3 Surprising Ways Your Husband Is Taking Advantage Of You

Women who feel, “my husband is taking advantage of me,” may often be confused by the damaging advice they receive when they go for help. And what you know right now may only be the tip of the iceberg. See If Your Husband is Taking Advantage of You: 3 Ways 1. IF HE USES YOUR TRUST TO HIDE WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING Most women don’t enter marriage looking for problems. They enter it assuming he’s telling the truth, and if something feels off, there must be a harmless reason. So when he’s distant or irritable, you might think he’s stressed or he’s had a bad day. But what if that’s not the reason he’s stressed? Stay with me…You’ll see more about how this plays out in real time. 2. He LIEs TO YOU ABOUT HOW HE SPENDS HIS TIME OR MONEY  If your husband is taking advantage of you in this way, you’re not going to know, but it’s definitely going to feel like he’s taking advantage of you, because things are not adding up. If you need help figuring things out, join our Betrayal Trauma Support Group online. Even if you don’t have all the details, patterns of secrecy + financial behavior + outside relationships are enough. 3. HE’S TRYING TO GET YOU TO DOUBT YOUR OWN INTUITION  If he’s saying things like, you’re overreacting or you’re imagining things, or he’s saying he didn’t say something he definitely said, he’s trying to take advantage of that conversation to manipulate you.  If you relate and think you might be experiencing emotional abuse, take my free emotional abuse test. Transcript: MY HUSBAND IS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF ME Anne: We have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’re gonna call her Misha. Welcome, Misha. Misha: Hi. Thanks for having me. I have listened to the podcast. Hearing other people’s story is the reason I wanted to share my story. And be part of this community of very strong women who have experienced a lot of things, similar to what I’ve experienced. We were married six and a half years, when I found out my husband was cheating on me. I was sitting on the couch with my two children, and scrolling through my apps on my phone, and I found four NSA dating apps. NSA is no strings attached. Not just one, but four. And I didn’t know where they came from, because I saw them on my phone, not his. And then I realized that we have a family share plan that shows all the apps within the family share plan. If you toggle at the top, it shows the other devices and they were on his device. That’s what triggered my story, but it is so much more explosive than that. The things that I found out after was horrifying. I knew I needed to start teaching children how to set boundaries. WE WERE THE PERFECT FAMILY Anne: So that was what some women called D-Day. You realized something was amiss. Can we go back a little bit? How did you feel about him and how your relationship was before you found those apps? Misha: We were the perfect family. He was charming, well-liked in our community. He’s high ranking military. We had adopted twins from birth, who were two years old when I found out. It was like Prince Charming, and he was perfect. So I thought, looking back now, there were a lot of signs that it wasn’t. Anne: And you couldn’t have known. I think this is the thing people don’t understand. They might say you didn’t see the red flags, and I don’t think that’s the case. I think you see them, you just interpret them through the lens you have at the time. So if he’s grumpy, for example, you think, oh, he had a bad day. You don’t think he is having an affair. Misha: He showed a lot of signs of stress. But anytime I approached him about it, he was stressed out from work. He felt overwhelmed by work. And he needed space because of the job. It was always, it’s not you or the kids, it’s just me, and it’s just work. So I tried to give him more space and make sure to take care of the house, kids and everything. So he could come home and decompress or whatever he needed. SECRET APPS AND MISSING FUNDS: MY HUSBAND IS TAKING ADVANTAGE Misha: He couldn’t talk to me about work. So I asked him if it was really affecting him that much, that he should find someone to talk to, that there are services for military. He decided to talk to the chaplain at one point, and then it was like everything magically was better. He seemed happier and more engaged with the kids and I after that. So I thought we were fine. But that was right before I found the apps. He had downloaded them about the same time he was feeling better. Once I found those apps, it triggered me to look for more. Since he was deployed during that time, I couldn’t even talk to him when I found those apps. Anne: That’s kind of a blessing actually. Misha: It actually was. Anne: Knowing that your husband is taking advantage of you, it was good that he couldn’t manipulate you more and lie to you more. You could just find more information that he couldn’t twist. Misha: Twist and turn and I found a whole nightmare. I went into his bank account and was looking for strange transactions, thinking I would find some dating thing going on, but if they’re NSA apps, they’re probably not that happening. So I searched through the bank statements and started finding thousands of dollars, wired out $31,000, wired out $15,000, wired out $3500 a check for $20,000. Anne: Whoa. FINDING EVIDENCE OF EXTORTION Misha: ATM withdrawals for almost $17,000. It was a lot. I was a stay at home mom and he was providing for us. Some transactions went to a place called digital forensics.com. I didn’t know what that was. So I looked it up and it was a digital forensics company that will basically cover up your digital tracks. I found emails from this digital forensics company. They were just some that were like screenshots of his WhatsApp, which I didn’t know he had WhatsApp. Then I scrolled through those emails and clicked on the attachment for one of them. And a brochure popped up that said sextortion onboarding. Anne: So is he extorted for videos or pictures of him out there doing sexual things? Or is he the one doing the extorting? What were you thinking at the time? Misha: I had to Google it to be sure I was correct, thinking that he did something of a sexual nature that someone was using to blackmail him. And the emails confirmed he is the one extorted. It was a lot of the same questions in my mind. Is it him? Is it somebody else? What’s going on here? But I still don’t have those answers. I don’t know what he did to get himself extorted, obviously. But I do know my husband is taking advantage of it. I CALLED A DIVORCE LAWYER Anne: One of the things I talk about quite a bit is knowing one thing is knowing everything. Knowing that he was extorted for sexual videos floating around there, or an affair or something. That’s all I need to know, because it tells me everything, even though I don’t have all the details or information. Misha: I didn’t wanna know from the start. It was enough to see that he did something of that nature that got him in this position, and I don’t need to know what it is. The amount of money gone, he obviously did something he was guilty of doing. The amount of money he spent to cover it up and get rid of it, whatever it is, was enough. After I found those emails, I immediately called a divorce lawyer. This was in like three days. Anne: Good for you. Misha: Yeah, from the time I found the bank statements to the emails was about three days, and I called the lawyer. Anne: Wow, that is so brave. You were really smart about it. ‘Cause I did this, and so many of us do that. We want to talk to them or try to work it out or something, and it just gets us in deeper, so that’s amazing. Had you guys ever done couple therapy or like pornography, addiction recovery, or had you ever seen anything like that before you found those apps on the phone? MY HUSBAND IS TAKING ADVANTAGE AND I CONFRONTED HIM Misha: I had caught him with pornography before, twice in our marriage. At times throughout the relationship he had stuff on his phone that was like pictures of himself being seductive in a mirror or something. I had no idea I was experiencing betrayal trauma in a relationship. Anne: Like thirst traps sort of-ish. Misha: Yes. I confronted him about those, and he was like, I was gonna send you those pictures. I just never got around to it. We just never were that way. He didn’t like me to send seductive pictures of myself to him. There was a time when I took my daughter one morning with me. He was taking our son to a playground, and have a Father’s Sunday. I came back to the house ’cause I forgot something and he hadn’t left yet. As I approached the house, the TV was blaring with cartoons, so I went in the front door and my son is sitting on the floor. He is about 18 months old by himself, with the TV as loud as could be. My husband is nowhere around. So I darted back to our bedroom, where I needed to get the thing I forgot. The door was cracked, and I could see him sitting on the end of the bed doing what you can only imagine. I thought, “my husband is taking advantage of me being gone.” I pushed the door open and confronted him. The door was open so my son could have walked in on him. I said, “Give me your phone.” And he was like, “It’s just porn, it’s just porn.” I was very angry about it. He didn’t really spend much time with the children anyways, and instead of taking his son to the park, he chose to do that instead. HE WAS VERY GOOD AT HIDING EVERYTHING Misha: I would say for the most part, he was very good at hiding everything. He’s military. He has top secret security clearance. And he knows how to hide things. He had a work cell phone that I couldn’t touch. When I searched his emails, nothing from those apps came up. You have to have an email to use those apps. We didn’t live together because of him deploying back and forth. He lived where he was stationed. And I lived back home in the Midwest. He would visit us after deployment, and then go back and forth. Anne: Mm-hmm. Misha: He was visiting us this one time for a short weekend before he was deploying again, and he was behaving very strangely. He looked disheveled, almost like a homeless person. It was very eerie when he was home, even my son was uncomfortable with him in the home. There was one night I was trying to put him to bed, and he was just aggressively not going to sleep, and he wouldn’t go to sleep till almost three o’clock in the morning. I never had those issues getting him to sleep. And so the next night after that, I asked my husband to leave and go to the gas station while I put them to bed. It took me about 15 minutes to get him sleep. I discovered later that my husband is taking advantage of that timeframe when he was there he was withdrawing from the ATM, which was two minutes from my house. HE GAVE MONEY TO THE EXTORTIONER Misha: It was like $200 transactions for those three days. Whatever the max withdrawal, you can withdraw for your limit. I totaled nearly $7,000 cash, and he drove to visit us. He had to hide the cash in my house, and then drove halfway across the country with it to give it to whoever was extorting him. I asked him later. Did you give cash to someone? And he said yes. It was confusing. Because after I filed for divorce, I talked to my mother about what happened. She knew a military veteran. She told him a little bit about what was going on. He told her that if I didn’t report him to the military, I would be found complicit and that they could take my children from me. So I called the commander’s wife and asked her to tell me who to call for this. And she was like, “Your husband? No, it has to be somebody else. Maybe it was one of his guys. He was helping with an extortion case. There’s no way it’s your husband. He loves you. He talks about you all the time. And the kids, there’s no way.” And I said, “It is him.” Anne: He couldn’t very well show his true self to his commander and wife. The person they would trust and think is a good guy would be a family man. So that’s the face he would show them. Your husband is taking advantage of you and them. MY HUSBAND IS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF HIS POSITION AND MILITARY TRAINING Misha: Exactly. He made a good show for sure. She referred me to the command, and then the command referred me to NCIS. I gave NCIS all the information I had. And I said, I just wanna know that my kids and I are safe. At the end of his digital forensics investigation into his extortion, there was an encrypted file saying your case has been closed. Obviously, I couldn’t see what was in the encrypted file. But I sent that to NCIS. They basically told me we were safe, and there was no other information they could give me. And that it was just an online scam. But I don’t see giving someone cash for an online scam. Anne: Yeah, if it was a scam, he wouldn’t have been so scared by it. Misha: Yeah, they basically were like, “Yep, this happens all the time.” Anne: Really. Misha: I’m like, “That’s horrible to hear, and why are you allowing it?” Anne: And also, What? Especially the military, you would think they would be worried about officers being extorted. Maybe by people from other countries. Misha: Exactly. Anne: It’s really alarming that your husband is taking advantage of his position. Misha: He gave trainings himself on this, how not to mess around to get extorted and blackmailed. Like my husband gave the trainings to his sailors on this, and this happens all the time. THEY SAID HE WAS THE VICTIM Anne: Well, and then the military doesn’t think, wait a minute, he for sure knows we’ve gotta do something about this guy. He is probably pretty dangerous. They just are like, eh, whatever, wow. Misha: No, they said, “He is the victim.” Anne: Wow! Okay. Misha: He’s the victim, and I was like, oh, I think he is actually the perpetrator of his own extortion. I don’t think he’s a victim of extortion. If he did something someone can use to extort him, that’s not a victim. Especially if it was a sexual nature outside your marriage. Anne: There are all kinds of victims in this story. Number one, you and your children, but then also perhaps the women your husband is taking advantage of, the women he’s paying money to exploit, that he’s coercing them with cash. We can imagine all the other women who maybe he’s lying to them. Misha: We don’t have to imagine it. I found it all. We had the same phone bill for six and a half years. I went back through the phone bills. This was going on way before we had children. It was going on our entire relationship. He was regularly in contact with sex workers. I went through phone number after phone number. He had hundreds and hundreds of text messages from all kinds of different numbers throughout the phone bill, and they led to pornography sites and escort sites. AUTHORITIES WOULDN’T DO ANYTHING UNLESS HE WAS VIOLENT Anne: Did you give the military that as well? And not that you should have, I’m just curious. Misha: They didn’t care. I reported him for potential prostitution. I did an entire report on all of it. Anne: They didn’t care that your husband is taking advantage of you and possibly endangering you and your children? Misha: They wouldn’t do anything unless he was violent towards me. Anne: Oh, that’s the insane thing about our current culture, I guess. He is, by all accounts, an abusive man on so many levels. Breaking the law because it’s illegal to coerce women with money. It’s often literal sex trafficking. Because the definition of sex trafficking is the exchange of money for it essentially. This is serious stuff. It’s criminal, but even if it wasn’t criminal, it’s abusive. But they’re like, it’s no big deal. If the people tasked with protecting us don’t know what abuse is, that’s a problem. Misha: Absolutely. I mean, the extent of information I found is just appalling. It makes him a very deviant person in my mind. After I was in contact with the NCIS investigators and everything, and they were like, “Yeah, thanks. We don’t care.” They brought him home within 24 hours of that phone call. Anne: So then you’re not protected. That was scary too. Misha: I said, can you not bring him home? They said, no, you guys need to talk. Anne: What? MY HUSBAND IS TAKING ADVANTAGE AND HE CLAIMS ADDICTION Misha: I don’t wanna talk to him. Yet they made me talk to him. Anne: But that only benefits him and not you. Misha: Yeah, they said he needs to explain himself to me. No, I don’t need an explanation. He lied to me more. He claims sex addiction. Immediately after he came home. He said, “Something happened really bad, I’ve reported myself.” He didn’t know that I was the one who reported him. Anne: Oh. Misha: I said, “No, you are home because I reported you.” And he goes, “What? What do you mean you reported me?” “I reported you, that is why they took you off the ship.” And I said, “So you can stop lying now. I know everything.” And then he just continued to lie. Anne: Mm-hmm. Misha: I know my husband is taking advantage of sex workers. He said he never had sex with any other women, so he didn’t technically cheat. Anne: But we know that’s not true. Misha: He did confirm paying for erotic massage. He said, “No sex or masturbation during the massage.” Anne: Didn’t you witness him doing that, to pornography? Misha: Yeah. Anne: Yeah, he’s just lying. Wow, okay. HE DIDN’T WANT TO GET A DIVORCE Misha: Well, this is the thing I said, “Where did you find an erotic massage?” Like, I wouldn’t even know where to find that. And he’s like, “Oh, it was an ad on a pornography site.” Anne: Also, what is the point of an erotic massage? If you don’t have sex? Just get a regular massage. Misha: Yeah. I was like, “You responded to an ad on a pornography site.” I said, “Where was it located?” And he said, “Someone’s private apartment.” Like, what are you doing? Going to a strange person’s apartment for that? And he did it more than once. Anne: Well, and a lot of these places will video without the person’s consent, and then upload it onto websites themselves. So then they have evidence of him, and that can be downloaded and uploaded repeatedly. Victims who are coerced or trafficked can never get the evidence of their sexual assault off the internet. In his case, he participated in it. That will be uploaded and downloaded. He already knew that, if that’s the class he taught in the military. Misha: Yeah, he knows, he doesn’t care. Anne: Did he react to you filing for divorce? Misha: He didn’t wanna get divorced, just stay separated. And I was like, absolutely not. I do not wanna be tied to you in any way. My husband is taking advantage of the courts. It took almost two years to get the divorce over with. I was trying to take the kids from him. Anne: He couldn’t take care of them ’cause he was always deployed, like that’s crazy. HE GOT A PROMOTION A MONTH AFTER Misha: He even told me, “I’ll give you sole custody,” at one point. And I’m like, “Okay, thanks. Sign the papers.” I mean there were so many layers of the trauma process. He wouldn’t do it. He told me he had to give the extorters the money, because they threatened his wife and kids. I wouldn’t let him see the kids until he had proof of therapy of some kind. The military didn’t do anything. There was no punishment that I know of. He actually got a promotion to commander a month after this. I’m like my husband is taking advantage of me and our kids and they don’t care. Anne: That happened with my ex too, like not with his job, but with our church. Basically, I let them know, and then, like two weeks later, he had a promotion. I was like, what? Misha: Doesn’t make sense. So he’s like, “I’m not dating anyone. I’m not doing any of that anymore. I’m recovered, I’m in SA I went to therapy.” And my lawyers and I agreed he could have supervised visits with the children, and I had to supervise it. Because he wouldn’t pay for social worker, of course, he wanted to make me watch him play with our children. it was very uncomfortable to supervise those visits. One of the worst was Christmas. He came in town and we decided to do Christmas at our house. His parents were gonna come over, we were gonna cook a small dinner and try to have a good holiday for the kids. He was cooking in the kitchen, putting together green bean casserole, and the kids and I were in the living room. He gets done with that and comes in the living room. And I got up and left and went in the kitchen. MY HUSBAND IS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF AND ENDANGERING OUR CHILDREN Misha: Because I couldn’t tolerate being in the same room as him. And I noticed that he left his phone on the counter open and unlocked, which had never happened before. His phone was always face down and locked, and not out of his sight. And again, it’s hundreds of text messages, FaceTimes from other women, and their names are like Angelica Rose, Ruby Bee. Names that sound like an alias. So I quickly scrolled through a few of them. There were three that I remember specifically. They were inappropriate adult conversations, but among those feeds, I found pictures of my children. Anne: It’s inappropriate to send people involved in trafficking pictures of children. Misha: Yes, and he also said their names. “That he couldn’t wait to go back to their location and see them for Christmas.” After he was blackmailed, extorted. He continues to communicate with these people. And he’s also sending pictures of my children, their location, and where he will be. And when I took the phone, I shoved it in his face, and I said, “Get out of my house.” Anne: Yeah, your husband is taking advantage of your children, too. Misha: And he’s like, “We’re not together anymore. I can date whoever I want.” I said, “I don’t give a, who you date, do not ever send pictures of my children to anyone ever again.” And his face dropped, and he put his head down, and he walked out the house. And I will never forgive this man for endangering my children. Anne: Yeah. I WAS EVEN MORE WORRIED FOR MY CHILDREN Misha: And I reported it to the Navy, and they said, “As long as those pictures weren’t inappropriate, there’s nothing we’ll do.” Anne: Well, at the very least, not have custody. Misha: Nope. The lawyer said that there’s nothing. Anne: It doesn’t make a difference. Misha: It doesn’t matter. Anne: Why does everyone talk about how they hate child abuse, but they won’t stop abusers? But this guy, even though there’s all this evidence of emotional and psychological abuse, abuse of other human beings, and I’m talking about the women he’s exploiting by coercing them with cash, that’s who does the abusing. This is who they are. And did he physically sexually abuse your kids? Who knows? Maybe you know, but that’s the type of person who would, they’re not parent material. Misha: Exactly what I was terrified of, because they’re adopted. And I know that people who do that don’t even care if they’re biologically related. So I was even more worried for my children. I lived near his family, and I had to get away from there before the divorce was over. He gets one week and a month and some holidays, and then half the summer. Anne: I have found the Living Free Workshop helps with everything. The message strategies you’ll see when you take it. If they have nothing to get from you and your kids, the current working theory is they just leave you alone forever, not taking the one weekend a month, or not taking the summer. THERE IS SO MUCH MORE GOING ON BESIDES WHAT I KNOW Anne: If there’s a woman out there listening who is wondering, is this really serious? Is this podcast actually for me? I mean, he’s only looked at pornography a few times. Or he only had that one affair or something like that. What would you share with her? Misha: When all this happened, the only person I really speak to is my sister. She called me immediately, and said, “I’m so sorry.” And over those next two or three days, as I found things, I shared them with her. And she told her husband what happened, and he told her, “She has to go, it doesn’t matter how small it is, most of the time it is just the tip of the iceberg. And there is so much more there that you may never even know and don’t wanna know.” He was like, ” The best way to leave a narcissist husband is right away.” For me, I was ready to leave the moment I found the apps, but you don’t have to stay because you need more information or evidence. You just can leave because you want to. Anne: Many women, and I did this, so this makes sense. I thought that when I had the information that would help him change, so in my case, I knew something was wrong. And when he got arrested for spraining my fingers, I thought, now he’ll know. Proof doesn’t do anything to them. So you taking this to him, and he did say, oh, I’ll get addiction therapy, but that’s not how it would’ve turned out. He would’ve just lied to you better. So even thinking that maybe somehow having the proof will help them make a change is also such a trap. LYING IS THE PROBLEM WHEN YOUR HUSBAND IS TAKING ADVANTAGE Anne: I’m so grateful that your sister and brother-in-law helped you see through that. That’s great that you had such good support. Misha: I am the kind of person that I have to know. So while he’s telling me he’s not doing those things anymore, I’m continuing to dig. Finding things was just more confirmation that he was never going to stop lying, and that I should not allow him to convince me to even contemplate getting back together, stay separated, and I still catch him lying about things. Anne: I mean, why do they want to be married when they don’t want to be married? Misha: Oh, that was my thing. Anne: What do they think marriage is? Misha: If this is what you wanna do with your life, why would you have a wife and children, just be single? And I hate that you wanna participate in, you know, sex trafficking, but if you wanna be single and go no strings attached with everyone else, that’s your choice. But it wasn’t mine, and I didn’t get a choice. And now I’m like, “Am I over my ex the best way to know?” Well, I can look back at all the facts. Anne: Exactly. Why not just be like, this is who I am, this is what I wanna do. Do you wanna be married to me under these circumstances? This is the whole point. If they weren’t abusive, they would say, oh no, I really like paying women for sex. I’m gonna keep doing it. And maybe no one would arrest them. But at least we could be like, oh, I don’t wanna be married to a man who does that. So goodbye. I DIDN’T HAVE FREEDOM OF CHOICE Anne: The lying is the real problem. While I don’t support pornography or any abuse of women, whether through coercion or exploitation, at least then you’d clearly see that your husband taking advantage goes beyond what you may have realized. Misha: Exactly. It would give me freedom of choice. But I didn’t have that. I still don’t have it, ’cause he’s still lying. I just wish he didn’t have custody of my children. Anne: Yeah, hopefully I can check back in with you after you’ve learned the Living Free strategies and see how things are going in six months to a year from now, and see if it was helpful to you. Thank you so much for sharing today. I am so sorry you’re going through this. Your story will help women. I’m so grateful that you were willing to share. Misha: Thank you for having me on.