✍️ By Linda C J Turner Therapy | Healing After Abuse Series
One of the most painful truths I’ve had to accept in my healing journey is this:
The abuse I endured wasn’t just emotional volatility. It was premeditated. Planned. Strategic.
What I once dismissed as confusion or misunderstanding now looks painfully clear in hindsight.
This wasn’t a man in crisis. This was a man with a plan.
He didn’t want to move to Spain.
He complained constantly about the weather.
He said we couldn’t afford it.
He resisted the move, resisted the dream… until it suited him.
Then, without warning, the manipulation began.
🎯 The Real Agenda: Force Her Out, Move Someone In
It became obvious that the entire abusive episode was not random.
It was engineered to push me out of my own home—emotionally, financially, and physically—so he could replace me, reclaim his place in a social scene, and rewrite the story with himself at the center.
“Get rid of her friends.”
“Isolate her.”
“Make her feel like the problem.”
“Let her unravel so no one believes her.”
This wasn’t just about me.
This was about power.
About image.
About control.
And worst of all, it was about punishing me for something I had no control over:
his own deep, unhealed unhappiness.
👁️ Psychological Abuse Often Has a Strategy
When people think of domestic abuse, they often imagine explosive arguments or bruises. But there is a far more insidious form:
coercive, strategic, psychological abuse.
This kind of abuse is layered in manipulation, subtle social sabotage, gaslighting, and financial control.
It’s not just about control in the moment.
It’s about reshaping a survivor’s entire life—her friendships, her reputation, her finances, her sense of reality.
It’s about stealing her future while pretending to be the one who suffered.
🧠 Why Would Someone Do This?
Psychologically speaking, this behavior often stems from deep narcissistic injury or pathological insecurity. When someone cannot tolerate their own sense of failure, they externalize it.
They find someone to blame, someone to destroy.
Rather than take responsibility for their own dissatisfaction, they try to ruin the life of the one person who stood by them.
And when that person dares to walk away?
They don’t just want her gone—they want her broken.
🛑 But I’m Not Broken. I’m Waking Up.
I see it now.
I see every calculated move for what it was.
Every friend turned cold, every financial demand, every lie whispered to mutual acquaintances.
I see the smear campaign. The silent treatment. The staged chaos.
But here’s the thing about survivors: we don’t stay silent forever.
I will not be pushed out of my own truth.
I will not shrink to protect the image of someone who tried to dismantle my life.
And I will not allow other women to think they are “crazy” when they feel like the walls are closing in.
You’re not crazy.
It’s real. It’s planned. And it’s abuse.
💪 For Every Woman Reading This…
If you feel like the people around you are being turned against you…
If you’re being told you’re “too emotional” while your bank account is draining and your friendships are slipping away…
If the person you loved has become unrecognizable—and yet, everyone still sees him as “the nice guy”…
Please know: It’s not your imagination. It’s a tactic.
You are not alone.
You are not overreacting.
You are waking up.
And you will rebuild—stronger, wiser, and deeply aligned with your truth.
