163. The Emotional Divorce After Betrayal & Abuse

Hello. Hello, my amazing, beautiful listeners. How are you? I am so glad you are here. Thank you for being with me today. Before I jump into the episode, I wanted to remind those of you who've had a couple questions about my intimacy within course. One of the questions is, is it self-paced? Yes, it is, meaning it has videos with worksheets that you get to watch and take and do all at your own pace.

I walk you through the entire workshop as we go through the seven different levels of intimacy, which are verbal, cognitive, emotional, physical, psychological, spiritual, and sexual intimacy. When you've had such injury around all of those different levels of intimacy, or you didn't have healthy, in a lot of them, maybe not any of them,

we have to be able to cultivate healthy in those areas within ourself first, especially if you wanna cultivate a healthy relationship again at some point. I know some of you are like never again. This is still very, very important for you to work through, to know what healthy is, so you show up in healthy, healthy relationships just in general.

This doesn't necessarily mean you are preparing for a romantic relationship, but part of healing is unpacking a lot of the harm that was done and cultivating that healthy within.

So I walk you through each one of those levels of intimacy. I have practices, tools, things that you can do, and you can take your time with that. To help you become more aware of how you talk to yourself.

What is your negative self-talk? We need to really get curious about what that looks like, which shocks everybody when we really start looking at this. So it's self-paced to give you enough time to practice and

take this as seriously as you wanna take it.

I hear all the time, Amy, I never knew what healthy was, so how am I going to recognize what healthy is again, if I do start dating? This is going to help you do just that. So intimacy within link in the show notes. Amy woolsey.com. So much content. So much information for a really great price.

Now we're talking about an emotional divorce today, but I just wanna validate one of the deepest injuries that. A lot of my clients have experienced, and those who have experienced a lifesaving divorce have had a lot of injury in that emotional intimacy.

There wasn't any, it was so infiltrated with emotional abuse, manipulation, gaslighting,

emotional immaturity from the partner. Makes it all the more important. Why we need to have, and why it takes so long to have an emotional divorce. I've talked 📍 about this, did a podcast a while ago, but honestly, it can't be talked about enough. The emotional divorce.

Isn't a one and done. It really is very layered. It comes in phases, and for many of you listening, it's the hardest part of moving on after a lifesaving divorce. So today I wanna go a little bit deeper, talk about the parts that we don't often name out loud. And one of those is that false sense of freedom, the emotional games that continue to play.

The parenting traps and really a lot of those subtle ways that you might still be giving your power away without even realizing it. If you're feeling stuck, feeling like, why can't I move forward? I'll never really be free and you're feeling like giving up, then this episode is for you.

When I work with women going through divorce and betrayal. What I see again and again is really how charged this feels. The anger, the grief, the rage, the intrusive thoughts. It is not just because the marriage ended, it's because there's no real closure from this kind of trauma. And when you don't know the full truth or the full extent of their acting out behaviors, your brain does

what every human brain is wired to do, it tries to complete the puzzle. It searches desperately for all of those missing pieces, and that's why you find yourself ruminating, obsessing, replaying, and staying in some of these unhealthy patterns. With the X, it's not because you're weak, not even because you're not doing healing work.

It's because your nervous system and your attachment system. Are desperately trying to make sense of what feels very senseless. One of the quotes I mention all the time is you are never going to understand behavior that you never behaved in. If the human brain is gonna still try really, really, really hard to understand it, and we can get really stuck there too emotionally. From a trauma lens, this is called incomplete processing. The story's unfinished in your body and brain, it's gonna keep looping, hoping to resolve it, and from an attachment perspective, it also makes perfect sense as well. If your primary bond that was with your ex, that primary attachment that's been with someone who betrayed, who deceived you. Your attachment is gonna get all kinds of scrambled. So you might feel both the pull towards anger, disgust, and confusing, and a confusing longing for them to finally admit, apologize, or show up differently. That is not crazy. That is exactly how attachment injury plays out, and it really creates both the protest and the yearning.

Then we have the injustice, which, oh my gosh, the amount of injustice, right? None of this is fair. Then when there's no ownership, no accountability, no apology, that sense of justice is gonna be left wide open. Humans are wired to need repair in relationships. When we don't get it, that pain is just gonna grow.

It just magnifies. Anger and rage aren't just negative emotions. They are signals from your body that something deeply unfair, deeply unsafe has happened. What makes it even harder is that once divorce begins. Many of my clients actually experience more abusive behaviors, not less. They don't stop.

He doesn't need to keep up the Mr. Nice Guy Act with you anymore. He's, he is most likely gonna say that for everybody else, the new partner, the friends, the family, the community, while you see the mass come off all the way. That contrast. Is maddening to say the least, because your instincts always told you something was off, and now he is proving it in real time.

But only you get that unfiltered version. Sometimes your kids do as well,

but all of this is gonna keep you in survival mode, so your nervous system doesn't get the message, Hey, it's over. We're safe now. Instead it will stay activated. It is scanning for the danger. It's still jumping at the text messages, anticipating the emails. It's caught in the in-between of longing for closure, bracing for more impact, that's why the decree, signing that decree in the court is not bringing the peace.

It's just one of the steps. The deeper work is the emotional divorce. We have to untangle that trauma bond. We have to calm the survival brain. We have to reclaim for you that inner sense of safety so that you can finally step outta survival mode and truly into that freedom that I talk about all the time. When you want to be free and even when you expect to feel free, but you don't, it is a false sense of freedom and that is very confusing. I know so many of you are living here right now. You can feel very hooked in that hyper vigilance. Always being braced for that next blow because your body has learned that danger comes without warning and it hasn't got the signal yet from you that you are totally safe.

I used to think that my silence was protecting. And oftentimes there's this pull of loyalty to someone who has been destructive and, it's a weird kind of loyalty. It's a loyalty.

That doesn't always look like love, but shows up in staying silent, minimizing, rationalizing their behavior. I used to think that my silence towards the behaviors that he was continuing after we divorce was protecting my kids, right? Keeping them from seeing their dad a certain way. The truth is, kids pick 📍 up on almost everything. When no one names gaslighting, manipulation, vo, when those aren't being named, they don't feel safer. They feel more confused and stuck and pulled in between mom and dad. They start to doubt their own instincts the same way that I doubted mine.

Real protection isn't silence. Real protection is calmly, neutrally, naming what's not okay without putting kids in the middle. We don't have to throw the other person under the bus per se, but we absolutely get to name, show them what manipulation and abuse is, that it is not okay.

It is not normal. Model that so that they can start trusting their own instincts.

We also show up in an emotionally attached way because the brain hates missing pieces of the puzzle. When you don't have closure. You don't have full disclosure, it's gonna keep spinning, searching for those answers that you will likely never get. Because of the years of gaslighting conditioning, you second guess yourself, you doubt your own reality. So of course you don't feel free yet. Now, feel free to stomp your feet. Punch the air, scream. I know this really, really sucks, but hang in there with me. We're going to get to the part where you can do something, I promise. First, we need to become more aware of what this might look like for you. So maybe this emotional divorce is showing up because of the money gains, like when child support or those shared expenses get weaponized.

Maybe they are withholding their half of, the football registration, or the dance registration. They're holding half of that unless you agree to meet them in person and talk face-to-face. But that's not safe for you. So you don't wanna do that. Now, you're not gonna get half the payment, manipulation, or dangle the payment with strings attacked.

If you don't do X, Y, Z, then I'm not gonna pay. That's manipulation, plain and simple. Or maybe it shows up in other ways, like you keep checking their social media, hoping to get answers or reassurance, but you just get more emotionally hijacked, more upset, more jealous, more envy, or you get hijacked every time they show up late or don't follow through because it throws your whole day off and reminds you once again that you can't rely on this person.

Maybe you still replay arguments over and over in your heads, thinking of all the things that you should have said or could have said that were a lot better than what you did say, or you imagine what you'd say to get them to just finally understand, or you compare your life to their life, missing yourself.

That they're winning, they got away with it. Their life is better. Or you stay silent. Again, stay silent about the manipulation or the controlling behaviors because you are still scared to rock the boat, or worried about if you do rock the boat, then how is that gonna impact you or the kids?

And maybe for you, it isn't about the child support, but it's the constant schedule changes. Or they're using kids as the messenger. So go tell your mom, or I'm not gonna talk to your mom. You go tell your mom, or the posting online about what a great dad they are, or what a great parent they are. All the while you are the one doing all of the heavy lifting and all of the repair work.

When they come back from the other parent, maybe they withhold information that you need to co-parent, or they downplay your concerns. When you do bring them up and now you're questioning yourself. All of these are versions of the game. The game that they keep playing emotionally—whiplash you, emotionally keeping you attached, emotionally keeping you reacting, hooked, and leaving you feeling trapped.

When you start to see these patterns for what they are, that is the first step of stepping out of it.

It is the first step towards freedom. If any of that, that I just rambled off, resonates. I hear you. I feel you. I've experienced all of it, which is why it is so easy for me to ramble it all off. It is awful. And again, hit pause. Stomp your feet, punch the air, scream. It sucks. Now

for me, the emotional divorce came in phases. Every time I expected him to do the responsible parent thing—to show up on time, to pay child support—and he didn't. I would go through that emotional rollercoaster. I was shocked. I was appalled. I was sad. I was furious. I would spend hours trying to figure out how to make him see, make him responsible, make him understand, how to make him change, how to navigate what my kids need without telling my kids, well, I didn't get child support, 'cause I didn't want them to worry about money and feel unsafe and like all the other things, but the cycle just kept repeating.

He was still going to be him, that was the turning point for me. I realized that if anything was going to shift, it had to be me because he wasn't going to. With child support for me, I just stopped expecting it because even him going to jail multiple times over, it wasn't gonna change. It didn't change.

So expecting payment was only setting myself up for another round of anger and disappointment. The emotional divorce for me was saying, I'm releasing this expectation. I am not giving him any more power over my peace anymore.

I used all of the energy that I was spending on the expecting and trying to get that enforced to make more money, or with pickup times. I had to create a boundary. It wasn't working for me anymore to wait around 15, 20, 30 minutes for this person to show up when they wanted to show up because my emotions were going crazy, and I would pick up that dang rope that kept me attached emotionally to this person.

I'd leave fuming. My whole day was ruined. So I decided I needed a boundary so that I wasn't playing into that emotional game anymore and getting emotionally hijacked. So for me, the boundary was if you're not there after 15 minutes, then I drove home and they had to drive all the way to my place

to pick the kids up. That was my line. Wasn't gonna cross it anymore. That was me stepping out of the game. Was it inconvenient? Sometimes yes. Did the kids complain? Yes.

But I needed to take my power back. So what does it look like for you to move from this false sense of freedom into true freedom and take your power back? It's gonna start very small. Very intentional ways. First, we have to see the game, step into that awareness. The moment that you can pause and say, wait, this is the emotional game.

He's trying to pull me back in, or I'm getting sucked back in. You've already created space between you and the hook. That awareness alone is going to disrupt that old cycle. It's going to shift you out of reaction mode. Start to make a little space for you to actually have some choice. So, for example, when he dangles the money with conditions, I'm only gonna pay my half if you meet me in person.

You can stop yourself from spiraling into rage or scrambling to convince them. Instead, you see it for what it is. Manipulation. Naming it also helps take some of that power back. Then you set the boundaries. Boundaries are not about getting them to change because they likely won't. They're about protecting you and your peace, your time, your sanity.

So maybe that is, this is the line that I hold for me, regardless of what he chooses, and this is where it gets tough, y'all. I know. I get it. This might look like you deciding to pay the entire registration fee or letting your child know I need a little more time. Paying the registration fee, it might mean you borrow, that half of the money for the registration fee.

You might need to get creative to break out of this cycle of manipulation and abuse.

It's 'cause I know you don't wanna put your kids in the middle of it and it is appropriate to say, here's my boundary. I am not willing to do the things that are being demanded of me. In order to get payment for you, I no longer play into manipulation. So here we are, we're naming it.

I 📍 don't do things that feel unfair 📍 or unsafe. I'll always do my best to take care of you, and I'm committed to figuring out how to do that. Sometimes we need to get a little creative on how to make things work. It is okay for our children to hear what we are naming, that we are no longer willing to play the game around.

Right—name the abuse, and then what I said there was very much letting the child know I'm interested in them. I'm committed to them, right? I'm going to figure out how I'm gonna make this work for you because you matter. It is okay for my child to feel a little disappointment that they don't get something maybe right away, or that they need to wait a little bit, or that they maybe need to figure out how to contribute to that.

It's okay for all of us to feel negative emotion. What's not okay is to continue to play into the manipulation and the abuse cycle, to feel stuck, to feel trapped because we don't wanna piss the other person off. Boundaries for you are gonna protect your peace. A lot of times my clients will say, yeah, but those boundaries come with consequences.

And then when we really start talking about what those consequences are, it's the old cycle, the old pattern. We're afraid that they're gonna get mad. Yeah, but you don't live in the same house anymore, so they can get mad. Okay. But they're gonna take it out on the kids. This is why we safety plan, why we parallel parent, and why we use legal tools or third party support people to help mitigate some of this.

You staying in an abusive, manipulative cycle doesn't ultimately protect your kids. It continues to teach them that the behavior is so bad, we need to stay silent about it, or we need to stay in the game around it.

It leaves them confused. It leaves them doubting their instincts. I know you don't wanna bash their dad, and you don't have to. Calmly naming the behavior: it's not okay to lie, even when it's someone we love. I know it feels confusing when one person says one thing and another says something else, that's not your fault.

When we name the behavior, you're modeling truth and giving them a language for what they already sense is happening. For you, naming it helps you to stop minimizing or rationalizing, and it reminds you this is manipulation and this is not okay, and this is why I had a lifesaving divorce. Also, when we do this, you start to rebuild your own sense of self-trust.

Finding freedom from an emotional divorce will grow when you can look at yourself and believe that you can trust you to show up differently. Despite how this person continues to show up in the same abusive patterns, the same emotionally immature patterns. When betrayal shakes your self-trust to the core,

it makes sense why you doubt your choices or your instincts or your ability to see things clearly. We have to rebuild that sense of self-trust. It's not gonna happen overnight. It really does happen through those small daily moments where you are choosing differently, which is why we have to get out of this cycle and this pattern emotionally.

So when you have the urge to check their social media and you decide not to, you're creating something different. You're building a new neural pathway,

every time you choose to align with your piece. Then you teach yourself that you can trust yourself again.

This is where you stop handing him power over your emotions. This is where you step off the rollercoaster and into your own steady, safe grounding. Doesn't mean that you'll never get triggered. It means that when you do. You know how to find your way back to yourself because we're not emotionally attached to them, then we start redefining our freedom.

You start shifting to what freedom actually means for you, because freedom isn't about them paying child support or showing up on time or suddenly becoming a respectful co-parent. It's really about reframing your beliefs, focusing on what you can control. Choosing what serves you. So you might, that might mean letting go of his pushback when you enforce a boundary.

I, really, really wanna validate how tricky this is. I know it's so easy or said than done. I get that, been there. I know, and it needs to be said. Even if we have to listen to this over and over, and over, over. I get that too. This is really tricky. Sometimes when you hold a boundary or stop playing the game, they find other ways to get to you, and it can feel worse, especially when they take it out on the kids.

And that fear is very real. I'm not gonna sugarcoat that or minimize that at all. I know a lot of you are stuck in that cycle because you wanna protect your kids in that way. I get that too.

The hard truth is that if you always let fear of their reactions dictate your choices or stay trapped, then you will stay trapped. This is why a lot of you aren't feeling freedom.

We're managing the other person. Instead of managing ourself, we're handing our power over to that very person who thrived and still thrives on control and manipulation. That is not freedom. Captivity.

Acknowledge the fear, honor it, and then ask yourself, what choice will align me with real peace? Even if he chooses the chaos? We have to remember that their retaliation or manipulation is their choice. Your choice is whether or not you live your life constantly bracing for it. Whether you start to reclaim your energy and focus on what serves you and the children. Abuse and cohesive control remind us that the fear around holding that line is very real.

If we continue to let. Fear and retaliation make every decision for us, then they still have control over our life, and that is not freedom.

I also know that when you start modeling this kind of resilience for your children, there is a period of time that their nervous system needs to rewire as well. So it's gonna feel like it's getting worse. It's gonna feel like they're even pulling away from you, and someone has to break the cycle. It might as well be you.

It might as well be you. So when you calmly hold the line and not collapse under the pushback, you are teaching them something very powerful. Like I say, the consistency in that is what matters. I remember my, the, my therapist told me this the very beginning, and I hated him for it, but it proved to be true.

As you stay consistent in these healthy ways—honoring boundaries, holding them and being consistent in them, stepping out of the old patterns and cycles and truly gaining your freedom—it's harder, but it pays off in the end. We gotta widen our scope, that lens, and look at the long term picture here.

I know everything that I've just shared can feel very, very heavy, and it is. An emotional divorce is not easy. It's not just flipping the switch. It's not one conversation. It's not just moving on. It is very deep. It is very layered. It is an ongoing work. It asks you to break patterns that have been wired in your nervous system.

It asks you to grieve, grieve dreams that you didn't wanna lose. It's asking you to stand steady when fear is telling you to collapse, and that's why this is so very brave. Every small choice that you make to step out of the game is an act of courage.

Healing is not gonna come from waiting for them to change. It comes from you deciding that you're not gonna hand over the power anymore. Freedom is not an absence of pain. It is the presence of peace even in the middle of hard things. And so many of you are looking for freedom to equate zero negative emotions, zero pain, zero hard.

It almost never works that way.

So every time you choose you, you are teaching your children that they're allowed to choose themselves as well. So yes, an emotional divorce is hard. It's layered. It takes time, but it's also the doorway to becoming who you really are. It's where you stop being defined by betrayal, abuse in someone else's choices, and you start to reclaim your own.

And that's why this work matters so much.

If you're feeling like the abuse and the control and these patterns are never going to end, I want you to know that there really is a way out. That way is through this emotional divorce. You are strong enough. You are wise enough, and you are worthy to walk this path because you are the chooser of your life, and you can create the life that you 📍 want to have, the freedom that you choose, because you can. Take care everybody