Truth Be Told: Healing from a Traumatic Relationship Can Only Come from Honesty

A personal story about how one woman finally let go of the painful trauma within a relationship by courageously embracing the truth

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Three years ago, on the eve of my birthday, I was awoken in the middle of the night by my former spouse.

He had burst into my daughter’s bedroom where I had been seeking refuge from our divorcing situation. He was heavily intoxicated as he engaged in a terrifying tirade towards me — including threatening to violently harm me physically. When the police eventually came, during the questioning, my former spouse stated that he had engaged in a brief, polite interaction with me and then had been woken up by the arrival of the officers.

These kinds of interactions were no stranger in our marriage. Within the first month of our living together, my former spouse — in an argument — threatened to kill my dog. There was explosive anger: fists into walls — furniture hacked to bits. There were ugly cruel words towards me. There were countless times that I got out of cars. There was drinking. This was not all the time, by any means. But it was enough to keep you on guard.

There were many times that I wanted to call the police, but as a stay-at-home mother with no income of my own at the time, I was worried about what would happen to our family.

This was not everything of course. There was at times camaraderie between he and me. There was a mutual love for our children. He could be very funny. There were kindnesses. “I want you to have your wedding exactly as you want it,” he once said to me. I came to him many times with pain about my family. And he was often there for me. He listened to me.

And on my side, I am sure that I was troublesome to him, too. I am certain that there is much that he could write about me.

But three years ago, on that night the police were called, there were two adult male family members staying in our house who did not defend me or reproach my former spouse. The next day — my birthday — I was making breakfast for my children when my former spouse walked into the kitchen. I was so terrified that I spilled grease from the stove onto my leg, receiving a burn down my calf; a scar that remains today.

The depression I felt on that day and for months afterwards was thick and unrelenting. It was the maelstrom of all of it — the lack of help, the lying, the absence of recourse or protection from the threat of violence. It was the suppression of myself — the palpable sense that I did not matter and my safety did not matter. It was also the dearth of integrity of the entire situation — the vacancy of truth. This all combined into a depression that left me wanting to jump out of my life. Ironically, my spouse attempted to use this depression against me later on in court regarding our children’s custody.

Where do I land today with all of this? I have learned to tell the truth.

I have learned that omitting the truth, forgetting the truth, denying the truth, paving over the truth, whitewashing the truth, photoshopping the truth only adds trauma on top of trauma to create an ever-expanding sphere of malignancy for all involved.

How can we ever shift these ways of being unless we shine the light of truth upon them?

I know this is true, but there is a part of me that is scared to tell this story, worried about injuring my former spouse here — about him being judged and totalized. There is also a part of me that worries about what others might think of me sharing something so personal. For these reasons, over the past two years, I have remained silent.

On my birthday this year, however, I woke up knowing that I needed to tell this story. In part because for the three years that I have been silent about this night, it has felt like I have left a part of me back in that scene: paralyzed, frozen, and alone.

The truth is that back then, three years ago, we were both suffering. We were facing the end of our marriage, separation from our children, financial challenges, and logistical ordeals. I believe my former spouse did not know what to do with these feelings, so he turned to alcohol to try to escape from his emotions.

My former spouse is a member of Western male culture which includes discourses, particularly for his generation, of shame regarding feelings and the expression of particular feelings. There are pervasive examples in this culture — in movies, video games, and so forth — of physical violence as an expression of anger.

This man is not the originator of these discourses and practices that were present in many of his interactions with me; he had been acculturated into these ways of being.

Three years ago, we were both living in an extremely stressful situation. Nearly everyone around us (family members and friends and our attorneys) adopted the mainstream divorce ‘battle’ mentality, pitting us against each other. Sadly, it was just “business as usual” for both of us. Even as our own worlds were shattering around us, we both had to continue going to work, taking care of children, and running a household. There was little space for any type of processing or healing of our profound wounds.

This does not condone what he did, but it helps to put into context what happened. In my doctoral psychotherapy education, the most profound question in my training was:

How does this individual’s behavior make sense, given his context?

Letting go of ideas of right or wrong, it makes sense to me that my former spouse — in his desperation, in his not knowing how to process his feelings, in his examples from his culture, within the system of making me the enemy — would lash out at me. It also makes sense to me that he did not express the truth of his actions that night to the police, given how punitive our society can be and since his livelihood could have been on the line.

This does not take away from the horror of what I experienced…

Over the past three years, I tried on many occasions to talk to him about what happened that night. But I did so largely from a place of anger, of being ‘right’, of wanting him to own what he did and apologize to me. More recently, I have talked to him about how difficult it must have been for him back then. How his whole world was falling apart. How he did not grow up learning how to process his anger.

Recently, we sat on the floor in my house surrounded by candles and palo-santo wood. My goal was to create peace between us, not to be right. In this quiet space, we both spoke about what we experienced that night. I felt that he heard me and I believe he felt that I heard him. I think that we both experienced healing as I felt the peace between us grow exponentially. And the truth is that there is love between us. The truth is that there was always love between us. The truth is that he is a good man in innumerable ways.

But I will not remain in the shadows of silence any longer.

This is the birthday gift I give to myself. By jumping out of my comfort zone here, I may be sharing too much, or maybe too little. I may not have shown enough compassion towards my former spouse or towards myself. But I am telling this story because I want to say something rather than nothing. I am trusting in the power of the truth here. How else can there be any healing?

I think one of the biggest issues here is — how do we talk about these types of things in regards to people that we love? How do we talk about these types of things without causing further harm? Whatever side of this type of interaction that you may have been on in your life experiences — and perhaps you have experienced both sides — I send you love and compassion.

I share this story in the hopes that it can contribute to healing. That there can be more understanding and less blaming and judging around these traumatic situations for all individuals involved. That there can be more support for families going through crisis. That there can be more forgiveness. That there can be more help for men (and for all of us) to process and feel our feelings in a healthy way.

That peace can grow — through truth.

You may also enjoy reading Forgiveness: The Path to Embracing My Lion Heart by Laura Bishop