Stuck in a harmful marriage? Here’s what I want you to know.

Mostly, I keep my marriage/divorce talk over on my Patreon, since it’s off-topic for this blog.

But since not everyone is over there, I’m gonna do a Cliff’s Notes version of the things I would tell my past self. Because they are the same things I would say to you if you are in a marriage that is eating away at you. 

(Requisite pile of disclaimers: I am not a licensed expert. I’m not telling you what to do; I’m telling you what I’d have told my past self. Not all abuse is perpetrated by men; sometimes (but statistically less often), it’s women. I have no experience with that; I’m writing from my experience. I still value marriage as an institution; I don’t value a marriage that is slowly poisoning one party. In sum: chew up the meat, spit out the bones, take what resonates, and leave the rest.)

1. The odds of an abusive man changing = slim to none

This info comes from Lundy Bancroft, who has spent his life trying to help abusive men change. Whether it’s physical, emotional, sexual, or spiritual abuse, the odds are very strongly not in favor of this guy changing. 

If your doctor told you there was a 99% chance the disease you have would kill you, you’d think you were as good as dead. You would not be thinking, “Ooh, great, there’s a 1% chance I will live!”

In the same way, I would not suggest thinking, “Ooh, there’s a 1% chance my man will change!” Instead, I’d consider, “Hmm, there’s something like a 99% chance he won’t change. In light of that, what do I want to do with the rest of my life?”

At least then you can make a more informed decision. 

2. Whatever type of abuse it is, it will eventually affect your body

If you’ve ever thought, “Well, he doesn’t hit me, so at least there’s that.”, you should know that living in an abusive relationship always takes a toll on your body in some way*.

Living on high alert, in a constant state of fight or flight can rob you of sleep, wreak havoc on your digestive system, cause muscle problems, and even cause autoimmune diseases.

Abuse is always physical, even when it’s not overtly so. 

(*I had chronic neck problems, resistant to any type of treatment, and they magically went away after I left my marriage.)

3. If you have to drag someone to therapy, don’t bother

If someone doesn’t want to get help, they probably aren’t interested in changing or growing. In such a case, relationship therapy will be an expensive and traumatizing waste of time, and the uninterested party is likely to repeatedly bail out when pressed on their behavior.

If someone will only say yes to therapy once you leave, don’t bother. If they truly cared about you and about the relationship, they’d be willing to get help before you leave. 

4. Do not depend on an unlicensed person to help you

I know this may be controversial to some of you, but: unlicensed Christian counselors and pastors are not trauma-informed and not abuse-informed. They mean well, but they will likely not be able to identify what is going on, nor will they be able to recognize that they are in over their heads. 

Get help from someone who is trained in dealing with trauma.

5. Staying is probably not helping your children

I stayed because I mistakenly thought it would be better for my children. But actual data show that children who are living in a high-discord household do better if their parents divorce.

Also: if you think you’re hiding it well from your children, take it from me: they know far more than you think they do. I’m a next-level cover-upper (my parents didn’t even know what was going on), but still, my children did. 

(I recognize that in cases where physical danger is a problem, this advice may not apply. I defer to experts in this area. But in my case, I strongly regret staying. If I could go back in time, I would leave far, far sooner.) 

6. Your mothering will probably be better as a single mom

When a marriage is sucking the life out of you, you cannot live up to your full mom potential. A healthy person makes a better mom. 

7. You don’t need to figure out WHY he does this

To some extent, the why is irrelevant. Maybe he has a personality disorder, maybe he is depressed, maybe he has past trauma, maybe he is stressed…who knows?

The important thing is to decide: Is the way he’s treating me acceptable? 

Natalie Hoffman says it’s like sitting next to someone who keeps kicking your shins, even though you’ve tried everything to get them to stop. It doesn’t really matter WHY he’s kicking your shins; you simply need to decide if you want to keep sitting within reach of a shin-kicker for the rest of your life. 

Maybe you want to sit further away, or maybe you want to leave the vicinity of the shin-kicker altogether. 

8. Ask yourself, “How would I behave?”

Many of us who stay in these marriages for decades are kind, compassionate, sensitive people. But we accept behavior we’d never accept out of ourselves.

If you wonder, “Is his behavior problematic?”, just ask yourself, “If the roles were reversed, how would I behave?” 

If it’s different than what he’s doing, you have a mismatch between your standard for your behavior and your standard for his behavior. 

Imagine you kicked someone’s shins, even by accident. When you realized you hurt the other person, you’d apologize, you’d make amends, you’d make efforts not to kick them again, right?

Ergo, his unrepentant shin-kicking is unacceptable.

9. You don’t have a mental illness; you have a bad relationship

When I was married, my anxiety levels were through the roof. I was constantly jumpy and high-strung.

I also had many symptoms of major depressive disorder, including (toward the end) unwanted suicidal ideation (I had a persistent thought that I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.)

Like magic, these things disappeared when I left my marriage. I was not mentally ill; these were just very sensible reactions to a relationship that was harmful. 

10. You can’t fix him

No matter…

• how much you submit
• how respectful you are
• how many of his needs you meet
• how helpful you are
• how encouraging you are
• how small you make yourself
• how quiet you are
• how kind you are
• how attractive you are
• how much you say yes

….you cannot change him. You do not have that kind of power, and furthermore, it is not your responsibility to change a grown adult. He is his own responsibility; his shortcomings are not your fault.

11. There’s hope! You can rebuild!

When I left my marriage, I blew my life up in a lot of ways. Still, it is one of the best decisions I have ever made, and every single solitary day since I left has been better than living in my marriage.

I still regularly feel astonished at the level of freedom and peace I experience now; I have to pinch myself sometimes to believe it is real and true, and that I never have to go back. 

I wish I’d left earlier, but I’m so grateful I left when I did. Twenty-five years in a harmful marriage is sad, but fifty years would be far worse! 

_________________

This feels a little bit scary to publish, because it’s so public. But I’m going to take a deep breath and do it anyway, in the hope that my words will reach someone who needs to hear them. 

If you’ve also left a harmful marriage, what advice would you add to mine?

P.S. A few helpful resources:

• Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft (This is THE book that helped me see I needed to leave for good.)
• Is it Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Christian Marriage by Natalie Hoffman (she also runs the Flying Free Sisterhood, a support group/program)
• Life-Saving Divorce, a site run by Gretchen Baskerville, a Christian
• Tips on finding a trauma-informed therapist (a long-standing harmful marriage often results in Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)
• Some summary points from Why Does He Do That?

P.P.S. If you want to respond to this post but don’t want to leave a public comment, you can email me; I sometimes take a while to reply, but I do usually get around to responding to everyone who emails me.  🙂