Have you ever asked, “Is it wrong to want to leave my emotionally abusive husband?” Many women in the BTR community yearn for emotional and psychological safety. If you’re asking yourself this same question, here are some things to consider: 

1. What would you tell someone else if they asked?

Pretend like you’re having a conversation with someone else. Listen to your own story as if you’re someone else. What would you say to this “other” person? Would she be wrong for wanting to leave an emotionally abusive husband?

2. What would a domestic abuse expert say?

Since most therapists, clergy, and almost everybody else doesn’t understand the ins and outs of domestic abuse, especially when it comes to emotional and psychological abuse, they’re not the right people to ask about whether or not your desire to leave your emotionally abusive husband is appropriate.

Anne Blythe, M.Ed, Producer & Host of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast helps women assess their level of emotional safety everyday. At BTR.ORG emotional safety is the top priority. So rather than asking yourself if it’s wrong to leave or even if you should leave, Anne would support you in your journey to discover what it means to be emotionally safe and to take steps to become emotionally safe, in whatever way works for you.

3. Who told you it’s wrong to leave an emotionally abusive husband?

If you’re wondering if it’s wrong to leave an emotionally abusive husband, consider why you’re even asking this question in the first place. Does the question even make sense? Who has told you or where have you picked up the idea that it could be wrong to leave an emotionally abusive relationship?

Anne wrote The BTR.ORG Meditations so that women can look inside themselves to sort out their own thoughts from the society scripting in their heads to determine what the is the best course of action to take. Start listening to your intuition, rather than people who don’t understand what it’s like to live in your situation. 

4. Consider asking, “How do I establish emotional safety,” instead of, “Can I get to emotional safety?”

One thing’s for sure, all women can get to emotionally safety. So it’s important to focus on HOW. Anne developed The BTR.ORG Living Free and Message Workshops for specifically this reason – to help victims get to emotional safety. To learn more about HOW, visit btr.org/livingfree

Whether you’re fully committed to separating from your husband, or have gone back and forth on this painful decision, consider these tips and strategies Anne and Karen discuss in the transcript below. 

Introduction to Karen DeArmond Gardner

Anne: I have Karen DeArmond Gardner on today’s episode. She is an author, speaker, and advocate. She wrote the book, Hope for Healing from Domestic Abuse. Thirty years, four months, and two days after she said, ‘I do’, Karen left an abusive marriage.

She walks with women as they learn to reframe what is normal, real, and necessary so women can rediscover who God is and who they are; moving from hopelessness to hope. Her passions include Jesus, her husband, healing, and coffee.

Welcome, Karen!

Karen: Thank you for having me on , Anne. I am so excited about this.

Karen’s Faith and Podcast Welcome

Anne: Obviously, from her bio, Karen is a woman of faith, so am I. If you are agnostic or atheist or anything else, you are welcome here. We’re going to be talking about our faith from our own perspective.

Karen and I don’t share the same faith tradition per se. Everyone is always welcome. And also, if you come on the podcast, you’re always welcome to share from your own faith or non-faith perspective.

Karen’s Story: The Beginning

Anne: Karen, can you tell me a little about your story?

Karen: Oh, gosh. Where do you start in your story? When you left or when you got into it?

As you shared already, I stayed 30 years in an abusive marriage. But at 20 years old, I did not know that.

He was charming and kind and he was funny and he listened to me. I told him secrets I had never told anybody in my entire life. And I had no idea.

Recognizing Red Flags

Karen: Were there red flags? Yes.

Do you pay attention to them? You do, but because he’s this guy over here, he’s always telling me how amazing I am. So it just must be like a one off.

Marriage and Abuse: Early Signs

Karen: We got married after two and a half months of dating, and I had no idea what I was stepping into. I noticed things changed, but I thought it was just marriage and getting used to each other. I didn’t have anything to compare it to. I didn’t have a frame to put it next to because my mom sought a divorce in the sixties because my father was abusive. Then the man she was married to while I was growing up was an alcoholic. So I really didn’t have anything to compare to what is normal and what’s not normal.

Anne: So many women have that situation. I remember telling my internal medicine, family practice doctor, I don’t know what is okay cause I’ve never been married to anyone else.

Lack of Education on Abuse

Anne: Everybody tells you marriage is hard, you have to work hard at it, and you have to be loving and patient.

We get really educated about how to love, serve, forgive, be kind, listen, and all that stuff. We get very little education about abuse. So it gets confusing.

Karen: Honestly, nobody talks about that. Every pre-marriage should contain a section on abusive behaviors, and it should be done separately because she’s not going to admit that in front of him or vice-versa. But we’re still not doing that even in this day and age.

The Hidden Dark Side

Karen: Nobody can imagine someone everybody likes who’s so kind, funny and all of these things has this dark side to them. I wasn’t looking for the fairy tale; I wasn’t even looking to get married. Instead of a fairy tale, I got a nightmare.

Some guys, as soon as you say ‘I do’, they immediately turn. They strip off all the masks and the monster is there. Some guys are really slow at it. Ours was slow and periodic.

The Reality of Abuse

Karen: It was mostly verbal, emotional, and psychological, but I didn’t know that. Most of what I know about what happened to me is after the fact.

I’ve been out now, coming up, it’ll be 19 years. I still have moments where I’ll read something on social media and I’m like, “Whoa, wow. Yes.”

So there’s all these tactics. There are so many. But even I am still surprised at what he did and how abusive it was.

Anne: I think the longer we’re out of it, we realize how intentional it was too, which is heartbreaking.

Karen: It is and I can’t tell you how many women I’ve talked to that they’re like, “Oh, he didn’t do it on purpose.”

” Yeah, he really did.”

“No, no, he wouldn’t do that. He’s just had this and is that…”

You can hear the cognitive dissonance going on in their brain. It’s part of that healing process of getting over the lies we think are really true because he’s said it so many times and for so long. Those thoughts have taken over because he’s ingrained it with behaviors, reactions and punishments.

It is so reinforced that we think he couldn’t help it. It’s hard to admit that this man that you shared your bed with, and raised children with, that said he loved you, actually purposely married you so he would have the freedom to abuse you.

Anne: I think it also comes from societal scripting, some religious scripting as well. It almost confirms the abusive gaslighting that they’re telling you. So then you go to a therapist, or a clergy, or a friend, and they unknowingly are also confirming to you this false reality that, “yeah, you should be submitting, that’s what a good wife would do.”

Or whatever they’re saying that keeps you stuck and you don’t realize what’s happening.

Karen: Sometimes you don’t know that you have an option. Which, to some people, sounds a little bit crazy. But the reality is when you’re in the middle of it, you feel like you don’t have any options.

Anne: You also have really good intentions. You care about your children. You care about your family.

If clergy or someone else is saying to you,” if you really care about your family, you need to forgive.”

Or, “if you really follow Jesus, then you need to submit, forgive, and pray for him.”

Or advice that doesn’t help women get to emotional safety.

So you’re around 50 years old at the time, and you’re thinking, ” I need to get to emotional safety, psychological safety.”

You see it as starting over, which is scary, because people don’t want to start over. They’ve already invested 30 years into this relationship. So thinking, “am I really going to put 30 years in the trash and start over?”

The Decision to Leave

Anne: Can you talk about your decision to leave and the concept of starting over? How that either can help victims, “Oh, I get a fresh start.”

Or it can actually keep them stuck because they’re like, “I don’t want to start over. I’ve already invested too much.”

Starting Over: The Challenges

Karen: I think starting over is the part that doesn’t even enter your brain. It didn’t enter my mind because I couldn’t even think that far ahead. Six months prior to leaving, was when I had the moment when I realized he wasn’t worth it anymore. This man clearly cares nothing about me.

It still took six months to leave because I didn’t know how to do that and I was isolated from my family. It just happened that my mom came in December for my daughter’s graduation from college . It was that week before Christmas, as everything came to a head.

I don’t know how I decided I was going to leave, but that’s all that I could think of. I was 51 when I left. When I landed in Texas about three weeks later, I couldn’t even imagine life any different than it was.

I felt like a little kid who someone took all the fences down and I was afraid to move. Like there was dangerous traffic all around me. I was so stuck and so terrified.

I went from, terrified of leaving him – I knew what he was capable of – to ” now, what do I do? I don’t know how to do this.”

I was with my family. My sister would drive me places and help me make decisions. My brother was helping me because I just couldn’t think straight.

The thought of starting over just seemed overwhelming. I didn’t use that terminology until I got a job.

Life After Leaving

Karen: About two and a half months after I left, I got a new job here in Texas that changed my thinking because all of a sudden I found these people that just absolutely adored me.

They actually liked me. That was a big deal. Over time, as I was away from his abuse, I could feel my mind clearing.

As I was working at learning a new job, because I was in like four months of training, I could feel the shift slowly happen. All of a sudden I could see possibilities and it was terrifying.

I just literally felt like I was just bumbling around in the dark. Up to this point, I had part-time or inconsequential jobs. He wanted me to work, but I always worked under my capabilities. Every job I had was never to my capabilities.

Now I have a job where I feel myself growing, learning, expanding my mind, and starting to see this is so different.

Rediscovering Self

Karen: It’s hard to put words to what I felt then, because I had no idea who I was. When I came out of the marriage, I was really mousy and quiet.

I’m not that way. That’s not who I am. I am not mousy or quiet.

I can over talk. I can be too loud when I get excited.

It’s only been in the last few years that the Lord has given me glimpses of moments in my early married life where, because of his reaction, I learned over time not to be loud, to not talk, and to not give my opinion. There was times when he would come at me and I would fight back emotionally or verbally. I thought I always just appeased him, and I didn’t.

The Lord had to open up my mind to help me to remember: He made you this way. This is not who you were. It has helped me to accept where I am today, if that makes any sense.

Anne: There is a population of victims who were quiet before so they’re like, ” I was always quiet.”

So they get a little bit confused, but you have to realize that does not cause abuse. There are other women who are quiet, who aren’t abused. Also, some women who were quiet and maybe really calm became more irritated or more upset because he was abusive.

They’re thinking they are this angry, bitter person because that’s what he’s told her. When really, she was just trying to protect herself.

The different ways victims end up perceiving themselves, and perceiving of their life before. It takes a while to sort it out.

I also think it takes some distance from that person. You’ve been exposed to their gaslighting for so long when you’re away from it, you can process it a little bit better and say, “wait a minute. Yeah, I did become more loud because I realized this wasn’t safe.”

Or, “I became more quiet because that was the way I was trying to survive.”

There’s all different ways that women react to it.

Karen: I totally agree.

There is no cookie cutter how we respond when they bait us. First of all, we’re not all the same. We all are different how we react.

We all have our own way. It’s our own personality.

It seems like abusers all read the same manual and they use the same tactics, but every abuser has their own nuance how they do things. I know there’s all these other terms that we can use, but I purposely use the word abuser. In reality, what we’re dealing with is someone who is abusive .

The point is abusers want to squish our personalities and they want to shift us. Some abusers really get off on the fact that when you react, when you fight back, they can go, “Oh, look at what you’re doing.’

They always point it back.

Anne: They love that they affected you.

For good, “Oh, I’m so grateful. Thank you.”

Or for bad, “you’re stressing me out. You’re a terrible person.”

They love the ability to be able to affect you. That’s what they love. They don’t love you.

They love the power like, “Ooh, I have the power to be able to affect her.”

Overcoming Obstacles

Anne: Because you were around 50, and I’ll be 50 sooner rather than later so it’s feeling very young to me right now, a lot of women think, ” I can’t do this now, my time has passed, and I’m too old to get to safety. This has been my life for too long.”

Really quick, I had an abusive boyfriend in high school. He really wanted me to marry him and he told me if I didn’t marry him right then, basically, I will have missed my chance because nobody gets married after 22.

He’s like, “There are these three phases: right after high school, right after everybody gets home from their missions, and then right after another time. If you miss this phase, you will never get married. So we got to get married now.”

In his mind, it was the third phase. I said, “no, thank you.”

When we talk about obstacles, so many women think, “it’s too late for me to have a peaceful life. It’s too late for me to get to safety.”

What are some obstacles? Can you talk about that in terms of starting over?

Karen: I would love to, because for the first time in my life, I had a career and it was an amazing career. I learned all that I was capable of. It’s been almost 19 years, I’ll be 70 next month, and my life just continues to grow.

I’ve discovered God loves people and it’s not about our age. Look at all of these people that he used when they were older in the scriptures, like Moses, Abraham, and Sarah. That means nothing to God because it’s never too late.

It’s never too late to leave, even if you’ve been married 40 or 50 years. Marriage… you will go through hard things, but it’s not supposed to be terrifying. That is not what it’s supposed to be.

Starting over is daunting, no doubt. It really is.

Finding Your Way After Leaving

Karen: Depending if you’ve never worked, “what’s going to happen? What am I going to do?”

But you will find your way. I’m not saying it’s easy because leaving is terribly hard. So is the after.

Embracing Your True Self

Karen: You’ve got to learn, “who am I?”

Who you were before may not be who you are now. That’s okay because maybe you needed some more healing.

Some of the hardest questions to ask yourself is who are you today? Who do you want to be? What do you want to do?

Dreaming Again

Karen: How can I learn to dream again?

Because we’re not limited by that. Yes, there’s always talk about youth, but honestly, think about what we were like when we were young and what we know now.

Age is Just a Number

Karen: To me, about to turn 70, age is irrelevant. It used to bother me. I didn’t want to tell anybody how old I was.

But now it’s like, no, I’m not done. I have so much more that God wants me to do. I was 68 when I wrote my book.

It doesn’t limit him. It doesn’t have to limit us.

Living Free Workshop

Anne: That’s one of the things we talk about in the Living Free Workshop, a workshop that helps women communicate with an abuser in a strategic way in order to get to safety. Then set boundaries in order to get to emotional and psychological safety.

One of those things is to dream. So many women have stopped because they think, “I have to be content with this. It will never get any better than this.”

Because that’s what they’ve been told. I find it to be very satisfying to say, “no, there’s so many options for you!”

But it’s really hard to see that when you’re still being traumatized over and over.

The Reality of Post-Divorce Abuse

Anne: Let’s talk about women who are trying to heal, but they’re still being traumatized by the abuser repeatedly. Is it possible to heal while you’re actively being traumatized?

Karen: Leaving is not something you announce to the world. I don’t care what the TV’s and the movies say, you don’t announce to him, “I’m going to leave you.”

You don’t do that. You become an actress and if you’re thinking about it, you put on the face, you react as you normally would. You don’t let them know that you’re thinking is changing though they’re very perceptive at noticing little nuances.

It’s a matter of protecting yourself and your kids. When you do leave, then there’s a whole new level of trauma. Now, I have not experienced this, but I have watched, I have talked to women, and what they deal with after is horrible.

Whether you stay in an abusive marriage for 30 or 40 years, or you leave, the trauma, it stays because you’ve got to deal with this man until your kids are adults. The strength it takes for some of these women to stand for themselves and to fight for the kids is absolutely extraordinary.

Anne: Yeah, it’s really rough. I had eight years of post divorce abuse, and it is just awful. I’m delivered now, which is amazing and freeing.

I do think a lot of people, for good reason, are really worried about the post divorce abuse and so they choose to stay. For me, I found it to be better because at least it wasn’t in my house; it was coming from the outside. I had a safe space where I could breathe but that’s such a rare situation.

The Importance of Safety

Anne: Sometimes safety is the healing. It’s almost instantaneous healing at times when you really are safe and they cannot harm you anymore. But healing does need to be intentional.

There are times where someone does not have to interact with the abuser anymore, for any reason. For example if someone gets abandoned. There’s still all those questions that come up.

Then his voice in your head. And all the societal scripting. Also, the anger of, “how did other people not help me with this secondary trauma?”

When you are like, “this is obviously emotionally and psychologically unsafe for me. I need to start making my way. I need to start thinking about getting to safety.”

Facing Hard Truths

Anne: What do you do when the start stops you? When the starting is the thing that you can’t quite do?

Karen: It’s so funny you say it that way, because the start can stop you. It is hard to know what to do. Even if you don’t believe in the Bible, there’s a scripture that says that God did not give us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and a sound mind.

When we’re afraid, there is no love. Fear and love cannot occupy the same space. It’s one or the other.

It’s like taking two magnets and they’ll automatically go together. But if you turn one around and you try to put the magnet together, they will shoot apart. That’s what fear and love does.

If you’re living in fear, you’re not living in love.

The Cycle of Chaos and Gaslighting

Karen: Love has gone out of the equation because the abusers keep you in a cycle of chaos. I don’t mean in a cycle of he’s abusive, then he’s not.

I mean a constant cycle of confusion. Which is why they use gaslighting. You will question everything you know is true and you will doubt yourself at every step single turn.

How in the world do you start over when you can’t even think a straight thought? If you make a decision, what if you’re wrong? He would set you up for failure in making decisions because no matter what you did, it was going to be wrong.

So now how do you make a decision? It sounds almost impossible. That’s why we say hard doesn’t even begin to explain the struggle of regaining your sound mind, your correct thinking to take your power back, to take your love back, you’ve got to work through the battle. The obstacle we face is our own brain.

It is brain science that our brain gets so jumbled up. How do we undo that to be able to think clearly? Part of what we’re dealing with is undoing all of that.

Healing and Clarity

Karen: When you become safe, all of a sudden you recognize the chaos is gone. You may not notice at first because it’s a strange feeling. Where did the eggshells go and I don’t have to watch out for a hidden landmine I might step on.

As you navigate that, your brain will start getting some clarity. Those clarity moments are sometimes hard because you have to face the hard truths that he never loved you.

Anne: Not because you’re not lovable, because you’re absolutely lovable, but because that’s not how he operates. He doesn’t even know how to love.

Karen: He doesn’t. He can put on a good show to get you to marry him and say all the right words. He’s a counterfeit. He’s a con man.

It was too hard to watch the constant con going on to trick people. It is literally what they do. They keep you guessing and wondering what’s true and what’s not.

Part of the healing process is determining what’s true and what isn’t. Am I valuable? Am I crazy?

You feel crazy. That’s a word you can feel. That doesn’t mean you are.

You can feel unlovable. That doesn’t mean you are.

The abuser makes us feel crazy, to feel unlovable, to feel all of these things. That doesn’t mean we discount them. We need to pay attention to those feelings because those emotions are valid.

Anybody that says, “Oh, don’t listen to your feelings and your emotions, they’ll lie to you.”

No, they’re not. They’re telling you something’s wrong and to pay attention to them.

The Power of Hope

Anne: You just mentioned how hard it is going to be, and these are all the obstacles you’re going to face. For so many victims, I try to have this dichotomous conversation.

Recently, I talked to a woman who decided she wanted to divorce. She had already decided she wanted to do that.

I said, ” just go for it then. Make sure you don’t tell your clergy because then he’s going to pull him in, he’s going to get you in couple therapy and you don’t want to do that. It’s gonna push you back like a year.”

I was trying to warn her about how hard it was going to be and all the obstacles she was going to face trying to get to safety. Talking about that and then talking about the hope. Sharing that, even though it’s going to be very hard, it is going to be the most worthwhile endeavor to deliver yourself from abuse.

You will be very grateful you took action in order to do that. For women of faith, you will see miracles along the way. They might seem really small.

You might wonder why is this happening? God cannot know because He’s not helping me. Then maybe a year later or two years later, you’ll realize, “oh, He was helping me, I just didn’t realize it.”

As we advocate for victims and educate women about abuse, can you talk about helping them understand how hard it’s going to be and also giving them hope at the same time? Why are those two things so important?

Karen: I so agree. We have to tell people how hard it’s going to be. It’s not necessarily going to get easier, but it’s not forever.

What we go through is not forever, it is for now. What you’re feeling, what you’re dealing with is normal. Feeling crazy is normal, but it’s not forever.

Your mind will clear. The hope grows. As you heal, you will discover what you were in and more of who you are.

It’s hard to see in the beginning because we can’t see beyond the end of our nose. It’s as if your hand is in front of your face and the longer you’re out, the more healing you get, it gets further and further away until suddenly you see, wow, there are trees out here. When did the sky get so blue?

There was never a promise that life was going to be easy. We have evil in this world. There are evil people and God gave us free will to choose and to not choose.

People make really bad decisions on our behalf and to harm us.

Making Decisions and Learning

Karen: When we’re out, we get to start making decisions and if it’s a wrong one, okay. We learn from our mistakes.

That’s part of the process of learning from right decisions and even wrong ones.

Everything is about hope. It’s not based on our religious beliefs or non-beliefs. It’s the fact that hope is built within us.

We keep our eye on hope for our future, because it will get better. I believe what happened to us does not have to define us. That is not who we are, it was what was done to us.

Hope is so important because the hard part is choosing to live again. But it’s beautiful. So it’s hard and glorious and amazing all at the same time.

Choosing a Life of Peace

Anne: I always want victims to know that it’s possible. I don’t want them to ask the question, can I get to safety? I want them to ask the question, how?

I know I can. I know that a peaceful life is possible. I know that.

It’s been promised to me in the scriptures, for example, if you’re a woman of faith. Just logically, it is possible to be able to choose the life that you want to live.

Instead of saying, “can I do it?”

Don’t even think that. You can put that question in the trash and never, ever get it out. Only ask how.

I would like a life of peace so how do I get to emotional safety? How do I get to psychological safety? Then just start taking one step at a time.

Karen: Yes. The question becomes, why not me? Not why me?

Why did he choose me? Why did this happen to me but why not me? For hope, for my dreams?

Anne: Absolutely. Well, Karen, thank you so much for spending time with us. I appreciate your thoughts and I’m so grateful that you shared your story.

Karen: Well, I am so appreciative to interact with you and to talk with you.