THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOVE AND ABUSE ISN’T ALWAYS OBVIOUS…

It took me 17 years to realise that I was living in an abusive marriage.

As I look back, it seems unreal that I would accept the day to day reality of my life as it was then. I have asked myself over and over, why did I tolerate what I now know to be emotional and financial abuse?

The short answer is that abuse had taken over my world so completely, that I no longer had any point of reference for being treated with dignity and respect. Abuse had become my ‘new normal’.

To me it was normal to be yelled at constantly.

It was normal to be told that I was too stupid to have an opinion about anything other than the children or running the house.

It was normal to never be consulted on any decisions that would impact our lives or our finances.

It was normal to have sex demanded every afternoon by being told to ‘get upstairs now’.

And it was normal to be treated as a cleaner, cook, servant and dogsbody who met my husband’s every need – without ever considering my own.

Yet the deeper answer as to why I tolerated the abuse, was I had grown to believe that I deserved to be treated that way.

As I look back, I realise that in my case abuse grew slowly, and what started out as one incident of disrespect, became two and three, until eventually it became the way I lived.

I was told over and over that I was stupid, so it didn’t take long before I believed it. This meant that every time I was treated badly, it was my fault, because I thought that if I was better, things would be better.

This was reinforced by the only people I was allowed to see in my life - my husband’s family.

I had long ago stopped trying to see friends on a regular basis as my husband, George*, didn’t like it – it took time away from my primary role of being a mother to our children and running the household.

Yet beyond the isolation and lack of perspective that others might have provided, one of the biggest issues was how I interpreted the signs of love in my marriage.

When I got married, I was convinced of one thing - that my husband loved me.

When he called a dozen times a day to see where I was and ask what I was doing, in my mind this showed me that he loved and cared about me.

When he was critical of the friends and people I spent time with during the early part of our relationship, I believed he was concerned for my wellbeing because he loved me so deeply.

In truth, I had to believe that I was loved, as the alternative was unthinkable, rendering my life meaningless.

So, as my husband’s behaviour towards me deteriorated, I made excuses, rather than accept the truth – that what I believed was love and a protective nature, was just control and abuse.

 When you have been abused for a long time, you keep accepting it, even when it doesn’t feel right and part of you knows that you shouldn’t.        

I now wonder if I would ever have moved beyond my marriage if I hadn’t discovered that George was having an affair. This was the catalyst that set everything into motion. Years of tolerating his abuse highlighted that I clearly didn’t have any real value for myself, but I needed to believe was that I was loved, and the thought of him having an affair incensed me.

I didn’t understand how he could betray our family in this way. How could he share a bed with someone else, or spend outrageous money on another woman, when he had made me scrimp and save on everything for years? I hadn’t received a birthday present from him in years!

At that time, I remember experiencing feelings of anger that I have never had before. I felt almost wild inside. But even with all the signs pointing me to the truth, I couldn’t bring myself to really believe it. I had been told for so long that I was ‘mad’ and had no idea about anything, that I could no longer trust my own mind.

Yet beyond this, my husband having an affair was so incongruent with how I needed to see the world, I refused to believe it until I had proof. Or should I say, ‘more proof’, as it was a shirt smelling of perfume that made me suspicious in the first place.

Eventually a private detective gave me the news that I so desperately didn’t want to hear - that George was having an affair… and this became my fork in the road.

I could either stay and live in a marriage where my husband had affairs and treated me with no respect, or I could leave. The prospect of leaving terrified me, wondering how I would cope and if I would be on the street with my two daughters.

This fear was almost enough to keep me stationary, but not quite. When I found out about the affair, something broke inside me.

And so, my journey to freedom started when I realised that I couldn't do it anymore, that I was worthy of being treated with respect and that I wanted a better life for myself and my children.

Over time I came to understand that the situation I was in had nothing to do with the way I behaved, or what I did or didn’t do.

It was because my husband was a deeply insecure man who needed absolute control, and because of my own lack of self-worth, I chose to accept rather than question that.

Through my journey to free myself, my lessons around love continued. I quickly discovered that love can turn to resentment and hate in the blink of an eye.

After I served my husband with divorce papers, things got significantly worse, rather than better. I am not sure what I expected, but I certainly wasn’t ready for what was to come.

George refused to leave the house and I instantly became the ‘beast’ that had ruined our family’s life.

George’s family, who had been my family for seventeen years and the only family I knew in Australia, threw me out of their house – even after I told them he was having an affair. To this day I have never been back.

At home, George and my children refused to speak to me most of the time – as even my two daughters, who were the centre of my world, blamed me for what was happening. Although, this was partly my fault, as I didn’t want to let them know what their father had done. Looking back, this is something I would do differently. Protecting my children’s belief in their father cost me dearly.

It would take me two years to free myself from the marriage and during that time I would be pushed to limits I never knew possible.

I saw myself as the loving wife whose priorities were always my husband and my children, yet during this time George called the police a number of times because I had lost control of my emotions and myself.

The most notable of these incidents took place after I told him that I wouldn’t be signing the refinancing papers prior to the settlement. This incensed him. He had previously not had to ask, but I had recently taken back my power of attorney from George’s lawyer, who seemed to be doing everything he could to put roadblocks in my path.

So, when I told George I was not going to co-operate he chased me upstairs, started screaming, and pushed me so hard that I ended up covered in scalding tea. I saw red. All I could think was that I was never going to be bullied by this man again as I grabbed for the first thing I could find, and started beating him - with my hairbrush.

The next time was when I discovered him begging his sugar daddy girlfriend for sex on the phone downstairs. After telling him what I thought of him, I grabbed his computer and refused to give it back until the police arrived.

In these moments I had turned from the abused into the abuser, because I had no outlet for my pent-up rage. And the saddest part of these incidents was that I could see myself becoming a person I didn’t like – I was turning into my husband, and that needed to stop!

My isolation during these days was crippling. With so little confidence in my own thoughts or feelings, I would spend days in a mental loop of agonizing over what would George do next to punish me; what would happen to us when the house was sold; how would we survive; and whether my girls would ever find happiness after living in such an abusive situation?

I was so traumatised I stopped eating.

Emotionally, I was at my wit’s end. All I wanted was to give my sleep deprived mind a moment of peace and for someone - anyone - to reassure me that everything would be ok.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and through this process I visited a clairvoyant, a healer and I even walked over hot coals at a Tony Robbins seminar – all to help me to find the strength to move beyond the only reality I had known for 17 years.

It turned out that it was the support I required at the time and did what it needed to - kept me moving and on the path forward.

There was so much uncertainly in my life at this time that to stop going crazy with overthinking and worry, I had to mentally let go and just allow things to be what they were. I couldn’t control everything, and I certainly couldn’t control George. I just had to trust that I was doing what needed to be done and that this would be enough to get me through the process and safely to the other side.

One of my greatest blessings was that I had kept in touch with an old friend, Annette, over the years. This was of course done without George’s knowledge. It turned out that Annette was a godsend to me from the minute I discovered George’s affair. She helped me find a private detective, supported me in every way she could through the process and lent me thousands of dollars on her credit card to attend a Tony Robbins event, despite having no idea when I would be able to pay her back.

There were other things that helped me as well. During my separation, I found enormous solace walking in nature. Centennial Park in Sydney was my happy place, as somehow it helped me to process my emotions of rage and fear.

This started a short while before I served George the divorce papers, having been invited on a walk with a new friend Ana, whom I had met at our restaurant. Going out with a friend was quite different for me, as I was never allowed to have friends or contact with anyone outside the family. It was Ana who highlighted to me that the way I was treated was not normal or respectful.

Having someone else treat me kindly and see value in my company helped build my sense of self-worth and fed my desire for a better life. Unfortunately, she was not someone I could confide in as she was married to one of George’s friends.

To get out of the house and away from the tension, I started walking regularly by myself and found that I was always in a better state of mind after the walk than at the beginning, and that my feeling of ‘not being able to cope for one more day’, was replaced with a resolve to keep going.

It turned out that walking in nature and the support of friends was what got me through in the end.

As I looked back years later, I realised that my story of abuse was similar to that of so many others.

Working with people how have experienced abuse, I came to understand that when you have experienced abuse over many years, you lose yourself. Life becomes about survival and silence, living quietly with the shame of constantly being wrong and not good enough to be treated with respect. 

I wanted to share my lived experience with others in the same situation as I believe we can all heal, grow, and move on to create the life we deserve.

So, I wrote a book, called Finding My Way Back To Me – How I found the courage to free myself after 17 years in an abusive Marriage.

This book is made up of the 43 pivotal days it took me to change my life and find my way to being me.

While my story took place over two years, these were the days when I was pushed to my limits, forced to make decisions and move beyond my comfort zone to create a new life.

My greatest hope is that my story can help shine more light on this issue, and bring awareness and support to people who are still living in an abusive situation.

Sadly, in Australia 1 in 4 people experiences financial abuse, but research shows that it disproportionally impacts women.

One of the real problems is the hidden nature of financial abuse and that even now, we do not have a clear definition of economic abuse in Australia, and as a result, we have no accurate or consistent measures. This means we are largely relying on the victims to identify as being financially abused – something that brushes up against the hidden nature of abuse and the shame that the victims feel.

For change to take place we need more resources and research to be undertaken to make it easier to identify when people are victims of financial abuse, and for people to recognise that they are being abused. This was something that didn’t even occur to me until it was pointed out.

The signs of abuse are never exactly the same, but in my case…

I suffered from Emotional abuse:

• I was told that I was stupid and a bad mother. 

• I had to plead to go out with friends and when I did, I was criticised for leaving and neglecting the house.

• If I was out of the house my husband would call me constantly, demanding to know where I was, what I was doing and when I would be home.                                       

• I never felt comfortable in the house, always walking on eggshells waiting for the next criticism or incident.        

• My entire existence was based around meeting his needs, and never my own.

• Despite the final trigger for the breakup being his infidelity, I was shamed in my home for abandoning our family and ruining their lives, even though I was innocent.

I was too scared to question my husband’s decisions and because I wanted relief from the constant tension in the house, I just did as I was told.

It was the this that enabled the financial abuse:                                            

• I was too scared to access money from the accounts and credit cards because of the repercussions.

• My husband had my power of attorney and used it to secure loans and credit in my name.

• The banking and finance for the business was controlled by my husband, which meant I had no means of escape.

• My car was in my husband’s name, which he took away from me, making it almost impossible to leave the house. 

• I worked part time in our restaurant business and managed the house, but was told that I did not contribute and was not entitled to any of the family’s money.

• In the end George let the bank take the business and the house as a form of punishment for leaving the marriage, even though other options were available.

I have come to understand that my story is the story of many others, so at the end of the book, I have included a few pieces of advice that would have been invaluable for me to have at the time I was trying to extract myself from years of abuse…

1. Real love doesn’t look like or feel like control. It took me years to understand that if it feels like control, it is.

   
   

2. Listen to your gut feelings and don’t talk yourself out of your own intuition to avoid making the hard decisions that will move your life forward.

   
   

3. Be across the family finances and do not sign anything without fully understanding what you are being presented with.

4. Don’t give your power of attorney away to anyone.

   
   

5. Get independent legal advice - never from your partner’s lawyer.

   
   

6. Stop feeling shame for things that aren’t your fault and don’t ever justify being treated with a lack of respect - disrespectful behaviour is always going to be disrespectful behaviour regardless of the ‘why’.

   
   

7. Don’t accept the blame for being the one who broke the marriage by hiding his bad behaviour from other people. I did this and as a result I was blamed by my children for the breakup and for ruining their lives. Abusers maintain their power by staying hidden. Not saying anything to other people allows them to look like a victim and make you wrong – again!

   
   

8. Don’t tell yourself that you will stay for the children, as all we teach our children in that situation is that love equals abuse. One of my primary motivations for leaving the marriage was to teach my children about the importance of self-respect.

   
   

9. Maintain strong friendships as they are the backbone of your path forward.

   
   

10. Start making your own needs a priority. For me this was being able to walk and connect with friends. This was the only way I was able to stay the distance to get through the process.

    
    

11. Maintain your dignity and self-respect as you go through the breakup process. My pent-up rage and humiliation meant that when I got the chance, I turned from the abused into the abuser very quickly and found myself doing things that I never thought possible. After two or three major incidents I realised that my desire for revenge was turning me into my husband – someone I would never want to be.

    
    

12. Regardless of whether you work or are a stay-at-home partner, you are entitled to half of the family earnings. I was always told I contributed nothing and was worth nothing. This simply isn’t true for anyone.

    
    

13. Make a decision that you deserve a different life and then do whatever it takes to make that happen. This means finding the part of you that still has dreams for a good life and wants to leave more than you want to stay.

    
    

14. Nothing about moving beyond an abusive situation is easy, but every time your mind faulters, tell yourself that you deserve more and keep going.

Finding My Way Back To Me is available on all platforms...

To hear more from Amanda go to https://amandajscottpodcast.com/