The Smart Divorce Podcast

Domestic Abuse - A Victim Survivor's Story

• Tamsin Caine • Season 10 • Episode 1

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TRIGGER WARNING. In the first episode, I speak to Rachel, who is currently navigating divorce from a partner who was abusive and continues to be so post separation. This is an incredibly brave conversation. We’re so grateful to be able to share Rachel’s story.

Tamsin Caine

Tamsin is a Chartered Financial Planner with over 20 years experience. She works with couples and individuals who are at the end of a relationship and want agree how to divide their assets FAIRLY without a fight.

You can contact Tamsin at tamsin@smartdivorce.co.uk or arrange a free initial meeting using https://bit.ly/SmDiv15min. She is also part of the team running Facebook group Separation, Divorce and Dissolution UK

Tamsin Caine MSc., FPFS
Chartered Financial Planner
Smart Divorce Ltd

P.S. I am the co-author of “My Divorce Handbook – It’s What You Do Next That Counts”, written by divorce specialists and lawyers writing about their area of expertise to help walk you through the divorce process. You can buy it here https://yourdivorcehandbook.co.uk/buy-the-book/



To learn more about our podcast sponsor Ampla Finance – access their product guide here: https://bit.ly/3Ieqmuc
Or complete enquiry form https://bit.ly/3W4J7pz and one of the team will be in touch.


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Tamsin Caine:

Welcome to series 10 of the Smart Divorce podcast. During this series, we're going to be speaking about the difficult subject of domestic abuse. Unfortunately, during my work, I come across people who are victim survivors of domestic abuse on a far too regular basis. So we're going to be talking to those who have survived themselves, to professionals working in this area, to solicitors, to hopefully help you to find the right support if you're in that situation. This is an iss ue that's not going away. So if you're going through this or you know anybody who is, I really hope this series helps you. Thanks for listening. Hello and welcome to the Smart Divorce Podcast.

Tamsin Caine:

Something a little bit different today. I am really pleased to be joined by my guest, Rachel, today. We are keeping her relatively anonymous for the reason that she's been kind and brave enough to come on to talk to us about her experiences of domestic abuse today and to kick-start our latest series, which will all be covering domestic abuse. So Rachel is 52 years old. She was in a relationship for 24 years with her ex. 14 of those were in a civil partnership. They have a 10-year-old son together who was birthed by Rachel's ex. However, Rachel was the main carer for the majority of her son's life or their son's life, and so either during that time didn't work or was working part time, so has been not the financial breadwinner. Rachel, thank you so much for joining me today. I really do appreciate it, you're welcome.

Rachel:

It's nice to be able to contribute.

Tamsin Caine:

Absolutely no, it's really appreciated. So can you tell us when you first realized that you were being subjected to domestic abuse?

Rachel:

yeah, I mean, I, I'm uh, I probably was a bit slow to the party because I didn't really realise that something was quite significantly wrong until the day after my ex-partner ended the marriage. So, 24 years in, my ex-partner ended the marriage and just kept saying the marriage is over, and then her behaviour just was so peculiar that I couldn't make sense of what was happening and I thought what on earth is going on? This doesn't feel normal. I knew that my body just thought what is going on? Because she behaved though she had just uh cancelled a newspaper subscription, and this was after 24 years of marriage, and she was very calm and very kind of, uh, collected and ruthless. I mean I and I, when I look, it's very difficult because I look back now with a different lens to how I felt then, but at the time I thought something sinister is going on and this word sinister kept popping into my head and I, um, I very quickly uh went to see my GP because I, you know, um, my marriage had ended. I had to call in sick, uh, with my employer and, um, I need I knew that I would need a sick note because I knew that this wasn't going to be, this wasn't going to be just a three days off work situation. So I went to talk to my GP and my GP said and this was in the first two days of the marriage ending um, my GP said I think you need to call the domestic abuse helpline, because I described the sort of behaviors that my ex was exhibiting and that was a total shock. And but I trusted my GP and I respected her and I called the domestic abuse helpline the national one and they said yes, you're being subjected to coercive, controlling and emotional and psychological abuse. And that was the very start of it and that was in November 2023 and it's eight months in. And I've been on this really horrendous journey.

Rachel:

Um, that I, I and I'm now sort of dealing with the, the loss of the marriage, the loss of what actually I thought I was in, that was completely fabricated. Um, and you know, all of that sort of sudden awareness has has been a a real uh reveal moment, which has been really horrible. Um, so, yeah, I, I didn't know at the time, at the time, throughout the relationship, we had ups and downs and I just thought that they were sort of the ups and downs that other marriages had. Um, and I, but I I'm, I wasn't brought up knowing about coercive control or that sort of abuse.

Rachel:

Domestic abuse to me was very much man hits woman, um, you know that kind of traditional, uh sort of sadly traditional idea, and so I wasn't looking for the signs of a female, uh perpetrator of domestic abuse carrying that out on me. I thought I would have noticed that. So, yeah, it took me. It took me to the end of the marriage to notice and from my experience with domestic abuse agencies, that's quite a common occurrence in the sort of situation where you've got this insidious psychological and emotional coercive control, it's just very, by very, very slow degrees that it, it ramps up. And then, yeah, as soon as the marriage ended, she was just quite, uh, I would say, overtly controlling, overtly psychologically damaging and overtly emotionally abusive. It was just very overt. It's almost like she couldn't pretend anymore that she didn't want to hurt me. She actively wanted to hurt me and actively wanted to do these things and was no longer pretending.

Tamsin Caine:

And that was, that was the, that was the sudden realizationisation Just heartbreaking, but not surprising, because I think a lot of clients that I work with are similarly unaware, until somebody says to them, post-separation actually you're aware that that sounds like domestic abuse and I think we were brought up in a generation where we weren't aware of coercive control and almost that wasn't a phrase that was ever used, probably until relatively recently I think, certainly in the kind of general public. In terms of when you look back on the relationship, can you pinpoint a time that this began or does it feel like it was something that was creeping up on you, kind of under the radar, from day one almost?

Rachel:

It was certainly creeping under the radar from day one. But there, and actually from day one, there were red flags and so, um, part of part of this sort of this journey that I've been on has rendered me quite isolated from long, long-term friendships and I've, in some way, I feel quite, uh, a burden of responsibility that I've allowed that to happen. You know it, I could have stayed in touch with old friends, but I didn't, and I realised that that was part and parcel of being made to feel I didn't need anybody else. You know, my ex-partner never said you can't see that person, apart from one person. So in the isolation that gradually grew, I wasn't able to sort of or I didn't say to people do you think this is normal, do you think this behavior is kind of okay? And so the behaviors that my ex exhibited at the very beginning of our relationship were typical of abusive people. And having got back in touch with those old friends that saw us at the beginning of our relationship, one of my good friends said you were predated, and she used the word predated in terms of my ex-partner being predatory towards me and marking me out, as you know, somebody that she was going to get. As you know, somebody that she was going to get, and I took that in my. You know, working through all of the work that I'm doing now with the various different abuse agencies, I'm doing my own work on myself and starting to understand what that predatory sensation was for me.

Rachel:

I thought that it was love. I thought that I was being, you know, I was being kind of um overwhelmed by this love. I didn't know what love bombing was at the time, but I was certainly love bombed. There was lots of attention, lots of gifts, lots of adoration, and it was highly, highly addictive to me, having maybe not experienced that very much in my childhood. And so, you know, I realized that there are patterns within that abusive, uh, those abusive traits that I I was willingly um accepting because because that's what I was, I was used to, and so it didn't seem unfamiliar to me. But there were red flags.

Rachel:

Then there was infidelity fairly early on, and I just sort of thought, well, I have to, I have to kind of not necessarily put up with it, but work through it. This is part and parcel of relationships, and relationships are not always easy, and it was my job to try to make it, make it work, um and so, um, yeah, the sort of insidious creep of of the relationship. And in the coercive sense, I didn't want to buy a house together but was coerced into buying a house together. We lived in London for a while. I really didn't want to do that and my ex-partner made lots of fun of me and said, oh, you're just a commitment phobe, and you don't, you don't, you don't want to do it because you're a commitment phobe and would say that in front of her family, to make me feel stupid. And and I was missing out somehow on getting on the housing ladder, um, I then didn't want to get civilly partnered, but again she made me, she, she made comments about well, you're just a commitment phobe and would say it in front of her family and friends, um, and passed it, always, always passed all of these nasty comments off as a joke, um, and so we bought a house and then we got civilly partnered, and so and I now realize that part of that coercive control is about binding you to that individual, that they get you bound, and so I was, you know, financially bound with a house. I then became legally bound to her and um, and then she coerced me into us having a baby together and I had.

Rachel:

Anybody that knows me had always known that I didn't really want to have children, not because I don't like them, but because I just didn't feel that was something I wanted to do. But she coerced me into saying well, this is my body, you can't stop me from wanting a child. I've wanted a child since I was 12. It's my womb. I've wanted a child since I was 12. It's my womb. And kind of went down the route of I'm an independent woman, you can't, as another woman, tell me what to do with my womb. And I was very conscious of not wanting to limit her ability to have a baby. But I was in love and I thought we're married. Ok, I have to. I have to go along with this because we're married and I've made this commitment and I'm of the opinion that once you make a commitment, that's it. You do stick.

Rachel:

And so, anyway, then we ended up on the journey of IVF and she got pregnant and we had our child in 2013.

Rachel:

And so, yes, there was a very slow, insidious, creeping build of of this coercive control and peppered within these big life events like buying a house and getting married, she was, she was dealing with things like the finances saying that she wanted to do it, she liked it, she would always have spreadsheets, she organized mortgages, she organized car insurances, things like that.

Rachel:

Um, and it was always a case of no, let me do that because I like doing it and I'm good at it. Um, and all the while, very slowly, when I look back, uh, my self-esteem was just getting lower and lower and lower and lower and lower, and I just started to feel worse about myself and I just thought, and she would sort of say, well, I think you need to go and see a therapist. So I would go and see a therapist and I would get help for me to try to figure out what was wrong with me. And that was, yeah, that was kind of I suppose that's the slow creep of that kind of power play. Really, ultimately, it was power play that I didn't know that I was being played that game.

Tamsin Caine:

How are you feeling now about what you've been through and how do you feel about the relationship now, kind of looking back on it?

Rachel:

It's easier to answer the second question. When I look back on the relationship, I feel that I was with a con woman, you know, like the old school con person uh, that none of it's real, it's all totally false. The only stuff that was real were my feelings of love and commitment, and so I have nothing to cling on to about the relationship. It was all fake. And so I'm dealing with a lot of grief uh, for the relationship that wasn't grief of not now being in love with a person I thought was there and so and I feel hugely betrayed betrayed and pretty stupid as well that those feelings are quite messy and in terms of how it's left me feeling just me as an individual, I feel sort of up until quite recently, I've been feeling fairly scraped out.

Rachel:

I used the phrase eviscerated when I was describing how I felt. I used the phrase eviscerated when I was describing how I felt on this sort of, you know, the culmination of this of 24 years and then the culmination of the post-separation abuse which is continuing. I just feel like I've been eviscerated and I liken it to, sadly, when bodies go in to be embalmed. Watched a program a long, long time ago about embalming and I feel like I've been embalmed emotionally to just this husk and so now I'm trying to build up who I am and that's that's a kind of going to be an ongoing lifelong process, I suspect.

Rachel:

Yeah, and it's been very hard and I've needed to get support from mental health charity, mental health body in my area where I live and different domestic abuse agencies. So I'm fortunate in that I've known where to look and I've been signposted in the right places. But that doesn't help me at sort of three, four o'clock in the night, in the morning, when I can't sleep and I have nightmares and I've been an insomniac since November and you know, physically it's had a massive negative impact on me.

Tamsin Caine:

I mean, I can't imagine what you're going through. I'm not going to'm not gonna pretend that I can, but the words that you use to describe it, uh, are very, very visual words and, and I mean unbelievable um, that somebody could, could behave to somebody else like this. Look at this might be a really difficult question to answer, but, looking back, if you had been aware of coercive control of domestic abuse not being necessarily man hits woman, etc. Do you think that that you would have picked up on it earlier? Or was it so subtle, the creep, that you you think that actually it's just impossible to pick up on it?

Rachel:

It is difficult to answer that because I think, in order to know that something is wrong and coercive and abusive the part of one's brain that is told something but witnesses something different. So her words were A but her actions were B I would have had to have been able to notice that what I was feeling in my body was the truth and that what she was saying was not the truth. And so, yes, maybe if I'd come across the term and I had friends that say this is coercive control, maybe that might have sparked something in me. But that cognitive dissonance that one feels when you know she had an affair, didn't tell me about it for two years and then told me about it just after both my grandparents had died, a time when I was emotionally very vulnerable when she was telling me that I love you, I love you, I love you, and the golden period of that love bombing comes back in such an intense way. I don't know that I would have had the sort of emotional intelligence to have said to myself she's saying all this stuff and she's showing love momentarily, but actually what her actions have been is this so I don't know. In an ideal world I would have had the self-compassion and emotional intelligence to have been able to pick that up. But honestly, I don't think I would have done.

Rachel:

I think I was too enmeshed emotionally in that love feeling and believing what she was saying, believing that we were. She was my soulmate. She'd never met anybody like me. I was the one for her, She'd always loved me, she would always love me. All of those, all of those kind of very magic thinking, future faking phrases that I heard all the time, except for when she was devaluing me. I think that would have been just, it's just such a big, too big a contrast. Well, it was for me anyway, for my little brain to cognitively process. Um, yeah, it's a hard one to know to look back actually do you know what I?

Tamsin Caine:

I think, I think you're right and you put in a position where it creeps up on you and I'm not sure anybody has the emotional intelligence to see what's happening to them and put yourself in two different mindsets, as you say.

Rachel:

So yeah, and the person the person that's doing it doesn't want you to know. They don't want you to leave. Of course they don't. They don't come up to you and say, right, I'm going to abuse you now. They are really wanting you to stay until they've got the next one lined up, so they will do whatever is necessary. My ex-partner did whatever was necessary to make sure that I was not going to go until she was ready. So, yeah, it's not a known quantity. So, yeah, that that's. That's how I feel about my particular situation absolutely how.

Tamsin Caine:

How is this impacting your day-to-day life now, other than, obviously, you're having huge amounts of support from different domestic abuse bodies? What, what kind of outside of that? How, how is day-to-day life currently?

Rachel:

you've spoken about nightmares and insomnia, which I can I can only imagine yeah, I haven't slept through the nights, except for about three times, um, since November the 8th, when our marriage ended, and so that has a material physical impact on me and so I, yeah, so I have nightmares that are very sort of distressing and I have lots of panic attacks and anxiety attacks. I didn't know what the word anxiety was before this was revealed to me, although I realise that I have been somebody that has suffered from anxiety in the past. Anyway, I just hadn't characterised it as that. So I find it very difficult to concentrate, to focus. I had a month off work. My employer is really really supportive, thankfully my employer is really really supportive, thankfully my sickness is up and down with work and so they are really working with me to make sure that those are classed as reasonable adjustments because I have symptoms of complex PTSD. So you know my GP's supportive. To talk to my, my employer, I've been really open and honest with my employer, um, because I can't sort of operate it any other way.

Rachel:

Um, and day to day I have, yeah, anxiety attacks and I just worry about everything. I have lots of, you know, periods of rumination and, um, beating myself up about, oh, I could have done this better. I could have not better. And so I'm running a house, looking after a full-time myself in a full-time job, and I've got a dog and you know, looking after my child and trying to provide a safe space for my child.

Rachel:

When I don't feel safe in myself, it's really, it's really really hard, and so some days are easier than others. I, I don't drink, I don't smoke, don't take drugs, um, and I don't quite know, I don't quite know how I'm managing. Actually, I just manage very much from day to day and I don't make plans, um, and now what I'm, my my go-to support is to reach out to people, because that's that's where I get the most support, because I had become so isolated. Yeah, and if I, if I need to just stop, I just have to stop and go for a sea swim. That's where I find my calm space now oh nice, I like that.

Tamsin Caine:

It's a good job. You don't live where I do because, uh, you see, swim would be a really long way away yeah, I'm very lucky it's not not too far away. Yeah, oh, that sounds. That sounds brilliant. Can you get your head around what might be the lasting impact of this, or or do you feel that it's too soon to say what you're going to be left with afterwards? Obviously, you've mentioned PTSD, which is something that seems to stick around for good, albeit manageable.

Rachel:

I don't know. I mean, I'm facing a lot of legal abuse, so my legal costs are astronomical. And I had an inheritance from my grandparents that I'm now starting to think that she actually just wanted me to not have that inheritance because it will all be gone. So I will be in debt. I've not really been in debt before in my life not significantly and I potentially will be in tens and tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt just in order to be able to get the 50-50 equals split of our marital pot. That she said no, we don't need lawyers, we don't need solicitors, we can just do it ourselves. At which I realised that was a big red flag, and I know that that's a common red flag. So I will be probably financially destitute and in debt. Uh, I don't I.

Rachel:

The lasting, the lasting hallmark impression of this will I. I hope that it will mean that I find a place in myself that, um, I haven't accessed before, that is stronger and more resilient. I don't feel like that is possible. Yet I know that people talk about post-traumatic growth. It's not something that I've currently experiencing. I don't know when that comes.

Rachel:

I certainly know who my friends are, certainly know more about you know the patterns of my behavior, uh, uh, that have not been healthy, um, but sadly ongoing because we share. We share our child uh, the the abuse is going to continue. So I'm going to need to find a way in which I can, I suppose, be my own advocate internally so that when that abuse continues because my ex will never stop being an abuser how to manage that. So that's my long term goal of how I'm going to deal with this is just knowing how to deal with that ongoing abuse. Goal of how I'm going to deal with this is just knowing how to deal with that ongoing abuse, um, and I hope that, uh, yeah, the PTSD symptoms, uh, reduce over time with the right help, and I'm getting the right help with trauma support, um, so I'm hoping that that's that's going to help me sure, I mean you.

Tamsin Caine:

You talk about not not feeling that you're in the post-traumatic growth period, but but the amount of bravery you show by by coming on to speak and and help other people who are in this position is is to me, absolutely incredible and and I hope one day you'll recognize that in yourself, because I'm aware that somebody else telling you isn't isn't you believing it necessarily, but, um, yeah, I think I think it's incredible.

Rachel:

I do hope to help other people. I have uh met some other survivors of domestic abuse and I've used my home as a place for us all to meet up post the domestic abuse group meetings that we've had, so we can all keep in touch with each other, and I really want other women to know what this is like, and I've been keeping a daily log of everything that's happened to me since November and I just wouldn't want anybody to have to experience this. It's uh, if I, if I, can help anybody, that's that's the main thing, and I and I do have friendships now with other uh abuse survivors and we help each other and it's it's so validating to be in a room or in in the company of people that really understand that domestic abuse isn't man hits woman. You know that's really valid, absolutely not well.

Tamsin Caine:

So you talked about um, some of the um domestic abuse services that have helped you. Are you able to talk a bit more about um? Obviously I don't want you to disclose the, the local um people that have helped, because we want to keep you anonymous. But are you able to talk about the kind of national support that's available to people, that that they are places where they might be able to go, where you found, where you found real help?

Rachel:

yeah, um, certainly I, I absolutely I've used the national domestic abuse helpline a lot, um, because I wanted to speak to other women, um, who were also speaking to mainly women, um, to kind of piece together what it's like to be on the receiving end of abuse from a woman, because that's been quite, you know, I've found that I have felt, oh god, nobody will believe me. My ex-partner is extremely charming and charismatic and well-groomed and well-educated and speaks with a very nice, calm voice and does not look the part at all and is a, you know, a thriving, thriving businesswoman and entrepreneur and all that kind of stuff. So I've just wanted to talk to people who, uh, had a national, had a kind of overview of that. This can happen with women. So I've accessed that and I've also accessed an agency which is a LGBTIQQI agency as well, that has a domestic abuse arm to it again, because there are subtle, subtle, nuanced things to do with, you know, within a kind of not heterosexual relationship.

Rachel:

And I've also utilized the NHS. So my GP has helped enable me to get help from my local community mental health team, so I've been supported by them. So, and TalkWorks, so through the NHS, and actually it was, it was on going through the GP and getting help from the TalkWorks team and trying to find out whether I would be suitable for EMDR therapy. The talk works person I saw said no, you're too traumatized, you're in the trauma already, you're still experiencing this trauma. Emdr needs to happen when you're safe. So, and that then catapulted me into the more local domestic abuse agencies where I live that specialise in trauma support. So I think that the and I also use the Samaritans a lot, so probably daily.

Rachel:

At the very beginning I was calling the Samaritans daily and all through the night, because the night times have been, you know, the most devastating in some ways to be alone in the house on my own and frightening and scary. So they've been extremely good, as have the crisis team within the NHS, that's through the community mental health. So I've used the crisis team as well. So that was through the local number that I've had access to. Okay, yeah, there's a lot. I know that's a lot. Yeah, the amount of money that has been spent on me, on my support, is awful. That one person on the planet has kind of contributed to my need to access all of these services for free. It's shocking. It's shocking that that could be the case, because it's yes, it's all being funded by government or whatever different public sector agencies. It's shocking.

Tamsin Caine:

I guess that's what they're there for, and it's a shame that they have to be there for that purpose.

Rachel:

but it wouldn't exist if there weren't't people needing those services so, yeah, and I'm really, I'm really grateful that they've been there for me and I'm really grateful that they're there for the women that I know and that I continue to meet. We're all extremely, extremely grateful, because without, without that, you know, I think there would be uh, much more tragedy. Uh, that, I mean, that's that's the reality of it. You know, the tragedy is that suicide suicide for me has felt like a uh, uh, what's the word? A more, a more available option to me than actually getting over this, and so I have struggled with that a lot, and so you know that that's crazy, but that's the reality, and the reality of that is that that does become the case for some women, sadly Of course, of course.

Tamsin Caine:

Again, this might be difficult to answer, but when you look back, was the abuse progressive?

Rachel:

Was the abuse progressive, did it become kind of start with, for example, financial abuse and move forward and become bigger jokey digs? Uh, sort of slight um, uh it not infidelities, but sort of the suggestion of infidelity, so not actual infidelities. And then there was an infidelity, um, and so it sort of ramped up and, um, I think, I think, as my ex became more stressed and where I wasn't providing, I wasn't being the right partner and wasn't becoming, I wasn't staying as controlled as I ought to have been, then I became more critical. I was then causing her more angst, that I wasn't towing the line. So then what she had done before didn't work, so then. So then the abuse started to sort of change up and get more overt, because actually it just wasn't working anymore. What had happened, you know, buying me something or kissing me or loving me wasn't quite adequate enough to shut me up, to keep me from saying, well, actually I don't like it when you flirt with other women behind the bar and that and that's not, it's not appropriate, and uh, I just wasn't being quiet enough and I think that, yeah, so so, when things were not working out for her in in whatever way she was trying to get what she needed.

Rachel:

Uh, the abuse sort of escalated, um, and it certainly escalated when she, she had a she sadly, she had a death in her family, um, and that sort of seemed to. It seemed to kind of create and her, I think, a sense of more loss of control when she lost this particular family member and she then felt that she needed to control more and I think that escalated the type of abuse that I was getting. It just got worse. And then the financial abuse has kicked in more since the separation, where she's holding the threat of not paying for things towards her house over my head and that's that's a very overt and very cogent um way of keeping me, keeping me quiet. Like you know, if you, if you do anything to rock the, then I will just stop paying towards the mortgage and then I lose my home. So you know, they're very tangible, real threats and whilst that threat is instilled in me, it does its job, it works. So I still live with that, sadly.

Tamsin Caine:

Yeah, of course. Are there things that you think that could be put into place? I'm thinking post-separation and during the divorce procedure. Are there things that you think could be put in place by the government to stop post-separation abuse to the extent that you've experienced it?

Rachel:

I've thought about this a lot. Oh, you might have done. I'm certainly no expert. All I know is, from my point of view, what could be done. But you know, solicitors are great. They're there to to protect people, but they're also there to do a job and make money. So I've had to rely on solicitors because my ex would not engage in anything other than just giving me half the house, and that was, that was all she said. No, you can have half the house and that's it.

Rachel:

So I wasn't in a position to to know where to go, and I think it would be great if solicitors were able to distinguish well, that's, you know from the very get go what is lawful and what is legal, and then not waste time writing lots of letters. So there is always this sort of back and forth, back and forth, and I only found out recently that all of the letters that these solicitors write to each other, they never get put into bundles that end up in court. The judges never see them. They're just letters between one solicitor and another solicitor. So those letters where these people might say horrible things about you, they don't ever get seen, and I think that's really important, that solicitors should be really clear about that important, that solicitors should be really clear about that, that when you can see that somebody is wasting the time and just writing these kind of letters about, well, can I come and get my stuff from the greenhouse, and when are you going to let me to come and get things out of the greenhouse? And I want to come and get things out of the greenhouse. You know it's just a constant wasting of time.

Rachel:

So I think solicitors would be well. Uh, it would be served well if solicitors were were able to get training in in this sort of financial and legal abuse. I'm sure some are my. My solicitor is was recommended to me by a particular author of uh narcissistic and domestic abuse, uh books, so I was put in touch with somebody who knows the landscape. But that still doesn't stop me having to spend thousands of pounds, and I think that from social workers to the police, to the lawyers, there needs to be this joined upness of when you can see that actually something is becoming litigiously messy, that there's no reason for it.

Rachel:

You know, I think I think that would I don't know help some people if they could, if they knew that the people that were there to support them really understood what coercive control was about. And there are people out there who want to train you know and can do that sort of training. And there are people out there who want to train you know and can do that sort of training. And I have.

Rachel:

I have had reason to contact the police myself and make and make not make a statement, but to record matters and I know that this coercive control behaviour is doesn't meet the thresholds that the police require at all. So whilst coercive control is within the Domestic Abuse Act, the thresholds that you have to meet in order to even get to court or even for it to be recognised are so high, the bar is so high I wouldn't have met any of those. So there's no point in me raising any allegation, which I think is sad, really a sad reflection that that that that act there is there and that that that coercive control is part of that act and yet it's not fully known how to um, uh, utilize that, that element of the act fully for all of those people that are being affected by it, unless it's really overt.

Tamsin Caine:

Crikey. There's a lot of work still to do, isn't there?

Rachel:

There's an awful lot of work, and one I wouldn't like to say it was all awful my son's school have been amazing. I think teachers are probably incredible they must see this sort of thing all the time and so my son's school has been really supportive to him and to me, and so you know there must be some really great work going on in some schools, uh, to to to be able to look out for signs of what you know, this sort of thing that's happening and how it's affecting kids. So that I want to you know, don't want to make out like everything's really awful, because I have had experience of where things can be put in place and when they're put in place, they really work. They really, really work.

Tamsin Caine:

That's brilliant. Well, that's brilliant. Well, that, that that's a really good news. Um, great, so we're coming to the end of our time together. Is anything that you want to say before, before we leave this conversation?

Rachel:

uh, I would just like to say the thing that's been the most helpful to me is knowing that there are other people out there who are experiencing feelings of being completely alone, and I've been listening to podcasts from all around the world with different from different people saying you're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone at three o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning, one o'clock in the morning. Put the podcast on. You're not alone. You're not going mad.

Rachel:

This, this abuse, is happening to you. If your body feels tense and anxious at the thought of your ex or your partner or whatever, that your body is telling you something. Listen to it, really, really listen to it, because your instincts know what's happening. Whilst you might be told that it isn't happening and your brain is trying to tell you it's not happening because you're not safe. But you're not alone and there are, sadly, there are lots of people out there who are experiencing this. But reach out to whoever you need to to get support, because it is there and it's a lonely place, so try to find company.

Tamsin Caine:

Yeah, thank you so much. Those were brilliant words and you know you're definitely not alone. There are so many support agencies available, as Rachel mentioned, the Samaritans through the night. If you need some comfort and some support, these agencies are there to provide that. And and you know, as Rachel said, you're definitely not going mad. You know, unfortunately, we work with these people who are victims, survivors of domestic abuse all of the time and it doesn't always look like um a punch, uh, you know it's quite often much more um subtle than that. Rachel, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you giving us your time and telling your story.

Rachel:

Thank you, you're welcome and it's been nice to be able to do this, so thank you hi and I hope you enjoyed that episode of the smart divorce podcast.

Tamsin Caine:

If you would like to get in touch, please have a look in the show notes for our details or go onto the website, wwwsmartdivorcecouk. Also, if you are listening on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify and you wouldn't mind leaving us a, lovely five-star review, that would be fantastic. I know that lots of our listeners are finding this is incredibly helpful in their journey through separation, divorce and dissolving a civil partnership. Also, if you would like some further support, we do have a facebook group now. It's called separation, divorce and dissolution uk. Please do go on to facebook, search up the group and we'd be delighted to have you join us, and the one thing I would say is do please answer their membership questions. Okay, have a great day and take care.

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Tamsin Caine

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