You Can't Love Him Into Healing | Why Women Stay With Abusive Men | Ep. 006

This episode is going to hit different. I'm joined by therapist and domestic violence survivor Aishia Grevenberg to destroy the most dangerous myth keeping women trapped: that your love can heal an abusive man.

What You'll Learn:

• Why high-functioning, successful women become targets for abusive men

• The childhood conditioning that teaches us to "perform" for love

• How abusers weaponize therapy and self-improvement narratives to keep you hooked

• Why individual therapy doesn't work for abusers (it's not a communication problem - it's a control problem)

• The exact moments we both realized we had to leave

Key Takeaways:

Abuse is a choice, not a reaction to your behavior

The desire to "fix" him comes from being conditioned to earn love through compliance

Self-love isn't bath bombs - it's protecting yourself and refusing to tolerate harm

No amount of love can stop someone from choosing to be abusive

This conversation gets real about the psychological traps that keep us stuck - not just the financial ones. If you've ever thought "if I just love him enough" or "once his stress goes away, he'll change," this episode will shatter those illusions and help you see the truth.

Guest:

Aishia Grevenberg - Therapist and domestic violence survivor who knows firsthand the duality of advocating against abuse publicly while enduring it privately.

Connect with Aisha  Follow her on TikTok

Transcript

00:00:08:19 - 00:00:17:11
Lisa Sonni
This is real talk with Lisa Sunny, Relationships Uncensored, the podcast. They don't want you listening to.

00:00:17:13 - 00:00:40:02
Lisa Sonni
Welcome to another episode of Real Talk with Lisa Sunny. And today I am just beyond excited to have our guest, Aishia Grevenberg who is a therapist, based in Nevada. For those that are looking for her, after you hear this incredible episode, and I want to talk about this idea that if we just loved him enough, right then things would be better, then he would heal.

00:00:40:07 - 00:00:55:22
Lisa Sonni
And I think that with that comes a lot of assumption that his trauma is what's causing him to act this way or something's going on with him or it's you. But there's this feeling of like, I loved him enough. So, Aishia Why don't you introduce yourself? Let the audience know who you are That

00:00:55:22 - 00:01:19:20
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
was like, tell us about yourself. I love those questions. I have been in mental health literally my entire life. It's all I've ever done. I've never done anything different, and I graduated. You ready for this 2002? So since 2002, I've been doing mental health and I've worked with different populations. So that's helped me really have a holistic view because I haven't only worked with one group of people.

00:01:19:23 - 00:01:46:15
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
So I'm also a survivor of domestic violence. And to have that lived experience while I'm actually working in mental health, not only was I working in mental health, I was on television talking about domestic violence, going home, dealing with domestic violence. And so there was a duality to my experience that I think is pretty unique and gives me a lot to sort of talk about because I had to heal as I was working.

00:01:46:18 - 00:02:10:14
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
So I was working in healing at the same time, and there was a lot that went into that. And now I do solely private practice. My practice is virtual. I work with people all over the world, primarily with women all over the world who are trying to come to terms with these type of relationships. So I have my experience and then their experience and we're learning and growing together.

00:02:10:16 - 00:02:12:19
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
So it's definitely something I enjoy talking about.

00:02:13:00 - 00:02:22:07
Lisa Sonni
Yeah. Tell me that you know what you're describing this talking on TV and talking about domestic violence. Did you not know that that was your situation? Did you sort of separate yourself from that?

00:02:22:12 - 00:02:50:02
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
I didn't want to admit that it was happening to me. And now when I work with women who were similar to me, professional top of their career, making money, the idea that I'm a victim was not something I can wrap my mind around. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I you know, I told myself that each episode was isolated, that it wasn't domestic violence because it happened last year and nothing happened since then.

00:02:50:02 - 00:03:09:19
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Do you know what I mean? So I could rationalize that this was happening to other women, women that had to live in shelters, women that had to, like, run for their lives. Even though that was my story. When I tried to leave in that moment, I was living a Facebook life. I was living a Facebook life, and I just couldn't accept that this was happening to me.

00:03:09:22 - 00:03:25:18
Lisa Sonni
Yeah. So I wasn't in, the field of domestic violence or mental health, but I also was like playing the role. And I would, you know, do my job. And I was known to be, assertive, to say the least, in my work. And then I would go home and I'm getting abuse. I swear, people that knew me back then would be like, no way.

00:03:25:18 - 00:03:47:10
Lisa Sonni
They would never, never guess that what I was trying to do in this sort of form of denial that you're even talking about, like, that's not me, because it was this one incident. It was last year. It was for this reason, and I was so convinced that it was not that bad. The word abuse did not even come into my brain until I was out like six, seven months when I was in it.

00:03:47:10 - 00:04:03:11
Lisa Sonni
Not once. I'd never even considered that it was abuse. It was just mean or not nice or a mood or whatever. I spent the whole entire time trying to figure him out, understand him, fix him, and the whole time I'm really just making excuses.

00:04:03:15 - 00:04:24:21
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Exactly. I was the exact same way. And the challenge for me, and I think for a lot of women is I thought if I explained things to him calmly, if I use my therapy voice, if I helped him to understand that his behavior was hurting me, I thought that he would connect the two. And oh, I don't want to hurt the person I love, so I'm going to stop doing this.

00:04:24:21 - 00:04:25:10
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Do you know what I mean?

00:04:25:10 - 00:04:26:17
Lisa Sonni
Yeah. Oh, and

00:04:26:19 - 00:04:47:06
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
you know, I turned into a lawyer. All these exhibits like this and this, and I'm not doing that. And you accused me of this, and that's not happening. And here's my phone. Check my phone. I'm not doing. You know what I mean? All of these ways that I was trying to present evidence to him, to get him to see that his behavior was harmful and we had this amazing life if he would just stop.

00:04:47:08 - 00:05:06:20
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Do you know what I mean? Like, how is this hard like you kindergarten you learned in kindergarten? Keep your hands to yourself. Do you know what I mean? Right? And so when I work with women now and they tell me, well, I've explained to him, I told him, I talked to his mom, I talked to his brother. It's this effort of communication, thinking that this is a communication issue.

00:05:06:20 - 00:05:12:02
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Right. We're having a communication barrier. He doesn't understand me. He heard you right

00:05:12:02 - 00:05:28:22
Lisa Sonni
there. You. Yeah. He was like, clear. It's like the biggest lie we tell ourselves now that he just doesn't understand. And I'm always like, babe, listen, what if he understands and he doesn't care? Like, just sit with that for a second. What if that's what's really going on? That he absolutely understand. He sees tears coming out of your eyeballs.

00:05:29:00 - 00:05:48:13
Lisa Sonni
He hears the words you're saying. We're all speaking the same language. And they that sort of that fake. I don't get it. I understand why you're so mad. That keeps you. Because you keep trying to explain and to fix. But where does that come from? That's where I want to, like, use that, you know, put on your therapy hat and tell me Where did we learn that we have to heal someone else?

00:05:48:16 - 00:06:09:22
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
I think a lot of it is misunderstanding what love is. I think that's number one. And I think it's very hard for women to understand that a person and not love you and harm you, because then we have to go back to our primary relationships. And I'm basically telling a woman, your mom didn't love you. How how is that supposed to sit with someone?

00:06:10:00 - 00:06:32:04
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Or your father didn't love you? He left. He didn't love you. So this idea of how can someone say they love me and hurt me at the same time? Now we're getting a little bit more complicated and vulnerable because the question is, Will did that. My parents love me. That my siblings love me, you know? Do my friends love me? And it's very hard for us to understand that love and abuse do not coexist.

00:06:32:08 - 00:06:52:17
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
And so to accept that now that is where the difficulty is, because now I have to go all the way back and unpack. I don't know what love is. Have you ever truly been loved? That's not like very that's deep. That's deep. It's very deep. And then as girls and there are all types of people in this type of situation,

00:06:52:20 - 00:07:11:19
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
but the idea is if I can make you proud of me, if I can make you see that I'm a good girl, if I can make you see that, you know, I'm going to go to college, I'm going to go to the all these things of trying to be perfect, to get our parents to show us the type of attention and love that we needed.

00:07:11:22 - 00:07:31:22
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
When that is there, then that's how we show up in every relationship. We try to perform to get love. It's a performance because the belief is the way I am is not enough. The way I show up isn't enough. Like just me being me on Tuesday. No makeup, you know what I mean? Sweatshirt. That part of me isn't worthy of love.

00:07:32:03 - 00:07:52:17
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
I have to be this professional. I have to explain things perfect for you just to love me and respect me. So one. We don't know what love is. That's number one. We don't know what love is. And it's hard. Then I think there is this desire to make people feel something. We want to be able to control how people feel.

00:07:52:20 - 00:08:14:17
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
We want to be able to control how people see us. And so a lot of it is that we want people to have this impression of us. And so we think we can make that happen. When in all honesty, is a person's choice, how they feel about you, it really is. But every every message that we receive is that if we present ourselves a certain way, then you're going to have a certain life, right?

00:08:14:17 - 00:08:40:12
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Period. And the messaging that we receive I receive is Gen X. I always talk about this is if you're thin, if you don't have no mouth, especially as a black woman, if you ain't got an attitude and you ain't doing all this, then period. If you're not talking like that, if you're a respectful, you cover your body, you know, then you are going to have a certain life. And the narrative is that you will be rewarded for being demure.

00:08:40:17 - 00:08:56:10
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
You will be rewarded for not having multiple partners. There's a reward for that. And so you have to chase this carrot, this patriarchal carrot that says if you perform the reward as a good man, he's going to have money and he's going to take care of you. That's the narrative,

00:08:56:14 - 00:09:21:03
Lisa Sonni
that provider protector, which just as an aside, I think that whole concept, I mean, the patriarchy in general, but like men do, what now? Protect? I don't think so. I've that's not that has not been my experience and mine either. I'm a millennial. think I'm an elder millennial in fact. But I was also raised to feel like if you are good, if you perform, if you do the right thing, like be ladylike, be.

00:09:21:03 - 00:09:40:04
Lisa Sonni
I'm the daughter of a British woman, right? So be ladylike and be the right thing and look a certain way. Be demure, all that. And yet what was the reward? Right? In a way, it was almost like, be compliant, be obedient. Because I also was raised, and it is more so with my father in like an authoritarian style. So like compliance really mattered.

00:09:40:04 - 00:09:58:22
Lisa Sonni
But what did that do for me as an adult? It meant I knew how to perform. And in fact, my sister is sort of like the the naughty one. And I was the good one. And I think I identified with that unknowingly, like I needed to be that role. So compliance was really important to me because I would watch my sister get in trouble for being non-compliant.

00:09:59:01 - 00:10:22:09
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
And a lot of that goes into the way we experience ourselves. And it's this narrative of if I'm good then good things will happen to me. And that sets us up for a world of hurt in every area of our lives, not just in relationships, but at work, in friendships and every area of our life. We are vulnerable because we believe we can control the outcome.

00:10:22:14 - 00:10:41:18
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
If we control our behavior. And that's the message that we're given. Until you realize I don't have control over other people, they have a right to feel how they want to feel and think how they want to think. And I can influence that. I really can influence that. But it doesn't register until you hit that wall several times to understand.

00:10:41:22 - 00:10:46:21
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
I cannot control another person. That's a hard lesson to learn in life, as

00:10:46:21 - 00:11:01:16
Lisa Sonni
I learned it the hard way as many of us did, and that like, I was so desperate and it I actually I feel like, you know, he would say to me a lot like you're trying to change me. And I was so perplexed by that. Like, what do you mean? I'm trying to change you. And in hindsight now I'm looking at it going, you know what?

00:11:01:19 - 00:11:16:23
Lisa Sonni
I was, but I didn't know at the time because what I thought I was doing was trying to get back the version of him that I met that I fell in love with. That version of him wasn't real. And it was almost his way of telling me, like, that dude wasn't even in existence. You're right. Trying to change me.

00:11:16:23 - 00:11:19:00
Lisa Sonni
And I didn't think that I was. But I

00:11:19:00 - 00:11:39:03
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
was. And in my mind, I'm not trying to change you because your behavior is so inappropriate and so egregious that I'm asking you to stop, that's not change. That's stop hurting me. Right? Right. And my ex was say the same thing, like, this is who I am, and this is how I talk. When I get upset, I yell and I'm like, you're yelling at me?

00:11:39:03 - 00:12:01:21
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
No, I'm yelling because that's just how I am and that's how I talk. No, that's you're yelling at me. Do you know what I mean? And and so it fed that narrative that this isn't I'm not being abused because he's not yelling at me. So he you know, he's just yelling. It was a way to undo his behavior and remove me as the victim from what was happening.

00:12:01:23 - 00:12:10:20
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
And that's the language of our even the linguistics of how we speak. You know, it's teenage girls got pregnant. How we got him pregnant.

00:12:10:23 - 00:12:14:02
Lisa Sonni
Got them pregnant. Yeah. And and why is it usually an older guy?

00:12:14:06 - 00:12:27:21
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Right. You know, we we got 15 teenage moms here, teenage girls here, They got pregnant, whereas the abuser is invisible. And in this interpersonal dynamic, his abuse was invisible because he's not yelling. This is just how he is.

00:12:27:21 - 00:12:44:23
Lisa Sonni
This is just how he is. Mine would say this is just how men are so often to me, like, men just yell. That's how men express themselves. And I always, I wish that I'd had the like sort of sarcasm back then to be like, not all men. Because I love how men are not all men when it's appropriate or convenient, I should say.

00:12:45:02 - 00:13:04:06
Lisa Sonni
And then sometimes they're not. But it was like, you know, stop trying to control how I talk. Also, now I'm not even allowed to be mad. Like, actually, you're allowed to be mad and you're not allowed to scream at me. And those two things can coexist. But it was like, yeah, I am trying to change him. So it sort of like metaphorically beat me down into just accepting him for who he was.

00:13:04:06 - 00:13:17:10
Lisa Sonni
He's a person who abuses me and yells, and that's just my life now. It was sort of, I don't know, tolerable misery. But I still kept trying to change him. And I'm telling you, it's like that emotional bait and switch. He didn't want help. He wanted control.

00:13:17:13 - 00:13:34:07
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Exactly. That's it. Exactly. And it. I used to call my ex, my abusive ex. An angry bird. So it was like I. I made fun of it, like, you know, and I would say to him, I'm not I'm not going to leave you, you know, you yell at me, I said this, I'm not going to leave you. You're just you're just an angry bird.

00:13:34:11 - 00:13:52:05
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
And then he would get angry at that, like, don't call me that. Don't call me that. Like, you know, I'm just expressing myself. You don't want me to express myself and but it just there was no pleasing this person and someone who's abusive has no desire to be anything but abusive. And why would they? It gets them exactly what they want.

00:13:52:08 - 00:14:14:09
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
And so the level of manipulation that I experienced, and then I see women experience and this false hope, this pathological hope that this is going to get better, insane hope, right. It's going to get better. It's going to get better. Even though you have the proof in front of you that is getting worse. But if it's getting worse and that means this fantasy that you live in, we have to tarnish that.

00:14:14:12 - 00:14:31:16
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
And then what does that do for you? For your identity, for your sense of self when you spend all this money on this wedding, when you have all these pictures on Instagram, when you have to admit that this isn't what I'm portraying it to be now, you have to tell the truth to yourself. And that's very difficult.

00:14:31:21 - 00:14:51:00
Lisa Sonni
Yeah, and all the stuff that comes with that, I always feel like the truth of he's not going to change, and the truth of you giving up on trying to love him enough and be compliant enough and, more supportive, less combative lab, blah, blah. It's so hard in that whole effort. You end up having to sort of sit in a place of going, okay, so I'm going to stop all of this.

00:14:51:00 - 00:15:01:09
Lisa Sonni
What does that mean? Now I have to tell people that I made a mistake. I have to tell people that this isn't the right relationship for me, that I shouldn't be here, that I'm being abused badly.

00:15:01:11 - 00:15:11:20
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Right. And there's a lot of shame, and I can honestly say that a lot of people aren't kind. They want to ask you, well, how how did this happen? How did you not see the signs? Basically, this is your fault.

00:15:11:20 - 00:15:14:03
Lisa Sonni
Yeah. You didn't know you picked them,

00:15:14:03 - 00:15:31:14
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
right? Like, how did you not know? And after the first time, why did you stay? Like what? Help me understand. Like that's stupid. That doesn't make any sense. You didn't need him financially, so why would you allow that? these are things people said to me, to my face, And, you know, I'm from new Jersey now. I'm ready to fight

00:15:31:15 - 00:15:40:11
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
now. I'm ready to curse you out because you don't care about my well-being. And I'm being vulnerable and sharing what happened to me. And you want to interrogate me? Yeah.

00:15:40:11 - 00:15:57:00
Lisa Sonni
You're not saying anything to him. Even the ones that say, like. Okay, no, I get it. He's bad. This is abuse, that this is his fault. But still, why did you stay? It's like, no, let's skip that part of the conversation and stick with that one, that one part instead of why did she stay? How did he make it so hard for her to leave?

00:15:57:03 - 00:16:13:20
Lisa Sonni
Why did he do that? What what was the circumstances that made it so hard? And the contrast is the hard part, because don't you also see this so often that on the flip side, you see, well, how come you know you're being so hard on him? Are you sure it's that bad? I mean, I don't have that experience with him, so maybe maybe it's you.

00:16:13:23 - 00:16:32:05
Lisa Sonni
People will also say like it's just one fight. You know, marriage is hard. Relationships are hard. It takes two. And so you're simultaneously trying to be the good woman that you were raised and conditioned to be and be forgiving and be not too hard on him and not ask for too much, because God forbid, a woman asks for too much.

00:16:32:05 - 00:16:33:19
Lisa Sonni
But also you picked him and you stayed

00:16:34:01 - 00:16:58:10
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Like no returns, basically And I think a lot of people do not want to accept that abusive people have been abusive most of their life, and when they do kind things for other people, they are creating alibis. And so they're often extremely generous. They are often very funny. They're often very kind. These are two people that was walk an old lady across the street.

00:16:58:10 - 00:17:22:15
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Do you know what I mean? Mow your lawn. They'll they'll do anything. They're so kind because they're planning that alibi so that someone says something about them. You have 15 people saying I. He's a nice guy I ever met. What are you talking about? You're lying. He gives. He'll give me money, he'll do this. And so we are just now starting to realize the pathology of abuse and the compassionate authority figures that we see among us,

00:17:22:16 - 00:17:53:01
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
the police officers, the rate of domestic violence with them, firefighters, these people that we see as heroes and the way that the abuse happens in their family is, is an open secret. It's an open secret. But we turn a blind eye to it, And one of the things that I've started to notice in my practice is I work with a lot of women from different cultural backgrounds, and there's a lot of domestic violence that is not reported, because what happens is when there's an incident, the woman will call her family.

00:17:53:01 - 00:18:11:15
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
She's not calling the police, she's gonna call her family, especially if there's a language issue, especially if there's immigration status, especially now. So she'll call her family, and her family will come over and tell her to stay, to give him a chance. The uncle or the father will go and talk to him, and they all have to work it out.

00:18:11:18 - 00:18:26:03
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
That is what's happening in different communities. So we don't have accurate data because no one is involved. It's worse than we realize because this is what happens. The family come over and they talk it out. They never call the police ever.

00:18:26:08 - 00:18:41:17
Lisa Sonni
I didn't, I didn't I picked up the phone to call the police and I called his mother. Yeah. And she was absolutely floored and was like, I can't deal with this. Talk to his dad. Hands the phone to dad, who basically says, like, okay, okay, talk to him. Keep this in the family. I'll deal with it, I promise.

00:18:41:19 - 00:18:59:22
Lisa Sonni
And his deal with it was to essentially tell him not to do it right, as if that's it. That's all he needed was to just to be told. Did you know that hitting your partner is not a good idea? Which is ridiculous, but ultimately they protected him. And I was shocked, which in hindsight, like, come on girl, I can't believe I was shocked.

00:18:59:22 - 00:19:24:20
Lisa Sonni
I thought his family would help me. That's insane. But we hope, you know, I think had hoped so much that they could all see that it was just his trauma, and he just needed more love and more support and more like I wasn't trying to get him in trouble. I just wanted him to be better. I am the epitome, like I'm the poster child for if I just loved him enough, then it will be better because he was constantly explaining to me how I was missing the mark.

00:19:25:00 - 00:19:42:18
Lisa Sonni
I needed to be more supportive. I needed to do more, be less combative, more compliant. And he wasn't using these words. I think that might have been more of a red flag, but it was just, can't you be more? Why do you always want to argue? You know, you hold on to things and just constantly bulldoze me into accepting him.

00:19:42:23 - 00:19:56:16
Lisa Sonni
And no matter how hard I tried to love him, the reason it was never enough was because love does not make someone not be abusive. Because shocker, abuse is a choice. That shocked me. I truly thought it was like a compulsion or something.

00:19:56:16 - 00:20:20:12
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
You know, I, I remember growing up with the idea of you, a woman can provoke a man to behave a certain way, and that if you talk to a man and you're disrespectful to a man, then he can't handle it. And he he just explodes, right? Because you're disrespecting him. And there's this episode in the film. I was in the theater watching it, where the character is

00:20:20:12 - 00:20:40:23
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
so just tearing this man apart, just like my son is not your son. And he smacks her and the crowd cheers. He smacks her in this movie, backhands or smacks her as hard as possible, and people are clapping because she deserved it. Because she was antagonizing him, she was provoking him. And the whole time she was berating him and you could see him crumbling.

00:20:40:23 - 00:21:04:07
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
And just then he just exploded. And so that is this idea that I grew up with that do. Women are provoking men. What are you saying to him? What are you doing to him that's making him act that way? Because he's only responding to you. And so there was no accountability for men, no accountability whatsoever. And that sort of men can't control themselves.

00:21:04:12 - 00:21:26:03
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
That's ubiquitous. That's our culture. like in churches, and I always say this, if you're sitting in the front row in a church, they make you cover your knees, they put a cloth over your lap and make you cover your knees. And it's called like a prayer cloth. They'll come and you have to put that over your knees. If you're sitting in the front of the church, because you could distract the pastor with showing too much skin.

00:21:26:03 - 00:21:44:15
Lisa Sonni
Wild. This whole concept, though, that men can't control themselves, which again, like not all men, right? But this idea that men, have no choice but to respond with violence, it's just in their nature. I mean, that is just proven to be completely false, but it's in the culture. And I agree, it was like, what do you expect? You know, that's what happened.

00:21:44:15 - 00:22:02:11
Lisa Sonni
And in fact, my most violent assault was I denied him spicy time. I said no. And I mean, I had a damn good reason to say no that particular night in my opinion. But the truth is, you don't need any reason. I realized that my reason was he was completely hammered. I was furious because I'd been doing everything that day

00:22:02:11 - 00:22:18:21
Lisa Sonni
that nothing except get drunk. So I was pissed off. And then I say no and he threw me up a staircase, dragged me into the kitchen. I should say trigger warning, dragged me into the kitchen and smashed my head in. And so many people, mostly men. Right. Well, what did you expect? Well, how many times had you said no?

00:22:19:00 - 00:22:42:09
Lisa Sonni
You know, like there's trying to give us an excuse or trying to create some context that would make that okay, or just men don't do that for no reason. So what happened first? Right. Men do do that for no reason. And certainly what would what would a valid reason be? But to them like saying no to spicy time disrespect which disrespect could just be, you know, not agreeing with him I think men's version of disrespect.

00:22:42:09 - 00:22:44:13
Lisa Sonni
It's shockingly, broad. Crazy.

00:22:44:14 - 00:23:09:16
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
And it changes all the time. And I think is so harmful to men to insist that they can't control themselves. That is dehumanizing and is invalidating because they absolutely can. They are capable of all kinds, that they're human, they're just like us. So if we can control ourselves they can control themselves. I think that's something that men should balk against, that they should push against because they're being reduced to animals.

00:23:09:16 - 00:23:43:17
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
They're being reduced to being totally incapable of controlling any impulse whatsoever. And words out of someone's mouth that have you haven't harmed them. You're no physical threat to them whatsoever, but words out of your mouth can provoke them to such rage that they feel entitled to harm you. This is unacceptable. And but when you put it in a different context, when you take a woman out of it, and when you say to a man, well, if a cop does that, if a cop loses his cool and attacks someone, oh, absolutely. They understand

00:23:43:17 - 00:24:04:14
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
it in that circumstance because they see two men and they respect two men. And so the idea is that if this man loses his cool, then it's his responsibility to know how to calm himself down and not harm someone who's no physical threat to him. So you can see it and that dynamic. But interpersonally, you want to interrogate me, you want to interrogate the woman.

00:24:04:19 - 00:24:26:02
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
And so this is the narrative. They are incapable of controlling themselves unless there's another man. Because as a woman, they're vulnerable to our criticism. They're so vulnerable. And another man said to me that a male ego is as fragile as an eggshell. And the words out of our mouths shatter them. Just the words shatter them. They can't

00:24:26:03 - 00:24:46:13
Lisa Sonni
fix that. I mean, it's interesting. I think, ironically, they need a therapist, but it's interesting how they turned their partner into a therapist and kind of no joke intended that you are actually a therapist, but most of us are not. And in even if you are your therapist, not his therapist, right? But yes, we want to support him. And so we become like the mother, which is a horrible role to be in.

00:24:46:13 - 00:25:08:01
Lisa Sonni
And we become the therapist, the coach, the cheerleader. We're everything. We're the fixer, the caretaker, the martyr, even. We're everything to this person. And we erase ourselves while we're trying to love this person. But that's kind of how you almost don't even notice, right? Because you're mirroring him and you lose yourself. But the more you mirror him, the more you don't know that you're erasing yourself. Right?

00:25:08:02 - 00:25:28:12
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
you start to lose your identity. And so much of language is so important. And as women, we are taught, especially in long term relationships and marriage, that you need a reason to leave. If this person says that they're working on it, then you don't have a reason to leave. If they have harmed you, but They are going to therapy.

00:25:28:17 - 00:25:51:04
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Which therapy is not appropriate for violence? For abuse of women is totally inappropriate. Individual therapy is inappropriate. Anger management doesn't work like these are all facts indisputable facts. But if he's willing to do those things, then you need to be willing to stay because you have to give him a chance. And so this idea of I'm walking away from a man who is trying, how are you doing that?

00:25:51:08 - 00:26:09:01
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
You haven't even given it a chance. But in the minds of men and abusive men, there's never enough chances. As long as he's willing to work on it. You should be willing to say. And so we get caught in this. Am I going to leave now? He's working on it. It hasn't happened in three months. So why am I leaving?

00:26:09:05 - 00:26:29:14
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
I'm going to basically wait until it happens again and the cycle starts all over again. And so women are put in these impossible situations when do you leave, when, when can you leave? and even when there isn't a barrier, there's not a financial barrier. The psychological barriers is much more intense than the financial barrier. You you'd have all the money in the world.

00:26:29:16 - 00:26:39:04
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
The door could be wide open, but someone walking out of that, that's a different dynamic. When we're talking about the psychological prison these relationships keep you trapped in.

00:26:39:06 - 00:26:56:19
Lisa Sonni
Yeah, I totally agree. We're so attached to that fantasy of they're going to change. They want to change. Although I always kind of say, you know, my abuser really wasn't one to kind of promised change. He would be more like, you're being ridiculous. It was a lot more stop it. This isn't even bad. It's just it's just who I am.

00:26:56:19 - 00:27:13:18
Lisa Sonni
Right? But I know that that promise of change or things will get better. He did future fake in that way. Like when the business gets going, when I retire, it was always some future thing where things would be easier or he wouldn't be so stressed out. And it's like that moment is not going to come. You're going to wait forever.

00:27:13:20 - 00:27:31:16
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
But what I found, especially what a lot of the women I work with, is the willingness to change ourselves. And that goes back to the idea that if I'm different, he's going to be different. So if, you know, if I do things differently, I'm going to make sure I cook, I'm going to try to talk to him kindly.

00:27:31:16 - 00:27:47:11
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
I'm not going to bring things up when he just comes home from work because he's exhausted. I'm going to wait. I'm going to do this when his friends are over. I'm going to make chicken wings, whatever. Right? But I'm going to tie myself into knots to be what I think he wants me to be, so that his behavior will change.

00:27:47:16 - 00:28:07:19
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
I'm going to I'm just going to do what he wants so that he's nice. He's kind. We learned that in childhood. We learn how to read people's moods and childhood, and how to adjust our behavior to get a different reaction from our parents and our caregivers. And so this type of change of me is what keeps us stuck.

00:28:08:00 - 00:28:22:22
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Because when do you stop trying to change yourself? When do you stop trying to work on yourself? Well, it's my attitude it's the way I'm showing up I'm not taking care of. And when you stop trying to change him and change yourself, that's when you can leave and stay gone.

00:28:22:22 - 00:28:35:08
Lisa Sonni
That is it's a pivotal moment. And honestly I mean I want to even ask you like what moment you had. That was the moment where you were like I can't do this anymore. I need to leave this in your own personal relationship. When, when was that moment for you?

00:28:35:11 - 00:28:55:22
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
So initially for me, I had set this boundary I said to him, I'm not this person. Like, I don't lead this life. People don't. I'm not going to be in a relationship where I'm being harmed. I'm not going to do that. And he said, so you think you're better than other people, that's your problem. You think you're better than other people. You're bougie

00:28:56:01 - 00:29:03:21
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
and and that that's a vulnerability, right? Because that I am bougie. Like that's I was ashamed of it then. Honey, I'm not ashamed of it now.

00:29:03:22 - 00:29:04:21
Lisa Sonni
You own that now.

00:29:05:02 - 00:29:24:23
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Yeah, I own it now. But I was so ashamed and I did it. I didn't want that, you know what I mean? And that made me feel like, okay, I am bougie. Like, let me pull it together. But we had this big explosion. I'm on TV, this is my big moment. I'm on TV where Ricky Smiley's comic and we're. I'm big moment.

00:29:24:23 - 00:29:46:20
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
We're laughing, we're enjoying ourselves. I mean, it's amazing for my career. It this is the launch of me being on TV. So after that show, he starts the biggest fight. You couldn't imagine. I'm on cloud nine and I'm thinking I could be on a national TV like this is just amazing for me. And I'm locally on TV here in Vegas and people are writing in.

00:29:46:20 - 00:30:06:06
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
They love my vibe, they love my clothes. Who does sir? I'm like, that's I love it, love it. And he started the biggest fight that night and he was so abusive and degrading. And the next time I was on TV threw my makeup against the wall. And I'm trying to rush to get on the set and he tried to sabotage everything.

00:30:06:11 - 00:30:28:01
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
And I said, in that moment, this man is my biggest enemy. He does not want me to succeed. He starts arguments in the morning before I go on live television, like, how is this appropriate? And the violence and a trigger warning, just the throwing and threw me against the wall and I said, you know what? I hit the floor

00:30:28:04 - 00:30:47:21
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
and I said, I'm done, I'm done. No one is going to throw me against the wall, slam my head against the wall, throw me on the floor. This is I'm not living like this. This is over. And that was the moment. And I wish it didn't take that. I wish it didn't have to get to that. I wish the sabotaging my career was enough.

00:30:47:21 - 00:31:05:05
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
I wish that that was enough. But in my mind, I could work through it. Right? I could deal with this, but that was entirely too much. It was entirely too much. And the part about that is that he said, I didn't hit you in the face. You can still go on TV. I didn't hit you in the face.

00:31:05:08 - 00:31:12:00
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Can you imagine that? You don't have any marks on your face. You can still work. You can still do all these things I didn't do.

00:31:12:00 - 00:31:17:04
Lisa Sonni
Sounds like you should have said thank you. Right? Like that's what you expect, right? Oh, you're so nice. Thank you,

00:31:17:07 - 00:31:38:11
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
I do. You can still go on perform. You can still be this on TV and do all these things because you were not hit in the face. And this is the and that sickness. I said, absolutely not. You are fundamentally dead to me. Dead. And everyone that knows you dead. But that's what it took. Just seeing that brazen.

00:31:38:18 - 00:31:40:15
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
didn't hit you in the face. Yeah, that's

00:31:40:15 - 00:31:58:06
Lisa Sonni
what they really say. Some wild things. Sometimes I think, you know, mine did many of the things that you're describing. And that was not enough for me. Somehow I had to get up to go to work the next day. And just like, you know, you just put your suit on and off you go, right? For me, it was a moment that we were already separated and completely separated

00:31:58:06 - 00:32:19:09
Lisa Sonni
at that point. he was still asking me to get back with him. But we were apart. We were not an official couple, and he screamed at me on the phone and remembered it was December 1st, 6:00 pm on the nose. And he said to me, I left you for a prostitute. Do you understand how bad you have to be for me to leave you for a prostitute?

00:32:19:12 - 00:32:41:15
Lisa Sonni
A literal, disgusting prostitute? I would rather be with her than with you. And I was like, and we're done. It was actually two parts. Obviously, I was offended at what way? The way he was speaking to me, but honestly, I was offended for her because yes, that is her career choice. Yes, that was. But my God, like the way that you're being so disparaging about this new person who's allegedly so much better than me, but look how you talk about her.

00:32:41:17 - 00:32:50:00
Lisa Sonni
It was like, oh, look how you feel about women. You're never going to change. This is this is so much more deeply rooted than I could have ever realized.

00:32:50:03 - 00:33:11:11
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Exactly. And I now, when I see signs signs of manipulation, when I see that I am able to nip it in the butt and I'm 4B Now, I don't date anyone. And you know God himself. All the disciples have to come right here in this office and bring the man with him for me to even consider it

00:33:11:11 - 00:33:41:07
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
okay. But before I picked up on all these little subtle ways that people tell you how they feel about women, and another thing is Pride Month. Men who are homophobic also hate women. And so being able to see that a homophobic man is also a misogynistic man and also therefore prone to abuse. This is a personality profile. And so when you see that, then that is your indication that you are not safe.

00:33:41:09 - 00:34:11:05
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
You're not safe. So any homophobic man is unsafe, period. And we have to understand that, that this energy, this harm, this sort of egregious attitude and sort of I don't want gay people around me that he's talking about women, too. He's talking about women, too. And so we have to learn these signs of abuse. And once you recognize it, turn and run in the other direction, screaming, screaming for dear life as fast as you can.

00:34:11:10 - 00:34:31:05
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
I don't care if you get up from a restaurant and just run out the restaurant. If people knew why you were running, they were cheering you on. Everybody be clapping for you because it doesn't change. It only gets worse and you are in danger. You're in danger. Any man that posts anything disparaging this month, get rid of them, dump them, block them.

00:34:31:05 - 00:34:33:20
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
It doesn't get better. Period, period.

00:34:33:22 - 00:34:50:22
Lisa Sonni
I wish everybody knew that, that it doesn't get better. No matter how much you love him, no matter how much you fit into the mold, contort yourself to make it work and be what he wants. It's never enough because I think the point is to make you feel like you're not enough. You could do the exact thing that he wants you to do and it will never be enough.

00:34:51:03 - 00:35:07:21
Lisa Sonni
So the trick really is he doesn't change. He's not going to change. You can change. Change how you see yourself. Change how you love yourself. Change your beliefs about love. Like you said, I don't think we know what love is, and I don't think we know what self-love is. Which I know is a whole huge topic in and of itself.

00:35:07:21 - 00:35:23:01
Lisa Sonni
But I always tell people it's not bubble baths and manicures. That's some level of self-care, but it's considering yourself. It's thinking about yourself. You say you respect yourself. I did, I respected myself, and then I went home and got abused. Make that make sense, right?

00:35:23:07 - 00:35:46:06
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
I think that was the shame of it, because I struggle and so many women that are very high performing, we are so vulnerable. I don't think we realize that we are targets. I didn't realize that we are targets for these type of men, because they feel better when they can tear us down, and they feel so empowered to have us beneath them.

00:35:46:08 - 00:36:12:06
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
And the desire is to control you and humiliate you. And when you realize that you are a target, when you're taking care of yourself, when you're working, it doesn't matter what you do. If you're independent, they your target. You are a target, and we have to understand that. But we also have to understand that self-love means that the most vulnerable part of me is also worthy of love.

00:36:12:10 - 00:36:32:20
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
So the fact that I'm bougie, unworthy of love now, period. I'm worthy of love. That's nothing to be ashamed of. And for women to understand that you don't have to be perfect for someone to love you. that's not real. That doesn't exist. You are born worthy. You don't have to earn love. You don't. You don't have to earn it.

00:36:32:20 - 00:36:51:20
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
You are amazing. You are wonderful. You have dark parts of your personality. You might have a stank attitude. You might have all these things you're still worthy of love. You still worthy of love. You might have 50 pounds. You have to lose. You're still worthy of love. You and all of them. 50 pounds, five zero. Still worthy of love.

00:36:51:23 - 00:37:01:03
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
But we've been taught that love is conditional. Love is not conditional. You have to realize that you are worthy of love and respect. No matter what you did. Period.

00:37:01:03 - 00:37:20:04
Lisa Sonni
I wish more people would do that. I wish more women knew that because I think it's harder I have this, I think it's way harder for women to learn because men are not raised and conditioned in the same kind of world, that it has to be earned the way we are. But we need to know that no matter how much you love this man, no matter what you do, how much you put in, he will take from you and you will be empty in the end.

00:37:20:06 - 00:37:22:17
Lisa Sonni
So you need to really? Yeah, focus on yourself.

00:37:22:22 - 00:37:48:00
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
You will be sick. It's not just you'll be empty, you will be sick. And the the amount of effort, the labor, the work to get someone to see you, to get someone to love you, that really drains you and makes you physically ill, makes you physically sick. And so this is a public health problem. Domestic violence says the numbers are so much smaller than what they actually are.

00:37:48:04 - 00:38:13:00
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
But women are suffering. Children are suffering because children are seeing this and hearing this. And so when you think about love and you realize that if I truly, truly love myself, then that means I have to protect myself. If I truly value my life, that means I have to protect my mental health. That means that I cannot allow someone to harm me and I have to get help.

00:38:13:05 - 00:38:29:13
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
There are people that want to help me. There are people that wake up every morning with the desire to help women like me, and I know that they're there And people that really are in this work and do this, it doesn't. The money doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Like people want to help you. They want to listen.

00:38:29:13 - 00:38:38:05
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
They want to hold space. There's goodness there. If we allow ourselves to receive it and let go of the shame of being abused, there's nothing to be ashamed about.

00:38:38:09 - 00:38:40:00
Lisa Sonni
Shame belongs to them, not to us.

00:38:40:00 - 00:38:41:10
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
Yes, yes, exactly.

00:38:41:15 - 00:38:57:15
Lisa Sonni
Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you coming on real talk with Lisa Sunny to have this, you know, really powerful conversation because I know so many women need to hear that message that there's no amount of love that's going to change him. He just has to make a choice and he needs help. And that's not your job, period.

00:38:57:18 - 00:38:59:00
Lisa Sonni
And right period.

00:38:59:00 - 00:39:11:17
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
It has nothing to do with you. Nothing, nothing. I just wish women accept it. That and accept that their worth and their beauty and that love, you don't have to perform for it.

00:39:11:19 - 00:39:13:01
Lisa Sonni
thank you so much for being here.

00:39:13:05 - 00:39:14:10
Aishia Grevenberg LCSW
You're welcome.

00:39:14:12 - 00:39:23:22
Lisa Sonni
If this episode gave you clarity. Share it with someone who needs it. Thanks for being here and for being honest with yourself. And remember, you're stronger than before.

00:39:24:00 - 00:39:28:04
Music
Stronger than before.