Can a marriage emerge from emotional abuse to be healed–to feel whole and intimate?
Last week was a depressing week on the blog. It really was a hard slog. I took an in-depth look at the book Love & Respect, and talked about how the Love & Respect enabled emotional abuse. And then so many of you shared your stories of dysfunctional marriages that were rooted in bad teaching like Love & Respect.
And I had so many of you saying: Can you please share stories of couples who actually healed from emotional abuse–couples who didn’t divorce, but came through on the other side?
Some of you did leave those stories, about how once you learned to enact boundaries, your marriage did get better. And it reminded me of a story that I shared several years ago on this blog, that I think it’s time to share again. So let’s take a look!
Emotional abuse is always wrong.
It is not, however, always straightforward.
Sometimes emotional abuse is caused by a narcissistic, or even sociopathic, spouse. One of the most profound books I’ve ever read was Scott Peck’s People of the Lie. It was all about toxic people who are simply evil. Most evil people are married, hold down good jobs, and look respectable. But they try to control people, usually by ignoring truth and redefining reality. It makes those around them feel crazy.
It is these kinds of people who often gravitate towards positions of absolute power in churches that are very hierarchical. It is these kinds of men who gravitate towards beliefs about marriage where the husband always has the final say and the wife must submit to his wishes no matter what. It is mostly (but not exclusively) these kinds of people that Leslie Vernick was writing about in her book The Emotionally Destructive Marriage.
Other times, however, emotional abuse starts from two people in a stressful situation who don’t handle that situation well–and who start developing extremely toxic and counterproductive coping patterns.
It’s not personality disorders as much as it is a difficult stage of life.
I’ve been writing a lot lately on how to stand up to a controlling husband and how to make sure that you’re not enabling sin.
Today, though, I’d like to share a real-life story of a woman who went through emotional abuse in her marriage–and who emerged on the other side.
When what you’re dealing with is not a personality disorder (like narcissism) but instead negative interaction patterns, then you can get through abuse. And I think this is so important to understand, because sometimes we paint all abusive behavior as so terrible that it can never be recovered from.
Human behavior isn’t that simple.
My good friend Natalie from Flying Free has been writing a lot about walking through a marriage where narcissism is prevalent. That’s something that you can’t get through save from an extraordinary miracle from God. And I am not trying to say that those of you who are married to a narcissistic spouse should just try harder.
What I am trying to say is that it’s possible to develop really destructive interaction patterns without meaning to–especially if you’ve been raised in a church culture where you were taught that if a woman disagrees with her husband she’s disrespecting him, and that he should get unconditional respect.
Relate to this? You may also enjoy:
Ronni Peck, aka The Screenwriter’s Wife, shared her own journey of how emotional abuse started–and how they got out of it. And I want to highlight a few things that we can learn from her journey:
Stress and job loss can do horrible things to people.
Here’s Ronni’s story: When their first child was a year old, all of a sudden her husband found himself out of a job because the company he worked for went belly up.
As month after month of unemployment passed, KP found himself struggling with purpose. His morale and self-esteem were low. He questioned himself, his writing, his dreams.
This was the starting point of her husband becoming abusive. At the same time, Ronni was feeling isolated, which made it easier for her husband to manipulate her.
We need a community to help us keep perspective.
Ronni writes:
Early on in our marriage, because I wasn’t as passionate about a particular career path as KP was of his writing dreams, it seemed a natural choice for me to leave behind my unsteady entertainment industry job for the steady income of a teaching position. After a year in a brick and mortar school, I further transitioned to a work-from-home online teaching position, a position that I enjoyed.
However, I’m already a bit of a homebody and so my social outlets gradually dwindled down only to KP’s circle of friends. I had no local friends of my own.
It was in this environment of stress and isolation that her husband started belittling her.
One of the characteristics of emotional abuse is the abuser needing to feel as if the other person is always at fault for something.
When emotional abuse stems from a feeling of inadequacy itself–as in the case of job loss–then it usually manifests itself in having to feel superior to someone else. Here’s how Ronni describes it:
No matter how our fights started, they always included KP telling me some or all of the following:
- That my memory was faulty and unless I could “prove” what I thought was said in a previous conversation, that I was wrong and had no clue what I was talking about.
- That everything I said was really a subtle attack against him. No matter what I tried to discuss, it was always turned around into how I was victimizing him. If I did not recognize how I was attacking him, it was because my memory and interpretation of situations were inaccurate.
- That I did not keep the house clean, and never did the dishes or vacuumed or laundry, and this showed how irresponsible and lazy I was and how I didn’t care about our family.
- That talking to me was like talking to a child and until I could grow up and accept responsibility for my actions (i.e. the state of the house and my attacks on him), that nothing I said was worth listening to.
Then, at some point in the argument, usually when it was at its highest convoluted peak, he’d tell me that talking to me was pointless since I was never going to change or grow up. Then he’d leave the room (and sometimes the house) and refuse to talk to me until I apologized. Which I usually did, hours or days later.
Do you see how so much of this has to do with one spouse challenging the other’s memory and interpretation of the past? It’s this constant redefining of history that is so confusing for someone walking through emotional abuse. You can never work anything out, because if you try to bring up a time you were upset, somehow the abuser turns it into “you’re remembering wrong” or “by feeling that way you’re abusing me.” Your feelings are always suspect.
Here’s how Ronni experienced it:
I questioned my own thinking, was I really misremembering situations? Was I really subtly attacking him with everything I said? I live far away from family and I had no local friends to be a sounding board to help me gauge the accuracy of my thoughts. I felt like who I was…had slowly diminished away.
Support is necessary. Boundaries, however, are too.
We need to support our spouses when they’re struggling. But you can still have boundaries which say, “when you insult me or criticize me I’m going to remove myself from the situation” without meaning that you aren’t supporting him. Boundaries are important, too, and Ronni didn’t have boundaries.
Though he was often grumpy and short with me, I knew that these actions were likely a passing phase and I wanted to be a good, supportive wife in this difficult time for him. So I put up with his moods. I tried to be extra kind and sympathetic and strong for him by willingly accepting his cranky criticisms. I figured I was giving him time to work through things, and by not putting up a fight to these early criticisms, I thought was “helping” him to come out of his funk and showing him that I’d always be by his side no matter what life brought us.
But that’s not what happened.
Instead of seeing my sympathy as a lifeline drawing us closer together, he instead capitalized on the opportunity I didn’t realize I’d given him: the opportunity to use me as an emotional whipping board.
Do you need to learn how to enforce boundaries?
Learn how to ask for what you want, and how to point your husband to Jesus–
so that you both have the kind of marriage you need.
She knew that the abusive behavior went against his basic character.
Here’s the defining difference between what Ronni went through and what someone married to a narcissist is going through: Ronni knew that this behaviour was atypical. She writes this:
During that time when our marriage was really tough and I felt so lost – I could have given up on it. A lot of other people in my shoes probably would have. But I knew my husband deep down, and I knew that he wasn’t always like this, and I knew that the good guy that I married was still in there somewhere…
I knew he could be a better man than he was showing me at that time.
How did she start rebuilding their marriage? She started enforcing her own boundaries.
But I also finally realized that I did not just have to sit there and take what he was throwing at me. I did not have to submit to his frustrations with his own life. I didn’t have to give up on him or on our marriage –but I also didn’t have to remain under his emotional control anymore either. Even though KP may have been 85% of the problem, it wasn’t until I accepted responsibility for my 15% and stopped giving in to his emotional manipulations were we able to move toward true reconciliation as a couple.
Here’s how she explains it:
Once I started exerting more independence for myself, an interesting thing happened. KP stopped having control over my emotional state…If he started to criticize, I let the criticism roll right off me. I’d answer rationally and calmly if I needed to, but otherwise, nothing negative he said could penetrate my emotions. I told him I loved him and wanted to stay married to him, but I wasn’t going to do this fighting thing anymore. I was over it… In a way, it seemed like I became more cold with him, but in reality, I was acknowledging that my emotions were not affected by him anymore.
And slowly, but surely, things started changing between us. Once KP realized that he couldn’t get that emotional rise out of me, he had no reason to continue pushing.
She stopped “the dance”.
I’ve heard this back-and-forth emotional argument called “the dance” by some therapists. He pushes that button, you respond by doing this, that in turn causes something else, and so on, and so on.
But if you refuse to dance–if you don’t respond to it–then it can, over time, end some of the behavior. You just don’t participate anymore.
Ronni has written another lengthy post on how to recover from a difficult marriage, and it includes such things as becoming committed to the marriage; finding a third party to talk to; believing the best; trying to find the win-win–all things we talk about on this blog. And she and her husband have emerged from that really trying time, and she even asked her husband to write some of the post on emotional abuse.
I wanted to share that today to give some of you hope that marriage can get better–that it can heal from emotional abuse.
I know that this may still sound depressing, but to me it’s really hopeful. It says that, in quite a few cases, even if the marriage is really difficult, by changing how we react, we can actually grow intimacy again. To me, that’s good news!
Now, Ronni’s situation was unique in that her husband was not physically dangerous, and his abuse was mostly caused by job stress, his own feelings of inadequacy, and her not standing up to him.
Sometimes, however, abuse is caused because the other person truly is narcissistic or dangerous. In those cases, enforcing simple boundaries can result in violence. If that is the case with you, please contact an abuse shelter and get some help. If your husband hasn’t been violent, but you’re worried he may be violent, call an abuse hotline to talk, or please find a counsellor to talk to.
So let’s not assume that abuse necessarily means that a marriage is over. Even if you’re in a marriage where he routinely dismisses your needs, or you feel like you’re invisible, if you stop the dance, and start enforcing boundaries, you may just find that your spouse responds positively–and you get that intimacy that you’ve wanted.
You may also benefit from:
If you’ve been through something like this, let me know in the comments: how did you stop “the dance”? Or how do you know the difference between a narcissist and someone just going through a really difficult stage of life?
Sheila Wray Gregoire has been married for 27 years and happily married for 22! She loves traveling around North America with her hubby in their RV, giving her signature "Girl Talk" about sex and marriage. And she's written 8 books. About sex and marriage. See a theme here? Plus she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
I’m still in this place, so I don’t know what the end result will be. Except, my hsuband has always been emotionally and verbally abusive, I just didn’t understand what was happening until more recently. He had several affairs and a sexual addiction he did a 12 step program for several years ago. Then we went through a difficult time trying for kids. Then it was having kids and being overwhelmed by that. I feel like he got relief and some level of healing for the addiction through the 12 step, but the counseling we went to didn’t address much of what I was going through or the healing process for me. We did a marriage class at church 5-6 times including leading the class at one point. Some of our mentors from the class confronted him about his attitude/behavior, but he just dismissed it as that’s how his personality is. Ten years after the affairs I still have anxiety and even though he’s not cheating or using porn, he doesn’t see how his behavior is wrong and gets mad at the slightest criticism. He has always been very easily offended and always made me feel guilty for not trying harder, being better, for not wanting to put up with his sorry attitude about everything in life. A few months ago he started accusing me of being willing to leave him for a particular celebrity because they live in our area now and I’m a fan of theirs. He checks my phone all the time under the guise of plugging it in to charge for me. And there’s the issue of his low testosterone so he has a lower sex drive than me and doesn’t really initiate anymore, which makes me feel rejected/unwanted. I am just tired of trying. I’m done with the counseling, retreats, marriage classes, mentors trying to help fix things.
Anonymous, that’s really, really concerning. All of these things are very concerning. This sounds like a man with some deep seated issues that he just isn’t addressing. Do you have a Christian community around you that can help you navigate this and decide what to do?
The thing about the story that I ran was that this man’s behaviour was out of character. It sounds like for your husband, this type of behaviour is completely in character, and has always been there. That’s just very sad.
You probably need some individual counseling. You could benefit from having someone help you work on boundaries and inner healing just for you. And he obviously needs help to work on him, but your concern should be you getting healthy and safe. I’m so sorry, I know this whole thing is so devastating.
I have decided to divorce my husband after 12 years of marriage. After our first few years we were together his attitude shifted. Then after about 6 years he uncovered a drug abuse to meth, had sex with men, and was emotionally abusing. I stood by him. He went to rehab. He also became very psychotic and he was placed in a 5150, by me. I had my first nervous breakdown from that. I still stood by him. After a few months of rehab and he felt life was good again. He would turn away from me, treat me like I was his maid, house keeper. Not really like his wife. I struggled with intimacy from him and always asked for him to try and connect with me. He’s usually say it’s not going to happen. Or something like that. He was fine with status quo. Only showing others how fun and great he was. But behind closed doors he was cold and acted as though he was entitled to sit on a thrown. Not really being a husband or doing much around the house. It was always left for me to do. I learned to keep quiet and only show a smile. I tried to love him anyway when he would show me a little attention. Finally one Christmas I bought a new car. I picked it out but it was not what he wanted me to have. He wanted to divorce me because I was ungrateful. This seemed to be my last emotional straw. I fell out of love. We tried going to the church for healing. Therapy. But it wasn’t until he got violent and threw a full bottle of beer and put a whole in the wall that I was able to get him out. I tried to dog deep after he was out to find peace to see if I could rebuild trust. Nothing. He has tried to change. But the anger and his punishing ways never left. He makes me feel I am the one that has damaged out marriage. That I am supposed to stay married. But our son was effected and doesn’t want to be triggered by him as well. He would purposely trigger our son to ignite me to have control. It’s been a very dysfunctional marriage and I feel without him, we can heal. I know it’s better for kids when parents stay married. But I am not so sure. Our son has issues. But I feel he needs protection.
F, if your husband is being violent, you need to protect your son. I am so, so sorry that you have been through this. I hope that you can find a healthy community to come around you and help you find strength.
I think this is where it’s crucial to have other people on board. An abuse victim may not even know for sure they are being abused, and they are more than likely to assume good about the attentions of the abuser, even if they are not there. And even this I say with hesitation, because sometimes a victim is further victimized by their community telling them that everything is okay and they are the problem. It really is hard. But I will say that in my own situation, that while there were people that thought that I was the problem, my mom could see through my ex and knew all along that how he was treating me was not okay.
Yes, I totally agree with you about how sometimes the community makes it worse. But you do need people around you who are wise and discerning. I’m glad your mom was that for you!
I’ve noticed that our problems always are worst when my husband is out of a job. He got sucked into the “contract work” market and can’t break out, so he’s very often out of a job… being unable to be hired does bad things to his self-esteem and as a result he takes it out on me… my enforcing boundaries doesn’t fix the problem, though, it just leads to spectacular fights… he’s back at work, now, for a couple of months, but he still hasn’t been paid… I’ve also noticed that financial problems can cause marital problems…
That’s definitely true, Brievel. I do think that this is something that needs to be dealt with, though. Stress comes in life. It just does. If he can’t handle it without taking it out on you, that’s not okay. Again, if he tries to start a fight, leave the room. Don’t engage. And if you’re ever in fear for what he might do to you or kids, leave. Please. But I think that it’s worth talking to a licensed counsellor and saying, “we can’t keep doing this.” And if your husband won’t work on it, he needs to know that you won’t stand for it. You do need to be treated with respect, without him taking anger out on you.
I am (unplanned) pregnant again, and I told him as soon as we figured it out that he couldn’t do what he did last time (withdrew, emotionally abandoned me and left me without support, turned to porn.) So we’re both making an effort to do better this time around (me to hold onto my temper and be less overreactive,) we had a bit of an argument last night where I called him out on some of his behavior and he ended up unable to deny it and promising to do better. It’ll be baby steps but ever since I separated from him for several days he has shown a willingness to improve.
The hardest thing about abusive relationships are the cycles of abuse vs affection. Constant severe abuse is often a lot easier to walk away from, as it is obvious and there is no ‘reward’ to pull you back. Emotional manipulation/abuse is far worse as you are trained to put up with more due to the carrot/stick behaviour. Just when you start to gather up the courage to leave, the abuser will switch into ‘nice’ mode to draw you back in again. Then the relationship will be roses for a while and you think everything is alright, let down your guard, start planning for the future again. Then one day the abuse restarts and you feel completely thrown. And the constant swings in emotion destroy your self esteem and leave you unable to accurately judge whether the abuse is really that bad (since ‘they can be so lovely at other times’). It’s exhausting and it gets harder and harder to find the energy to stand up to the bad times. You eventually just give up and assume that is how your life will be forever. The cycles of abuse/affection become your new normal as you forget what a real normal, healthy relationship is like (assuming you’ve ever experienced one).
Yep. Really screws with your head. Feels like you are going crazy. And isolation from friends and family don’t help either.
Yes, this is very true. That’s why I highly recommend getting some very wise, discerning people around you who can be separate from the emotions of the situation and just see it for what it is. The key, too, is not “is my husband being nice to me” (the affection part) but rather “is my husband owning his actions and taking responsibility for what he has done and taking steps to stop the problem?” Is he going to counselling, getting help with stress, confessing what he has done to your family and friends and asking for accountability, etc.
Affection alone will do nothing. What an abuser needs to be doing is accepting responsibility and making tangible changes.
I think we do get caught up in the affection cycle and the emotion of it all, but that’s where getting someone else around us who can ask, “is he actually accepting responsibility” can be very helpful.
I agree if you are lucky enough to have people like that around you. Unfortunately, my husband and I shared most of our friends and I don’t think anyone wanted to rock the boat. When I finally found the courage to leave, it put an end to the yearly holidays we had always taken as a group of couples (since we were no longer part of one). I have remained friends with most of them, but the dynamic definitely changed. They knew the ‘good’ side of him and never saw what went on between us in private, so it was difficult to explain.
My family were the same. They were happy with the way things were, only knew the ‘good’ version my husband, and my father enjoyed going fishing with him, so encouraged me to stay and try to make things work over and over again. He was always on his best behaviour around my family, so they couldn’t accept that he could be a different person with me. If I said anything, excuses would be made or they would downplay his actions with ‘well, that doesn’t sound like L’, ‘everyone has bad days, no one is perfect’, etc.
I know their intentions were good, but it dragged out the relationship for years longer than it should have been as everyone around us was happy with the status quo.
That’s so sad, Yulia. I thought your comment was so good, though, that I used it in my comment of the week for my podcast next week! Just recorded the segment on the abuse/affection cycle, so listen in next week, because what you said was so important.
I am sorry that others didn’t see. It reminds me again to reach out to some of my now single friends who have been divorced due to emotional abuse and make sure I still see them!
I almost feel famous! : )
Things are getting better now, and I’ve made other friends so I’m not as reliant on the old ones. I do understand their perspective, so I don’t hold any grudges against them. I think we all have a tendancy to put people around us in neat boxes (I know I’ve done this in the past myself) and struggle when that person seemingly changes overnight. It can be a bit jarring and difficult to accept.
I totally resonate with this and have come a long way in some ways but also am still stuck because I am more of a loner and when depression sinks in I tend to start allowing things again. I wish I knew how to get the right kind of help that would help me overcome everything that causes the depression and then be able to be more independent. I know that would help a lot.
Yes, I can see how that would be a big problem, Angel. Even just reaching out to one or two women who are wise so that they know what is going on in your life is so vital. Just get some people around you who care.
Yes, emotionally abusive marriages can heal. As a husband who was in an emotionally abusive marriage for 24 years, I lived with harsh relentless criticism, tolerating verbal and emotional abuse on a regular basis.
I’m happy to report that our marriage has been free from abuse for the past four years. I’m 100% certain it will continue “abuse-free”.
Sheila cited how I ended the cycle of emotional abuse in her Aug 25 2017 post “How to Stop the Emotional Abuse”
https://tolovehonorandvacuum.com/2017/08/how-to-stop-the-emotional-abuse-cycle/
Yes, that was a great story, BCMan! Thank you for sharing it with us, and thank you for reminding us as well that there can be male victims of emotional abuse.
How do you put up boundaries when the husbands response to conflict is stonewalling? I’m struggling with that. If we disagree, He’ll just get depressed and not talk and need to sleep a lot (which with our 4 kids leaves extra work on me). We don’t have big fights but because of his reactions to any disagreement we really just don’t talk anymore other than family logistics. It’s not worth the fallout.
I understand, Erin. Has he been seeing a doctor for his depression? That honestly isn’t normal, and I wonder if he got some medication if it may clear up a lot of the other problems?
He is on medication and seeing a counselor and psychiatrist. Still doesn’t help with any conflict though. It’s like a reverse form of narcissism. In conflict he still can only think of himself even if he’s thinking he’s “the worst”. It’s so over the top though it feels like fishing for complements.
The book “Rethinking Narcissim” has a really interesting take on this, which is that people move up and down the narcissim spectrum during their lives, and generally all but the highest-order narcissists can move lower on the spectrum if they choose to.
My own marriage has been emotionally abusive for 11 out of 15 years. My H always had a bit of a tendency to push bounaries and be a bit manipulative and controlling, but after a career change he became angry frequently and upped the boundary trampling, manipulativeness, and controllingness a great deal. I realized he was abusive 18 months ago and have worked on setting (and enforcing) boundaries and changing my part of the dance. He’s mostly responded by shifting tactics, not be becoming non-abusive. So it seems to me that he moved up the narcissism scale after the career change, and isn’t all that interested in moving down at this point. He’s made some behavior changes but his underlying attitudes remain.
Oh, that’s so tough, Anna. I’m sorry. It sounds like you’ve been doing things right, too. That sounds like a really interesting book; I’ll have to take a look. And in the meantime, I do hope you have a lot of support around you!
My name is Ed my wife finally kicked me out for emotional abuse I’ve been married 13 years she finally she finally put a stop To the abuse I’ve been inflicting on her for years I’m just becoming to realize that it’s all me and I’m seeking help and the stories really are encouraging that I can get out and I could stop the abuse I really love her and would do anything do you have her back in my arms. Now that I’m living with my parents I realize where I get it from and I’m working on myself to get help . Thank you for the stories and gives Me help that I can change
Im not quite kicked out since I take care of my wife, her mother and our 3 daughters by myself we both have no where to go anyways. I went outside our narriage a few months back and the shit Ive been going through and what it did to my family, I wouldnt put on anybody. Ive just realized Ive been emotionally abusive most of our 10 years together. Its a hard pillow to swallow. With everything on your shouldeds, now this slap in the face of reality is the hardest thing Ive ever dealt with. My mental health is in extreme need of TLC and the one person I need through this, I kind of dont have right now which makes things so much harder. This is the 1st step though. Coming to terms that I am abusive and what I can do to stop it. Bless the writers and replys on this page