Transcription
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Tina Swithin was one of our most powerful and popular conversations from season 1. She's a friend of mine and one of the first guests I invited on Navigating Narcissism. She opened up about her experience with narcissistic abuse and the horrors she endured in the family court system. I have learned so much from Tina. And what was so powerful for me in listening to her story, it confirmed the experience of countless clients. I cannot tell you the number of times a client has told me about the chaos of the family court system and how callous, tragic, and frankly unbelievable it is. Tina's battle leveled up narcissistic abuse to something that is systemic. Above all else, Tina's story is a stark reminder of how much children suffer in these situations. I know Tina's journey will resonate with so many who will recognize themselves in her. Here's my powerful conversation with my friend, Tina Swithin.
This podcast should not be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering to some people. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk Productions, iHeart Media, or their employees.
Hi, I'm Dr. Ramani and this is Navigating Narcissism. In this podcast, we'll learn how to heal from the narcissist in your life from the people who know this territory the best, the survivors. In this episode, we are going to hear the story of Tina Swithin. Tina is a survivor of an abusive marriage, post-separation abuse, and a painful journey through the family court system. Her story is one of perseverance through a relationship that seemed perfect at the start, but went downhill, ending in a long court battle. Today, Tina is working to raise awareness of these issues in the family court system. She works with survivors and educates the general public on post-separation abuse and narcissistic abuse.
Hey Tina, welcome, welcome. How are you?
I am doing well and I'm so excited to be here.
Well, I'm deeply honored because, you know, I not only am awestruck by your expertise, but you know, I very much consider you a friend. So, it's an honor times two to have you here on the podcast. So, thank you so much for doing this and for sharing your story, which is incredibly empowering, but also it's unbelievable that you're able to talk about it again and again because of how difficult it is. So, thank you.
Thank you.
So, Tina, I want to start at the very beginning and go back to literally when you first met your ex-husband. And I want to understand what about the new life with your ex-husband drew you in the most.
I think it was the presentation and what he had to offer me and how kind and considerate and caring he seemed to be. I had never dated anyone that was as thoughtful as he was. And coming from a very broken home life, um difficult childhood, I really put both he and his family up on a pedestal. Mhm. They were, you know, an intact family. They seemed very healthy, very happy, very involved in the community, very educated. It was really a picture of stability. Mhm, interesting.
How compelling that idea of stability was. Let's pause a second and allow me to break this down a little more. One of the ways that narcissistic relationships can sneak up on us is when they represent something we have never experienced and are an offset to the difficult parts of our life histories. People who come from dysfunctional families may be really drawn to what seem like healthier people or families or people who can pretend to be those things. If a person craves stability or has never had it, then stability can be really seductive.
So, from there, Tina, you chose to go with your therapist's advice at the time by deciding to start dating him because she said you were not used to people treating you well. How did following your therapist's advice shape where your life ended up?
Wow. You know, when I had taken a full year off from dating and really put myself into therapy, I wanted to work through past baggage from childhood, from my upbringing, and I didn't want to carry that into future relationships. Mhm. And I remember going to her and telling her, you know, this person seems too good to be true, but for some reason, I'm not attracted to him at all. And honestly, the thought of even kissing him, I it felt almost repulsive. I just could not imagine being intimate with this person. And I remember her telling me, you're just not accustomed to a normal adult healthy relationship. And so, you may have to push yourself a little bit out of your comfort zone. And when she said that to me, it actually made complete sense and I thought, you know, that is probably what's happening. And so, I overrode my instincts and pushed myself forward. And I thought, you know, I'm being superficial, I'm being vain because I'm not physically attracted to this person and that there's more to a relationship than just physical attraction. And so, I really pushed.
You know, now in hindsight, I can see that was my intuition screaming loudly.
That is so wild. You're right. Yeah. You framed it as was I being superficial, but it does make me wonder if somewhere there was this instinct that was screaming out that in some ways you were sort of told to silence.
Yeah. So many people have asked me, Dr. Ramani, how do I detect a narcissist as early as possible? They're always looking for a question they could ask or a tell they can look for. But I always tell them, listen to your body. Our brain, frankly, often gaslights our body. Our body may not feel comfortable when we meet a new narcissistic person, but we often talk ourselves out of that feeling or other people talk us out of it. Tina's body was telling her something and most of us often don't listen to those instincts that we feel about a person early on.
And I have actually stayed in touch with my therapist from back then and she's read my book and has said, you know, these are things I never learned in school. And so, she's learned a lot from my journey, from my experience. You sort of silenced this physical instinct at one point that was trying to help you.
So, Tina raises something really important here. For all the havoc that narcissistic people wreak in our lives, in our relationships, not all therapists understand narcissistic relationships because this stuff isn't taught in school. That can mean that a person going through a narcissistic relationship is going to therapy and clearly describing their relationship and the therapist may simply just not have a playbook for a narcissistic relationship to be able to help the client.
Now, I love this quote from your blog, quote, "Red flags are only seen while reflecting on the relationship in the rearview mirror." Take us through some of the red flags that you only realized were really red later and how you weren't able to see them at first.
One of the first dates that we had, we were driving about an hour away from our home. He was taking me out to dinner and he didn't tell me where we were going. He wanted it to be a surprise. I didn't know this person. He told me the only thing you need to bring is your driver's license in case we go out after dinner. And so, I got into his car trusting and after dinner, we had had a few drinks and had the hour drive back home and I had warned him I fall asleep in the car. So, I I fell asleep. Next thing I know I heard the tires of his car pull off into gravel. And when I woke up we were up on the top of the mountain in the middle of nowhere overlooking a city and it was pitch black out. I froze and I panicked and I instantly thought I've made a really bad decision. I put myself in a really dangerous situation and I remember asking him why why are we stopped? Can we please leave? And he said I want to show you the view. I want to show you the city from up here. And it made me so uncomfortable but then again I'm second-guessing myself thinking you're being too paranoid. This is such a nice guy. He did all the right things said all the right things at dinner. Then he gave me the silent treatment the whole way home because of how I reacted and looking back a healthy considerate human would not have put me in a situation like that and so that was the very first red flag on our date but again because I came from a background where I did not have healthy relationships and I had a lot of self-doubt that took over and so then I started beating myself up thinking why are you so critical of him you know so again it's overriding my intuition.
Many people might say oh it's a surprise isn't that romantic and yet you saw it as that it felt unsettling and then to be taken in the dark somewhere someone you didn't know again a lot of people say oh it's so romantic but not so much they almost felt like there wasn't even that much consent. Yes. You were just taken and you had nothing to say about it. We tend to over romanticize surprises. Being taken somewhere and not knowing what it's going to be it all feels very rom-com but when you think about it really early in a relationship before you know someone it may also be a bit controlling and even unsettling because a surprise is supposed to be so exciting people will often feel guilty for viewing a heavily planned surprise as a red flag. And another red flag popped up here. The silent treatment when she didn't give him the reaction he wanted for his surprise. When people are this thin-skinned that is a bad sign.
Were there any other red flags Tina that jumped out at you from not even just the early days but weeks months of the relationship that looking back you're like wow that was a red banner.
Looking back what I now know to be love bombing was extreme and even the stories I hear now I sometimes reflect back on how over the top it truly was. The first week we started dating I would go out to my car at 7:00 a.m. to get ready and go to work and there would be poetry on my windshield. There would be a dozen red roses delivered to my office days after I met this person.
Wow the poetry the roses and all within a week of your first date. I'm going to take a moment now to explain what love bombing is. Love bombing is this process of seduction and idealization and it sweeps a person away into something that feels like a fairy tale. Now unfortunately while you're being love bombed you can easily miss the red flags. Love bombing though is often a part of abusive and narcissistic relationship cycles and as exciting as all of this may seem the love bombing should absolutely be a red flag. Yeah absolutely. When the love bombing manifests as stuff being left on your windshield or on your doorstep or flowers to your workplace really early on once again big red flag. There's something sort of surveillance-y about it that they're rolling by your spot making their presence known in your workplace. It's like they're marking their territory. I know I sound like the anti-Cupid pointing out these things but a week in finding stuff on your windshield may be a sign of more obsessive behavior and not just healthy interest.
Tina what were some of the other ways that he love bombed you?
I remember after our first date he called me a couple days later and said I want you to take the whole day off of work. I've called in to the local day spa. I've put my credit card down. You have a full day of services booked for you. It was so much that I truly didn't have time to think or to self-reflect. It was just constant and truly overwhelming but again overriding intuition I thought this is what it's like to date an adult male. I've only dated I was 26 years old. I had a history of dating bad boys and you know not the healthiest of relationships and so I thought this is what adult dating must be like and sign me up if this is what it is it's amazing.
So let's unpack this. Love bombing is exciting and it can be amazing but as Tina said it's also overwhelming. And so we don't even get a second to process all that's happening. And the tough part of love bombing is that anyone looking at this relationship from the outside would think that you're lucky so calling red flags out while you are being love bombed may literally feel impossible for many people especially for people who may not have had these experiences in prior relationships.
There was another major red flag Tina that jumped out which was the prenup that you didn't sign. Can you sort of frame that as a red flag cuz it certainly seemed to be but can you talk to us a little bit about that episode?
Right before we went on this vacation to Maui I had lost my mom to suicide and so I was in this state of emotional turmoil you know it was very much a fog and he suggested we fly off to Hawaii and spend a week there. I had never been I thought that was so exciting and a good you know place for me to just take a breather. A few days into our trip he proposed to me. Not only that he said let's not tell anyone and let's get married while we're here. So I'm away from friends and family. I can't call anybody. He doesn't want anyone to know. He planned the wedding within a two-day period of time. He was insistent that it was a man who married us. He did not want a female. That should have been a red flag and we went to dinner the night before and we wrote vows. It was very important to him that we both wrote wedding vows. So we did that and then we get back to our hotel and he said you know go ahead and go to bed. I want to continue working on my vows and I thought wow that is so romantic and he hands me a stack of paper and what he had actually stayed up all night writing was a prenup. But this was not a normal prenup. It had things in there like if I were to ever get pregnant I had to return to pre-pregnancy weight within one year. If our marriage failed within the first five years I had to give the wedding ring back to him. If the marriage lasted eight years we split the wedding ring whatever it sold for. If we made it past the 10-year mark the wedding ring was mine to keep and it went on and on and on. And I remember sitting there I walked over to a curb and I am sitting on a curb crying and basically some expletives and and shoved it back at him and said I'm not doing this and I didn't even read I just skimmed it but what I did skim was mind-blowing to me and I told him I'm not marrying you and this is this is insane and he ended up apologizing begging profusely that we just go on with our day go on with the ceremony and so I didn't sign it.
Yeah that should have sent me running for the hills of Maui. Narcissistic entitlement can often come out in a prenup. While prenuptial agreements in and of themselves aren't an issue in the hands of a narcissistic person a prenup can be punitive entitled and manipulative. In some ways the deviousness of a narcissist prenup is a real hint of what a mess a divorce from a narcissist is going to be.
Just for my curiosity if you had gained 10 pounds after a pregnancy then what? Did you have to pay like a penalty?
I no idea, but I will tell you that was really what put our marriage in a downward spiral because I did gain 10 lb and I didn't lose that that 10 lb right within the 1-year mark, but the gifts that I received after I gave birth were how to get perfect abs. I got a new road bike, which I don't bike. I got running shoes. I got signed up for 5K's and 10K's, new jogging strollers, and he ended up moving into a second bedroom after the birth of our second daughter because he was repulsed by was probably 15 lb, but compared to the 110 person he married, it was unacceptable and in his mind grotesque.
Now that you talk about it, you know, people will say that's beyond a red flag. Like you know, that's like a red like a red cover a football stadium in one banner. Like be like you could see it from the sun kind of thing. Narcissistic gift giving can be really messed up. It's typically quite self-serving. They will often give gifts that are consistent with their lifestyle and their interests. And for example, Tina getting a bike and running shoes that she didn't need or relate to how they want their partner to look or give lavish gifts so they can get praised by the world. Wow, what a great amazing piece of jewelry you gave her or something like that. But narcissists rarely give gifts from a place of empathy or thoughtfulness about what the other person wants. In fact, in this case, Tina got gifts that almost felt punitive. You know, get those flat abs back.
But as you were talking about red flags, you said so many things were happening so quickly, you almost wouldn't have had the time to notice these things as red flags. Like it was just sounded like there was an intensity and a quickness to this relationship. So there isn't even enough time to process the information.
No, but you start going in deeper and deeper and then it starts becoming I couldn't leave even if I wanted to. I have basically sold everything I owned. I am dependent on him because he wanted me to quit work, go back to college, and so it was in a very short period of time, he pushed me into completely being dependent on him in pretty much all areas of our life.
You know this as well as anybody out there, Tina. This idea of making someone financially dependent on them. That's one of many dynamics of a toxic relationship or toxic marriage with a narcissist. When you look especially at the early days of this marriage cuz already the financial dependency was being created early. What are the other dynamics of a toxic relationship that you were observing in your own marriage?
Whittling away at my self-esteem in a very covert way. It wasn't outright calling me names or saying negative things about me. He would say them about other people. My self-esteem was nonexistent. Everything I had worked for a year in therapy to build up was beneath him, wasn't good enough, and I remember anytime I would be on a phone call with someone or talking to someone at one of his work events, he would then tell me the whole way home what I said wrong, why I shouldn't have said this, why I shouldn't have said that to where I truly became quiet.
So you're slowly being taken apart. That's what I'm hearing.
Absolutely. A toxic relationship is death by a thousand cuts. These are relationships where a person's wings are clipped one feather at a time. They methodically play upon any existing narrative you have of being not good enough. They will scrutinize you and belittle you and criticize you and all of this is a slow indoctrination into domination and control. The smaller they can make you feel, the bigger they believe they are.
My mom had bipolar disorder and ended up taking her life and he knew how afraid I was because I had read that it was genetic. Back then I didn't know a lot about it and he would constantly use that to taunt me because we had a very difficult relationship because of her addiction to drugs and just the choices she made in life and she wasn't a part of my life, but what I knew from a distance terrified me. And he used that to constantly, you know, I I can think of one example when my mom actually died. I found out and it was the phone call I expected my whole life because of the path she had been on. I was in fetal position crying and he walked in and he looked at me and said, "I don't understand why you're so upset. You weren't even close with her." And I started realizing that anytime I had any type of emotional reaction, he thought I was unhinged or unstable. And so it started creating doubt in me. You know, am I Is something wrong with me?
Doubting and judging your emotion, questioning your grief, and then portraying you as unstable for having any kind of emotional reaction, that is gaslighting, plain and simple. And it's also emotional abuse.
Tina, you said something so interesting. You said, "We married in secret in Hawaii. We didn't tell anyone. We You didn't propose and boom, you were you were It wasn't Usually there's some space between proposal and a wedding. And once he was willing to get rid of the ridiculous pre-nup, you went ahead and got married." Why did you get married in secret? Can you unpack that for us a little just to understand that?
The way it was presented to me, spontaneous, romantic, we'll tell everybody afterwards we're going to have this big party, and now I realize it would have been a big spotlight for him. He likes to be different. And I think there was a part of him who he was embarrassed by me. His family didn't accept me because educational, you know, they were very big on college. I had become an entrepreneur at a very young age and I took a different path in life, but all of a sudden that was a negative and I thought, "Wow, am I that naive that other people judge me this way when I've always been praised and received awards for my successes." I just think yet this family who I look up to would somehow think less of me or wouldn't consider me to be appropriate for their family.
So let's do a little bit of a deeper dive here, right? Around shame. Narcissistic people often infect other people with their shame. Uh narcissism's basically a shame-based pattern and they will often project that shame onto other people. So what we see here is that he may have wanted a secret wedding because his family didn't want people to know about Tina's education despite her considerable success as a businesswoman. Narcissistic people can leave any of us feeling like we are just 1 in tall, devaluing our successes and our achievements, and that's mostly because they are so insecure themselves.
I I know he would weaponize your mom's death. Did he do that? Did he use your mother's death as a way to to sort of reel you in to this long-term commitment into a marriage?
Absolutely. I mean, when my mom died, he proposed to me less than a month later. And so I was in this deep grief, you know, because even though my mom and I had had an estranged relationship and it had been very difficult, I grasped so tightly onto hope that she would come through this, that she would get help. And so I was not only grieving her death, but the loss of hope of having a relationship with my mom.
We see something interesting here. Pushing fast forward on that commitment button, proposing to Tina at a time of such complex grief. When her mother died, it really exploits her confusion and her anguish. It makes it harder to think clearly about committing to such a momentous decision. And also takes advantage of Tina wanting to find that piece of stability when so much has changed in her life.
So you said in your book, you say that survivors of narcissistic abuse are some of the most intelligent, empathetic humans I've ever known. Why do you say that and how did all of this get shaped by your relationship with your ex-husband?
I think that narcissists are attracted to people who are the exact opposite of themselves. So in some ways through the work that I do, through the work that you do, you're able to connect with and find some pretty amazing humans to surround yourself with.
You know, it's funny here. Tina frames it as narcissists being attracted to people who are the opposite of them. Narcissistic people are actually drawn to empathic people, people who are willing to justify, to cut them slack, to forgive them, and above all, who are willing to put up with their stuff without calling them out. So, your empathy, the best part of you, actually places you at risk for narcissistic relationships. You would think that survivors of narcissistic abuse would get the the empathy kind of um scared out of them in a way, and yet that doesn't go away despite having gone through something so awful. And certainly your story was very difficult. I think that what you really laid out is that at the beginning of a narcissistic relationship, the narcissistic person in a way has this sort of dark superpower, is the only way I can designate it, to be able to find every vulnerability a person has and use those to control them. And the entire experience leaves an individual who is in the early phase of a narcissistic relationship constantly doubting themselves, especially if there had been a history of sort of difficult or complex relationships when a person was growing up. So, it's as though the narcissistic person is the ultimate tactician. They get someone exactly where they need them to be able to take them apart, to be able to control them, and then they engage in all kinds of tricks to obscure the red flags. So, if you're not aware of what this is, and most people aren't in one of their earlier relationships, they get you right where they want you.
Yeah. I would describe it as, you know, this person when I first met who seemed like a sponge. Like he was this dried up sponge, and he was so interested in everything I had to say, my every worry, my every concern, my every ailment that I have ever had in life. And in a lot of ways molded himself to be my band-aid, my savior. And now looking back, he was keeping a mental spreadsheet of every single pain, every single wound, so that he knew right where to go to inflict the most pain the quickest. And it's hard to grasp for those of us who don't think that way.
Something I've said is that I believe that narcissistic people create an atlas of our vulnerabilities. So, just like a map, they know exactly where to go to get what they need from us, and that's what the love bombing is. It's our walls come down, and they get that information.
So, let's talk about then having kids. It's interesting in the pre-nup he said that if you gain weight when you're pregnant, who knows what the penalty would be. But come to find out that he didn't really want kids. How would you connect, Tina, his lack of excitement around having children to his narcissism? And how did this affect you in the beginning cuz it sounded like you really wanted to be a mom?
For him, he wanted to be a jet-setter. He wanted to travel the world. He wanted to excel in our businesses, have this fantastic life, which he felt children would ruin for him. And he had grown up in a family with quite a few kids and didn't want to do that. He saw his parents struggle with having so many children, and for whatever reason he was adamant that we would not have kids. So, when I found out in 2004 that I was pregnant with my first daughter, I was terrified to tell him. Um I didn't even tell him that I purchased pregnancy tests because I didn't want it to be true for fear of his reaction. And this sense of fear as I walked out of the bathroom and told him, and sure enough, he took one look at me, and I just saw this look of disgust and rage. And he walked out of the room.
It's so painful. A person's married, you find out you're pregnant. We often have this vision of this being such a precious moment in a relationship, and you were met with the silent treatment. So, that's what happened when you found out you were pregnant. And then you delivered the baby. What was his caregiving like at those times?
Well, I was almost 2 weeks overdue, and that infringed on his triathlon training schedule. So, he would leave and leave me home alone for great periods of time, and it was terrifying. And so he's gone for 2 hours, and I called my doula and pretended he was there, that we were just tying up a few things before we came it had become my role to protect our image. And I didn't want our doula to be mad at him during delivery. So, I pretended that he was there with me, and that we would be to the hospital shortly. Once we got there, he became what I needed. And he was actually presented as very caring, compassionate, and in my opinion, it was because there was an audience. A doula, doctors, everybody else, and we were known in the community, so he really did become a doting dad of this newborn baby in the hospital. Interesting. But even in that period of time, it gave me such hope. I thought that I knew as soon as he met this baby that it would all become clear for him how important this was. And so I I was on this roller coaster of, you know, went through my whole pregnancy without him ever touching my stomach or feeling her kick or doing the things a a normal partner would do. And so I I did have hope after she was born, and that quickly went away. Right after I got out of the hospital, he let me know how much I had hurt his triathlon training schedule, and that he was really behind.
Okay, let's pause a second so I can break this down. Hope is a four-letter word in narcissistic relationships, and people give in to it so quickly. Tina's ex didn't take care of her at all during the pregnancy, but when he showed up at the hospital, the frustration of the prior 9 months was almost immediately replaced by hope. This hope-disappointment cycle is the roller coaster that is every narcissistic relationship.
I'll tell you, I almost feel embarrassed to admit the day we left the hospital, we drove out to the lake, which was about an hour from our home, and I sat in the truck in the parking lot with the air conditioner on holding a newborn baby in excruciating pain while he went out swimming and biking and did his whole triathlon run. And then later that week, we went camping. He had trained for this triathlon, and that was the weekend that it was happening. And so I stood at the finish line in high heat holding a newborn baby with staples in my stomach cheering him on like the good wife. I did it for both pregnancies because both of my daughters were born in April during his triathlon.
I couldn't do the things you're describing on a good day. Camping, triathlon, he's waiting for somebody to run. But what's really interesting to me is how you keep saying, "I'm embarrassed to say this." Yeah. You know, it speaks to how much we internalize these Yeah. You were simply doing what you needed to do to survive in that relationship, and yet after all these years telling this story, you still feel that sense of embarrassment as though you've done something wrong.
I was in such a deep fog that I didn't see how horrible it was. Now looking back, if someone were to tell me this story, I would, you know, probably look at them sideways thinking, "How, you know, that's seems almost hard to believe." But not hard to believe once we know what narcissism is. It's sort of like every story has different episodes, but all of it comes down to it being invalidating unempathic behavior. Stories may look different, but the theme is always the same.
[Music] My session with Tina will continue after this break.
[Music]
So, Tina, let's talk about the weekend that changed it all. Okay? Cuz there was this moment. Honestly, every narcissistic relationship has this. So far what you've been talking about is behavior that's pretty bad. But I have a feeling we haven't hit rock bottom on this one yet. So, Tina, tell us how bad did your ex-husband's behavior get? And what was this tipping point? What did this look like?
I started uncovering some pretty significant financial indiscretions. At one point, I found out that we were $1.6 million in debt. There was a reality that I didn't know about, and that was we didn't really have the money that we you spending. There came a point where everything was frozen because the IRS shut it all down. Around that time, I ended up finding a therapist and this therapist said, "It sounds like he's highly narcissistic." And that really started the beginning of the end. He basically waited until I left on a Friday night to go down south to visit my sister and lying in wait was a moving truck and um his family members. They basically took every single possession that I owned out of the house and then replaced it with very cheap furniture. The most disturbing part was he had gutted everything out of my bedroom and redecorated it with a toddler bed with little girl decor and on the bed he left the book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. Mhm.
That's interesting. I can get him vindictively taking all of the things out of the house. I mean, that's theft, but okay. Putting children's furniture in your room, what's that about? I have some hypotheses myself, but why do you think he did that?
To this day I have no idea. It was so disturbing. I to this day I cannot understand why.
We could only speculate. Like part of me wonders is that how he saw you as a child? Because I mean, we can control a child, right? As a child that he could control or is that just sort of how he almost viewed you within the I mean, in the marriage like I don't think being viewed as a child being devalued. I think actually children are wonderful, but in this case it implied like a powerlessness. Like I'm going to render you to be as powerless as a child. You're going to have no more power than a toddler basically cuz there's a toddler bed in the room. It's such a strange thing for him to have done.
Yeah, and our nanny was living with us at the time and she's the one that called me to tip me off that this was happening and she said when I walked in the room, he looked manic and he was terrifying and he was trying to show me the photos of you as a little girl and and look how sweet she looked and our nanny moved out that weekend and I ended up in the women's shelter afraid for my life very shortly after that episode because I no longer felt safe in the house.
You think about that again, we talk about that weekend that changed it all that you went from living in a comfortable home, married with kids and all of that to having to show up at a women's shelter just to feel safe is a remarkable, remarkable shift. One something that you never sounds like in your story you never would have anticipated something like that happening.
No, I remember my little girl saying from the backseat, "Where are we going?" And I said, "You know, we're going to a special hotel for moms and kids and we'll be there for a few days hopefully and and then we can go back home." But very humbling.
So, Tina, I honestly think after what you've been through, you are literally an expert on gaslighting. Something you probably didn't even know what it was before you got married. Talk to us about what does it mean? What does it mean to be gaslighted and how it showed up in your relationship?
I called him one day. I was home in this brand new house that we lived in and the the roof was leaking. I called him and I said, "What should I do? I'm not sure what to do." And he said, "Tina, I told you to remind me to have the gutters cleaned." He was irate and he was yelling at me and it was in that moment I literally felt like things became so clear. I've never in my life had a conversation with anyone about clearing gutters and how everything in our relationship was my fault.
It's so interesting, Tina, that you should talk about gaslighting because your story shows it in its many different forms. Yeah. Gaslighting is a process of manipulation in which the gaslighter denies reality and doubts the mental health of the other person. Over time, a gaslighted person starts to not only doubt reality, but they also doubt themselves. For example, with the gutters, you had a situation where he yelled at you for not cleaning them and that it was your fault that the roof was leaking. He expected you to read his mind about cleaning the gutters and because you didn't do that, because you couldn't do that, it was your fault that the roof is leaking. And I would even argue too, Tina, that the way he was reassuring you that your family finances were fine, although there was 1.6 million dollars in debt, that was gaslighting, too.
You know, you were married for 9 years and it started going downhill to the point where you had had enough and the only option for you to get housing was to go to a women's shelter and that was the place where you filed the paperwork for the divorce. At that point, he cut you off from all financial resources.
Yeah. It's not just about denying reality. It's cutting you down so much. Now you're already confused and you've been cut down. Gaslighting has a few parts to it. First, you trust him because he is your husband or at least you want to trust him. Then he repeatedly denies reality, denies your reality, he denies all reality, which confuses you. Then he tells you that you're impaired or stupid about money or have a mother who has mental illness. So, this is a systematic process. It's a systematic process of breaking you down so he can control you.
Absolutely. There it is. So you can see that if you have less power, which in your case you did, and then he was from this family that had a good reputation in the community and you are being painted as having something wrong with you, all of this together can make it really impossible to feel like you can fight back.
We will be right back with this conversation with Tina.
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So, Tina, your story is already extraordinary, but what starts happening in court is almost unreal. One of the most important points you have brought up over and over again is how the family court system cares much more about parental rights over child safety and welfare. Can you talk about that because I think that's such an important part of your story.
When I first walked into the family court system, it was 2009. I was forced to represent myself because of severe financial abuse. I could not afford an attorney. And I walked in so naive. I just believed that they would hear the concerns and that it's it's really common sense. You protect children. That's what I thought that the court system was there to do, but what I quickly found out was that his parental rights were truly given more weight than my child's safety.
Talk to us more about what a safe environment in this situation you're in for a child or for your children would have meant.
For our situation, I mean, I I don't believe he should have ever been unsupervised. But the way the family court system works, if you have a pulse and you say you want to give parenting a try, even if you've never parented before or they're still going to give you a standing ovation for having a pulse and showing up and they give the benefit of the doubt to the detriment of the children.
What needs to happen in the family court system then?
So many people, myself included, are shocked when they find out that most family court judges have zero training in domestic violence. And if they do have training in domestic violence, we are talking the very 101 version and and that usually involves black eyes, busted lips, broken bones. They don't have the understanding of the intricacies of these toxic individuals. See, you know, narcissistic individuals. And that the children to them are possessions, they're pawns, they're weapons, you know, in the family court system. It's all about winning and it's all about hurting the healthy parent.
Well, it sounds like it would make their job harder because right now it sounds like a very rubber stamped parental rights thing. There's also a lot of people making money, Tina. There's a part of me wondering that the system as it stands, there's a lot of money going into a lot of people's pockets that perhaps people, you know, powerful people don't even want to see a change. But I I think at some level, too, is that once you have to account for these dynamics, adjudicating these cases becomes a lot more complicated. It means you have to take in a lot more variables and I I just don't know that they want to make their jobs more difficult.
Understanding narcissism isn't just a useful tool for people in toxic relationships. It is unconscionable that people making such life-altering decisions that should be informed by this knowledge have almost no working knowledge of narcissism or antagonistic personalities in general. Narcissistic folks know how to perform in court and can quite easily trick the various folks who make the big decisions in the family courts. The charm and the charisma that you saw during the love bombing, they're going to bring that same game into court.
Did your divorce, the finalization of your divorce, did that provide you with any closure?
No. Actually, the two-day trial that we had two years into my divorce proceedings actually placed my children in a worse situation. Through the entire trial, I had brought friends into the courtroom and when we were on a break, everybody was saying, you know, this is a no-brainer. Instead of protecting my children, my children were actually put with him even more. It was such a difficult pill to swallow because the court had acknowledged that they didn't trust him to pick them up from school, yet we're allowing this person to have them. And you know, I'll tell you, my daughters, when this started, were two and four years old, had never been away from me, especially my youngest, not even an overnight. And the trauma that that alone, even if he would have been a healthy parent or a semi-healthy parent, it is so wrong what we're doing to the kids because years later, we are still dealing with that baggage from her being ripped away from me at two years old.
It didn't provide you with closure and it sounds a lot of that is because of the poor decision-making within the system. As you said, they couldn't entrust him to pick up the children, but they were willing to entrust him to keep the children overnight. They're not even thinking about the illogic of that. It's actually quite striking.
Can you tell us, Tina, where are things now with your case?
2019, we successfully terminated his parental rights, which I was told all along the way that would never happen. It's impossible. It took almost 10 years for me to get from the starting point to actually terminating his parental rights. It's an ultra-marathon and the reality is narcissists typically only trained for a 10K and so it's outlasting them um because these are children and you don't really have a choice. Your hands are tied by this broken system. I am remarried to a a wonderful man and he's adopted my daughters and so we we have peace.
And I think that's so important for people to hear on multiple levels. This is two things that jump out about what you just said, Tina. One was that this is an ultra-marathon, right? You fight for your kids. Your story is extraordinary for your tenaciousness, for your perseverance in the face of what happened. It's understandable how many other people would not have that tenacity, who would say, "I can't do this anymore." Who are so traumatized by these systems. Uh I know in your work you work with many people who've been pushed to those limits. So, in your case in many ways, one could view it as a win, Tina, but I think that's a risky way to frame it because it was a win that left you and your children completely ragged. Tina's case is unusual in that parental rights were terminated and that was after 10
years. Many people do not have these outcomes. And can we really call it a win even when people get outcomes that may ultimately protect their children after the children are put through so much chaos and instability by systems that are so concerned with the rights of antagonistic parents over the needs of children, these toxic processes can impact children for a lifetime.
You met someone and you fell in love and you've created a new life. I think survivors really need to hear it. They do. They really do. You're happy. Yeah. That journey though, you're exceptional as well. Thank you.
As we wrap up here, something you've often said, Tina, is that you've chosen to take on or assume the title of being a survivor instead of being a victim. Talk to us about how you got to that way of thinking of yourself as a survivor. Everyone who goes through the system is a survivor. You're strong, you are a warrior, whether or not you feel like you are or not. And I'm going to not only survive, I'm going to thrive. It's such an amazing journey because I really do it does The family court system is almost designed to leave someone feeling like a victim, like something is being done to them versus taking back your power and saying, "I am going to navigate through this." And I suppose the next part of the journey after being a survivor is being a thriver, which is something you really are doing. Please tell us a little bit about what you are working on now and how people can find you because your work is absolutely extraordinary, Tina. Thank you.
So, I'm one of the founding members of an organization called the National Safe Parents Organization and it's the top family court advocates in the country coming together and working really hard to ensure that in five years we don't have to keep talking about how broken it is and that changes are going to be made, but it's going to take a village. And Tina, how can people find you? onemomsbattle.com and my books, Divorcing a Narcissist, are all available on Amazon.
Fantastic. Again, Tina, I know you and so you and I obviously have heard your story over the over the years, but getting to these pointed questions and more than anything having you tell the story in a way that people can actually see a story that was worse than most in the way how long it went through the system, how many barriers you faced, the sort of the harrowing risks that at times you really had to walk your children through and yet you got to where you needed to get through through persistence. I think it's important for people to hear this because I have worked with many, many, many clients wending their way through the family court system and the sheer amount of hopelessness and powerlessness that people experience, to hear a hopeful story despite having gone through such a difficult journey. I'm hoping is something that will sort of invigorate people to to keep getting up and fighting another day and being self-forgiving and recognizing that there are times that you just need to give yourself a break because this system is really designed to discourage people from soldiering on. So, thank you again. Thank you.
Well, that was an amazing conversation with Tina. So, let's go over some takeaways after all that we've talked about. First of all, we learned it's so important to trust your instincts repeatedly and to listen to your body. From the very beginning, Tina felt something wasn't right. Don't talk yourself out of what you feel. If you are going through a high-conflict divorce with a toxic or antagonistic partner, be sure you educate yourself about how family court procedures in your region, state, or province work. Many people are rudely awakened when they recognize that the court does not account for narcissistic behavior, no matter how badly it is harming children. And take a page out of Tina's playbook. Another takeaway, is to keep in mind that when a person weaponizes your pain and vulnerability against you, that is abuse and it's a sign of how far this person will go when the relationship either goes on the rocks or finally ends. And always remember that the most dangerous and abusive time in a narcissistic relationship is often when it ends. Be prepared for that.
Thank you so much for listening. Lastly, make sure you subscribe on iHeartRadio and please rate this podcast on Apple Podcasts. This show is produced by executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith, Fallon Jethroe, Ellen Rakieten, and Dr. Romany Dvosila. Also, producer Matthew Jones, associate producer Mara Del Rosa, and our editors and sound engineers Devin Donahue and Calvin Bayliff. [Music]