Learning how to set boundaries in an emotionally abusive relationship may seem confusing and overwhelming.

Elsa, a member of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery community, shares how she learned how to set boundaries with her emotionally abusive husband.

To discover if you’re emotionally abused, take this free emotional abuse quiz.

Setting Boundaries With Your Emotionally Abusive Husband Will Establish Greater Safety

Have you ever tried to set boundaries expecting more safety and security, only to feel more exposed to harm than ever? That’s because traditional boundary-setting models simply don’t work in abuse scenarios. Learn how to set boundaries effectively by enrolling in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop.

Relationship “professionals” often tout telling the abuser what you need to feel safe. They say it is a solution to emotional abuse, when in reality, they usually keep victims exposed to harmful situations.

We created the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Boundaries Model because we want victims to experience greater emotional and psychological safety.

Effective Boundaries in an Emotionally Abusive Relationship are:

• Courageous actions that evolve to fit the needs of the victim
• Often unspoken
• Essential to emotional and psychological safety

Boundaries are NOT:

• If-then statements given to the abuser verbally or in writing
• A statement of ones values, or of what a person hopes for or needs
• An expected behavior with an attached consequence or threat.

How To Set Boundaries in My Emotionally Abusive Relationship?

Establishing effective safety boundaries is new territory for many women who find Betrayal Trauma Recovery.

If you’re wondering how to set boundaries, begin this process, ask yourself these questions:

• What actions can I take today to begin creating more emotional & psychological safety for myself?
• How will I learn effective strategies to keep expanding my emotional & psychological safety? The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop teaches you step-by-step how to set boundaries effectively and maintain boundaries in an emotionally abusive relationship.
• Where will I seek support as I begin the process of establishing safety boundaries? We recommend Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions.

Transcript: How To Set Boundaries With An Emotionally Abusive Husband

Anne: We have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’re going to call her Elsa and talk about how to set boundaries. Welcome Elsa.

Elsa: Thank you.

Anne: She’s been a podcast listener for a long time. It’s always an honor to have podcast listeners on. So thank you so much for supporting the podcast by listening to it. Let’s start with your story. Tell me about the beginning. Did you recognize your husband’s abusive behaviors at first?

Elsa: I dated my ex husband before we married, and noticed some things regarding his behavior. Specifically with social media, there was an instance when he omitted some information. And I didn’t consider it abuse. I honestly addressed it with him. He agreed and said I was right. I thought, that’s it, that’s solved. I felt like he heard me, and we moved on.

After we married, I noticed that some responses seemed more contemptuous. He was less agreeable if I brought things to him. And that’s when I started to have some questions and feel quite out of sorts because it felt like such a change from when we were dating.

Anne: What was the nature of the information that he withheld?

Elsa: We hadn’t dated that long, and I had a trip planned with a couple of my girlfriends to go to Europe. We planned it quite a while previously. I would be away for a couple of months. I felt like I wanted to pursue the relationship, and he said, would you want to be exclusive? It was like a big yes for me. I felt like communication was difficult during the trip. I felt like he was hard to pin down.

The Camping Trip Incident

Elsa: He said he was going to go camping one weekend. I had this gut feeling that he may go camping with somebody he worked with. Who was quite a bit younger than him.

And I don’t know why, but I just had this gut feeling. I asked him if he did, and at first he said he went with just my dog because he was taking care of my dog. And then he said, Oh, I went with some coworkers. The truth was, I found out much later, about six months later. That he had gone on a one-on-one camping trip with a 21 year old when he was in his mid thirties.

So that’s obviously a red flag. But at the time, I was already pretty invested. And he denied anything happened, and I worked through it. At first he understood, but then he became quite pressuring that I get over it, in his words. After a few days of listening to my concerns about him withholding that information. That was the situation. But nothing had happened between them.

Anne: That you knew of. And you didn’t know that was abusive or how to set boundaries.

Elsa: Exactly.

Anne: Did you ever find out later that there was something that happened between them?

Elsa: He told me she shot him down and said no. Looking back now and the knowledge I have, I think there was a certain amount of grooming going on with that co-worker, and that she maybe saw him as an older brother type. And in reality, there was a different motive on his end. So I think it probably confused her quite a bit, if I was to put myself in her shoes.

Anne: Totally, so had he been able to, he would have.

Trickle Disclosure & Manipulation

Elsa: Yes, and he said that.

Anne: He said that at the time, like back in the day, or six months later, I was going to say that doesn’t sound like something you’d say right away. It’s interesting to me when they decide to lie. And then when they decide to tell you the information, it’s almost this calculated time that is meant to hurt you.

Not necessarily a time to bring you closer, when they feel like you’re maybe having a great day or something’s going well for you. They calculate it to hurt you. So can you tell me when he told you this?

Elsa: I definitely identify, there have been times when that’s the case. I used to call it like the trickle disclosure. That’s what I got in my relationship was, oh yeah, this flashback came back to me and it would be gut wrenching for me. And looking back, I think he did do that sometimes to keep me kind of destabilized a bit.

But this particular instance for this situation, I think he was afraid I would leave him. That I was getting tired of him, whatever was going on. So he told me about this camping trip and the fact that he lied. And told me that now we had everything out in the open. This was before we got engaged. I didn’t know how to set boundaries.

That was like, now you know everything, it was a lie. Looking back, he did that when I first met him two days in. He told me something that wasn’t the truth. But I thought, wow, how vulnerable he was to tell me this difficult part. That he had cheated on a past partner. one partner, one time.

How To Set Boundaries: Grooming

Elsa: It’s grooming. I had no idea what grooming was, it was a way to trust him. To say, he was up front and told me this information. It’s all there is, all the skeletons are out of the closet, and they weren’t, it was a way to silence me a bit.

Anne: Knowing if your husband is grooming you starts with understanding that manipulative truth is never the whole truth. They make you think no one who is a liar would tell me this thing. They must be telling the truth, they’re telling a part of the truth that is the tip of the iceberg. If they told the truth, they’d say, I’ve cheated on every partner. I masturbate every day, and look at pornography. I have every intention of cheating because I don’t want to be with one person. Then they say, now everything’s out on the table.

Elsa: It creates a false sense of safety, yeah.

Anne: Exactly, and they do it on purpose. Then you are left wondering what to do when your husband betrays your trust. I think the other issue, before you were engaged, was a test. If I tell her this partial truth, that seems horrific, and she’ll still get engaged to me. This is the kind of girl I want to marry. She believes me. They’re going to tell like a partial truth that feels true to test. Is this the kind of woman I can exploit sometimes?

That’s not your fault. It has nothing to do with you. It’s really scary, sad and awful that that is their intention from the beginning. That’s what it is always so alarming. And you had no concrete reasons to learn how to set boundaries.

Elsa: It was mind blowing that level , that it was that planned and calculated.

Anne: What types of reasons did you give in the beginning for this behavior that seemed kind of off?

How To Set Boundaries In Counseling

Elsa: Initially, I think there was some self blame, that’s the work I’ve done. In my own journey, I thought, maybe the problem lies with me. And my husband says I was the problem too. I said, I had done counseling in the past and I think I should take it back up. And he said, yeah, I think you should too. So he really let me go down that road of, I just need to do my own work.

That it was my neediness, or anxiousness. That was the problem, and nothing had changed on his end. It was night or day, we moved to a different town, and it was kind of a college town. There were younger women around in this college town. Before I met him, he’d been in the city with a lot of college students, young women, around. And he was in that kind of party atmosphere. And I didn’t know the extent of it.

When You Blame Yourself

So when we moved to this new city, and we were newly married, his behavior towards me changed. He helped me think it was me. So I started counseling, and he did come to some early counseling sessions with me. And we found out there was an addiction.

Anne: He came to confirm to the therapist that it was your problem. Did you find the therapy helpful in this particular situation? No talk of abuse or how to set boundaries?

Elsa: No, I’d say no. I was pregnant. So the goal was to help reduce my anxiety. I was feeling anxious in the pregnancy, and I wasn’t able to put my finger on what was going on. So it felt crazy making. That’s what I internalized. It was coming from, within me, and that I had nothing to worry about.

Discovering Addiction

Elsa: I worried about the impact on my unborn child. She was basically trying to support me with my anxiety. Well, turns out my gut is sensitive, and yeah. And so I kept picking at the wound kind of thing and just bringing my concerns to him over and over. Something doesn’t feel right. Something has changed.

Anne: Did you get diagnosed with anxiety at that time?

Elsa: No, we used it as a diagnosis just for insurance purposes, but I’ve never had a diagnosis of anything.

Anne: That’s good. So many women get diagnosed with something during this time because instead of their therapist saying, oh, this is your internal warning system telling you something’s wrong. You are reacting in a totally normal way. You are great. Let’s figure out why your warning system is going off.

Instead of saying that they’re happy to be like, oh yeah, you’re just another crazy woman who’s having too much anxiety and you’re hysterical for no reason. It always just, argh.

Elsa: That’s the only message I was getting.

Anne: So the therapist doesn’t help you figure out what’s going on. She doesn’t help you figure out that you’re abused or how to set boundaries. You realize he’s addicted to pornography without the help of that therapist. How did you discover his use? Was your husband on his phone all the time?

Elsa: I kept asking, something has changed. What has changed? And I thought, is it because I’m pregnant? Again, a lot of focus on myself, but I knew something was different. And one day I thought to ask him, finally. It’s never been on my radar. And I said, do you look at this stuff? Because something in the conversation led me to ask the question. And he said, “Yes, I do. So that I don’t bleep other women.”

How To Set Boundaries: He Goes To SAA

Elsa: He shocked me. It’s a moment etched in my memory. He never offered that information. That conversation never came up.

Anne: Also, his opinion, his viewpoint, was that if he did not look at it, he was not in control of himself enough. He did not have the integrity, ability, or adult skill of not having sex with someone who wasn’t his wife. That was his reasoning. Otherwise, if he didn’t look at it, hey, you are lucky, right. I’m such a giver. I’m looking at pornography for you, because if I didn’t do this, I would be out having sex with other women. And you don’t want me to do that, do you?

Elsa: It was kind of progress in his mind.

Anne: I’m doing a great kind of a thing. Oh, that must have been devastating. I’m so sorry. When does the word addict come into play?

Elsa: I don’t think until he sought out sex addicts anonymous. I think it had been a decade since I’d even heard of someone having a sex addiction, and I kind of laughed. I didn’t think it was a real thing.

Anne: Why did he seek it out?

Elsa: Much like when he confessed about the story about the girl, the 21 year old. I think he could sense that I would potentially leave him or have him leave the house. And so he found an SAA ad in the paper, he said, I’m going to go. And he went and I, at that point started on the journey of thinking that was our only issue. I didn’t need to know how to set boundaries.

Trying Therapy

Elsa: I found out, it was much bigger than looking at exploitative material, the ingrained pattern of his character. I needed to protect myself by learning how to set boundaries. At the time, once I learned about sex addiction, I thought that was the only issue.

Anne: It’s interesting to me that it is the issue, but the issue is larger than that. This is a systemic issue, it breaks my heart when women don’t go the abuse route first. Women are kept in the abuse so much longer and in a strange way, because the answer in COSA is stay on your side of the street, work on your things. If you’re dealing with abuse, then you realize, oh, I don’t need to work on my side of the street. I need to get off the street.

Elsa: Yes, I missed that point. That’s what I was seeking, support from professionals. I didn’t get that.

Anne: Did you ever go to a addiction therapist?

Elsa: I did, once I knew he had an addiction. I started reading the recommended information. His counselor was not a certified sex addiction therapist. The whole time I didn’t have safety. I didn’t feel safe in my home around him, but I was trying all these different things.

Anne: Even if the person was a certified sexual addiction therapist, the likelihood of them identifying the abuse is next to zero, because they don’t see it as an abuse issue.

They’re not certified abuse specialists. They’re certified sexual addiction therapists. So they will identify anything he does as an extension of the addiction. So he’s in addict mode, he’s not in recovery, rather than he’s abusive. Which is a totally different thing for a woman to hear.

Separation & Escalation

Elsa: So we did separate for a short time.

Anne: And then you ended up getting back together.

Elsa: Yeah.

Anne: Tell me how that happened.

Elsa: He wanted to separate from me, but he didn’t want to leave the comfort of the home. So his idea was that he would sleep in the living room. We had a loft in our garage. He’d go sleep out there. And I took a trip, four or five days to California to visit a friend and have some space. I had my daughter with me. And when I came back, he picked us up at the airport. He barely acknowledged me. There was a lot of feeling of contempt.

And I was like, you know what? I want this separation, but I want him out of the home. So I told him, and he raged and tore things apart in the house. And I did call the police. They came. He left after that for two months. He still had access to my daughter, he’d still come and get her, but we had no interaction.

Anne: Did you learn how to set boundaries or get a protective order at that time? Or learn how to set boundaries?

Elsa: I did not. So fast forward a couple months. He’s still coming to get my daughter, but I try to have little to no contact with him in that exchange. Then we’re at church on Easter, and I use the bathroom or something. I walk by where my daughter is in the playroom, and he’s standing at the doorway of the playroom.

And I thought it was this, reconciliatory event in my mind. And from there, he doesn’t move in right away, but we start communication again.

How To Set Boundaries: False Hope Of Reconciliation

Elsa: I don’t even know if he ever said he’s sorry. Maybe once, but I thought this is where we both take accountability. And we start to move forward and repair our relationship. And he eventually moved in after about a month. We were together for another six months, and it got worse. It got much worse. Looking back, he cut off all communication I had with his counselor. She would allow me to call her, still no knowledge of how to set boundaries. He didn’t allow me to talk to her.

He wouldn’t talk to anybody in the church with me. And he wouldn’t let me be around if he was talking to his sister. She was a bit older than him, and was kind of a support. So I was basically completely isolated in those six months. I would say definitely the abuse escalated. I don’t think he wanted to be there. He wanted to change the narrative of the story. So that when he left, it was because I was crazy and unstable versus what was the initial story. He looked like the bad guy.

Elsa: So after that six months, he left and I said, this is it. He was going on a trip to see his family. And I knew that this wasn’t something we were both invested in repairing. So I said when you leave this time, you’re not coming back in the home. Then I moved forward pretty quickly to pursue divorce, because I was going to move back to Canada. Part of it was that I needed to secure my future. Because when he first left, all I could think about was how do I keep my daughter close to him? How do I make this work for him?

Final Decision To Divorce

Elsa: My whole way of thinking was what would he want? And then I started to think about what I wanted and what brings me peace. And that led me to make some choices for myself and my daughter.

Anne: Canada’s laws are much more effective when it comes to domestic abuse. Did you end up moving to Canada?

Elsa: Mm hmm. I did.

Anne: And was that before or after your divorce?

Elsa: After, I didn’t have a green card. I was authorized to work in the United States. He thought I would continue to pursue my green card, and he could help me so that I could remain in the United States. And I didn’t tell him that I changed my plan to move back to Canada, where I’m a citizen. He believed he still had a certain amount of control over me after we were separated for a few months. And then I pursued doing everything legally and up front. I took action, which is how to set boundaries.

When he found out, he was obviously upset, but it protects me. I’m not a citizen here and I don’t have any support.

Anne: And protected you from prolonged legal abuse in terms of the divorce. But maybe not in terms of custody, because I have a feeling that you’re going to bring up custody. Because this guy sounds like a coercive controller, this type of abuser enjoys chaos and pain, and they will even hurt themselves, because it’s so fun for them to see someone else in chaos and pain. It’s strange, because they do things that seem stupid, because it’s hurting them. But it’s also hurting you.

Custody Battles & Parenting Challenges

Anne: It also seems smart. Women in this situation are usually like, how can you be so smart and so stupid simultaneously?

Elsa: It’s a question that’s crossed my mind, yeah.

Anne: So let’s talk about the post divorce abuse and your actions in how to set boundaries. What happened after?

Elsa: They asked, do we want to subpoena his bank records? We had never shared banking. I’d never looked at any of that. They said, it’s just something we typically do during divorce. So I’m like, okay, sure. And his bank records showed that when we first separated the first couple of months after, he was at a college bar every second night. So he was right back into the. kind of behaviors, that he’d been used to.

I just said that because when we first were moving away, I think he was busy with his own thing. So he wasn’t as intent and wasn’t as involved. But then, uh, maybe something changed in his life. And when we were, in fact, across the border, He started to really just harass me a lot through the parenting app. And we had created this parenting plan when we lived in, in the U.S. Which was a part of how to set boundaries.

And when the borders finally opened and we moved to the area we moved to, we had no idea of the impact it would have on my daughter. She was two at the time, barely two. But it was a rigorous schedule for her. I worked full time, and she was in daycare full time. Two nights a week, she’d have to be away from home for 12 hours. We’d have to meet him at this neutral location, it’s dark, it’s raining, the roads are bad.

How To Set Boundaries: Using the Parenting App For Documentation

Elsa: He had no intent, as much feedback as I gave him: that this was so hard on her. Can we please figure out a different way for him to get that one and a half hour visit? By extending his weekend visits or something, he just wouldn’t budge. And he could see the difficulty for her in terms of her sleep schedule.

Anne: And for you, yeah. Because it was hard for you too. And he’s thinking, awesome, awesome. It’s hard for her and the baby.

Elsa: Exactly, I’m sure he knew, and he didn’t care if it was hard on me. If she was just kind of a byproduct of that or whatever. So that went on for about six months. And then I just said, enough, like, you can take me to court, but I’m decreasing this to one night a week on her weeknights. I had learned how to set boundaries and take action,

And this is where I find him to be kind of a lot of talk, but then no action. Because I think if you get down to the truth of everything, of what he actually wants. It’s not that extra one and a half hours. It was more that, like you said, it was kind of impacting our lives. We had no free time, we’re exhausted all the time, you know, we’re bending to his will.

And so that’s been the main thing. Still kind of a lot of crazy making in that he’ll say, you never give me any time, da da da. But then there’s evidence of all through the parenting app. And the parenting app has been so great, because it’s all there. It’s all documented. And you’re not having to fish through to find things.

The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free & Message Strategies

Elsa: It’s valid to look back and go, this is all the times I offered, it contradicts itself. Now here we are three years since we moved. I just say, you’re contradicting yourself. I don’t even say that much. He knows, but at first I was over explaining and deflecting, and now I don’t do any of that. Learning how to set boundaries has really helped.

He doesn’t try to make up any extra time with her, so it’s playing itself out. And the less I engage, the less of a rise he gets from me, the more I have cut down any interaction on the app, to like the bare minimum, he shrinks away.

Anne: I love that you’re using The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop strategies. That is awesome.

The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop teaches you how to think about the abuser, so that you can respond to them in a way that protects you. And learn how to set boundaries. Where they can’t actually cross them, because it’s all you. The types of boundaries that we teach in the workshop are never anything you say.

Elsa: I love that.

Anne: Because women who take the workshop will learn this. With an abuser, if you tell them, hey, I don’t like it when you wear green. They’ll be like, sweet, now I know how to bug her. I’m gonna wear green. It’s never a way to solve the problem.

How To Set Boundaries: Do Not Believe Your Abuser

Anne: You’re always giving them a sign how to harass you. It bothers me when you do this. They’re great, thanks for letting me know. I’ll keep doing it. We never want to tell them what our boundaries are, what we need, want, or anything like that. That only puts us in more danger. The Living Free workshop talks about that in teaching how to set boundaries.

One of the things you said is a very important principle that we teach in the Living Free Workshop. It is do not believe them. Many times these abusers will say, well, I’ll take you to court. And you’re terrified, right? You don’t want to lose your daughter. So you think, well, I better do what he says, or he’ll take me to court.

Elsa: That went on for a couple of years for me.

Anne: Yeah, the better way to respond is, okay, sounds good. This is my attorney’s phone number. Let me know how it goes, and leave it at that. Some of them will take you to court, knowing that it’s not always going to end up like that. Most of them want to make you do what they want, they think threats will work. They don’t want to spend the time and energy to take you to court, their actions rarely match their words. That goes the same for promises.

Of course, I love you, I’m not gonna look at pornography. Then it goes the same for threats too, usually. If they’ve threatened to harm you physically, and in your state, that enables you to get a protective order, get it. That will always help you. The criminal route is always better than civil for protection. If you have some kind of criminal action, it will help you more.

The Importance of Boundaries

Anne: That’s good you’ve been delivered, because you stopped believing him.

Elsa: Exactly, I advocate for myself and my daughter. I have the documentation to support decisions. I’ve just kind of protected myself that way. What you said about the boundaries, I think of that all the time. I share it with other people, because I learned it from you and the podcast. And The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions because many people think it’s a lot of words to describe your boundary. I love that it’s an action, an action you take.

Anne: That’s the only thing that will actually protect you. If you tell them your boundary, it’s a giant flag that says, hey, this is how to abuse me. So you never want to tell them. Once you know they’re an abuser, of course. In the beginning, you’re trying to figure out, is this abuse? What’s going on?

And instead of asking him or talking to him about abuse, again, with Living Free, we recommend you just observe, just watch. You don’t have to ask him, hey, are you abusive? Or, this is abuse. You don’t have to bring it up. You can just observe. And you can see that he’s abusive. If you see that he’s abusive, you don’t have to tell him. You need to get to safety, but you don’t need to say anything about it.

Elsa: He’s heavily just projected that towards me. So the parenting app, I had to go through some of the documentation recently. And I think it was over 30 counts of him accusing me of being a parental alienator and narcissist. And I don’t comment. I learned that from you too. There’s no point, but yeah, he heavily projects on me that I’m mentally unstable.

Finding Support Through Betrayal Trauma Recovery

Elsa: Where I lived, like I mentioned, is in the northern states near the Canadian border. I just couldn’t find anything in the city for support. I mentioned he started SAA. They did have a group. Then I found a COSA group of about four or five women in that area. I just didn’t find that I got much from it. So I started looking for podcasts. And I stumbled across Betrayal Trauma Recovery. Where I was being so isolated. It was my main support.

The Betrayal Trauma Recovery podcast helped me connect the dots. I did read some books, but I would say the podcasts from Betrayal Trauma Recovery were the main thing that kept me rooted in reality. Where I was like, yes, this matches. Because like you said, in certain parts of COSA, there are certain things that I was like, yeah, sort of. But then listening to the podcast and the different people you would have on was the main thing that rooted me in reality of what I was experiencing.

It was like a big, yes, this fits with what I’m experiencing. And that’s what helped me in a lot of my decision-making. And his counselor even said to him at one point, he said, she’s reading these books. He didn’t know about the podcast. She’s reading these books. Like it threatened him that I was learning what I was learning. Because then I was no longer trapped in the chaos.

Anne: Was the Betrayal Trauma Recovery podcast revelatory when you found it? Was it something totally new that you hadn’t thought of or heard before? Or was it something that you knew inside, but you just didn’t know you knew it?

Elsa: I would say, looking back, I would say the latter, for sure.

How To Set Boundaries: Realizing The Extent Of Abuse

Elsa: I work in healthcare. I have some knowledge of mental health, knowledge from books I’ve read. So, as I started listening to it, I’m like, yes, this makes sense as to what I already know. I talked about the addiction side of it, and I knew about attachment. So it kind of brought everything together. The Betrayal Trauma Recovery episodes started to put pieces together. It was like I knew it was ill treatment, but I didn’t think it was as calculated as it was.

Anne: Women, when they find the podcast, they’re like, yes, like they knew it. But they didn’t have words for it or couldn’t bring it to the surface. And they’re also like, what, how did I not know? That’s how I felt. I was like, how am I a college graduate with a master’s degree who doesn’t want to be abused? I’m not afraid of divorce. How can I not realize I’m being abused? This is crazy. It’s both like, I knew it. And then like, how did I not know it at the exact same time?

And it’s such a strange place to be, where at least I felt so stupid that I didn’t see it. But then also not stupid at all because I’d never been educated about it. And all the abuse checklists are like, does he control your transportation? And you’re like, no, does he trap you in a room? No. I mean, maybe he might trap you in a room. I’m not saying he wouldn’t. I’m just saying the classic abuse checklists didn’t seem to fit my situation. It was just confusing.

The Role Of Feelings In Identifying Abuse

Elsa: The idea of secret keeping his “power over” resonated with me. I’m like, yeah. Because at first I thought he didn’t realize it was painful for me. Or he didn’t realize the depth of his actions, the impact of his actions. But then I circled around to the fact that it didn’t matter to him, which is what I came to.

Anne: Well, it’s even that he does it on purpose.

Elsa: Yeah, and that.

Anne: He uses your feelings against you to control you. Rather than listening or caring about your feelings. So the only reason he pays attention to your feelings is to manipulate you, control the situation and the narrative. And that’s where women, well meaning, awesome, caring women, don’t know what they’re dealing with. So of course, they’re going to share their feelings with their husband. Because they think in sharing their feelings, they can resolve the issue. They want to know if their abusive husband is changing.

But with an abuser sharing your feelings, it is literally offering them a list of how to manipulate you better. That’s why it’s so important to know what you’re looking at.

Boundaries & Responses

Elsa: You know, it’s kind of cliche, but trust your gut. How do you feel around him? That was a big one for me. I never felt calm, I always felt like something wasn’t right. I learned from you, how do you feel when that happened, the feeling attached to being around someone, how their behaviors make you feel.

Then boundaries, because he was sometimes snide or joking, and I’ve experienced this with other people I’ve dated. If you put up a boundary that he would be like, oh, yes, you’re right, I should have that boundary. But then I felt like there was undermining surrounding it, kind of diminishing me, invalidating me.

And those things I just pushed aside because I was like, oh, when I brought it to him, he did say he would go along with it. But there’s the whole understanding of boundaries and the response to them. I’ve watched my own daughter give a, no. If she’s like having a video call, no, I don’t like that book or no. And I watched the response and I’m like, oh, I know that, you know, of course you like it. You just don’t know that you do yet, this constant kind of harassment almost.

So I think that knowledge about boundaries shouldn’t be something that they come around the back door and harass you about, obviously. Or make snide remarks about, or attack, your character. If it’s something you have made clear that you stand for, or that aligns with your values.

Anne: Thank you so much for sharing your story. I appreciate the time that you’ve taken to talk with us today.

Elsa: Yeah, thank you so much for everything.