THIS IS AN AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT, AND MAY CONTAIN ERRORS.
(00:00:01):
I had my partner removed from my house by police after his third physical attack.

(00:00:05):
but the first in which my baby was in my arms.

(00:00:08):
I naively thought the abuse would end that night, but it only escalated.

(00:00:13):
Since the separation,

(00:00:14):
my child's father has broken my front door when I refused to let him back into my house,

(00:00:18):
has threatened suicide by cop if I call for help,

(00:00:21):
has threatened to have both of my kids put into the system by making false reports

(00:00:24):
to child services,

(00:00:26):
and has attempted to drug me with a sedative at a coffee shop knowing I would be

(00:00:29):
driving home with our infant in the backseat.

(00:00:32):
I've disclosed the abuse to therapists, police, my friends and family.

(00:00:36):
I have completed a danger assessment with a trained domestic violence worker and

(00:00:39):
scored the highest level of risk,

(00:00:41):
extreme danger.

(00:00:43):
The questionnaire stated that I was in need of urgent safety measures.

(00:00:47):
He tells me every time we speak that he has nothing left to lose,

(00:00:50):
nothing to live for,

(00:00:51):
and that he holds me entirely responsible for his dismal circumstances.

(00:00:55):
He drinks.

(00:00:56):
He is chronically unemployed.

(00:00:58):
I have been certain at times that he was preparing to kill me, my children and himself.

(00:01:03):
So I sought a protective order and the order was denied because the judge felt my

(00:01:07):
fears were based on nothing but quote suspicions and opinions about this man's personality.

(00:01:12):
I think the trauma of being ignored and left unprotected has actually been one of

(00:01:16):
my greatest in this entire ordeal.

(00:01:19):
I don't know how I am supposed to serve this man with court papers seeking custody

(00:01:22):
and supervision for his parenting time when I know I may not survive that day.

(00:01:43):
yet I have very little choice as I need to protect my child from his violence.

(00:01:48):
My own outreach worker told me she felt my best course of action would be to flee,

(00:01:52):
to move far away and never look back.

(00:01:55):
I am a college professor with a home that I own,

(00:01:57):
a promising career ahead of me,

(00:01:59):
and an older child in school with friends and activities they adore.

(00:02:03):
I will not be surrendering that good life I built for myself and my children to this man."

(00:02:08):
All I can do is hope that he doesn't choose to end it as I take back the control he

(00:02:12):
seized from me in what should have been the most beautiful season of our lives.

(00:02:17):
Hi, I'm Zahn Valines, a writer and feminist activist, and this is the Liberating Motherhood podcast.

(00:02:23):
Today, I am here with Dr. Emma Katz.

(00:02:26):
Hi, Dr. Katz.

(00:02:29):
Hi.

(00:02:29):
And I'm so excited to talk to her today because she's going to speak to so many of

(00:02:35):
the issues that I talk about.

(00:02:38):
Dr.

(00:02:38):
Emma Katz is a researcher in domestic violence and coercive control whose work has

(00:02:43):
helped shape legislation and professional practice globally.

(00:02:46):
Her book, Coercive Control in Children's and Mothers' Lives, is widely acclaimed.

(00:02:52):
Emma also brings her research to the public in an accessible and influential way on

(00:02:56):
her Substack,

(00:02:57):
Decoding Coercive Control with Dr.

(00:02:59):
Emma Katz,

(00:03:00):
which is read by thousands of people in more than 90 countries across the world.

(00:03:04):
You can read it at dremmakatz.substack.com.

(00:03:10):
Emma's research has illuminated children's experiences of coercive control,

(00:03:14):
which had previously remained largely invisible.

(00:03:17):
She argues that children are affected by many forms of abuse inherent to coercive control,

(00:03:22):
including the breaking down of close relationships with loved ones,

(00:03:26):
deprivation of resources,

(00:03:27):
constrained behavior,

(00:03:28):
and isolation from the outside world.

(00:03:31):
Her research has been described as pioneering work that will change how we

(00:03:35):
understand and respond to children's experience of domestic abuse.

(00:03:39):
And I'm just so grateful to have her here today because I think one of the most

(00:03:43):
common things we hear in activism is,

(00:03:46):
well,

(00:03:47):
he's a shitty husband,

(00:03:48):
but he's actually a really good dad.

(00:03:51):
And I think that Dr. Katz's work shows that to abuse a child's mother is to abuse a child.

(00:03:58):
So I'm just I'm so glad to have you today.

(00:04:00):
And we're going to get started with the basics.

(00:04:03):
What is coercive control?

(00:04:06):
Thanks so much for having me.

(00:04:08):
It's great to be able to share my insights with you and with your listeners.

(00:04:14):
Oh, that vignette at the beginning.

(00:04:15):
My heart was breaking for that mum.

(00:04:18):
It's appalling.

(00:04:20):
And when she said that the worst thing was being...

(00:04:24):
One of the worst things was the way that the court disbelieved.

(00:04:27):
There's a term for that.

(00:04:28):
It's called institutional betrayal.

(00:04:30):
And it is really traumatizing.

(00:04:33):
And that's that's well recognized within researchers who look into this sort of vile kind of trauma.

(00:04:42):
So.

(00:04:44):
You asked what is coercive control.

(00:04:46):
So I'll give it you in a nutshell and then I'll go into a little bit more detail.

(00:04:50):
In a nutshell,

(00:04:51):
coercive control involves situations where somebody subjects another person to

(00:04:57):
persistent and wide ranging controlling behavior over a long period of time.

(00:05:04):
taking away their freedom and autonomy.

(00:05:07):
And they make it clear that standing up for themselves will be punished.

(00:05:12):
So very much a do what I say or else situation.

(00:05:18):
So that's the nutshell.

(00:05:19):
To go into a bit more detail,

(00:05:21):
the punishment for not doing what the perpetrator wants can take many different forms.

(00:05:28):
It might be

(00:05:29):
violence it might be beating you up but it might not be that but it will definitely

(00:05:33):
be something that the abuser knows that the victim and survivor dreads and will go

(00:05:38):
a long way to avoid things like hurting loved ones coercing the victim survivor

(00:05:44):
into sexual activity that they don't want to be doing economically abusing them so

(00:05:49):
perhaps taking their money or dragging them through court post separation to drain

(00:05:54):
their money or as in the story you told at the beginning it might be

(00:06:00):
making these threats to kill,

(00:06:02):
making it very clear that the perpetrator is willing to go to the point of death

(00:06:08):
and thereby keeping the victim survivor in a state of terror with those threats.

(00:06:15):
So perpetrators, by repeatedly punishing a victim survivor for noncompliance,

(00:06:22):
What the perpetrator wants,

(00:06:24):
what they intend is to demoralize and terrorize the victim survivor into a state of

(00:06:32):
permanent subjugation,

(00:06:35):
permanent kind of servitude,

(00:06:37):
terror,

(00:06:39):
turning them into a kind of puppet on a string like figure who the perpetrator can

(00:06:43):
get whatever they want from.

(00:06:46):
And the perpetrator is motivated by their deeply held and really harmful belief that

(00:06:54):
that they are entitled to control others in a way that strips them of their normal

(00:07:00):
rights and liberties and not just any others but usually their girlfriend,

(00:07:05):
their wife,

(00:07:05):
their children and they're motivated by this deeply held and harmful drive that

(00:07:12):
they have to get control over the people in their family and maintain that control

(00:07:16):
for as long as they want it.

(00:07:20):
So perpetrators, they want their victims, their targets' lives to be all under their control.

(00:07:26):
But at the same time, the perpetrator wants a lot of freedom for themselves.

(00:07:30):
So they'll impose a thousand rules on their partner or their child,

(00:07:35):
but they won't stick to any rules themselves.

(00:07:37):
So there's a great imbalance there.

(00:07:40):
And I also want to say that coercive control can often be mistaken for a lot of different things.

(00:07:47):
But it's not about love.

(00:07:50):
People aren't behaving this way because they're madly in love.

(00:07:53):
It's not about lost tempers because perpetrators can control their temper when it suits them.

(00:07:59):
It's not about anger problems because, again, the perpetrator can control their anger when it suits them.

(00:08:06):
And it's not about drug or alcohol misuse,

(00:08:08):
although that might be going on in the situation,

(00:08:11):
but it's not what's causing the abusive behaviour.

(00:08:14):
It might make it worse, but it's not the root cause.

(00:08:18):
Like I say,

(00:08:18):
the root cause,

(00:08:20):
the real root cause,

(00:08:21):
is that perpetrators believe they're entitled to do this and they're highly

(00:08:25):
motivated to do it.

(00:08:27):
They want to exploit their target and get control of their life.

(00:08:31):
And this intersects so well with what you so brilliantly talk about in Liberating Motherhood,

(00:08:37):
the unequal division of labour in the home.

(00:08:40):
One thing that perpetrators of coercive control want is to be able to exploit the

(00:08:44):
domestic labour of their mother.

(00:08:47):
their partner, and I'm putting partner in inverted quote marks because it's not a partnership.

(00:08:52):
It's like a sustained, prolonged assault.

(00:08:56):
But yeah,

(00:08:57):
they want,

(00:08:58):
so one of the things that they want,

(00:08:59):
one of the many things they want is to exploit domestic labour by putting the

(00:09:04):
partner in a situation where they're scared to not do all the domestic labour

(00:09:08):
because the perpetrator will have such a negative reaction if they don't.

(00:09:12):
But it also goes much wider than that as well.

(00:09:16):
That's a lot.

(00:09:17):
That's really helpful.

(00:09:19):
One thing that I really appreciate you saying is that this isn't happening because

(00:09:24):
of an anger management problem.

(00:09:25):
It's not happening because of passion.

(00:09:27):
It's not happening because of all of these reasons that we use to dismiss it.

(00:09:31):
And I found in my own work that we seem to have this idea that if there's a reason

(00:09:36):
that it is happening,

(00:09:37):
that then we have to work on the reason it's happening rather than the actual behavior.

(00:09:42):
So if he...

(00:09:45):
is an alcoholic,

(00:09:45):
for example,

(00:09:46):
well,

(00:09:46):
we need to get him to alcohol treatment rather than addressing the fact that this

(00:09:51):
is someone who's abusing someone when they're drinking.

(00:09:54):
So I really appreciate you addressing that.

(00:09:56):
But I'm also hoping you can speak a little more to why these causes are not the

(00:10:03):
real cause and what you think the root cause is of

(00:10:08):
these men who feel compelled to control others?

(00:10:11):
Why is this so widespread and perhaps even normal in heterosexual relationships?

(00:10:19):
That's a really good question.

(00:10:21):
I don't have all the answers to that because I feel like I would need to have five

(00:10:25):
more PhDs than I actually do to really have a handle on that why.

(00:10:30):
It's a huge question.

(00:10:32):
But I think one thing I can say is that we see a lot more men perpetrating coercive

(00:10:37):
control than women do.

(00:10:39):
There are women coercive control perpetrators out there,

(00:10:42):
but they are much rarer and they're much more likely to go so far as to kill their partners.

(00:10:49):
That's far less likely in the case with the woman perpetrator.

(00:10:52):
And killing is the ultimate act of control for these perpetrators.

(00:10:56):
It's not a loss of control.

(00:10:57):
It's not that they snapped.

(00:10:59):
It's the ultimate act of control for them.

(00:11:03):
So one of the reasons why we see this imbalance,

(00:11:05):
where it's the vast majority of coercive control perpetrators are men,

(00:11:10):
I think,

(00:11:11):
is because of the level of entitlement that our society gives to men to behave in

(00:11:18):
these ways.

(00:11:18):
And the fact that it's pretty normalized for men to have a certain level of control

(00:11:24):
and power over their family.

(00:11:28):
So the idea that a man is the head of the household,

(00:11:32):
for a lot of people,

(00:11:32):
that is still the way they think.

(00:11:34):
And even if they don't think that now,

(00:11:36):
it was only a couple of generations ago that that would have been the way things

(00:11:40):
were thought about in their family.

(00:11:43):
And we see male power and control really normalized in our culture to a far greater

(00:11:48):
extent than female power and control is,

(00:11:51):
where women have power and control.

(00:11:53):
It makes people uncomfortable.

(00:11:54):
It's seen as a problem.

(00:11:56):
People often really,

(00:11:58):
really struggle with that,

(00:11:59):
whether it's a female politician or a boss or a wife who's perhaps earning more

(00:12:05):
than her husband.

(00:12:07):
So I think our cultures have really set up the situation where we're going to see a lot of men

(00:12:15):
taking this power and control that they've been told is rightfully theirs and

(00:12:21):
taking it to quite an extreme place.

(00:12:24):
So for some men, they'll take their ideas about entitlement

(00:12:29):
To a certain extent, and there'll be really bad husbands because of that.

(00:12:34):
But for some,

(00:12:35):
they'll take it to such an extreme place that they become a full-blown coercive

(00:12:40):
control perpetrator.

(00:12:42):
And they're really at the extreme end of the spectrum of...

(00:12:48):
of controlling behavior and of absolutely being the most terrible,

(00:12:52):
terrible person to be in a relationship with.

(00:12:54):
And again,

(00:12:55):
I use this relationship in inverted commas because it's not even a relationship,

(00:12:58):
but it was disguised as that at the beginning.

(00:13:02):
So yeah,

(00:13:02):
I would say that that's one major element of why male perpetrators are so much more

(00:13:11):
common than female perpetrators.

(00:13:13):
But, um, as to the rest of it, like, um, you know, why some men are not others.

(00:13:18):
Um,

(00:13:19):
I think that everyone has a kind of unique set of circumstances and,

(00:13:24):
and people respond to the messages they get from their cultures to different extents.

(00:13:30):
And some people reject the messages they get from their cultures while others fully embrace them.

(00:13:35):
So for example,

(00:13:36):
a vegan in a meat eating culture is rejecting the messages that they got about meat eating.

(00:13:41):
And similarly,

(00:13:41):
a man who's actively anti-sexist in a sexist culture is rejecting a lot of messages

(00:13:48):
that he's getting from his culture.

(00:13:50):
So why some men go down that route and others don't, I'm not too sure.

(00:13:55):
But one thing I do feel is that it's not particularly helpful to put mental health

(00:14:00):
labels on coercive controllers.

(00:14:05):
So a lot of people are very drawn to explaining things

(00:14:10):
a man's behaviour as narcissism or sociopathy or psychopathy,

(00:14:17):
you know,

(00:14:17):
to say he's a narcissist,

(00:14:18):
he's a sociopath,

(00:14:19):
he's a psychopath.

(00:14:21):
And I can totally see why people find those labels helpful.

(00:14:25):
But at the same time, I think it distracts, as you just said, from looking at the behavior.

(00:14:31):
And I think if we just look at the behavior of what they're doing,

(00:14:34):
that tells us more than enough that they're a despicable and dangerous person

(00:14:40):
without worrying about what.

(00:14:43):
you know, what particular label might apply to them.

(00:14:45):
And also coercive control perpetrators are very, very predictable in their own right.

(00:14:52):
It's like they've all read a very similar script.

(00:14:55):
It's quite,

(00:14:56):
you know,

(00:14:56):
the way that they're going to escalate when they receive pushback is quite predictable.

(00:15:01):
So, yeah,

(00:15:04):
Yeah,

(00:15:04):
again,

(00:15:04):
I don't think we need a kind of label like narcissism to help us predict what

(00:15:07):
they're going to do.

(00:15:08):
I think we can do that very easily by looking at their behavior more directly.

(00:15:14):
That's so interesting that you talk about them having a script because one of the

(00:15:18):
most consistent pieces of feedback that I get from readers is that they thought it

(00:15:24):
was just them.

(00:15:25):
And they didn't know that so many women's partners were using this exact same language.

(00:15:32):
And

(00:15:33):
you know,

(00:15:33):
women will email me questions and I can almost predict like what their husbands are

(00:15:38):
going to say next based on what they're telling me.

(00:15:41):
And the thing that I often tell women is it's,

(00:15:44):
It's like this patriarchal,

(00:15:46):
destructive,

(00:15:46):
oppressive society has turned a lot of men into like not fully human people.

(00:15:51):
They're just repeating these awful things that they've been taught without even questioning them.

(00:15:57):
But you said something really interesting that I want to go back to that I've never

(00:16:00):
heard anybody say before and now I'm going to latch on to it forever,

(00:16:04):
which is that this is not really a relationship in the typical way.

(00:16:09):
And I think that the way that most people conceive of this is that you have a relationship –

(00:16:15):
And the abuse is layered on top.

(00:16:17):
But I think you're right that in these dynamics,

(00:16:20):
the abuse is integral to the dynamic and not separable from the relationship.

(00:16:26):
So could you just speak a little more to that?

(00:16:27):
Because I know so many women who think that they can cure their partners or who

(00:16:32):
think that they have a good relationship under the abuse.

(00:16:35):
But I think maybe they don't have a relationship at all under the abuse.

(00:16:40):
I'm really glad you brought me back to that because I think that's such an important point.

(00:16:47):
So yeah, I see this all the time as well.

(00:16:49):
For example, people will say,

(00:16:51):
the first time the abuse happened was the day they got married,

(00:16:54):
or the first time the abuse happened was when she was pregnant.

(00:16:57):
And I want to just say,

(00:17:00):
I'm usually reading this in a newspaper piece or a magazine piece about domestic abuse,

(00:17:05):
and I want to just say,

(00:17:06):
whoa,

(00:17:07):
are you really sure about that?

(00:17:08):
Because what you probably mean is that was the first time where he did something

(00:17:14):
that was so explicitly,

(00:17:16):
obviously abusive that the victim felt...

(00:17:21):
confident in saying that was an incident of abuse.

(00:17:25):
Usually we're talking about that he hit her on that occasion,

(00:17:28):
because that's often the thing that people wait for before they're willing to say

(00:17:34):
this is abuse.

(00:17:36):
But actually,

(00:17:38):
The first thing that perpetrators do is they hook you into a relationship with them

(00:17:44):
fast and really suck you in really hard because they know that they want to start

(00:17:51):
controlling you.

(00:17:52):
So they need to get you on board quickly and they need to get you on board very

(00:17:56):
thoroughly so that they can start doing what they really want to do,

(00:17:59):
which is controlling you.

(00:18:01):
And so at the beginning,

(00:18:03):
they're presenting as your dream come true,

(00:18:05):
your prince charming,

(00:18:07):
exactly what you needed at that moment in your life.

(00:18:11):
And so many victim survivors say this.

(00:18:14):
They say it was so great at the beginning.

(00:18:16):
It was a whirlwind.

(00:18:17):
He seemed like everything that I was looking for.

(00:18:19):
And he was doing that on purpose right from the start.

(00:18:22):
So that manipulation right at the beginning from the first text messages, from the first date was,

(00:18:29):
That was the beginning of the abuse,

(00:18:31):
not the first time that he that he hit you or was sexually coercive with you or

(00:18:36):
called you a really vile,

(00:18:37):
horrible name.

(00:18:39):
And yeah, I think that what I say, what these what these kinds of men want to do is to.

(00:18:45):
get you to think that they're in a relationship,

(00:18:48):
get you to think that you're going to have a good future with them,

(00:18:51):
get you heavily invested.

(00:18:53):
And often this is on a very accelerated timescale.

(00:18:56):
So, you know, they pursue you quite relentlessly.

(00:18:59):
They sweep you off your feet.

(00:19:01):
They'll have you pregnant and married to them much quicker than you would have

(00:19:05):
perhaps done on your own timetable if they hadn't been rushing you.

(00:19:09):
Or they'll move you in with them or move into your place quite quickly.

(00:19:12):
And

(00:19:15):
Once they've got you sufficiently on board,

(00:19:17):
thinking that this is the relationship,

(00:19:19):
this is the love of your life,

(00:19:21):
and once they've got you sufficiently entrapped because you're tied to them

(00:19:24):
financially through living together or legally through marriage or through having a

(00:19:31):
pregnancy with them,

(00:19:31):
a child with them,

(00:19:33):
then they'll feel a lot freer to start introducing the control.

(00:19:39):
And for the victim-survivor,

(00:19:41):
yeah,

(00:19:41):
it seems like this has come out of nowhere and it seems like this is not...

(00:19:45):
what the relationship is really like because it just starts to creep in and it's

(00:19:50):
not seemed to be like that before.

(00:19:53):
But I'm afraid it was like that all along with the coercive controller.

(00:19:57):
And we'll often find also that this wasn't the first time they'd coercively

(00:20:00):
controlled someone and they have a long history of exes who they've done this to in

(00:20:05):
one form or another.

(00:20:07):
And so,

(00:20:07):
yeah,

(00:20:08):
I think if we look at it that way and we look at it as this sort of sustained

(00:20:14):
manipulation and this sustained entrapment that the perpetrator worked on for

(00:20:19):
months and years,

(00:20:21):
it really can change our perspective on it.

(00:20:23):
And I know it can be totally heartbreaking for a victim survivor to think about it that way.

(00:20:28):
but also in some ways quite liberating because it never was this good thing.

(00:20:33):
So they haven't lost this good thing because it never was that in the first place.

(00:20:38):
But that brings with it so many different emotions.

(00:20:41):
I'm really aware of that.

(00:20:42):
But I do think it's important to be able to recognise the reality of what actually happened.

(00:20:47):
Definitely.

(00:20:49):
Yeah, the heartbreak is really resonant.

(00:20:52):
I had a woman to me who I was talking to yesterday say, well, how do you know that he doesn't love me?

(00:20:59):
How do you know that he never loved me?

(00:21:01):
And I think that that's something that a lot of women really get stuck on is that

(00:21:06):
they had this image of this beautiful,

(00:21:08):
loving relationship.

(00:21:09):
And it turns out that that was never real.

(00:21:10):
And we culturally teach women to derive so much of their value from their

(00:21:15):
relationships that then they conclude that

(00:21:17):
you know, well, they have no value if this man didn't love them.

(00:21:21):
And I just want to say to anyone who feels that,

(00:21:26):
that you have so much worth just for being a human being and you are so worthy of love.

(00:21:32):
And if this person who turned out to be,

(00:21:36):
excuse my language,

(00:21:36):
a total asshole didn't love you,

(00:21:38):
that does not mean that you are not worthy of love and that you're not still worthy

(00:21:42):
of love.

(00:21:42):
I just want to put that into the conversation just for anyone who would benefit

(00:21:47):
from hearing that right now.

(00:21:48):
Yes.

(00:21:49):
Well,

(00:21:49):
and the other thing is that our culture has broken so many men in such a way that

(00:21:55):
they are not capable of loving women.

(00:21:57):
And I think that we have to accept that probably most women are going to have to be

(00:22:03):
single or willing to be single to be healthy because there aren't

(00:22:06):
enough healthy men and i think coming to terms with that can maybe be helpful

(00:22:12):
coming to terms with the reality that you know there are other ways to get love

(00:22:16):
from you know family from friends all of that um yes you know and from pets as well

(00:22:23):
a wonderful source of love you can become a cat lady and and and that's that's

(00:22:27):
lovely um or a dog lady or a dog i'm a frog lady i have like 19 frogs um

(00:22:35):
it's it's oh wow yeah um I think the last number I gave my husband was that there

(00:22:40):
were only 14 in the house so maybe we'll just say there are only 14 we've gotten

(00:22:44):
five more that he didn't notice well that's really cool I've never met anyone who

(00:22:50):
had 19 frogs or anything like that before yeah they're they're really cool I make

(00:22:54):
these little like bioactive enclosures for them and they chirp and they do little

(00:22:58):
froggy things they're they're just charming little pets and they don't you know

(00:23:02):
they don't need anything which which I like um

(00:23:05):
So you talked a lot about how a lot of people conceive of abuse as only physical.

(00:23:11):
And I think that that's really critical.

(00:23:15):
We think that it's fine as long as he's not hitting her.

(00:23:18):
And something that I'm seeing more and more is this discourse around red flags, looking for red flags.

(00:23:25):
And I think that can be helpful.

(00:23:27):
But what I'm finding more and more is that a lot of the behaviors that people put

(00:23:32):
on lists of red flags are

(00:23:33):
are not red flags.

(00:23:35):
They're abusive behaviors.

(00:23:36):
And it's got me really thinking about how we have so heavily socialized women to

(00:23:43):
accept so many layers of abuse that we don't recognize abuse when it's happening to

(00:23:50):
us until it has accelerated to a really intense point.

(00:23:54):
So I'm hoping you could speak a little bit to why abuse matters, even if it's not physical.

(00:24:01):
And also,

(00:24:03):
What kind of behaviors constitute abuse?

(00:24:06):
I know that that can be tricky because, you know, we've all yelled at someone we love.

(00:24:09):
And one time yelling is not necessarily abuse.

(00:24:13):
But I think just generally telling people what to look for could be helpful.

(00:24:20):
Absolutely.

(00:24:21):
I think that it becomes abuse when somebody is behaving differently.

(00:24:29):
in a way that is controlling and is taking away your choices and your freedom and

(00:24:35):
treating your feelings and your needs as though they don't matter in a sustained way,

(00:24:40):
you know,

(00:24:41):
not just one incident of insensitivity in a sea of otherwise good behavior,

(00:24:46):
but there's a pattern here.

(00:24:49):
And also they're making it so confronting them and holding them accountable safely

(00:24:56):
is impossible.

(00:24:57):
And I think that's where we kind of take,

(00:25:00):
where bad behavior turns into abusive behavior,

(00:25:03):
where you can't confront the person safely because they're going to have such a

(00:25:08):
negative reaction that it makes it just,

(00:25:12):
you just feel like it's not worth trying to bring it up with them because you know

(00:25:16):
from past experience that

(00:25:18):
that they're going to have such a negative reaction that it's not worth it.

(00:25:22):
And that negative reaction could be that they get violent with you,

(00:25:25):
or it could be that they get nasty with your children.

(00:25:28):
It is retaliation.

(00:25:29):
Or it could be that they spend your money or spend their own money frivolously,

(00:25:35):
recklessly,

(00:25:36):
leaving the family in a really tight squeeze that month.

(00:25:40):
They can't pay the rent or something because he's retaliated by gambling away the

(00:25:45):
rent money,

(00:25:46):
for example,

(00:25:46):
or spending it on some

(00:25:48):
expensive computer or something um it could be sexual coercion you know that you

(00:25:53):
know that if you say no to to whatever he wants to do sexually that he's going to

(00:25:58):
take it out on you by doing something even worse or doing it more violently um or

(00:26:03):
again that he's going to hurt the kids in some way if if you're not complying and

(00:26:11):
um so it's situations of coercive control are situations where

(00:26:16):
The victim doesn't have genuine autonomy and choices because they've ended up

(00:26:21):
having to filter everything that they're doing through this lens of how's he going

(00:26:26):
to react to that?

(00:26:27):
Is that going to make him happy?

(00:26:29):
Is that going to make him angry?

(00:26:30):
Is he going to be aware that I've done this and backlash against me for it?

(00:26:36):
Can I perhaps get away with doing it without him noticing?

(00:26:40):
And so you started to tiptoe around in your own life, you know, we call it walking on eggshells.

(00:26:46):
But for some victims and survivors,

(00:26:48):
it's more like tiptoeing around a load of landmines rather than eggshells,

(00:26:53):
because the explosion when it goes off is so bad.

(00:26:55):
So

(00:26:58):
There's a lot of perpetrators out there who don't use physical violence because

(00:27:02):
they're smart and they realise that using physical violence gives the game away.

(00:27:09):
It's something that our culture...

(00:27:12):
frowns upon more than it frowns upon other kinds of abuse it's something that

(00:27:16):
you're that the perpetrator is more likely to get into trouble about than any other

(00:27:20):
kind of abuse not that they're particularly likely to get into much trouble anyway

(00:27:25):
because our you know police and justice response to perpetrators is so pathetic

(00:27:29):
most of the time or a lot of the time um

(00:27:34):
But they know that if they're going to get caught and punished for anything,

(00:27:37):
it's going to be physical violence.

(00:27:39):
And also that that is the one thing that some victims and survivors,

(00:27:45):
you know,

(00:27:46):
that might alert them to the fact that this is abusive.

(00:27:49):
And it might tip them over the edge from thinking this is a bad marriage into

(00:27:55):
thinking this is an abusive marriage.

(00:27:57):
So they'll deliberately not use physical violence so that you don't reach that

(00:28:00):
tipping point so that they can keep you captured and keep exploiting you and

(00:28:05):
dominating and controlling you for longer and longer and longer.

(00:28:09):
But perpetrators,

(00:28:10):
you know,

(00:28:11):
they aren't geniuses and sometimes they miscalculate and they they use a tactic to.

(00:28:17):
in a way that does backfire on them because the victim survivor does start to

(00:28:23):
really think this is unbearable and I'm going to start to look for a way out.

(00:28:33):
Yeah, I think that the use of violence is really complicated.

(00:28:36):
But most perpetrators will only use it when they think it's necessary.

(00:28:42):
So often they will use it if they feel like their non-violent means of controlling

(00:28:46):
you are starting to not work.

(00:28:49):
And then it will escalate into physical violence to try and scare you back into compliance.

(00:28:53):
Yeah.

(00:28:55):
On the other hand,

(00:28:56):
some perpetrators use physical violence really early and really frequently because

(00:28:59):
they calculate that they've got the victim survivor sufficiently entrapped that

(00:29:04):
they can get away with doing that.

(00:29:06):
And that might be a victim survivor who,

(00:29:08):
for whatever reason,

(00:29:09):
is really going to struggle to leave them,

(00:29:10):
perhaps financially,

(00:29:12):
perhaps for religious and cultural reasons.

(00:29:14):
So they feel like they've got enough of an advantage that they can use that

(00:29:18):
physical violence really early and frequently.

(00:29:23):
So it's very calculated.

(00:29:24):
It's very strategic on the part of perpetrators.

(00:29:28):
It's strategic.

(00:29:29):
It's functional.

(00:29:29):
They're really making decisions as smartly as they know how.

(00:29:35):
And the smarter they are, the better they'll be at that.

(00:29:38):
And you do end up with a lot of perpetrators who don't use physical violence at all,

(00:29:43):
but find many,

(00:29:45):
many,

(00:29:45):
many other ways to absolutely abuse and control and decimate the life

(00:29:50):
of the person who they say that they love.

(00:29:54):
So one thing I want to talk about with identifying abuse is one thing that we have

(00:29:59):
all seen is that sooner or later,

(00:30:02):
the dominant group,

(00:30:03):
whether that's men,

(00:30:04):
whether that's white people,

(00:30:06):
whether that's wealthy people,

(00:30:07):
will co-opt the language of social justice.

(00:30:11):
So I live in the deep south of the United States,

(00:30:13):
and one thing we see constantly is white people claiming that they're a victim of

(00:30:18):
reverse racism.

(00:30:20):
And

(00:30:21):
I also see men insisting that actually they're the abuse victim when their partners

(00:30:28):
do very normal things like imposing boundaries or saying no to sex or asserting

(00:30:33):
their needs.

(00:30:34):
And I think that in these controlling dynamics, because they become kind of a cult of one,

(00:30:41):
it becomes very easy for women to believe that maybe they are the abusive one.

(00:30:45):
You know,

(00:30:45):
they'll Google a checklist of abusive behaviors and they'll see one thing that they

(00:30:49):
did one time on that list.

(00:30:52):
Can you speak to how abusers often make their victims feel like they're the bad guys,

(00:30:57):
like they deserve it,

(00:30:58):
like they've caused it,

(00:31:00):
and how that dynamic works and also what victim survivors might do to assess

(00:31:07):
whether they're really the abusive one or whether they're just being manipulated?

(00:31:14):
I think that this is a really common issue, as you say.

(00:31:19):
So perpetrators are excellent at getting victims and survivors to think that everything is their fault.

(00:31:26):
So they structure whole arguments and confrontations around getting the victim survivor to think that.

(00:31:32):
So for example,

(00:31:34):
the victim survivor wants to do something very normal and very reasonable and go

(00:31:38):
and see their friend.

(00:31:39):
And the perpetrator says, you know, how could you want to see your friend?

(00:31:43):
I need you.

(00:31:44):
I'm having a crisis.

(00:31:45):
My life's really bad at the moment.

(00:31:47):
I need you here.

(00:31:48):
You're so selfish and horrible and mean to me for wanting to go and see your friend.

(00:31:52):
Or...

(00:31:53):
They might get really sulky and quiet and express their displeasure that way.

(00:31:57):
Or they might say, you know, if you go out tonight, I'm going to think that you don't love me.

(00:32:02):
You're proving that you don't love me because you're not prioritizing me.

(00:32:06):
And the victim doesn't.

(00:32:11):
they don't realise that the perpetrator is an abuser.

(00:32:14):
They still think that this is someone who they love and who loves them.

(00:32:17):
So they're like, oh my gosh, I've made my partner feel this way.

(00:32:20):
I must be communicating something really badly to him to make him feel that I don't love him enough.

(00:32:27):
This must be my fault that I've created a situation where he doesn't realise how much I love him.

(00:32:33):
And so she'll take responsibility, she'll back down, she'll not go and see the friend.

(00:32:38):
But the whole

(00:32:39):
The point of that tactic was that perpetrators need victims and survivors isolated

(00:32:44):
because it makes them easier to control.

(00:32:47):
Because if you have people who you can check in with regularly,

(00:32:51):
who love you and support you,

(00:32:52):
you're getting an outside perspective on it,

(00:32:54):
which is totally undermining the perpetrator's ability to manipulate you.

(00:32:59):
So the outside perspectives need to be cut off as much as the perpetrator can

(00:33:04):
manage to orchestrate that.

(00:33:06):
But they've set the whole thing up in such a way that the victim survivor walks

(00:33:09):
away from that thinking it's their fault.

(00:33:11):
They didn't communicate how much they love the perpetrator.

(00:33:14):
They were being selfish for wanting to abandon them in their hour of need for

(00:33:18):
whatever pretext that the perpetrator makes.

(00:33:22):
So the perpetrator does just set everything up to make the victim survivor feel that way.

(00:33:28):
And also,

(00:33:28):
again,

(00:33:29):
we're living in a society where women are told from very,

(00:33:33):
very early on in their lives that relationships take work.

(00:33:38):
Women are the more mature ones, the more emotionally intelligent ones.

(00:33:42):
They're the ones who've got to do this work of making the relationship work.

(00:33:47):
because men are too incompetent and unable to express themselves.

(00:33:55):
You know,

(00:33:55):
bless them,

(00:33:56):
we need to look after them,

(00:33:58):
given this kind of horrible narrative around it,

(00:34:02):
which obviously I'm deeply critical of.

(00:34:05):
So when an abuse perpetrator starts to draw on that narrative,

(00:34:11):
it's very,

(00:34:12):
very easy for the woman to fall into thinking,

(00:34:14):
This is a relationships take work issue.

(00:34:17):
I'm going to make the concession,

(00:34:19):
make the sacrifice,

(00:34:21):
use my emotional intelligence to try and make him feel more loved,

(00:34:26):
give him what he wants so he'll feel happier.

(00:34:29):
That will make the relationship work.

(00:34:31):
So society and the perpetrator are working hand in hand to get the woman thinking that way.

(00:34:36):
it'd be so much harder for a woman to get a man thinking that way,

(00:34:39):
to get him thinking it's all his fault,

(00:34:41):
that he needs to make all these sacrifices,

(00:34:43):
that he needs to do all that work,

(00:34:44):
because that's not the narrative that men have grown up with.

(00:34:47):
So it'd be so much more of a tough ask for a female perpetrator,

(00:34:51):
which is why we don't see very many women attempting this amongst other reasons,

(00:34:56):
but that's definitely part of it.

(00:34:59):
So yeah, it's just awful for the victim survivor because they spend years thinking it's all their fault.

(00:35:04):
And

(00:35:05):
even after they've separated from the abuser,

(00:35:09):
separation doesn't mean that you suddenly understand everything that went on.

(00:35:14):
People tend to separate because they get to a point where staying together is in

(00:35:19):
some way intolerable and separation becomes an urgent necessity.

(00:35:26):
But that doesn't mean that they've necessarily figured out all the ways the abuser

(00:35:30):
was manipulating their thinking.

(00:35:32):
So even after they've

(00:35:33):
perhaps divorce the guy five years they might still feel that they were in part

(00:35:36):
responsible and it was kind of their fault um so yeah these things can can sit with

(00:35:44):
women for such a long time and it's it's totally unfair um and yeah i think we need

(00:35:50):
to really we need to really hold in our minds what is reasonable and what is

(00:35:55):
unreasonable and you know it's it is reasonable for a

(00:36:03):
And it's reasonable for her to wear what she wants to wear and to look the way she wants to look.

(00:36:08):
That's an important part of any human being's identity.

(00:36:12):
And it's not reasonable of a man to try and control how she looks,

(00:36:16):
control who she sees,

(00:36:18):
to monopolize all of her time and her effort and her energy.

(00:36:23):
As you say really brilliantly in your work, it's stealing her life.

(00:36:27):
And that's not fair.

(00:36:28):
So...

(00:36:29):
Yeah, I think that perpetrators will really try and twist what is fair and unfair.

(00:36:35):
But I think women need to hold in their minds quite strongly their understanding of

(00:36:39):
what is fair and unfair because it will help them to reject people's attempts to,

(00:36:48):
as you say,

(00:36:48):
turn this all around and make them seem like the unreasonable one.

(00:36:53):
And also there's a term for this where perpetrators say that they're the victims.

(00:36:57):
It's a term your listeners use

(00:36:58):
might have heard of, it's called DARVO, D-A-R-V-O.

(00:37:03):
So that's a tactic that perpetrators really commonly use.

(00:37:07):
And the D is for deny.

(00:37:09):
The perpetrator denies that they were abusive.

(00:37:12):
And then the A is for attack.

(00:37:15):
They attack the credibility of the victim survivor, the memories that she has.

(00:37:21):
They tell her that what happened didn't happen or that she's remembering it wrong.

(00:37:26):
And then they reverse victim and offender, the RVO.

(00:37:30):
So they say, you were the perpetrator and I was the victim.

(00:37:34):
So yeah, DARVO, it's so common that there's an acronym for it.

(00:37:39):
I think that's really important for people to know.

(00:37:42):
You talk about...

(00:37:44):
kind of our entire society coercively controlling women in a way and how so much of

(00:37:48):
our culture is built around keeping women in these relationships.

(00:37:51):
And one thing that I wanted to add to that that I'm seeing more and more is how

(00:37:57):
women's parents often conspire against them with their abusers to keep them in

(00:38:03):
abusive relationships.

(00:38:04):
And this is especially common in very religious areas or very conservative areas where

(00:38:11):
And so it becomes she's not just trying to escape her husband, but an entire system.

(00:38:18):
And leaving her husband maybe destroys all of her relationships.

(00:38:22):
It's just unbearable what we force so many women needlessly to go through.

(00:38:28):
So we know this is terrible for women.

(00:38:31):
What happens when we bring a child into this mix?

(00:38:34):
Tell me why.

(00:38:36):
This whole, well, he might be a bad husband, but he's actually a good father is just ridiculous.

(00:38:43):
It's really ridiculous.

(00:38:45):
I have a sub stack on this that I wrote a couple of weeks ago,

(00:38:49):
and it's one of my free posts so anyone can read it.

(00:38:52):
And it's called 10 Reasons Why a Coercively Controlling Father is an Unfit Father.

(00:38:59):
I think that's the title.

(00:39:00):
It might be slightly different than that.

(00:39:01):
I'm just trying to remember it off the top of my head.

(00:39:03):
But if you go onto my sub stack and you have a look for that post,

(00:39:06):
10 Reasons Why,

(00:39:08):
and it's one of my more recent posts.

(00:39:10):
I think it came out in July of 2024.

(00:39:15):
Have a look at that post because then I really break it down for you more

(00:39:18):
articulately than I'm probably going to be able to do in the next two or three

(00:39:21):
minutes here.

(00:39:22):
But just for starters, so...

(00:39:26):
the victim survivor is walking on eggshells slash landmines all day long.

(00:39:32):
The kids are going to be walking on those same eggshells and landmines because they,

(00:39:37):
the kids also know that there's a lot of things that they can't do that they better

(00:39:42):
not do because it will cause an explosion in dad.

(00:39:46):
Just as the,

(00:39:46):
as the adult victim survivor knows that the kids know that too,

(00:39:51):
because the father is,

(00:39:52):
um,

(00:39:54):
he is,

(00:39:56):
he applies the same entitlement and expectations of control and domination to his

(00:40:02):
relationships with his children as he does to his relationship with his partner,

(00:40:07):
especially if he has this mentality of,

(00:40:09):
I'm the head of the household,

(00:40:11):
so I control everyone in the house,

(00:40:13):
wife,

(00:40:13):
children,

(00:40:14):
pets.

(00:40:17):
So the children are also living with really constrained behaviour.

(00:40:21):
They're constantly trying to work out, you know,

(00:40:25):
what does dad want from me right now?

(00:40:27):
Does he want me to engage with him and seem to be having fun with him?

(00:40:30):
Or does he want me to shut up,

(00:40:32):
disappear,

(00:40:32):
pretend I don't exist,

(00:40:33):
pretend I have no needs and basically blend into the wallpaper?

(00:40:37):
A lot of mothers talk about their children becoming very quiet,

(00:40:42):
very withdrawn,

(00:40:43):
having speech delays because speaking to a perpetrator is so high stakes and

(00:40:50):
You don't know whether he's going to be happy or furious with what you've said.

(00:40:53):
So some children have speech delays where they just don't speak at all because I'm

(00:40:58):
guessing they're scared to take the risk of saying anything.

(00:41:02):
And perpetrators will also use children to manipulate the situation.

(00:41:07):
So they'll use children to punish the adult victim survivor.

(00:41:10):
If she won't do what he wants, they'll be nasty to the children.

(00:41:14):
He'll also put her in a situation where she feels isolated as a mother and feels like a terrible mother.

(00:41:20):
And he'll do that by criticising her mothering to the children,

(00:41:23):
making them lose respect for her,

(00:41:26):
making them treat her like dirt and have no respect for her.

(00:41:30):
And he'll encourage and reward them to do that.

(00:41:32):
So he's really damaging their relationship with their one safe parent.

(00:41:37):
And...

(00:41:39):
And he'll often present himself as the goody.

(00:41:42):
So he'll let the children,

(00:41:44):
for example,

(00:41:45):
not do their homework,

(00:41:46):
not have a bath,

(00:41:47):
not clean their teeth,

(00:41:48):
not have a bedtime,

(00:41:50):
eat as much junk food as they want.

(00:41:52):
As they get older,

(00:41:53):
he might let them,

(00:41:54):
you know,

(00:41:56):
have a lot of freedoms that are dangerous and inappropriate.

(00:42:01):
He's not monitoring whether they're safe or not.

(00:42:04):
But he presents that to them as him being the goody, the fun one.

(00:42:07):
And then the poor mum is trying to get them to do their homework and clean their

(00:42:11):
teeth and eat a healthy diet and go to bed at a reasonable time so they're not exhausted.

(00:42:16):
And she's the baddie because she's unfun and a killjoy.

(00:42:19):
And that's how he's presenting it to the children.

(00:42:21):
So then she feels like she's a terrible mother,

(00:42:23):
that she can't do anything right,

(00:42:25):
that she's a bad person.

(00:42:26):
She's demoralized.

(00:42:28):
She feels like leaving is impossible because she wouldn't be able to handle the

(00:42:31):
children without him because they're so disrespectful towards her.

(00:42:35):
So some perpetrators,

(00:42:36):
like I say,

(00:42:38):
they appear like the goody to the children,

(00:42:41):
but what they're doing is actually really nasty and insidious and damaging for the children.

(00:42:48):
Other perpetrators are hostile and mean to their children and make their children

(00:42:52):
feel very frightened to be around them.

(00:42:55):
and punish their children very harshly.

(00:42:57):
Some perpetrators do both and swing back and forth between those two modes in a

(00:43:02):
very scary and unpredictable way.

(00:43:04):
And like I say, if you're attacked, I mean a child's mother

(00:43:11):
is the most important resource that that child is going to have throughout all of their childhood.

(00:43:17):
In most relationships,

(00:43:20):
not in absolutely all of them,

(00:43:21):
but in most relationships,

(00:43:23):
it's the mum who is the one who is looking after that child day to day to day,

(00:43:26):
who knows what their favourite things are and what they dislike,

(00:43:29):
who knows,

(00:43:30):
you know,

(00:43:31):
not only their birthdays,

(00:43:32):
but all their friends' birthdays,

(00:43:35):
is the one who is,

(00:43:36):
you know,

(00:43:36):
is doing so much of the work of

(00:43:39):
making that child's childhood a good childhood.

(00:43:42):
And for the father to attack that mother,

(00:43:45):
to break her down,

(00:43:47):
to try and make her feel rubbish and worthless and useless and to blame,

(00:43:53):
is to do a huge,

(00:43:54):
huge,

(00:43:55):
huge disservice to that child.

(00:43:57):
It's so damaging to their child.

(00:44:00):
So,

(00:44:01):
yeah,

(00:44:01):
I would say those are some of the reasons why,

(00:44:03):
you know,

(00:44:05):
even if he's not hit the children or not hit the mother in front of the children,

(00:44:08):
He's still an absolutely appalling father.

(00:44:11):
And then also let's remember that he'll impoverish the mother and he'll impoverish

(00:44:17):
her perhaps during the relationship,

(00:44:19):
but also post-separation,

(00:44:21):
perhaps by constantly dragging her through the courts.

(00:44:24):
And then he's taking away her ability to provide for the children.

(00:44:27):
And again,

(00:44:28):
taking away the ability of the one person on the planet who probably most wants to

(00:44:32):
provide for those children and enable them to get on in life,

(00:44:37):
taking away her ability to do that so selfishly because he wants to keep punishing

(00:44:43):
her and punishing her and punishing her.

(00:44:45):
and and thereby he's punishing the children too and he doesn't care about that um

(00:44:50):
and post separation um he'll continue his campaign of abuse against the mother very

(00:44:55):
often again just he won't he won't let it go he won't let her go and he just keeps

(00:45:02):
doing this to the children's mother throughout their childhood and into their

(00:45:05):
teenage years and into their adulthood as well

(00:45:08):
You know,

(00:45:08):
while you're talking about this,

(00:45:09):
I'm thinking of someone I know,

(00:45:12):
like a friend of a friend who I've known since childhood.

(00:45:17):
And this person in childhood was neurodivergent and had like learning disorders and a number of issues.

(00:45:24):
And the mom was a really good advocate for the child,

(00:45:27):
really like working hard to try to get the child on track.

(00:45:31):
And the dad just undermined every effort the mom made.

(00:45:36):
And when they finally got divorced,

(00:45:38):
the dad worked for years and years and years to harm the mother and especially to

(00:45:44):
align the child against the mother.

(00:45:46):
And so what ended up happening is that this child did get aligned against the mother,

(00:45:51):
moved in with the father.

(00:45:52):
And you can predict what that looked like.

(00:45:54):
It was a very

(00:45:56):
both permissive and authoritarian environment where the father didn't really have

(00:46:00):
rules except for when the child was an inconvenience to him and then would become

(00:46:05):
abusive toward the child.

(00:46:07):
And then the child becomes even more aligned to the father.

(00:46:10):
This is a strange dynamic with child abuse where the child will say,

(00:46:15):
oh,

(00:46:15):
I'd be so much worse if my father wasn't abusing me.

(00:46:18):
And what ultimately happened is that this child, of course, who had a number of challenges in

(00:46:24):
spiraled and spiraled and spiraled while still,

(00:46:27):
you know,

(00:46:27):
worshiping their father and ended up in prison and,

(00:46:31):
you know,

(00:46:32):
is an adult now and someone I know.

(00:46:34):
And I was talking to him the other day and he said,

(00:46:39):
you know,

(00:46:39):
I've really been thinking since I've been in prison,

(00:46:42):
I think that my dad abused my mom and turned me against my mom.

(00:46:47):
And that if that hadn't happened, I might've had a different life.

(00:46:51):
And this is someone in their late 20s.

(00:46:54):
and it's taken them this long to realize, and their mother is now dead.

(00:46:59):
So, you know, there's no healing with the mother, and the damage has been done to the child.

(00:47:06):
And I think that this is perhaps a more extreme case, but I think it's common.

(00:47:12):
I think a lot of people think that if the father is abusing the mother,

(00:47:15):
the children will take the side of the mother.

(00:47:17):
And

(00:47:18):
I do think they tend to when they're smaller and more vulnerable.

(00:47:22):
But I think with older children,

(00:47:24):
dad can become fun dad and dad can become access to resources and he'll weaponize that.

(00:47:30):
And I see over and over again with women I counsel where the father has turned the

(00:47:35):
children against the mother and in so doing also done such immense harm to the

(00:47:40):
children because he's never turning them against the mother and then providing them

(00:47:44):
a stable environment.

(00:47:46):
he's turning them against her and then providing them with the completely chaotic,

(00:47:51):
unsafe,

(00:47:52):
unhealthy environment because they're not people to him.

(00:47:57):
Yes, I think this does happen in a number of cases.

(00:48:01):
I think that from my own research, there's a number of factors that feed into how the children react.

(00:48:11):
I think that

(00:48:14):
Firstly, how is the father treated the children?

(00:48:16):
Because for children whose father is pretty unrelentingly hostile towards them,

(00:48:20):
there's not much to attract them towards him.

(00:48:23):
It's more the children who...

(00:48:26):
who have a father who's sometimes horrible, but sometimes very permissive.

(00:48:31):
And like we said, fun dad, the goodie.

(00:48:33):
I think those children are more vulnerable to that kind of scenario you just outlined.

(00:48:38):
I think also, to what extent is the abuse obvious to the children?

(00:48:44):
Is he very obviously abusing the mother in front of the children?

(00:48:48):
If he is, then that tends to make the children more scared of him and less wanting to be around him.

(00:48:54):
And

(00:48:56):
If he's not,

(00:48:57):
if the abuse is not that obvious to them,

(00:48:59):
then that tends to make it easier for him to manipulate them in the way you described.

(00:49:05):
I also think to what extent is it his goal to turn the children against the mother?

(00:49:12):
Because for some perpetrators, that is one of their main goals and they really go for it.

(00:49:17):
For other perpetrators, they don't seem as interested in doing that for whatever reason in their minds.

(00:49:25):
Some are more interested in doing that than others.

(00:49:27):
So if he's really invested in turning them against the mother,

(00:49:30):
he'll probably have some success with that because he's putting a lot of effort in.

(00:49:34):
But if he's not that interested in doing that, it's less likely to happen.

(00:49:38):
And then finally, to what extent has he broken the mother-child relationship?

(00:49:44):
Some perpetrators, the impact of their abuse on the mother is so bad that

(00:49:50):
because they've really succeeded in torturing the mother,

(00:49:54):
that the mother can't emotionally connect with the children anymore.

(00:50:00):
Mothers have described it to me as they were in a state where they were just

(00:50:03):
surviving in robotic mode,

(00:50:06):
that their emotions had shut down,

(00:50:08):
that they were kind of dissociated.

(00:50:13):
And also that mothers have described situations to me where they couldn't

(00:50:17):
they weren't allowed to show their children any love.

(00:50:19):
If they did, they were punished.

(00:50:21):
They weren't allowed to play with them.

(00:50:22):
They were barely allowed to talk to them.

(00:50:25):
And they were not allowed to have any fun with them.

(00:50:27):
And if they tried to have fun with their children, they were punished.

(00:50:31):
So in those circumstances,

(00:50:33):
again,

(00:50:33):
the children are very vulnerable to the dad getting them to align with him because

(00:50:38):
they can't connect with their mother.

(00:50:40):
But in circumstances where the children are strongly emotionally connected to their mother, I think it

(00:50:45):
that is more protective of the mother-child relationship.

(00:50:48):
But this is never the mother's fault.

(00:50:50):
It just depends on how the horrific abuse of the father is affecting her.

(00:50:54):
But it's never her fault,

(00:50:56):
however it's affecting her,

(00:50:58):
because she's a survivor of something absolutely horrendous.

(00:51:02):
So,

(00:51:02):
yeah,

(00:51:03):
I think in my research,

(00:51:04):
certainly,

(00:51:05):
those factors made a difference as to what direction the mother-child relationship

(00:51:09):
and the father-child relationships took.

(00:51:12):
But that might not apply universally.

(00:51:14):
But that's what I found in the research that I've done.

(00:51:17):
But it's not like I've talked to every person on the planet.

(00:51:20):
So that might not be the case for everyone.

(00:51:22):
No, I think that's helpful.

(00:51:24):
And again,

(00:51:25):
you know,

(00:51:25):
I appreciate that you say that it's never the mother's fault because,

(00:51:29):
you know,

(00:51:29):
these circumstances are largely out of their control.

(00:51:31):
But I do think that it's helpful for people in these situations to kind of understand

(00:51:37):
what dynamics tend to get which results.

(00:51:39):
So, you know, for people to know that a strong mother-child bond does matter.

(00:51:45):
Because what I see with a lot of these men is they get really jealous of the bond.

(00:51:50):
So they'll be really opposed to breastfeeding or to co-sleeping.

(00:51:54):
And they really want to disrupt that bond early.

(00:51:57):
And so I think it's helpful for women to hear, no, you're right.

(00:52:01):
You should cultivate that bond.

(00:52:02):
And not only is that bond natural,

(00:52:05):
but it's protective for you and your child's relationship.

(00:52:09):
So I think that's a good thing to hear.

(00:52:10):
Oh, absolutely, yeah.

(00:52:12):
If you can, cultivate that bond with everything that you've got, even if you have to do it in secret.

(00:52:20):
You know, I mean, one mother who I spoke with, her son,

(00:52:24):
her abusive partner wouldn't allow her to comfort her child when her child was trying to get to sleep.

(00:52:29):
The child hated going to sleep alone,

(00:52:31):
but he wouldn't allow her to go to the child to cuddle her to sleep.

(00:52:35):
But what she'd do is she'd wait for him to go to sleep and she'd sneak out of bed and cuddle that child.

(00:52:41):
And that kept their bond alive.

(00:52:44):
And he wouldn't let her play with the child when he was at home.

(00:52:47):
But when he left the house, she played with the child.

(00:52:50):
And, you know, she sees those moments where he wasn't there to keep that bond going.

(00:52:57):
And, yeah, you mentioned that they're really jealous of the bond early on, but also later on.

(00:53:03):
So,

(00:53:03):
for example,

(00:53:04):
a girl who I interviewed for my research,

(00:53:08):
because I've interviewed children as well as mothers,

(00:53:10):
mostly older children,

(00:53:11):
like 10 years old plus.

(00:53:14):
But one girl I interviewed, she was talking about a time when she was about,

(00:53:19):
seven to 11 years old.

(00:53:20):
She said that the perpetrator,

(00:53:22):
whenever she tried to spend time with her mum,

(00:53:25):
whenever she tried to cuddle her mum or watch a movie with her mum,

(00:53:27):
he would come in and,

(00:53:29):
and disrupt them.

(00:53:30):
And, and, and they couldn't do that.

(00:53:33):
Um, and now that they'd separated from him, they were enjoying doing that again.

(00:53:36):
Um, so yeah, it,

(00:53:40):
if anyone is listening to this and and reflecting on their own circumstances you

(00:53:44):
know what is going on there where he's trying to disrupt that bond is is really

(00:53:48):
serious and and it could have lifelong impact so if you can hang on to that bond

(00:53:53):
you know really do try but at the same time it's a situation that is so difficult

(00:53:58):
because the mothers have been put in a situation of relative powerlessness um so

(00:54:04):
they don't have a lot of options but

(00:54:07):
but at the same time human beings are really great at looking at situations where

(00:54:10):
they don't have a lot of options and working out how they can work their way around

(00:54:15):
that in in the best possible way um and choose the option that's least bad i guess

(00:54:21):
um all human beings do that i think when they're confronted with an unreasonable

(00:54:25):
power structure they look for ways around it um that's

(00:54:30):
Little ways, invisible ways.

(00:54:32):
That's something humans can, I think, are universally quite good at.

(00:54:37):
I also think that's really helpful advice because so many people in these

(00:54:42):
relationships can't leave or can't leave right away.

(00:54:45):
Or they have a co-parent who is truly dangerous to the child.

(00:54:51):
I had this horrific story,

(00:54:53):
a friend of a friend who,

(00:54:55):
you know,

(00:54:55):
divorced her abuser and it seemed like everything was going okay.

(00:55:00):
But he was given visitation with their toddler and he left the toddler unattended

(00:55:04):
in the bathtub and she drowned.

(00:55:07):
And I tell this story to young women because I want young women to know how serious

(00:55:13):
their relationship choices can be.

(00:55:15):
And I also want people to understand that there are reasons women don't leave.

(00:55:21):
And it's not because they're not smart or they're not thinking or they don't have enough feminism.

(00:55:28):
You know, like you said, people make the choices they can and they kind of hope for the best.

(00:55:33):
And very often they're,

(00:55:36):
yeah,

(00:55:36):
very often also women are,

(00:55:38):
you know,

(00:55:39):
they know that the structures are against them and they calculate that it might be

(00:55:43):
better to stay while the children are very young,

(00:55:46):
where at least they can protect the children to an extent,

(00:55:49):
rather than ending up in a situation where the children are spending a lot of

(00:55:53):
unsupervised time with a very dangerous father.

(00:55:56):
Yeah.

(00:55:56):
And so their staying is protective of the children as much as they,

(00:56:02):
you know,

(00:56:03):
that's their understanding of the situation is that they're staying to protect the child.

(00:56:07):
And they may well be right.

(00:56:09):
You know, that might really be the best decision.

(00:56:12):
It may or it may not.

(00:56:13):
We don't have crystal balls.

(00:56:14):
We can't know how things would have worked out if we made different choices.

(00:56:17):
But

(00:56:18):
But yeah, for a lot of women, they're not staying because they're being foolish.

(00:56:23):
They're staying because they've made a very informed, realistic decision.

(00:56:30):
And they're actually far smarter about the risks that the perpetrator poses than

(00:56:35):
the system is,

(00:56:37):
as you said.

(00:56:38):
as the story you told at the beginning illustrates,

(00:56:40):
where the court couldn't see how dangerous this guy was.

(00:56:42):
And by the way,

(00:56:43):
that guy in that story at the beginning,

(00:56:45):
where he was talking about killing her,

(00:56:47):
talking about killing himself,

(00:56:48):
saying that he had nothing to lose and blamed her entirely.

(00:56:51):
That is so, so, so dangerous.

(00:56:54):
He is really at the point where he could kill her.

(00:56:56):
So...

(00:56:58):
That is so scary.

(00:56:59):
And I'm just infuriated with that court and that judge for not recognizing that.

(00:57:04):
It's so infuriating.

(00:57:05):
And I am seeing this last week with my readers,

(00:57:10):
this has been kind of the week of readers reaching out to me with their protective

(00:57:13):
order stories.

(00:57:15):
And the circumstances in which these women have been denied protective orders are shocking.

(00:57:20):
You know,

(00:57:20):
X is stockpiling weapons and has,

(00:57:23):
you know,

(00:57:24):
brandished a weapon against her in front of their baby.

(00:57:26):
And she's made out to be the alienator kind of stuff.

(00:57:31):
So I want to talk about the courts a little bit because,

(00:57:37):
you know,

(00:57:38):
we do still have this idea of children as a resource and as property.

(00:57:44):
And we have this cultural idea that,

(00:57:47):
you know,

(00:57:47):
well,

(00:57:47):
children need a father and children do need a father if he's a good,

(00:57:51):
decent,

(00:57:51):
involved father.

(00:57:52):
Children need as many loving adults as possible.

(00:57:56):
But it seems that the idea that children need a father has supplanted the idea that children need safety.

(00:58:03):
And we now think it's more important for them to spend time with a father than it is for them to be safe.

(00:58:08):
Can you talk about that and talk about that?

(00:58:11):
How that has happened and what we can do to counteract that.

(00:58:17):
So I would say that this whole narrative that it's more important for children to

(00:58:21):
have a father in any circumstances than to be safe is all part of the backlash

(00:58:28):
against women's rights and feminism.

(00:58:31):
And it's a narrative that's been very carefully developed.

(00:58:34):
pushed and pushed by people who are supporting the conservative family,

(00:58:39):
the family that is headed by a man and who are very against divorce because they

(00:58:45):
want men to stay in charge of families.

(00:58:47):
There is no social science basis.

(00:58:50):
There's no research basis that.

(00:58:53):
for this claim that it's better for a child to have an abusive father than no father.

(00:58:58):
So what the research shows us is that children do badly in circumstances of parental conflict.

(00:59:07):
And children do very badly in circumstances where one or both of their parents is an abuser.

(00:59:14):
So on the other hand,

(00:59:16):
children thrive in circumstances where there's no conflict,

(00:59:20):
very little conflict,

(00:59:21):
and

(00:59:23):
they're in a peaceful, harmonious home.

(00:59:26):
And if they're in that home with one adult or with two adults or with four adults,

(00:59:31):
if it's harmonious and peaceful,

(00:59:33):
they're going to thrive.

(00:59:33):
It doesn't matter how many adults are in that home,

(00:59:36):
whether it's just the mum,

(00:59:37):
this is the mum and dad,

(00:59:38):
the mum and dad and the grandparents or whatever.

(00:59:40):
If it's a harmonious, peaceful home, they're going to thrive.

(00:59:43):
But as soon as you put a child in a situation of conflict where the home is very conflictual,

(00:59:48):
very,

(00:59:48):
very stressful,

(00:59:49):
they're not going to do well.

(00:59:51):
And it's going to be much more of a struggle for them to do well.

(00:59:54):
And as soon as you put the child in a home where there's an abuser,

(00:59:59):
then they're really not going to do well.

(01:00:00):
And we have so much evidence from social science and psychology showing the harm

(01:00:07):
and the damage that abusers do to children when they're in proximity to them.

(01:00:15):
Yeah,

(01:00:15):
I think that because children whose parents have divorced have been exposed to a

(01:00:20):
lot of conflict,

(01:00:22):
and it's that conflict that's then,

(01:00:25):
you know,

(01:00:27):
then there's been the,

(01:00:28):
you know,

(01:00:29):
parents have tried to find,

(01:00:32):
one or both of the parents have tried to dissolve the conflict by divorcing.

(01:00:35):
Then, sure, we see those children struggle more afterwards, but it's not because their parents split up.

(01:00:40):
It's because of all the conflict that they were exposed to.

(01:00:43):
And the divorce is just part of the story of, you know, the conflict.

(01:00:48):
The parents didn't want to stay in that conflict.

(01:00:49):
One of them or both of them didn't want to stay in it.

(01:00:51):
So they split up.

(01:00:53):
But it's not the divorce that hurt the children.

(01:00:54):
It's the conflict.

(01:00:56):
because we also see children whose parents stayed married,

(01:00:58):
but in a lot of conflict,

(01:01:00):
having the same struggles.

(01:01:01):
So it's the conflict.

(01:01:04):
But situations of abuse are more serious than situations of conflict, because abuse is so serious.

(01:01:10):
And we see that children are struggling in multiple domains of their life, you know, whether it's

(01:01:15):
they're educationally cognitively emotionally behaviorally um that that they're

(01:01:22):
struggling because they've been exposed to an abuser and that abuser has chosen to

(01:01:27):
expose the child to their abuse and let's put that blame on the abuser never on the

(01:01:31):
victim survivor parent because the victim survivor parent as we talked about never

(01:01:35):
signed up to be abused they signed up for this good relationship with this person

(01:01:39):
who seemed really nice and then they got entrapped um so so

(01:01:45):
child who's grown up with an abuser that is because the abuser chose to be abusive

(01:01:49):
around a child the abuser could have walked away they were the one with the power

(01:01:53):
they could have stopped being abusive and if they couldn't stop they could have

(01:01:56):
walked away to protect the child they never made those choices they were the ones

(01:02:00):
who made the child grow up with abuse not the victim survivor parent but yeah so i

(01:02:06):
think that um that people who who are um very

(01:02:12):
wanting men to stay the head of the household and to retain power as head of the

(01:02:16):
household have been very successful at putting this idea into our minds that

(01:02:20):
divorce is bad for children,

(01:02:21):
but it's not the divorce.

(01:02:23):
It's the conflict or even worse, the abuse, not the divorce.

(01:02:28):
Children who have parents who divorce amicably and who parent peacefully and

(01:02:33):
harmoniously as two separate parents,

(01:02:35):
again,

(01:02:35):
we see them thriving.

(01:02:37):
I think that's really helpful.

(01:02:39):
for people to hear because what I hear from women all the time is that they don't

(01:02:43):
want to break up their family and they don't want to make their child become a

(01:02:46):
child of divorce because we have convinced women that this is the worst possible

(01:02:51):
thing that they can do.

(01:02:53):
So you talked about the fun dad and we all kind of know that trope,

(01:02:58):
but there's also kind of like the fun husband who is really nice and romantic

(01:03:04):
sometimes and

(01:03:05):
And I hear from a lot of women.

(01:03:08):
In fact,

(01:03:08):
I would even say like the majority of people who contact me wanting to know if

(01:03:11):
their relationship is abusive,

(01:03:13):
they start their letter with something like,

(01:03:16):
well,

(01:03:16):
my relationship isn't like most of the relationships you talk about because he's

(01:03:20):
nice some of the time or most of the time or usually.

(01:03:25):
And the thing that I always tell them is that the niceness is part of the abuse.

(01:03:29):
So can we talk about the myth that abusive men are never nice?

(01:03:35):
Niceness is integral to keeping you entrapped with the abuser.

(01:03:39):
So it's very unlikely unless somebody is incredibly unable to leave,

(01:03:46):
again,

(01:03:46):
for like financial reasons or religious reasons or cultural reasons.

(01:03:52):
If people have any choice to leave,

(01:03:54):
then if their abuser is being unrelentingly hostile to them,

(01:03:58):
they're going to take that choice and leave.

(01:04:00):
And they're going to escape or attempt to escape the controller.

(01:04:04):
The controller doesn't want their control to end.

(01:04:07):
They want to keep going with their control.

(01:04:08):
They want to keep exploiting their partner.

(01:04:10):
So they have to be nice sometimes.

(01:04:13):
Again, put nice in inverted quote marks.

(01:04:15):
Because otherwise,

(01:04:16):
any woman who had any choice,

(01:04:18):
faced with unrelenting hostility day in,

(01:04:20):
day out,

(01:04:21):
would be leaving.

(01:04:24):
Like I say, unless there were some really major, major obstacles in her way that were stopping that.

(01:04:31):
So...

(01:04:32):
the niceness is absolutely integral.

(01:04:35):
Almost all abusers go through periods of niceness,

(01:04:39):
indulgence,

(01:04:40):
gift-giving,

(01:04:42):
romantic gestures,

(01:04:43):
because in order to keep their abuse up and running and to keep being able to

(01:04:47):
control and to keep being able to exploit,

(01:04:50):
whether it's exploiting you sexually,

(01:04:52):
physically through your domestic labour,

(01:04:54):
emotionally through being a sort of emotional,

(01:04:59):
through treating you as though you're

(01:05:02):
You're his therapist and responsible for all of his problems.

(01:05:06):
Just to keep exploiting you, they have to keep you entrapped.

(01:05:09):
And to keep you entrapped,

(01:05:10):
they have to alternate between making you feel rubbish and making you feel special.

(01:05:16):
And they have to make you think that they're still the nice person that they

(01:05:22):
presented themselves to be at the start of the relationship.

(01:05:24):
They have to make you think that the abuse is aberrant and not the norm and is not

(01:05:30):
what the relationship is really like.

(01:05:32):
So, yeah, these times of being nice are absolutely to be expected.

(01:05:37):
They're totally predictable.

(01:05:40):
But as you said, they are all part of the abuse.

(01:05:45):
And most abusers cannot keep up being nice for very long,

(01:05:51):
and nor do they want to,

(01:05:52):
because they need to keep you feeling good.

(01:05:57):
though about yourself, feeling unconfident, feeling like you're to blame, that it's your fault.

(01:06:01):
They need to keep you feeling scared and nervous and apprehensive of how they're

(01:06:05):
going to react if you disobey them.

(01:06:07):
So the niceness cannot be all the time because then you start to relax and assert

(01:06:12):
yourself again and be it.

(01:06:13):
start to behave like a human being wants to behave,

(01:06:16):
you know,

(01:06:16):
that you have rights and that you're an individual and you want to pursue your dreams.

(01:06:20):
So they have to keep all that squashed down.

(01:06:22):
So they can't be nice for long, but they have to be nice sometimes.

(01:06:25):
Otherwise, unless there's something really in the way, you would leave them.

(01:06:30):
So yeah, it's all part of the abuse.

(01:06:32):
Well, I think that's really helpful and it's what people need to hear.

(01:06:35):
So my last question for you is this podcast, I'm trying something new that if listeners like,

(01:06:43):
we may keep doing, which is that, as you all know, I do an advice column.

(01:06:47):
And I thought it would be interesting to pose an advice question to our guest about

(01:06:52):
something that she's an expert on.

(01:06:54):
So I asked readers what they would like to ask you about.

(01:06:58):
And here was a question that I thought was compelling.

(01:07:01):
So Emma and I are going to talk about this question and we'll see what she thinks.

(01:07:06):
Here it is.

(01:07:08):
My husband has been sexually abusive to me, along with emotional and

(01:07:12):
He's an authoritarian father who has never hit our children,

(01:07:16):
but who has engaged in a wide range of emotional and psychological violence.

(01:07:20):
I hate him.

(01:07:21):
I can see how my kids are growing to hate him too.

(01:07:24):
I want to leave,

(01:07:25):
but I know he may get 50-50 custody and will almost certainly get some custody

(01:07:30):
because the courts do not care about children and women beyond treating them like property.

(01:07:34):
I hate my life with him.

(01:07:35):
I hate that I cannot provide my children a stable home.

(01:07:39):
I am terrified of what will happen to them alone with him.

(01:07:42):
but I know that I would at least be able to provide stability at my house if I got him out.

(01:07:46):
Is it better for him to stay and to expose them to his constant abuse,

(01:07:53):
or is it better for me to leave and expose them to part-time abuse but with no

(01:07:57):
protection from me?

(01:07:58):
Yeah.

(01:08:05):
Yeah, that's really heavy.

(01:08:10):
And I know it's a situation that so many mothers are in.

(01:08:16):
It's tough.

(01:08:18):
Yeah, it is.

(01:08:19):
It's so tough.

(01:08:20):
I think maybe start with a risk assessment.

(01:08:22):
I think with really young children where there's a situation where he might

(01:08:27):
endanger their life,

(01:08:29):
leaving them in the bathtub,

(01:08:30):
giving them an allergen,

(01:08:32):
I think then we might have to lean more towards staying.

(01:08:35):
I think with older children,

(01:08:38):
then we have to look at factors like,

(01:08:40):
you know,

(01:08:40):
what are the dangers that they would face alone with him?

(01:08:43):
And are those dangers offset by having stability at home?

(01:08:48):
Because I don't know.

(01:08:49):
I mean, I think there's great value in having at least part-time stability, don't you think?

(01:08:55):
I do think.

(01:08:56):
And again, from the women and the children who I've interviewed with for my research,

(01:09:02):
In some circumstances,

(01:09:04):
the children were doing really well when they were having to see their father sometime.

(01:09:12):
But the stable and loving and calm and safe home that their mother was providing

(01:09:18):
was doing them a lot of good.

(01:09:21):
I think how much custody is an important point because I think 50-50 is an awful lot of time

(01:09:29):
for children to spend with an abusive father alone.

(01:09:33):
But if it was less than that,

(01:09:34):
if it was more infrequent,

(01:09:37):
then it would be more worth it and it would be more manageable for them.

(01:09:43):
Yeah, the 50-50 thing, like that's tough.

(01:09:50):
And I get up on my soapbox about this a little bit.

(01:09:53):
One of the things that I tell women is don't take legal advice from someone who's trying to hurt you.

(01:09:58):
You know,

(01:09:58):
the fact that he tells you he's going to take the kids or that he's going to get

(01:10:01):
50-50 custody doesn't necessarily mean that he can.

(01:10:04):
And the fact that,

(01:10:06):
you know,

(01:10:07):
somebody in a support group you're in had this happen to them in a different state

(01:10:10):
or country doesn't mean it's what's going to happen to you.

(01:10:13):
You know, we have lots of different – I was just going to say that.

(01:10:16):
Yeah.

(01:10:17):
Lots of different legal systems.

(01:10:18):
Yeah.

(01:10:19):
yes and one thing you you often say in in liberating motherhood is that speak to

(01:10:26):
local lawyers because it varies by by state and and know you know the lawyers know

(01:10:34):
what the judges in your area are like um so yeah i think that's really important

(01:10:40):
advice um one thing i want to do

(01:10:43):
is read you some quotes from mums and children who were living apart from perpetrators.

(01:10:48):
Oh, yeah, that's great.

(01:10:49):
And in some cases,

(01:10:51):
the children were still occasionally seeing the perpetrator,

(01:10:55):
but it wasn't 50-50 because I think 50-50 is really hard for the children.

(01:11:01):
But in some of these cases,

(01:11:02):
they were still occasionally seeing him,

(01:11:04):
but they were mostly living in the safe and calm home with their mum.

(01:11:08):
So this mum, she's talking about her teenage son, and his name is John.

(01:11:12):
These are not real names,

(01:11:13):
but these are the names I used in my book,

(01:11:16):
Coercive Control in Children's and Mothers' Lives.

(01:11:19):
And I'm drawing the quotes from my book.

(01:11:21):
So the mum says, John, her teenage son, he was painting the bathroom.

(01:11:26):
He never would have done that before.

(01:11:28):
His dad wouldn't allow it.

(01:11:30):
And he dropped the paint and he thought I was going to go mad because his dad would have gone mad.

(01:11:36):
So I come along and he says, you're probably not going to ask me to paint anymore, are you?

(01:11:41):
And I said, don't worry, John, I will.

(01:11:44):
Things like that, that his dad would never have allowed him to do.

(01:11:46):
And then John said to me the other day, mum, will you teach me how to make pastry?

(01:11:51):
because he wants to learn.

(01:11:54):
And again,

(01:11:54):
he never would have dared to ask that when his dad was around,

(01:11:57):
because he would have been mocked for it,

(01:11:59):
or he would have been criticized if it had gone wrong.

(01:12:02):
It never could have happened before.

(01:12:04):
But now these new horizons and opportunities were opening up.

(01:12:10):
And another quote I want to read for you is, so where the mum says,

(01:12:22):
about her and the children and the life that they have together.

(01:12:25):
And her children were occasionally seeing the father.

(01:12:27):
She said, we just support each other.

(01:12:30):
We support each other, her and her daughters through cuddles and cups of tea and chocolate.

(01:12:36):
We put on a film and snuggle up together.

(01:12:38):
We know we're going to be there for each other and we do help each other.

(01:12:42):
And we just know that we love each other.

(01:12:43):
And they, she,

(01:12:47):
They had this really nice relationship now, and it had taken years to get to that point.

(01:12:53):
That particular mum,

(01:12:54):
who we just heard from just then,

(01:12:57):
when she'd first separated from her abuser,

(01:12:59):
her kids were quite young,

(01:13:01):
and he was one of those abusers who sometimes was really nice to the kids and

(01:13:04):
sometimes was really scary with them.

(01:13:06):
And they hated her for taking him away.

(01:13:09):
taking them away from him.

(01:13:11):
And they were really angry with her for about two years.

(01:13:14):
But when I interviewed them,

(01:13:15):
it was several years later,

(01:13:17):
and they developed these really warm,

(01:13:19):
loving relationships with their mother over time.

(01:13:21):
And she was just able to stick out the initial hating and just hang in there and be

(01:13:27):
a good mother to them.

(01:13:29):
And they eventually, they really adored her by the time that I interviewed with them.

(01:13:33):
I've rarely heard teenagers who adored their mum so much as those girls did.

(01:13:39):
And another mother said about her little son,

(01:13:42):
she said,

(01:13:43):
I feel like now I can show him how much I love him and how fun and interesting he

(01:13:48):
is and take an interest in him without worrying that his dad will stop me.

(01:13:52):
We play lots of games together now.

(01:13:54):
I've taught myself to play with him.

(01:13:57):
And she described how even if she could have played with him before,

(01:14:01):
like she wouldn't have been physically stopped before.

(01:14:06):
she said she was so ground down by it all that she didn't have the mental ability

(01:14:12):
to play with her son when she was being coercively controlled because she said,

(01:14:17):
I was so ground down.

(01:14:18):
She said, I was like this sad little woman trapped in a house and it was just not possible for her.

(01:14:25):
But now that she was free and she had a lot of time with her son,

(01:14:30):
just the two of them,

(01:14:31):
as she said,

(01:14:32):
she taught herself to play with him

(01:14:34):
She taught herself to show an interest in him.

(01:14:37):
And she said with a lot of pride that he was now giving her feedback like,

(01:14:40):
you're a great mum and I'm really lucky to have you as my mum.

(01:14:44):
And these were things he'd never said to her before.

(01:14:47):
And that was meaning a lot to her.

(01:14:50):
And the children who I spoke to in these sorts of circumstances where things were

(01:14:55):
good with their mums,

(01:14:56):
they said things about their mum like,

(01:14:58):
she's always there and she's kind and she helps me.

(01:15:02):
My mum makes everything better.

(01:15:03):
She's always there for me.

(01:15:05):
She would do everything in her power to help me.

(01:15:07):
And one teenage boy said, mum's the parent I can rely on.

(01:15:12):
So like I say,

(01:15:13):
these kids,

(01:15:14):
some of them,

(01:15:14):
they were still seeing their father,

(01:15:15):
albeit not particularly often,

(01:15:18):
but they and their mums had got these really lovely relationships now.

(01:15:22):
Not in all cases, but I want to illustrate what is possible.

(01:15:27):
In some circumstances,

(01:15:30):
having really good,

(01:15:32):
healthy,

(01:15:32):
warm relationships with children post-separation is possible.

(01:15:36):
It really is.

(01:15:37):
I love that because,

(01:15:38):
you know,

(01:15:39):
there's so much doom and gloom in this world and there's so much fear,

(01:15:43):
rightfully so,

(01:15:44):
because at every level the system is not biased or is not biased in favor of

(01:15:49):
protecting children.

(01:15:51):
So I think people need to hear that there is hope,

(01:15:54):
that there is a path,

(01:15:56):
that you do not have to sacrifice your entire life at the altar of these abusive people.

(01:16:03):
And I would add in my own surveys of women,

(01:16:08):
the overwhelming majority of mothers got way more than 50-50 custody.

(01:16:15):
Almost all of them,

(01:16:16):
like literally like 99.98% say that they don't regret leaving,

(01:16:20):
that their lives are better,

(01:16:21):
that their children's lives are better.

(01:16:24):
It can be really hard and I don't want to discount that.

(01:16:27):
But I think that

(01:16:28):
There's hope on the other side.

(01:16:30):
And I think that people need to know that,

(01:16:32):
you know,

(01:16:32):
there are options and there are resources,

(01:16:34):
not enough resources,

(01:16:35):
but you can be resourceful.

(01:16:37):
You know,

(01:16:38):
if you've lived with an abuser,

(01:16:39):
you've learned a lot to survive day to day and you can use that to survive your way out.

(01:16:45):
And absolutely.

(01:16:46):
And it's just reminded me of something that another mother said that her abuser did

(01:16:50):
a lot of post-separation stalking.

(01:16:52):
And she said that she'd initially worked with the charity to try and establish some,

(01:16:59):
this was like a domestic violence charity,

(01:17:01):
to try and establish some sense of,

(01:17:07):
some psychological peace for herself.

(01:17:09):
So he wasn't getting to her constantly.

(01:17:12):
He was driving by her house.

(01:17:14):
He was doing it to upset her.

(01:17:15):
She was trying to work with the charity to get to a point where

(01:17:19):
where it wasn't upsetting her the way he wanted it to.

(01:17:22):
And she'd achieved that for a while.

(01:17:24):
And then he'd done something else and it had kind of thrown her off course.

(01:17:27):
And she got really, really upset and felt really bad again.

(01:17:30):
Rightfully,

(01:17:31):
because,

(01:17:31):
you know,

(01:17:32):
it's awful that women have to put up with this and they have to try and train

(01:17:35):
themselves not to feel upset that they,

(01:17:38):
you know,

(01:17:38):
they're absolutely entitled to feel.

(01:17:40):
But at the same time, they don't want their abusers to still have this power to rule their emotions.

(01:17:47):
And she'd gone back to the charity and she'd done more work.

(01:17:50):
And she got back to a place where she felt like she had some psychological peace again.

(01:17:56):
She felt more in control as a mother again.

(01:17:59):
And at the point in time where I spoke to her, he was not succeeding with upsetting her despite his...

(01:18:06):
his stalking tactics, which I should point out were not terribly severe.

(01:18:11):
I don't think she was scared that he was going to kill her or anything.

(01:18:14):
I mean, if it was more severe, then I can see why you would be terrified about that night and day.

(01:18:20):
But it was more at the level of he was trying to play these mind games just to keep her upset.

(01:18:26):
And she talked as well about having better mother-child relationships.

(01:18:30):
And she said, like,

(01:18:31):
She said,

(01:18:32):
I'm a lot more chilled out with the kids now and I can let things go more and,

(01:18:36):
you know,

(01:18:36):
I can have more fun with them as a mother.

(01:18:40):
Before she said I was very sort of tense about everything.

(01:18:44):
And she said, no, I have just learned to chill out a lot more with the kids.

(01:18:48):
And she said that was really helping those mother-child relationships.

(01:18:53):
So,

(01:18:53):
yeah,

(01:18:53):
I think that it is possible to get to a place where not everything that he does has

(01:19:00):
the power to hurt you anymore in some circumstances.

(01:19:03):
But it depends how severe what he's doing is.

(01:19:06):
But I think for some people it is definitely possible.

(01:19:08):
And, yeah, that's hopeful.

(01:19:11):
Well, I appreciate that.

(01:19:13):
And I'm so glad that I got to have you today, Dr. Emma Katz.

(01:19:16):
So I will put links to all of Emma's work in the show notes.

(01:19:21):
She has a great book.

(01:19:22):
She has a great sub stack.

(01:19:24):
She's just a mega super genius on these issues.

(01:19:27):
And you should read everything she writes.

(01:19:30):
So if you like the show, I hope you will share.

(01:19:34):
I hope you will review.

(01:19:35):
I hope you will comment.

(01:19:37):
And we will be back in two weeks.