What happens when seeing your ex derails all your progress? And why do your friends think he’s such a great guy when you know the truth?

Key Takeaways:

• Why seeing your ex after months can feel like all your progress disappeared (it didn’t)
• What trauma bonding actually does to your memory of the relationship
• Why emotionally abusive people seem so great to everyone else
• The false equivalency that keeps people from believing abuse survivors
• How to know if you’re lonely for him or for something else entirely

Get Today’s Free Resource:

I want to give you a free gift. It’s the audio version of my book, All the Scary Little Gods. It’s a spiritual memoir about healing from religious trauma and toxic programming. You can listen to it FREE by going to scarylittlegods.com

I will also send you my weekly Hope Letters for Christian women in emotionally and spiritually abusive marriages.

Article: Why Do Your Friends Believe the Person Who Abused You?

A listener wrote to me with a question: “I’ve been divorced for seven months. I thought I was doing good—I moved across the country, bought a house, got a dog. But then I saw him for the first time, and it totally set me back. Now I’m depressed, crying, feeling alone and helpless. And worst of all, I wish we could get back together even though I know that would be a disaster. Plus, my friends still text him and think he’s such a great guy. Do they think I’m lying? That I made it all up?”

You’ve done everything right. You moved across the country. You bought a house. You stayed busy. You have your dog. You thought you were doing good, and you were doing good.

But then you saw him and it felt like all that progress—boom—gone. Now you’re crying and depressed and feeling alone and hopeless. And worst of all, you’re having thoughts about getting back together with him even though you know that would be a disaster.

What Happens in Your Brain When You See Your Abuser Again?

When you were married to him, your nervous system was constantly activated. You were in a state of hypervigilance, monitoring his moods, trying to predict his reactions. And your body created neural pathways around him.

Your brain learned to associate him with intensity, drama, and that desperate need to make things okay. To get him to see you. To get him to love you the way you needed to be loved.

Those neural pathways don’t just disappear after seven months. They’re still there.

So when you saw him, your nervous system lit up like a Christmas tree. All those old pathways got activated again. Your body remembered before your brain could even catch up.

This is a trauma response. This is what happens when you’ve been living in a state of chronic stress and then you encounter the source of that stress again.

It’s not proof that you’re not healing. It’s actually proof that you were traumatized, and your body is doing exactly what traumatized bodies are supposed to do.

Why Can’t You Stop Thinking About the Good Times?

Those good times you keep remembering? They’re torturing you right now. This is what we call trauma bonding, and it is one of the most painful parts of healing from an abusive relationship.

Those good times happened. But they were part of a cycle.

They were the relief you felt after the pain. And that relief felt so good that your brain coded it as love.

There’s tension building, an explosion, a honeymoon period, and then you repeat it over and over again. The good times made you think, “Oh see, he can be a good person. Maybe if I just try harder, he could be that person all the time.”

But he won’t. Because those good times were part of the abuse cycle.

And now you’re asking, “Why couldn’t he love me?”

He couldn’t love you because he doesn’t have the capacity to love anyone the way we all need to be loved. This has nothing to do with your worth. This is about his limitations as a human being. His character. His choices. The way he’s wired.

What Should You Do With These Feelings?

First, write down what life was really like with him. Not the highlight reel your brain is showing you right now, but the reality. The day-to-day reality of living with someone like this.

Write down how you felt most days. Write down the things he said and did. Write down what it cost you to stay as long as you did.

Your brain is showing you the trailer for a movie that never actually existed. Keep that list somewhere you can access it when these waves of “what if” start hitting you.

Second, give yourself permission to feel this without acting on it. You can feel sad because this is a sad thing. You can feel lonely. You can feel like you want him back. But that doesn’t mean you have to go back.

Feelings aren’t facts. They’re just weather patterns moving through. You don’t have to believe them and you certainly don’t have to obey them.

Third, know that this setback is temporary. You’re seven months out. Seven months is still early. The fact that you saw him and it derailed you for a few days or even a few weeks does not erase all the progress you’ve already made.

You’re going to be okay. This wave is going to pass.

Why Do Your Friends Think He’s Such a Great Guy?

Now let’s talk about the second part of your question: You’ve got friends who are still buddies with your abuser. They text him. They think he’s such a great guy. And you’re sitting there thinking, “Do they think I’m a liar? That I made it all up?”

Here’s the truth: Your ex is absolutely presenting as such a great guy to everyone. That is what emotionally abusive people do.

They’re charming. Some of them are fun, the life of the party. Others are just really nice guys, maybe even passive. They know how to make people like them. They might serve in the church and do good deeds.

But they’re doing those good things for a reason. It’s not the only part of who they are. It’s just the part that everybody else sees.

What people aren’t seeing are the private moments you had with him. Those closed-door conversations. The subtle ways he undermined you or controlled you or criticized you or made you feel crazy.

Emotional abuse does not leave bruises that other people can see. But it definitely leaves bruises on your soul and your spirit. Those are invisible to everyone else but you.

What About When People Say, “Well, both people always say the other one was at fault when they divorce.”

This is called a false equivalency, and it’s one of the most harmful things people say about abuse.

Sure, in a normal divorce between two imperfect people, you’ll hear different versions of what went wrong and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But abuse is not a conflict between equals. Abuse is where one person is able to exert power and coercive control over another person.

Your friend’s comment treats abuse like it’s a difference of opinion. Like it’s a he-said-she-said situation where both parties are equally unreliable narrators.

But abuse is not subjective. It’s not a perspective problem. It is a behavior problem.

Your response—”Would you say that if he was hitting her?”—cuts right to the heart of it. Because people can see physical abuse. They can measure it. So they’re willing to believe it and take sides.

But emotional abuse, mental abuse, coercive control? That’s invisible. So suddenly it becomes, “Well, who really knows what happened behind closed doors?”

The fact that emotional abuse is invisible does not make it less real or less harmful. The fact that he’s charming in public does not negate what he did to you in private. And the fact that some people don’t believe you or understand doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

What Do You Do With These Friends?

First, I want to give you permission to create distance from anyone who’s maintaining a friendly relationship with your abuser while simultaneously doubting or dismissing your experience.

You don’t owe them an explanation. You don’t owe them a defense of your story. You don’t have to convince them. You don’t owe them your friendship.

You can just quietly step back. You can stop confiding in them. You can stop expecting them to understand. You can stop hoping they’re going to validate your experience.

Take all that emotional energy and redirect it toward relationships with people who do believe you, who do understand you, and who are willing to support you.

Second, find your people. That means people who have been through what you’ve been through. Women who know what it’s like to be married to someone who’s charming to everyone else and cruel behind closed doors. Women who understand trauma bonding and setbacks and the grief of losing a marriage you never really had. Women who aren’t going to tell you that both people were at fault when you talk about abuse.

That’s what the Flying Free community is for.

Third, stop trying to figure out what these friends are thinking about you. You don’t need to make sense of their behavior. You don’t need to wonder anymore if they think you’re lying.

Because none of that really matters.

What matters is what you know to be true about your experience. You lived it. You were there. You know what happened behind closed doors. No amount of him being the fun guy to other people changes that reality.

Your healing does not depend on other people believing you. I know it would be nice if they believed you. It might be easier if they believed you. But your healing is about you coming to terms with the truth of what happened, grieving it, processing it, and moving forward.

That work happens inside of you. It doesn’t happen in other people’s opinions of you.

What About the Crushing Loneliness?

You mentioned feeling alone, and you put that word in all caps and mentioned it twice. And loneliness is a reality when you leave an abusive relationship.

You’d think you might feel less lonely after leaving someone who makes you feel unseen and unheard. But sometimes you go through a phase where you feel more lonely because at least before you had someone physically present, even if they weren’t emotionally available.

Plus, you had the hope that maybe someday they would change and then you’d feel connected. And that hope kept you going. Now you don’t even have that.

Add onto that friends who don’t believe you and are maintaining friendships with him, and that loneliness is compounded. You feel isolated not just from him but from your whole social circle.

That feeling is real. And it’s hard. But it’s also a season. It’s not forever.

Right now you’re in this grief stage where the loss feels overwhelming. But as you build new connections with people who truly see you, as you rebuild your life and invest in friendships with people who understand your reality, and as you do your own work of healing, that loneliness will ease.

In the meantime, practice something: When you feel that crushing loneliness, ask yourself: Am I lonely for him? Or am I lonely for what I hoped he would be?

Am I lonely for the relationship I actually had, or for some imaginary relationship I was hoping to create?

There’s a big difference.

Usually when we’re missing someone who is abusive, we’re not actually missing the reality of who they were. We’re missing the fantasy of who we wanted them to be. We’re missing the person we caught glimpses of in the good times. We’re missing the relationship we were trying so hard to build.

But you can’t have a real relationship with a fantasy. 

So when you’re feeling lonely, it’s okay to say: I am lonely. I wish I had a partner who loved me well. I miss feeling connected.

But don’t let your brain trick you into thinking that the solution to that loneliness is to go back to someone who made you feel even more alone when you were with him.

You’re going to be okay. You’re already doing the work. Keep going.

If you need training and support that will give you courage, confidence, and hope, come join us in Flying Free. 

XOXO,
Natalie