Episode Details

If you’ve wondered, “Is my husband grooming me?” Raven talks about how her emotionally abusive husband groomed her from the beginning of their relationship.

One way to know if he’s grooming you is to see if he’s using any one of the 19 emotional abuse tactics. To find out, take our free emotional abuse test.

What Is Grooming?

No matter what kind of abuse, or who the abuser is, grooming occurs when an abuser creates a false sense of safety for his victim.

“Anything that someone does to make it look like he’s a knight in shining armor.”

Raven, Member of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community Community

At the start of a relationship, an abuser might act very kind and caring to make a woman believe he is a safe and trustworthy partner. He might seem honest, loyal, and emotionally strong. But later, he may start cheating, lying, and making her question her own feelings or memories. This shows that the way he acted in the beginning was just a trick to control and manipulate her.

If you relate, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session to find support.

Transcript: Is My Husband Grooming Me?

Anne: A member of our community, we’re going to call her Raven, is on today’s episode.

I sent a request on social media to have a member of our community. Come on the podcast to talk about grooming, and Raven was like, “Pick me, I want to talk about grooming.”

On our social media channels, you can interact with women who comment back and forth about what they think of these episodes. You can be anonymous on social media, depending on what your profile says.

If you’re not anonymous on social media and want to be anonymous, you can go to our website and search for this episode in the search bar. So for example, the title of this one is, “Is my husband grooming me?” So you can put that in the search bar on our website. This podcast episode will come up, and then on this particular episode, you can comment and interact anonymously with other women on our website.

Understanding Grooming

Anne: So you volunteered to talk about grooming. Thank you, what motivated you to respond to my request?

Raven: Thanks for having me. When I first saw the post, I actually didn’t know what it was. So I looked it up and I was like, Oh, and I think maybe some other women haven’t heard that term yet. And it’s something I would like to explore more.

Anne: So, obviously, we’re not talking about grooming in terms of brushing our teeth or combing our hair. But we’re talking about the kind of grooming that an abusive man does to give the impression he’s a really good guy. This is when he manipulates someone with a goal in mind. In this way, an abusive man uses words and actions calculated to create a feeling of safety, so he can trap his victim.

We’ll chat about grooming, and if she had any questions, I would answer them. I didn’t ask her to, but she did some research about grooming in preparation for our chat. So can you talk about some of the things you learned?

Raven: