On this episode of The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast, host Anne Blythe, M.Ed. asks Elizabeth, who’s been in an abusive marriage and is now in a healthy marriage, “Is marriage meant to be hard?”

Is crying yourself to sleep normal? Is everyone else getting the cold shoulder unless they apologize for an argument they didn’t start?

Do other women have to submit sexually, no matter how much they don’t want to, to keep their husbands happy and faithful?

“Marriage Is Hard” Enables Abuse

The old “marriage is hard” trope enables abusers. When clergy, family, therapists, and others tell women who are struggling to survive an abuse situation that all marriages are difficult, all men demand sex, and all women are enduring some level of misery, victims may feel that they aren’t justified to seek safety.

The truth? Healthy marriages are a safe space from the pain, fatigue, and trauma of life. Healthy marriages do not cause pain, fatigue, and trauma.

“When you said marriage doesn’t have to be hard work, you were speaking from experience, right? Because your current healthy marriage doesn’t feel like hard work, does it?”

Anne Blythe, Founder of BTR.ORG

So What’s “Normal”?

Many women in the BTR.ORG community fear that their experiences with abuse have altered their perception of “normal” and “healthy”, making it so that they won’t be able to recognize a healthy relationship and will be attracted to abuse.

None of this was your fault. We’re never so broken that we deserve to be abused.

Anne Blythe, Founder of BTR.ORG

This list may help you if you are having trouble identifying abusive behaviors in your relationships:

• Gaslighting is abuse
• Yelling is abuse
• Punching walls, hitting objects, and slamming doors is abuse
• Hurting or threatening pets is abuse
• Coercing you into sex is abuse
• Having sex with you when you’re sleeping, using painkillers, or feeling sick is abuse
• Giving you an STD is abuse
• Humiliating you is abuse
• Having sex with you without your informed consent (including about his pornography use or other sexual behaviors) is abuse
• Shaming you, using scriptures, Conference talks, or other religious materials is abuse
• Lying to other people about you is abuse

This list is not exhaustive, but may help you to identify covert abuse in your relatinship.

Are You In An Abusive Marriage?

At BTR.ORG, we know the feeling of the floor falling under your feet when it slowly dawns on you that you are in an abusive marriage.

We know that the first instinct women usually experience is a desire to point it out to the abuser, and try to elicit him to change.

We also know that this doesn’t work and puts the victim in more danger – emotionally, sexually, and physically.

We are here for you. The BTR.ORG Group Sessions were specifically created for women who need a safe space to process trauma, ask questions, and find a community of women in situations similar to theirs. Join us today. You are not alone.

Find the BTR.ORG Playlist Here:

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Transcript

Transcript

Introduction to Elizabeth

Anne: I have a member of our community, Elizabeth, on today’s episode. She’s a wife and mom and a survivor of a 14 year abusive marriage. She’s a writer working in the advertising industry. Outside of her career, Elizabeth works as a grant writer for human trafficking restoration house, and as a leader for her church youth group. She enjoys working out, being outside, and caring for her very energetic German shepherd.

Welcome Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Anne, thank you so much for having me.

Anne: Before we pushed record on this episode, Elizabeth was talking about how this is an opportunity for her to process her experience in story form. I’m excited to be part of that process with her and hopefully this will be a good experience as she shares. Is this one of the first times you’ve shared your story publicly, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth: Yes. It’s the very first time. There’s very few people in my life that I’ve shared the full experience with.

Anne: We are really honored to hear your story today. Let’s start at the very beginning.

Elizabeth’s Early Life and Family Background

Elizabeth: My parents were part of an arranged marriage through the Unification Church cult. They were married in Madison Square Garden with a bunch of other people.

They went on to have five kids. I’m the second oldest. I have two brothers and two sisters.

Growing up, it was just a lot of chaos. My parents were not in a good space emotionally or mentally. They both had rough upbringings.

Struggles with Mental and Physical Abuse

Elizabeth: My mom was overtly mentally ill and also had a lot of physical problems. A lot of times there was conversations about, “what’s mom’s mood today?”

We were always watching what she was feeling because if things were not going well for her, that meant bad things for us.

There was a lot of mental and physical abuse that happened in that situation. We were left on our own a lot. The five of us banded together and really worked together to survive.

My dad worked on Capitol Hill in the eighties.

Life in West Virginia

Elizabeth: He would commute into Washington, DC and leave us out in West Virginia in the panhandle country, in the side of a mountain with my mom who was homeschooling us. So we didn’t really have a lot of contact with the outside world other than play groups sometimes.

I always had this sense there was these other families that were normal. I would look at other families and it just always felt like we were so different. Their mom seemed to care for their kids and would actually do things for their kids, but we always were doing things for ourselves.

We would go to a play group and my older sister and I would pack the lunches, just simple things like that. My job was to serve my mom coffee in bed.

Thankfully, there wasn’t a lot of involvement with the Unification Church when we were living in West Virginia, we ended up going to an evangelical church and that was a refuge for me. I remember going to church camp and I had become a believer at a church event at age seven. So I was a Christian and I wanted to follow God, but it always felt like I was somehow doing something wrong.

I was confused. I could never, ever get my mom’s approval. There was just a lot of pain and chaos and confusion. My dad is originally from the Midwest.

Moving to the Midwest and Parental Separation

Elizabeth: So around 10, we ended up moving to the Midwest. His family was still there, and that was the start of things really going downhill.

Shortly after we moved out there, my parents separated and my dad left. So that meant we had no buffer between ourselves and our mom. My mom would keep my older sister and I up late and accuse us of awful things. make us feel like we were to blame because our dad had left. There was just constant chaos.

Like she would physically abuse us. I remember washing the dishes one day and she just came up behind me and smacked me across the head because I wasn’t doing it the right way. And that was a big theme I could never do things exactly the way she wanted them, but she had never taught me how she wanted me to do them. So there was a lot of shame in that, that I couldn’t ever figure out what my mom wanted. She cut our hair as a punishment one day, one night when we were staying up late, she, and she was really angry at us. She started sawing at her wrists and that actually happened twice where she tried to commit suicide in front of us.

So we were going to a church and pretty involved with the youth group there. My youth pastor one day talked to my dad, who we were still in contact with, but obviously weren’t living with and said, you need to go get custody of those kids because my older sister had basically shared what was going on.

My mom had basically torn a nightgown off of her body . So there was some evidence of what had happened.

Custody Battle and Living with Dad

Elizabeth: So my dad ended up going to get custody of us and we moved in with him and I was about 11 or 12. So that was something.

Anne: Did he get custody relatively easily?

Elizabeth: There was a court hearing, and my mom basically was not in a good mental space to be able to fight for us. I don’t remember this very well, but my dad says that even her attorney said, she’d probably go with her dad. I remember my older sister and I were in the judge’s chambers, and he had us go over to the window and wave at our parents.

And I didn’t understand why at the time, but I think he was looking at our body language. when we were doing that. So I guess that had something to do with it as well.

Anne: Custody by waving. Sorry, I’ve never heard of that before.

Elizabeth: I know. Looking back now as an adult, I’m sure that there were other things that were going on as far as evidence , but I don’t remember it.

We had been homeschooled, like I said. It wasn’t well done because there was so much chaos. And there was a lot of trauma involved having been homeschooled by my mom. I remember trying to learn to read the word turtle and I could not figure it out and, she started physically assaulting me basically because I couldn’t read this word and Another time, I was learning fractions, and I filled out a pie chart in crayon, but I was writing on a surface that was kind of bumpy, so the other parts that I had written in pencil also looked like they were in crayon because it was kind of bumpy, and she got so mad at me because I had written the whole thing in crayon , so she basically screamed at me and then made me go back.

And so I kind of scratched the crayon off of my pie chart. But when I took it back to her, she said, Oh, that was actually okay. The rest of it was done in crayon. I said, no, it was in pencil and it just looks textured or whatever. And she blew it off and didn’t apologize. I felt that I had actually been right all along, but it didn’t matter.

Transition to Public School

Elizabeth: So I got put into middle school the last quarter of seventh grade. , living with my dad and I’d always wanted to go to public school. It felt like really cool. I’m just now realizing how traumatic that was because I had never been around kids like that.

They knew all these really funny sayings and words that I didn’t know. They said that I was slow because I just didn’t understand what they were saying. It was like they were speaking a different language. I just remember at that time sort of this growing need in me for acceptance.

But at the same time feeling a lot of shame and rejection. Like, I was different again than everyone else and everyone else seemed to have their lives together. But meanwhile, I was living with my dad in this very small house with my four brothers and sisters going through puberty at the same time, not having any support because my dad is overwhelmed dealing with his own problems .

High School Challenges and Desires

Elizabeth: High school was a little bit better. I got involved with soccer and newspaper and writing, but looking back , I had friends that were not healthy, would sort of make fun of me but I was always just trying to win their approval. I had this sort of mentality that, my childhood, okay, it wasn’t that bad.

Obviously I was fine. It was a long time ago. I’d moved on and was just trying to do my best and obviously was okay. So all through high school, I really wanted a boyfriend that seemed to me like the ultimate symbol of acceptance. And unfortunately I was sort of awkward and out there and.

Didn’t really seem like, there was a lot of interest from other people in me that way. So I would say that I was definitely desperate for attention. I graduated high school and I was going to go on to journalism school and be a writer.

Meeting Her Future Husband

Elizabeth: The summer after my graduation, I met a boy who I’d known in the past through church.

He was a friend of a friend who would come to church sometimes. He was different and sort of grown up and we started hanging out. And a month later we were dating. I finally had a boyfriend, someone who actually liked me. And to make things even better, his family was still together.

His parents were together. His mom worked at a church. His mom was really involved with their lives. So like I would come home from college and stay with them over the weekend and she would do my laundry. I had been doing my own laundry since I was 13.

When I was living with my mom, she would threaten to not let me use the washing machine and have to hang my clothes outside. Um, the fact that his mom was so involved was something spectacular for me. You know, talk about red flags.

Early Relationship Dynamics

Elizabeth: The first time I ever met his mom, she was in his room changing his sheets. He was 17. We all went downstairs and there was a bunch of us friends and he was like snapping at her to get out of his room. And I was impressed, almost? Or kind of like, you know, I didn’t think you should talk to your parents like that, but I was also sort of impressed that he could do that, and she accepted that without causing a huge blow up, because definitely I could never have an attitude with my mom like that, if I wanted not to be smacked in the face.

Anne: So, to you, did it sort of signal a good relationship, kind of?

Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah.

Anne: Due to your experience

Elizabeth: yes, yes. That seemed like something accepting like they could actually I don’t know, go back and forth instead of escalating into this awful scene. So yeah, you’re right. for all I knew It was sort of a healthy way of interacting.

I was a freshman. And he was in the delayed entry program to join the Army. And we grew really close really fast.

And unfortunately, that was escalated by sexual intimacy that, Was way too premature, here I am a Christian having sex with my boyfriend feeling wrought with guilt because I knew better and wanted to do what God asked of me, but also feeling like, well, it had happened, so now I can’t stop, and that was also the message I was getting from him.

We’ve started, we’re basically married now, so we can’t stop having sex.

Anne: So this is what he told you .

Elizabeth: Right.

Anne: You didn’t know at the time it was coercion.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Anne: For victims of coercion, you think you’re consenting but that was the purpose of the manipulation.

Elizabeth: That’s an example of it not exactly sounding right, but entering into his world and his logic. Which would end up being a long term problem. Like, we were living in our own world. People just didn’t understand us. He always had an explanation for why he did things or why we should do certain things.

That sort of made sense. And I really wanted him to like me. And I really liked him. I was again, desperate. So all of those combined added up to basically me putting aside whatever reservations I had and going along with what he wanted because another underlying issue here was a lack of close support.

So my dad at this time had remarried and I obviously had three younger siblings and they were still living at home. There was just this sense that. I was a bother to them because they were remarried. They were dealing with my younger siblings they didn’t want to take care of me. They didn’t have the capacity to offer that kind of support and I wanted to get out of the way

So I would come home and I would stay with my boyfriend’s family. And maybe go over there, but they didn’t, just didn’t seem like they were that interested in my life.

In the meantime, I was getting very much ingrained with his family. I remember one time saying, I’m not okay with us being sexually intimate anymore. I want to stop. And he basically said to me, Show me in the Bible where it says that. I wanted to go flip through my Bible and find a verse, but I didn’t know where to look or how to interpret that.

So I just didn’t know what to do. And without someone saying, it’s okay if you want to stop. I just didn’t have the ability to say no.

Anne: What you didn’t have is understanding. you Were gaslit by society, gaslit maybe by their church, gaslit by their abuser. So when you’re in that fog of abuse, you don’t have the ability, but only because you don’t have the knowledge.

Once you get educated about it, it’s like, I can take a step toward that, but I just don’t want victims to blame themselves. It’s the opposite. It wasn’t your fault.

Elizabeth: I just didn’t know better.

Anne: Like, there’s nothing that you could have done in, at the time because you don’t know what you don’t know. When you don’t know what you don’t know, there’s no way to get out of that.

Elizabeth: Exactly. And when I finally did, and I don’t want to jump ahead, but when I finally did, I couldn’t go back.

Anne: Right. We’ll get to that soon.

Elizabeth: Yes. My freshman year, I was at a big university. I just didn’t get involved. I would go to classes but come back so I could talk to him I was so obsessed with my boyfriend. He would come down at every opportunity. And occasionally we would get into fights.

Like one time he told his younger brother when I was at their house to Come at me with his bath mat that the dog had peed on and I was so mad I was taking out my anger on his younger brother. Because I had a younger brother about that age. He was egging his brother on and now I’m the one to blame. Because of how I reacted, which wasn’t good either. I was just really angry. His whole family got mad at me.

I had crossed a line. I was so embarrassed and mortified. I withdrew and I didn’t take his calls. I was like, we’re done. I remember feeling at that point like, okay, I’m going to break up with him.

Then him talking to me and somehow feeling like I had no choice again, I had to stay with him. It was a lonely world out there and I had become part of his family and if I wasn’t part of his family, I didn’t have anyone. There was no apology from his little brother.

There was no apologies from his family or from him. It was just, let’s move on. So I forgave and forgot. Another theme that would emerge later on. like I said, he was going to ship off to basic training.

Joining the Army and Marriage

Elizabeth: And I decided to also join the army and I was going to join the reserves.

And we would go to basic training at the same time and everything would be great because once he’s in the army I could transfer to a unit wherever he is, and I could get my college paid for, which was a big deal because I had taken out loans in order to pay for my first year of school. So we started talking about getting married and it was always brewing in the background because like I said, one of his arguments was that he thought we were already married, because we’d been having sex.

And so I was like, we might as well just formalize this. So we decided that we would get married a couple weeks before we would both leave for basic training. And we did. I remember meeting my dad at the back of the church and going down the aisle and feeling this sense of dread, not knowing what I was getting myself into, but feeling like it was too late.

Here all these people were, and I had to keep going. When I said my vows, I genuinely meant them. I really wanted to take care of him. I really wanted to be a family with him. I always remembered that throughout our marriage. But, a couple weeks later, I was set to ship out for boot camp.

Pregnancy and New Beginnings

Elizabeth: And, the military has learned the hard way that you give female recruits a pregnancy test before they leave for basic training. And I was the one that found out I was pregnant at the military processing station.

Anne: Oh, wow.

How did you feel when that happened? Did you feel happy, excited, sad? Did you feel confused?

Elizabeth: I was in shock. I was in shock. And there was also a sense of guilt because this is the natural result of doing what I had done the last eight months. So there’s a lot of shame as well.

I don’t know when I’d actually gotten pregnant. It was before we’d gotten married, but I didn’t know that when I’d got married, all I knew that I was not feeling good.

I made it a point to Pretend like I’d gotten pregnant on our wedding night because of the shame also from, a church environment knowing very well that I was not fulfilling those expectations. So, basically, lied for quite a while.

Anne: I’m so grateful that you’re sharing your story and how you felt. So many women have been sexually coerced like this and they haven’t understood that they were being sexually coerced, and then maybe they do get pregnant.

Then they feel like, They, have to get married and they also kind of want to get married, so there’s conflicting feelings,

Elizabeth: Exactly.

Anne: The end result is usually that they aren’t able to get help because they aren’t able to tell other people what’s really going on. Which is what your abuser wants.

But you don’t know that at the time. You just think you’re protecting yourself from embarrassment. I think abusers know this and they use it against you, it’s a way that they end up manipulating their victims. And that has happened to all of us.

Elizabeth: Yes, exactly. So they give you an option to nullify all of your contracts with the military, or to stay in and go to training later. I decided just to nullify everything and set my life on a new trajectory. He ended up shipping out just the same, went to training over that summer and that fall watched his graduation.

We moved to a base and I ended up having our son two months after we moved there.

So I had my son and he became, um, Sort of the focus of my world.

Husband’s Deployment and Injury

Elizabeth: This was during the early stages of the Iraq war and my husband deployed to Iraq a year after my son was born. I ended up moving back to where we were from. He ended up getting hurt got a purple heart and came home.

So I was taking care of him

Anne: Is his injury like a long term type of injury that’s going to affect him the rest of his life?

Elizabeth: He had some bad burns that eventually did heal up and a fractured hip, that I think still does give him problems, he was in a wheelchair for a while, but he was able to recover completely. You would not know to look at him that he had been through that. I will say though that it became his identity. It became this persona that he took on that is very much honored by people around him.

That was used against me later on,

and he eventually got out of the army and we brought our life to our hometown.

Career and Family Life

Elizabeth: And I ended up graduating before him and I got a job.

Our son was getting ready for kindergarten.

Struggles with Homeschooling and Public Perception

Elizabeth: I was talking about maybe homeschooling him, but the view of my background and homeschooling in general was looked down upon by him and his family because they really thought my background was crazy and ridiculous they didn’t want anything to do with it.

There was a lot of mocking that went on about it. even though that was part of who I was, it wasn’t really welcome in that space. put our son in public school and went to work and rose pretty quickly in my career to levels of influence in our state politics. I had worked as a reporter, then I started working in communications and was really well regarded and able to use my abilities .

A lot of people saw it was very visible. It was very public roles in the legislature and in state government.

Professional Success and Personal Degradation

Elizabeth: There was always this disconnect because I had this important job, I’d go off, in my fancy dress in the morning and go work for people who had a lot of influence, but I would come home and was constantly degraded and put down.

There’s a lot of, like I said, mockery that went on about, who I was. I have this exuberant personality and sense of humor. But I was always regarded by him as not funny and just sort of stupid and too much. And it was communicated to me in very subtle ways.

In the meantime, I really just wanted to have a good marriage.

Efforts to Improve Marriage

Elizabeth: And so I would read books about marriage, especially Christian books about marriage. I would put those things into practice because I’m extremely self aware, which I’m coming to understand is a trauma response .

Just trying so hard to be the wife that. I wanted him to recognize me as, but it was never quite good enough.

Cooking and Constant Criticism

Elizabeth: One thing about him is that he’s a very picky eater and I love to cook and I love to serve other people. So I would make these meals. He wanted, like steak or, roast or something like that.

And it was never quite good enough. He would put a bite in his mouth and taste it and then have to say, Oh, it’s okay. Maybe it could be done differently this time. This way next time.

Anne: Like, a condescending, Nice try, honey, but

Elizabeth: It wasn’t even that sweet. he would Taste it And You could just tell by his expression, That there was something that was coming up short. I would just feel really sad, but I would resolve to try better next time. to Keep working to try to improve myself, whether that was my physical appearance or my abilities or working out.

Running and Seeking Validation

Elizabeth: I was a runner at the time. And I had entered into a 5k race in support of our son’s school. I ended up being first place for the women’s division. There wasn’t a ton of people in the race, but there was still something that I was really excited about. Coming home and I had this medal .

And he’s like, well, when you beat my army PT score, you’ll know you’ve really done something. And I was just devastated because I never ever could do anything that meant anything to him. I never was able to put my finger on what exactly was going on and why I could never make him happy.

Marriage Books and Unmet Expectations

Elizabeth: Because all the marriage books that I was reading basically presented this formula, like if you respect your husband enough, if you submit to him, if you do these things, he’s going to love you back. He’s going to do his part. And it never worked for me. It never ever worked for me.

looking back now, I see how marriage books from a Christian perspective were wrong.

Coming from a place of you do this, this is what’s going to happen. It always talked about if you respect your husband, then he’s going to love you in the way that you need.

I was really focused on my part. I had to make sure that I did everything perfectly. I met his every need. I was always there for him whenever however, and whatever he needed, which was a lot, if I was reading a book and he came into the room, my attention was on him, but it just never worked.

He would treat me with disdain.

Emotional Neglect and Stonewalling

Elizabeth: When there were issues that would come up inevitably, we could never get them resolved because he would never take responsibility for himself. There was occasions where I would elevate things like, okay, I know for certain that what he did or what he said was not okay.

I just know it. I would have in my mind, like, I’m not going to let this go. I’m not going to just, apologize. I would bring that to him and say, I’m not, you know., Well, he would start stonewalling me. He would ignore me for days on end until I finally, relented and just, apologized and had to let go of whatever.

Had actually been going on with him and his behavior. I was always the problem. And I internalized that message. A lot of times just distraught that I was such a failure as a wife. Just very discouraged. And that just left me really vulnerable because I was looking for affirmation all the time of like, am I even acceptable?

And it got to the point where I didn’t even feel like I was a human. I felt like I was something different and that was something obviously I struggled with throughout my life just feeling like an other feeling like somehow outside of mainstream society and This was you know along that same vein like I was somehow worse or different or my problems had no solution and he would talk about how he didn’t believe in feelings, like emotions are not logical.

They serve no purpose. So how you feel doesn’t matter. I got that message a lot. Like, if I would say, Hey, the way that you did this hurt me in this way, it would be completely disregarded and mocked because he would say that I was so emotional and that it didn’t matter and I needed to be more like him Stoic and such a leader and strong. I just needed to do what he said.

Triangulation and Comparisons

Elizabeth: There was also a lot of triangulation that went on.

He would point to other women and basically be a fan of them, especially about news reporters on the TV, like, local news reporters. He knew at one point that had been a dream of mine to be on a broadcast. I’d studied journalism in college, and so he would be like a fan of these local reporters, and when they’d inevitably move on to another station, he would be like grieving.

And I was supposed to be like supportive or something, but obviously it just made me feel like I was lesser than and didn’t live up to that standard. Whenever there was a situation, where I would share my point of view.

Parenting Conflicts

Elizabeth: Like for example, our son was playing basketball. There would be like these really tense situations in the car on the way home where my son had, Not done something the right way in a game.

I would be like, maybe next time you can try this. And he would say, no, don’t even do that. That’s dumb. So it was automatically wrong. And then he would basically restate what I had just said. It was almost like, it didn’t matter what I said. Another example of that is.

Constant Undermining and Double Standards

Elizabeth: You know, in dining rooms, the chandelier is lower because it’s supposed to be over the table.

He had been hitting his head on the chandelier and he just didn’t understand why. And I was like, we just need to move the table back. He automatically said, no, that’s not it. And then he paused for a minute and he was like, Oh, that was one of the very few times I can remember that he actually realized maybe there is something to what she’s saying.

Normally it was just, I’m wrong. What I said was stupid. I just needed to shut up.

Physical Appearance and Cruel Jokes

Elizabeth: There was a lot of jokes about me and my physical appearance. My teeth. I didn’t like it, but I also wanted to be seen by him as someone with a sense of humor.

And so I was willing to go along with being self deprecating, but it was really from a point of cruelty because it wasn’t affectionate.

It was just putting me down. There was also a lot of double standards. Like if something went wrong with our cell phones , like Oh, I accidentally dropped it and cracked the screen. That was like a crisis. And it was my fault.

Phone Incident and Double Standards

Elizabeth: Well, one time his phone fell out of his pocket and he stepped back and stepped on it and shattered the screen. And he came home disappointed. And I was like, trying to be supportive. And then I realized if I had done that, that would have been hell to pay.

I would have been berated for being so stupid. Of course I wouldn’t treat him like that. I brought that up to him, trying to gently say, Hey, what’s with this double standard? And this is an example of being in his world. He said, I’m already harsh enough on myself.

I punish myself, but you need to be told that’s not okay by me because you don’t really think that way.

Anne: I need to teach you a lesson

Elizabeth: Exactly.

Anne: yeah, the abuser way of thinking of it.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So yeah, there was that double standard all the time. He would always have a very convenient explanation for why it made sense.

And eventually I knew there wasn’t anything I could do about it, it didn’t make sense to me all the time, but if I tried to challenge him on it, it would escalate into an argument and then him stonewalling me, ignoring me for days on end until finally I relented.

Evangelical Views on Marriage and Intimacy

Elizabeth: Another angle of this, and it speaks to the evangelical world’s view on sexual relationships between husband and wife. As we’ve established, I wanted very much to be a good wife. if I was not fulfilling his sex needs, I was falling short as a wife.

I had this view that I had to meet his intimacy needs Like every three days. He was on board with that. Looking back now, it was just very mechanical.

He wouldn’t kiss me. There was a lack of intimacy . And eventually he coerced me into doing things that I didn’t want to do, but I was stuck between this place where I have to meet his needs and if I don’t, I’m not going to be the kind of wife that I want to be.

He was so persistent pressure to make me do things I didn’t want to do that I eventually relented. It was very traumatic for me. Actually towards the end, I was starting to say to myself, this can’t be right. I didn’t know what to think.

Isolation and Lack of Support

Anne: Were you sharing it with anyone at the time?

Elizabeth: No.

Anne: Do you think that was part of why you didn’t know what to think. Because he had isolated you?

Elizabeth: I would have never brought those things up to another person because I didn’t want to dishonor him. And I felt like I would be disrespecting him or betraying him if I brought those issues up. His needs and his comfort and everything was much more important then whatever I was experiencing.

And looking back, I was so used to dealing with things alone and not having very much support and accepting things for what they were and not really knowing any different. I was definitely coerced in that way and didn’t know what to do about it.

but yes, I was very isolated. We couldn’t make couple friends because people didn’t want to be around him.

He had the same friends since high school and they were people who were willing to go along with what he wanted. Other people I tried to bring into our lives, whether from church or people I knew in high school, there was something wrong with them. I had very few friends.

I would try to get involved at our church, like volunteer. Or do some sort of Bible study, but there was always some reason why I shouldn’t do that.

If we would drop our son off on Wednesday nights, he would want to take me on a date . He would want to do something with me. And so I was like, if he’s initiating that, I’ve got to, do that and not go to the adult Bible study.

Job Loss and Emotional Breakdown

Elizabeth: What finally broke everything wide open, as I said, I had been very involved in politics in our state and had gotten a job.

Through circumstances outside of my control, that job ended after six months due to the way that the political system works. It was unexpected. He melted down. He could not handle the fact that I had lost my job and that I was going to be without work. We weren’t destitute by any means, but it was like such an injury to him that this had happened.

What’s so interesting is I’d always thought of him as this leader you know, he’s got such a strong personality and he has all these opinions and isn’t afraid to share them and such a pronounced sense of right and wrong. Well, in crises, he would just not be able to function because he was so stressed out or I don’t know, had anxiety or couldn’t control things.

So that would all get taken out on me. That’s definitely what happened in this situation. I was the reason why this had gone badly. I could have done things differently. It was all my fault. Of course. I was trying to tell him, let’s just trust God in this situation. I think things are going to work out. I’m pretty well respected. There’s other opportunities out there and let’s see what we can make happen.

He just thought that was really dumb. I remember, wanting to pray with him about the situation. And he pulled his hands back from me and said, no, I don’t do that. And that was such a wake up to me because we’re supposed to be this Christian couple.

Like what kind of Christian couple doesn’t pray together. But again, there was a sense of shame on me because I had failed somehow and I had pushed my husband towards these actions somehow.

Realization of Abuse

Anne: Have you ever considered during that time instead of him quote unquote losing it that he saw this as an opportunity to assert more control and abuse you more because you were vulnerable?

Elizabeth: I haven’t considered that. No. Talk more about that.

Anne: So many people view abuse as like when they lost control. What we know is abuse is when they try to assert control. It doesn’t look like they’re having fun to us because they look angry and bitter and frustrated. but it’s an opportunity for him to truly, really abuse you because you’ve lost your job.

Elizabeth: Very possible.

Anne: It’s kind of like kick them once they’re down. I’m not sure if that was the case in your situation, but I like to point that out because a healthy person would not take the opportunity to assert control and make sure there’s a power differential at a time like this. They would be trying to build up their partner or help them feel good about themselves . When you say at times of stress, he would really fall apart. One thing I would like victims to consider is during times of stress is when they really want to assert control.

That’s when they really want to dominate. That’s when they really want to make you feel bad.

Elizabeth: Just from what you’re describing, yes, that was a pattern throughout our marriage where if there was a crisis, if there was something that went wrong, I would just want to deal with it with him and we can get through this together.

This is just life and he would use that to bark orders at me to make me feel awful for what happened. yeah, like you’re saying to assert control. So I think you’re right.

Anne: For them, a crisis is an opportunity for abuse.

Elizabeth: Very interesting.

Anne: It’s like a reason to abuse someone.

Whereas if you hadn’t lost your job, it’s really hard to go off on how bad of an employee you are.

Elizabeth: Yeah. All the things that you did wrong. That’s absolutely right.

So at this point, I was working with a coworker who had gotten me this job and felt really bad that this ended up happening.

It was outside of their control and I didn’t know what to do. So I opened up like saying, this is what’s going on at home. I feel so bad. Can you help me get another job? And this person used that as an opening to say, Actually, Elizabeth, I’ve been watching your marriage for a long time and I’ve seen some things that I’m really concerned about and they sent me a couple articles on abuse.

At first, I was really dismissive because I’ve been through what I’d been through with my mom and I knew that was child abuse. There was a lot of physical violence that went on in my childhood. That hadn’t actually been happening in my marriage. So I was dismissive having his mindset like, Oh, emotions don’t matter.

You just need to think about things logically.

Logical vs Emotional Manipulation

Anne: Can we pause there for just a second?

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Anne: So I am like hyper logical.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Anne: So in my marriage, I was logical about everything and instead I got accused of being a robot and not being feeling enough and not being compassionate enough .

They’re always going to use your strengths. against you and they’re going to exploit your weaknesses.

Elizabeth: Yes. Yes.

Anne: So I want to put this out to everyone, whatever it is, the thing they were telling you, just imagine you were the opposite.

I assure you they would have acted the same way.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Anne: To make sure that everybody knows that it wasn’t about you being a human. Good for you. I’m so glad you weren’t a robot. Congratulations. Okay, thank you.

Elizabeth: It turns out that God made us with all these different parts of ourselves that are actually make up who we are.

So our logic, our emotions, our physical bodies, our spiritual bodies they’re all integrated together and we can’t cut off one part. And say that’s what’s healthy. And that was such a revelation to me, like, actually, no, it wouldn’t have been healthy to become a Vulcan.

That was not okay.

Anne: Also, you sound super logical to me. I’m guessing from your job you had to be really logical.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Anne: Let’s pretend for two seconds that he would have engaged you in a logical debate, I’m guessing you would have won. And the reason he had to go silent was because he never could have beat you logically.

Elizabeth: I mean, yes.

Anne: Because he was being illogical.

Elizabeth: Yes, you’re right. Another point of hypocrisy there : he would get angry. And anger is an emotion.

Anne: Exactly.

Elizabeth: But he would act like that doesn’t count.

Anne: Yes.

Elizabeth: So it was okay for him to be angry, but when I cried tears of frustration because I was so desperate for him to understand me, I was being emotional, illogical.

Discovering Patterns of Abuse

Elizabeth: So I started reading everything I could get my hands on about abuse and light bulb after light bulb started going off and I started seeing the patterns . So gaslighting, shaming and criticizing were all there. I just felt sick because

I thought I was getting away from that path by marrying into his family and having a family of my own.

So I got another job, surprise, surprise. It was a better job. It was more money with good coworkers and I was really good at it.

It was a really spiritual moment for me. I was reading an abuse book it said are you willing to surrender the outcome of your marriage to God and let things fall where they may by saying no to this.

I had been trying to control the outcome. I was so stuck on, we don’t divorce. 14 years of, I can grit this out. I can make things work. It’s up to me to make this work. This realization that It was actually out of my hands and a large part of it was his responsibility and he was not taking responsibility at all.

You know, we had this beautiful house that we’d purchased together. A dream house and we’d only been there a couple of years. And I realized what it meant to say. I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m not going to put up with this.

Setting Boundaries and Seeking Separation

Elizabeth: I started saying no. I started calling him out on his behavior and saying, I don’t want you to say that about my teeth. It’s not okay for you to tell me that I’m wrong and dismiss me out of hand. I’m actually saying something that you need to hear. He immediately noticed that something was different. His mom noticed too. What’s interesting is she had always been really supportive of me.

We were good friends. She knew her son had issues and she knew that he didn’t treat me very well. And I was like, I’m not going to keep putting up with this. And she understood at that point. Well, there was a couple of nights I had been really firm on my boundaries and He called his mom crying she came over and was basically like, You’ve got to do what he wants you to do, you need to stop this silliness about what you’re doing because she’s been married 35 years and marriage is hard .

That marriage is hard line is such a lie. Marriage is actually not hard, Marriage shouldn’t be that hard. But we always act like, Oh, you’ve got to sacrifice. You’ve got to die. Like if your marriage is killing you, actually, .

I moved into the guest room and was having very little contact with him.

I realized that I needed everything that come through writing with him, so he could text me or email me, but I could not have a conversation with him in person because he was so good at manipulating and getting me off track and pointing the blame back on me. I would just get so confused.

everything in writing was a big factor being able to get clarity because I would go back and look at those texts and say, okay, this is what’s going on here. I can identify. He’s trying to make me feel guilty here I spent a few months getting strong educating myself about what was going on.

There was a point where I said, okay, nothing is changing. He has not done anything to indicate that he cares enough to change his behavior, he’s not showing any remorse, or if he is saying, sorry, there’s no marked change of behavior. So, I decided that I needed to separate out of home, and I wanted him to move out because his parents had an extra bedroom, he could go live with them.

Separation and Legal Proceedings

Elizabeth: I went to my dad and his wife’s house. They lived an hour away at that point, and I called him and said, listen, we’re going to separate. I need you to go to your parents house. And that didn’t go over well. I knew it wouldn’t. Like he cannot be moved unless he’s physically forced out of place.

So I ended up moving in with a friend who I knew from Bible study. She opened up her home to me and lived there for six weeks. A week after I made the realization, there has been absolutely no movement. I am going to file for divorce. I had been thinking about that as a possibility. I wasn’t there yet.

It was too overwhelming to, to comprehend. I was thinking about our son thinking about, what does our witness look like if I do this.

Anne: When you say, what does our witness look like? What do you mean by that?

Elizabeth: Just the way that we live our lives is a testimony to what we believe.

Anne: Okay. You

Elizabeth: know, that’s a big piece of evangelicalism is being a witness to the world and showing God’s love and God’s redemption . And the idea that our marriage was to a point where it couldn’t be redeemed was really hard for me to grasp. There’s theological issues there because some people believe that God controls everything .

So God has the ability to break into his heart and say, you’ve been treating your wife really poorly. The Bible talks about this a lot What I came to understand is that he has a very hardened heart it’s a choice that he makes. And if he were to soften his heart, I’ve been doing it wrong.

I’m going to go the other way. I’m going to make amends. I’m going to do the work on myself that God would redeem that. But since he is so convinced that he is right in everything and he never takes responsibility for his behavior, God allows him to make that choice. He has the free will to make that choice.

And I had to come to that realization. Because we do want to have this idea that butterflies and rainbows and God will do all these things. But here’s the thing. We work in cooperation with God. He didn’t make us to be puppets. What it means to be a follower of Christ is you surrender your life and say, God my life is yours.

You move that way every day. Well, if you say those words but your heart is hardened, you’re not following Christ. Because your heart is not there.

Smear Campaign and Family Dynamics

Elizabeth: He started a smear campaign while we were separated, my boss came into my office one day and said, Elizabeth, I’m hearing things and I don’t know what to think, tell me what’s going on.

And I was so mortified. He worked in a similar way for the state, and had access to people who had access to my boss, and basically had set them on me, through my boss. And his mom was also on me, and his aunt, who I had been really good friends with, and who seemed really supportive of me, saw his behavior was suddenly against me.

So that was extremely painful. He was making all sorts of accusations about me about my motivations. Saying that we just had some communication problems and here I was causing all these problems and saying all these things about him. I was devastated because I was obviously mortified that it had leaked into my work life, my career, it just was more evidence that there was no change and that he didn’t really love me. He couldn’t really love me. You don’t treat people that you love like that. And that was a really hard realization because we’d always made it a priority to say love you when we got off the phone. So realizing those are just words then the way he behaved or even what he’s capable of, I don’t believe that he’s capable of actually loving other people .

Some really hard realizations during that time period. But. I ended up being able to move back into our house after about six weeks of out of house separation. That was because a judge ordered him to move out for the remainder of our divorce proceedings. We were able to work things out through a concilator, although I had to sit across the table from him and basically work things out with our son.

I think a lot of survivors do this, where they’ve had all these realizations and so they’re trying to get other people to understand and explain all these things and it’s like the meme with the guy and the threads and they’re making all these connections.

And so I was trying to explain to this lawyer who’s Supposed to be mediating for us . And she’s like, I don’t care. I’m just here to make sure that everything goes well .

Finalizing the Divorce

Elizabeth: So we ended up being able to come to a divorce agreement.

During this time, he sort of realized that he couldn’t control me anymore and so he discarded me because I wasn’t any use to him.

Unfortunately, his family was still angry at me.

I had deleted him off my Facebook , but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to get rid of all of his friends and family yet. And there was one post I made that said something, I can’t remember exactly, but they found it offensive and they called me out. And his aunt said something about how I was driving around in my car, which, had a Purple Heart license plate on it that he had made me put on because, as I said earlier, that was very much his identity and that I was just trying to get credit or look good because I hadn’t changed my license plate yet.

Anne: That you wanted people to think that you were the Purple Heart?

Elizabeth: Mm hmm.

Anne: That’s hilarious. To put words in her mouth And probably also, you were using him all along.

Elizabeth: Or something like that?

Anne: Yeah, for your own engrandisement.

Elizabeth: Yes, yeah, something like that.

Anne: Which, by the way, is exactly what he was doing.

So that was just projection.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Anne: Whatever comes out of his mouth and he accuses you of doing is what he was actually doing.

Elizabeth: Right. And I know for a fact that She did not come up with that on her own. She doesn’t even live in town. So she would have had no way of knowing what license plate I had on my car.

Anne: That’s straight out of his mouth for sure.

Elizabeth: Exactly. Yeah.

Anne: Yeah. And other women get accused of being gold diggers or wanting the image like, I’m an attorney. She just wanted to be married to an attorney.

Elizabeth: Yes, exactly. The divorce was finalized.

Post-Divorce Reflections

Elizabeth: I tried to move on. Finding myself picking up the pieces and honestly It almost started to begin to feel inevitable.

Having grown up with such a traumatic experience and dysfunction, never having people say, Hey, that wasn’t right directly to my face. I was bound and destined to repeat that sort of situation.

Anne: You’re thinking this to yourself?

Yeah.

I don’t think this is true, by the way. People tell this to survivors all the time, The victim blaming and it’s just luck of the draw, who people marry.

Because some women might be quote unquote attracted to that behavior But then their husband ends up being amazing, you know,

Elizabeth: absolutely

Anne: maybe you don’t agree with me But I’m like none of this was your fault.

We’re never so broken that we still deserve to be abused. But anyway, you’re here at this point in your life where you’re thinking this is an inevitable due to your injuries.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Maybe part of that sort of thinking is evidence that, it’s really hard to think about so many things being outside of your control.

Anne: Yeah.

Elizabeth: You know, you want to think through your life, you’re making these conscious, good decisions, and they’re not because of patterns from your past. But I think in my case, I was very much going down this stream and not being aware of my own agency, my own sense of self, and my own ability to shape my own world.

Healing and Self-Realization

Elizabeth: So, I am definitely still healing. I’m trying to do better about owning my story. Thank you for giving me the chance to do that. Like I said, There’s not very many people who know this about me. There’s a lot of themes that I’m trying to deal with around shame and rejection and abandonment that are really painful.

At the same time, and I think this is probably my personality, I can see the gifts that have been given to me because of my experiences and not to say that they were good, but they’ve shaped my understanding of other people really well and shape my ability to deal with grief. And to deal with hard situations and to sit with people in grief and hard situations and just be with them.

And I’m grateful for that.

New Beginnings and Healthy Relationships

Elizabeth: Now I’m remarried to a really wonderful person. He is very steady. He’s very respectful. He’s extremely smart and he really loves me and he really values who I am. And that is something to get used to. I’ve had to get used to that because I still have tendencies to want to earn his love.

Those two things don’t work together. Earning and love, they don’t work together. And I think that’s something I’m going to be working through for the rest of my life. But, I’m definitely on that path.

Anne: When you said marriage doesn’t have to be hard work, you were speaking from experience,

because your current marriage doesn’t feel like hard work.

Elizabeth: It doesn’t. And maybe that’s a testament to how hard I worked before. So this seems really easy in comparison. It’s easy for me to think about things from his perspective . Not to say that we don’t, have scuffles and things that we work through, but comparatively it’s a breeze.

Hope and Faith in Healing

Anne: If there was anything I could just like pour into our listeners, it would be hope. Hope that You can have a peaceful life, hope that you can heal, and faith that any action that you take towards safety will fruit something. Because so many victims think, well, I could try but it wouldn’t do any good.

And sometimes it doesn’t, right? Sometimes you try to have that conversation and it doesn’t do any good.

Spiritual Insights on Abuse

Anne: Another thing I’ve been thinking about lately is there’s a scripture that says, God does not give his children a rock when they ask for a fish. He gives them a fish. Abuse victims think

I’m praying and I’m getting rocks and God’s never gonna give me a fish. I’m just getting rocks. I think the reason that happens is they don’t realize that there is an abuser in between them and God’s blessings who’s literally swatting the blessings away. The fish are coming our way, but he is there like, nope, nope, nope.

You can’t get them. You can’t feel God’s love. You can’t feel people’s appreciation. You are going to feel isolated and they’re swatting it away. And so God really does want to give us the fish. We can’t get the fish because we have an actual like evil or wicked block in our life, keeping it away. To have faith that every step you take towards safety will fruit something.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Anne: God does want to give you a fish. And I’m so thankful and grateful that you found a relationship where you feel loved and you’re starting to feel God’s blessings.

Elizabeth: It’s amazing.

Anne: You’re starting to feel the fruits of your own righteousness. Even if you’re really submerged in scripture, even if you’re doing your best to be righteous, you cannot feel the fruits of your own righteousness when you’re married to a wicked man.

Overcoming Wickedness and Finding Solid Ground

Elizabeth: Yes, and coming to terms with the idea that wickedness that’s been so close to you all this time and affected you so deeply is really hard. There’s a lot of grief there because you thought he was something and he’s actually something else and it’s like the ground is disappearing out from under your feet and you have to learn how to stand up again and realize that’s okay, like those experiences are what they are, but there’s also solid ground out there.

Anne: Processing our stories is part of that.

Strength and Responsibility in Survivors

Anne: As you’ve shared your story, the one thing I’m hearing is strength and an awesome sense of responsibility for yourself and your own life. That’s one thing that I find awe inspiring about survivors, even though we are victims of other people’s absolute atrocious behavior, we still maintained the sense of responsibility.

For ourselves and our lives and that is what helps us get to safety and that is what will help us live a life of peace. I think it’s remarkable that almost across the board, all victims maintain the sense of responsibility, even when acknowledging that they were a victim. And I think that’s really cool.

And I hear that in your voice. And I hear this strength and that you acknowledge your injuries and are working to heal them from a place of humility. That is just so inspiring as well. So thank you so much for sharing.