Today I'm going to talk about hidden abuse. Hidden abuse is any abuse that you can't see.

All the abuse I talk about of betrayal trauma recovery is hidden. That includes emotional and psychological abuse and sexual

coercion. Hidden abuse doesn't leave bruises or physical injuries. There's no way

you can quote unquote prove it with pictures, but it does leave emotional and psychological injuries.

In our culture, hidden abuse doesn't really count.

You can sue someone in civil court for fraud, but fraud does not come into account with

civil divorce cases because people don't classify hidden abuse as domestic violence.

For some reason, if a husband defraads his wife,

eh, that's not really fraud, that's just, I don't know.

He's not a great guy, but he still shouldn't have any consequences in divorce cases apparently.

But hidden abuse is 100% domestic abuse. Invisible abuse includes financial, emotional, psychological, sexual, as well as spiritual abuse.

I mentioned sexual coercion. Sexual coercion in marriage is invisible. It can happen in a variety of ways, but one of the ones I talk about on this podcast a lot is when a man is using pornography or having an affair or has a secret sexual life and he obstructs his wife from having the knowledge she needs to have a mutual relationship.

So he uses psychological abuse, emotional abuse, gas lighting, lying, deceit, to purposefully obstruct his wife from finding out who he really is.

This is sexual coercion because if she knew who he really was, the likelihood of her

consenting to sex is extremely low and he knows that. He's well aware and so he obstructs her from gaining that knowledge

so she will continue to either have sex with him or continue to be in a relationship with him.

So here's an example of abuse that the general public wouldn't necessarily recognize as the

abuse it is. But once you're educated about it, you can clearly see it's abusive.

This one falls under the category of financial abuse.

Let's say there's a woman named Rose.

She's lived a seemingly ordinary suburban life.

She's married to Tom a well respected

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