Is crying yourself to sleep almost every night normal? Is marriage meant to be hard?

We’ll get to the answer. And in the meantime, consider that you may be experiencing emotional abuse. To find out, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

The Myth That Marriage Is Meant To Be Hard Enables Abuse

The old “marriage is hard” trope enables abusers. When clergy, family, therapists, and others advise women struggling in abusive situations, they answer the question, “Is marriage meant to be hard?”” By saying that all marriages are difficult, all men demand sex, and all women are enduring some level of misery. Victims may feel they aren’t justified to seek safety.

The truth? Healthy marriages are a safe space from the pain, fatigue, and trauma of life. Healthy marriages do not cause pain, fatigue, and trauma.

So What’s “Normal” Marriage Meant To Be Like?

Many women fear that abuse has altered their perception of “normal” and “healthy.” Answering the question “Is marriage meant to be hard?” with a yes prevents them from recognizing a healthy relationship.

This list may help you if you are having trouble identifying abusive behaviors in your relationships:

• Gaslighting is abuse
• Yelling is abuse
• Punching walls, hitting objects, and slamming doors is abuse
• Hurting or threatening pets is abuse
• Coercing you into sex is abuse
• Having sex with you when you’re sleeping, using painkillers, or feeling sick is abuse
• Giving you an STD is abuse
• Humiliating you is abuse
• Having sex with you without your informed consent (including about his pornography use or other sexual behaviors) is abuse
• Shaming you by using scriptures, talks, or other religious materials is abuse
• Lying to other people about you is abuse

This list is not exhaustive, but may help identify covert abuse in your relationship.

Is Your Marriage Harder Than It Should Be?

At Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we know that the first instinct women usually experience is a desire to point it out to the abuser, and try to elicit him to change. We also know that this doesn’t work and puts the victim in more danger – emotionally, sexually, and physically.

We’re here for you. The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions are specifically created for women who need a safe space to process trauma, ask questions, and find a community of women in similar situations. You’re not alone.

Transcript: Is Marriage Meant To Be Hard?

Anne: I have a member of our community, Elizabeth, on today’s episode. She’s a wife and mom, and survivor of a 14 year abusive marriage. She’s a writer working in the advertising industry. Outside of her career, Elizabeth works as a grant writer for Human Trafficking Restoration House, and as a leader for her church youth group. She enjoys working out, being outside, and caring for her energetic German shepherd.

Welcome Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Anne, thank you so much for having me.

Anne: Elizabeth talked about how this is an opportunity to process her experience in story form. Before we started recording. I’m excited to be part of that process with her, and hopefully this will be a good experience as she shares. Is this one of the first times you’ve publicly shared your story, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth: Yes. It’s the first time. There are very few people in my life with whom I’ve shared the full experience.

Anne: Let’s start at the very beginning.

Elizabeth: My parents were part of an arranged marriage through the Unification Church cult. They married in Madison Square Garden with a bunch of other people. They had five kids. I’m the second oldest. I have two brothers and two sisters. Growing up, it was just a lot of chaos. I didn’t know, is marriage meant to be hard? My parents were not in a good space emotionally or mentally. They both had rough upbringings.

Struggles With Mental & Physical Abuse

Elizabeth: My mom was overtly mentally ill and also had a lot of physical problems. Is marriage meant to be hard? Mom’s illness caused many conversations about, “what’s Mom’s mood today?” We always watched what she was feeling, because if things were not going well for her, that meant bad things for us. There was a lot of mental and physical abuse in that situation. Our parents left us alone a lot. We banded together and worked together to survive.

My dad worked on Capitol Hill in the eighties. He would commute into Washington, DC and leave us out in West Virginia in the panhandle country, in the side of a mountain with my mom who was homeschooling us. So we didn’t have much contact with the outside world, other than play groups sometimes. I always had this sense that there were these other families that were normal. I looked at other families. It always seemed like we were so different.

Their mom seemed to care for their kids and would actually do things for their kids, but we were always doing things for ourselves. We would go to a play group, and my older sister and I would pack the lunches, just simple things like that. My job was to serve my mom coffee in bed.

Thankfully, there wasn’t much involvement with the Unification Church. When we lived in West Virginia, we went to an evangelical church, and that was a refuge for me. I remember going to church camp, and I had become a believer at a church event at age seven. I’m Christian and want to follow God.. It always seemed like I was somehow doing something wrong. I felt confused. I could never, ever get my mom’s approval.

Moving To The Midwest & Parental Separation

Elizabeth: There was a lot of pain, chaos, and confusion. Is marriage meant to be hard? Theirs was. My dad is from the Midwest. Around age 10, we moved to the Midwest, his family was still there, and that was the start of things going downhill. Shortly after we moved out there, my parents separated and my dad left. So that meant we had no buffer between ourselves and our mom. My mom would keep my older sister and I up late and accuse us of awful things.

She would make us feel like we were to blame because our dad had left. There was just constant chaos. She would physically abuse us. I remember washing the dishes one day. She came up behind me and smacked me across the head. Because I wasn’t doing it right. That was a big theme. I could never do things exactly the way she wanted them, but she had never taught me how.

There was a lot of shame in that I couldn’t ever figure out what my mom wanted. She cut our hair as a punishment one day. One night when we were staying up late, she was really angry at us. She started sawing at her wrists, and that actually happened twice where she tried to commit suicide in front of us. We attended church and participated with the youth group there.

My youth pastor one day talked to my dad. We still contacted him. But obviously didn’t live with him. The pastor said, you need to get custody of those kids. My older sister basically shared what was going on. My mom had basically torn a nightgown off of her body. So there was evidence of what had happened.

Is Marriage Meant To Be Hard: Custody Battle & Living With Dad

Elizabeth: So my dad got custody of us, and we moved in with him, and I was about 11 or 12. So that was something.

Anne: Did he get custody relatively easily?

Elizabeth: There was a court hearing, and my mom basically was not in a good mental space to fight for us. I don’t remember this well, but my dad says even her attorney said she’d probably go with her dad. I remember my older sister and I were in the judge’s chambers. He told us to go over to the window and wave at our parents.

And I didn’t understand why at the time. But I think he was looking at our body language when we were doing that. So I guess that had something to do with it.

Anne: Custody by waving. Sorry, I’ve never heard of that before.

Elizabeth: I know. Looking back now as an adult, I’m sure there were other things that were going on as far as evidence. But I don’t remember it. My Mom homeschooled us. It wasn’t well done, because there was so much chaos. My mom caused a lot of trauma when she homeschooled us.

I remember trying to learn to read the word turtle, and I could not figure it out. She started physically assaulting me, because I couldn’t read this word. Is marriage meant to be hard? It certainly was with my Mom. Another time, I learned fractions, and filled out a pie chart in crayon, but I was writing on a surface that was kind of bumpy. So the other parts I had written in pencil also looked like they were in crayon, because it was bumpy.

Transition To Public School

Elizabeth: She was mad at me because I had written the whole thing in crayon, so she basically screamed at me and made me go back. So I kind of scratched the crayon off of my pie chart. But when I took it back to her, she said, oh, that was actually okay. I did the rest in crayon. I said, no, it was in pencil, and looks textured or whatever. And she blew it off and didn’t apologize. I felt that I had actually been right all along, but it didn’t matter.

So, I attended middle school the last quarter of seventh grade. I lived with my dad, and always wanted to go to public school. It felt cool. I realize now how traumatic that was. Because I had never been around kids like that. They knew all these funny sayings and words that I didn’t know. They said I was slow, because I just didn’t understand what they were saying. It was like they were speaking a different language.

I remember at that time this growing need for acceptance. But simultaneously, feeling a lot of shame and rejection. I felt different again than everyone else, and everyone else seemed to have their lives together. Meanwhile, I lived with my dad in this very small house, with my four brothers and sisters going through puberty simultaneously, without any support. My dad seemed overwhelmed with his own problems.

High school is a little better. I played soccer and wrote for the newspaper. Looking back, I had friends that were not healthy, they would make fun of me, but I was always trying to win their approval. It seemed like people thought marriage was supposed to be that hard.

Meeting Her Future Husband

Elizabeth: I had this sort of mentality that my childhood wasn’t that bad. Obviously, I was fine. It was a long time ago. I’d moved on and tried to do my best, and obviously was okay. So all through high school, I wanted a boyfriend that seemed like the ultimate symbol of acceptance. And unfortunately, I was awkward and out there, and it didn’t seem like there was a lot of interest from other people in me that way. So I would say I was definitely desperate for attention.

I graduated high school, and I was going to go to journalism school and be a writer. The summer after my graduation, I met a boy I’d known in the past through church. He was a friend of a friend who would sometimes come to church. He was different and sort of grown up, and we started hanging out. And a month later, we were dating. I finally had a boyfriend, someone who actually liked me. And to make things even better, his family was still together.

His parents were together. Is marriage meant to be hard? It seemed like theirs wasn’t. His Mom worked at a church. She spent time involved in their lives. So I would come home from college and stay with them over the weekend, and she would do my laundry. I had been doing my own laundry since I was 13.

When I lived with my mom, she threatened not to let me use the washing machine and hang my clothes outside. The fact that his mom helped was something spectacular for me. You know, talk about red flags.

Is Marriage Meant To Be Hard: Early Relationship Dynamics

Elizabeth: The first time I met his mom, she was in his room changing his sheets. He was 17. We all went downstairs and there were a bunch of us friends, and he was like snapping at her to get out of his room. And I felt impressed. Or like, you know, I didn’t think you should talk to your parents like that. But I felt impressed that he could do that. And she accepted that without causing a huge blow up.

Because I definitely could never have that attitude with my mom. Unless I wanted a smack in the face.

Anne: So, to you, did it signal a good relationship, kind of? That this was an answer to: is marriage meant to be hard?

Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah.

Anne: Due to your experience.

Elizabeth: Yes, that seemed like something accepting. Like they could actually, I don’t know, go back and forth instead of escalating into this awful scene. So yeah, you’re right. For all I knew, it was a healthy way of interacting. I was a freshman. He was in the delayed entry program to join the Army. And we grew really close, really fast.

And unfortunately, intimacy escalated, that was way too premature. Here I am a Christian having sex with my boyfriend, feeling wrought with guilt because I knew better. And I wanted to do what God asked me. But I also felt like it happened, so now I can’t stop, and that was also the message I was getting from him. We started, and basically married now, so we can’t stop.

Anne: So this is what he told you.

Elizabeth: Right.

Anne: You didn’t know at the time it was coercion.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Coercion & Manipulation

Anne: For victims of coercion, you think you’re consenting, that was the purpose of the manipulation.

Elizabeth: That’s an example of it not exactly sounding right, but entering into his world and his logic. Which would end up being a long-term problem. Like, we lived in our own world. People just didn’t understand us. He always had an explanation for why he did things or why we should do certain things. That sort of made sense. And I wanted him to like me. And I liked him. I was again desperate. Is marriage meant to be hard? I didn’t know.

So all those combined contributed to basically me putting aside whatever reservations I had. And going along with what he wanted, because another underlying issue here was a lack of close support. So my dad at this time had remarried, and I obviously had three younger siblings, and they were still living at home. There was just this sense that. I bothered them because they remarried. They were dealing with my younger siblings, they didn’t want to take care of me.

They didn’t have the capacity to offer that kind of support. I wanted to get out of the way. So I would come home and stay with my boyfriend’s family. And maybe go over there, but they didn’t seem interested in my life. In the meantime, I was getting very much ingrained with his family. I remember one time saying, I’m not okay with us being intimate anymore. I want to stop. And he basically said to me, show me in the Bible where it says that.

I wanted to flip through my Bible and find a verse, but I didn’t know where to look or how to interpret that. So I just didn’t know what to do.

I Didn’t Have The Ability To Say No

Elizabeth: And without someone saying, it’s okay if you want to stop. I just didn’t have the ability to say no.

Anne: What you didn’t have is understanding. You were gaslit by society, maybe by their church and your abuser. So when you’re in that fog of abuse, you don’t have the ability, but only because you don’t have the knowledge. Once you receive education about it. It’s like I can take a step toward that. But I just don’t want victims to blame themselves. It’s the opposite. It wasn’t your fault.

Elizabeth: I just didn’t know better.

Anne: Like, there’s nothing you could have done at the time, because you don’t know what you don’t know. When you don’t know what you don’t know, there’s no way to get out of that.

Elizabeth: Exactly. And when I finally did, and I don’t want to jump ahead, but when I finally did, I couldn’t go back.

Anne: Right, we’ll get to that soon.

Elizabeth: Yes, my freshman year was at a big university. I wasn’t involved, I would go to classes, but come back so I could talk to him. I felt obsessed with my boyfriend. Is marriage meant to be hard? I didn’t know. He would come down at every opportunity. And occasionally we would get into fights. Like one time he told his younger brother when I was at their house to come at me with his bath mat that the dog had peed on.

And I was so mad I took out my anger on his younger brother. Because I had a younger brother about that age. He was egging his brother on, and now I’m the one to blame.

Is Marriage Meant To Be Hard: Joining The Army & Marriage

Elizabeth: Because of how I reacted, which wasn’t good either. I was just really angry. His whole family got mad at me, and had crossed a line. I felt embarrassed and mortified, so I withdrew and didn’t take his calls. I was like, we’re done. And I remember feeling at that point like, okay, I’m going to break up with him.

Then, when he talked to me and somehow felt like I had no choice again, I had to stay with him. It was a lonely world out there, and I had become part of his family. If I wasn’t part of his family, I didn’t have anyone. His little brother did not apologize.

There were no apologies from his family or from him. It was just, let’s move on. So I forgave and forgot another theme that would emerge later on. Like I said, he was going to ship off to basic training. And I decided to join the army, and I was going to join the reserves. And we would go to basic training simultaneously, and everything would be great. Because once he’s in the army, I could transfer to a unit wherever he is.

And I could get my college paid for, which was a big deal. Because I had taken out loans to pay for my first year of school. So we talked about marriage, and it was always brewing in the background. I said in one of his arguments, he said we already married. Because we’d been having intimate. Is marriage meant to be hard? I still don’t know.

And so I was like, we might as well just formalize this. We decided to marry a couple of weeks before we would both leave for basic training. And we did.

Pregnancy & New Beginnings

Elizabeth: I remember meeting my dad at the back of the church and going down the aisle, and feeling this sense of dread, not knowing what I was getting into, but feeling like it was too late.

Here all these people were, and I must keep going. When I said my vows, I genuinely meant them. I wanted to take care of him. I wanted to be a family with him. And I always remembered that throughout our marriage. But, a couple of weeks later, I needed to set to ship out for boot camp. And, the military has learned the hard way to give female recruits a pregnancy test before they leave for basic training. I found out I was pregnant at the military processing station.

Anne: Oh, wow. How did you feel when that happened? Did you feel happy, excited, sad? Did you feel confused?

Elizabeth: I was in shock. And there was also a sense of guilt, because this is the natural result of doing what I had done the last eight months. So there’s a lot of shame. I don’t know when I’d actually got pregnant. It was before we married. But I didn’t know that when I married, all I knew was that I was not feeling well. Is marriage meant to be hard? It was so far.

I made it a point to pretend like got pregnant on our wedding night, because of the shame. Also from a church environment, knowing well that I was not fulfilling those expectations. So, basically, I lied for a while.

I Have The Baby & He’s Recuperating

Anne: I’m grateful that you’re sharing your story and how you felt. So many women have been coerced like this, and they haven’t understood they were being coerced. And then maybe they get pregnant. Then they feel like they have to marry, and they also want to marry, so there’s conflicting feelings.

Elizabeth: Exactly.

Anne: The end result is usually they can’t get help because they can’t tell other people what’s going on. Which is what your abuser wants. But you don’t know that at the time. You just think you’re protecting yourself from embarrassment. I think abusers know this and use it against you. It’s a way that they end up manipulating their victims. And that has happened to all of us.

Elizabeth: Yes, exactly. So they give you the option to nullify all your contracts with the military, or to stay in and go to training later. I decided to nullify everything and set my life on a new trajectory. He ended up shipping out exactly the same, went to training over that summer, and that fall I watched his graduation. We moved to a base, and our son was born two months after we moved there. So my son became the focus of my world.

During the early stages of the Iraq war, my husband deployed to Iraq a year after. I ended up moving back to where we came from. He ended up getting hurt, got a purple heart, and came home. So I took care of him. So is marriage meant to be hard? I thought so.

Is Marriage Meant To Be Hard: Career & Family Life

Anne: Is his injury like a long term type of injury that’s going to affect him the rest of his life?

Elizabeth: He had some bad burns that eventually healed, and a fractured hip, that I think still gives him problems. He was in a wheelchair for a while, but he recovered completely. You wouldn’t know to look at him that he went through that. I will say it became his identity. It became this persona that he took on that is very much honored by people around him. He used that against me later on. He eventually is discharged from the army, and we continued our life in our hometown.

Elizabeth: And I graduated before him and got a job. Our son was getting ready for kindergarten. I talked about maybe homeschooling him. He and his family looked down on my background, and homeschooling. They thought my background was crazy and ridiculous. And they didn’t want anything to do with it. So is marriage meant to be hard still? Yes.

There was a lot of mocking about it. Even though that was part of who I was, it wasn’t welcome in that space. I put our son in public school and went to work, and rose pretty quickly in my career to levels of influence in our state politics. I worked as a reporter, and then started working in communications. My company regarded me well and used my abilities. Many people saw it was very visible. It was very public roles in the legislature and in state government.

Professional Success & Personal Degradation

Elizabeth: There was always this disconnect. I had this important job, I’d go off in my fancy dress in the morning and work for people who had a lot of influence. But I came home, and he constantly degraded me and put me down. There’s a lot of mockery about who I was. I have this exuberant personality and sense of humor. But he always regarded me as not funny, and just sort of stupid and too much. He communicated it to me in very subtle ways.

In the meantime, I wanted to have a good marriage. And so I would read books about marriage, especially Christian books about marriage. I would put those things into practice because I’m extremely self aware, which I’m coming to understand is a trauma response. Just trying so hard to be the wife. I wanted him to recognize me, but it was never good enough. Is marriage meant to be hard? For me, it was.

One thing about him is that he’s a picky eater, and I love to cook and serve other people. So I would make these meals. He wanted steak or roast or something like that. And it was never quite good enough. He would put a bite in his mouth and taste it, and then say, oh, it’s okay. Maybe it could be different this time. This way next time.

Anne: Like, a condescending, nice try, honey, but…

Elizabeth: It wasn’t even that sweet. He would taste it, and you could just tell by his expression, that there was something that was coming up short. I would just feel sad, but I would resolve to try better next time. to keep working to improve myself, whether that was my physical appearance or my abilities, or working out.

Running & Seeking Validation

Elizabeth: I was a runner at the time. And I had entered a 5k race to support our son’s school. I ended up being first place for the women’s division. There weren’t many people in the race, but there was still something that I was excited about. Coming home and I had this medal. And he’s like, well, when you beat my army PT score, you’ll know you’ve done something. And I felt devastated, because I never could do anything that meant anything to him.

I never knew what was going on and why I could never make him happy. Because all the marriage books I read basically presented this formula. Like if you respect your husband enough, if you submit to him, if you do these things, he’s going to love you back. He’s going to do his part. And it never worked for me. It never worked for me. Is marriage meant to be hard? Yes, it was with him. Looking back now, I see how marriage books from a Christian perspective were wrong.

Coming from a place where if you do this, this is what’s going to happen. It always talked about that if you respect your husband, he’s going to love you in the way you need. So I focused on my part and had to make sure I did everything perfectly. I met his every need. I was always there for him whenever, however, and whatever he needed, which was a lot. If I read a book and he came into the room, my attention was on him, but it never worked. He would treat me with disdain.

Is Marriage Meant To Be Hard: Emotional Neglect & Stonewalling

Elizabeth: There were issues that would come up inevitably, we could never get them resolved. He would never take responsibility for himself. Is marriage meant to be hard? Yes, for me it was. There were occasions where I would elevate things like, okay, I know for certain that what he did or said was not okay. I just know it. I would have in my mind, like, I’m not going to let this go. I’m not going to just apologize. I would bring that to him and say, I’m not, you know.

Well, he would start stonewalling me. He ignored me for days until I finally relented and just apologized. Then I had to let go of whatever was actually going on with him and his behavior. I was always the problem. And I internalized that message. Many times I was just distraught that I was such a failure as a wife.

I felt discouraged. And that just left me vulnerable, because I was looking for affirmation all the time. Like, am I even acceptable? It got to the point where I didn’t even feel like I was a human. I felt like I was something different, and that was obviously what I struggled with throughout my life, just feeling like another. Feeling like somehow outside of mainstream society. This was along that same vein, like I was somehow worse or different, or my problems had no solution.

And he would talk about how he didn’t believe in feelings, like emotions are not logical. They serve no purpose. So how you feel doesn’t matter. I got that message a lot. If I said, hey, the way you did this hurt me in this way. He completely disregarded and mocked me.

Triangulation & Comparisons

Elizabeth: He would say I was so emotional, that it didn’t matter. I needed to be more like him, stoic, and such a leader and strong. I just needed to do what he said. There was also a lot of triangulation. He would point to other women and basically be a fan of them, especially about news reporters on the TV, local news reporters. He knew at one point that it was a dream of mine to be on a broadcast. Is marriage meant to be hard? It was heartbreaking for me.

I’d studied journalism in college, so he would be like a fan of these local reporters, and when they’d inevitably move on to another station, he would be like grieving. I was supposed to be like supportive or something. But obviously, it made me feel like I was lesser than and didn’t live up to that standard. Is marriage meant to be hard? Mine was hard.

Whenever there was a situation where I would share my view. Like for example, our son was playing basketball. There would be like these really tense situations in the car on the way home. Where my son hadn’t done something the right way in a game. I would be like, maybe next time you can try this. And he would say, no, don’t even do that. That’s dumb. So it was automatically wrong. And then he would basically restate what I had just said. It was almost like, it didn’t matter what I said.

Another example is in dining rooms, the chandelier is lower because it’s over the table. He had been hitting his head on the chandelier, and he just didn’t understand why. And I was like, we just need to move the table back.

Constant Undermining & Double Standards

Elizabeth: He automatically said, no, that’s not it. Then he paused for a minute. He was like, oh. That is one of the few times I remember that he actually realized. Maybe there is something to what she’s saying. Normally it was just, I’m wrong. What I said was stupid. I just needed to shut up. There were a lot of jokes about me, my physical appearance and my teeth. I didn’t like it. But I also wanted to look like someone with a sense of humor.

I was willing to go along with being self-deprecating, but it was really from a point of cruelty. It wasn’t affectionate. It was just putting me down. There were also many double standards. If something went wrong with our cell phones, like I accidentally dropped it and cracked the screen. That was a crisis. It was my fault. One time his phone fell out of his pocket, he stepped back, stepped on it and shattered the screen. He came home disappointed.

I was trying to be supportive. Then I realized that if I had done that, there would have been hell to pay. He would berate me for being so stupid. Of course, I wouldn’t treat him like that. I brought that up to him, trying to gently say, hey, what’s with this double standard? And this is an example of being in his world. He said, I’m already harsh enough on myself. I punish myself, but you need to be told that’s not okay by me, because you don’t think that way.

Anne: I need to teach you a lesson

Elizabeth: Exactly.

Anne: Yeah, the abuser way of thinking of it. Is marriage meant to be hard? It is with an abusive spouse.

Is Marriage Meant To Be Hard: Evangelical Views On Marriage & Intimacy

Elizabeth: Yeah, there was that double standard all the time. He would always have a convenient explanation for why it made sense. And eventually I knew there wasn’t anything I could do about it. It didn’t make sense to me all the time, but if I tried to challenge him, it would escalate into an argument. Then him stonewalling me and ignoring me for days until I finally relented.

Another angle of this, and it speaks to the evangelical world’s view on relationships between husband and wife. As we’ve established, I wanted to be a good wife. If I was not fulfilling his needs, I was falling short as a wife. I had this view that I had to meet his intimacy needs like every three days. He was on board with that. Looking back now, it was just very mechanical. He wouldn’t kiss me. There was a lack of intimacy.

Eventually, he coerced me into doing things that I didn’t want to do. But I felt stuck between this place where I have to meet his needs. And if I don’t, I’m not going to be the kind of wife I want to be. He was so persistent to make me do things I didn’t want to do that I eventually relented. It was very traumatic for me. Actually, towards the end, I started to say to myself, this can’t be right. Is marriage meant to be hard? I didn’t think it was supposed to be. didn’t know what to think.

Anne: Were you sharing it with anyone at the time?

Elizabeth: No.

Anne: Do you think that was part of why you didn’t know what to think? Because he had isolated you?

Isolation & Lack Of Support

Elizabeth: I would have never brought those things up to another person, because I didn’t want to dishonor him. And I felt like I would disrespect him or betray him if I brought those issues up. His needs and comfort, and everything was much more important than whatever I was experiencing. And looking back, I dealt with things alone, didn’t have support, accepted things for what they were, and didn’t know any different.

He definitely coerced me in that way and didn’t know what to do about it. Is marriage meant to be hard? It was for me. Yes, I felt isolated. We couldn’t make couple friends, because people didn’t want to be around him. He had the same friends since high school, and they were people willing to go along with what he wanted. Other people I tried to bring into our lives, whether from church or people I knew in high school, there was something wrong with them. I had very few friends.

I tried to get involved at our church, like a volunteer. Or do some sort of Bible study, but there was always some reason why I shouldn’t do that. If we would drop our son off on Wednesday nights, he would want to take me on a date. He would want to do something with me. And so I was like, if he’s initiating that, I’ve got to do that and not go to the adult Bible study.

What finally broke everything wide open, as I said, I had been involved in politics in our state and had a job. Through circumstances outside my control, that job ended after six months. Because of the way the political system works. I didn’t expect it. And he melted down.

Job Loss & Emotional Breakdown

Elizabeth: He could not handle the fact that I had lost my job and was going to be without work. We weren’t destitute by any means, but it was like such an injury to him that this had happened. What’s so interesting is that I’d always thought of him as this leader. You know, he’s got such a strong personality, and he has all these opinions and isn’t afraid to share them. And such a pronounced sense of right and wrong.

In a crisis, he wouldn’t function. Because he was so stressed out, or I don’t know, had anxiety or couldn’t control things. So that would all get taken out on me. That’s definitely what happened in this situation. I was the reason why this had gone badly. I could have done things differently. It was all my fault, of course. I was trying to tell him, let’s just trust God in this situation. I think things will work out.

People respect me. There are other opportunities out there, and let’s see what we can make happen. He just thought that was dumb. I remember wanting to pray with him about the situation. And he pulled his hands back from me and said, “No, I don’t do that”. It was a wake up call to me, because we’re supposed to be this Christian couple. Like what kind of Christian couple doesn’t pray together.

But again, I felt a sense of shame on me because I had failed somehow and somehow pushed my husband towards these actions. Is marriage meant to be hard? It was very hard.

Anne: Have you ever considered during that time, instead of him “losing it” that he saw this as an opportunity to assert more control and abuse you more because you were vulnerable?

Is Marriage Meant To Be Hard: Realization Of Abuse

Elizabeth: I haven’t considered that, no. Talk more about that.

Anne: So many people view abuse as like when they lost control. What we know is abuse is when they try to assert control. It doesn’t look like they’re having fun to us, because they look angry, bitter, and frustrated. But it’s an opportunity for him to truly, really abuse you because you’ve lost your job.

Elizabeth: Very possible.

Anne: It’s like kick them once they’re down. I’m not sure if that was the case in your situation, but I like to point that out. A healthy person would not take the opportunity to assert control and ensure there’s a power differential at a time like this. They would be trying to build up their partner or help them feel good about themselves. Is marriage meant to be hard? These are situations when abusers make it extra hard.

When you say at times of stress, he would fall apart. One thing I would like victims to consider is that during times of stress, they want to assert control. That’s when they want to dominate. That’s when they want to make you feel bad.

Elizabeth: From what you’re describing, yes, that was a pattern throughout our marriage. Where if there was a crisis, if there was something that went wrong, I would just want to deal with it with him and we can get through this together. This is just life, and he would use that to bark orders at me to make me feel awful for what happened. Yeah, like you’re saying to assert control. So I think you’re right.

Anne: For them, a crisis is an opportunity for abuse.

Elizabeth: Very interesting.

Realization The Extent Of The Abuse

Anne: It’s like a reason to abuse someone. Whereas if you hadn’t lost your job, it’s hard to go off on how bad of an employee you are.

Elizabeth: Yeah. All the things you did wrong. That’s absolutely right. So at this point, I worked with a coworker who got me this job, and felt really bad that this ended up happening. It was outside their control, and I didn’t know what to do. So I opened up like saying, this is what’s going on at home. I feel so bad. Can you help me get another job? And this person used that as an opening to say, actually, Elizabeth, I’ve been watching your marriage for a long time.

I’ve seen some things that I’m concerned about. And they sent me a few articles on abuse. At first, I was dismissive, because of what I’d been through with my mom. And I knew that was child abuse. There was a lot of physical violence in my childhood. That hadn’t actually happened in my marriage. So I was dismissive, having his mindset like, oh, emotions don’t matter. You just need to think about things logically.

Anne: Can we pause there for just a second?

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Anne: So I am like hyper-logical.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Anne: So in my marriage, I was logical about everything. And instead, I was accused of being a robot, not being feeling enough, and not being compassionate enough. Is marriage meant to be hard? With an abusive husband, it is. They’re always going to use your strengths against you, and they’re going to exploit your weaknesses.

Elizabeth: Yes, yes.

Anne: So I want to put this out to everyone, whatever it is, the thing they were telling you, imagine you were the opposite.

Logical vs. Emotional Manipulation

Anne: I assure you they would have acted the same way.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Anne: To ensure everybody knows that it wasn’t about you being a human. Good for you. I’m so glad you weren’t a robot. Congratulations. Okay, thank you.

Elizabeth: It turns out that God made us with all these different parts of ourselves that actually make up who we are. So our logic, our emotions, our physical bodies, our spiritual bodies are all integrated together. We can’t cut off one part. And say that’s what’s healthy. And that was such a revelation to me. Like, actually, no, it wouldn’t have been healthy to become a Vulcan. That was not okay.

Anne: Also, you sound super logical to me. I’m guessing from your job you had to be really logical.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Anne: Let’s pretend for two seconds that he would have engaged you in a logical debate, I’m guessing you would have won. And the reason he had to go silent was because he never could have beat you logically.

Elizabeth: I mean, yes.

Anne: Because he was being illogical.

Elizabeth: Yes, you’re right. Another point of hypocrisy there: he would get angry. And anger is an emotion.

Anne: Exactly.

Elizabeth: But he would act like that doesn’t count.

Anne: Yes.

Elizabeth: So it was okay for him to be angry, but when I cried tears of frustration because I was so desperate for him to understand me, I was being emotional, illogical. I started reading everything I could get my hands on about abuse. And light bulb after light bulb started going off. I started seeing the patterns. Gaslighting, shaming and criticizing were all there. Is marriage meant to be hard? No, but with an abuser it is.

Is Marriage Meant To Be Hard: Discovering Patterns Of Abuse

Elizabeth: I just felt sick because I thought I was getting away from that path by marrying into his family and having a family of my own. So I got another job, surprise, surprise. It was a better job and it was more money with good coworkers, and I was good at it. It was a spiritual moment for me. I read an abuse book, it said are you willing to surrender the outcome of your marriage to God and let things fall where they may by saying no to this?

I had been trying to control the outcome. And I was so stuck on, we don’t divorce. 14 years of, I can grit this out. I can make things work. It’s up to me to make this work. This realization that it was actually out of my hands, and a large part of it was his responsibility. And he was not taking responsibility at all. You know, we had this beautiful house that we’d purchased together. A dream house, and we’d only been there a few years.

And I realized what it meant to say. I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m not going to put up with this. Is marriage meant to be hard? No, it isn’t. I started saying no. I started calling him out on his behavior and saying, I don’t want you to say that about my teeth. It’s not okay for you to tell me that I’m wrong and dismiss me out of hand. I’m actually saying something that you need to hear. He immediately noticed that something was different. His mom noticed too.

What’s interesting is she had always been supportive of me. We were good friends. She knew her son had issues, and she knew that he didn’t treat me well.

Setting Boundaries & Seeking Separation

Elizabeth: And I was like, I’m not going to keep putting up with this. She understood at that point. Well, there were a few nights I had been firm on my boundaries. He called his mom crying. She came over and was basically like, you’ve got to do what he wants you to do. You need to stop this silliness about what you’re doing, because she’s been married 35 years and marriage is hard.

That marriage is hard line is such a lie. Is marriage meant to be hard? Marriage is actually not hard. Marriage shouldn’t be that hard. But we always act like, Oh, you’ve got to sacrifice. You’ve got to die, like if your marriage is killing you. I moved into the guest room and had very little contact with him. I realized I needed everything to come through writing with him. So he could text me or email me. I could not have a conversation with him in person.

Because he was so good at manipulating and getting me off track and pointing the blame back on me. I would just get so confused. Everything in writing was a big factor in getting clarity. Because I would go back and look at those texts and say, okay, this is what’s going on here. I can identify. He’s trying to make me feel guilty here. I spent a few months getting strong, educating myself about what was going on.

There was a point where I said, okay, nothing is changing. He has not done anything to indicate that he cares enough to change his behavior. He’s not showing any remorse, or if he says, sorry, there’s no marked change of behavior. So, I decided to separate out of home.

Separation & Legal Proceedings

Elizabeth: And I wanted him to move out, because his parents had an extra bedroom. So he could live with them. I went to my dad and his wife’s house. They lived an hour away at that point, and I called him and said, listen, we’re going to separate. I need you to go to your parents’ house. And that didn’t go over well. I knew it wouldn’t. Like he cannot be moved unless he’s physically forced out of place.

So I moved in with a friend I knew from Bible study. She opened up her home to me, and I lived there for six weeks. A week after I realized, there was absolutely no movement. I will file for divorce. I had been thinking about that as a possibility, but I wasn’t there yet. It was too overwhelming to comprehend. I was thinking about our son. Thinking about, what does our witness look like if I do this?

Anne: When you say, what does our witness look like? What do you mean by that?

Elizabeth: Just the way that we live our lives is a testimony to what we believe.

Anne: Okay.

Elizabeth: You know, that’s a big piece of evangelicalism, which is being a witness to the world and showing God’s love and redemption. And the idea that our marriage couldn’t be redeemed was hard for me to grasp. There are theological issues there, because some people believe God controls everything.

So God can break into his heart and say, you’ve been treating your wife really poorly. The Bible talks about this a lot. Is marriage meant to be hard? Not like this. What I learned is that he has a very hardened heart, it’s a choice that he makes.

Is Marriage Meant To Be Hard: Smear Campaign & Family Dynamics

Elizabeth: And if he were to soften his heart, I’ve been doing it wrong. I’m going to go the other way, and going to make amends. I’m going to do the work on myself, so God would redeem that. But since he is so convinced that he is right in everything and never takes responsibility for his behavior, God allows him to make that choice. He has the free will to make that choice.

And I had to come to that realization. Because we want to have this idea that butterflies and rainbows, and God will do all these things. But here’s the thing. We work in cooperation with God. He didn’t make us puppets. What it means to be a follower of Christ is that you surrender your life and say, God, my life is yours. You move that way every day. Well, if you say those words, but your heart is hardened, you’re not following Christ. Because your heart is not there.

He started a smear campaign while we were separated. My boss came into my office one day and said, Elizabeth, I’m hearing things, and I don’t know what to think. Tell me what’s going on. And I was so mortified. He worked in a similar way for the state, and had access to people who had access to my boss, and basically had set them on me, through my boss. Is marriage meant to be hard? Abusers make it hard.

And his mom was also on me, and his aunt, with whom I had been good friends, and who seemed supportive of me. They saw his behavior suddenly against me. So that was extremely painful. He was making all sorts of accusations about me about my motivations.

He Lied & Manipulated At Work & With Family

Elizabeth: He said we just had some communication problems, and here I was causing all these problems and saying all these things about him. I was devastated. I was obviously mortified that it had leaked into my work life, my career. It just was more evidence that there was no change and that he didn’t love me. He couldn’t love me. You don’t treat people you love like that. And that was a really hard realization. Is marriage meant to be hard? It’s difficult when the husband’s abusive.

We’d always made it a priority to say love you when we got off the phone. So realizing those are just words, then the way he behaved or even what he’s capable of, I don’t believe he’s capable of actually loving other people. Some really hard realizations during that time period. But, I ended up able to move back into our house after about six weeks of out of house separation. That was because a judge ordered him to move out for the remainder of our divorce proceedings.

We were able to work things out through a conciliator. Although I had to sit across the table from him and basically work things out with our son. I think many survivors do this, where they’ve had all these realizations, so they’re trying to get other people to understand and explain all these things. It’s like the meme with the guy and the threads, and they’re making all these connections.

And so I was trying to explain to this lawyer who’s supposed to be mediating for us. And she’s like, I don’t care. I’m just here to make sure everything goes well. So we ended up in a divorce agreement.

Finalizing The Divorce

Elizabeth: During this time, he realized he couldn’t control me anymore, so he discarded me because I wasn’t any use to him. Unfortunately, his family was still angry at me. I had deleted him off my Facebook, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to rid me of all his friends and family yet. And there was one post I made that said something, I can’t remember exactly, but they found it offensive and called me out.

His aunt said something about how I was driving around in my car, which had a Purple Heart license plate on it. He made me put it on because that was his identity. I was just trying to get credit or look good, because I hadn’t changed my license plate yet.

Anne: That you wanted people to think you were the Purple Heart?

Elizabeth: Mm hmm.

Anne: That’s hilarious. To put words in her mouth, and probably also, you were using him all along.

Elizabeth: Something like that?

Anne: Yeah, for your own aggrandizement.

Elizabeth: Yes, yeah, something like that.

Anne: Which is exactly what he was doing. That was just projection.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Anne: Whatever comes out of his mouth and accuses you of doing is what he is actually doing.

Elizabeth: Right, and I know for a fact that she did not come up with that on her own. She doesn’t even live in town. So she would have had no way to know what license plate I had on my car.

Anne: That’s straight out of his mouth for sure.

Elizabeth: Exactly, yeah.

Anne: And other women get accused of being gold diggers or wanting the image like, I’m an attorney. She wanted to marry an attorney.

Elizabeth: Yes, exactly. I finalized the divorce.

Is Marriage Meant To Be Hard: Post-Divorce Reflections

Elizabeth: I tried to move on. Finding myself picking up the pieces, and honestly, it almost started to begin to feel inevitable. Having grown up with such a traumatic experience and dysfunction, never having people say, hey, that wasn’t right directly to my face. I felt bound and destined to repeat that sort of situation. Is marriage meant to be hard? It seems like it was meant to be hard for me.

Anne: You’re thinking this to yourself?

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Anne: I don’t think this is true, by the way. People tell this to survivors all the time, the victim blaming, and it’s just luck of the draw, who people marry. Because some women might be “attracted to that behavior”, but then their husband ends up being amazing, you know,

Elizabeth: Absolutely.

Anne: Maybe you don’t agree with me, but none of this was your fault. We don’t deserve to be abused, even if we’re broken. But anyway, you’re here at this point in your life where you’re thinking this is inevitable due to your injuries.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Maybe part of that sort of thinking is evidence that it’s hard to think about so many things outside your control.

Anne: Yeah.

Elizabeth: You know, you want to think through your life. You’re making these conscious, good decisions, and they’re not because of patterns from your past. But I think in my case, I was going down this stream and not being aware of my own agency, my own sense of self, and my own ability to shape my own world. So, I am definitely still healing. I’m trying to do better about owning my story. Thank you for giving me the chance to do that.

Healing & Self-Realization

Elizabeth: Like I said, there are not many people who know this about me. There are many themes that I’m trying to deal with around shame, rejection, and abandonment that are painful. At the same time, and I think this is probably my personality, I can see the gifts given to me because of my experiences. And not to say they were good, but they’ve shaped my understanding of other people well and shape my ability to deal with grief.

To deal with hard situations, and sit with people in grief and hard situations, and just be with them. And I’m grateful for that. Now I remarried a wonderful person. He is very steady. He’s respectful, extremely smart, loves me, and values who I am. That is something to get used to, I’ve had to get used to that. Because I still want to earn his love.

Those two things don’t work together. Earning and love, they don’t work together. And I think that’s something I’m going to be working through for the rest of my life. But, I’m definitely on that path.

Anne: So is marriage meant to be hard? When you said marriage doesn’t have to be hard work. You spoke from experience, because your current marriage doesn’t feel like hard work.

Elizabeth: It doesn’t. And maybe that’s a testament to how hard I worked before. So this seems really easy in comparison. It’s easy for me to think about things from his perspective. Not to say that we don’t have scuffles and things that we work through, but comparatively it’s a breeze.

Hope & Faith For The Future

Anne: If there was anything I could just like pour into our listeners, it would be hope. Hope that you can have a peaceful life, heal, and faith that any action you take towards safety will fruit something. Because so many victims think, well, I could try, but it wouldn’t do any good. And sometimes it doesn’t, right? Sometimes you try to have that conversation, and it doesn’t do any good.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about lately is there’s a scripture that says, God does not give his children a rock when they ask for a fish. He gives them a fish. Abuse victims think I’m praying and getting rocks, and God’s never gonna give me a fish. I’m just getting rocks. I think the reason that happens is they don’t realize there is an abuser between them and God’s blessings, who literally swats the blessings away. The fish are coming our way, but he is there like, nope.

You can’t get them, feel God’s love or people’s appreciation. You feel isolated, and they’re swatting it away. God wants to give us the fish. We can’t get the fish, we have an evil or wicked block in our life keeping it away. Having faith that every step taken towards safety will fruit something.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Anne: God wants to give you a fish. You found a relationship where you feel loved. I’m so thankful and grateful for you. And you feel God’s blessings.

Elizabeth: It’s amazing.

Anne: You’re starting to feel the fruits of your own righteousness. If you really submerge in scripture, even if you do your best to be righteous. You can’t feel the fruits of it when you marry a wicked man. Is marriage meant to be hard? Being married to an abuser is hard.

Is Marriage Meant To Be Hard: Overcoming Wickedness & Finding Solid Ground

Elizabeth: Yes, and coming to terms with the idea that wickedness was close to you all this time. And affected you so deeply is really hard. There’s a lot of grief there, because you thought he was something and he’s actually something else. It’s like the ground is disappearing from under your feet, and you have to learn how to stand up again and realize that’s okay. Like those experiences are what they are, but there’s also solid ground out there.

Anne: Processing our stories is part of that. Is marriage meant to be hard? No, it shouldn’t be. As you’ve shared your story. The one thing I hear is strength and an awesome sense of responsibility for yourself and your own life. That’s one thing that I find awe inspiring about survivors. Even though we are victims of other people’s atrocious behavior. We still maintain the sense of responsibility for ourselves and our lives. And that is what helps us get to safety.

And that is what will help us live a life of peace. I think it’s remarkable that almost all victims maintain the sense of responsibility, even when acknowledging they were a victim. And I think that’s cool. I hear that in your voice. I hear this strength and that you acknowledge your injuries and are working to heal them from a place of humility. That is so inspiring. So thank you so much for sharing.