Emotional Battering: The Invisible Abuse No One Can See

When emotional battering is covert, each moment looks harmless on its own. A comment, joke, or a nice” surprise might seem harmless. But when you step back and look at the pattern, a very different story emerges, one where boundaries are crossed, and her reactions are used as evidence against her. SEVEN SIGNS OF EMOTIONAL BATTERING Here are seven signs of emotional battering that often go unnoticed, especially when the husband looks like a great guy to everyone else. Her reactions don’t match his gestures. He is doing something that seems nice, but she seems genuinely distressed. It usually means she senses something that other people can’t. If she seems on edge around his kindness. She flinches at affection or looks uneasy when he is charming, it’s usually because she knows that kindness is hiding something that isn’t so kind. If she watches him carefully, she’s probably gauging risk. Hyperawareness is an emotional survival skill. So if she’s being emotionally battered, it’s totally normal that she’s gonna be on high alert for emotional manipulation. Feeling relief when you are away from him is a powerful indicator that something’s really wrong in your marriage. She apologizes for things that don’t require an apology. If she’s apologizing for just stating her opinion, or talking about how she feels, it’s highly likely that she’s experiencing emotional battering. She adjusts herself to constantly keep the peace. His lies that she’s doing something wrong are part of the emotional battering. Her friends notice that she’s not quite herself around him. A woman who’s trying to make herself smaller is not loved in marriage. If she seems quieter or less alive in his presence, that’s a sign that her husband is emotionally battering her. To learn if you are a victim of emotional battering, take this free emotional abuse quiz. WHAT IS EMOTIONAL BATTERING? Emotional battering is a consistent pattern of words, actions, or behaviors intended to manipulate, or control a person. Unlike physical abuse, emotional battering is more subtle and insidious, making it difficult to identify and even harder to explain to others. Worse, an abuser may manipulate others, so you experience emotional battering from people in your church congregation or even neighbors. If you’re experiencing emotional battering from by-standers regarding your husband’s behavior, you need support. Attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY. COMMON EMOTIONAL BATTERING TACTICS Being married and experiencing emotional battering by your husband means navigating daily complexities that are draining and painful. Some common tactics include: Gaslighting: Making you question your memory, reality, or perceptions. For example, he may say, “I never said that,” even when you vividly remember he did. Constant Criticism: Regularly pointing out flaws, whether it’s your cooking, appearance, or parenting, to damage your confidence. Blame Shifting: Over time, you may find yourself thinking, my husband says I’m the problem, because he consistently redirects accountability onto you instead of addressing his own actions. Stonewalling or Silent Treatment: Refusing to engage in meaningful conversations, leaving you feeling invalidated and powerless. Public Embarrassment: Mocking or undermining you in front of friends or family to isolate you and damage your self-esteem. Emotional Withholding: Withholding affection, love, or support to punish or control you. TRANSCRIPT: EMOTIONAL BATTERING – THE INVISIBLE ABUSE NO ONE CAN SEE Anne: I have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’re gonna call her Kiki. Welcome, Kiki. Kiki: Thank you very much. I’m excited to be here. First of all, I wanna thank BTR, because when I was in the middle of a complete breakdown, not understanding what was happening to me, it was only through finding your organization and the help of your team that made me realize that I wasn’t safe. The abuse was so covert that most people couldn’t have recognized it, myself included. I had therapists that didn’t recognize it as emotional battering. And that started a journey into figuring out exactly what had happened to me. And what had happened to my friend. I came home from work one night, and there were police vehicles all over the place. We were told she had shot herself in her husband’s car. And she would tell us a lot of times these stories, and we would look at her like. She’s crazy or she’s making things up because her husband was such a great guy. As I started going through my own stories and learning things after her death, but I was thinking about it the other day, like, you look at the Diddy trial or you look at women who come in and they’re battered. And they still have a hard time being believed. And then you take somebody who has been covertly abused or live in a society where, if your wife isn’t pretty enough or what have you, then she’s replaceable and it’s okay. PEOPLE HAVE A HARD TIME BELIEVING THERE IS EMOTIONAL BATTERING Kiki: People have a hard time believing there was abuse involved, but I left a 35 year marriage with severe CPTSD. I had a psychotic break, and I had to put myself back together. And during all of it, my ex-husband is the hero. My kids aren’t talking to me because I had some big breakdowns and did some things I’m not proud of. And that was like my friend’s story, she would have these breakdowns. You could be just as abused with a fist as you can with a piece of birthday cake. And I know that sounds silly. But it’s so covert, that people can’t see it as emotional battering. And BTR and the women and the professionals that came on here really gave me that push to step into it. Anne: Talk to me about the things your friend did that were totally normal under the circumstances. Like now that you know what you were looking at. So that we can let women who are listening know they’re not alone. If they’ve done something like this, it’s because they were trying to protect themselves. It’s completely and totally normal, and even healthy, when you’re in the situation to try to get to safety in any way that you can. Kiki: Oh, absolutely. There are several things that come up right away. The first one was we always had holiday parties at their house. They had a beautiful pool and her husband said something that seemed very innocuous and she started yelling. You promised me you wouldn’t say that you wouldn’t do this. ABUSE BY THROWING A SURPRISE PARTY Kiki: And she kind of goes off the rails a little bit, and we’re all sitting there looking at her like, what is going on right now? And so I immediately go into my people pleasing it’s okay to… and she’s yelling at me, “No, you don’t understand. You don’t understand what he does. I told him not to do this. He told me he wouldn’t do it. To you it seems innocent, but it’s not innocent.” And everybody’s looking at her. I get her away, and then I get her calmed down. And I go back and her husband is playing the victim. “Oh, poor me, you see, she’s bipolar. She always does this. This is what I have to live with.” And I feel so bad, because at the time, I didn’t realize I was going through it myself. You don’t realize it until after you’re out of it. Another thing, he was just very manipulative. For her 40th birthday, he threw her this amazing party, and everybody was in awe and completely jealous. And she was not happy about it. She told me afterwards, “I told him, I don’t like things like this. And it was just too much. It was way over the top.” And of course, I’m looking at her like I would give my left arm if my husband would throw me a party like this. Of course, he wouldn’t, because he knew I wanted one. Yeah, so there’s the difference. If you want it, you don’t get it. If you don’t want it, you get it. Then every year after that, he would throw her a surprise party and he would go out of his way to get people there, and she would walk in the room. MAKING HER LOOK UNGRATEFUL, UNKIND AND UNCARING Kiki: And we would all yell, surprise, and she would be devastated. then she’d try to put a smile on her face, and she was dying inside. Because how do you walk into the public where your husband has done this beautiful thing for you, but it’s exactly what you’ve asked him not to do? By year seven, she just kind of walked in, and then just went off in the corner and drank too much. She didn’t want a dog, but her son wanted a dog. So on her birthday, he bought her a designer dog and invited several friends to see her get the dog. Now she loved the dog with all her heart, but it was that manipulation tactic to say. Look at what a great husband I am. Here’s this $1,500 dog and you don’t get to complain about it. Anne: Correct me if I’m wrong. But he had effectively made her look ungrateful, unkind, uncaring. Which is exactly what he wanted. Kiki: Exactly. He was a very charming, gracious host, and the door was always open. I lived next door to them. And she could be reactive at times. And I would hear him talking to his son on the side of the house, and he would be saying. Just be quiet. I’ll help you out. You know how your mother is, you know how your mother gets, so he’s completely not supporting her. The biggest thing: the woman who he had a long-term affair with, they ended up getting married and they had a destination wedding. Anne: Did you know about the affair before she died ? Kiki: I did know about it and she knew about it. She was always concerned about it because her husband had told her it was over. ALWAYS PITTING EVERYBODY AGAINST ONE ANOTHER Kiki: But she would get these, Facebook or emails from an email she had never heard of before or a fake name, nobody she knew. That would say, your husband doesn’t love you. At one point, her husband even admitted it was from this woman, and of course, “I love you. I love only you. This woman’s crazy.” So he always pitted everybody against one another, that they’re crazy. Well, he ends up marrying this woman in a destination wedding. On the 10th anniversary of her death, his new wife, who he had an affair with the whole time. Puts up a post on Facebook that says, “I’ve been keeping a secret. We actually got secretly married on the day before the anniversary of her death” And nobody says a word. There’s whispers behind the scenes, but there’s the, Jesus wants us to forgive and forget. And I’m like, no. And that’s when I said, “Uhuh, you know what? I’m not gonna keep quiet.” And you know what? I believe it was soul murder, because that’s how abusers manipulate their victims, especially the covert type. It’s so insidious. It just eats away at your soul, and you completely lose yourself. Anne: That is so strange. Who in their right mind, if they’re a decent person, wants to publicly say that? Having your new wife tell the whole world that they secretly got married the day before the anniversary of when mom committed suicide. Like, that’s not hurting anyone? What? That’s like next level. How did people react to that post? Were they like, it feels like it would be like radio silence, okay, cray cray town. Or were they like, “Oh, congratulations, I’m so glad you did that secretly because she was so crazy.” What was the reaction? REACTIONS TO AN ABUSIVE POST Kiki: Mostly my friends and people who didn’t know her spoke out. It was almost crickets from friends and family, publicly. Several of them reached out behind the scenes or had somebody reach out on their behalf. People seemed afraid to say anything. That’s what they do is gather their minions. I’ve heard he’s sending out paragraphs of these long texts, playing the victim and putting his son in the role of, here’s Kiki hurting my son. He’s retired from the police force, but is now serving as a bailiff. And that’s, one of the things he’s very concerned about is what if I lose my job or what if I lose face, because nothing triggers a covert abuser than being cornered. Anne: It’s really, I would say, shocking that that’s what abusive messages sound like. Because they sound so nice and they sound like he’s the victim, really. It’s awful to think that society in general is so blind and in the dark about what these messages look and sound like. They all look the same. Once you know what you’re looking at, you know how to see it. And my workshop covers that. I took the real life messages from five different, emotionally abusive men and use those and then how to respond to them. And most of them are just not overt. They really sound like nice guys, but when you know what you’re looking for, you’re able to see these are clearly abusive. Kiki: Yeah, it’s really hard , these are people that we had great times with. You don’t understand that they’re being horrible and they’ve got this whole other life. INVESTIGATORS TALK TO ME Kiki: One thing I will say is, the investigator who called me, actually two investigators called me and the one was really good. We talked about coercive abuse. He says, ” A lot of times people think coercive abuse is they lock you in the house or they take away your money. But it’s not always that way.” He says, “I understand what you’re saying.” He said, “Unfortunately, we’re not at the point in our world where it’s really illegal to be a jerk.” But I did send all his text messages to this investigator and said, “Hey, just in case anything happens, I want you to see this.” I don’t think she was terrified of him at all, nor was I of my husband. As a matter of fact, about a month before she passed away, she was with another friend and wanted to hire a private investigator. The friend was going to help her, and then a day or two later she wrote and she said, no, don’t do it. Because even if I find out he’s cheating again, I love my husband and I am not going to leave him. I think she was just so convinced that she was lucky to have this guy . She didn’t understand the covert abuse. I have become this huge investigator on patterns, looking at patterns and trying to figure it all out. Because it is so sneaky and so covert, and it goes over so long. I thought I had the perfect marriage. I didn’t understand until I was out of it. How much of myself I had lost and how some of these things that I had completely normalized, my ex-husband had me convinced that all men think this way and all men do these things. YOU DON’T KNOW ALL OF THE ABUSE YOU’RE EXPERIENCING Kiki: I got married when I was 21 years old. I had never even heard of pornography until I got married. Then we were in the military, and went to the Philippines, where sex was everywhere, so was infidelity. So anytime a husband had an affair, it was the wife’s fault. Because she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be doing. And even within our group, there were affairs within different couples. The thing was, you don’t take sides. They’re always invited, and whoever shows up, shows up. Of course, it was always the two people having the affair that showed up. And the spouse that was actually wronged didn’t. It always bothered me. I always felt horrible, but I thought, that’s the way the world is. And it’s really sad when you don’t know what you don’t know until it’s too late. Anne: Isn’t it too late the whole time? You don’t know all of the emotional and psychological abuse you’re experiencing the entire time. Kiki: No, you don’t. Until you’re out of it, you’ve lost your mind. You’re blaming yourself for everything. People are dropping out of your life. My ex-husband was married within 30 days to a woman. He’s 70 now, I think she might be 29 or 30. He is the great guy and look, I finally got away from that crazy person. And I’m sitting here in shock as to how I’m the bad person. But that’s because the people we were around, society as a whole, a lot of the times think, time to get a new one. My ex used to do things very covertly. He knew I was always very concerned about my weight. COVERTLY UNDERMINING SELF-ESTEEM Kiki: Of course, he made me concerned about my weight. He would come home and say, I brought us cake for dessert, and tonight when we’re watching TV, we could eat cake for dessert. And I’d be like, okay. It was always the kind of cake, almost 99% of the time, he liked. Not the cake I liked. And we would split the piece of cake. Well, while I was eating my cake, we would be watching TV and there would be some beautiful actress on there, and he’d say something like, “Oh what did she allow to happen to herself? She just turned into such a fat pig.” Like he would say that. And here’s me sitting here. Anne: Wow. Kiki: So used to people talking that way, that I look and it’s this beautiful woman. I say, “Are you crazy? She’s gorgeous, she’s beautiful.” And he’d say, “Well, honey, don’t get jealous or upset. I mean, she’s not 55 years old and she hasn’t had two kids.” So suddenly that cake is just sitting there in your throat, like this lump of cement. That’s how badly I had been groomed. He would say these horrible things and say, all men think that way. That’s how a lot of people thought in the circle we were with. He told me one time. You know how they always tell on themselves? He says, “I’m not really mad at you. I kind of respect you for finally standing up for yourself.” And I just went, oh my, he knew. It’s a game. Anne: It’s a game of exploitation. How much can I exploit her, how much can I get from her? How can I use her without having to give very much? They know they have to give a little bit. CALCULATING TO EXPLOIT Anne: But like, what is the least amount I can give for the most amount I can get? And they’re not caring about us. They are using us. Their motions, as if they care, are calculated to exploit us. They’re like, what’s the biggest bang I can get for this? It’s a completely different vibe that we feel from people when they actually care about us, when they’re not transactional in the way that they interact with us. All of this I talk about in detail in my Workshop , like exactly why this happens and what to look for, to know if they are transactional in their relationships. That means every time he says, I care about you, he’s calculated that in order to get something out of you, he’s not actually caring about you. That’s what makes couple therapy so impossible or going to clergy so impossible, or friends. Because he’ll never actually say the truth of how he feels and what his intentions are. Kiki: Oh yeah. I grew up where love was transactional. I know it’s not my fault, but if I want a healthy relationship, then I have to understand that. Anne: The plane wreck’s not your fault. It’s not your fault that the plane didn’t have supplies on it. It’s not your fault that the plane didn’t have a satellite phone. You are gonna need to stand up and start walking toward the nearest city, and I think that’s what you’re talking about. It is where you’re like, okay, the plane wreck is not my fault. None of this is my fault. However, if I don’t stand up and start moving forward, I’m not gonna survive this. Kiki: Exactly. HOW THEY ACT IS NOT WHAT THEY SAY Anne: That survival starts with recognizing what these liars do and what they say. If we had to boil it down—though it’s almost impossible—it’s this: if you only observed what they did with your eyes and not your ears, what would you see? Most of the time, you would see that how they act doesn’t match what they say. And that’s when women start asking an important question: is lying emotionally abusive? Because when someone’s words and actions never line up, that pattern alone begins to erode your sense of reality. Kiki: Oh, I often say that if my ex-husband’s lips were moving, there was a lie coming out. Even though he presented as the most wonderful, generous person you ever met in your life. He controlled with size. He controlled with victimhood, the poor me. As a matter of fact, most people would tell you in my family that I wore the pants of the family. But the reality was, it was just an illusion. I was controlled from the time I woke up through the time I went to bed. I call it death through thousand paper cuts just all day long. “Did ‘you have to put the ketchup in here like this? Why did you put the dish in here like this? Most women would be thrilled that they have a husband that wants to watch TV with them. Why can’t you come sit down and watch TV?” I’d be like, oh yeah, you’re right. And I’d go running and never understand what was really going on. I think that happens in a lot of marriages, and it still didn’t all add up for me. I had to learn patterns, because to me, coercive meant it was mean, but it’s not always. SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON EMOTIONAL BATTERING Anne: You mentioned they can hurt you just as much with a piece of cake as they can with a fist. The most abusive thing someone can do is tell you they love you when it’s not true. They’re using you. They love what they can get from you, but actually caring about you, not so much. Thank you so much. Kiki, you’re incredible for wanting to set the record straight about who your friend was and why she was acting the way that she was. She was doing what any healthy woman would do, not understanding her situation, and trying to create some emotional safety for herself. In the best way that she knew how and she didn’t know what was happening and she didn’t know what to do about it. And that’s not her fault. That’s society’s fault. That’s every therapist that they went to’s fault. If they went to therapy or clergy or whoever, who did not educate her about what was actually happening. Because women in this situation, they do the right thing. They try to get help. They try to get information, they try to listen to their husband and communicate with him more. Whatever it is they’re trying to do, they have good intentions. It’s really unfortunate that bystanders, professionals, people outside, they attribute good intentions to someone. Meaning an abusive man who doesn’t have them. He actually has bad intentions. So, that’s awesome that you’re honoring your friend in this way. I bet she’s looking on you and thanking you for that. WANTING PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND Kiki: I hope so. Yeah, I wanted people to understand who she really was and why she was the way she was sometimes, and even for her son to maybe understand who his mother really was and what was happening. Because I think that’s the biggest travesty. I’m being blamed for hurting the son, but the son is still caught in these dynamics within a system that protects the perpetrator. The truth may hurt, but lies will kill you. Anne: Yeah, oh, that is so true. Kiki: Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity. You’re amazing. BTR is amazing and thank you. Anne: Thank you.