March 25, 2025
Beyond the Escape: Life After Abuse with Emma Jean Rowin (Part 3/3) I Ep. 61
What happens after you leave an abuse relationship? The movies would have you believe it's all sunshine and roses once you escape, but the reality is far more complicated. Author Emma Jean Rowin returns to share the final chapter of her journey, reading from her powerful memoir "When Things Collapse" and exploring the complex aftermath of domestic abuse. Emma Jean opens with a reading about "The Work of Letting Peace In," describing how survivors often develop hypervigilance as a protection ...
What happens after you leave an abuse relationship? The movies would have you believe it's all sunshine and roses once you escape, but the reality is far more complicated. Author Emma Jean Rowin returns to share the final chapter of her journey, reading from her powerful memoir "When Things Collapse" and exploring the complex aftermath of domestic abuse.
Emma Jean opens with a reading about "The Work of Letting Peace In," describing how survivors often develop hypervigilance as a protection mechanism. This overwhelming need to control one's environment—especially for parents trying to shield their children from further harm—becomes its own struggle that requires intentional healing.
One of the most profound revelations in our conversation is how both of us believed we were "too smart" or "too strong" to be abuse victims. This common belief actually makes us more vulnerable, as it prevents us from recognizing abuse for what it is and seeking help. We discuss how abuse creates neural pathways that trigger unexpected reactions in future relationships, requiring conscious reprogramming through therapy and self-awareness.
"If a person's good side is very good and their bad side is very bad, you have to let go of both," Emma Jean shares, highlighting one of the most difficult aspects of leaving—the uncertainty about whether those good moments were real, and learning that ultimately, it doesn't matter. The intensity that many survivors become accustomed to in relationships is not healthy, though it can take time to understand that peaceful relationships are actually the goal.
While the journey after abuse isn't fair and requires tremendous work, the peace and freedom are worth it. There's a special appreciation for autonomy that survivors develop—the ability to make decisions without fear, to experience calm without walking on eggshells, to simply be. If you're on this journey, remember that all your feelings are valid, healing isn't linear, and you are never, ever alone.
Emma Jean’s 1in3 bio: https://www.1in3podcast.com/guests/emma-jean-rowin/
Link to “When Things Collapse”: https://a.co/d/8wTUZ1W
1 in 3 is intended for mature audiences. Episodes contain explicit content and may be triggering to some.
If you are in the United States and need help right now, call the national domestic violence hotline at 800-799-7233 or text the word “start” to 88788.
Contact 1 in 3:
- Send your emails to 1in3podcast@gmail.com
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- Check out the website https://www.1in3podcast.com/
Thank you for listening!
Cover art by Laura Swift Dahlke
Music by Tim Crowe
00:46 - Introduction to Post-Abuse Recovery
01:36 - Reading: The Work of Letting Peace In
06:26 - Understanding Abuser Behavior
10:17 - Letting Go of Both the Good and Bad
14:53 - Breaking Free From Relationship Intensity
24:43 - The Journey of Healing and Therapy
35:31 - Finding Peace and Celebrating Progress
WEBVTT
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Hi Warriors, welcome to One in Three.
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I'm your host, ingrid.
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In the last two episodes, we followed Emma Jean Rowan's journey through an abusive relationship from its onset to the depths of the turmoil.
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Today, after sharing one more excerpt from her book when Things Collapse, we dive into a conversation about the thoughts and beliefs we each had held regarding our personal experiences with our abusers, both during and after the relationship.
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Here's Emma Jean.
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Hi, emma Jean.
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This is episode number three and this is a very important episode.
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The other two were important as well, but this one we're going to talk about what happens once you are out of the relationship.
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Okay, yeah, I'm excited to talk about this.
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So I'm going to start with one of the later, one of the last chapters in my book, where I'm discussing after I've left, the final time and how, that kind of how that manifests itself and how that manifests itself, because what I want people to know is that you don't just get out and suddenly it's not like a movie where it's all rainbows and sunshine.
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There's work to do afterwards, and for me, I had quite a bit of work to do.
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So this chapter is called the Work of Letting Peace In, and I'm going to read an excerpt.
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The obvious gift of severing our lives from Alec is that, for the first time in a decade, I gained the ability to control my own peace and the peace of my children, and peace is a cherished gift for those who have been deprived of it.
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The unexpected caveat of controlling my own peace is that I can't stop myself from doing just that.
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And overnight, a meddling monster is born.
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This meddling monster thrives on the belief that Ava and Cal have already been through too much for one lifetime, have paid their allotted dues to tragedy, so to speak.
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So, with clear purpose, I set out to shield them from any potential new strife for the length of their days.
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This manifests in a number of ways.
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I interview my children for pain daily, checking in constantly to see how they've been treated at school by classmates, friends and teachers.
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This information helps me predict which outside forces might pose the threat, the next threat to them, and once I identify those threats, I try to head them off at the pass, making phone calls to schools and parents like some sort of overprotective parental goalie keeping my children's pain score at zero.
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Dare to come near my children with anything other than love and light and I'll knock your block off promptly with my mom cleats.
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My counselor, judy, calls this compulsion to control hypervigilance.
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She explains that, ironically, this type of controlling parenting has the potential to hurt my children over time.
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This perks my ears and propels me to do the work, but the tentacles of the hypervigilance monster are deeply anchored within me.
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It takes years of regular counseling for me to grasp the less is more concept of applying my input to my children.
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Putting it into practice, though, is another beast entirely.
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Judy explains that my checking behaviors are like a shot in the arm to a drug addict that quell my cravings to control my own fate.
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The withdrawal I feel in letting my children live their own lives and make their own decisions is physically painful at time.
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But I keep trying and failing, hoping it will become less difficult.
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Judy claims that practicing mental habit changes over time, reprograms my neural pathways and eventually it will become easier until it feels automatic.
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I buy into this concept hard.
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The work of unraveling oneself is not easy, but I refuse to get this wrong for my children after all we have overcome.
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In the midst of this work, I also toil with guilt over leaving Alec behind in his chaos.
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Where does Alec's mental illness end and his humanity begin?
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Is his anger really just anger, or is it also hurt?
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Could he have gotten better if I hadn't left him?
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If so, am I to blame for his demise?
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Often, when my happiness glows brightest, the shadow of guilt it casts is the largest.
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Judy explains this as survivor's guilt.
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You took the lifeboat and left, she tells me.
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Where would you and your kids be if you hadn't?
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There is an obligation that pulls at us as women, programmed into us through our motherly instincts to nurture, to console, to rescue what needs our healing.
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For me, an empathic heart gives me a window to the inner child of some of the most hurt humans.
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I see it all around me, the disappointed youngster inside every adult's outer struggle.
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It's the same window through which I saw my father and the hurt child inside of him, teaching me to pity males and forgive them endlessly for their angry behavior.
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The origin of an individual's mental illness isn't a black and white matter.
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Was it drug use that led to the onset for Alec Conspiracy theories?
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Or was it his family history that led him to the drug use and the conspiracy theories?
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We can never say for certain which combination or succession of these factors caused his devolvement into darkness.
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A chicken and egg scenario that cycles unsolved and clouds the barriers between what should and shouldn't be forgiven.
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Alec's childhood trauma isn't his fault, nor is his genetic predisposition toward mental illness.
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But today I would tell my younger self that just because you can see the origin of a person's brokenness doesn't mean you're bound to endure the suffering it creates without end.
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We each have a choice in what we take on through compassion, and its extension cannot be without limits.
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After all, we each have our own inner child to comfort, our own peace to protect and our own lives to experience, and regardless of the cause of a person's affliction, we cannot rescue someone who won't help themselves.
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That was another page that I had marked.
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You read the two pages that I had marked so that I was like, oh, that's really important.
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That was one thing that I struggled with for a while was trying to figure out what caused the abuse in my abuser's head, you know, and was he conscious about it?
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Was it something that he wasn't conscious about it?
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Was you know, and was he conscious about it?
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Was it something that he wasn't conscious about it?
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Was he?
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You know so many things.
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And then I finally was able to get to the point, with a lot of therapy, of why are you going to bother yourself with figuring him out when you have to figure yourself out and you know, identify Like not that it was my fault that I ended up in a relationship like that, but do I have any characteristics that made me more susceptible to fall prey to that?
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And you know, we've mentioned it in the previous episodes is the self-love, and I don't think I loved or respected myself enough and perhaps if I did, I wouldn't have carried on with that relationship for as long as I did.
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I wouldn't have carried on with that relationship for as long as I did.
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The other thing that I've read is that abusers abuse because they're abusers.
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It might be mental illness, it might be their childhood, it might be a combination of both, it might be substance abuse, but there are plenty of people that have had bad childhoods, there are plenty of people that have been through each of these or all of those items and they choose not to abuse.
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So abusers abuse because they are abusers or they're abusive.
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And also some abusers.
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Many abusers are able to control themselves in all other public aspects of their lives.
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So there is a choice there, right there is yes, and that's something that I read really recently I think, on Instagram, where I get a lot of, but that was really important for me to see that.
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Oh, that's right.
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You know, he could be really nice when my family came over, but not when it was just us alone, and I think that's that's, you know.
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And the other thing is, you know when I would sit and ruminate and oh, you know what did it mean?
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You know, were his good times good?
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Were those real?
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Did he really love me?
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And I can't tell you how many times I would lie awake at night thinking about those things, both when I was with him and then after, and I mean even just years ago.
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You know, you wake up in the night sometimes and think I can't believe.
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I can't believe this happened you know, and the answer I've settled on is much what you've just said.
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Through therapy you learn it doesn't matter.
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It doesn't matter what the meaning is of those good times, because something I tell my kids all the time, since before they were dating, is if a person's good side is very good and their bad side is very bad, you have to let go of both.
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It doesn't matter what is the truth of that good side, it becomes irrelevant.
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Just like we were saying about a nuclear family You're no longer allowed to be in a nuclear family.
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If you're an abuser and if you have a terrible side to you, then I no longer have to sit and factor that in.
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I shouldn't, because if I'm doing that and I'm ruminating on that, I'm opening myself up to ask myself should I have compassion for you?
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And the moment something is unsafe, you don't receive any more compassion from me, because that makes me unsafe.
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That is such good advice because the bad behavior they can be, and there usually is a huge sway from one side to the other when they're good, they're really good.
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You feel like you are on top of the world and you're the most important person.
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In the other, when they're good, they're really good.
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You feel like you are on top of the world and you're the most important person in the world.
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But then when it's bad, it can be really bad and no, you don't get to pick one and that's what they're going to stay with.
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It's the same person you have to drop all of it.
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Yeah, you're right, because an intense person tends to be intense on both sides of that spectrum and again, I think I was attracted to that because I didn't see that with my parents.
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What I have learned is that it would be better to have a five on the negative side and a five on the positive side than two tens, because you're you're living.
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You can't live with a 10 on the negative side.
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You can't live with that 10 on the negative side.
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You can't live with that kind of intensity towards the negative.
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And so maybe, maybe if you have to seek out relationships, that it took me time to understand that that tumultuous feeling wasn't normal.
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I was used to that and I also used to think, especially in my relationship now, when Scott and I first started to date, I would push his buttons when things got too calm, because once the honeymoon period was over, I think deep down I had a fear that if we didn't have intensity, he would be bored of me, because I had always been with sort of these really cocky, confident guys who loved the excitement in a relationship and loved the intensity, whether it was good or bad.
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It's very freeing to learn, to accept, to be with someone who can just allow you to be peaceful and calm and love you in that calmness.
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That's what we should be reaching for right.
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Yeah, because that's healthy.
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That's healthy.
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I did not know that before.
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Yeah, those waves are a way to keep you unbalanced and then for them to be able to maintain control over you, because you're so unsure of which direction you're going to go, because at some point there's a little bit of a predictability to their mood swings, and then at some point there's no predictability.
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Something that would not have bothered them before is now creating this massive explosion, and I remember saying at one point to my abuser I'm like, can you just be an asshole all the time?
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That way I know what to expect.
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Yes, yes, and you get into the habit of walking on eggshells and at some point it stops working because you can't predict, like you're saying, it's something out of left field.
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I would have never thought that that would set you off, but it did, and all these other things that I'm tiptoeing around and that's what.
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I don't know what that is.
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I guess it's.
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Is it a need to release an explosion?
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Is it asserting control?
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I don't really know.
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I don't know why it's that way.
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I feel like it has to be, and I don't know if it's again, I don't know if it's a conscious need or a conscious thing to do to maintain control, but I do feel it is to maintain control because, you know, if you just rip the rug out from somebody, you're going to be like, okay, that never was an issue before and now it is.
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So now I have to be even more on edge and more prepared for anything, and it just it confuses you too, because, at you know, some of them will twist it of like, no, you're exaggerating, that actually didn't really happen, or they'll forget what are you talking about?
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I don't remember that happening.
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Yes, yes, it makes you feel like you're crazy.
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And then you're just even more stuck in that relationship, because now can I even turn to somebody to talk to them about this?
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Are they going to think I'm crazy or are they going to take his side?
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Yes, I know when you wrote about talking to your mom and how you were reluctant to tell your family and I think that's something that a lot of victims feel too is because if you get certain friends involved or your family involved and you start telling them like, oh, he did this, you don't want them to cast this judgment, because how are you supposed to take him back?
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They're going to be like you need to get rid of that guy.
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Yeah, how are we going to sit?
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at a barbecue together next week.
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If I've told you that he calls me a bitch you don't want to cross.
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It's really it's.
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You don't want to cross that threshold.
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And I waited way, way too long to cross that threshold.
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And once I did, um, I remember seeing the look on my family's faces and my girlfriend's faces when I was just telling them I was giving them just a little bit of a watered down detail, thinking I'll just see what they think of this, and telling them something, and then looking at me and saying that's not okay and thinking, oh no, that's not the worst of it.
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You know that's not.
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But and that's some advice that I would give to people now is don't hide.
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I mean, I'm not saying, you know, constantly be complaining about your spouse or your partner, be complaining about your spouse or your partner.
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Certainly I uphold my partner and I, um, and you know I respect Scott and I don't go around telling people every argument or disagreement we have, but I don't, I would never again hide the bad behavior from my closest people, from my mother, from, uh, my best friend, because it put me in a position where I wasn't reading things from an outside perspective and I needed that outside perspective to see the truth of what I was in.
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Yeah, and I mean you're.
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Also, if you are reluctant to tell somebody what's happening to you, there's that it's already a voice inside of you saying you know, this is really not okay.
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Because, if it's, if it's something like oh my gosh, we had an argument about what we were going to watch over Netflix and he chose this.
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Of course you can tell your friends that and they're going to be like, well, I would have chosen that too, or whatever.
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It's not that big of a deal.
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But if there's something that you're reluctant to tell somebody, that's your gut.
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Telling you this is really not okay, and you know that.
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Yeah, you're right, you're right.
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And ultimately I think that deep down we do know in our gut that it isn't okay.
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Because you're right, why wouldn't we?
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Why wouldn't we say it out loud?
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Then it's just, it's hard and you really you don't want to immerse yourself in sort of that isolation.
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And I was also a stay at home mom, so I wasn't going to an office anymore.
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I wasn't bouncing it off of my coat.
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You know it's a normal thing for a coworker to come in in a bad mood.
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I think and say, ah, you know, he drove me crazy today and I'm mad at him, and if it's the kind of fight that's, that's not a big deal, then everybody can laugh at that, right, right, I wasn't bouncing anything off of anybody and so I was living in my head and so by the time I got out, I didn't know how to properly tell the story to myself, to then understand I should have left.
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I knew when it came to my children, I knew that story.
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I knew they shouldn't be exposed to this, but it took me a long time to understand to myself.
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You deserve pity for what happened to you.
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Maybe not even until I read, wrote this book Did I understand that I was.
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I was a victim of abuse, which is crazy.
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It's crazy.
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It is and it isn't because I think that you, that tumultuous life that they have, you living, the gaslighting, everything you don't, you don't understand, understand or you're so confused that it's difficult to actually put these into a definition and to be able to label it.
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For me, I knew in the back of my mind what was going on and I didn't want to admit it out loud because I was like, if I say what's happening to me, then I'm a victim of abuse and I'm too smart to be a victim of abuse.
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That's not what's happening.
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And so it took a really long time before I could actually finally come to terms with what was happening and actually put that label.
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And I think that's a massive step is for a victim to admit they're a victim, and that's when you make that transition of victim to survivor, because once you're like, okay, I'm a victim, I don't want to be a victim anymore.
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I need to get out of this.
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Yeah, there's almost an imposter syndrome about it.
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Yes.
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And I had said that to my best friend after I wrote the book.
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And then in talking about you know, am I going to talk to this advocate, about you know helping get this book into the right hands?
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And I said it's weird, like, can I call myself a domestic violence victim?
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And she said leave it to a woman to ask herself have I been through enough trauma to qualify?
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And she said anyone who reads that book would say of course, and most people would say this is much worse than I even knew.
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But there's something about us and I think it's kind of what you've hit on.
00:18:52.063 --> 00:18:53.817
I thought I was too smart for that.
00:18:53.817 --> 00:18:58.540
That same quality of thinking I was too smart for that allowed me to absorb it.
00:18:58.540 --> 00:18:59.403
I'm too strong.
00:18:59.403 --> 00:19:00.454
This isn't going to hurt me.
00:19:00.454 --> 00:19:07.584
So maybe if I saw another girl's husband treat her that way, she would be an abusive victim.
00:19:07.584 --> 00:19:10.019
But if it happens to me, I'm strong.
00:19:11.109 --> 00:19:14.578
So it's not the same, doesn't hit me the same, you know, yeah, and I mean I would.
00:19:14.578 --> 00:19:20.301
I would turn things on myself like, okay, I can get mouthy sometimes, so may I probably said something that set him off.
00:19:20.301 --> 00:19:31.405
You know, yeah, you know I'm a strong, independent woman and sometimes it's hard for somebody to take, you know, and yeah, that's problematic right, because I felt the same.
00:19:31.529 --> 00:19:32.932
I'm an assertive person.
00:19:32.932 --> 00:19:46.135
I was raised by a woman who, you know, had feminist values in the home and I think during all the time that this was happening to me, I think I still was out in the world saying I'm a strong woman, you know, strong, independent woman.
00:19:46.135 --> 00:19:54.912
And all the while letting myself endure these things and not really feeling any pity for myself.
00:19:54.912 --> 00:20:02.315
Just, this is that's my life, I'll get through it and really just trying to practical, practical ways to just keep getting through it.
00:20:02.315 --> 00:20:04.199
And that's not.
00:20:04.199 --> 00:20:06.083
That's not the strong woman I was.
00:20:06.083 --> 00:20:08.134
I was trying to project.
00:20:08.736 --> 00:20:09.979
Right and I have.
00:20:09.979 --> 00:20:15.758
So one thing I wanted to go back that imposter syndrome I was actually talking to a friend about.
00:20:15.758 --> 00:20:30.675
He had come upon my podcast and it's somebody that's from my hometown and so we were messaging about stuff and I said sometimes I feel like I'm a fraud for having this podcast on domestic violence because I've had some bad stuff happen to me.
00:20:30.675 --> 00:20:37.604
But I've talked to some individuals that have had some really, really bad things happen to them.
00:20:37.604 --> 00:20:41.506
I was never drug out to the woods and had a shotgun put up to my head.
00:20:41.506 --> 00:20:42.770
That didn't happen to me.
00:20:42.770 --> 00:20:47.060
I'm like, so I feel like maybe I'm not the right person to be doing this.
00:20:47.060 --> 00:20:51.760
And he was like do you know what you've told me that you've been through?
00:20:51.760 --> 00:20:54.730
He's like that's abuse, yes, and it's.
00:20:54.990 --> 00:21:00.615
It's really weird how we can like downplay, uh, what's happened to ourselves.
00:21:00.615 --> 00:21:03.319
And I want to take a second.
00:21:03.319 --> 00:21:06.151
Like you, you, you were saying some conversations.
00:21:06.151 --> 00:21:12.085
You've read in some excerpts from your book of conversations that you had with your abuser, and those were actual conversations.
00:21:12.085 --> 00:21:15.352
You didn't elaborate or throw in extra.
00:21:15.352 --> 00:21:18.198
You know words for dramatization.
00:21:26.816 --> 00:21:32.986
I watered down because my ex-husband was so intelligent and so clever.
00:21:32.986 --> 00:21:42.848
The way he could spin insults was it was so destructive and it was so, so poignant and hurtful.
00:21:42.848 --> 00:21:45.355
I actually decided at some point I would.
00:21:45.355 --> 00:21:56.847
I would write out what was actually said to me and then I would come back and change some words because it was so awful that I thought it would be irresponsible to put it on the page.
00:21:56.847 --> 00:22:00.483
And what if somebody reads this and one day they go say it to someone else?
00:22:00.483 --> 00:22:02.028
Because I've never heard?
00:22:02.248 --> 00:22:09.128
anyone say some of the things I mean every part of my body has been insulted and it you know.
00:22:09.128 --> 00:22:12.111
Here's the thing If you've got someone intelligent, you don't have.
00:22:12.111 --> 00:22:17.194
It's not just some guy spewing obscenities I mean, there were obscenities, but he was.
00:22:17.194 --> 00:22:29.059
These are very nuanced turns of phrase and he was taking things that I maybe suspected were flaws about me and turning them into this heightened horrible imagery.
00:22:31.625 --> 00:22:46.709
And yeah, it's actually what you read in the book is watered down sadly Okay, and I mean I thought it was very believable, but I wanted to bring that up in case there's somebody that's never been exposed to domestic violence that reads it and is like oh no, this is exaggerated, there's no way somebody would talk like that to another individual.
00:22:47.170 --> 00:22:48.313
I wish wish.
00:22:48.313 --> 00:22:52.692
I wish it's exaggerated, it's, it's downplayed for sure.
00:22:54.156 --> 00:22:55.642
Um, another thing I wanted to bring up.
00:22:55.642 --> 00:23:04.759
As far as you know, feeling like a strong woman is when I got out of my relationship, I felt I, I've got this.
00:23:04.759 --> 00:23:09.032
I, you know, I can, I'm living on my own, I'm doing all of this.
00:23:09.032 --> 00:23:13.271
I'm so strong, and it's like I formed this little bubble again.
00:23:13.271 --> 00:23:21.498
You know, I had my little abusive bubble when I was in it and then after, immediately afterward, I had another bubble of where, this is it, I've got this.
00:23:21.498 --> 00:23:23.487
You know, the hard part's done.
00:23:23.748 --> 00:23:34.019
And I was cruising for quite a while, probably close to a year, and then all of a sudden I started noticing little cracks in myself where I was.
00:23:34.019 --> 00:23:41.451
You know, I'd have like a friend, a male friend, say something to me and I would just like lash out like what do you mean by that?
00:23:41.451 --> 00:23:43.692
And he's like whoa, what are you talking about?
00:23:43.692 --> 00:23:48.194
You know, and I realized I'm like, oh, I'm not okay.
00:23:48.194 --> 00:24:16.316
And I realized, oh, I'm not okay, I'm holding a lot of issues inside of me and I'm holding other people accountable for something that they weren't implying or meaning at all, because I had done brief therapy right after, and then I thought I was okay, and then so I was like I have to get back into therapy again to figure out what's going on, and it's so important to do that.
00:24:16.375 --> 00:24:20.692
That is that's the one piece of advice I would give to anyone who has left.
00:24:20.692 --> 00:24:28.409
You know, a hurtful relationship is that you've got some deprogramming that you've got to do and you're right things will cruise along just fine and then it will.
00:24:28.409 --> 00:24:29.913
It will pop up later.
00:24:29.913 --> 00:24:34.484
I still have some fight or flight patterns to my arguing.
00:24:34.484 --> 00:24:39.454
You know, I have a very calm husband now but he's disagreeing with me.
00:24:39.454 --> 00:24:45.546
I mean I might jump up, try and jump out of the car at Panera, at the drive-through, because of my fight or flight is so strong.
00:24:45.546 --> 00:24:47.009
Well, I'll just get out here and walk home.
00:24:47.009 --> 00:24:50.999
You know that's crazy and I have to work on toning that down.
00:24:51.038 --> 00:25:04.645
And also, when you have been fighting with someone who goes immediately to a 10, or you know, with with my ex-husband, I mean that's the meanest person I've ever met and I spent you know I spent 12 years arguing with that person.
00:25:04.645 --> 00:25:13.334
I go when, when someone disagrees with me or they hurt my feelings, or when I feel someone is crossing my boundaries, I go straight to a 10.
00:25:13.334 --> 00:25:15.993
And that's not necessary and it's not normal.
00:25:15.993 --> 00:25:22.832
And it can be very like you're saying, it's very off-putting to people, but it's something that it's not even just in my marriage.
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