Three Examples of Covert Abuse
//What does covert abuse look like? Most of the time here at Voice of Influence, we focus on the dynamics of healthy influence that makes collaborative teams more innovatively productive. As Andrea and Rosanne discuss today, however, it’s vital to recognize the characteristics of unhealthy influence, especially in their most deceptive forms, so that we can identify elements that would harm an organization.
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Transcript
Hey there! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence. Today, Rosanne is with me because we are here to talk about the episode that aired last week with Helena Knowlton. Helena is from Confusion to Clarity. She leads these groups called Arise, which have to do with healing from covert abuse. And Rosanne, before our conversation started, she asked me, you know, “How does this relate to what you do on, like, with corporate?” Basically, “Why are you interviewing me?” and I said, “Well, we are here to study the dynamics of healthy influence, which means we also need to really understand what unhealthy influence looks like.”
Rosanne Moore: Yeah, and with covert control, the challenge is that it can look really nice and inviting on the surface, and then you find yourself completely disoriented and confused because there’s something totally different going on underneath.
Andrea: And it seems like one of the most difficult things about covert abuse is just it’s not so obvious, so it makes you question yourself.
Rosanne Moore: Right.
Andrea: And I would imagine it makes everybody else question you, too. It’s hard to figure out what reality really is. Like, what is actually going on?
Rosanne Moore: Yes, yes. Yeah, and that’s the worst part of it. It’s not even the other things that you lose in the process. It’s that loss of your sense of confidence in your own judgment and in your own perception of reality that is so destructive. It is so destructive.
Andrea: So, you know, in your experience… you’ve had a lot of experience. You studied this a lot. We did a whole series last summer about the abuse of power. And so, we’ve talked about it quite a bit. And not only that but then you have also created Lifeline, which is an important resource for women who are experiencing abuse and having to deal with the courts, especially Family Court.
So, you’ve talked about this a lot. You’ve worked with women a lot. So, I have a few questions for you to help us kind of understand and grapple with… Again, we’re trying to figure out what healthy influence is, so we need to be able to push it up against what’s unhealthy. So, when you’re in that situation, when you’re in a situation like this and somebody does seem to be like playing with your mind, how do you know that it’s them and not you?
Rosanne Moore: Yeah, that’s a great question. You won’t right away. You have to look for patterns. And even when you’re describing this to somebody else, like to your attorney or to a counselor, often you can be dismissed because it can sound really vague and confusing. And if you just say, “He’s abusing me,” they don’t know what that means. So, one of the things we talked about in Lifeline is always try to give concrete examples of the dynamic that’s taking place.
So, let me give you a few examples of what covert abuse looked like in my marriage. This happened very, very early on, okay? My former husband would say, “Let’s go out to eat so that you don’t have to cook.”
Andrea: Well, that sounds good.
Rosanne Moore: Yeah, that sounds great, right? That sounds really nice, and then he’ll follow up with, “Where do you want to go?” You know, I’d start saying, “Well, we could do this, or we could do that,” and he’d say, “Well, you know, we could go out for Chinese.”
Andrea: Like, it would be different than what you had suggested?
Rosanne Moore: It would be different from what I suggested. And I’d say, “Yeah, if you want to go out for Chinese, we can.” You know, I don’t care. I mean, I was fine with that. And he would say, “Well, you said you wanted to go out for steak or you wanted to do this, but you know, the reason Chinese would be really good is because…” and then he sorts of build the case. Well, I’ve already said if you want to go out for Chinese, that’s fine.” So, I’m thinking, “Okay, well, if you want to go out for Chinese, you know, that’s fine. We can do that.”
And then he would loop it back to, like, he was considering my options. And we ended up in this big fight, and I could never figure out why. Well, after three months of being married to him, I finally realized it’s not enough to say, “Yeah, if you’d like to go for Chinese, we can do that.” And I would truly, totally be fine with that. There would be no, you know, punishment later, or whatever, or pouting. I would truly be fine with that. Now, he wanted me to say that I wanted to go to Chinese so that he could then look like the good guy for having taken me where I wanted to go, but he actually wanted to go there.
Andrea: Oh my goodness. ‘Cause, “You’re so right. I’m so stupid. Why would I ever think about going to these other places when Chinese is clearly the best choice and definitely what I want?” Oh my gosh!
Rosanne Moore: So, yeah. I mean, it was so convoluted. Now, trying to explain that to somebody else… you know, it took me three months to figure out what he wanted, okay? And by that time, I was so relieved just to have found an answer that would bring peace… Like, I always, from then on, I paid attention to what hints he was giving, and I just said, “Let’s go to __,” where I knew he wanted to go, and that would be fine.
Andrea: It would keep the peace, yeah.
Rosanne Moore: Yeah. So, for me, part of taking back my voice when I started really coming to grips with the abuse that was taking place in my marriage was to say, “If you would like to go out for Chinese, that is fine. I’d kind of like to go for steak. But if you would like to go for Chinese, that is fine.” And we went through this whole thing where he kept trying to build, and I’m like, “If you want to do that, that is fine.”
Andrea: So, you would just say the same thing over and over.
Rosanne Moore: I would just repeat, “If you would like to do that, I’m fine with that.” But I was not going to own his choice for me anymore. And I truly would have been fine if he had simply owned it and done that. Well, he didn’t. We went out for steak, and he spent the entire meal being rude to me and everybody, complaining about the food, complaining about everything. And when it was over, he was like, “That was a terrible choice, and we’ll never do that again.” So, it got exposed at that point, you know. The nice face was all gone. And that’s what covert abuse is like, you know. It’s that kind of manipulation.
I can think of another example. I have a friend who has a serious health condition that’s chronic. And her husband… for years, she thought she was in a very nurturing, caring… Everybody else thought he was this great caretaker, you know, because he’d married this woman who had these health issues. And he seemed to be so concerned about whether or not she was going to be okay.
Well, the reality was every time she tried to do things that would better her life ⎼ whether it was going to school or working, or doing different things that would help improve her health ⎼ he’d say, “You know what, I just think that’s gonna be too much for you. I just really think that’s gonna be too much for you.” And so, he made her world smaller and smaller. And then finally, she got to the point where she’s like, “I can’t live like this anymore. This is depressing. I am so confined by this world, this box he has locked me in that I feel like I’m not even living.”
So, she did go to school. Well, she got a job, and then she started doing school. And so, she had money to do that. She had money to do things that she had not been able to do before because he was trying to keep her dependent on him financially, and he was not a good provider. And so, they were living in a constant struggle. So, she was limited on multiple levels. So, as she began to work, as she began to expand her horizons, he would do things that would try to undermine that. So that’s where the covert stuff… it looks very caring, but it’s actually undermining the person that it’s supposedly caring for. It’s not making her life better. It’s making her world smaller and making her more dependent.
So, those are just a couple of things. But it can also be something as simple as like when we got married, my husband was a church leader in a ministry. So, you know, he purported to be this great spiritual leader. He presented himself that way. Certainly, I wouldn’t have married him had I not thought he had a really genuine, deep relationship with God. And yet, no sooner we’re married, literally, every time I tried to read my Bible, every time I tried to read a book, or like I enjoyed doing cross-stitch, he would come and he would interrupt me.
And it would be not just like one interruption, but it would be like this constant flow of interruption. And I would say, “Can I get back to you on that in twenty minutes? I’m trying to have my time with God right now.” And it was little, ridiculous, made-up things. It was not an emergency. It was not like he had to know that moment. It was, “Oh, I noticed there was a light bulb downstairs that went out at some point. Do we have more light bulbs?” Like, you can’t wait twenty minutes for that? You know, really? It was that kind of chronic flow. And I’m not talking one interruption. I’m talking like, four or five in a ten-minute period of time until I would finally get up from what I was doing and I just wouldn’t do whatever I was making space for myself.
There was this need to always have my attention and always have me at his beck and call. Or things like we’d be driving along, and I would be trying to share something that was really important to me, and he would constantly interrupt me. “Oh, look, there’s a white barn. I’ve never seen a white barn before.” And here’s the thing. So, when I would try to address this behavior and talk about the impact, and say, “It feels like you don’t consider me. You’re not recognizing that I’m trying to spend time reading, or I’m trying to spend time on this project that I wanted to do. Like, I’m fine if you want my attention at some point but when do I get to do this?” it would turn into, “Ugh, you get upset over the smallest things. Like, I can’t even talk to you about anything because you get upset. You’re always about having these harsh boundaries.” Like, it would become an accusation of my character because I expressed a desire for some time for me to do something that I enjoy.
So, it’s not a healthy: “Hey, you’ve been spending a lot of time, you know, with your friends going out. I feel like I’m not seeing you anymore. Can we schedule a date night for us?” You know, it’s not that kind of thing. It’s a, “You are not allowed to have any space to yourself. You are not allowed to pursue anything you enjoy. You have to get my permission to do anything apart from me.” It’s more of that dynamic in a relationship.
Andrea: I’m thinking about just looking from the outside in. Also, I’m thinking about what the abuser is… like, why? There’s part of me that’s just, “Why, why?” But I recognize that it’s pretty hard to identify or to be able to relate to why when you actually care about other people and you’re not doing everything for yourself. But I guess what it sounds to me like is it sounds like this interruption, disruption of both your inner voice and your outer voice.
Rosanne Moore: Yes.
Andrea: So, the expression of you in the world is not okay. And you figuring out what you think and what you like and all that, that is not okay. And voice equals choice in my mind ⎼ there’s something to that idea ⎼ so, not having any having any choice or opportunity to explore your inner or outer voice.
Rosanne Moore: Right. And as to why, you have to understand that somebody who’s pursuing this kind of control, they don’t want a partner. They don’t want a person who is an actual person. They want a mirror. They want somebody that they can control who is going to mirror back to them whatever they demand, whether it’s attention or adoration or service, or just the opportunity to own someone. And that really is what it comes down to. Like, it is about control. It is about owning another person.
Andrea: Rosanne, can I ask this? This is just a strange, random, maybe thought, I don’t know. But it reminds me of when you were talking about the situation with going to dinner and trying to decide where to go, and then he was wanting you to own the decision. Is there a sense in which the abuser also doesn’t really own their own voice? Is that why they need a mirror? Is that partly why they want somebody else to… Like, they need that external validation in such a deep way that they can’t say, “You know what, I would like to go here, and that’s okay for me to want that?” Instead, “I’m going to put it on you and manipulate you so that you can own that for me because I don’t want to.”
Rosanne Moore: Yeah. I think there’s a spectrum to what you’re dealing with. And I think in my situation, if you look at cluster B disorders, there are different motivating factors. You have someone with borderline personality disorder, and I would say they are more fragile, like what you’re talking about. And certainly, whenever it came to big decisions, my husband never wanted to actually be the one who took responsibility for the decision, whether it was a purchase… You know, I can remember he would do, like, detailed research. I mean, he would, like, research the purchase of an appliance that cost several hundred dollars. And he would spend weeks, and he would just obsess over it for weeks ahead of time, every review, talking to forty million people.
And after several weeks of this, I would be very clear on which one he wanted. Like, I could pick up on which one he had decided on, but he wanted me to be the one to make that decision. Now, if I suggested something different than what he decided, then he would harp on it, you know. Like, he would go on and on. The tape would keep rolling on a loop until I finally got the message and said, “I think we should do this.” But yes, he would never own those decisions, because then if it didn’t turn out the way he thought it should, he could blame me. He could blame me. And yes, that was very much a part of him.
Now, that’s not true of everybody. There are people who just take pleasure, and they feel entitled. If you’re looking at more the malignant narcissist side of things or the sociopathic or psychopathic side of things, they just get a rise out of control. I mean, like, they take pleasure in destroying another person. And it’s not that they feel like they need to fill their emptiness. Like, they get pleasure out of destroying another person.
Andrea: And I can totally see that too. But even malignant narcissists that I’ve seen in public life or whatever seem to do a lot of blaming and pushing off of any responsibility that they might have, should have, or take ⎼ never taking responsibility. So, in that way, maybe there is some, “I don’t want to own any negative consequences,” in the same way your husband didn’t want to own, you know, the decision for the restaurant. It just made me think of that, I guess.
Rosanne Moore: I think the difference is felt pain. A person who falls more in the sociopathic or malignant narcissist side feels entitled not to ever own anything.
Andrea: Okay, okay.
Rosanne Moore: They feel above that ⎼ entitled ⎼ whereas a person more on the borderline feels enormous pain over any perceived flaw. Like, that just feels unbearable to them, that they have to own anything. And so, it’s cruel and unusual punishment if you ask them to own their own decisions, you know. It can be more that end of things.
Andrea: That’s interesting.
Rosanne Moore: And there’s a place for compassion in that. But here’s the deal. That’s the warning I would give because a woman in this situation, she gets chosen for being a compassionate person. She gets chosen because she’s responsible. She gets chosen because she’s kind. She gets chosen because she’s empathetic and can see things through another person’s perspective. She gets chosen because she’s unselfish. She gets chosen for things that are actually positive characteristics in a healthy relationship.
But because the abuser is usually very good at playing this chameleon role of presenting something that’s not true… People like this are very good actors, okay? So, they’re playing a role where they’re presenting themselves as a loving person. They’re acting at being a loving person, rather than actually loving. And so, then once they have you, once they have you invested in the relationship, the goal is then to break down your own sense of self and your own boundaries, so that they can then use all of those good characteristics to feed themselves endlessly. They’re like, I would say, a bucket with a hole in it, but some of them, it’s just like a bottomless pit. You know, like, the bucket has no bottom at all. It’s not a hole. And so, that’s the dynamic that takes place.
And what often happens is then when you go to try to get help and you try to describe your confusing situation to somebody else who doesn’t understand it, then you get preached at about being unselfish, and “You have to see both sides of things,” – all the things that she’s already been doing. She already naturally does, or then she’s told she has to do that more.
Andrea: Yeah. And so, it gets thrown back in your face again.
Rosanne Moore: Right, right. Yeah, I can remember at one point when we were seeking help, like, things had gotten bad enough where I was like, “I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer. We’ve got to talk to somebody.” And so, he went in with tears with this kind of very surface ownership of a very small thing. But he’s crying about it and: “I just feel so tormented that I did this and, you know, that I realized I’m hurting my family, and I want to change,” which of course makes the listener go, “Oh, yeah, but you know, it’s okay. None of us are perfect.”
And I’m like, “Wait a minute, there’s more to the situation than that.”
And I’m told, “Rosanne, you can’t be a perfectionist. Like, nobody’s perfect. You’re not perfect. Your kids aren’t perfect. He’s not.”
I’m thinking, “What just happened? Nobody’s asking for perfection. Like, I’m asking for him to be on it. All I’m asking is that the truth be told here and addressed.”
And so, I can remember that particular situation was so devastating to me. I was literally awake all night, and I was trying to figure out, “Is it me? Is it me? Am I just being demanding and selfish and unforgiving, all these things that were suggested?” And God just met me that night because all of a sudden, like a ticker tape through my mind, there was this whole stream of circumstances where my perception and my voice had been shut down, and then later the truth came out. And I had been right. And like, a ticker tape through my mind, this just went on for like twenty minutes, and at the end of it, I sensed God saying, “And I know the truth.”
When that happened, it was like, “Wait a minute, and I know the truth too, and I need to stop surrendering my voice.” And I got up that next morning, and I went to my husband, and I said, “I am willing to look at my part of this situation, but I do not believe that what happened last night was fair or an accurate evaluation of what’s taking place in my relationship.” And I really do believe it was the grace of God because, amazingly enough, he said, “Yeah, I don’t know why they went where they did with that because, you know, no, that wasn’t true about you.” And I was like, “Wow, okay, you actually admitted that, you know, instead of, like, playing with my mind.” But that was a rare occurrence, for him to actually acknowledge, and I don’t think he meant to. I think I kind of caught him off guard that he actually owned the truth. But that was the real turning point, for us, for me.
Andrea: Okay. So, listener, if you know somebody who is experiencing covert abuse in their relationships ⎼ in a particular relationship, particularly a spouse or partner ⎼ then you need to check out Lifeline because we have free resources for you that Rosanne has created. And then there’s just a twenty-five dollar course that has a lot of information, has a workbook, has so many practical things to help you think through practically how you’re going to get out, how you’re going to handle counseling, courts, getting people around you who you can trust.
Rosanne, what else do you want to say about Lifeline?
Rosanne Moore: There’s also a resource list because somebody who may be listening may realize, “Okay, this is my relationship.” There may be somebody else listening who’s thinking, “Oh, I had a conversation with a friend last week, and I shut her down. Like, she was trying to tell me.” Or it may be somebody comes next week, and your immediate reaction is to try to project your healthy marriage or your healthy relationship into the conversation. I would caution you, instead, step back from that. Start asking questions, get a clearer picture. Don’t assume that the dynamic is the same because, usually, when somebody is abused and they come and they’re upset about their situation and they’re confused, they’re trying to figure out what’s going on.
And if you automatically normalize what actually may be very unhealthy behavior because you haven’t taken the time to ask questions, you’re going to hurt them without meaning to. And so, the resource list that we have on Lifeline would be really valuable too, because there’s a lot of books and things that can help you better understand the dynamics of healthy versus unhealthy intimate relationships.
Andrea: So, you can go to voiceofinfluence.net/podcast and find this episode, where we will have a list of all of the different links to different resources that we’ve mentioned. But you can also go to voiceofinfluence.net/lifeline, and find the free resources there, and find also the opportunity to go ahead and just get the course so that you have what you need. And so, I would really encourage you to do that.
Rosanne Moore: I’m just always glad for an opportunity to talk about this and what healthy influence looks like because you can’t bring your contribution to the world while you’re being owned by somebody else. You can’t. And so we all lose when that’s the dynamic that’s taking place.
Andrea: Good words. Thank you so much, Rosanne. We’ll see you next week with an interview with Dr. Diane Langberg, who wrote a book called Redeeming Power. And it’s going to be a similar conversation, so we invite you to come to that as well.
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