I Was Never Heard - By “Brooke” | The MEND Project
In this survivor of domestic violence story written by a brave soul who we will call “Brooke” you’ll learn about:
- The crazy-making covert tactics her partner used to maintain power and control over her
- How reporting the abuse led to Double Abuse and Complex PTSD
- How her Complex PTSD and trauma got so bad that she started having health problems
- And how learning to label and name her abuse gave her the power to begin freeing herself
Brooke fell deeply in love with a man too broken to return her love.
Let’s talk about it.
It Started Out Like a Fairy Tale
It was less than 5 months from our first date to our wedding.
Back then, I believed that the accelerated timeline demonstrated God’s will that I marry him.
We were older, and both had previous relationships. He was so attentive and charming, so the short engagement seemed appropriate.
There Were Red Flags, but They Didn’t Seem Too ‘Red’ to Be Dangerous
In retrospect, I saw some red flags while we were dating, but I didn’t think any of them were “red enough” until our wedding rehearsal.
On that night, my charming fiancé’s mask came off.
Something happened during rehearsal, making him so angry that he screamed at me nonstop during the ride from the church to the restaurant for our rehearsal dinner.
When we arrived, he parked the car and walked into the restaurant by himself, abandoning me to fall apart and pull myself together all on my own.
I thought it was an isolated incident so we wed twelve hours later.
Her Marriage Quickly Became a Nightmare
I cried almost every day on our honeymoon, as he regularly left me to meet or hang out with other people on his own.
When we returned, he moved into the condo I owned and quickly took over the second bedroom—making it his personal space.
He didn’t want me in “his room” or touching “his stuff”; pictures of old girlfriends, letters, and other memorabilia.
He would get angry when I asked why he kept those things, but his anger wasn’t limited to that.
I wasn’t allowed to make simple inquiries about when he would be home for dinner without him becoming very angry, defensive, and accusatory of me.
He seemed to feel entitled to his independence and freedom, and he shut down anything I said or did that he thought inhibited him.
For example, when he traveled a lot for business and I wanted to know if he’d be home that night, he refused to answer and told me if I wanted to know I could figure it out by myself when I found out if his toiletry kit was in the bathroom or not.
If it wasn’t there, I would know he wouldn’t be coming home that night, although I would have to guess how long he would be gone.
The Abuse Began to Take Shape—but It Was Confusing
He was a master at keeping me off balance with his irrational principles and double standards.
I learned to silence myself and live in isolation in order to manage his outbursts.
I believed that marriage was a serious commitment not to be broken, so I needed to see it through.
He lied about everything—even things he didn’t “need” to lie about.
He refused to tell the truth about the most minuscule things.
It was such a departure from the character he showed while we were dating that I was stunned and devastated by his behavior and cruelty.
Their ‘Christian Marriage’ Quickly Became a Scam
I had trusted he was good for me, because a pastor at our church, who I respected, had introduced us believing we would make the perfect match.
He portrayed himself so differently in public that I knew no one would believe me if I ever described how he was behaving behind our closed doors.
Within a few weeks of our wedding, he stopped going to church except very occasionally.
He criticized how I prayed and dictated how our couple’s devotions would go, if at all.
I was ashamed and so embarrassed by my “Christian husband” and my “Christian marriage” that I didn’t get help; I just prayed harder, needing to believe that God would fix this.
I did not know how to safely act within the marriage.
Trying to Talk About the Issues Felt Pointless
If I expressed an opinion that differed from his, it would set him off in a rage.
When I would try to explain my position, it made things worse.
He would frame and then reframe our arguments, making himself the authority on what actually happened or what was said, even when it wasn’t true.
He was so adamant and convincing that I was left spinning, confused, or feeling completely wrong.
There was little room for “me” and definitely no space for my anger, so I stuffed myself and my anger down deep.
He was the only one entitled to be angry or have a bad day.
He would turn all emotion off when I shared with him about a tough day I had at work or with the kids.
At the time, I didn’t understand that his behavior was narcissistic and covert emotional abuse because I had never heard of those terms.
She Also Suffered Physical Abuse
In addition to the confounding covert abuse I endured, he physically abused me on a few occasions, once in our first year of marriage when he pushed me into a wall, then he physically threatened me 3 years later and on with years in between assaults.
Since the physical attacks didn’t happen often, I didn’t think I was in a domestically violent relationship.
However, his non-verbal rage and anger were always simmering—if not on the surface, then just below the surface, like a dormant volcano ready to explode.
I was always afraid he would blow up, so I learned to walk on eggshells day after day.
I wondered if this was what other marriages looked like behind closed doors.
I doubted myself and whether or not I was loveable. Or maybe I didn’t know how to communicate correctly.
The self-doubt was paralyzing.
She Thought It Was Her Fault
I wracked my brain to understand what I had done in such a short time to cause such incredible rage in him.
I had a professional career and was the initial breadwinner in our family, yet I could not figure out what had gone so wrong.
I never saw him like this with other people, so I assumed I was the cause of his anger, and continually tried to shift my behaviors in the hopes I could manage his.
Eventually, I became desperate to get outside help and was willing to risk the embarrassment I felt.
He refused to see a pastor or counselor because he said he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
He Refused to Try to Fix the Problems
On our 10th wedding anniversary, I begged for marriage counseling “so the next 10 years wouldn’t be like the last 10.”
He told me that I was the one who needed counseling and to shut up because he couldn’t stand to hear my voice.
He didn’t like how things were between us either, but he was incapable of taking any personal responsibility for the toxicity that existed or the changes that needed to be made.
He played the victim, claiming how much harder his life had been, how difficult his work was, and his playbook of excuses he used to justify his abusive behavior.
He put the responsibility of our relationship problems on me, 100%.
The Idea That ‘Divorce Was Almost Never Allowed’ Kept Her Trapped
What I hadn’t been taught or didn’t realize back then, was that God did not want me to remain in a violent marriage.
I believed then that divorce was almost never allowed for a Christian couple.
Leaving him wasn’t an option that was available to me, as a Christian.
It took me years to realize this was not true; that God’s intention for me in marriage was that it would be safe and loving; one of mutual respect and care.
I had never heard a pastor speak against abuse in a marriage or communicate that emotional or physical abuse was a proper reason to leave your spouse.
He Also Used Her Fear Against Her
My husband used fear to hold me captive in the relationship.
He would tell me he was about to get fired, or that we were going to go bankrupt any day, causing me tremendous anxiety for our family.
He’d say, “tomorrow will be a better day to commit suicide…” so that I would not leave.
It worked.
I was terrified most of the time; frozen by my fear. So, I stayed.
His ‘Magical Thinking’ Was Destructive and Confusing
He was a master at lying, and also a master of “magical” thinking.
He magically thought that if he did nothing, things would get better on their own without any effort or change on his part.
His magical thinking included what I call “geographical thinking,” meaning he would promise that things would be better in the next place we would move to.
After multiple cross-country moves, I discovered that there is no such thing as a geographical promise in a destructive relationship.
Anger and control were so embedded in him. He carried them everywhere he went.
He told me that he loved me, but in reality, he defined “love” by the amount of “control” he had.
He Used Her Vulnerabilities Against Her
If I shared something confidential or personal about my life or my family, he would ultimately use it against me.
He would go on to betray that confidence with others, exploiting my vulnerability.
Although he liberally exposed the things I entrusted to him, he refused to be authentic or vulnerable with me about himself.
He shared almost nothing about his past or his family with me.
The Most Confusing Part of It All Was the ‘Covert’ Abuse
The complicated nature of the type of abuse I experienced was because much of it was “covert.”
He rarely called me names or engaged in overt, obvious behaviors that would help me see it as abuse.
Instead, he withheld approval and appreciation constantly, and then I would wonder if I was just being too needy.
An example of this is one time I asked him how I looked in a new pantsuit, and he told me he liked the pantsuit, specifically emphasizing the suit instead of me.
I asked him, “But how do ‘I’ look?”
I really wanted him to see me and how I wanted to look good for him.
He leaned in, stared right through me with an ice-cold glare, and repeated that he liked the pantsuit.
He consistently refused to see me, affirm me, or give his approval of me in any way.
And it effectively broke me down.
Communication Seemed Utterly Impossible
I asked him to communicate more with me and to tell me why he was angry all the time, what he was thinking and feeling—but he had me believing those “expectations” of him were too high and unreasonable.
He repeatedly told me that I made his life miserable, but never once gave me a reason for how or why he felt that way.
As a rational person, I kept trying to make sense of things and that is what kept me in his irrational spiral.
After our biggest cross-country move for his job, I was having a hard time adjusting.
One night, crumbled in tears, I told my husband that I was hurting and really needed him.
He looked at me, said he had nothing to give, and walked out of the room.
He actually put into words what his behavior had been saying since our wedding rehearsal dinner—he had nothing to give, and no intention to change that.
Zero empathy.
I started to see what I was living in at that time.
She Eventually Learned That He Had Been Having Affairs
Much later, I came to know and understand that my husband had many extramarital affairs with other women throughout our relationship, starting shortly after we first wed.
One of the few times that he confessed, he told me to “get over it” and that it was more devastating for him to admit the affairs than it was for me to endure them.
He would become untethered when I found emails, letters, or texts from other women.
Somehow, he would turn it around on me, accusing me of cheating and putting me on the defense.
- What I was doing all day?
- Who I was with?
- How could he trust me?
His Behavior Was Confusing and Difficult to Unravel
It’s hard to explain, but caught in the whirlwind of these tactics, you get misdirected, confused, and all effort toward resolution and clarity is thwarted.
He could make himself look like the victim even though he was the one who was caught cheating.
When I confronted him about letters I found from other women, he would have them call me to lie and tell me they were only fantasizing about being intimate with him and to deny any affair.
My suspicions only heightened his efforts to hide his affairs, so he never made the same mistake twice.
He abused Christianity by saying that he could never be unfaithful to me and although he “made mistakes with women,” he would NEVER actually cheat on me.
Quite honestly, I was afraid to not believe him because I desperately wanted this to be true.
I was so broken down and in my desperation, I chose to believe him.
I didn’t know how to set and enforce boundaries with such a force as his anger.
She Tried Reaching Out to a Friend, but It Went Horribly Wrong
Early on, I reached out to my best friend about the pain I was living in.
What I was not prepared for was how utterly harmful and destructive her responses were to me; she exacerbated the traumatic effects of the abuse I had already endured.
Her “godly advice” consistently guided me into learned hopelessness and despair.
This is when the trajectory of my marriage changed and I knew I would not survive if I didn’t get professional help.
I had lost all faith in our own ability to make this work—and even though I wanted to believe that our marriage could survive, I knew the only hope I had was in reaching out.
The experience over the course of my 25+ year marriage living under my husband’s oppression, I lost my confidence to think clearly, lost trust my feelings and perspective, and was a shell of my former self.
Early on in my marriage, when I began to lose clarity, the first person I naturally reached out to for support was my best friend; sharing with her all the lies, anger, and crazy-making behaviors.
“Well, God hates divorce so that’s not an option” became her mantra to me for over two decades.
It was my first exposure to this legalism, but certainly not my last.
My best friend believed that unless I could prove my husband was cheating on me, I didn’t have Biblical grounds to take any action—and my reaction should be to just keep praying.
It had never been pointed out to me, by pastors or other Christians, that God abhors abuse within relationships and that verbal and emotional mistreatment is just as much abuse as physical violence.
As a result of not knowing this then, and thinking my friend was spiritually wiser, I felt compelled to stay; but staying only emboldened my husband’s abusive behavior.
My friend’s ideology had me believing that the institution of marriage was more valuable than my own safety, and that leaving my marriage would equate to disobeying God or losing His favor.
Even years later, when I learned about my husband’s adultery—dozens of affairs, which gave me the most widely accepted Biblical grounds for a divorce—my friend encouraged me to forgive because “he was really crying and very sorry.”
The Trauma Started to Drastically Affect Her Mental Health
On the outside, I looked fine—because I had learned how to conceal what was going on in my home.
But on the inside, I lived in a constant state of confusion and despair.
I started experiencing what I later learned were panic attacks.
I was scrambling for answers—so when I came across the word and meaning of “narcissist,” it was a before-and-after moment for me.
I immediately confirmed that my husband’s behavior checked 8 of the 9 traits found on the list of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) established by the psychiatric world.
“Abuse” was not a widely used term at that time, and it would be years before I discovered the list of abusive behavior terms and definitions created by The MEND Project.
But recognizing that he was a narcissist helped me start to understand some of the chaos and dysfunction he created.
They Started Going to Counseling—and That Only Made Things Worse
When my husband finally agreed to marriage counseling, we went to six different Christian counselors over many years.
My husband gave me strict guidelines on who he would and would not see, and those guidelines propped up his moralism of appearing like a “big-time Christian” on the outside.
Strategically, my husband would ask to meet with the new counselor alone before we met as a couple. Therefore, by the time I walked into the first counseling session, he had already set the stage, portraying himself as the victim.
I quietly accepted this because I was too fearful not to, but also I was hoping the counselor would discern what was really going on and rescue us.
Instead, each of these six counselors made things phenomenally worse.
And the only thing I walked away with from Christian marriage counseling was more trauma.
Our first counselor gave my husband permission to not disclose things about his affairs, so he quickly learned that he didn’t have to be accountable for his infidelity.
Another counselor asked me if I was really telling the truth about my husband’s erratic anger and cruelty.
He clearly favored believing my husband’s calm and impressive demeanor that sat in his office over believing the threatening and mean-spirited demeanor that I described living with at home.
Trying to relieve the tension between us over my husband’s increasing unaccountability, a third counselor proposed that we create a curfew.
My husband could be unaccountable to me up until a pre-arranged curfew time.
He asked if I was comfortable with a 1 a.m. curfew or if midnight would be better.
I remember thinking to myself, “wow, my husband just manipulated a Christian PhD into thinking it’s acceptable for a married man to be unaccountable to his wife.”
He is THAT GOOD at manipulating people.
He Eventually Got a DUI
After a DUI, my husband manipulated an AA counselor from Hazleton into believing that he didn’t have a drinking problem and could do his court-required counseling over the phone.
One month after the mandatory counseling ended, he got his second DUI.
One of the last counselors we saw refused to allow me to use the words “narcissist” or “abuse” because he believed it was wrong to put labels on behaviors—it was all just sin.
We had to pretend that my husband’s abuse, drinking, and narcissism were just generic sins with generic cures.
This naïve counselor’s effort to streamline several years of harm that had been done, actually kept us from any chance of restoring our marriage.
One can’t cure cancer if it is not diagnosed as cancer and treated as cancer.
In the End, Marriage Counseling Only Led to Spiritual and Double Abuse
In summary, our marriage counseling experiences amounted to Spiritual Abuse and Double Abuse® for me.
In their attempts to save the marriage at all costs, each counselor failed to see me and, instead, they sacrificed me.
It was so much easier for them to put the onus on me to adjust, forgive, and move on, rather than to try to change a master narcissistic abuser.
I eventually terminated each of our counseling sessions because, for me, our marriage only got worse.
“Quitting” became part of my husband’s narrative against me: He was willing to go to counseling and “fight” for the marriage, but I was always “quitting.”
The truth is that there was no transparency, no accountability, no healing, and no change. This was the story with every counselor.
My Spiritual and Double Abuse® continued with local churches and Christian leaders when I reached out to them for help and understanding.
For example, an influential bible study leader I had for over 10 years met with me a few times and listened as I described living with my husband’s alcoholism, discovering his adultery, and suffering through his verbal and emotional abuse.
I wanted to believe that she was my advocate until one day her parting words were that she wouldn’t do anything because she is “not a whistleblower.”
She also informed me that because we were not technically members of that church (even though we were regular attendees who faithfully tithed and they were very happy to take our money) the church would not help me either.
She then gave me a list of some things I needed to do if I wanted to get the church’s support in the future, and never reached out to me again.
In another situation, I reached out to the leadership of a Christian men’s group my husband was part of for many years.
I hoped that once my husband’s faith peers knew he was abusive and living in adultery with a drinking problem, they would rally around him with tough love.
The leaders promised that our meeting and communication would be strictly confidential.
Weeks passed and rather than hearing back from them, the first thing I heard was OUTRAGE from my husband because they told him we had met.
It appeared that their goal was to give him a heads up on what I was saying and not to intervene.
Although I had explained to them how destructive counseling had been for our marriage, they said they wouldn’t get involved unless I returned to marriage counseling.
They lied, violated my confidence, caused even more psychological harm for me from my husband, and were willing to overlook his egregious sins and violations of his vows.
They never apologized for their betrayal. Instead, they “doubled down” claiming they did nothing wrong.
A couple years later, it became public that the leader of this group was exposed for sexting and prostitution.
Through another friend’s concern, she set up a meeting for me with her pastor because he claimed that he could assuredly identify a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
If my husband was saying one thing and living another way, this pastor would know.
My gut told me not to meet with him, but agreed anyway because of my friend’s encouragement and my own desperation to be validated.
We met several times, and rather than educating himself on covert abuse or gaining an understanding on the faulty thinking in abusers, this pastor befriended my husband.
After one lunch together and against the advice within all of the professional and expert research and books that I shared with him, he sided with my husband.
He decided he believed my husband, severed his connection with me, and soon thereafter my friend severed her connection as well.
They deserted me in favor of an abusive, alcoholic adulterer.
It was exactly the Double Abuse® that The MEND Project so clearly identifies.
The Double Abuse and Spiritual Abuse Did a Great Deal of Damage
The Spiritual and Double Abuse® from these Christian counselors, leaders, and pastor brought me into the darkest days of my life.
I had never felt so alone as I when I was rejected in my greatest time of need by God’s people.
I had lived in a constant state of angst and trauma with my husband for decades, but it was the Spiritual and Double Abuse® that plunged me into an exponentially darker trauma.
With Complex PTSD, I descended into a long battle of health issues, medical testing, surgeries, and diagnostics.
I was genetically tested when my team of nine doctors believed my health decline was too extreme to only be stress-related.
The tests found no genetic markers and no medical explanations.
Consequently, the more I separated from harmful people, the more my soul healed and my body followed.
Thankfully, Hope Was Not All Lost
In 2017, I met Annette Oltmans, founder of The MEND Project.
Annette was the first person that I heard speak about the physical trauma that happens from non-physical harm.
Our bodies do keep the score of our experiences (book by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk) and most importantly, God is keeping score of all the harm that we have suffered.
Also, upon meeting Annette, she gave me her list of Covert Emotional Abuse Terms and Definitions (which you can download from our resources page.)
Similar to when I discovered the term “narcissist,” reading The MEND Project’s definitions was life-changing for me.
I realized there are others living with the same abuse, the same nightmares, and struggling to put it into words.
It remains the most powerful information on abuse that I have found.
The covert suffering from my ex-husband made me passionate to help other Christian wives, and the suffering I endured at the hands of the church drives me to be a voice, to write my story, and to support the work that The MEND Project is doing.
I love that TMP has created teaching and training for the abused, the church, the responders, and even the abuser.
Educating everyone is the only way to make a difference in this epidemic.
In Conclusion
We hope that by reading Brooke’s story, you are able to see how gaining clarity of the issues she was facing became a necessary turning point in her ability to take concrete steps towards her own healing.
At the MEND Project, we provide a comprehensive list of terms and definitions (mentioned above) that describe specific abusive behaviors so abuse can be identified and confronted by victims and Responders.
These terms and definitions are integral to victims’ processes of unraveling their confusion.
We also see In Brooke’s story an overly familiar and unfortunate theme: the clear signs that too many therapists have not been sufficiently trained in abuse to provide the care and counsel their clients need.
Properly trained therapists fully recognize that couples therapy is strictly contraindicated in emotional and physical abuse cases.
When people in positions of power and authority doubly abuse victims, it makes matters so much worse for both the one who is being harmed and the one who is causing harm.
That is one reason The MEND Project places a priority on training therapists and faith-based leaders of all beliefs.
If you know a therapist or pastor who is harming you and needs our training, please connect them to us so we can help.