Why Is My Husband Yelling at Me? – Cat’s story

Betrayal Trauma Recovery

If you’re wondering, “Why is my husband yelling at me?” the answer might surprise you. Here are 7 key questions to help uncover the real reasons behind his constant anger.

1. Maybe He’s Yelling Because He Has A Secret?

When your husband has something he wants to do that he doesn’t want you to know about. He will be very irritated when you ask normal everyday questions. Or try to interact with him like any normal person would. Hiding things from you is not only lying and deceit, it’s actually a form of emotional and psychological abuse. To know if he’s using any of the 19 types of emotional abuse to hide his secret, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

2. Is Your Husband’s Yelling About Overpowering You?

The purpose of yelling in the context of marriage is to overpower the other person. If he’s yelling at you, his primary motivation is to control you or the situation. Unfortunately for you, overpowering someone isn’t about relationship – it’s about control. If your husband frequently attempts to overpower you by yelling. He’s more interested in keeping his secrets hidden or exploiting you than solving problems.

3. Does His Yelling Solve Problems?

As previously mentioned, yelling is never about solving problems. Healthy people who are solution oriented ask questions to clarify or understand, not to overpower.

If he’s yelling questions at you, he’s doing it to prove you wrong, silence you, or invalidate you, not solve a problem. It’s important to understand this type of emotionally abusive dynamic, so you can use strategies to protect yourself. To learn more, enroll in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop.

4. When He Yells at You, Does It Hurt?

Your husband may claim that yelling is just part of normal communication. Or he may even insist that he isn’t yelling when he is. But if he’s yelling, he’s using his voice to intimidate, control, and degrade you. If it hurts, it’s actually emotional harm. To learn more about why this is emotionally abusive, listen to The FREE Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast.

5. Is He Yelling At You In Front Of Children?

When he yells at you to create an excuse to stomp off and do the secret thing he had planned, it creates an environment of fear and instability for children. They’ll feel like they have to walk on eggshells. Additionally, witnessing their mother be emotionally abused in this way can have long-lasting effects on children’s mental health and well-being.

6. Does Your Husband Say His Yelling Is Your Fault?

If he tells you he wouldn’t yell if only you (fill in the blank), that’s nonsense. He has a million choices about how he can respond, and yelling is only one of those choices. Did you know he could ask a question and listen to the answer? He could sit down and listen to what you have to say. He could stop being selfish. His yelling has literally nothing to do with you. If he blames you for it, that’s emotional and psychological abuse.

7. Does He Sound Like He Cares, But It’s Really A Threat?

If your husband yells at you and then says, “I don’t want to do something I’m going to regret, so I’m going to go cool off,” you might not realize it, but this can actually be a veiled threat.

What he’s really communicating is that he’s capable of harming you, whether physically or emotionally. By framing it this way, he shifts the responsibility onto you to avoid triggering his harmful behavior, which is a form of manipulation.

If he stonewalls you by stomping off, that’s a threat to your dignity. That communicates clearly, “You’re not worth resolving problems with.” Anytime a husband yells at his wife and stomps off, it’s an abusive threat meant to silence and overpower her, whether she recognizes it or not.

How To Stop My Husband From Yelling At Me

While there’s no way to stop your husband from yelling or change his character to be an emotionally safe person. There is a way to protect yourself. Our Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions meet daily to provide healthy, compassionate support for women in this situation. Attend a session today.

Transcript: Why Is My Husband Yelling At Me?

Anne: We have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’re going to call her Cat. Before Cat shares her story. Here are seven key questions to ask yourself to determine: Why is my husband yelling at me? And if his yelling indicates something deeper. And you’ll hear these themes throughout Cat’s story.

Cat: Thanks, Anne. I’m happy to be here.

Anne: I’m honored that you volunteered to share your story today. And I’m so sorry about what you’ve been through.

Cat: Thank you.

Anne: Let’s start at the beginning.

Cat: The beginning is way back in the nineties. My ex-husband and I met in college and started dating. We were married for about twenty five years. We were together for 28. Looking back, there were a ton of red flags, but I just had no concept of those particular types of red flags. One of the best things that the Betrayal Trauma Recovery community and the coaches had me do was write a timeline of our entire relationship.

Throughout the process of separation, divorce, and healing, whenever I would feel wobbly, I would just go back and look at that timeline, and it immediately grounded me. So, I still look at it from time to time, just to remember it was always there.

Recognizing Covert Narcissistic Abuse

Cat: It wasn’t me. The signs were always there. It took me that long to claw my way out. I think that’s probably the best thing any woman who finds herself in this situation can do. So many women are aware of the more overt and socially recognized forms of abuse. That’s what we’re on the lookout for. My parents raised me in the South. I was aware, staying away from the “bad guys.”

The guys who were more, maybe aggressive alpha males who were more overt in their expressions of aggression. Like men who are always yelling and stomping around. Oh, I would never end up in a relationship with someone like that. And I think most women have a hard time recognizing that highly intelligent, manipulative, covert, narcissistic type of abuse. That is consistently playing the long game. My ex-husband is considered a good guy.

He is very performative in his social kind of markers, very progressive, very liberal. He would seem very pro-women, sensitive, you know, all those things. But behind closed doors or with what probably feels like enabling company to him, there are many behaviors that I now recognize as problematic. One of the first was such an obvious red flag to me. Our junior year, we’d been dating for a while. But I had not seen any of the red flag behavior.

One of his dearest friends from childhood who also went to our college was his roommate. He pulled me aside and said, have you seen his dark side? And I didn’t know what he was talking about. I couldn’t even imagine what he was describing.

When Your Husband Is Yelling, Manipulative & Mooddy

Cat: He would act moody and grouchy for a prolonged time. His friend group had become accustomed to and sort of made space for. I now understand that friend group is what would be called flying monkeys and enablers. At the time, I didn’t know that. And he was sort of the alpha of that friend group. Even though he was not your typical alpha male. And it wasn’t long after that that I did see a sort of dark side come out. I couldn’t figure out what had happened.

I still don’t know why he directed the moodiness and grouchiness at me. But no reason could be provided for it, you know, and I had never experienced anything like that. So I said, you know, what’s going on? What’s wrong? What do you need? How can I help you? Doing all the things, and nothing I did made a difference. And then just like within 24 hours, I guess it passed, but there was no reason given. Eventually, the narrative became this is something the men in my family do.

We all struggle with anxiety and depression. He implied it was part of their genetic makeup.

Anne: I have developed a theory, and when my book comes out, it clearly outlines this. When they start to escalate to yelling and fighting like that for seemingly no reason, it’s because they have something else they want to do. But they can’t figure out how to get away from us.

Cat: Mm hmm.

Instigating A Fight & Stomping Off

Anne: So he starts yelling to instigate a fight. They can stomp off and do the thing they want to do, like solicit a prostitute, but they can’t say to you, Hey, you know what, I’ve got a prostitute to solicit.

Cat: Right.

Anne: And so I’m going to go, some of them will be like, I’ve got homework to do. And go and solicit the prostitute. So the question I have is, did he escalate to the point where he kind of stomped off?

Cat: Yes, that was always what would happen. He even told me he managed outbursts like that.

Anne: Was stomping off?

Cat: Yeah, stomping off, going on a walk, going out. And that became the protocol, his way of dealing with this over the decades. I can’t even believe it, Anne, but now that you’re saying it that way.

Anne: This is all theoretical, he admitted to you this is what my family does. But he didn’t say we know how to leave the house and make it your fault so we can go solicit a prostitute. I’ve interviewed over 300 betrayal trauma victims in long form interviews like this one. And in the 70s, the 1970s in the 1900s. Maybe they went to like the corner secret store, but I’ve seen it as a pattern.

And until you put the pieces together. It’s hard to know, because they would never ever admit it. That they just want you to think they got so mad at you because you’re so terrible. That’s the only way they could cool down, and they’ll maybe even say it in a way that makes them sound a little bit nice.

Psychopaths & Pity

Anne: Like I didn’t want to hurt you anymore. And so to explain why I yelled and stomped off to like, save you from my anger. When they invented a fight from nothing, to do the secret thing they wanted to do. That they had planned before they started the “argument.”

Cat: Yeah, yes, women who find themselves in this situation. The fact that we have a conscience makes it so easy to dupe us. By people who don’t have a conscience, because we just assume the person we’re with also has a conscience. So it’s hard to conceive the depth of manipulation and malignancy. And really, up until D-Day, I could not have conceived this was what was happening. I truly believed his rationales or reasons.

I know this is such a stereotype, but he had a lot of trauma in his childhood. His mother died in an accident when he was young. And a lot of the “moodiness, depression, and anxiety,” and I’m using air quotes there, because I no longer believe that’s what it was. But that’s what it was attributed to at the time. It was implicitly ascribed to that trauma, and I made space for that all the time. Even if it wasn’t directly talked about.

That was the narrative I created in my mind for what was going on and why he deserved compassion, understanding and support.

Anne: I had a therapist say to me once about my ex, he’s a psychopath, and I was like, what? She’d never met him, so she couldn’t diagnose him.

Blaming His Yelling & Anger On Something In The Past

Anne: She said, did he manipulate you to feel sorry for him to get away with yelling and bad behavior? And I said, wow, I didn’t think about that. She said one of the hallmarks of a psychopath is they want someone to pity them.

Cat: Yeah.

Anne: Because a healthy person does not want someone’s pity. They’re like, yeah, my mom passed away from a car accident when I was a kid. It was a real bummer, it’s sad, but like, I’m healthy now and here I am as an adult.

Cat: Yeah.

Anne: But they could use anything to elicit pity to do what they want to do. Let’s go back to that flying monkey friend. It’s interesting to me that you said your husband was the alpha of this group. Who I assume took his side later from the way you described it. What do you think his motivation was to ask if you had seen a dark side? Do you think he was trying to warn you?

Cat: I don’t know if it was out of concern for me. I have to share the tone of this friend group. They’re all very sweet. They’re all very kind. Well, I know one of them has attacked me verbally, talking about me behind my back. I don’t know that any of the rest of them have.

They have all, at least to me, said kind, compassionate things, but it’s that sitting on the fence. You know, I want to be nice to you. I want to be a good guy and say the right thing to you, but I’m also going to totally support your ex-husband.

It’s Not Our Fault That We Believe Them

Cat: Although when my ex husband, I think, notified some of his cohort and requested privacy or something like that. One of those friends reached out to both of us and said, I’m so sorry to hear this. If either of you want to talk, I’m here. And, I did contact him, and I told him everything going on. We had a long conversation, and he believed everything I said because he had seen things.

But he said to me, you know Cat, we all knew he was capable of this. We just hoped it wasn’t happening to you. That’s like verbatim what he said to me, and yet they’re all just there for him. So I thought the group was all kind, all sensitive, all good guys. And yet they are his enablers to the end. I’ve since cut ties with everyone. Like, all of them, even though some of them were my friends, separate from my ex-husband before we got together in college, even most of his family, I’ve cut ties with.

I do have intermittent contact with his brother and brother’s wife from his family, who do not speak to him anymore. But the rest, I’ve cut everyone out.

Anne: That’s so hard. We perceive it as a warning, but part of me wonders if they’re testing the waters.

Cat: Mm hmm.

Anne: Because many of them drop the mask a little bit before the marriage, and then they put it back on. And I often wonder if it’s a little bit of a test, and again, this is not our fault that we believe them. Which is the most awful, unconscionable thing to think.

Abuse Cycles & Realizations

Anne: A normal person would be like, shoot, she believed me. I better tell her the truth so that she knows what she’s getting into.

Cat: Yeah.

Anne: uh, it’s awful.

Cat: Yeah, after that first, I didn’t know what it was at the time, but now I understand that was abuse early on. Nine months into dating, it didn’t happen again for a long time. I couldn’t figure out why those cycles of yelling and anger got closer and closer together, and it took 15 or more years. I mean, I was in my 30s with three children before I realized, like, this is just my life. It’s just one big, and I didn’t have the word abuse cycle then. But I understood that this is all the time now, it’s not intermittent episodes anymore.

It is just a constant, daily grind. We all know the frog in the pot of boiling water analogy. I look back now and understand the behaviors. Especially the outward behaviors that were happening within our various friend groups over the decades. They meant to create his false image to hide his secret behaviors, secret basement. And covert abuse while simultaneously invalidating me. So that if I ever went to someone, I wouldn’t be believed. He did actually write that to me.

He admitted he did that on purpose. So I know that the gaslighting, which was happening outwardly with our friends. Him putting on the mask of a good guy, all the way to him encouraging me to go to the Women’s March in DC. Like almost to the point of like, if I didn’t go, it would be disappointing him. Because that’s part of his mask.

My Husband Yells & Abuses Because It Works

Cat: The fact that he would be married to a feminist means there’s no way he could do what he’s doing. You know, it’s like a decorator crab. They’re just putting all these things on their shell, and I was like his crown jewel. But I was just social capital, that’s it. And I know now that’s what our family was. So that long game, it’s hard to wrap your mind around how deep and calculated it is. I still struggle with wondering, is it all conscious or “he can’t help it.”

And I’m saying that with air quotes like, he can’t help it. Not like, oh, poor him. I don’t feel that way at all. But that it’s such a part of who he is. And it’s kind of gotten to the point where it doesn’t matter to me. I just know that I want that level of manipulation nowhere around me. And, I know it works on many people, and I can’t worry about that.

Anne: And the answer might be that they yell and abuse because it works.

Cat: Yeah.

Anne: It allows them to exploit people. It allows them to work the least amount.

Cat: Yep.

Anne: In terms of emotional work, psychological work, and even physical labor. It allows them to have all the privileges of a family without having the responsibilities.

Cat: Yeah.

Anne: A survey done in prison that the counselor asked the abusers in the prison, why would you abuse? They just had lists and lists of reasons, all the entitlements they get. And then he said, why wouldn’t you? And they said things like, because I might get thrown in jail.

False Disclosures & Therapy Manipulation

Anne: Because people might not like me, and guess what wasn’t on their list, because I care about her, was not on the list. So anytime someone lacks that basic human care for their own partner, and everyone is just fodder for exploitation, They’re just going to do what works and controlling people with anger and yelling works .They’re very practical, not to their credit, but their values and moral system are only based on what works to get them what they want, not what is the right thing to do.

Cat: Yeah, and I think that goes along with what I was talking about. People with a conscience have a hard time comprehending the behaviors of people without a conscience. It causes us to give them the benefit of the doubt all the time. And then the people without a conscience use that against us or use that for their own betterment.

To your point, about the therapist saying your ex husband was a psychopath. We did couple’s therapy for probably eight years, almost weekly, because of a fake disclosure that happened.

Anne: He lied about something he did?

Cat: I know crazy, right? He lied about something. Yeah, so this is, it’s almost like hard to believe I didn’t see it. So we had many, many years of abuse cycles, increasing in regularity. I had begged him to go to therapy, but there was so much I didn’t know about getting a therapist for my abusive husband. for a long time. He wouldn’t do it. He also had pretty regular impotence, which I had personally seen professionals about. Because I didn’t want a loveless marriage.

Discovering The Truth

Cat: And I eventually encouraged him to seek help about it. I remember asking him if men attracted him. And I didn’t know about exploitative content use at that time. I had no concept that this material induced impotency. And no professional I went to, you know, doctors, therapists, acupuncture, whatever. No one said, could it be this? Nobody said that to me. So I went to him and said, can you go get checked out? Let’s figure out what’s going on, and he came back.

He said everything’s fine, they just said it’s anxiety, but the abuse cycles associated with his impotence were the worst. I had three kids, eventually I just kept them away as much as possible. While he was like in a dark room, on the computer and grouchy. So his dad, came to visit one time. He saw what was happening, and came to me and said he didn’t like what he was seeing. And I said, can you tell him to go to therapy? Because he won’t listen to me.

So he went to therapy after his dad told him to. He got on some anti-anxiety medication, and things nominally improved. The yelling and abuse cycles were still there, but they were not as extreme. And then he came to me and said, I’ve been talking to my therapist and I need to confess something to you, because I’m worried about how I might act on this impulse I’m having.

He said, I just wanted you to know that I was watching this horrible stuff. I have to admit, I didn’t care about it at that point. And I just thought it was something most guys did. I didn’t know all the harms associated with it.

Concocting A Lie To Preempt Discovery

Cat: I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t an area of concern for me. So he said I watched it, and all these pop up windows came up, and I clicked on a website. I started talking to a bot, and it was taking me further into chat rooms. And these are his words. “I was getting worried about how far I was going,” he said. “I ended up on a website called Ashley Madison”, and he said, “All I was doing was talking to people.”

But again, I had no idea, I mean, I look back now and I’m just like, I’m a different person, but I said, Ashley Madison. And then I realized what Ashley Madison was. I did not think he was cheating, I believed what he said about just talking to people.

Anne: For women who may not be aware of the Ashley Madison scandal, can you give a brief overview of that?

Cat: It’s a website for married people to sign up to cheat on their spouses.

Anne: Right, they hacked it and released all the names?

Cat: Well, I didn’t know that, but yes, that’s why he did it. Yes, he was preempting.

Anne: Exactly, he was getting ahead of it just in case you discovered it.

Cat: Yes, exactly. It was a fake disclosure.

Anne: That time, you think, of course he’s telling the truth. Because why would he tell me if he didn’t tell the truth? There’s no way you’d think he concocted a lie preemptively, so that he could lie to you if you discovered the truth.

Cat: Exactly.

Going No Contact

Anne: When you said the abuse cycle with the impotence was the worst. That may or may not confirm my theory. That the reason why he’s yelling and angry is because you’re obstructing them from using. Or hooking up with married women on Ashley Madison. Because anytime you try to talk to them, if they’re like on their way to use it, or if they’re on their way to do the thing they want to do.

They’ll be extremely irritated. And mad at you, so that they have an “excuse” to go do something else. And that also might explain why he was so impotent at that time. Because if you’re using every day or multiple times a day, you’re definitely going to be impotent with your wife.

Cat: Yeah, and he told me at the end of the marriage that there were times where he was using it seven hours a day. He would leave his tech job and meet up with like Craigslist hookups. Which who knows, and my oldest son said to me, you would be an idiot to believe a word that comes out of his mouth at this point.

And that was just a few months after he admitted the “real” and I’m saying real in air quotes. Because I’m sure that’s the tip of the iceberg. Whatever he admitted. I mean, we had 26 years of him doing stuff. I don’t know about, whatever he admitted. There’s way worse out there, but that’s all I needed. And that’s when I went no contact.

Couples Therapy & Narcissism

Cat: But after the first fake disclosure regarding Ashley Madison, he had a whole plan in place. He had already contacted a couples therapist. He said, let’s start doing couples therapy. I want to use this to rebuild our marriage and all this stuff. And I never enthusiastically agreed, but I definitely acquiesced. And so we spent eight years in couples therapy, I realize now what garbage that was. He used couples therapy to manipulate me.

When more truth came out, I scheduled an appointment with that therapist and recounted several times. I had tried to point to what happened. And was silenced in couples therapy. That couples therapist, to his credit, said he’s definitely a covert narcissist. And I think he’s a sociopath. Probably like your therapist saying, your ex-husband was a psychopath. This therapist saw my ex-husband weekly for eight years. So that was eye opening for me.

Anne: That’s the first time the therapist recognized he lied for eight years. The fact that someone can go to therapy every week for eight years and lie the entire time. My ex did it through addiction recovery therapy. He’d go to 12-step meetings and lied to everyone. He enjoyed every minute of it.

Mine loved therapy. When I mentioned, hey, let’s go to therapy. He was like, yes. Once they discover that therapy will work for them, they don’t mind it at all. A lot of women think, if I could just get him in therapy, and it sounds like you thought that.

Cat: I did!

Anne: Then you did. And it gets worse.

Weaponizing Therapy

Anne: They learn how to weaponize the therapy against us. So that they seem better and sound good. Yours was already good at that, so it makes them even more scary. So yeah, if you’re listening, thinking if he would only go to therapy.

Cat: It’s dangerous. Especially couples therapy, when you’re considering intensive couples therapy because couples therapists assume an equality of good intention. That both people are there because they’re trying to improve the relationship. That’s part of how they train therapists. But in reality with emotional abuse, where it’s hidden, even from the victim. It’s really dangerous, and therapy becomes a tool for further manipulation and control. And that’s definitely what happened.

The way I was able to gain awareness of the reality that what I was living with was abuse. Started when I discovered a large bag of marijuana in his backpack. While I helped my middle son look for something he had lost that my husband was mad about.

And I was trying to help him avoid his dad’s ire by helping him look for this thing. I opened up my husband’s backpack, and there was a big bag of marijuana in there. And he had been saying in therapy, he wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t looking at exploitative material. He wasn’t doing drugs, he wasn’t doing all the stuff. And I just lost it.

Like I could not believe the level of deception I was still dealing with, and my husbands lying all the time. And so we had a big heated argument that night he did a lot of yelling. He’d obviously thought about, if he got caught, what he would do.

PTSD & Realizations

Cat: And he immediately redirected the conversation to the fact that he has an addiction problem with drugs and alcohol. This was news to me. I had no idea. I don’t think he actually, I mean, I think it’s more that he has a problem with entitlement. And if he wants to do something, he’s going to do it. Whether he said he won’t, or whether it’s harmful to others.

So, he said, I’m going to start going to AA, I’m going to go, do all these 12-step things. My oldest son had done a wilderness therapy program, and we were still working with his therapist from that program. I also now understand that was a whole redirection away from my husband’s issues to scapegoat my child. But anyway, I called that therapist to tell him what was going on. And he said to me Cat, I think I’ve seen signs in you of PTSD in our family sessions.

I think something’s going on and I recommend you look at, I think he gave me the name of a podcast, like the Betrayed and the something. And my ex husband started doing a men’s program and determined he had a problem lying. That was his problem. I was diagnosed with PTSD, or CPTSD.

Anne: I’m going to jump in and say, that there’s the P in CPTSD, the post.

Cat: Right.

Anne: If he’s still yelling, lying, and raging around. It’s not post, it’s still happening.

Cat: Right.

Anne: If they’re going to diagnose us, which I have to tell you, I disagree with. I think they should look at us and say, you’re acting completely normal. You’re not diagnosed with anything. And it’s not post anything. You’re still experiencing abuse.

Empty Pronouncements That He Would Stop Yelling & Lying

Cat: Yes. He did that program. And we were still in constant contact. I look back now and all our text exchanges, and I can’t believe how much energy I put into explaining human decency to him for so long. He obviously knew, I mean, after that program, a few months later, he started another men’s program. And, then I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

Then he finished the program, all the while making pronouncements to me, “Oh, I’m going to do this.” And “Here’s all of this.” And then he said he wanted a divorce. And the biggest tell to me was that I wasn’t even sad. I was sad about our family, and I was scared. There was a lot of fear, but I’ve never once missed him.

Anne: Yeah, that is a good sign, or not.

Cat: Yeah.

Anne: It’s not a good sign, but that’s a sign.

Cat: It’s very clear, yeah.

Anne: Clarifying, I’m so glad you discovered that. I used to recommend men’s programs, and I don’t anymore because of this.

Cat: Totally, through this program, my ex-husband found a way to manipulate through therapy language. He went to those AA meetings and 12-step program meetings. And would come home and disparage all the people in those meetings and say like, Oh, I’m not as bad as those guys. You know, comparing himself to how much better he was than all these other people at these AA meetings, but yet he would still use them to build up his ego and stuff.

Anne: This is why it does not help them.

They Don’t Believe His Yelling & Lying Is Abuse: Fooling Trained Therapists & Courts

Cat: No, I don’t think anything would. I mean, even now he’s donning a new costume of healed or healing. Good dad, I know he dog whistles to all his enablers that this is my fault. Because his needs weren’t being met, he had to do what he did. And I even heard him say this through a year through the divorce and family court mediation. I know he even told the assigned family mediator he did what he did, so he didn’t hurt me.

And she ate it up, and she’s a highly trained therapist, and she repeated his words to me. The institutions around therapy and the way therapists are trained. From family court, to the criminal court system, to social systems in general, are all designed to support the main characters, which are these privileged men.

Anne: When they’ve learned the right things to say. And as long as they play the game right, they maintain their privilege and their power.

Cat: Yeah, that’s right.

Anne: It’s extremely discouraging.

Cat: It is. I’ve just immersed myself in learning so much about it. I’m interested in Dr. Peter Salerno, and his books. Which say we have to stop trying to help these men.

Anne: Yeah, this is exactly why I don’t recommend men’s programs anymore.

Living Free Workshop Strategies

Anne: Due to hearing this story over and over from women over the years. And my own struggle to be free from this type of manipulation. I discovered and created the strategies in the Living Free Workshop. In The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop, 100 percent of the focus is on helping you. Does that mean I think he can’t change?

I don’t think that’s my call to make, the only person I’m concerned about is you. The only help you need is to see his true character. You can observe from a safe distance to see if he will continue to lie and exploit. Or will he make different choices? The strategies give you enough space to see who he really is and what he’s going to do. Because with a therapy program, a men’s program, or a couple’s program, you don’t get the space you need to see him for who he really is.

It just becomes an extension of his manipulation of you. You still have no way to protect yourself from his yelling and abusive behaviors. But the strategies in the Living Free Workshop enable you to create space for yourself to see his true character, because truth is the only way out of this.

Cat: Right, that’s exactly right. That’s so good.

Anne: Our local domestic violence coalition, instead of putting more money into helping victims. They decided to do a men’s program. And I’m like, don’t do it. Because they know what they’re doing.

Hiding Patriarchy In Feminist Language

Anne: I don’t know if you’re a fan of the Barbie movie.

Cat: Yeah, I loved it.

Anne: Ryan Gosling goes into that office building, and he’s in the lobby. I’m gonna do this scene for everyone. Ken says, I’ll take a high level, high paying job with influence, please. And the corporate man says, okay, then you’ll need at least an MBA, and a lot of our people have PhDs. Ken says, Isn’t being a man enough? And the corporate man says, actually, right now it’s the opposite.

Ken says, You guys are clearly not doing patriarchy very well. And here’s the kicker. The corporate man says, no, no, we’re doing it well. Yeah, we just hide it better now. And that’s what you’re talking about. They’re hiding it in feminist language, but they’re not actually feminists. They don’t actually see women as equals. They want to hold on to their exploitative privilege. The part I loved about that movie is they know that.

Cat: They do. And you know, that’s why the covert abusers are probably the most successful now. Because there are so few avenues still socially acceptable to exercise dominance and control.

Anne: Right, yeah, and they’re getting good at it. So in court they intend to, and they know that they can dysregulate us by abusing us. Their intent in yelling to strike fear, to dysregulate us. So they can claim we’re crazy, and we look disheveled and freaked out because we are.

Cat: Yeah, I was even very put together and calm and poised in all our family court meetings, with the judge. They said point blank, we don’t talk about anything that’s come before in here.

Advocating For Children

Cat: We only talk about how we’re moving forward, which is crazy to me. Knowing all the written admissions I had from him, I was not allowed to even present that. This is the twisted thing about family court. I was the only one showing up and advocating for the kids. He showed up and advocated for what he wanted from custody. And they said if I didn’t stop, I would be labeled a parental alienator.

So I just said, okay, we’re just 50/50, we’re not 50/50. I have more custody, but yeah, it’s broken. I just want to say how grateful I am to Betrayal Trauma Recovery for really accelerating my healing. And giving me compassionate but radical acceptance. So that I could start to get myself to safety and my kids to safety.

Anne: Cat, thank you so much for sharing your story.