You know when your relationship doesn’t feel right, look right, or function with the freedom of individual thinking and independent behavior for both spouses.
You know that having no access to money isn’t normal for an adult in a marriage.
You know that giving up self-expression means having no personal identity.
You may live in a culture or a religion that gives more autonomy to one gender over another, to the point where individual freedoms aren’t recognized, and the simple pleasures of lunching with friends, going to the manicurist, or buying treats for the family are done on condition of the approval of your spouse. And you live in fear of asking for approval.
But you don’t know what to call it. There is a name for it: Hostage. You are being held hostage in your marriage. If you agree to that type of behavior, then you will continue in that role and you are hopefully fulfilled living like that. But many people are not agreeable to being a victim, yet don’t know what to do. “I don’t want to divorce my spouse, but I can’t live like this anymore. I used to have a career, my own money, and a sense of freedom to do what I wanted to do. But now, I can’t.”
I had a client who came to me for a divorce. She had six kids. She was significantly overweight. She said that she firmly believed that her husband encouraged her to have a lot of children, and live at an unhealthy weight, so that she couldn’t experience life outside of the marriage. She felt enslaved. When she filed for divorce she had no idea where her husband was living. He had suddenly walked out of the marriage, leaving her with all the children, no job, no source of income upon which to provide for her children. She pulled it together, filed for wage garnishment for child support as he still was with the same employer, and eventually started to work. Her husband leaving her forced her to turn her life around.
It’s so easy to be lulled into an acceptance of a relationship that is limiting
Marriage is a commitment, not a trap. People are still supposed to grow and flourish in relationships, both as a partner and as an individual. This is what is hard about marriage, that balance between being a couple while being an individual different than the other partner. Please listen to this episode to learn the following:
- How to identify if you are or were held hostage in your marriage.
- How to identify a cult-like mentality.
- How you can be seduced by someone who wants to control you.
- What seduction is like, and why it begins the process of control.
- How you become a slave to your spouse in your relationship.
- Neither education nor intelligence have anything to do with being seduced and held hostage in the relationship.
- What love bombing is and how it is part of the seduction process to establish the hostage relationship.
- How and when we give our power away to someone else.
- Are you making choices against your own best interests, and compromising your values?
- If you’re in a cult-like relationship questioning the other person is not possible.
- Extricating yourself from a cult-like marriage or divorce.
- Own your story and drop your shame.
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