I married young with little dating experience. I was a “good girl”, growing up in a sheltered, Christian home, and eager to please. I didn’t know anything about marriage other than what I saw growing up—and my parents made it work. If I’m honest, I just wanted to live happily ever after (I obviously was very naive and watched too many fairy tale movies!) So after dating someone a year, I got married right out of college and I really didn’t have a clue…
Looking back 30 years later and knowing what I know now, I can see that the emotional and verbal abuse began the day after the wedding. When I didn’t do something right, I was yelled at and/or ignored. I cried so much those first few years until at some point, I just stopped crying. I stuffed all the feelings, emotions, reactions down so far, I couldn’t feel anything anymore. I just pretended everything was fine.
Because in reality, I couldn’t fathom how anyone who said they loved me could treat me how he was treating me.
How could he say he loved me and treat me like that?
In addition to dealing with emotional and verbal abuse, my new husband didn’t work after he graduated from college with a mechanical engineering degree. Me being the good girl worked a temp job until I was hired on in my field. It was a recession and he couldn’t find a job. He actually didn’t want to be an engineer, so while he was searching the want ads, he discovered multi-level marketing. This created an unquenchable desire to be an entrepreneur. This desire led to so many courses, bootcamps, trainings and get rich quick seminars over the years, all the while spending thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars that he didn’t earn to pursue that dream.
Trying to be a “good, submissive wife”
Meanwhile, being the “good, submissive wife”, I let him do whatever he wanted, because that’s what a good, submissive wife is supposed to do, right? (My theology was a little lot skewed and believing the lie started early on.) I did the cooking, cleaning and laundry in addition to my job while he rode his bike often and played solitaire. I realized during this time that I was afraid of him.
I tried multiple times over the years to leave him, but depending on the time, I either had no community support or no money. Things did get better briefly after each time I threatened him. After the first time was probably the best few years of our marriage, because he did get a job. We bought a house and did a kitchen renovation. We got dogs. The emotional abuse continued, but I was able to manage it and still pretend. Then my chiropractor advised me to go off birth control pills if I wanted to be healthier. I got pregnant soon thereafter. When kids started coming, he freaked out and the “good” times went south.
I loved being pregnant and being a mom. (Most of the time anyway!) It was as if something inside me was completely fulfilled by bringing life into the world and seeing these little people grow and develop. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the best world those lives were brought into. I had to be the buffer between him and the kids and between the kids and him. It was an exhausting role. It was also after the oldest was born that he quit his job to pursue his dream. I had started my own contracting business and was able to work from home most of the time—when I had work. It was feast or famine. And there was a lot of famine.
A really dark time
It was really such a dark time, with the kids themselves my only sunshine. We couldn’t spend any money outside of necessities. I had been frugal before, but it became extreme. It didn’t seem to bother him that we had no income. He still kept losing money on his dream. I suggested that he get a job, but his answer was always that it didn’t make sense for him to work. And then God provided a job for me.
It came out of the blue, but it was full time, although still as a contractor. These were horrible days as we moved to a 100+ year old 3000 square foot fixer upper house, I worked full time and was also starting to homeschool. I worked all day, helped him with a house project when I got home and read to the kids after dinner. I couldn’t figure out how I could do all that. When I told him I couldn’t do it, he reminded me that I had said that I would. Being such a good girl, I couldn’t go back on my word. He knew all the right buttons to push to manipulate.
I started questioning my sanity
I don’t remember much about this time. I’ve blocked out quite a bit. I felt like Joseph being sold into slavery and I cried a lot. After working full time for a couple of years, I quit. I told him it was his turn to work. This led to another horrible time of him being home all day while we worked on finishing up the house. He didn’t get a job during this couple of years, but again, out of the blue, I got called to work on another project. Desperate for money, I accepted.
As I got older, I really questioned my sanity and how I could survive this marriage. I felt guilty for even thinking about divorce. Seeking counsel from my church at the time, I was told to be more submissive, pray more, have more sex, be more supportive, blah, blah, blah. This was the worst possible advice as it heaped more guilt on me and allowed him to totally believe everything really was all about him.
Reaching out to Jesus
But it was during this time that my relationship with the Lord started to change into something more intimate. In desperation, I needed help and cried out. He started showing me lies I had believed, ever so slowly, as that is all I could handle at the time. And even when I did learn a new truth—it was so shocking to me that that was what I was living with that I couldn’t deal with some of it at the time. I vacillated between truth and denial over and over and over again until finally, the truth started sticking.
As the years went by, I learned what a narcissist was. I learned about verbal abuse. I learned about emotional abuse. I learned about the abuse cycle that I had lived over and over and over for decades without realizing it. It was horrifying but quite validating when I would read my life within the pages of these books.
It was after I finally and totally hit bottom that I learned I didn’t have to put up with all the toxic behavior I was dealing with. I learned that God wouldn’t be disappointed with me if I got a divorce.
Even after I had decided to get a divorce, it still took me a year and a half before I actually followed through with it. But during all of this extra time that it took, I’m thankful for the peace of knowing that after 29 years of a toxic marriage, I gave him every possible chance to change.
God’s faithfulness during the yuck
And I am able to see God’s faithfulness through this whole time.
- We racked up about $90,000 in credit card debt and had a 2nd mortgage on the house. But we never missed a payment for anything.
- We never went without food.
- God always provided the clothes and extras that we needed, sometimes in miraculous ways.
- The jobs that always showed up for me when we were most desperate I can now see as not only God’s provision during the hard times. It was also provision for my future as it allowed me to keep up my skills and contacts to be able to provide for myself and my kids and make it on my own post-divorce.
It has been so hard for so long. Even after the divorce, it has been hard. The peace level at home has gone up exponentially, but the reality of all the denial and stuffing I did needs to be dealt with. I’ve been working with a trauma counselor and realize I have PTSD and depression from the whole experience. I’ve been numb for so long, it’s been hard to allow myself to feel again. It just takes time and I’m still not all there, but I can see progress like a very gradual coming out of the fog. Read the next part of my story here.
Can you relate?
So if you’ve stuck with me through this long post, you may be able to relate with what I’m dealing with:
- Numbness
- Lack of motivation
- Easily overwhelmed
- Exhausted
- Haven’t been able to create
- Hiding
- Chronic pain
This blog is sharing what I’ve learned on the journey to healing and the ways I’m making progress—to inspire you to do the same. Please join me! And there’s always grace as some days are better than others.
I want to redeem my story and help you to redeem yours!
What drives me is the desire to redeem my story—to be able to help others survive whatever they are going through and actually thrive—so that we all fully become the people that God created us to be! My favorite verse is the foundation of this blog, Ephesians 2:10:
For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
Ephesians 2:10
God has purpose for each of us and I can guarantee it’s not being stuck in a black hole of shutdown and overwhelm. He’s got plans for you! He’s ready to redeem your story.
Let’s do this, lovely one!
