Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse – What You Need To Know

Betrayal Trauma Recovery

If you’re wondering about psychological abuse vs emotional abuse, here’s what to know.

Emotional abuse is when someone manipulates your emotions to exploit you. He can use psychological abuse or emotional abuse to toy with your emotions to get what he wants. To find out if you’re experiencing emotional abuse, take this free emotional abuse quiz.

Psychological abuse is a deliberate attempt to manipulate, control, and diminish a person’s sense of reality. It can be impossible to detect, because it includes subtle and calculated tactics that undermine your mental and emotional stability.

The Link Between Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse

One very hurtful kind of emotional and mental abuse happens when some men hide harmful behaviors, like secretly watching inappropriate videos or having relationships outside of their marriage. Then, they use tricks and lies to keep these actions secret. For example, they might blame others, make excuses, or try to confuse the person they are hurting.

This kind of behavior is unfair and can make the people around them feel sad, scared, or unsure of what’s true. It’s important to understand these actions so we can help people who are being treated this way.

• Grooming: Acting overly kind or loving to distract you from their deception or to lower your guard.
• Gaslighting Through Deception: Insisting that behaviors you suspect (like inappropriate texts or suspicious accounts) are harmless or fabricated by your imagination.
• Blame-Shifting: Making you feel responsible for their choices—whether it’s pornography use, emotional affairs, or other betrayals.

These behaviors are not only abusive but can leave you feeling emotionally unsafe and fragmented, as you try to reconcile the lies with the reality you live. To learn more about this type of abuse, specifically related to infidelity, listen to The Free Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast.

Identifying Psychological Abuse And Emotional Abuse:

Healing from psychological abuse is almost exactly the same as healing from emotional abuse. Either way, you’ll need to heal from…

• Lying and Deception: Repeated lies or withholding the truth to maintain power and secrecy. Your husband might make promises he has no intention of keeping, or lie to cover up deeper issues, like infidelity or pornography use.
• Gaslighting: Making you question your own reality or memory. For example, he might say, “That never happened,” or twist your words to make you feel irrational.
• Manipulation: Using grooming, love bombing, hoovering, or fear to gain control. He might send flowers or plan amazing dates. Or he might play the victim or focus on your weaknesses to deflect attention from his own harmful behavior.

These psychologically abusive behaviors make it even harder to recognize or confront the abuse. Learn more about what strategies to use to protect yourself from this type of abuse by enrolling in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop.

Steps To Heal From Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse

Healing from psychological abuse is possible, here’s how to start your healing process:

1. Seek Emotional Safety

Your emotional safety is very important, and it should always come first. Taking care of yourself might mean stepping away from the situation, setting clear boundaries, or getting help from a trusted professional. It’s okay to make changes to protect yourself, even if it feels hard.

Always remember, you don’t need your husband’s permission to take steps toward feeling safe. You deserve to feel happy, respected, and secure in your life. Start by reaching out to someone you trust or a professional who can guide you. You are not alone, and there are people who want to help.

2. Build a Support Network

Surround yourself with people who validate your reality and support your healing. This could be trusted friends, family, or specialized support groups like Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions. Betrayal Trauma Recovery is designed specifically for women overcoming trauma from psychological abuse vs emotional abuse.

3. Educate Yourself on His Tactics To Make Healing From Psychological Abuse Possible

Learning about harmful behaviors, like gaslighting, blaming others, and lying, can help you think more clearly and feel stronger. These actions are used to confuse or control someone, but understanding them is the first step to stopping their effects. When you know how these tactics work, it’s easier to recognize them and take steps to protect yourself. Knowledge gives you the power to break free from unfair or manipulative situations and start feeling more in control of your life.

To learn how to heal from your husband’s psychological abuse vs emotional abuse, listen to The Free Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast.

4. It Has Nothing To Do With You (and Everything To Do with You)

Even though his psychological abuse and emotional abuse has nothing to do with you, it has everything to do with you because you’re the victim. You deserve to live a life free from manipulation, gaslighting, and lies.

Transcript: Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse

Anne: Many women ask. What is the difference between psychological abuse vs emotional abuse? So emotional abuse is when someone manipulates your emotions to exploit you. So they’re going for that emotional reaction. Psychological abuse is the deliberate attempt to manipulate and control your sense of reality. Healing from psychological abuse vs emotional abuse is pretty much the same thing. You’re still healing from the lying and deception, the gaslighting and manipulation.

Psychological abuse and emotional abuse are linked. Both happen when your husband has affairs or has a secret life, watching exploitative material or having relationships outside the marriage. He’s going to be psychologically and emotionally abusive. Grooming and blame shifting is all abuse. So on the podcast today, I have a member of our community. We’re going to call her Margaret. Something happened to her track, and I tried to fix it. And it distorted it a bit.

Her story is so good. If you’re having a hard time hearing it, you can read it here. So I want to welcome Margaret. Margaret, let’s start at the beginning of your story.

Margaret: In the beginning, I was young and married at 23. So it was kind of a quick courtship dating. I was involved in my church and met him at my work. It clicked, and he started going to church with me, he got baptized at my church. And then, you know, one thing led to another, we’re engaged, and then we’re getting married.

And looking back, I can see red flags now, because I’m much older and wiser. But at the time, you don’t think they’re red flags. You just think, Oh, that’s just a little thing. That’s not a sign of a bigger thing.

Disrespect & Lack Of Communication

Margaret: For example, this sounds so benign, later, it played out so much bigger in our marriage. We were sitting at a table and talking, and there was a newspaper nearby. I’m talking and he picks up the paper. He opens it and starts reading, and the paper is now in front of me. And I remember thinking, Oh, I wasn’t done talking, but you pretty much just cut me off. And I couldn’t even tell you what I was talking about, but that lack of respect, I would say for years, you don’t respect me.

You don’t hear me. I’m talking, it’s not processing with you or you’re not acknowledging me. I had dated a guy before him, and I still lived at home. We were coming home, and that other boyfriend was at the door of my house. And I told him, let’s not stop, let’s just keep going.

As we drove off, a few minutes passed, and he suddenly started banging on the steering wheel. Upset with me about that, because I didn’t want to stop. That I was ashamed of him or something. And it was very startling.

https://youtu.be/3sJNedeS4es

Anne: I wonder if he had hoped to just drop you off. Because he was maybe meeting up with another woman. And he had plans or something like that, when you didn’t go in. And he couldn’t drop you off. He was ticked. But of course he couldn’t tell you the truth.

Maybe he could use psychological abuse or emotional abuse to batter you to the point where you’re like, let’s just go home then, and then he could go about his merry way. And meet with whoever he was going to meet.

Silent Treatment & Gaslighting

Margaret: He just got quiet, and then was banging on the steering wheel and yelling at me.

Anne: Because nothing is what it seems with an abuser. It’s hard to figure out what’s going on, because you’re trying to resolve an issue and they are trying to meet up with their affair partner. They’re lying to you about needing to work so they can use exploitative material. And a lot of times you’ll ask questions, and they will literally never answer. They’ll just be silent.

Margaret: Like we would be having a discussion or disagreement, an argument. And he would be quiet, and I’d be like, what do you think? Why aren’t you saying anything? Oh, tell me, I have a whole party going on in my head. I just didn’t say it. So then I’d be like, that doesn’t help me. And that doesn’t help us.

Looking back, I would tell people like, trying to get anything resolved with him is so difficult because I could be talking about apples. We’re going back and forth, and he’s like, okay, we got the oranges all settled. And I’d be like, wait, what? What are we talking about?

Anne: That happened to me too. Part of that is that they’re just getting energy from the argument. So it’s not about resolving anything. I’m a good debater, so we would get to the point where it would be resolved. He would use psychological abuse and emotional abuse. Then he would start again on the exact opposite thing of what he just said, and I was like, what?

Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse: Energy From Chaos

Anne: You just argued for two hours for that. No, I didn’t. It was insane. I think they just gain so much energy from that chaos. It’s fun for them. They’re having a good time. Yeah.

Margaret: Oh, yeah, because I would repeat back to him word for word what he’d said to me, like, okay, so you’re saying X, Y, Z. No, no, that’s not what I said. I said, no, those are your exact words, but that’s not what I mean. And I’d be like, say what you mean. And it would just go on like that.

Like nothing ever felt like we accomplished anything, or he’d be like, I’ll try, try to do that. And I’m like, many years of trying and there’s no change. I thought, we’re just young and have a lot of growing to do. And we got married, and the behaviors continue. I just thought we’re just immature. It’s two people from two backgrounds coming together to make a marriage work.

And my childhood was one that my parents had a very unhealthy marriage. There was spousal abuse. So I knew what physical abuse looked like. I had seen or felt threatened, or had hands laid on me in that way. I would have known that.

I could never put my finger on it, something’s off. Something’s not right. I couldn’t identify either the psychological or emotional abuse. So maybe it’s because I don’t know what healthy marriage looks like. Okay, his parents are married. He’s an only child. His parents seem to have a good marriage, so they must have been good role models for him. So he must know, it must be me and growing in the church.

Struggles With Exploitative Content

Margaret: I got to pray more and learn how to communicate better and submit. To respect my husband more, and things will turn around, things will get better. I had first caught him using exploitative material when I found out I was pregnant with my first son. I had gone to bed, he didn’t come to bed, and I’m like, where is he? And we were in a three bedroom house at the time, and I went to one of the bedrooms and it was locked.

I thought, that’s odd, why is he locked in there? And when he opened the door, I could smell something, and I could see a diagonal view to the computer screen. It was exploitative material. I was shocked, stunned, and sick to my stomach. I don’t know what he told me. So I think he said he would come into bed soon, or something, and I just went to bed. The topic would come up off and on for years, because I would catch him. Back then, I didn’t know, and I didn’t understand.

And I grew up in that generation, 70s, 80s, where friends’ dads had stocks hidden under the bed, you know, of magazines. And so you’re trying, I’m trying to process, as a good Christian wife, as a woman, as a Christian family. I don’t think this is okay, but like how bad is this? And what do I do? And I did go to his mom and say, look, I think this is an issue, but what could she do?

How could I fix this? I did tell him I didn’t like it. This is wrong. I don’t feel good about this. And I think he just got better at using psychological abuse and emotional abuse to hide it.

Failed Counseling Attempts

Margaret: At one point, we did go to counseling at a church for marriage issues. And somehow, and he’s good at this, the focus became me. The person that was counseling us was not equipped for what was happening. They were not equipped for his use of emotional and psychological abuse to focus on me. The session became about me, my childhood, and my issues.

I just know that when it was over, I got in my car, pulled off to the side of the road, and called my sister. Excuse me, it still triggers me. I was so upset. I was bawling. And I said, I can never do that again. I can never go back to counseling. It was so traumatic. I was like, I would never return to another counselor.

Anne: Good for you.

Margaret: It was horrible. So that was early in the marriage. That was probably 10, 15 years in, and at this point I was beginning to question his fidelity. I would find condoms. And he would say, at the time, we had grown sons, like 20 and 19. He would say, Oh, I grabbed those from our son’s room, and they just ended up in my car. I know my sons, and I know they’re not just leaving them lying out. So what was he doing? And that wasn’t the first time I found them in his car.

I had found some early in our marriage, about four, five, or six years in, in a briefcase he had left in the garage. He worked for doctors, a large group of doctors. And it was around a lot of people, women, hospitals, that sort of thing.

Psychological vs Emotional Abuse: Lies In The Face Of Hard Evidence

Margaret: And I remember finding a briefcase in the garage, and it had a Viagra and condoms, and I was like, what is this? We aren’t using those things. Oh, he said a doctor, as a joke for his birthday, gave them to him. And as a young wife who’s just has a one year old, I’m thinking, what, would I think? You know, I want to believe him. And so I said, Oh, okay. And who am I going to ask, the doctor? No, it was just little things like that that you, I could never verify.

Anne: Blaming it on your kids, that is really, really wrong, super wrong. And they don’t have any problem with false witness, and I want to use that word false witness purposefully. They don’t have any problem bearing false witness, which is really alarming.

Margaret: I think he knew I would not contact my son and ask him. I think he knew that. And so if he knew that was a safe way to go. But that episode with the finding the condoms in the car, that’s after so many other issues. So for example, the marriage was very difficult. We were struggling. I found it out through my youngest son that he tracked me through my phone, because my son watched him watch the computer monitor. He could see where my car was going.

Later when I got home, my son very naively said, Hey, calm down, he knows where you go. I remember being like, what are you talking about?

Hidden Cameras & Stalking

Margaret: And I don’t remember the conversation with my ex. I don’t remember. I just remember thinking I have nothing to hide. I’m meeting my friend. I’m a mom to four. I homeschool. I don’t get out often. She and I would meet every three or four months to just have dinner. So I have nothing to hide, so I don’t know why you’re doing that. So there’s a long history of these things, spyware on my phone, hidden cameras in our bedroom.

Anne: Hidden cameras in your bedroom, do you know of trafficking that he posted online?

Margaret: I don’t know he did. He said it wasn’t a good camera.

Anne: So he would have trafficked you, but the footage wasn’t good enough, was his excuse?

Margaret: He would not speak. When I say he would just not speak, he wouldn’t speak. He would just look at me. I would just back down. He had a heart issue, almost died, life flight and everything. And when he survived, which, because the odds were against him, I thought, this is our second chance now, this is God’s opportunity. He’s going to turn this ship around, because we’ve been struggling, and he had a long recovery.

Like he didn’t trust me. He was stalking me. He accused me of things. Which I now know was him projecting. He has been having affairs. He has been having a lot of affairs and things at work. So, he almost dies. He’s out of work until he goes back to work, and they’re telling him he’s done. And still he’s using psychological abuse or emotional abuse to blame me.

Discovering The Dating Profile

Margaret: He always said it was because of this other minor issue at the job. He’d been with them for 20 years. I don’t believe that story anymore. I think he was having affairs at work, and I think it finally caught up with him. So I still did not know, I’m still believing what he tells me. And I’m like, hey, that’s okay. We’re going to be fine. God has brought us through this far, and we’ll be okay.

When my daughter was 17 and this friend of hers was on a dating app. My daughter comes to me at 10 o’clock at night with screenshots and says, Mom, my friend just sent me these. And it’s my husband’s face on a dating profile. And he has solicited pictures from my daughter’s friend. I don’t think he realized it was my daughter’s friend. And a friend saw his picture screenshot them and sent them to my daughter and said, Hey, this guy is DMing me. Is this your dad?

And she’s like, Mom, do you think somebody took his picture and is using his pictures? And when I read the words for the little bio, a little hook to get people to click on you. I heard his voice in those words. Like I could hear, I said, baby girl, that’s your dad. And it was about 10 o’clock, 10:30 at night, and I walked over to him. I’m like, you need to pack a bag, and you need to leave.

And when he saw what I was showing him with the screenshots, the look on his face, I knew that, yeah, he’s done this. He used psychological and emotional abuse to hide online dating.

Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse: Attempting Affair Recovery

Margaret: He said, but I don’t want to leave. I’m like, you don’t have a choice, or I’ll call the police. You need to leave. I’m going to call your mother. I’m going to call your father. You need to leave. That was in November 11th. I’ll never forget that. That night, he goes to her and says, I have to leave because your mother’s mad. He wasn’t saying I use psychological abuse and emotional abuse to hide my infidelity.

Anne: Yeah, duh, she’s mad,

Margaret: She was more on the ball than I was. I have to say, I have to give her credit. She was much wiser at that point to what was going on than I was. She was upset with me when I finally took him back eight months later. It made our, she and I had a very difficult relationship. And I realized now that that was the trigger for her and I not getting along at that point. Because she saw what I couldn’t see. So he moved home. We’re working on our marriage.

Margaret: We do Affair Recovery, which is based out of Austin, Texas. It’s an emergency, weekend.

Anne: For couples, someone’s had an affair.

Margaret: Yes.

Anne: Did they mention abuse at all?

Margaret: No, never. It’s always assumed, okay, at some point you’ll have to have sex.

Anne: You’re going to have to have it, which is coercion, that’s coercion right there.

Margaret: You’re a good Christian wife and you need to submit.

Anne: They really don’t know anything about rape, do they?

Margaret: No! Absolutely, I was like, okay, telling my kids, we’ve been married 29 years. He says he still wants to be married. We can make this work. I’m thinking we’re working on having a better marriage.

Pressure & Self-Betrayal

Margaret: It’s still always difficult. There are just all these issues. It was an issue, because he moved home and wanted me to start having it right away. I didn’t feel good about that. But I said, okay, and I can look back and see I betrayed myself. He had his own personal counselor. I had my own personal counselor. Then we have the marriage counselor.

It seemed like we could never get any resolution, we could never get anywhere. And we started the counseling sessions, and then there’s holidays. So there are these gaps in the counseling, we’re going in January, February, March, and we’re going, but I remember him telling our counselor, what do I need to do?

Tell me so I can go through the checklist. At one point, he banged his hand on the couch and said, well, I didn’t even do anything. I should have done something then. The psychological and emotional abuse were continuing in lies to the counselor.

Anne: What? Wait. So he was like, wait, I didn’t even do anything. I should have. Wow, okay, he was lying in that moment anyway.

Margaret: When I look back and say everything out loud. When I finally sat down with like my mother. I had never told my mother everything. Early in my marriage, my mother-in-law told me, don’t talk bad about him to your family, because then they won’t like him. And thinking, well, yeah, you know, I probably shouldn’t.

So I was careful about what I told to who. I would never tell my best friend, even everything, because if she knew everything, it probably would sound bad. And so I was careful about what I shared. So I went to my mother-in-law and told her, and she said, don’t be telling people.

Discovering Infidelity

Margaret: I saw a message on his phone before all the dating apps. It was a message on his phone about meeting someone at ten thirty at night after their daughter went to sleep. And when I confronted him, he said, oh, it was for a massage. A friend of his recommended her, and he wanted one late at night. But he told me he never went. Yeah, I believed that. And it wasn’t until years later, when we’re trying to work through the marriage issues, that came up again.

And this time when he told the story, he did go, and I said, wait, you said you didn’t go. He goes, no, I always told you I went up. I said, no, you didn’t. I was a shell of myself by the time I left. Fast forward a year, I felt like things were just not good. I felt like things were bad. I was experiencing severe psychological abuse and emotional abuse.I went to him. Then I said, if you’re not happy and don’t want to be married to me, that’s okay. I understand. I love you enough to say, okay, we can separate and divorce.

That’s fine. And he said, no, I want to be married. In February, I had a gut feeling. And February 6th is when things finally came to a head. I knew he was cheating again. I saw things on his phone. He chased me around the house because I had the phone and he wanted it back.

And he was frantically trying to delete things off the phone while talking to me. He chased me outside as I tried to go through his truck, and I was burned out a few times.

Social Media & Realizations

Margaret: Conveniently the next day, he deleted all the Ring doorbell video. So I had no proof, yeah.

Anne: So he knew what he was doing.

Margaret: You know, he was caught. I had found condoms in the car again. So, thank social media. I could not even tell you how I came across you, and Betrayal Trauma Recovery. It started showing up. And I started coming across terms like DARVO, gaslighting, and word salad. And I thought, this is in my marriage. This explains everything on Betrayal Trauma Recovery Instagram, yeah.

Anne: So you’re first introduced to these ideas, that maybe it’s abuse. You learned the difference between psychological abuse vs emotional abuse. Most women are shocked. Like, how did I not know? And then also totally not shocked simultaneously. It’s a relief. Because it’s like I knew something was wrong, and this is it. Can you talk me through your thought process?

Margaret: At first I was like, okay, I know what physical abuse is. You know, everybody has a clear understanding of that. So then when the whole concept of, no, this is psychological abuse or emotional abuse. I had to listen and re-listen to podcasts and go, okay, him having affairs and then coming home. T

And I’m not having informed consent to what’s happening to my body, and bringing home risks to my health. Because of his behavior. It was so painful to realize that we’d been married that long. The level of manipulation, at the end, I would just sit and he would talk, and I would just sit and hold my head, okay, okay.

Emotional & Physical Safety

Anne: Pretty violent episodes, and maybe it will help you, maybe not, reframe it to think that that is the definition of survivor right there, abuse survivor. That you survived psychological abuse and emotional abuse. And you were resisting, and that was all you could do at that time because of how scary your situation was.

Margaret: I think deep down in my core, I knew, I think that’s why physically and intimately I couldn’t respond anymore. There was a dread, and I slept on the edge of the bed with my back to him. And I would wake up in the morning in the same position wondering how did I not fall off the bed? You know, because I think I knew I wasn’t emotionally safe with him.

He has punched holes in doors. He has yelled, not laid hands on me. But there’s that fear, especially because I carried that fear and trauma from my childhood. So like, we want to avoid triggering any of that. So you’d be a good wife, and you don’t trigger that. And being the Christian woman, I was like, I wanted my marriage to work. I’ve got four kids and I’ve been homeschooling them.

And I always said divorce would stop with me because my parents were divorced. Like, I had that other family member’s divorce, and I didn’t want that for my family. I wanted the marriage to work. And so he says he’s sorry, he says he wants to be married, okay. But when you’re being manipulated and lied to, I forgive myself because I didn’t know.

Seeking Legal Help

Margaret: I didn’t know the extent and what I was seeing, it’s so hard. But I was willing to believe him to make the marriage work.

Anne: It was the safest option at the time, because women are really smart.

Margaret: Yeah, I’ve got kids. I’m doing homeschool. And how do I navigate going back to work? I’ve been dependent. I just stayed home for 27 years. And I finally texted a friend of mine, my good friend for 20 years. I called her, I said, well, I’m pretty sure we’re done. I can’t do this anymore. And I told her what had happened, and she started asking her friends very covertly, very secretly.

We need a lawyer. I need a lawyer for my friend. I had planned a trip that following weekend to visit El Paso to see my daughter. She had by this point married and lived in El Paso, and I flew out to see her. And that was a godsend to be away that first weekend. So I could process what was happening. To get distance from the psychological andd emotional abuse. They got me a burner phone, because I was concerned he was spying on my phone.

And I found out months later, my son came to me and said, Mom, one day when I got in dad’s car, I heard your voice coming through the speakers. Dad did something quick and shut it off. He was definitely reading my texts, my emails, listening to my phone calls. So when you realize the level that he has been going through to keep track of you.

Psychological And Emotional Abuse: Using Meditation To Heal

Margaret: And I told my friends, somebody asked me, are you afraid for your life? I said, I don’t think so, but I need you to know that God forbid, I’m in an accident and in the hospital. Because I do not want him to have power of attorney over me. I don’t want him to have medical power over me. I’m letting everybody know. And I am not suicidal, and I would not run away because I have four kids, even though they’re adult kids.

I was like, I would never leave them. So I just needed people to know that, because at this point you just don’t know what they’re capable of. And he knew he was going to take a loss financially, because in the state I’m in, we get half, although he cheated me out of half of the home. Which is another story, but yeah, he was not going to be happy about that. We went to mediation, and signed paperwork, and then the final papers were January of this year.

It was a heavy grief. It was really hard in the beginning to say the word abuse. I think because in society, we just think of physical abuse as abuse. If it’s psychological abuse vs emotional abuse, or mental, like that’s not really abuse, right? Because you’re okay.

Anne: Do you feel okay?

Margaret: I didn’t, I wasn’t. I still have to return to my faith, because there are the marriage advice books and Christian marriage advice books. Reading all those things, I have good Christian friends who love me. But who would tell me things like marriage is hard, divorce is hard, choose your hard.

Support & Community

Margaret: And that I need. I’m like, good grief, if your marriage is that hard, choose divorce, that is not heart free. And then the whole God hates divorce sentiment. Which we now know and is becoming more widely talked about. That’s taken out of context, you know, that scripture is taking out of context, and that’s not accurate. And so now I have all those tools. Now I know, that this was not just a hard marriage.

It was an abusive marriage. Where one person was a master manipulator, a pathological liar, I survived. The last words I told him, he said, Oh, you’re always the victim. And I said, no, I’m an overcomer. I stand on that. I have been overcoming, I am overcoming, and yet it was abuse for 31 years. And so that’s going to take time, and I may always have those triggers. I’ve since gone back to that counselor, because I wanted to let her know.

And once she heard all the pieces, she goes, there was no way this was going to work. Because when she talked to his counselor, his counselor said a whole different story. He told the counselor different scenarios of what was going on, so my ex was going to his counselor and mine. And he would go to my mother-in-law and lie about me. He called my best friend and tried to talk to her and tell her stories about me. The psychological abuse and emotional abuse were so crazy.

He called my brother-in-law to set me up. He went to our pastor. The pieces started unfolding, and it was so mind blowing. So hard to believe.

Escalation & More Lies

Margaret: That the person supposed to have my back and do life with me would go to this extent. He was out for himself and protecting his image. Everybody was shocked. And then they think, is it because he almost died? Maybe he’s having this crisis, and I was like, no, this has gone on for years, it just escalated.

Anne: It’s interesting that it escalated after his near death experience. Because so many women, me included, are praying for something to wake him up. We think maybe a car accident would help him understand that he is psychologically and emotionally abusive, like my ex got hit by a car. I’ve actually never told that story, and I will soon, on the podcast. He didn’t die, but I did think surely this will help him understand. And even that didn’t help.

And I think one of the reasons is because they know. And they manipulate us to think they don’t understand what they’re doing. Or maybe they need to be educated, or maybe communication will improve it, but they know what is going on and know it the whole time. And so to them, this is no wake up call, because knowing has never helped them decide to change, because they’ve known every step of the way.

Margaret: Right, I don’t know if they just lied to themselves, if they’re in denial. He, even now, has never had an open, honest conversation with any of my kids about the divorce and the lie behind it, not once. One of my older sons went to him, and my son came back and said, dad said he’d put a pin in it and we’d get back to it, which never happened.

Psychological Abuse vs Emotional Abuse: So Many Lies

Margaret: My son tried to talk to my mother-in-law, and she was, no, no, you just don’t understand. He told my daughter in an email that he just has communication issues. And that was the root of everything. And if I had been better, as a wife, been a better listener, loved him, compassionate, it would have worked out. I don’t know how they sleep. I don’t know how they look at themselves in the mirror.

Anne: Yeah, I don’t either. I think that all that is just a lie too. And people, me included, have a hard time being like, wow, they do lie about everything. Because if they said the truth, I choose to do this, they’ve never wanted to say it in the past. Why would they start now to tell the truth? Habitual psychological abuse and emotional abuse is part of their character.

Margaret: When it’s been going on for so long, the lies now, or there’s so much, so many of them. Like I said, I caught him in that one lie. He couldn’t even keep the facts straight anymore. There’s so much of it. I have such a deep desire to pay it forward for other women who may hear themselves in my story. Hopefully, they’re earlier in their marriages, and they don’t stay as long. If you feel something’s off, go with your gut. For so many years, I’ve ignored my gut instincts.

And took him in his word, go with your gut. If something feels off, it’s probably off. And be there for other women. I now am in a full-time job. And there are two women where I work that I can encourage now, because they’re going through their own, struggles, divorces, and trauma from their own marriages.

Wanting To Help Other Women

Margaret: I know God has put me where I’m supposed to be with these women. And that has been my prayer. If I can help just one woman out there, give her the courage to stand up and say, Nope, I’m done. I’m done, and walk away. That makes me feel better. And I know it’s worth something. It couldn’t have all been for nothing.

I wanted a happy home, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I know I did my best with what I was being told. And I can hold my head up high. The marriage was killing me, I couldn’t stay.

Anne: Thank you so much for being brave and sharing your story. It will help other women. Just hearing other women’s stories, even without my enlightening commentary, if I can be sarcastic, is so helpful.

Margaret: Yes.

Anne: When you hear someone else say it, it sounds awful, because it is awful. Going through psychological and emotional abuse is terrible. Then realizing this is exactly what’s happening to me. And it’s just as awful. And I am just as important as the woman sharing this story.

Margaret: Right, because you feel like good grief, you know, it’s embarrassing. But I was in a fog. I wanted to believe him. I wanted the marriage to work, and I have four kids. Yeah, and I’m being told as a Christian woman. That if you pray enough, submit enough, be the good wife, do all the things, he’ll come around, it’ll work.

Anne: Having been through it.

Margaret: Yeah.

Anne: There’s no way to describe it to people who haven’t. But there are good people who haven’t been through it. They still probably can’t understand it on the level that women who have been through it can.

Hope For The Future

Margaret: I agree. My mother had her own abusive situation, and I didn’t appreciate that. Until now, I’ve gone through my own. I knew it was bad. And I would never say it wasn’t traumatic for her. But it’s not until you go through your own trauma with a spouse. That you go, oh, this is why she didn’t want to be around him at the holidays. I was like, hey, this makes sense.

Anne: Yeah, everything becomes pretty clear, yeah.

Margaret: Yeah, I appreciate women going through the divorce process. And how difficult it is with the court systems. And lawyers, that’s a hard path to navigate. I attended Betrayal Trauma Recovery group sessions, early on in the whole process. And loved it, I need community. I would go to Betrayal Trauma Recovery group sessions a couple of times a week which was amazing. I tell people, you need to do this.

If you can’t afford anything else, you can afford this, especially with a marriage with betrayal and psychological and emotional abuse. I know that from last year when I started my job to this year, my BTR coach, she’s like, you’re a different person. I was very beat down, and this year I carry myself a little better, a little stronger. I’m excited for the future. I know it’s going to be good.

Anne: It will be. You’re awesome.

Margaret: Thank you.