Why I Stayed for 20 Years (And What It Cost My Children)

"You know he's being abused, don't you?"

The child counselor's words hit me like a physical blow as we stood in the parking lot after yet another session with my second-grade son. The word "abused" had never entered my mind. How could it? My husband had never hit us. He knew exactly where my line was—physical violence—and he was careful never to cross it.

But my seven-year-old son was suicidal. Not just saying things like "life is hard" or "I don't want to live." He had a plan. He knew exactly what he was going to do. And in that parking lot conversation, I began to understand why.

Today, I want to share the painful truth about why I stayed in an unhealthy marriage for twenty years, and more importantly, what it cost the people I loved most—my children. If my story can help even one person recognize the patterns that keep us trapped, or motivate someone to seek help sooner than I did, then the vulnerability of sharing it will be worth it.

The Mythology of Endurance

The Christian world had taught me a beautiful lie: if you just love enough, submit enough, honor enough, God will transform your spouse and your marriage. There was a formula for success, and if it wasn't working, I simply wasn't doing it right.

I spent years believing that my love could be powerful enough to change someone else's heart. I thought my submission could soften a hard heart. I believed my honor and respect could inspire reciprocal love.

This mythology is incredibly dangerous because it places the responsibility for the relationship's health entirely on the shoulders of the person being mistreated. It suggests that abuse continues because the victim isn't godly enough, isn't trying hard enough, isn't loving enough.

But love without boundaries isn't love—it's enabling. And enabling abuse doesn't demonstrate godly submission; it perpetuates ungodly dominance.

The Gradual Erosion of Normal

Abuse rarely announces itself with dramatic, unmistakable events. Instead, it's usually a gradual erosion of what's normal, healthy, and acceptable. The line moves so slowly that you don't realize how far you've traveled from safety until you look back years later.

What started as occasional controlling behavior became constant monitoring. What began as passionate jealousy became systematic isolation. What appeared to be strong leadership became emotional tyranny.

And through it all, I kept adjusting. Kept adapting. Kept finding ways to make it work because I believed that's what good Christian wives do. I thought endurance was a virtue. I thought my ability to tolerate increasingly unacceptable behavior demonstrated spiritual maturity.

I was wrong.

The Prison of "God Hates Divorce"

The verse that kept me trapped for two decades was Malachi 2:16: "God hates divorce." Every time my heart screamed that this wasn't right, that this wasn't what God wanted for me or my children, I would remember that verse and recommit to trying harder.

Who wants to do something God hates? When you love the Lord and desperately want to please Him, that verse becomes a prison door that locks from the inside.

I now know that Malachi 2:16 isn't actually an anti-divorce verse—it's an anti-treachery verse. The original Hebrew condemns men who hate and put away their wives, committing violence and treachery against them. But for twenty years, I didn't know that. I only knew the translation that had been drilled into me: God hates divorce.

So I stayed. And I justified staying. And I taught my children that this was what godly families looked like.

The Christian Counseling Trap

When I finally reached out for help, I encountered another barrier: Christian counselors who were either not trauma-informed or who operated from a complementarian framework that prioritized male authority over family safety.

I can't tell you how many times I sat in counseling sessions where I was asked, "How much abuse should you take before it's too much?" The answer I received was devastating: "Well, Jesus suffered. You're doing Jesus-like work because you're suffering for marriage."

This is spiritual abuse masquerading as counseling. It's taking the beautiful truth of Christ's redemptive suffering and twisting it to justify ongoing harm to vulnerable people.

Suffering for righteousness' sake is biblical. Suffering because someone chooses to sin against you repeatedly while you enable their behavior is not the same thing. Christ's suffering accomplished redemption. My suffering was accomplishing destruction—of myself, my children, and ultimately even the marriage I was trying so desperately to save.

The Price My Children Paid

The most painful part of my story isn't what I endured—it's what I allowed my children to endure. By staying in an unhealthy environment, I taught them that this was normal. I taught them that love looked like walking on eggshells. I taught them that family meant living in fear of someone's moods and reactions.

My son's suicidal ideation at age seven was a symptom of a child trying to cope with an environment that felt unsafe. Children aren't equipped to process chronic tension, unpredictability, and the hypervigilance required to navigate an emotionally volatile household.

Even though the abuse wasn't directly targeted at my children, they were being harmed by witnessing it. Child abuse isn't just what happens to the child—it includes what the child is forced to witness. When children watch a parent being manipulated, controlled, or emotionally battered, they're experiencing trauma.

I can see the effects of those twenty years on my children even now. I'm still uncovering how that environment twisted their view of relationships, of God, of what they deserve in life. The ripple effects of staying in an unhealthy marriage extend far beyond the marriage itself.

The Illusion of Protecting Them by Staying

One of the lies I told myself was that I was protecting my children by keeping the family together. I thought that having two parents in the home—even if one was creating chaos—was better than the disruption of divorce.

But children don't need intact homes—they need healthy homes. They don't need two parents who are miserable together—they need to see what love, respect, and partnership actually look like, even if that means seeing it modeled in separate households.

By staying, I wasn't protecting my children from dysfunction. I was ensuring they would be marinated in it during their most formative years.

The Lack of Healthy Models

One reason I tolerated unacceptable behavior for so long was that I had no reference point for what healthy relationships looked like. I thought my former husband's family was healthy because they appeared more functional than my own childhood experience.

When you haven't witnessed mutual respect, healthy boundaries, and genuine partnership, you can mistake intensity for passion, control for security, and manipulation for love.

This is why it's so important for children to see healthy relationship dynamics. Without that template, they're left to figure out what's normal based on whatever they experience, no matter how dysfunctional it might be.

The Counselor's Wake-Up Call

When that counselor told me my son was being abused, it shattered my denial in a way that nothing else had. I could justify my own suffering—I was an adult, I had made choices, I could endure whatever I needed to endure for the sake of honoring God and preserving our family.

But I couldn't justify my son's suffering. He hadn't chosen this. He was innocent. And he was paying the price for my inability to recognize that sometimes the most godly thing you can do is remove yourself and your children from an unhealthy situation.

That moment in the parking lot began my journey toward understanding that God's heart isn't for the preservation of institutions at the expense of individuals. God cares more about people than about structures. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath—and marriage was made for people, not people for marriage.

The Church's Role in Enabling Abuse

The church culture I was part of had created an environment where unhealthy marriages could survive without any external pressure to become healthy. The message was clear: wives should submit more, love more, honor more, and God would eventually change their husbands' hearts.

But this creates a recipe where entitled people never have to give up their entitlement. If there's no external pressure to change, if there are no consequences for harmful behavior, if the victim is always told to try harder while the perpetrator is enabled to continue—why would anything change?

The church was inadvertently promoting the kingdom of darkness in marriage rather than God's Kingdom of light. We were unleashing the wrong kingdom by insisting that appearances mattered more than reality, that preserving the institution mattered more than protecting the individuals within it.

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me

Looking back, here's what I desperately needed to hear but never did:

You cannot love someone into wholeness. Only God can transform a human heart, and He won't do it against someone's will. Your submission, no matter how perfect, cannot force someone else to choose love.

Boundaries are biblical. Jesus modeled healthy boundaries throughout His ministry. He didn't allow people to manipulate, control, or abuse Him, even when they claimed religious justification for doing so.

Your children need to see what healthy looks like. Staying in dysfunction doesn't protect them—it programs them to accept dysfunction as normal in their own future relationships.

Fear is a warning sign. If you're afraid to bring up conversations with your spouse, if you're constantly modifying your behavior to avoid conflict, if you're living in hypervigilance—these are symptoms of an unhealthy relationship dynamic.

God's heart is for your flourishing. The same God who said "It is not good for man to be alone" also wants you to experience relationships that are life-giving rather than life-draining.

The Long Road to Healing

After I finally left that marriage, it took years to understand how deeply the experience had affected all of us. I had to learn what healthy boundaries looked like. My children had to unlearn patterns of hypervigilance and people-pleasing. We all had to discover what it felt like to live without fear.

The journey of inner healing is ongoing. I'm still uncovering ways that twenty years of unhealthy dynamics twisted my view of God, relationships, and myself. But there is hope. There is healing available for those who have endured abuse, whether they stayed too long or left too late.

A Different Story Is Possible

Today, I'm married to Gregory, a man who demonstrates daily what it looks like to use strength to protect rather than control, to lead through service rather than dominance. Our relationship is built on mutual submission, mutual respect, and the safety that allows both of us to be authentic.

My children are seeing a completely different model of marriage now. They're witnessing what it looks like when two people honor each other, defer to each other's wisdom, and work together as true partners.

This is what God's Kingdom looks like in marriage—not perfect, but healthy. Not without challenges, but without fear. Not without disagreements, but with the safety to work through them without walking on eggshells.

For Those Still Trapped

If you're reading this and recognizing your own story, please know that staying doesn't make you godly—it might make you complicit in the destruction of everyone involved, including the person whose behavior you're enabling.

God's heart is for redemption, but sometimes redemption requires consequences. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for someone is to refuse to enable their harmful choices anymore.

Your children need to see what healthy looks like more than they need to see you endure what's unhealthy. You cannot teach them to value themselves if you don't demonstrate that you value yourself.

And you cannot protect them from the effects of dysfunction by keeping them immersed in it.

The Hope of True Redemption

I want to be clear: I'm not advocating for giving up on marriage at the first sign of difficulty. Every marriage faces challenges, and working through those challenges with professional help, prayer, and commitment can lead to beautiful growth and deeper intimacy.

But there's a difference between normal marriage challenges and abusive relationship dynamics. There's a difference between two people working on their issues together and one person chronically harming another while the victim is told to try harder.

True redemption sometimes looks like restoration within marriage. But sometimes it looks like finding the courage to say "no more" to behaviors that destroy rather than build up, that tear down rather than edify.

The God who promises to "bind up the brokenhearted" and "set the captives free" (Isaiah 61:1, NIV) wants healing for everyone involved—including those who are causing harm. But healing rarely happens without honest acknowledgment of the problem and genuine commitment to change.

Breaking the Cycle

One of the most important things I've learned is that the patterns that kept me trapped for twenty years didn't begin in my marriage—they began in my childhood. I had no boundaries because I had never been taught to have them. I tolerated the intolerable because I had been conditioned to believe that was love.

Breaking these generational cycles requires intentional work. It requires learning what healthy looks like, developing the skills to recognize red flags, and building the internal strength to maintain boundaries even when others pressure us to abandon them.

This is the work of discipleship—learning to live in the freedom Christ purchased for us rather than remaining trapped by patterns of dysfunction that masquerade as spirituality.

A Final Word to the Church

To pastors, counselors, and church leaders who encounter people in abusive situations: please educate yourselves about the dynamics of abuse. Understand that staying in harmful situations doesn't demonstrate godliness—it often demonstrates the need for healing from previous trauma that has made someone unable to recognize or respond appropriately to harmful behavior.

Instead of asking abuse victims to try harder, ask abusers to get help. Instead of teaching people to endure harm, teach them to recognize their worth as image-bearers of God who deserve relationships that reflect His love, honor, and respect.

The church should be the safest place on earth for vulnerable people to find help, healing, and hope. We fail in that calling when we prioritize the preservation of institutions over the protection of individuals.

God's Kingdom is unleashed not when we force people to stay in harmful situations, but when we help them find the healing and wholeness that allows them to participate in truly healthy relationships—whether that's through marriage restoration or through finding freedom from marriages that have become destructive.

There is hope. There is healing. And there is a God who sees, who cares, and who wants better for you and your children than what you may be settling for right now.

If you're in a situation where you recognize yourself in this story, please reach out for help from trained counselors who understand both biblical principles and the dynamics of abuse. You and your children deserve relationships that are safe, healthy, and life-giving.

Blessings,
Susan 😊