Marriage, Survival, And Credibility

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to the Post Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Black. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. In a moment, I'm going to introduce you to someone who has never appeared on this podcast before, but who has been, quietly and consistently and with no fanfare whatsoever, one of the most important people in everything that I've built here. Before I do that, there's something else that I'd like to talk about. Something that sits in the room whenever people find out that I'm happily married. Something that I want to talk about directly before we go any further. This week my husband Drew and I are celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary. Thirteen years, four children, more than I could have imagined for my life when I was in the middle of the hardest parts of it. And it's important that I be honest that I actually don't always mention that I'm married when I'm doing this work. Not because I'm ashamed of it, I'm profoundly not ashamed of it, but because I have learned over the years that there are some spaces where being a happily married woman who has survived family violence and post-separation abuse can be received as a kind of a contradiction. As though the happiness somehow revises the history, as though finding something good on the other side of something terrible maybe means that the terrible wasn't quite as terrible as I said it was. In those moments there have been times when I've felt that I don't fully qualify. Like my credibility as a survivor is somehow conditional on remaining in a particular kind of pain. And it isn't. The abuse that I experienced was real. The complex PTSD? Real. The years of navigating a system that couldn't see what was happening to me and my child, real. None of that is revised by the fact that I also eventually found my way to a life that I love. Those two things exist together. The space that I work in, post-separation abuse, family violence, high conflict, co-parenting is a space in which the vast majority of perpetrators are men. The research is consistent. The lived experience of the women that I work with is consistent. Most family violence is perpetrated by men against women. Most coercive control is perpetrated by men against women. That's real and it matters, and I'm never going to soften that. And I want to hold that reality alongside something else. Not to diminish it and not to offer a but that cancels out everything else before it, but rather to offer something that I think women in this space sometimes need and sometimes resist and sometimes need precisely because they resist it. And that is that there are good men in the world. There are men who are capable of genuine partnership. There are men who don't replicate the bad patterns. There are men who show up not performatively, not for applause, not because they've been asked repeatedly, but rather because they actually do understand what partnership means and they are genuinely committed to it. And I know that men like this exist because I happen to be married to one. I also know that the phrase, quote, not all men, has a really complicated history in feminist discourse and rightly so, because it's been used and is still used to derail conversations about gendered violence. It's been used to redirect attention away from the pattern and towards the exception, to make women who are naming their experiences somehow feel responsible for managing the feelings of men who are uncomfortable with what's being named. That's a real thing, and that's not what I'm doing here. What I'm doing here on this episode today is something very different to that. I'm saying not all men from a place of hope, from a place of evidence, from a place of believing that if we want to raise boys who become good men, and I have three sons, so I have a personal stake in this, then we need to be able to hold the reality of gendered violence and the possibility of something different in the same hand at the same time, without one cancelling out the other. Because I have to believe that good men exist. My sons depend on me believing it, and my husband has spent more than 13 years proving it. Drew and I did not meet as finished whole complete people. And I want to be really transparent about that because there's a version of this episode that I could have easily recorded that would have ended up sounding like a love story with all of the rough edges gone. But that wouldn't be the truth, and that's not the episode that I want to make. When Drew and I met, I was in my late twenties. I'd been through a marriage that had been abusive. I had a toddler son, Ash, and I was navigating post-separation coercive control in an environment where the term coercive control was not being used, so I didn't have any language, any framework to understand or even to name what was happening to me. I was carrying significant trauma, and I was at times genuinely hard to be around. Not because of anything that I'd done wrong, per se, but because trauma does that. It can make you really reactive, it can make you anxious in ways that just spill over. It can make you braced for things that haven't happened yet because your nervous system has learned to stay ready. I was a victim, and I was also sometimes difficult. Those two things were true at the same time. I wasn't to blame for my trauma, but I was responsible for my healing. And that healing took time, it took work, and it took a partner who was prepared to stay in the room while I did that work. Drew had his own history too. He had experienced significant loss and pain of his own before we met. We were not two whole perfect people coming together. We were two people with broken edges that just somehow fit. And we were both willing to do the work of building something that neither of us had ever actually seen, modelled, that neither of us had ever actually experienced, and that is a genuinely healthy, genuinely equal, genuinely loving partnership. Thirteen years later, we're both still doing that work, and it's not always easy, but it is absolutely worth it. And so now I'd like you to meet him. Drew, welcome to the Post Separation Abuse Podcast. Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

I've spent a lot of time talking on the podcast about what it's like to be the person navigating post-separation abuse and the family court system. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like to step into that situation?

SPEAKER_04 8:06

Um at first it was a bit of confusion and almost helplessness.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

When we first met, I was carrying a lot. Ash was a toddler, the post-separation situation between me and Mark was ongoing, and I was dealing with trauma that I didn't really fully understand. What was your first sense of what you were walking into?

SPEAKER_04 8:35

At first it was it just seemed like a it j just a normal marriage breakup, but as time had gone on, it seemed like that it was a hell of a lot worse.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

So did you d at some point in time did you get a sense that what was happening wasn't normal?

SPEAKER_04 8:57

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was it was beyond punishing.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

There were times when I know that my trauma made me hard to be around when I was reactive, anxious, not fully present because you know my nervous system was somewhere else entirely. What was that like for you and how did you make sense of it?

SPEAKER_04 9:24

I think I'd already had made sense of what everything was, but it was more of a um what can I do to help? Where to get tea going, or or washing, whatever it happened to be. Just just sort of a little bit more practical.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

And I mean there were moments that I know that you've described in in conversations that we've had over the years where you where you felt completely helpless and didn't know what to do, didn't know how to fix it, couldn't make it stop. What was that like for you?

SPEAKER_04 10:00

It felt there's definitely helplessness, not being able to do something to fix what was going on. But that'd probably be the the main thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Just Do you think being a man makes that a different situation in the sense that I mean we were creating a family together and here was this other man my ex-husband who was just consistently inserting himself into things, messaging me non-stop, ongoing criticism. I'm curious about what it was like for you as a man having your wife be just constantly abused by someone.

SPEAKER_04 10:48

Without understanding um with the coercive control and all that sort of stuff that's um being highlighted now, the typical thing would be to do the so-called man thing and go around there and have a word to him. But that would just escalate the situation.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

And I remember you and I having conversations about that where you were wanting to just go and tell him to pull his head in.

SPEAKER_04 11:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

And where I was then saying, no, that's just going to lead to more retaliation, that's not going to be a good way to go about it. But again, as you said, when we were still trying to understand what it was that we were dealing with, how to name it, how to understand it, I think we both felt pretty helpless.

Court Stress And Message Management

SPEAKER_04 11:38

Yeah, yeah. It was I I remember oh, it would have been going oh easily seven years ago when we sort of um w when we're right in the thick of it, and I remember when we actually put two and two together, and it felt like a whole weight had been lifted off, and it was a case of okay, we've we we've established on what's happening, and we sort of educated ourselves a little bit more, and from there it it seemed like it was getting easier.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

There was also an entire legal and court process that eventually ended up happening, and listeners might recall from previous episodes, but just to refresh anyone's memory, or for new listeners who haven't listened to past episodes, when I left my first marriage, my son Ash was only 12 months old. There was a coerced 50-50 equal shed care arrangement for at least 10 years, and it was around the time when Ash was sort of 10-11. Child protection ended up getting involved in our situation, his time with his dad was stopped, and then he eventually initiated court proceedings, and so it was really sometime down the track on my post-separation journey that I found myself in the family court system, and obviously Drew was there next to me through all of that, and at this point in time we had three children, one of whom, you know, our youngest was just a baby. Um, and neither of us really understood a huge amount with the legal and the court processes, having never gone through it before. We didn't fully understand it. We were trying to make sense of it at the time, and there was also a period of time where Drew was responsible for all of the communication that was coming from Ash's dad as well. What do you remember about that time, Drew?

SPEAKER_04 13:52

I remember the manipulation tactics was a very big one, and I recall some messages where he was requesting time to see Ash, and so I would ask Ash. I I thought that it would be um better to ask him rather than just to flat out say uh what not give him the option or or something like that. And so I'd ask him, he would say no. Um so I would reply with just a simple no, he doesn't want to. And I would find getting text messages, well, perhaps he would prefer answering that to a judge to that account.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Um I'd forgotten about that one.

SPEAKER_04 14:43

Yeah, so and that that happened a couple of times, and I would just simply not reply.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Did you find that messaging like was that stressful to you dealing with him?

SPEAKER_04 14:57

No, uh like once we had learnt or once I had learned just a few things about different types of personalities, all that sort of stuff, it was really easy to just uh you just sent another message and then it was just phone back in the pocket.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

So really minimising the interaction that you had with him.

SPEAKER_04 15:20

Yeah, minimising and more so well, no, that's not happening, and then full stop.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:29

That I felt was better dealing with him in that regard, um, rather than giving explanations and big long messages and all that sort of stuff. It was just short and to the point.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Absolutely, and just not giving much that he could then engage with. Not that that stopped him, I don't think, but but yeah, I mean, and we were this was when we were in the early stages of really learning how do we best deal with someone like this um high conflict for for you know, want of a better word, someone continually engaging in abuse and coercive control tactics.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

And I mean, he had a particular narrative about you at the time that I know he was telling anyone and everyone who would listen, and there was actually an incident where you were verbally attacked, just going about your business. Um, I can't remember now if it was in the supermarket or in Bunnings. Yeah, that's it. We don't have to go into the to the specifics of those situations, but do you just want to talk more generally about what was actually that what was that like for you when it became obvious that there was this narrative going around, not just about me, but about you, that other people were believing to the point that they were actually prepared to walk up and insert, like people that didn't even know you, that were prepared to walk up and actually make horrible comments to your face?

SPEAKER_04 17:02

Yeah. Oh, I just sort of shrugged it off a bit. Um I just sort of thought, what a dickhead.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Um Did it surprise you that other people had actually believed the narrative to the extent that they were actually prepared to come up and have a go at you in person?

SPEAKER_04 17:23

No, not really, because I'd once again look like looking into the whole that personality type of thing, um, having the the flying monkeys around, it would have been a small group of people, and really, who cares? Like how sad is their life if they've got to insert themselves into somebody else's life, really. So it was just a case of right, okay, well, that's your opinion, so nick off.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Well said. Was there anything that I did or that we did together, do you think, that made that time easier?

SPEAKER_04 17:59

Educating ourselves. Educating yourselves because um uh the fear tends to go. Or it do or uh or majority of the time it does go. That's not to say that it's like sometimes it might creep back up if you get that text message or something like that, but majority is you've got your self a lot more under control.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Thirteen years, four children. We've navigated a shit ton of things together. When you think about what we've navigated, what we've survived, what we've created, what we've built, what our family actually looks and feels like from the inside, what are you most proud of?

SPEAKER_04 18:43

Our strong marriage, second to that are kids, and then everything else is just cream.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

I talked on this podcast about the invisible architecture of primary caregiving, so the work that holds a family together but doesn't often get seen purely because it works. And we both do versions of that in our family. But can you talk a little bit about what it looks like day to day in terms of your role in our family and the sorts of things that you're doing in our household and with the kids, not because anyone needs to be giving you a gold star, but rather because it's possible that a lot of our listeners have not actually ever seen that modelled, particularly from a partner, and I think it's important for them to know that it actually exists.

SPEAKER_04 19:40

Okay, well, I suppose my day would usually start with um getting up early in the morning and start taking care of some things, say whether it's feeding the cats, taking the bins out, getting the washing machine organized before everyone wakes up, and then it's a case of just getting myself organized for work and then off I go, and then knock off at work, uh pick up the two younger two, think about okay, what are we doing for tea, all that sort of stuff. Once we get home, it's okay, empty out your bags, lunchboxes on the um kitchen bench, and then um what we're organizing for tea, um, just that type of stuff. Um, whether there's washing that needs to be hung out, whether there needs to be washing going on, vacuuming the floor whenever I think about it. Um or whenever it needs doing, I suppose. Um just some just chores really. Dinner, showers, um bedtime routine, all that sort of stuff. Oh yeah, brushing teeth. What else is there? Readers. Oh yeah, being called out when we're sitting down watching TV and huffing to go up and how long until Easter? 17 days. Um Yeah, just things of that nature. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

And listeners, it's not uncommon when Drew and I are relaxing at the end of a long day and our youngest is calling out with the kids' bedrooms up upstairs. It's not uncommon that I'm tagging him to make the trek up the stairs to the various call-outs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:28

Although there are some, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Yeah, it is usually you, but there are some things that only mum apparently can handle.

SPEAKER_04 21:35

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

But, you know, we're a we're a pretty solid team, I would say. So that just gives you a little bit of insight as to all the things that that Drew's managing. Again, not because he needs a star, but because rather I just really wanted to make the point that, you know, we truly do have what I would consider a pretty equal relationship as much as much as what it possibly can be. You know, if I have more. Time in my day or in my schedule, I'll take on some more of the meal prep and meal planning work. But when it's when it's something different, which honestly is happening more and more often lately as as the business is expanding and scaling, that's Danny Alblack coaching. Um Drew's really been picking up more and more and more of that. And there are times when we've got to be navigating that and having conversations as a couple, as a team, about whether or not it's working, whether or not it's balanced, whether or not one of us needs to be picking up, you know, some extra tasks so that the other person's not feeling quite so burdened. I mean, would you agree that like us having a healthy relationship is just partly based on that regular communication?

SPEAKER_04 22:46

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um open mindness as well, acceptance, all that sort of stuff that goes along with it.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

We've had conversations together at home about gender, gender stereotypes, gender norms, and what we're modelling for our kids. And again, for everybody's um information, we've got one daughter and three sons. What do you want our kids to see when they look at us as parents, as a couple, as a functioning team and leaders of our family?

SPEAKER_04 23:21

I don't want them to see the typical 1950s stereotype. The man goes to work, he comes home, puts his feet up, that's his day done. Well, that's just not how it works. I think it's important that men do the cooking, do do the cleaning, all that sort of stuff. And when it comes down to it, like it just makes life a hell of a lot easier as well. When everybody's working together and all that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Absolutely. And I think it's, you know, that that characterization of what it is to be a man and what's typical for a man, you know, I think it is so important that that's challenged, and I'm glad that we're doing that in our family, and just I mean, none of you can actually see inside our office at this point in time. But Drew's sitting here beside me, he's in his hive's, he's in his work boots, he's usually working on site, he's a tradee, he's got tats, he's got a beard and all the things, probably looks a little bit rough around the edges. And I just give you that context again because I think it's so important that, you know, again, what we're doing with our family and what Drew's just modelling as a man is that it is absolutely manly to be going off doing whatever it is that you're doing for work and being a truly active, involved partner and father.

SPEAKER_04 24:50

Yeah, that's right.

Healing Work And Emotional Maturity

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Drew, we're not a perfect couple. Neither of us came into this, you know, perfect or or completely whole. We had our own stuff, we had our own trauma, we had our own issues. You were healing from your own history and past, and you've done your own um inner work as well. And I think it's important that our listeners hear that because a good partnership, a good marriage, a good relationship doesn't mean that everything's perfect. It doesn't mean that there's no pain or no trauma. Rather, I think it's what you do with it and what you do about it, and if you take responsibility for it. What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_04 25:36

Coming from such a dysfunctional family, um you can you can look back and all that sort of stuff, um, and then it can give you a bit of insight into your own behaviour, you can yeah, you can sort of move forward.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

And I think part of why our relationship has worked the way that it has is that we've both just been willing to do that work.

SPEAKER_04 26:02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

But I guess here's the thing. I mean, would you say that that work is hard? Is that how you would like I think when people hear Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:10

Well, just from my perspective, the whole emotional work was probably the hardest. Um but as time goes goes on, it gets easier and easier. So but it's about the willingness to actually do all that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

And do you think that that's been worth it? Like if you reflect on who you were and where you were at in your life when we first met, so we're going back what, fifteen odd years ago now, compared to who you are now? Like when you look at the differences, like what what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_04 26:44

I I would say that I was still a child, basically.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Um So emotionally Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um just for listeners, yeah. He wasn't actually a child.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

So um We were both in our twenties.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Um Yeah, so So that so the the emotional maturity piece of it.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Like if you think about where you're at now emotionally in terms of that maturity compared to where you were growing up a hell of a lot. And is that something that like would you if you had to call that positive, negative, if you had to talk about whether it's man of benefit, what would you say?

SPEAKER_04 27:24

Oh, I'd say that's benefit. Um you are actually more engaged with your kids when you're emotionally aware.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Um and so that works made you a not just a better partner but a better dad.

SPEAKER_04 27:40

Oh, yeah, easily.

How To Support Without Escalating

SPEAKER_00 27:41

In the event that there's someone listening to this who is supporting someone, navigating family violence, post-separation abuse, the court system, the way that you had been supporting me for so many years and support me now in doing this work, what would you say to someone who's in that supporting role with what you've experienced, with what you've learned? Is there anything that you'd say to them? What would that be?

SPEAKER_04 28:13

Advice I would give and um what I believed worked well was practical stuff. Just help out with practical stuff. And also if your partner is wanting to talk about it, don't shut it down and listen. And if there's something to add to the conversation, be a positive um at it. I don't think it's going to help anybody if you wind up in an argument because of what the ex-partner is doing. And just try and keep that in mind that it's the ex-partner that's causing all this trouble.

A Message To Survivors And Partners

Introducing The Song Calm Is Credible

The Anthem And What It Means

SPEAKER_00 28:51

I think that's a really great point to end on and something that just for everybody else's understanding, not once through any of what I went through was Drew ever upset, irritated, frustrated, or angry towards me. And I know you're probably thinking, well, too right, he shouldn't be, it wasn't my fault. But even I can look back on how challenging those times were and acknowledge that, wow, I mean he he truly never directed any of his irritation or frustration at me. And that is just something that was so incredibly powerfully helpful that the entire time he knew exactly where the blame needed to be placed, and it was fairly and squarely on the person who was perpetrating the abuse. Was that a question? No, that wasn't a question. So thanks, Drew. Thanks, Drew. I want to close this episode by speaking to a few different people who might be listening. If you're listening and you're in the middle of proceedings or the early chaos of separation, the long exhausting aftermath of a relationship that took more from you than what it ever gave to you. I'm not telling you that you need to rush out and find a partner in order to be okay. You certainly don't. Your life can be full, your children can be loved, and you can build something genuinely good without a partner at all. That's completely true. But what I am saying is this please don't close the door because of what you've been through. Please don't decide in the middle of your hardest chapter that the hardest chapter is the whole story, that the hardest chapter is where your love story ends. Because it absolutely doesn't have to be. And I know that it's easy for me to say from the other side. I know that when you're in the middle of it the other side just feels really theoretical at best. But I was in it. And I know what it takes to believe in something that you can't see yet. Before I met him, I believed that Drew was out there. I believed in the way that you believe things that you can't prove yet. I believed that there was someone looking for me too. Someone kind, someone respectful, someone loving, someone loyal, someone genuine, someone trustworthy. And I want to offer you that belief, not as a promise but as a possibility. If you're listening to this and you're the partner, the person standing next to someone who's navigating this and maybe not knowing what to do, maybe sometimes getting it wrong, maybe sometimes feeling completely helpless. Please hear what Drew said today. It's not about needing to fix it or even understanding it fully. You just have to be there, you just have to show up, you just have to do whatever needs doing on the days when the person that you love can't. That is often more than enough. In fact it can be everything. I still have moments even now, thirteen years of marriage down the track that I'm amazed with Drew. The way that he never once blamed me for anything that our family was experiencing with all of the abuse that was thrown our way because of my ex. Even just that, even just making sure that the blame is laid firmly where it belongs can be such a powerful thing for the person that you're supporting. And if you're listening and some part of you was a bit triggered by this episode, if a part of you sort of bristled a bit at this episode, it may be the not all men framing, at the idea of a happily married woman having the audacity to be speaking and working in this space, at maybe some discomfort of holding hope alongside very legitimate anger, very legitimate rage. I understand that. I understand those feelings. I've felt them. I still feel them. I still feel that righteous anger and fury and rage. That's part of what fuels me in doing this work. So I'm certainly not asking you to abandon that. I'm just inviting you to stay curious, to let that curiosity, to let that hope coexist with the possibility, however small that might feel, that something different could exist for you. Drew and I have four children, one daughter and three sons. We're raising them all in the same house with the same values. Watching the same example of what a real partnership can look like when two people are genuinely committed to building it. And it's only possible because I believed even when I had very little evidence for it, again, I had never seen or experienced what I would call a healthy relationship, but I still chose to believe that good men existed. Before we finish up today, I want to share something with you that I haven't shared before on the podcast or on any other platform. I've been working with an incredibly talented creative, someone who's taken the time to really understand this work, who I am, who we are as a community, and what we stand for. From that shared understanding we've created something. A song, the first of what I hope will be several. It's called Calm is Credible. And if you've spent any time in my world, you will know that phrase because it is something that I say constantly. I know there will be clients listening to this who are nodding. I say that phrase constantly, calm is credible in my coaching, on the podcast, in so many things that I do, because I so deeply believe it. Being calm on this journey is not a weakness, it's actually one of the most important things that can help us to optimise our outcomes. I'm releasing this song today on this episode, this anthem rather, because the timing feels right. This week Drew and I are celebrating 13 years of marriage, and while this song is not about him, it's not a love ballad, rather, it's about you, it's about me, it's about every parent who has had to become something more than they thought that they were capable of in order to protect the people that they love the most. I still can't hear it without thinking about what it's meant for me to have someone steady beside me while I was in the middle of that journey of becoming. Because I wasn't yet calm nor credible when Drew and I first met. I was still in that process of becoming. I was frightened, I was fighting, I was still figuring out slowly and painfully how to turn survival and reaction into something with more direction, with more credibility. Drew didn't build that for me, but he did stand next to me while I built it. Quietly, consistently, without ever once asking me to be further along than I was. This song is for me, for my children, and it's also for you, for every version of you that has ever had to hold the line when no one else understood why, for the sleepless nights, for the choices that cost you something, for those moments when you realize that you are not going to achieve what you wanted by being louder or harder or more aggressive, but by becoming grounded, clear, strategically calm. This is calm is credible. And at least for the time being, it's a bit of an anthem for Danielle Black Coaching, and I hope it will resonate with you as much as it does with me.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

There's a moment where the noise stops landing, where the chaos loses its hold, and you realize you're not breaking, you're becoming something whole. You walk through fire with steady hands. Hell the life no one understands every choice, every sleepless night was building something stronger inside. They called it too much, too strong, too loud, but you would stand in your sacred ground. No more reaction, no more small. There's a different way. Oh, it's kind of cool. That's how you do it.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Never underestimate how important and meaningful that is. I look forward to chatting with you again soon.