Most women would probably not describe their husband as misogynistic. But some examples of misogyny are so subtle, you may be surprised to realize your husband is doing them.

3 EXAMPLES OF MISOGYNY

https://youtu.be/M0jE-acoBrk

1. HE NEEDS A LIST FOR EVERY HOUSEHOLD CHORE

Your husband might say he is happy to help around the house, but only if you tell him exactly what to do. He might expect you to write detailed lists, remind him to finish chores, or walk him through basic childcare tasks. By waiting for your directions before lifting a finger, or leaving things unfinished, he forces you to carry the entire mental load of running your home and maintaining your relationship.

When your husband doesn’t help with the housework it shifts those responsibilities completely onto your shoulders, because of misogyny, leaving you feeling more like his personal assistant or his mother than his equal partner.

2. HE CHOOSES INAPPROPRIATE MATERIAL OVER TRUE INTIMACY

Many women might not even know this is happening. He might hide his misogyny. What a woman might notice is that her husband doesn’t seem truly interested in her. He might ignore her by spending long hours in his office or on hobbies, until he needs something from her. He may give excuses like, “I have a ton of work to do. You go to bed. I’ll come when I’m done” or “I’m stressed and I need to go cool off,” while he secretly uses that time to pursue fantasy over his real-life marriage.

This behavior undermines the emotional and physical intimacy that is foundational to a healthy marriage, leaving you feeling isolated, unwanted, and unloved.

3. HE APPLIES DIFFERENT STANDARDS TO YOU THAN TO HIMSELF BECAUSE OF MISOGYNY

Misogyny often shows up when your husband holds you to different standards than he does for himself. For example: he might criticize you for buying clothes or something for your home, while he spends freely on his personal hobbies, or he expects you to keep a tidy house while leaving his belongings scattered in every room.

This double standard often extends to shared finances. He may hide money, refuse access to bank statements, or pat you on the head with phrases like, “I’ll take care of the finances, you don’t need to worry about it.”

This behavior strips you of your voice and agency, leaving you in the vulnerable position of not having access to betrayal trauma resources you need to live in emotional safety.

To find out if your husband is using any one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse, take my free emotional abuse test.

For strategies to deal with this type of abuse and establish peace in your home, enroll in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop.

Key takeaways from the interview:

• Recognizing Patterns of Misogyny in Relationships
• How Misogyny Interferes with Truth and Healing in Therapy
• When Your Husband Uses the Truth to Lie
• The Connection Between Misogyny and Inappropriate Media

TRANSCRIPT: FINDING SUPPORT AND NAMING THE REALITY OF EXAMPLES OF MISOGYNY

Anne: Welcome Virginia.

Virginia: Thank You for everything you do. I would be lost without BTR. You have seriously brought me back to life.

Anne: Oh, I’m so glad to hear that. How did you find out about BTR and betrayal trauma in marriage?

Virginia: It was the oddest thing. Something came up on YouTube that showed BTR.ORG. I tell you fate, whatever you wanna call it, I checked it out and that’s how I found BTR.

When I started attending the Betrayal Trama Recovery Group Sessions. The first session, I couldn’t believe in a sense of relief that, oh, I’m not the only person living in this world. And not that it’s relieving to know that other women suffer in this manner.

You feel like you’re on your own planet. And you don’t know what to do. Hearing the other women’s stories in what they’ve been through is just heartbreaking. But the ability to share and validate each other is amazing. And the coaches listen so well. The feedback they give is invaluable. They’re on top of it and they remember everything. I don’t know how they do it. I’m not on very often. I know other people are on much more often than I am. But I’m telling you, this is a lifesaver. It really is. I don’t know what else to say. I can’t say enough about it.

Anne: I am so grateful. It’s helpful. I think our coaches are incredible. Our whole team is incredible. I think one of the reasons we’re incredible is because we’ve all been through it with misogyny, so we understand it on such a visceral level. And then we have really great training and we know what we’re talking about.

UNDERSTANDING WHAT EXAMPLES OF MISOGYNY ARE IN MARRIAGE

Anne: I’m really happy that it was helpful to you. Let’s start with your story and the misogyny you endured.

Virginia: So I married my Chuck in 2002. I married once before for seven years. I have two children from that first marriage. It occurred to me after realizing what was going on in this current marriage. That I was also experiencing more physical abuse and sexual abuse in the first marriage.

So this has been an eye opening experience. The entire beginning of our marriage, he made me feel unattractive. That he did not want to be intimate. He was tired, too busy, and worked so hard and all this. And I would think to myself, that doesn’t seem to add up to me, and I couldn’t quite understand.

But as a woman, you take it out on yourself and think, what am I doing wrong? What am I not doing right? Am I not pretty enough? I had discovered so many things, pornographic materials, books, cross-dressing clothes in his car. Magazines everywhere. And I confronted him on this. Because here I am, newly married, with two small children of eight and six years old. My thought was, I can’t put them through this again. I can’t have another divorce, it will devastate them.

And I knew at the time that it was wrong. He told me he was going to get help and take care of this. He brushed away a lot of it as nothing. I was just in shock and trusted him.

FINDING INAPPROPRIATE MATERIAL – MY HUSBAND BLAMED IT ON OUR SON

Virginia: Fast forward a little bit. My son was about 10 and the basement was not finished at the time. I had it set up so the kids could play. And there was a little TV down here for them. Well, I found pornographic videos tucked into the couch and behind the couch. I went to my husband and said, “You’ve gotta be kidding with me right now. The kids play down there. You can’t do this. This is unacceptable.”

And his answer was, ” Oh, it must be our son’s, he must be looking at the videos.”

Anne: It’s just so offensive to me that they don’t even care about kids. They’ll exploit and use children. There’s no excuse for the misogyny.

Virginia: Right . then three or four years later, I had upstairs in the kitchen, a computer. Because I want them to do their homework in there.

This one night they went to bed. I was going to play solitaire and I find porn. So I called him out into the kitchen and again he swore, “I will get help. I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that.” And went to therapy and all of this.

So here we are. He’s been going to a 12-Step program for all this time. It’s been 20 years. This is an interesting thing, and I find common through conversations that I’ve heard through the other women. You know something is wrong, and I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was wrong.

DISCOVERING THAT HE’S HIDING MONEY

Virginia: The first thing I found was the money. He was hiding money all throughout the house in books, you name it, thousands of dollars hidden. I didn’t tell him I knew that there was money hidden everywhere. He figured out that I found it, because all of a sudden the money was all moved out of the hidden places. I still, till this day, have no idea where all that money went. This is evidence of misogyny.

He said, “We spent it”.

I said, “No, we didn’t.”

Then we started to redo the basement. I cleaned out the basement, and found every single one of those magazines. He supposedly threw away 20 years ago. I was furious and didn’t say anything.

I packaged every single one of them up in trash bags. And I put them in the back of my car with a bunch of other boxes that I had cleaned out. And when I dropped off the donations, I was going to bring the trash bags with the magazines to the dump. He emptied all of those bags out of my car, every bag. And I never told them I found them. I didn’t say a single word.

And I found them in the garage. I took them, and again, I didn’t say anything. I brought them out to the fire pit, and God forgive me, I burnt every single one of them because I was so mad. And two weeks later, he went out to the fire pit, and he came and he said, ” Hey, do you wanna help me clean up that mess out in the fire pit that you made?” And I said, “No, I really don’t.”

EXAMPLES OF MISOGYNY – LOSING MY INDEPENDENCE

Anne: Was he calm when he said it?

Virginia: He’s always calm.

Anne: That’s so scary. It’s like that chilling kind of calm, right? It’s like terrifying.

Virginia: This has been a really difficult situation, because I was supposed to have retired. I am retired, but now I have no independence. And I’m trying feverishly to find a job, so I’m relying on him to pay the bills. I bought this house as a single mother with two small children. And I put his name on it when we married. So now, I’m in a difficult position, so I am here with him in the home with no choice right now, but to stick around until I can find another job.

Anne: Until you can figure it out and realize the effects of misogyny.. I am so sorry.

Virginia: It is so hard, yeah.

Anne: I was gonna ask, before you found the money or the pornography, he was going to 12 Step ?

Virginia: He would go every week. He wouldn’t discuss his sobriety, but it was SLAA , Sex, Love, Addiction Anonymous. It’s based off the same 12-Step that AA is based off of. Nobody knew he was going except for me. So in a conversation that we would have privately, his response would be, “Well, I know I go to a 12-Step program every week. I don’t know about them.” He would lord it over people.

EXAMPLES OF MISOGYNY – MY HUSBAND THINKS HE’S THE VICTIM

Virginia: And by the way, I am also very well educated and have had a fantastic job, and have made the same if not more money than he at times. Someone could take your self-esteem and twist it like that, and make you feel so bad about yourself.

Because they’re doing something wrong, and so they’re just sort of taking it out on you. I couldn’t understand. And I’ll be honest with you, I still cannot understand that this person can still continue to lie and do these things after all of these years and look me in the face and say, “I didn’t do that. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

They asked him to leave. I actually paid for him to live in Airbnbs for a few months. Through this, he’s been going to see a therapist, but he’s clearly not telling the truth. What I’m getting is he’s feeling sorry for himself. He’s the victim. He’s the one that’s doing all the work, and he’s trying to make himself better. He left until this last Saturday. And I found more pornography links on his Facebook site, more chat rooms. So all this time we are going through this, and he’s swearing, “I’m doing the very best I can.”

And he’s still doing the same things. I found out that it’s worse than I thought it was. So I’m living in a house with this man, who I really have no idea who he is. Because he cannot tell the truth. he’s trying to make me feel bad. And he’s using my son in the whole process.

Anne: I am so sorry. That sounds like a nightmare.

WHEN THERAPistS ARE FOOLED BY HIS LIES

Anne: Before you understood what was happening, did you guys ever go to couple therapy for help?

Virginia: I asked him years ago to go to therapy, because I felt he was depressed. His mood swings were so significant.

It’s this heavy negative presence. Unnecessary anger, taking things out on people you don’t need to be taking things out on. The entitlement of misogyny. He would come in a room, and you could just feel the negativity coming off of him. He did go to see a therapist. I also went to a therapist. At one point, we met together. But it wasn’t working. The therapist recognized that, which I thank God for. I’d been going to therapy, a specialist, to work with somebody that is addicted to pornography, but also childhood trauma. I did not feel his therapy was working.

I asked if I could be invited into one of the sessions. Because I wanted to give her the information that not only is he continuing to do what he was doing, but it’s worse than ever. Her response to me on that was, ” He’s telling a very different story from what you’re telling. And I’ve been doing this for a very long time. It’s very difficult for people to fool me.” And then she said, “Would you like him to get rid of his Facebook page? It seems like you have trust issues.” And I don’t mean to laugh, but I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW IF A LIAR IS TRUTHFUL, WATCH THEIR ACTIONS

Virginia: She said to him, ” Would you be willing to get rid of your Facebook page?”

He’s crying, and he, says, “Yes.”

And she said, “Would that make you feel better?”

I said, “This is not my call. I’m not here to be his mom or his parent. or for couple therapy. I’m here to give you the information. It’s in black and white. I have photos of what I found.” So just as I’ve heard you talk about, and I’ve heard in group sessions. “This person is now lying to you, and you’re telling me that you believe what that person is saying.”

And I also said to her, ” I’ve been married to him for almost 24 years. I know what is true and what is not true.”

Anne: It’s crazy to me that a therapist would say, “I’ve been doing this a long time. I know how to tell the truth.” When they have no other way of verifying the truth other than what he’s saying. She just thinks she’s a walking lie detector test or something. You don’t realize with a liar that in order to know the truth, you have to not talk to them, because talking is how they lie.

So if you wanna know if a liar is telling the truth or not you have to watch their actions. And how they use misogyny to excuse themselves.

THEY DON’T RECOGNIZE THAT TALKING IS HOW THESE GUYS LIE

Anne: So any therapist who purports to work with liars, AKA sex addicts, and says to you, “I’ve been doing this a long time, I know when they’re telling the truth.” I’m like, did you hire a private investigator? Are you following them around all the time? How would you know that they’re telling the truth? You’re talking about a master manipulator. It’s crazy to me that they don’t recognize that talking is how these guys lie.

Virginia: It makes perfect sense. At the beginning, I had been waiting for him to have an epiphany and say, I’m sorry, I lied. He continues to deny the fact that he blamed my son. He doesn’t remember blaming him on two separate occasions. You don’t remember? Boy, it seared in my brain pretty hard that was an accusation you made towards my son at the age of 10 years old, and the age of 13 years old. Also does not remember how the magazines got back downstairs, cannot recall how that happened. There’s no recollection at all.

That’s quite convenient if you ask me. And the therapist’s response is, “When people suffer childhood trauma, sometimes they tend to forget or they block things out.”

Anne: Something not related to their childhood trauma. That’s not logical. Yeah, a childhood trauma, maybe they forget things related to their childhood trauma. But you’re saying somebody with childhood trauma forgets what they said to someone yesterday? What? The two are not even related in the least.

Virginia: Exactly.

THEY JUST DON’T STOP MANIPULATING

Virginia: So it’s been quite a frustrating journey, and I don’t even have words. For me, the worst part of it is that I had confided in my son and told him we were separated and shared with him. My son is very much like me, very inquisitive. He wants to know, And he wants to know to the point where he wants every detail.

He’s 31 years old, but I don’t care. He does not need to know significant details. I gave him enough information, and he made the decision that this must be my fault, meaning me. That I must have pushed him too far. And I thought to myself, he’s always been unkind to my son, and it’s been a bone of contention. I’ve always tried to make a bond between the two of them to build a relationship. And he refused to do so.

All of a sudden now he said, ” My father got in touch. To say he was taking me out for dinner.” And he’s asking our son to join us. I thought after 20, however many years, that I’ve been asking you to build a relationship with child, now man, all of a sudden now you’re going to go out and have dinner with him. So I did speak up last night and I said to him, I don’t think that’s appropriate. You need to leave him out of this.

In my opinion, in my experience, they don’t stop. They’re such good manipulators, they just don’t stop manipulating. And that I think is a hard road for most people to navigate.

EXAMPLES OF MISOGYNY – THEY USE THE TRUTH TO LIE

Virginia: Epecially when you’ve trusted that person for so very long, or even for the shortest period of time when you love somebody and they betrayed you. The betrayal is beyond comprehension.

Anne: Yeah, it is. At least for me, when I realized that everything that came out of his mouth was a lie, a switch flipped for me. And then I couldn’t believe anything he said. Even things that may be true that he said. He even uses the truth to lie. So if he’s telling the truth, that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean he’s being honest.

It’s really hard to flip that switch, because there’s gaps. Why would a really good guy get mad over milk? Our brains automatically fill that gap with what we “know”. And what we “know” is that he’s a good guy. So of course, we’ll fill that gap in with, “Oh, he had a bad day,” or “He’s stressed out, or He’s tired ’cause he didn’t get enough sleep. So one thing that I wanna encourage women to do who are listening is just leave that gap blank instead of trying to think of a reason why. The reason why is often how they manipulate us, because we’re naturally going to look for reasons.

Virginia: Correct, yeah, I agree. And I’ve seen that over and over again. Even to the point of he does not necessarily get angry. It gets very passive aggressive and will say things and then you follow up and say, Did you just say what I think you said?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t say What kind of a man would I be if I would ever say something like that.”

THE SIGNS HAVE BEEN THERE ALL ALONG

Virginia: The signs of misogyny have been there all along. Constantly working, managing the house, taking care of the kids, doing all of that and finally I retire. I could not believe what I was finding.

Anne: As we wrap up, is there anything that you’d like to share with listeners? Somebody who’s new.

Virginia: When I first started listening to your Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast. It just hit me. And I really thought, thank God. It gave me courage. I’m actually getting goosebumps, a little emotional. And then I went on and joined into the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions. This is so important for women going through this type of situation. It is real. It is so important for your mental health.

If you are in a situation like this. Please listen and join, because it is significant emotional abuse. And the cruelest thing about it is to try to prove it because nine times out of 10, I keep hearing. But he was such a great guy. How could that be? This truly is emotional abuse. Listen, take care and be part of the community.

WOMEN MAKE SO MUCH PROGRESS

Anne: Thank you so much for taking the time to share your story. If you are interested in coming back on to share with me how you’re doing in six months to a year since he’s still in the home. And you’re still in the middle of this. I would love to hear the rest of the story. Especially when women are getting services here, women make so much progress.

I love to have women come back on and hear them sound more confident and more sure of themselves, because they aren’t liviing with misogyny. And you sound sure of yourself now, like you sound amazing now.

Virginia: Thank you. Thank you for hearing my story. I appreciate it.

Anne: Yeah, thank you so much.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN MISOGYNY AND D-DAY STORIES

Anne: Now you’re going to hear a recording that Corrie sent in about an example of misogyny that so many women in our community experience. It’s frequently called D-Day for Discovery Day. It could also stand for Destruction Day. That’s the day women discover something awful about their husband, and it’s seared in everyone’s memory. Women who’ve gone through it often divide their life between what happened before this day and what happened after.

This level of betrayal and deception is rooted in a profound sense of entitlement. So if your husband completely disregards your need for emotional safety, and he’s fine with lying to you, he’s basically deciding your pain and trauma and the negative consequences to you are really not that big of deal compared to what he wants.

Over the years, I’ve heard hundreds, maybe thousands of D-Day stories. I personally experienced three D-Days, and you can read all about those experiences in my book, which will come out soon. To get on the mailing list for when that comes out, go to any page on my website and scroll all the way down and put your email into our community.

If you’re listening, I want you to think about if you’ve had a D-Day or how many D-Day you’ve had and know that you’re not alone.

There’s a whole community of women who totally understand what you’re going through. So here’s Corrie’s story.

CORRIE’S D-DAY STORY

Corrie: I just wanted to share about my D-Day, mostly because today is the three year anniversary. It was a Sunday, I had been at church, and that particular day, they had a special visitor come from the Church’s Addiction Recovery Program, specifically on pornography addiction recovery. They came and just kind of talked to the women and men of my congregation about the Addiction Recovery Program

I only was able to hear a little bit of it. Since I was in and out with the baby, but I was just thinking at the time, wow, I’m so grateful I don’t have to deal with that. So we went home after church, and we got the baby and my older daughter down for a nap. And I talked to my husband, and I said something like,” I’m really glad that you don’t have that problem. So we don’t have to deal with it.”

And he got this look on his face, just this like, green, almost sick look. And I said, am I right? We don’t have to deal with that, right? I thought it wasn’t even an issue. Before we got married, I asked him about it. But, he hadn’t been truthful. He was living a lie. It was three days before our three year wedding anniversary, which really pissed me off. Because I was looking forward to our anniversary. I can’t even remember right now what we had planned, but it just changed the whole thing, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do.

LOOKING BACK ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF D-DAY

Corrie: After that, I just froze. I couldn’t trust my husband anymore. That trust was completely shattered, and I didn’t know where to go from there.

I am one who has struggled with emotions, dealing with, sharing with, just feeling emotions. I grew up in a home where, especially negative emotions were not okay. We don’t talk about real things, like negative emotion.

We don’t talk about depression or anxiety or pornography addiction. I didn’t know how to handle it. So I just froze. It took me a long time, in fact, it wasn’t until this year. When my husband had another relapse, and I was done. I started focusing on me, and that has helped me. It’s been good for me to look back on this, the third anniversary of my D-Day, and see just the crushed person I was back then and how it didn’t destroy my life.

Anne: Corrie thank you so much for your bravery and recording your D-Day story. And how misogyny affected your marriage.

If you would like to record your D-Day story, you can record it on your phone using voice memo, and then email it to podcast@btr.org. And if I get enough of them, I’ll compile them into one episode and air that in the future.

If you’ve just had a D-Day the first one or the second one, no matter what D-Day it is. And you don’t know what to do. The first step is getting educated about this type of abuse and getting the right support. Patriarchy fuels abuse. When I went through it, even though I went for help, the professionals I went to knew nothing about abuse

THERAPISTS DIDN’T HELP ME IDENTIFY ABUSE

Anne: And so their help actually prolonged my suffering. The couple therapists we went to, the pornography addiction recovery therapists, even the individual therapists, didn’t help me identify that I was a victim of emotional and psychological abuse.and sexual coercion. With a man who justified misogyny.

That’s why I started podcasting, so that no other woman had to go through what I went through. So if you’ve had a D-Day and you’re wondering where to turn. This podcast is a great way to learn about the reality of your situation. Also to educate you about abuse, so that when you are ready to date again or you have a teenager you want to protect, you can identify it.

And then to talk to women who are going through it. We totally understand what you’re going through. Our Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions are the safest, professionally facilitated group sessions on the planet. You deserve appropriate support, that doesn’t blame you for any of this.

To see the group session schedule, go to /group/.

We’d love to see you in a group session