Do you feel anxious, confused, or unsafe in your marriage, but you can’t quite explain why? These 7 emotional safety examples can help you find clarity when your husband’s words sound loving, but his actions leave you feeling betrayed.
Before we get to the list, to see if he’s using any one of the 19 types of emotional abuse tactics, take our free emotional abuse test.
7 EMOTIONAL SAFETY EXAMPLES
In this article you’ll see the following emotional safety examples:
- 7 Practical examples of emotional safety issues.
- Identifying his behaviors that threaten your emotionally safety.
- Realizing that your reactions to his emotional abuse are “normal.”
- What getting the right information means for your emotional safety.
- Honoring your needs and boundaries is essential as you decide next steps.
1. IF HIS ACTIONS DON’T MATCH HIS WORDS, TRUST WHAT YOU SEE
How it Sounds: “I love you and I’d never do anything to hurt you or our family.”
His promises may sound comforting, but his patterns are evidence. If you find yourself assessing his mood before you speak, rehearse conversations afterwards to figure out what went wrong, edit your needs to avoid a reaction, notice something feels off about his relationship with a co-worker, or realize the same issues never get resolved no matter how carefully you explain them, start trusting what you can see and feel.
Emotional safety examples begin with trusting your instincts.
2. IF HE USES MONEY OR OTHER RESOURCES TO CONTROL YOU, UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT MEANS
How it Sounds: “I’m just trying to take care of you. You don’t need to worry about the money.”
It may feel caring or protective for your husband to take care of the finances, but if he is secretive about his purchases, monitors every purchase you make, withholds money, interferes with your ability to work, or makes you feel dependent on him for basic needs, that is not protection. It is control.
Emotional safety examples, means you have access to money, transportation, information, food, medical care, and communication without having to beg, panic, or wait for him to decide whether you deserve them.
3. IF HE USES STRESS, SADNESS, OR HELPLESSNESS TO EXPLOIT YOU, PROTECT YOUR ENERGY
How it Sounds: “I’m so overwhelmed lately. I just need your help, so I can recover.”
If your husband uses stress, sadness, illness, addiction, work, or confusion to make you responsible for his life, you may end up managing the children, the house, the appointments, the meals, his emotions, his recovery, and his reputation alone.
Emotional safety examples mean you are seen as a person with needs, limits, and a life of your own, not just someone who’s there to “help him” manage his.
4. IF HE TWISTS THE TRUTH AND BLAMES YOUR “POOR” COMMUNICATION, BE STRATEGIC: EMOTIONAL SAFETY EXAMPLES
How it Sounds: “You never told me you had a problem with my behavior.”
Husbands who are hiding addictions, emotional affairs, or coercive behavior often depend on confusion to keep the pattern going. He may have watched you cry, ask questions, explain your concerns repeatedly, or change yourself trying to fix the relationship, only to later claim he “didn’t know” there was a problem.
Emotional safety examples are not established by trying to perfectly explain why something hurts you. It’s recognizing that someone who benefits from deception has a strong incentive to pretend he never understood your concerns in the first place.
5. IF HE BLAMES YOU FOR HIS BETRAYALS, REMEMBER BLAME IS A DEFLECTION
How it Sounds: “I wouldn’t have done this if you were more affectionate, less critical, or easier to live with.”
If your husband blames you for his use of inappropriate material, cheating, emotional affairs, lies, or other betrayals, he is shifting responsibility for choices that were always his to make.
Emotional safety examples begin with releasing yourself from any responsibility for the choices he has made.
6. IF HE SUGGESTS COUPLE THERAPY, SEEK EMOTIONAL SAFETY FIRST
How it Sounds: “Let’s go to couples therapy so we can both work on our issues.”
If your husband lies or withholds information that directly affects your reality, safety, health, finances, sexuality, or ability to make informed decisions, he uses coercive control. This is not a marriage issue. Traditional couples therapy is not designed to address ongoing deception and manipulation, especially when one person benefits from keeping the other and the therapist confused.
Determining what you need for emotional safety, comes before focusing on repairing the relationship.
7. EMOTIONAL SAFETY EXAMPLES: IF HE LIES ABOUT YOU TO OTHERS, PROTECT YOUR PEACE
How it Sounds: “She’s unstable. She’s angry. She needs help. I’m really worried about her.”
If your husband feels he is losing control, he may try to control the story. He might tell friends, family, clergy, therapists, or even your children that you are irrational, bitter, unforgiving, mentally unwell, or abusive. You may feel the need to defend yourself, but you do not owe unsafe people access to you.
Emotional safety examples include choosing grounded support, protecting your peace, and letting your consistent actions speak over time.
Talk to women who can support you and validate you. We’d love to see you in a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.
TRANSCRIPT: EMOTIONAL SAFETY EXAMPLES
Anne: Okay, here’s my interview with Roxanna. I have a woman I actually knew in person from years ago when I went to 12-Step. She wrote a book called, Forgotten In The Battle of Sexual Addiction, the Journey of a Spouse. I’m honored to catch up, Roxanna. Let’s just start wherever you would like to start.
Roxanna: Thank you Anne. I am excited to be here. When I met my husband and started building a family when we married, there were certain behaviors that he had that I thought were normal and that I needed to work around. I was in a 12-Step meeting one day when I suddenly remembered something from my childhood. My sister and I came home from school animated and excited. But when we hit the back door, we lowered our voices, and we immediately began assessing our situation.
Was Dad home? Had he gone to the bar? Had he gone to his second job? Was Mom upstairs crying? Because our emotional safety examples revolved around an accurate assessment of his mood. And I realized I was doing the same thing. That I was to a place in the relationship where when I was around him, I assessed and responded to keep myself safe.
Anne: Did you know that you were experiencing abuse?
Roxanna: At that point, no, because it wasn’t until 24 years into the marriage and I refer to it as the bomb because it exploded my existence. It totally fractured everything that I had built my life around.
THE TRUTH THAT EXPLODED MY EXISTENCE
Roxanna: Now he came forward with a very sterile confession, but it was incomplete. About a week later, the spirit said, check his wallet. And I found motel receipts. I had a very flexible job, and the next morning, I checked our bank records. What I found sickened me: phone stuff, prostitution, strip clubs, inappropriate viewing. I mean, it was a bomb.
Because of his vast flips in personality, I went from thinking he was bipolar to wondering who he was. Because it was clear to me that so much of my reality wasn’t as I knew it to be. And I asked him to meet me at a park, and I said, I don’t know what you’re doing or who you are, but if you don’t get help, I’m going to file for divorce today. He checked himself into a rehab center. And I got really sick, and I mean like eight months of illness, 12 times of being hospitalized, and he couldn’t continue the facade.
Anne: Also, he can’t get you to do what he wants at this point, because you’re too sick to do it. You’re too sick to be exploited in the way he was exploiting you before. You’re too sick to be manipulated. I’m so, so sorry. Because that’s when you need the person to be there for you.
Roxanna: Yeah.
Anne: They think that you’re created for them, but they don’t like giving back.
Roxanna: Right, they objectify everyone around them.
Anne: So the rehab center he checked into was for drugs and alcohol.
Roxanna: Yes, but at the end the counselor said, “I think your husband is an addict.” And I countered with, ” What in the world is that?”
I LEARNED TO MEET MY OWN NEEDS
Anne: And no one identified any emotional, psychological, financial or spiritual abuse, at that time, not the therapist or anything? No one said anything about abuse? There were no emotional safety examples for me to follow.
Roxanna: That therapist blamed me. And I looked at it as a two-way street. I was 46 when this happened, and gradually, I gave space, I gave Jack first a year.
I didn’t do that verbally, but I did that in my heart and mind. Part of my learning process was to learn to hold boundaries with someone I didn’t think I could hold boundaries with. As I held boundaries and learned to meet my own needs. I learned to make decisions based on what I saw and what my truth was, not what he was telling me. It freed him to decide what he wanted.
Anne: Well, he was always free to do what he wanted the whole time.
Roxanna: But some of those boundaries allowed me to step out of the position of being blamed.
Anne: He never had to blame you.
Roxanna: Right, but he did.
Anne: Yeah, the language “allowed him”, I’m like no. He was always free to choose.
Roxanna: I look at myself and think I made a million mistakes, but were they mistakes? Probably not. One of the experiences I learned from a Saturday. I wanted it to be a wonderful day, and Jack just kept sulking on the couch. I remember coming over and visiting with him and saying, “What’s up?” and I can’t remember the words he used. But essentially, I’m mad because you are supposed to make me happy, and I’m not happy. and I just kept trying to make life pleasant. I would twist myself and my schedule into a pretzel.
EMOTIONAL SAFETY EXAMPLES: WE WANT TO PROTECT OUR FAMILIES
Anne: It’s a total normal reaction. We all value our dignity. We’re all going to stand up for ourselves. We’re all going to try and improve the situation. Women are incredible. They’re smart, they’re capable. And when something’s not quite right, of course we wanna fix it, anybody would. Healthy people want to help the people they love, they wanna care. Women who have never been abused act the same way.
They’re like, “Are you okay? What’s wrong? How can I help you?” Because they’re a good person. It’s just that manipulators use that against you, regardless of your background. And that’s the hard part for women to wrap their heads around, is that they’ve never done anything wrong.
I’ve done over 200 long form interviews that are like an hour or longer, and they’re all different. Women come from really healthy backgrounds, women come from unhealthy ones, and we’re all completely different. But we all wanna help out. We all wanna protect our families. Of course, none of us are perfect. We’re just trying to navigate someone who’s lying to us and manipulating us. They’re actually doing the right things. He’s just using all the right things against them.
Roxanna: That is so true, Anne. I love your stance on it. We are amazing. You’re responding reasonably to an unreasonable situation. You’re learning to be true to yourself. You don’t have to believe what other people tell you. Somewhere in your gut and somewhere with God, you can figure out in those moments, “That’s not my job.” I could leave.
I tried marriage again AND HE LIED TO ME, TOO
Roxanna: Jack had a lot of medical issues. One night we were in the ER, it was very late, he was overtly flirting, and it was horrible. And I left. That was the good part. But then the old messages started playing in my head. A good wife wouldn’t leave her husband in the ER, wouldn’t do this. A good wife wouldn’t do that. Instead of trying to fight those untrue messages, I went back. At this point, I didn’t have emotional safety examples to help me understand what was happening.
That was a very unpleasant night. That took me months to be able to talk about. But I learned from it. I learned that I could never reenter the room or the situation that was hurtful. That learning resulted in a later episode in an ICU room, and I left. After Jack passed away, I tried marriage again, and despite all that I had learned, his facade fooled me.
Anne: Yeah, he lied to you on purpose. He didn’t fool you, he lied.
Roxanna: Yeah.
Anne: How did you feel when you met him? I wanna bring this up, because you’re not doing anything wrong. You’re very healthy at this point. You’ve really focused on making sure that you’re making good choices, which you’ve been doing all along.
I recently did an episode about how Jesus was betrayed. He was perfect. And Judas still lied. In that episode, I talk about how Judas betrayed him long before the last supper. When he is like, whoever takes the bread will betray him because Judas had gone out and arranged it prior to this.
I HAD THE RIGHT TO JUDGE HIS BEHAVIOR
Anne: So you could have been absolutely perfect, and he would’ve lied to you, and still you wouldn’t have known. So that’s why I’m like, tell me about what you’re feeling in real time. Like you meet him, and he seems probably really great, because I’m guessing you don’t wanna go through what you’ve just been through.
Roxanna: Well, the interesting part is I knew that he had struggled with alcohol. But he told me he was clean. Because of my background, we talked extensively about what he wanted in his life. What I learned is that I had the right to judge people on what they had done.
Anne: Right.
Roxanna: Not what they said.
Anne: Well, how old is this guy?
Roxanna: He was 56.
Anne: So if he wanted what he said he wanted, he would be that person already.
Roxanna: I learned that.
Anne: So he is just lying. My ex, I talked to him extensively about exploitative materials use. ‘Cause I did not wanna marry a user. He told me to my face, “I don’t use it.”
And he still did. We choose our character one choice at a time. So at 56 with this guy. If he wanted the things he was lying to you about, he would’ve been that person. But he wasn’t that person. But he knew you wanted that. You didn’t have emotional safety examples.
LYING IS CONTROL: EMOTIONAL SAFETY EXAMPLES
Roxanna: Absolutely, a healthy marriage cannot be built by one person. It takes the foundation of honesty. Marriage therapy often does not work, because a lot of times therapists don’t even see the lie.
Anne: Right, or they don’t view lies as domestic abuse. And couple therapy or any type of couple work is never, ever ethically indicated if there’s abuse. So if they’re like, “Oh yeah, we’ll help him with his lying.” I’m like, well, that is abuse. So that should never happen.
But they don’t view it as emotional manipulation and psychological abuse a lot of the time, which I disagree with. The definitions from mainstream domestic abuse educators would include lying as domestic abuse. So they just haven’t been trained in abuse. There’s this huge problem with this gap between what the behaviors actually are and how they’re literally defined, how they’re viewing them, which is a problem that I’m always combating.
Roxanna: Yes, I bet you are, because in my mind, lying comes from not seeing the other person as a real person with wants and needs of their own.
Anne: Well, and at the heart of abuse, because lying is control. You’re controlling that person through withholding certain information from them that they have a right to know. So it’s a serious coercive control issue. It’s not like I was ashamed or something. It doesn’t matter if you were ashamed or not. It meets the legal definition of coercive control.
I WANTED HUMAN CONNECTION, NOT A “TRANSACTIONSHIP”
Roxanna: Right, and marriages cannot last in a healthy way with deceit. And that’s one thing that this process of growth learning emotional safety examples has helped me identify, is what I want.
Anne: Yeah.
Roxanna: I wanted human connection. And when you are lying or when you see the other person as just a means to your end, there is no human connection. I think it was Teddy Roosevelt who said the man in the arena who comes out and he’s bloody from trying, he doesn’t have any armor on. He doesn’t have any deceit in him. He comes out and wants to try honestly. And what is required, and what these men typically do not understand.
Is that we’re asking for the human connection. We ask others to see us as another human being, and they want to treat us as something that meets their needs.
Anne: Yeah, that’s essentially the definition of abuse, is that you view the other person as someone who you exploit for your own gain. But they’re not an equal to you. I remember something you said way, way back in the day.
This was when you were still married to Jack. You said to him, I’m someone who buys the groceries, takes care of the kids, and gives him it, but that’s about it. I’m not a person to him. And that stuck with me. ‘Cause many views I have now evolved, obviously over the years, because I’ve talked to so many women and become so educated about abuse and the long term affects.
I didn’t have the two things put together. I thought I knew about abuse, but I really didn’t understand it back then. And that is the heart of it.
WHAT HIS PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR MEAN
Anne: Whether he has an addiction and what he’s doing about that, it’s always abuse to us as the victim of that. With the most recent husband, how did you find out? The difference between what he said and what he did is that what you started to observe? Or did you have a D-Day with the new husband?
Roxanna: That’s a really good question. They were in little snippets. So about a month after we married, the behaviors began. The objectifying, the using, the shutting me out and off started almost immediately. We took a vacation with my family. In very separateness from associating with my family, he started penalizing me for asking questions. And that’s when I knew I was in real trouble. The drinking and substance abuse started later. So, from there. I went back to getting support. He remained angry.
He was always defensive. So I filed for divorce, it was a heartbreak. They always are. You’re always losing hopes and dreams, and you have to grieve it. At the same time, it had begun to affect my health. And I knew it would destroy me if I didn’t keep myself in a safe place.
Anne: Yeah, here at BTR, everything’s founded on the strategies in the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop. And it’s the same thing you’re talking about. If she wants safety, and help with emotional safety examples, She’s going to need to learn some skills. But there’s nothing wrong with her character.
THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU, YOU JUST DIDN’T HAVE THE RIGHT INFORMATION
Anne: If you put our program next to 12-Step. There are no character defects. You’ve always been trying to get help. You’ve always been trying to do the right thing. But you just didn’t have the right information. You didn’t realize what you were dealing with. Once you realize what’s happening, he’s lied to you and he’s manipulative. You can create some space, either just in your mind or physical space, whatever kind of space you need to observe. And that’s what you’ve been talking about.
Just observe, see if their actions match their words. As you observe, some of them might start making good choices, observing whether that’s grooming, like what you experienced with your second marriage.
‘Cause he was grooming you and lying to you from the beginning. So it wasn’t like he switched, he was the same person. He just switched tactics. He went from grooming to being mean to you. You know, I’m being angry. They’re both two sides of the control coin of trying to manipulate you to do what he wanted. Then over time, if he escalates, you can increase your boundaries. You learn by seeing practical emotional safety examples.
Or you can pull back on your boundaries a little bit and be like, okay, he’s safe. So that process of trying to figure out am I safe? Am I not safe? This feels safe. He feels safe, but then realizing, oh, that’s what he does when he grooms me. Okay, nevermind. That wasn’t actual safety, because there’s no way to circumvent the process of figuring them out, because there’s no human way on the face of the earth to be like a lie detector.
Roxanna: Right.
RELEARNING WHAT TO DO
Anne: So the only way to determine whether they’re telling the truth is to observe over time. There’s no way to shortcut that.
Roxanna: A lot of my journey is because I lived in some sort of dysfunctional relationship for the better part of 46 years, before I started recognizing what I had lived in. And so I wasn’t ever the problem. You say that so beautifully, and that’s so freeing. I was doing the dance of what did I do wrong, because that was what I was taught. Through years and years of this. A counselor stopped me and said, “You could be the biggest bitch in the world, and Jack would still be responsible for keeping his vows.”
That was a turning point for me. The process that you do in your groups. I learned in various groups and situations. That living in these dysfunctional ways and relationships, I had acquired coping skills that were no longer serving me. They weren’t helping me be peaceful and happy in my own life.
So my journey is about relearning what I got to do in my life. In fact, I have a chapter in the book called The Things That Get to Change, and I see that as a happy process. Because no matter what they’re doing over there in their life. You get to bring positive behaviors and positive responses into your life, and you get to start showing how you wanna be and how you are. The beautiful person you are, you get to start showing up like that. I had become almost a little mouse. I was afraid of asserting too much or being strong or meeting my own needs.
Anne: Yeah.
EMOTIONAL SAFETY EXAMPLES: BECOMING STRONG AND BRAVE
Roxanna: I learned to meet my own needs. To say my truth and not cower when someone else responded with what I knew was a lie. I didn’t have to convince them that their’s was a lie.
Anne: Yeah, I love that. I liken it to a plane crash. Think about the movie Castaway, when he’s first on the island and struggling, and then it fast forwards and he is standing on that rock super strong, and he can catch the fish and do all the stuff. You’re not the pilot, you’re just on the plane. You didn’t do anything wrong. Then you wanna survive. You’re gonna try and make a fire a bunch of times and fail. But none of that is you doing anything wrong. Then you’re gonna learn these amazing skills.
Women who learn how to protect themselves and realize that that’s the journey they were always on, right? They were always doing the right thing, even if they couldn’t catch the fish in the beginning. Then there’s this montage of, and now Roxanna is here and she is strong, she’s brave, and she’s always been strong and brave because she faced all these things head on, and this is who she is now. Who is this even stronger braver woman who came out of it? So it’s really cool.
I love that part of it, that women share over and over again, that the process of realizing someone was harming them and learning how to protect themselves. Instead of saying, would a good wife do this? Asking what would a brave woman do?
Roxanna: Right. I learned to ask myself, what’s the next right decision?
EMOTONAL SAFETY EXAMPLES: SEEING THE TRUTH
Roxanna: And that’s something that I use to this day with relationships with my children, with my grandchildren. You are absolutely right. This process enriches our lives. I tell people that I believe God is making an army of strong women who know what the truth is. Who know how to live happy lives, and who can teach our children what the truth is. And to protect a child from inappropriate media.
Anne: Yeah.
Roxanna: Our culture desperately needs that. It really is.
Anne: Yeah, I feel the same way. See the truth, and then protect themselves and others from the lies through their actions. Communication is never the solution to domestic abuse. When someone’s lying, communication isn’t the solution, because that’s how they lie. Knowing how to navigate a situation where words, to the person who’s hurting you, mean nothing. And knowing how to figure out what’s going on. It’s hard for everybody.
Roxanna: It is, and I think that’s what I learned in this last marriage. We have to make judgments, keep ourselves safe. And judgments are not the same necessarily as condemning. But I get to make judgments based on what a person has done.
Anne: Yes
Roxanna: Not on what they say they’re going to do. It’s freeing to learn.
Anne: You are so incredible. The process of writing, ‘because I’ve been writing my own book, it’s not just an end result, like writing in and of itself is the process of learning. That’s so exciting that you took the time to do that. ‘Cause that is a huge accomplishment. So way to go.
BUYING A MOTORCYCLE
Roxanna: It was a labor of love. Jack is deceased and I wanted to say this has happened to me and I’ve grown from it and I understand it. And I have overcome the terrible lies it said to me about myself.
Anne: From knowing you in person way back in the day, I appreciated you so much. What you were going through was very heavy, but there was this super fun, awesome person who was trying to claw her way out of the darkness. You knew that life didn’t have to be this miserable, and you wanted to create that life that you wanted, and that was really impactful to me at the time. And I thank you.
Roxanna: During that process is when I, bought my motorcycle, Anne. And I would suggest a passionate hobby like that to any woman going through this. I still love to ride. I wanna say I felt the same about you. There was a connection, and it is so fun to reconnect after all these years and look at all you’ve done.
Anne: That’s the crazy part. When you knew me, and maybe for our listeners who have listened, if you wouldn’t mind sharing. You knew me before I was podcasting, when I was in 12-Step and in absolute shock about what had happened.
Roxanna: What I remember is that I was drawn to you because your personality and your demeanor were still dynamic. You were full of life, but you had so many questions and concerns about what you were learning, the road ahead of you, and what you could feel as deceit in your own situation. What I see now is that you remain true to acknowledging what you felt and moved forward.
ON A JOURNEY TO BUILD WHAT I NEEDED
Roxanna: You got those questions answered. And to me, that is the impetus of change and recovery. Because I remember looking at a young woman one time that came through the doors, and she was like, “I’m fine.” And six months later, she said, “I’m angry”. I remember saying to her. Good, now we can get somewhere.
Anne: Yeah.
Roxanna: And so I just look at you as you came into those meetings, aware that you were on a journey.
Anne: Yeah.
Roxanna: And you were searching. That is a beautiful place to start.
Anne: Yeah.
Roxanna: What is a really tough journey.
Anne: We do things in a specific way here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery, because of what I went through and all the obstacles I faced along the way. And all the stuff that people said did not sit right with me over the years. So I built BTR, the ideal thing I needed. This is what it would’ve been.
But I wanna say it doesn’t matter what someone uses, I mean uses. I’m using that word specifically on purpose. Whatever a woman uses to realize how amazing she is. That she’s always been trying to do the right thing. That she’s always been working hard and capable, and that there’s nothing inherently wrong with her. She’s just fine. If the thing she’s doing is getting her where she wants to go, then great.
WE BECOME A DIFFERENT PERSON: EMOTIONAL SAFETY EXAMPLES
Anne: Because different things speak to different people, and it’s important to acknowledge there’s been some of the best books that I’ve read that I now look back and think. I don’t agree with that, but it was super helpful for me in the moment.
Roxanna: At that point.
Anne: And it helped me along my journey.
Roxanna: Right, because we become a different person almost incrementally. I love that you’re saying this, because you’re basically giving you the milestones of my path, so you can pull apart the pieces that might help you on yours.
Anne: Yeah, and many women who come here are like, wow, this is what I needed. Because I’m so careful about, we’re not gonna say this thing that was said or this thing. But at the same time, they make it here, and they’ve all used different things along the way. Or when they come here, maybe it doesn’t work for them, and maybe something else is gonna work. Maybe hearing emotional safety examples from others. So whatever works.
Because like you said, all I care about is that we become collectively an army of really healthy women. Who can through our boundaries in marriage and our actions, literally stop abuse.
Not that the abusers are stopping. They could be doing it all they want, but it cannot reach us because we are so strong and so united.
Roxanna: And we have detached ourselves from places that they can hurt us.
SEPARATING FROM PLACES THEY CAN HURT US
Anne: Exactly, we’ve created space, mentally, physically, whatever it is. Where they are trying to hurt us, but they cannot. Healthy people, living healthy lives.
Roxanna: Yeah, that’s beautiful because we’ve all got to learn to separate ourselves from that.
Anne: Well, Roxanna, thank you so much for coming on to share your story. It’s so great catching up with you again.
Roxanna: Anne, thank you so much for this opportunity. It was beautiful to reconnect, what a privilege.
It seems so unnatural to run to safety and then deal with the relationship – but it makes total sense. I feel like young girls need to learn more about how self care isn’t selfish but necessary! Especially in an abusive relationship. Loved this article!
For a long time I didn’t have any boundaries, and then I created artificial boundaries which I couldn’t enforce. Only now am I becoming a person of boundaries and it’s because of my desire for and belief in my right to safety. Thank you for this information!
My husband has been lying frequently to me about his tobacco addiction (He started smoking regularly 5 years ago, before that it was dipping). I’ve told him that the issue isn’t that he smokes, it is that he smokes and lies to me about it. He will say (un-coerced by me), “I’m quitting cold turkey.” And then I’ll find a pack of cigarettes hiding in his closet or in the garage, etc. When I ask him about it, he’ll deny it until I show him the cigarettes that I found. Then and only then will he confess. This has been going on for close to a year. But it has been a pattern in his life for as long as I’ve known him, the lying. Unless I catch him “red-handed”, he won’t confess and repent. In the past it’s been online infidelity as well. I had proof of website history, but he would blame it on the kids or offer up some other excuse. For most of our marriage, he password protected his computer. phone, and email accounts, and when I asked him for his passwords, he’d tell me “It’s none of my business”, or “It’s my work phone and it’s against company policy.” Because I need emotional safety, I’ve recently have I put my foot down and made him write down all his passwords (after like, 20 years of marriage). I’m pretty sure he has kicked his bad online habits, but his continued lies about other things make me unsure what I can and what I can’t believe. After writing all this out, I’m thinking I sound pretty naive, don’t I? But I have NO ONE to talk to. I don’t have family, and his family is my only family. We are all professing Christians, and he is a leader in the church and in the workplace, so I’m pretty sure everyone will downplay my concerns. I’ve started to talk to a Christian therapist, hoping that I can resolve some of my anxiety and give me the tools to work this out. (I’m writing this hoping someone will just hear me–he lied again to me today (multiple times) until I confronted him with the evidence, so I guess that is why I’m on your website trying to process the pain here.)
Have you considered joining Betrayal Trauma Group an online support group for women who are being lied to by men?
I’m so sorry for your pain. I experienced similar things in my marriage. The scary thing is I saw counselors on and off for 16 years and most of them minimized or justified his actions. So few counselors that I have seen really recognize this type of behavior as abuse and to me recognizing it as abuse was a game changer. I recommend getting the book “Why Does He Do That?”. I needed the book in my first year of marriage because it identified and put language to what was going on in my marriage. I couldn’t even do that, but the writer has worked with over 2k abusive men (if I’m remembering correctly), so he has systematically identified the types of behaviors that are consistent in abusive men.
Yes, we love that book! You can find that book and others we recommend for victims of emotional and psychological abuse on btr.org/books