I tell my story because, as a Christian woman, for the longest time I felt like divorce was not an option. After all, that’s what we are taught, right? God hates divorce! But when you learn the truth about that misinterpreted and misconstrued Scripture, you will realize that MARRIAGE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO HURT. Yes, marriage is hard because life is hard. But the whole point of marriage is to have a partner to work with and support you during hard times. The partner is NOT supposed to be CREATING the hard times! If your marriage is painful, if your partner is hurtful, if you are confused, then this story might be for you.
I think we are quick to blame the divorce on the one seeking the divorce.
After all, THAT is the person that “broke” the marriage by filing for divorce, right? Right?
Well, not always. There are plenty of instances where the one filing for divorce is not the one that actually broke the marriage. My 17-year marriage was broken, absolutely shattered, years before I filed for divorce.
This is my story.
My Marriage was already broken. I just walked away from the pieces.
My husband had spent over a decade trying to break our marriage (and he eventually succeeded). In fact, he pretty much started breaking our marriage as soon as the honeymoon was over. He did a really good job of hiding it that first year. The second year, he actually left for a weekend, said it was all a mistake and we needed to divorce. But then he came back, apologetic, and I believed him. For the next year, I tolerated some things (an ever-increasing alcohol problem) and didn’t know about some other things (a nefarious online life). The following year brought a baby and a promise that he was done with alcohol. It was a promise broken again and again for the next decade until I just gave up on asking him to stop.
The alcoholism got so bad that when G was close to turning eleven he was terrified to have his dad at his birthday party. I pulled off a “secret birthday party” over 6 weeks before G’s actual birthday for him and a few of his friends without his dad knowing about it until it was over. That was the wake up call for me – my son was scared to have his dad around. I had to do something.
The alcoholism was only part of it. It was a big part, and probably fueled a lot of the other things. But it definitely wasn’t the only thing. There was the scathing verbal and emotional abuse; the poor financial decisions that left me without enough money to cover the bills; the questionable online activity; the inability to keep a job and rumors of some serious allegations about issues at work (I never got the whole story about why he lost several jobs but after the divorce I was given some information about one case that we’ll call “HR complaints” and leave it at that.)
It was clear that the man I thought I married didn’t exist.
Click here to visit the National Domestic Abuse Hotline.
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I said “I do” to a dream but I was living in a nightmare.
This book, and Natalie Hoffman’s podcast, were instrumental in helping me sort through my situation, the facts, my feelings, and the trauma I was going through. I highly recommend But if you just can’t swing the expense of purchasing the book, check out the Flying Free podcast for free anywhere you listen to podcasts. It helped me SO much.
When I got married, I truly believed “divorce was not an option”.
But I had no idea that someone that I pledged to love, honor, and cherish – who also pledged to love, honor, and cherish ME – could be so incredibly cruel to me.
I sought religious counsel. I was told to “pray harder”.
So I did. I prayed. I cried. I begged God to make him stop hurting me and our son. I prayed that God would open his eyes to how bad the alcoholism was and how much it was hurting us.
But then that 11th birthday party for G happened and my prayers changed. They changed from “God, please fix it. Save my marriage.” to “God, if you’re not going to fix it, show me how to get out. Save ME.”
And I’m living proof that He answered that prayers.
How did I reconcile my faith with my need for a divorce?
In are the four key Bible verses that support divorce for infidelity, neglect, and physical and/or emotional abuse. Turns out, God hates when men abuse their wives. That infamous “God hates divorce” line in the book of Malachi is God comparing the nation of Israel to a husband that has mistreated and abandoned* his wife. That’s what God hates. (*and the “abandonment” doesn’t mean physically leaving – it means neglecting his wife and his duties as a husband.)
But if he doesn’t hit me, then how do I know it’s abuse?
Click here to visit the National Domestic Abuse Hotline.
That’s an excellent question.
This infographic from the National Domestic Abuse Hotline lays out examples of emotional abuse, coercive control, financial abuse, and more. Here are the items from that list that I dealt with:
- threatening suicide (he did this once in front of our son)
- destroying my property (or selling it for beer money)
- putting me down / calling me names
- playing mind games / making me feel crazy (because he would do or say something and then later say he didn’t and tell me I was crazy or making things up)
- shifting responsibility for the abuse / claiming it was my fault (“well, if you wouldn’t do this I wouldn’t yell/cuss you/call you names/etc”)
- threatening to take my child away if I try to leave
- treating me like a servant
- taking my money / using bill money on alcohol and video games
I would encourage you to check out the list for more.
I had a more exhaustive list at one time but I can’t find it now. When I come across it again I’m going to come back and add it to this post. It went into even more detail with items like:
- using religion to confuse you (“well, you’re not a real Christian if you want a divorce.”)
- insults your friends, family, or people you care for
- making absurd accusations against you (I was a full-time stay-at-home homeschooling mom with a work from home job but I was accused of cheating numerous times)
- forces you to stay awake or repeatedly wakes you from sleep
- controlling the finances and not allowing you to have money or (as in my case) reckless spending with no regard for the bills
Trying to figure out if it’s abuse? In abuse survivor Cindy Burrell, unravels the confusing and chaotic world of verbal and emotional abuse. “Why Is He So Mean to Me?” answers the question every abuse victim asks herself. The book provides the reader with a wealth of valuable, firsthand insight – the kind of clarity a confused victim needs to begin the process of reclaiming her value and her life.
She looked at me, and in the most sympathetic tone, said, “That’s abuse.”
Up until that point, if you had asked me to make a list of all the ways I was being abused – that wouldn’t have made it on there. But in the moment, I was like, “Oh, yeah, you’re right.”
I used a lot of the tips I heard listening to Natalie Hoffman’s podcast to help me get my exit strategy together. I was unaware that there existed a book that could help me! When you’re in the midst of it all it feels overwhelming. You know what the end goal is (getting out) and you know some of the broader steps, but it’s hard to focus specifically on what the next thing to do is. If you would benefit from having all the steps in front of you in black and white, check out When the abuse starts, that’s when you know enough is enough. It’s time to find a haven somewhere else. There will be a chance down the road to assess where your marriage is headed in the long term. No one is saying divorce is the inevitable outcome. God can transform anyone. But He doesn’t promise to do that. People choose to persist in sin. And that’s why it’s imperative for you to leave . . . so you can think clearly, take stock of the situation, and most of all, protect yourself and those whom you love.
Enough is Enough
2019 was a very bad year. That’s when things had gotten the worst they had ever been. I had opened my own bank account so I could put money up that he couldn’t get to so I could pay bills. I got a small gig job and worked event childcare out our church (paid job) so I could start putting some extra money away. September of that year was the birthday party incident. It was clear I needed to prepare to do the hard thing, and with God’s help, I did.
Although I wish I could say I just snapped my fingers and it was done – but it was a process that took longer than I wanted it to.
In January of 2020 (yes, that 2020) my now-ex comes home at 2am from his night shift job and tells me he got fired. I never got the whole story but if it wasn’t “HR violations” then it was being drunk and/or hungover on the job. If I hadn’t started that bank account the year before, we would’ve lost our house in 2020. It took him months to find another job (he wasn’t really trying hard) and he was working delivering pizzas during that time. We were barely scraping by. I was looking into getting a part time job but then you-know-what happened in 2020. Thankfully he had been hired on by a large company right before everything shut down and he ended up being deemed “essential” so at least he was now working. But then there was the DUI – a long story I don’t want to get in to except to say that it led to him losing his job right before Christmas of 2020.
By that time, I had a small part time custodial job at my church. And at the beginning of 2021 I started my housecleaning business. I started 2021 hopeful. I squirreled away every penny I could. By that fall, I had a lawyer and the process was moving. I amped it up in December and pressed for everything to be ready ASAP. When the calendar rolled over to December, I started having a panic attack. The thought of having to endure one more Christmas with him in the house made my chest hurt. He had a particular knack for ruining Christmas. He was always drunk on Christmas morning (yes, morning) and would normally pass out on the couch in the middle of opening presents, snoring like a chainsaw. And then when he came to, he was always ready for some kind of argument. Which ended with him turning on the TV and playing some awful video game very loudly while G and I were just trying to enjoy Christmas presents. I.could.not.do.that.again.
He moved out the night of December 21, 2021.
My soul was instantly at peace.
It took until April of 2023 before our divorce was final. It really shouldn’t have taken that long. Either he had a crappy lawyer, he just wouldn’t follow through on his end to move things along, or at some point he stopped paying his lawyer for a while. I don’t know. But I just know it took far longer than it should have. Thankfully we did everything through our lawyers and never had to go to court.
The Body Keeps Score
But regardless of how long it took to finalize the divorce, my healing process started the night of December 21, 2021.
One of the most eye-opening podcasts that I listened to prior to start the divorce process was about C-PTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder) and the effects it has on your body. I realized that the environment I was living in (in my home with an abuser) had given me C-PTSD and it was slowly killing me.
Some might stop me here and say I’m being dramatic but let me continue.
In June of 2020, I ended up in the emergency room when my blood pressure spiked to 175/95. It was terrifying. My head felt like it was going to explode. I thought I was having a stroke. In the ER they ruled out every emergent situation and had me follow up with my GP. I went to follow up and was diagnosed with hypertension at 36 years old. I was put on blood pressure medication to keep my blood pressure down. But the most confounding thing was, despite my consistent blood pressure readings that had me well within the hypertension range, all my labs came back completely normal – I had no discernible physical reason to have hypertension.
I stayed on medication for over a year. Eight months after my ex moved out, I was weaned off the blood pressure medication and have had perfectly healthy blood pressure for two and a half years. Living in a constant state of fear and stress was causing physical symptoms – the high blood pressure / hypertension. My GP even acknowledged when I was weaned from the medicine that this was the case – she knew some of my situation because of a patient history form I had filled out before my initial visit.
In December 2020 I had another medical issue that was deemed a “stress-induced psoriasis flare”. I broke out in a horrible psoriatic rash that lasted for months. I still have scars on my arms and the backs of my hands from this. The entire time I’ve been typing this post, the scars on the back of my hands have been staring back at me. They blend in some in the winter. But in the warmer months when my skin starts seeing some sun again, they become very obvious.
When you are in a high state of stress, your body releases cortisol. It is not healthy for your body to be releasing cortisol 24/7. But when you live in an environment that keeps your in a constant state of “fight-or-flight”, that’s exactly what your body is doing.
Emotional abuse can have very real physical symptoms.
I would suggest you read for help understanding what your body is going through when you experience trauma. The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.
My marriage was slowly killing me.
If you can relate to this, I have to encourage you to GET OUT. Your physical manifestations won’t necessarily be high blood pressure and rashes. They could be autoimmune disorders, cancer, stomach ulcers, unhealthy weight gain, or a host of other things.
For your own sake, get out.
If you’ve made it this far through my story and you can identify with what I went through and you now you need to get out, you might be asking yourself this one big question…
What about my children?
This is SUCH a hard question and the answer to that is different in every individual situation. I am not qualified to give legal advice but I can make suggestions:
- Document everything. Every instance of abuse or questionable behavior you can document, do it. Keep medical records. Take photos of any evidence (in my case, the absurd amounts of alcohol he consumed.) Record conversations if it’s legal in your state (my state is a one-party consent state so I’m allowed to record conversations that I am a part of without letting other parties know.) If this has been going on for a while, go back and find documentation you might have going as far back as you can find it.
- Keep a journal. This is for evidence and also for your sanity. Being in an abusive relationship messes with your head and makes you start to doubt yourself. And abusers lie and gaslight – having everything written down helps keep you grounded in reality. Plus it can corroborate your documented evidence. And just like the documentation, you can journal past things that have happened.
- Discuss your options with an attorney. Be open and honest about your situation so they can give you your options. There are ways to protect yourself and your children. They can also advise you on a protection-from-abuse (PFA) order if the situation warrants it. This is where documentation helps – especially since emotional, psychological and financial abuse are more nuanced than physical abuse.
- Talk to someone you can trust. I know it’s hard but if you’re going through this, SOMEONE NEEDS TO KNOW. Your sister, your mother, your best friend – someone needs to know. First, because you need someone to talk to. And second, because if things go unexpectedly south fast, you need someone you can call that already knows what’s going on.
- Go to counseling. If you are able and it’s safe for you to go, it’s very important to seek solo counseling. MARRIAGE COUNSELING WITH AN ABUSER DOES NOT DO ANY GOOD. In fact, it makes things worse because it gives them tools to abuse you more and hide it better.
All of those things can help you with the concerns about your kids. You’ve got to keep records. You’ve got to seek counsel. You have to talk to someone. And if you’re thinking you’ll just wait it out until the kids are older, here are some things that I know from firsthand experience that you should consider:
- If you are being abused, your kids are being abused. Every thing they are seeing and hearing is abuse. If they are witnessing arguments, if they are seeing their dad throw rage fits, if they see you crying and cowering in the bathroom, if they are losing sleep or confined to their bedroom when dad is “in one of his moods”, they are experiencing trauma. If they are suffering because of your spouse’s financial abuse (you don’t have access to enough money for bills, groceries, medical treatment, etc, or you have to beg every time money is needed for the kids), that is abuse on the kids as well.
- Kids pick up on more than you realize. I don’t care if your kids are 16 months or 16 years old and you think you’re hiding everything well – you aren’t. They’re soaking all this in – even if it’s subconsciously. And it will cause problems later. The sooner you can get them out of it, the better for their future well-being it will be.
- Your children need a safe, healthy, whole mother more than they need a father in the house. I can’t expound upon that statement anymore than that. That is the whole hot take in one sentence.
Leaving an abusive marriage is so hard.
It feels impossible. It’s like an insurmountable mountain is in front of you. But when you look at the whole picture, staying is hard too. You have to choose your hard. I reached a point where staying became harder than leaving. And at least leaving had some beneficial outcome.
Staying is hard.
Leaving is hard.
Choose your hard.
And please understand, YOU, my precious sister-in-Christ, did not “break” your marriage by leaving. It was already broken.
I listed several books in the post, but I have a curated list that contains more, here.
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