Here’s the fifth installment in the Survivor Wisdom Series.
These are the other articles in this series:

Part One: What I Wish I’d Done Differently During My Marriage
Part Two: What I Wish I’d Done Differently During My Divorce and Dealing with Others
Part Three: How I Realized My Abuser Would Never Change
Part Four: Tips if You’re Still Wondering if Your Abuser Will Change
Part Six: Why I Stayed
Part Seven: How I Knew it was Time to Separate
Part Eight: How God Guided Me to Divorce
Part Nine: How Divorce Made My Life Better
Part Ten: Seeing Spiritual Abuse
Part Eleven: How Your Church Should Respond When You Disclose Abuse

I asked the members of my Confusion to Clarity Facebook Community:

How did you come to realize that your husband’s covert emotional and psychological abuse was intentional?
Before this, did you believe he was unaware, wounded, or something else that made you give him the benefit of the doubt over and over?
When you realized the abuse was intentional, how did this change things for you?

Here are their answers:

Some women realize it’s intentional while still married

Learning about abusers in general rather than thinking of my husband's behavior as uniquely individual really helped me see more clearly his intention. It cut through his excuses that I would buy into.

When he would apologize for causing so much hurt, but not do anything about stopping the actions that caused the hurt.

I don’t remember the exact moment– it was a series of events. We had been married for 20 years and things were still horrible between us no matter how much I tried to keep the peace. During the small moments of kindness I would wonder if I made up the abusive times and if it wasn’t as bad as I remember. I began documenting his behavior and things he said and it was a turning point of realizing how horrible he really was. That’s when I began googling and came across one article after another. Somewhere in that time it became clear to me that his behavior could be controlled in public and therefore it was intentional.

It took 33 years to realize that what he was doing was intentional. It was only 5 months ago that I learned about covert abuse.

I realized it was intentional when I shared that I wanted to feel financially secure, and I needed financial transparency. The next time he got mad at me, he cut me out of the business savings account and cancelled my credit card. He “said” he wanted me to be secure, then did that.

My turning point was when I had a coach validate what I was going through and told me what I was experiencing was abuse. I was more sure after I left him and read Don Hennessy’s book “How He Gets Into Her Head.”

He used to talk over me regularly or cut me off so I couldn’t finish my sentence. I thought he was deaf. I was assertive and told him, “When you talk over me I feel disrespected.” He would get angry and then give me silent treatment. I saw a counsellor who said what he was doing was ‘power over.’ Turns out he was not deaf! He was intentionally silencing me.

When I started recording our conversations and then later listened to them, truth occurred. I realized how much I was being played and manipulated– how in the moment it seemed he was so reasonable. Listening later it was so much clearer what he was purposely doing. I had a few recordings I kept during the separation/divorce to listen to any time I started to wonder if it was all in my head. In the end I finally stopped questioning his evil intent.

It never entered my mind that his actions were intentional until I started reading about emotional abuse. I read “Healing from Hidden Abuse” by Shannon Thomas. I was shocked when I read about common behaviors of narcissists, psychopaths, etc. that matched my husband's. With my new knowledge, I began to observe him in a different way and realized that his behaviors were intentional. I looked back at my years of journaling and saw the same thing. In all my 26 years of marriage, I never guessed that his tricks, lies, deceit and strange behavior was intentional. I thought it was some kind of disorder or autism or result of crazy upbringing. Realizing that it was intentional was the most revealing, painful and shocking revelation and a huge turning point in my life.

I believed he was on the autistic spectrum and unaware! My husband told me it was intentional and that he knew what he was doing all along. Now I’m in absolute disbelief. It has made me think there is something much more evil running through his veins...but I hate to believe that because I don’t want to believe anyone could be!

I’ve been married 25 years and all that time I just thought he was wounded! I started reading the articles on the Confusion to Clarity website and started to realize I was a victim of emotional abuse and he knew what he was doing. As soon as he realized I was serious about the divorce, he tried to gaslight and manipulate me and I could see right through it. They know what they are doing.

I read “The Passive Aggressive Covert Narcissist” at the same time I was doing EMDR therapy. That sealed the deal for me.

When he left to spend Christmas with his daughter, her half-siblings, and his ex-wife and didn’t call or even text to wish me Merry Christmas yet posted pictures on Facebook with all of them saying he was having a wonderful Christmas with family, I could no longer make excuses for his behavior.

I ignored warning signs by justifying to myself and others that he didn't have mother to teach him or his father was abusive to women and he had no good examples. I didn't realize his covert behavior was intentional until about 10 years in. Then I told him I wanted him to leave and his rage was turned wide open. The mocking words and expressions were so over emphasized in his anger that I realized what he had been hiding all along.

The patterns finally rang a bell for me. I remember having a very pivotal moment. Something he said and the way he acted flashed a past memory in my mind. I realized then that he had never changed! He only got better at the deception. Something happened between me and God in that moment. It was then that I realized it was all a lie. Every single second of my life with him. A complete disaster of one evil thing after another masked with fake Christianity in between spinning a web of chaos that never stopped for long.

When he would point at others and say how stupid they were to believe him. He loved to lie, confuse people, then laugh at them. I felt embarrassed and ashamed of his behavior and trapped that I could not leave because of the church and what my family would say.

I realized it when I read “In Sheep’s Clothing” by George Simon. After 19 years of believing his excuses, feeling sorry for his supposed “woundedness,” eventually wondering if he had Asperger’s and looking for any reason for his abuse except facing that it was intentional, that book opened my eyes to the horrifying realization that he knew exactly what he was doing and was playing me all along.

When he found out that I was serious about the 6 month separation I insisted on before we could consider reconciliation, he immediately sued me for alimony. (I had been a SAHM for 25 years to special needs kids.) That was when I realized that he only married me for my family’s money.

I realized when he set me up. I'd been talking to him about how I thought he had issues with needing to be right all the time. He literally came to me with something to confront me with to make me wrong, and then accused me of exactly what I'd been saying to him.

I truly thought my husband had a mental health problem and was extremely depressed. He gave the kids and me the silent treatment and the cold shoulder for years and years. I finally learned a year ago that he knew exactly what he was doing – he confessed he was punishing me for a sin that he perceived I had committed. When I learned he had punished me (and the kids) for 30 years and I was a victim of his choice to abuse, it changed everything.

I didn't see the patterns, I thought he was getting worse because he was beginning to deal with his childhood. I felt so sorry for that abused little boy that I could see standing there instead of my husband. I started to read about narcissism so I had a small understanding. The patterns showed up when he tried incest with our adult daughter. I hate that it took this last episode to rip the blinders completely off my eyes.

Some women realize it was intentional after they leave

Once I moved out and he was served legal separation papers, he hired a lawyer and that very day filed a motion to deny me alimony, any custody with the kids, and access to the home. He made false allegations of a man supporting me to get out of his legal responsibility to pay me support. It was this moment where I knew that this man was evil, not just a good guy with some bad habits.

I was several years out before I realized that I was not alone, that he deliberately destroyed me and our family all while blaming me for it all. I had a panic attack 2 years ago and ended up in therapy through the local DV shelter. I started to learn about what had been done to me and was given Lundy Bancroft's book, “Why Does He Do That.”

I realized it was intentional by reading it over and over as I was researching NPD. I believed that he was unaware and that if I could just find the right words, or if someone else who was an authority figure could explain it just the right way to him, the lightbulb would go off and he would finally get it! When I could finally accept that it was intentional, I could let go, go low contact (we have a son together), and move forward with my life, knowing that he is choosing to not change and there is nothing I could do to change that. There were no magic words!

When I realized how strategic he was about the timing. As an example, after we separated, he would repeatedly call or text to confront and accuse as I was getting ready for church. He just can't stand not being the center of attention, and he hates that we gain peace and security from our faith. He does the same whenever the boys will be with me for a holiday, to be sure we are thinking about him instead of enjoying the time with extended family.

Reading Don Hennessey book “How He Gets Into Her Head” was eye opening. I also kept going back to my journals and SEEING the purposeful digging into me verbally, not letting up even when I was in tears. When your wife is on her knees sobbing, begging you to stop yelling, criticizing, and demanding to be right, and he keeps doing it, that is a clear indicator that THEY DON'T CARE THAT THEY ARE HURTING YOU. They KNOW they are hurting you. They can see it and hear it with their own senses. If they don't stop, they are doing it to HURT YOU ON PURPOSE.

When I reflect and read my journal, there's no denying the triangulation, double standards, changing the goal posts, treating me better in public than at home, outright bullying and name calling, etc. Those are intentional, abusive mind games. I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I assumed all those years that our problems were due to personality differences, poor communication, or challenges of blended families. It wasn't until I learned about narcissism that I realized what was really going on. It brought horrifying clarity and confirmed that I shouldn't try any more to save the marriage.

After I had divorced and was educating myself on covert narc abuse, I discovered that it was intentional. Up until then I just thought that his childhood abuse caused him to rage and verbally abuse me. When I learned about the intentional part, it took me a long time to wrap my head around it. I now view him as an evil, ugly person whom I have blocked from contact as I know there is no hope of change or closure.

My mind actually still cannot fully accept that he did it intentionally, but he did. In his accusations against ME, he called me the narcissist and said "I can't believe you planned the whole thing right from the beginning. It was always your plan to destroy me.".... Then I learned about projection....

And some women continue to struggle with believing that it WAS intentional

This is a hard one for me, I still struggle with it. My nature is to believe the best of people, and always give the benefit of the doubt. I have to remove the emotion from it and trust my common sense and the evidence. Everyone around me who knows my ex sees that it’s intentional. I just struggle so much with the thought that he was and is abusive on purpose.

Years later I’m still wrapping my brain around the idea it was intentional.

There are times when I still don't know if he's doing it on purpose or if that is just that way he is. But, there was one time when he said something very mean to me and when I called him out on it, he said "Well, I'm just trying to light a fire under you." Meaning, he purposely said what he said to get a reaction out of me!

I am still trying to come to terms that it was intentional. I know it was but it's hard to believe. It's what is still keeping me in the grieving process. It's a constant battle in my head.

In my head I can't wrap my brain around that someone would lie to me so boldly and so frequently. For years he had me convinced that I misremembered things even though I have a photographic memory.

I have always struggled with the intentional part, but there have been times I have known it was intentional. Particularly when he slung something in my face about my past I had confided in him about. This was at a time I questioned a decision he was making. He just came out with it, it was completely unrelated and definitely designed to hurt me and throw me off course. It was intentional. So other things must have been too.

No matter where you are in your struggle with this, you aren’t alone!

Coming to terms with our spouse’s intention to hurt and abuse us is difficult and devastating. It requires a complete shift in our view of the world, and our husband. Yet when we realize it, it can be freeing.

If you’ve experienced covert psychological abuse, come join our private Facebook group for women of faith who are covert emotional and psychological spousal abuse survivors!

Be sure to download this Guide to help you understand covert abuse.

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