Why Won’t My Husband Fight For Our Marriage? – Kirsten’s Story

Betrayal Trauma Recovery - BTR.ORG

Does your husband promise you that he will do anything to help heal your marriage from his betrayal, lies, and emotional abuse? Then then doesn’t do anything? “I fight for our marriage, but he doesn’t follow through,” said Kirsten, a member of our community.

Does this sound familiar? We’re here for you, learn about our Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions.

Transcript: Why Won’t My Husband Fight For Our Marriage?

Anne: I have Kirsten on the podcast today. I know her personally, and she’s amazing. She’s a member of our community. She is a divorced mom of four, and she’s also an incredible artist and writer. Who likes to write to explore being a real human being breaking through destructive personal and generational patterns. And how handling hard times with humor can make life more palatable.

Kirsten strives to not take herself too seriously. To help balance out the very serious things she’s been through in her life with humor and art and other modes of coping. We’re going to talk about a phrase that she invented. I’m not going to let the cat out of the bag. I’m going to let her set up what this term is and then we’ll have a discussion about it.

So can you talk about the background of this term, first of all?

Kirsten: So a little bit about my personal backstory. I had been about 17 years into my then marriage, and we were about a year into an in house separation. And working on him trying to recover from his sex addiction. And me trying to recover from 17 years of long term premeditated and fairly disturbing mind games and lies and betrayals.

What Is “Meatloafing”? When He Says He Will Fight For Our Marriage

Kirsten: We were doing an in house separation, and he said that he would do anything to fix the damage that was happening in our marriage. And I believed him. I wanted to believe him when he said he would fight for our marriage. One night he came down from his bedroom that he was staying in and asked me when I would drop my boundary of him Not being able to initiate any physical touch in our marriage.

I reminded him that he had not followed through with the task that he’d been given by his therapist and by our religious leader. That my personal therapist had suggested that I may even need some really specialized sex therapy to be able to heal. To get back to that point where I’d be comfortable being physically intimate with him.

He asked me how long it would take for me to do this healing. And I said, I don’t, I don’t know. Six months? A year? I don’t know. He let me know that that was too long. That my boundary was impeding his recovery. So, that’s kind of when I knew that that marriage was over.

I’m a pretty visual thinker. I’m an artist. I have a brain full of all kinds of ridiculous cultural references. When he said that, I could see in my head this video and song that came out in the early 90s from this rocker, Meatloaf.

https://youtu.be/qpinvaj-q2A

Why Won’t He Do This One Thing To Fight For Our Marriage?

Kirsten: He did this ridiculous video called, I will do anything for love. And I could hear his voice in my head. You know, I can do anything for love, but I won’t do that. I just started laughing and walked out of the room. I’m sure that it appeared very rude to him, but I just, the ridiculousness of it. You know, 17 years of really awful behavior and damage, and he couldn’t give me this. This one thing that I was asking for him to do.

I’m in the Betrayal Trauma Recovery community, and one day a woman said her partner was not going to do the thing that she had asked him to do. To be able to receive healing in their marriage. That came back to my head and I said, Oh, he’s Meatloafing you.

Of course, you know, I often forget that I’m one of the older members of the community. You probably have to be over maybe 35 to kind of get that reference right away. But he said, what are you talking about? And I said, don’t you remember that song by Meatloaf? I’ll do anything for love, but I won’t do that.

And that just started a whole entire thing of hilarity where we made up memes about Meatloaf and what he would and wouldn’t do. It was fun. And we need the laugh, quite frankly, things can get quite heavy in the community at times. They are all saying I will do anything to fight for our marriage, but in reality won’t do what it actually takes. But it’s a really appropriate term to describe the way that sometimes when addicts try to keep all the things.

I Want To Fight For Our Marriage: When Abusers Use The Meatloaf Technique

Kirsten: Why wouldn’t they? They have a loving partner and a family, they’re taking care of all their stuff. Then on the side, they also have their addiction and whatever life they’ve built around that. They’ll say, “I want to fight for our marriage.” To be able to try and protect that dual life and that addiction.

So you can’t really listen to the things they say. You know, I mean, this meatloaf song is like eight minutes long. It’s ridiculous. I mean, he just goes on and on and on about all these things that he’ll do for her. He’ll go to hell and back. He’ll do, you know, I mean, it’s just, the video is hilarious. And not to mention that, by the way, he’s a monster in the video, but when she gives him love, he turns into a man.

Anne: Oh, wow. The Beauty and the Beast. scenario. Does it ever say what the thing he won’t do is?

Kirsten: Well, in actuality, of course, the song doesn’t really mean that. Because what he means is he won’t cheat on her. He won’t forget her feelings. He’ll do all these things. And then she comes in on her verse and she says, are you gonna cheat on me?

Are you gonna hurt my feelings and break my heart? And he’s like, I won’t do that. So in actuality, the song’s not really as bad as it sounds when we made the meme out of it. But you know, we all have that line in our head from the song, if we’re old enough.

I Will Do Anything For Love, But I Won’t Do That

Anne: Yeah, I will do anything for love, but I won’t do that. A woman in our community, she got her young daughter’s ears pierced in like January? And I don’t know, four months later or something, she sent her daughter to her ex’s house. They were these really expensive stud earrings. And he lost one of the earrings and then he wrote this email that was like this five paragraph manifesto about how could they improve communication and what could he do, “To fight for our marriage?”

He would do anything to help out, you know, that kind of a thing. She wrote back and said, pay $20 for Sophie’s earring. He wrote this big rant about how he never consented to her getting her ears pierced. There was no way he was going to pay for the earring. But he didn’t bring that up back in January when she had her ears pierced.

So he was like, I will do anything, but there’s no way I’ll pay $20 for a lost earring. And it’s funny the things that they won’t do. When they say, “I want to fight for our marriage.” Well, they won’t do what they don’t want to do is the thing.

Kirsten: Right. You know, when you speak about serious breaches in trust and contract of a partnership, which, most of our members are married and their partnership is a marriage and, you know, the onus of healing, the broken trust is on the person that broke the trust.

I Tried To Fight For Our Marriage Using Boundaries

Kirsten: So, as the offended partner begins their healing process. And they start to gather their strength and their dignity back around them. Also they have a community that builds them up, they learn about boundaries and they start to put those in place. They’ll begin to set healing tasks and limits on the allowed behaviors for that offending partner.

This is not an attempt to control the partner, this is their attempt to try and stay in the relationship. This is their attempt to “Fight for our marriage.”

Anne: To establish some safety.

Kirsten: Exactly. I mean, because they’ve now realized. That all these things have gone on. My first reaction when I found out the true depth of the betrayal, that had happened in my marriage, was to just leave.

I was done right then. But my attempt to be able to feel safe enough to wait to give him some time to heal and fix his problem. Was to have boundaries in place. That’s the only way I could stay. I wasn’t trying to control him as a person. I just needed that. You know, I needed that for myself. I wanted to fight for our marriage.

Oftentimes the offending partner will profess with all kinds of words, all the things that they’re willing to do. They feel so bad. I’ll do anything I can to fix this. But when they’re actually put to the test, they refuse to engage. They refuse to follow through. That just goes to show you that the old adage that you watch their feet and not their mouth is true.

Anne: Like the, I would do it if you wouldn’t bother me about it. You’ve heard that one before.

He Said He Wanted To Fight For Our Marriage But He Acted Like He Didn’t

Anne: Where they’re like, I was about to do it, but now that you reminded me, I won’t be doing it on my own. So just let me do it in my own time.

Kirsten: I don’t like it when you act like my Mom. You’re taking my dignity away. Let me do this in my own time.

Anne: In their own time is never. They’re only saying that to avoid doing the thing.

Kirsten: Why should they get to do anything in their own time? They’re the one that broke the contract. They’re the one that broke the trust. They are the one’s who should fight for our marriage. They really should do anything. I mean, you know, within reason. Most of the women in our community are pretty healthy people. They’re not trying to use this as an opportunity to control their spouse or their partner.

Anne: No, they’re looking for safety and they’re looking for truth. In your situation, did you ever consider your situation to be abuse while you were in this place of knowing about his sexual behavior. But thinking maybe he could get into recovery when you’re kind of thinking of him as an addict?

Was there ever a time where you were like, wait a minute, I was abused this whole time?

Kirsten: No, it never really crossed my mind. See, one of the things about my situation is I was married before this marriage, very shortly. For 18 months and it was a very abusive, destructive marriage. So to me, anything that wasn’t that was better.

When Victims Begin To Set Limits & Boundaries, Abusers May Start “Meatloafing”

Anytime I start to feel like something might be wrong or my body was like, Oh, I’m uncomfortable. If I would bring it up to my spouse. He would say, yeah, you’re right, something is wrong, you need to go to therapy because you’re broken from your first marriage. I became the kind of person that would just completely take all of it in on myself.

I was sure that everything that was wrong in our marriage was my fault. It wasn’t until I was in my therapeutic disclosure, and this is after a surprise dump disclosure, I thought I knew everything. But after a therapist had helped lead him through. all the things, which, you know, turned in from a five page thing to ten page disclosure.

When I heard some of the very specific things that he did that were so twisted that my brain starts to say, wait a minute, only crazy people do this. Like abusive, crazy, like you see in the lifetime movies, kind of people. Even then, it still took me a good year, year and a half to accept the fact that I was actually severely abused for many, many years.

Anne: Why do you think it’s so easy? Well, not so easy, but easier for women to recognize abuse when they’re in a relationship, like your first marriage? Where the abuse was really obvious compared to how long was your second marriage?

Kirsten: By the time the divorce went through, we’d been married for 20 years.

I Wanted To Fight For Our Marriage, I Couldn’t See Through The Fog Of Emotional Abuse

Anne: So compared to the second marriage, that was 20 years where the whole time, You’re in this fog of abuse, but you can’t see it, and you’re trying to wrap your head around what’s going on. Why do you think it’s so difficult for women to see this second type of abuse?

Kirsten: Well, I’ve never considered myself a person that could be abused.

I’m not stupid or weak. I’m quite sassy and strong willed. I never thought that anything like that could ever happen to me, and it was very subtle. Very, very subtle and not only that, but I grew up in a family and in a religion where I was groomed. Some people don’t like that term, but it’s true. To turn over my knowing and my will to the patriarch of the home, the husband, the leader of our church, that’s what a good woman does.

So my natural ability to kind of say, Hey, this doesn’t feel right. Just over the years really was squashed. So, you know, never in my brain until like a therapist or a podcast or something would say, Hey, this behavior is abusive. Would I ever think, Oh, you’re right. Putting that label on it, which seems extreme to a lot of people and they really kick against it was enough to clear my brain up from the fog to start to look for more truth.

Anne: Yeah, you mentioned a lot of people kick against the term abuse, especially within the context of sex addiction. Why do you think so many people are unwilling to say, if you’re in a relationship with an active sex addict or an active porn user, you are in an abusive relationship? It is an abuse issue.

He Says He Want’s To Fight For Our Marriage But He Sees Me As Subservient

Anne: Why do you think so many people don’t want to go there?

Kirsten: Well, there’s a lot of shame around anything that has to do with sex. People don’t like to talk about sex. They don’t want to be real about sex. They certainly don’t want to talk about anything that has to do with abusive behaviors and sex. The level of shame will make it so people don’t want to talk about it at all.

Let alone slap a label of abuse on it. There’s all this cultural misogyny. That a woman should do what her spouse wants her to do. Her needs should be subservient to her spouse’s needs. Even things like a woman shouldn’t enjoy sex, or she shouldn’t have to worry about feeling safe because it’s just a duty that needs to happen in a marriage.

With all this cultural baggage and all these things generationally that we’re dragging with us as women, it’s just something that we wouldn’t even consider unless it’s, you know, a violent rape, say. You know, but in a marriage context, I mean, we’ve had women in the community that didn’t even realize until they heard somebody else talk about it. That they actually were raped in their own marriage, when I had that experience.

And you just don’t understand what’s going on. You have no context or words for it. You don’t have the vocabulary for it. We weren’t taught that until you get into the Betrayal Trauma Recovery community and learn . The verbiage that you need to be able to start clarifying those things in your head.

Abusers Don’t Think to Ask For Consent: They Feel Entitled To It

Anne: What helps you realize you were raped? I’m guessing multiple rapes.

Kirsten: Well, yeah multiple times. I didn’t understand my body’s fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. I didn’t understand the trauma response. So, I didn’t recognize that those times when I didn’t want to be there doing what he wanted. I would just leave my body so that I could make it through it.

That that was something that would be considered a rape. And there was one specific situation that involved a big production that he had put together almost like a movie. A play that he wanted me to play out. With notes and letters and this big thing where I had to go here and do this and then here and do that. And da da da and ended up in a hotel room and it was a horrendous experience for me.

Somebody had mentioned, hey, this thing happened to me, I think I was raped by my husband. And I was like, wait, rape? That’s rape? And it just hit me. I was like, that is what I was experiencing that night. I left my body so I wasn’t there, and let him do what he wanted to do. But I didn’t want to be there.

I had not given consent for that experience. But I didn’t know how to say no. I didn’t know I could say no.

Anne: Yeah, and for someone who thinks they’re entitled, to sex from their wife because she is an object or she is subservient, then asking for consent is not even on the table either.

Humor and Validation Help Victims of Betrayal & Abuse

Kirsten: Right. If you’ve lived most of your marriage in a place of trauma where you didn’t ever speak up and say, I don’t like this or no, I’m not doing that.

In my case, my then spouse considered that I was into it. You know, he never stopped to question that I might not enjoy it. And he was so good at building up fantasies in his head that he wouldn’t probably have seen or cared to see, that I wasn’t really fully giving consent.

Anne: We have so much that we’ve learned through these experiences and hopefully sharing it can help other women

Kirsten: Yes, and when you learn that, you need things to help you be brave. You need a community around you of women who understand what you’ve gone through. No one has to try and explain everything to them because they already know.

You need people that you can laugh with. I mean you can’t just go over to your next door neighbor and make a joke about marital rape. You can’t do that. It’s totally inappropriate. But sometimes we need to laugh. The absurdity of our situations will hit us. And it’s all you can do. I mean, if you can’t laugh, you’ll die.

If you need to be able to have that picture of Meatloaf singing in your head. While your spouse is trying to give you all the reasons why he can’t do this one thing that you’ve asked him to do. To try and fix the damage that he did, to be able to help you get through that without going crazy, you need that. He’s saying I want to fight for our marriage, and you can see through his actions that he’s not going to.

Processing Abuse Through Art

Anne: Kirsten is an incredible artist and I want her to talk about her art. And how that has helped her process her trauma and heal from what she has been through.

I had the opportunity to go to her art show with my Mother. We spent, I don’t know, maybe two hours. We spent so long there because every single painting was so touching to me. I read the descriptions and I just sat and pondered it. We didn’t want to leave. We just wanted to stay there and it was one of the best experiences I’ve had viewing art. It really spoke to me, and helped me process my own trauma.

Having had that experience with your art, able to view it and process my own trauma and interpret it in different ways. Can you talk about your art and what it means to you and how it helped you?

Kirsten: You know, sometimes we think, Oh, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I have all this trauma stored up in me and I didn’t know how to process it. But the human mind is incredibly flexible and, you know, very able to defend itself against trauma in any way that it can. For me, a way that I didn’t realize, I was doing that before I find out anything about what was happening in my marriage was through art.

Victims of Abuse & Betrayal Deserve Safe Spaces

Kirsten: I was processing the things that were happening in my life through art. I initially had gone to school to be a children’s book illustrator. That’s what I thought I wanted to do. I love that still, but I found myself being drawn to doing a lot of really angsty and introspective self portraits. I laugh sometimes because I think, what am I, a narcissist?

That word is thrown around a lot. I just keep painting myself over and over and over again. I don’t know if you know anything about the artist Frida Kahlo, but she did a lot of self processing through her art as well. A lot of self portraits. I don’t know if I would say that I’m as amazing as she was. But she’s kind of my guide as far as just going ahead and doing what your heart tells you to do as an artist.

The first self portrait that I did was right after my first divorce from my 18 month marriage, and it was surprising to me how cathartic it was to paint the feelings I was feeling. To get them out onto this canvas. That continued through the years. My entire getting married again, being a young mother, and through a very toxic marriage.

I would do these self portraits. Usually, I would have a dream, and the image would be in my head when I would wake up. Then I would go through the process of doing sketches, taking pictures, preparing the work and then making it. I’d always feel better afterwards. I didn’t really realize what I was doing.

In My Fight For Our Marriage, I Didn’t Realize How Much I Needed To Heal

Kirsten: Now looking back and having had so much education about , abuse and learning more about trauma and what it does to the body and the brain. I realized that I was releasing a lot of trauma into my paintings. In fact, sometimes I laugh and call my paintings horcruxes because I feel like I’ve cut a piece of my soul out and put it into the painting.

But usually the things that I leave in the painting are things that are good to be leaving. So it’s just a really important way for me to journal my life, to express my feelings and to get something out of my soul.

Anne: I’d like to talk about a couple of specific pieces, if you don’t mind. One of them is this incredible painting of you in a nightgown with a halo in a dirty bathroom.

I really wanted to talk to you about this because I have had so many dirty bathroom dreams. Where I’m in like a stall, the toilet’s overflowing. There’s dirty water on the ground, the sink is overflowing, and it’s just disgusting. I have to figure out how to go to the bathroom in there. This is a recurring dream that I’ve had. And when I saw this painting, I was like, this is straight out of my dream.

I don’t know if this was one that you had a dream about as well. There’s also a chicken in it and a candle.

Kirsten: This was the first painting that I did after my therapeutic disclosure that I went through with my now ex husband and our therapist. When I wanted to fight for our marriage.

The Fight For Our Marriage Was In The Art

Kirsten: In which I heard all the things, all the things that had been happening in my marriage for 17 years. I had read online a call for entry to a show in which they were asking people to do theme specific artwork. It was for a gallery that was in LA and the name of the show was Waterline. They wanted women artists to do works about water and its effect on their lives. I never enter a show that isn’t local, I wanted to be brave.

I kind of had my fists up in a fighting mode after finding out all these awful things. And so I was thinking about what I could do for the show if I was going to enter it and I had a dream that night.

That I was in a old, dirty and for me it wasn’t a bath, it was actually, an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Like from a horror movie, you know, with broken tiles and the old school look of the industrial in the 20s and 30s and drains and yucky, dirty water everywhere. I was, covered in mud with the lines from floods.

You know, when there’s a flood, how it leaves a line of debris on whatever, the building or the edge of the creek or something. There’s a flood and they’ll leave these lines and each line, you know, progressively went up what was representing different traumas that I’d been through in my life. The fight for our marriage, was in those flood lines.

Imagery Of Abuse

Kirsten: It was as if I was there, you know, the, the image already existed. It was created, if you will, spiritually in my head that night. I got up the next morning and I ran to the thrift store and I found a nightgown and I went outside and started dumping myself in mud so that I could take photos to, to draw from for this painting.

And just the process of actually preparing the reference photos, getting this nightgown muddy, getting my arms muddy, taking the pictures was incredibly important to me. It would, if anybody filmed it, be considered a piece of performance art that went along with the painting. But you know, it was a private experience and not something that I wanted documented for everybody to see.

Then when I start putting the imagery together, I had to include a chicken because I love chickens and they’re my girls. So don’t try to ask me to explain it, but the chicken’s like my spirit guide. So that was one of my hens, Penny, my hen, and she was in the painting.

I also included a prayer candle, like you would find in a Catholic church at the altar, I like to use a lot of old Renaissance imagery in my artwork. I just like it. So I put a halo around myself because I felt like not toot my own horn or anything, but sometimes when you go through really traumatic experiences. Especially when they last for a long time, it changes you.

Saints & Drowning In Someone Else’s Filth

Kirsten: Those experiences can be sanctified by your healing. You kind of feel like these old saints, you know, there’s a saint for everything in the Catholic church. There’s a saint for everything. A saint for moving, a saint for people that drown in water, a saint for being killed by an arrow on the back of a wagon.

I mean, anything that you can think of. And, and I’m like, yeah, I feel like I’m the saint in my fight for our marriage, toxic marriages or something. So that’s why I included that imagery and it just came pouring out of me. I got the painting done really quickly. I sent it to the show. It did very well there. I’ve won several awards with it. It’s kind of like an icon for me.

Anne: St. Kirsten

Kirsten: Yeah, right..

Anne: Yeah, it was very, I don’t know if shocking is the right word that I would use for me. But because it just spoke to me so deeply of the imagery that I had experienced in my dreams. It’s interesting that the experience of this type of abuse, the details are all different for every woman, but this feeling of we were almost drowning in someone else’s filth.

In a place where we should be safe. Like, yours was a psychiatric hospital. That’s a place where someone should be helping you. You know, technically. In a bathroom, it should be somewhere that you feel safe enough to just, you know, relax, I guess. But instead of that, you’re drowning in someone else’s filth. It is kind of a sanctifying experience.

Unequally Yoked: A Symbol For My Fight For Our Marriage

Kirsten: It leaves marks on you. And those marks don’t go away. They can be transformed, but they don’t go away.

Anne: The title is Flood Damage and that really, really looks like that. It was amazing. There were so many, like every single one I could talk about. Especially your, what are the ones called, Japanese ones, where you put yourself back together with gold?

Kirsten: Kintsugi

Anne: Those really spoke to me. But the second one I’d like to really focus on is called Unequally Yoked. So this is a painting of Kirsten with a yoke and she is yoked on one side.

Kirsten: Yes, yeah. I have my neck in one side of the double yoke.

Anne: Okay. Yeah. And the other one is just empty and she’s pulling this by herself. This one too, it just, I mean every one of your paintings just hit me at my core. But this one I spent so much time just observing and thinking about and processing my own things. Can you talk about this one a little bit?

Kirsten: I did this painting, it’s probably my favorite painting that I’ve ever done, by the way.

It really speaks to me still. I did it in 2018. I was divorced and just start to get back into trying to date. It was a vulnerable time for me. There was a lot of heaviness and loneliness at that time. And again, I’m not quite sure why this happens, but I had a dream about this painting and woke up with the image in my head already.

Yoked With Abuse

Kirsten: So I couldn’t find a yoke to make the painting. When I did the reference photos, I put a very heavy beam of wood over my shoulders so that I could get that sense of weight and heaviness. I just have so much grief over the fact that I had two partners who were supposed to be my forever companion. In which that didn’t happen, and not only did it not happen, but I carried the brunt of the emotional work. I carried their shame. It was my fight for our marriage, and they didn’t try.

Now I carry the weight of being a single mom and trying to deal with the damage that’s happening to my children. I just felt it so heavily. I think that it just needs to come out in this image. And you know in the scriptures, Jesus talks about a yoke and he says that his yoke is is easy and his burden is light. That if you’ll yoke yourself to him, you can make it through the things in life.

But the yoke also connotes being tied to something. When you yoke yourself to something, that double yoke of the ox and team, you can’t move unless they’re moving. And if they don’t move, you have to drag them. So there was a lot of feelings and symbolism in that for me. Then I put fig leaves around in the background to kind of represent some things that I feel about partnership, the Garden of Eden and that story of creation.

Emotional Release With A Painting

Kirsten: Then I also added a, a wedding ring in the background. To symbolize the fight for our marriage. I had a ton of feelings come out while I was painting this painting. Many times I actually had to stop and put it away because I would just start crying and I couldn’t see the panel I was working on.

I would just have to put it away. But I think you can feel that when you look at the painting. One of the cool things about seeing artwork in life as opposed to just a picture online. You can really feel the feelings that were poured into a piece.

Anne: That is what is incredible about excellent art, is that you painted it and put in the work. But it seemed like it was painted just for me. And for all the members of our community who can imagine that feeling of being unequally yoked, and then having to carry the burden of the lack of a partner. We fight for our marriage, and they leave us alone.

I really appreciate your art and your talent. And so many women have gone through this and they’re, so incredibly talented and you are one of those amazing talented women. Here is her website so you can look at the paintings yourself www.kirstenbeitler.com

Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Helps Victims Identify “Meatloafing” & Other Abusive Tactics

Anne: I would really encourage you to go take a look at her artwork. Hopefully it will speak to you as it spoke to me. Can you talk a little bit about how the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group has helped you to heal?

Kirsten: Absolutely. This community, this idea of community and sisterhood is one of the things. I’m not exaggerating that I say actually saved my life and my sanity. It started for me when I don’t know how this happened. I wasn’t looking for it, I was just online looking how to fight for our marriage, and then suddenly it was there in front of me.

It was a tender mercy from God. The loving compassion I felt because you all knew exactly what I was going through. I didn’t have to say anything or do anything. I am enfolded in love.

And from those groups came some of the best and truest friends that I’ve ever had in my life. They saved me. They walked with me through horrendous things. And I’ve been able to be there for them too.

Finding BTR filled so many holes in my heart because I didn’t feel like a freak anymore. I didn’t feel alone. There was at least one woman whose story was so similar to mine that I knew, okay, this isn’t just because of me. This isn’t just because of how broken I am. This is happening to other people too.

It was such a relief. It was such a relief to me. Not that you would ever want anybody to go through that, like you did, but just to know that it’s not because of you. I’m always grateful for the BTR community where something horrible is turned into something holy.

The Fight Four Our Marriage Led Me To Clearing Up The Fog Of Abuse

Anne: Yeah, it’s amazing how much our Shero community has evolved over the years. We’ve all evolved together to be like, that didn’t work, right? Like, Oh, he may be an addict. There’s no question about that. But what we were experiencing the entire time was abuse. We didn’t know that back then. Sometimes we fight for our marriage, and don’t realize how much we are suffering.

It’s so nice to come out of the fog and be able to define it and help other women so that they don’t have to go through the, you know, 10, 20 year process, seven, however long it was process of figuring that out. Figuring out how long to fight for our marriage.

Kirsten: Oh my goodness. And thousands and thousands of dollars worth of therapy and agony.

Anne: The cool thing is because we’re all together now and because we’re continuing our healing journey together. We are still evolving and we still don’t know what we don’t know, right? We still are there for each other and when one of us has an epiphany, all of us have an epiphany.

The Fight For Our Marriage Turned Into A Fight For Women Experiencing Abuse

You know, it’s like, oh, why didn’t we think of that before? So it’s a really amazing community to be a part of, to see it evolve. Because our true desire is for safety, truth and peace. We are evolving to be more gentle with each other and more kind and more understanding. Yet also more fierce in our boundaries and more fierce in our belief in ourselves and what we deserve and that we are worth it.

So it’s, it’s a mix of like, amazing bravery and also this incredible vulnerability at the same time. That to me is just the most amazing army of healthy women who can help bring other women out of the fog of abuse.

Kirsten: Absolutely. You know, none of us are perfect. We’re all still learning. We’re learning from each other every day. There are so many people that have so many different opinions about everything, but still working together. To try and clear everybody’s mind, you know, “Should I fight for our marriage?” We can come out healed, and it can happen, and it does happen every day.

Anne: Well, thank you for sharing parts of your story and some of your talent, especially with your Meatloaf metaphors. And your, “fight for our marriage.” You’re amazing, Kirsten. Thank you so much for coming on today’s episode.