10/06/2026
Today we are sharing a blog post from The Therapeutic Bookshelf and a book Leslie Vernick - Enriching Relationships That Matter Most, a former guest speaker at Voices, wrote several years ago.
We invite you to take a few minutes and read this post.
The link for Leslie's book will be in the comment section below.
I didn't know I was being abused.
That sounds naive, I know. I thought abuse was physical, bruises, broken bones, fists through walls. I thought it was screaming, threats, the kind of thing you see on true crime documentaries where the neighbors say "we never suspected anything."
What I was living with was quieter than that. It was criticism that sounded like concern. It was disrespect dressed up as "just being honest." It was the slow erosion of my confidence, one small comment at a time, until I couldn't remember who I was before I met him.
I thought I was the problem. I thought if I just tried harder, communicated better, loved him more, became the wife he wanted me to be, things would change. I read the marriage books. I went to the conferences. I prayed harder. I journaled. I made lists of my own faults.
Nothing changed. Because the problem wasn't me. And I didn't know that until I found this book.
Leslie Vernick opens with a description that felt like she'd been reading my diary:
"Your stomach churns, your heart aches, and the tension in your marriage is making you feel weary and a little crazy. The constant criticism, disrespect, cruelty, deceit, and gross indifference are eroding your confidence and breaking your spirit."
I read that sentence four times. Then I cried for an hour.
Because she named it. The stomach churning. The feeling crazy. The way my confidence had shrunk to almost nothing. The way I'd started to believe I was the one who was broken, the one who needed to change, the one who was making everything harder than it needed to be.
She called it what it was: emotional destruction.
And she said something no one else had said to me: God sees and hates what is happening to you.
I'd been told my whole life that God hated divorce. I'd never been told that God hated what was being done to me.
The 5 Lessons That Changed How I See My Marriage:
1. Emotional abuse is real abuse, and it has a pattern.
Vernick walks through the behaviors with clinical precision: criticism, contempt, control, isolation, gaslighting, blame-shifting, dishonesty, and indifference. I checked them off like a checklist and felt my stomach drop. It wasn't just one or two. It was almost all of them. For years, I'd minimized each incident individually. Seeing them together showed me the pattern, and the pattern was abuse.
2. You cannot fix a marriage by yourself.
I spent years trying. I was the one scheduling counseling appointments. I was the one reading the books. I was the one initiating difficult conversations. I was the one apologizing. Vernick says: Stop. A marriage takes two people. If you're the only one working on it, you're not in a marriage, you're in a performance. And no performance lasts forever.
3. Setting boundaries isn't selfish, it's necessary.
I thought boundaries were something you set with strangers, not spouses. I thought marriage meant giving someone unlimited access to you. Vernick showed me that boundaries are what protect your soul. They're not punishment. They're not ultimatums. They're the line between what you can tolerate and what destroys you.
4. You can be a good Christian and still leave.
This was the hardest one. I'd been taught that divorce was a sin, that marriage was forever, that God hated it when families broke apart. Vernick doesn't tell you to leave. She tells you something more nuanced: that sometimes leaving is the most faithful thing you can do. That God doesn't want you destroyed. That safety matters. That staying in an abusive situation isn't a testimony, it's a slow death.
5. Your voice matters, and it's time to use it.
For years, I'd been silent. I'd swallowed my feelings, minimized my pain, pretended everything was fine. Vernick says: Speak. Not to attack. Not to shame. But to tell the truth, to yourself, to God, to trusted people, and eventually to him. The truth is what sets you free. Silence is what keeps you trapped.
I'm still married. I'm still figuring out what's next. But I'm not the same person I was before I read this book. I have language now. I have boundaries. I have a voice.
Vernick gave me something no one else had given me: permission to trust my own experience. Permission to stop blaming myself for the things being done to me. Permission to believe that God sees and hates what's happening, and that He doesn't expect me to endure it forever.
This book didn't save my marriage. It saved me. And maybe that's the same thing, in the end.
BOOK: https://link.amazon/B02yp6ABb
