You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.

Muma Me acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters.

This podcast is recorded on This episode contains discussion of domestic violence and suicide, which may be distressing for some listeners.

If you or someone you know is affected, support resources are listed in the show notes.

Belief systems run deep within us, etched into our nature and reinforce through our upbringing.

We're molded by the adults who surround us, people who often were the best of intentions, shape our understanding of the world and pass down the lessons of life.

We went to the pastor, and the same thing that my mum said was what this pastors said to me.

So his advice to me was to not provoke.

As a woman, what we were taught about was being submissive, and that men get angry and you need to just kind of really try to simmoth down.

I just learned to be quiet.

I learned to not pipe up.

I learned to not try to defend myself, to argue.

That sometimes the very truths you were raised on hard and inter lies, and you left with no choice but to unlearn them because your sense of self, even your survival depends on it.

And in that moment, I made a decision that I had two options, that I actually physically couldn't live in that environment anymore, and that I either end my life or I get out.

And I knew how to get out, and that was to sleep with someone else.

I'm Georgia Love and this is everyone has an ex Come with me as we dive into a collection of unconventional stories about relationships past through the eyes and the hearts of the very people who lived them.

To begin this story, dear listener, I've got to take you back to when Bella was born.

She was one of three kids, lived with both parents.

But what was unique about Bella's upbringing was her community, or more specifically, her church.

The church that we attended was pretty full on.

It wasn't probably your standard Christian church.

For example, we weren't allowed to mix with any other churches.

We had very strict rules around what we were allowed and not allowed to do, so probably the obvious no drinking, no dancing.

I never attended a party.

Your life was very much the church, and we attended three to four times a week, and your community was a church.

So you won't encourage really to make friendships outside of the church.

It was quite insular, but in saying that, growing up in it it was really fun.

I've got really good memories, I think because we had such a sense of community and it was always something on and there was kids everywhere all the time.

When I was younger, it was really nice.

I never felt alone if we would cool sort of adults in our lives that attended the church, our aunties and our uncles, and so it sort of had like this family feel to it.

So when I was younger, I kind of had a really positive experience growing up in that environment.

But I think as I got older and as we get into our teenage years, I suppose that's where some of the rules you kind of under your parents' guidance when you're young, and then as you become a teenager.

Where I attended, this particular church had some pretty strict rules, and so I grew up very much a people pleaser, didn't want to upset my parents, wanted to do the right thing, and growing up as a girl in that church, there was no sex before marriage.

There was a real sense of your goal in life is to get married and to have children, and that's kind of the way that it all worked, and it was very common for the majority of young people to get married between the ages, sort of like eighteen nineteen twenty.

That was kind of expected in the standard.

At the tender age of sixteen, when Bella and her family moved across the country, her teenage heart started to feel teenage things and her interest in boys began.

This church is all over Australia, so we attended the one in Perth, and then when we attended the one in Sydney, we weren't allowed to date until girls were seventeen and boys were eighteen, and it was called going official, and what that meant was that you sat down with the pastors and they ran through some rules with you and then they kind of officiated your relationship.

So I was getting to that age, or I was sixteen, and I was kind of like close to being allowed to having a boyfriend.

And for me growing up, because it was sort of tortoise, kind of the pinnacle to get married and to have children, that was on the forefront of my mind.

So we arrived into Sydney and I remember sort of like the first we had like a youth night.

I had come like youth groups and I met all the girls and they were like, Oh, is there any boys here that you like?

And I remember this one guy who stood out as soon as I walked in the room, and he was gorgeous.

He had tanned skin, he had green eyes, and he had this presence about him, almost an arrogance.

But I was so attracted to it, and I said what about him?

And all the girls looked at me and they said, no, anyone but Luke.

Stay away from Luke.

And I think they called him a player, whatever that meant.

When we were sixteen, and I was like, I'm a pretty stubborn person.

I was like, no, I got my eye on him.

And the next time I met him was at a youth camp.

So a part of this church, we would have youth camps and we met for the first time, and I don't know whether it was love at first sight, but it kind of felt that way when we met.

That was it.

We were just absolutely infatuated with each other, but obviously, not being seventeen and him not being eighteen, we weren't allowed to date, and so we kept that on the down low.

When I say that, there was still no kissing, there was still no hand holding.

But we knew that we liked each other.

Once I hit seventeen, we got official, which meant that we were then officially a couple.

And I remember just being so besotted and in love.

And you know, I think the beautiful thing about your first love is you've got no past experiences of heartbreak, and so it is this beautiful time where you love so wholeheartedly with every ounce of your being.

And that's what I did.

I just my heart.

I just remember looking at him and being just mesmerized to a degree, and I feel like he felt the same about me.

We were just absolutely obsessed with each other.

I really admired Luke's ability to go after what he wanted.

He was very driven in certain ways in that there was an element of he had a huge amount of arrogance and confidence, which I was super attracted to.

And he seemed very sure of himself, more sure than me.

Being a people pleaser, I would always over explain would I would want to appease those around me, where he just did what he wanted and didn't really care about ramifications to a degree, And maybe because he was more experienced in certain areas, I also found that quite attractive.

He would give me so much attention.

He at that time had a sense of like kindness about him.

I liked that he got on with my family quite a lot.

And the funny thing is is like when you're that age, those things are kind of status is like what matters.

And I think it was his status that really drew me to him, and feeling chosen that made me feel good, and that was probably the thing that I loved the most.

But I also had this romanticized idea of him as well, where I just thought he was so capable, he was so talented, he was so good at sport, he held himself well, he was popular.

He was like this image of like this incredibly capable man that I just found myself so attracted to.

And where there's attraction, we all know what happens next.

But for Bella, there were several complexities around this next step.

There was always a massive sense of shame around I guess sexuality for females.

So like growing up, I was taught the basics around what sex was, but I actually didn't even know how it worked.

And I know that sounds really silly, but I didn't know about female pleasure and I was never taught about anything like that.

Sex was for the man and so, and if you had slept with someone outside of marriage, you were sort of really encouraged to get married, even at a very young age, because that was such a no no.

So to prevent that from happening and to be looking like I'm say it tat you know, you didn't date around and you did the right thing and then you got married quite quickly, which is kind of what happened.

So once I hit about eighteen, we got engaged.

I remember we were at the Botanical gardens and he got down on one knee and proposed to me.

And I sort of knew it was coming because that was just the process of what it was like for us growing up.

And I was so excited.

I organized the wedding all on my own.

We had a huge wedding.

I think we had over three hundred people, and yeah, it was massive.

I was so young, and I didn't probably quite understand this severity or the seriousness of getting married.

But all I did know is that I was absolutely in love with Luke, and there was not one other person I saw.

He was my heart.

He was the love of my life, and I felt like he was my soulmate.

Before getting married, neither one of us had lived out of home.

I had just finished school before getting married, so very naive.

I'd just got my first job.

He, on the other hands, that have had probably a pretty typical being like a little bit rebellious sort of fifteen sixteen, where he'd go out and sneak out to parties and drink alcohol, so he kind of had a little bit more knowledge and experience he had had girlfriends prior.

I was just wide eyed and bushy tailed and had no idea about anything.

I was incredibly naive, But in saying that, I'd say he was still fairly naive.

We were both so young, so getting married it was a massive shift in what our life looked like and responsibilities.

Were both going from living at home never knowing even how to rely look after ourselves, and we were thrown into this adult relationship with a real lack of skills on how to do that, you know, like how to communicate effectively, how to be respectful of each other, and how to just live.

After getting married, we moved into our first little rental, which was a grunny flat at the back of Luke's Auntie's house, and we rented that out.

We had gone on our honeymoon.

It was all like a massive learning curve.

As you can understand.

It was also like it was the first time having sex as well, my mum telling me, like, when your husband wants to have sex, you have sex.

That's your duty.

And so I was like, okay, you know, that's what I do.

And it was very much tried wife here.

You know, I cooked, cleaned, I also worked.

That was the idea of what a good wife was really under this type of Christianity.

While Bella's life we're shifting in a whole host of different directions.

So was Luke's behavior.

There was a shift in Luke from who I knew him to be almost instantly once we got married, and it started off very subtle.

Our honeymoon, I believe, was for two weeks and we got home and we were bickering a lot.

We were fighting a lot, We weren't communicating properly, and this was just over really basic things.

It could have been about the way that we unpacked the dishwasher, the way that you stack the plates, super basic things, just like really learning how to live together.

Were we compatible and knowing how to communicate effectively, but we didn't know how to do that, so it was I remember feeling very high strung and feeling like I was very out of control and maybe I had made the worst mistake of my life.

And I remember, just after getting married, having this gut feeling, like this sinking feeling in my gut that what have I done.

I remember him putting me down, making certain comments about me, even sexually, which was quite spiteful and hurtful, about my body.

He would say, like, you know, I prefer you with makeup on.

You're not really very pretty without makeup on.

It was the first time we had seen each other without clothes and he had made comments about my body.

And I was only nineteen.

I got married at nineteen, so I was already very insecure.

I guess you are when you're younger.

And I was also in this position where all of a sudden I had gone from being in the safety of my home, and that being quite consistent too, with this man who I didn't feel a lot of love, that I was getting love from him, or that maybe he didn't even like me at this point, and it was very confusing because I would talk to him and I'd be like that's just how I do things, to the point where I would talk and I would talk too loud.

You're so loud, Like, shut up all the time.

Okay, I'm really annoying.

I'm so irritating.

I felt like the most irritating human and it was like he just couldn't stand me.

I irritated him.

But in the same instance, he was so obsessed and so possessive of me.

Luke would say to me all the time that no one will love you like I love you.

That was what he would say to me.

He would say to me that I was selfish, that I was self centered, and that it was almost implied that he was doing a service to everyone else that he is putting up with me as his wife.

I felt incredibly grateful for him, so grateful that he had chosen, almost selfishly to love someone that was unlovable, and so I just felt like I owed him and I wasn't my own I felt like he owned me because if I was to leave, no one would want me, and I guess that's why I felt like a possession.

But it was a possession that he didn't even like.

It started to really unravel once we got back from our honeymoon and we were having an argument and it wasn't even about anything in particular.

It was something so trivial, and he pushed me, and he pushed me into the wall quite hard, and as a reaction, I had never had someone physically do that to me, and I pushed him back, and it just kept happening.

Were pushing each other back and forth until he pinned me down, and I realized in that moment, I was like, Okay, well, I can't fight back, but I was so angry at him for doing that to me.

I wasn't actually quite fearful at that point.

I was just angry, like how dare you push me?

That really progressed throughout our marriage.

Quite early on.

It escalated and it would start with pushing and shoving, and then it would start with getting me down on all fours and he would just be kneeing me and hurting me quite a lot.

And till one day we were having another argument.

And I can't even tell you what the argument was about.

There were never anything big, about anything big.

It was just really standard stuff.

And he grabbed a knife out of the knife block and he just started running at me, and I remember like at that point opening the door.

This was still maybe like six weeks after getting married at sclated very quickly and I just ran and I was trying to get into my car, and I was shaking so much.

I couldn't unlock my car door.

It took me so long to just try to steady my hand, and I couldn't even put it in the ignition to drive away.

I just locked it and I was screaming.

At that moment, I thought I was going to die.

And as soon as I got out the front of the house, he walked back inside.

Because something that drove Luke was his perception how people perceived him, and he did not want anyone to see what he was doing to me.

I drove to my parents' house.

I told my mum and my dad.

My dad sat me down and he said to me, Bella, you need to put a stop to this now, because if you don't nip this in the butt, he's going to think that this behavior is okay.

This is an intimidation and he's trying to bully you.

My mum, on the other hand, had a different opinion.

Her response to me was, well, what did you do?

And then she said to me, well, look, your dad's done things to me in the past.

You just need to not provoke.

I didn't know what to do.

I didn't go to the police.

I internalized it.

I felt so sorry for him.

It was always my fault.

Whatever he did, it was my fault.

And after having that conversation with my parents and went back to where we were living, and I said, this can't keep happening.

I told him that we need to go to our pastor and we need to talk about what's going on, because he needed some kind of counseling to deal with his anger, because he would just lose it.

So he agreed to go to the pastor.

We went to the pastor, and the same thing that my mom said was what this pastor said to me.

Luke was looked at by this particular pastor as like the up and coming.

He was certainly quote unquote special in his eyes, and he thought the world of him.

And so his advice to me was that to not provoke.

As a woman, what we were taught about was being submissive and that men get angry and you need to just kind of really try to simmer things down.

When we got back, it didn't take long.

Four things to continue to escalate, and things escalated for a really long time.

It stated a lot of pushing, a lot of shoving.

There was a few more other knife incidences which were similar getting thrown out of cars, and I just remember feeling so overwhelmed and perplexed at the situation that I was in, and that feeling of being stuck started to hit me hard, and I realized at that point that this was my life moving forward, and I I couldn't believe that this man that I loved wholeheartedly with every fiber of my being, would want to hurt me.

And the only way I could compartmentalize it at that point was that if I blame me, Luke would use suicide quite a lot after every time he would physically abuse me that if I was to go anywhere, if I was to tell anyone, that he would kill himself, and so that weighed very heavily on me.

We would have good days, and we would have days where we would get on, we would laugh.

There was always a sense that he was better than me.

Always.

He would always subtly put me down, and it was almost like being with someone that kind of had to put up with you, but hated you.

That's what it felt like.

Honestly, every day of our marriage, I just remember feeling so annoying, like the most irritating person I think on the planet, Like why am I so annoying?

And the one thing that would really set him off quite a lot would be when I would raise my voice.

And I would raise my voice.

At the beginning of our marriage, when the physical abuse started, I had a few traumatic events, especially the knife incident.

My first reaction was to scream for help, genuinely scream for help.

He was so conscious of his image that that was the thing that would set him off to be more abusive and would get more angry.

And when I say angry, I mean I would know when it was coming, when he would snap.

His whole demeanor and his whole face would change, and I would look at his eyes and he was not thinking rationally, and I have this vivid memory in my brain of going okay.

I learned how to get through those situations, and that was I couldn't yell anymore.

I would put my head down, I would roll my shoulders down, and I would look at the ground and I would just I would just want it to be over.

And I knew the smaller I would make myself maybe the less angry he would be at me, until the behavior with that would it started to get a little bit scarier.

And that was he would whenever he would do anything, he would smother me with a pillow and that would go over my face, so he knew I couldn't yell for help.

Or he would stand by the front door and he would always snatch my phone from me, and he would break my things in front of me, so he knew I couldn't contact.

He would smash my laptops.

I mean I went through that many phones, that many laptops.

Despite the abuse, Bella still loved Luke and felt compelled to protect him.

After all, he was her husband.

To her, this behavior seemed normal, especially since the person she loved and trusted most reinforced that belief.

My mother was a very important person in my life.

We were very close, and I went to her for everything, and her reinforcement of his behavior was sort of what solidified it for me.

I think I went back to her for that reassurance to be like, is this isn't okay?

Is it?

And I didn't get that.

I got this is okay.

And I think once again, like the idea of my mom being you know, this idea of like the solid foundation in your love for life, for love, for safety, for consistency.

She was backing up that behavior.

And so the influences in my life that was most important to me were all saying the same thing, and so how could I think any different.

I never spoke to anyone else besides the pastor and my mum, And the reason for that is I felt this huge amount of loyalty and protection for him.

I wanted to protect him.

I didn't want anyone to think of him badly.

I totally and wholeheartedly believed I was causing him to act that way, that I was deserving of that behavior, and I felt sorry for him.

I felt sorry that he had to put up with me, that he had to do those things to me, and that he might feel upset that he did those things to me, And I was so terrified of him ending his own life that I just wanted to protect him.

I loved him, I loved him with every ounce of my being.

I just loved him, and I wanted to make him happy.

But I knew I couldn't make him happy, and I just felt like I was I was making him so miserable and not even aware of how any of this was affecting me.

Yeah, I had no idea where I was being abused, and no clue I thought I was deserving of all of it.

I just learned to be quiet.

I learned to not pipe up, I learned to not try to defend myself to argue.

I was pretty defeated, and as time went on, I started to get more and more depressed, more anxious.

I started to feel quite disconnected from the world.

I felt like I was existing, but I was not living.

And I was also incredibly lonely, incredibly lonely, and trying to grapple with the idea that this is the decision that I've made and this is going to be my life now moving forward.

We decided that we wanted to have a child.

I always wanted to be a mum, and we had to go through the IVF process.

As anyone knows, the whole IVF process can be like quite taxing and very emotional, and we were so blessed to have fallen pregnant and it be successful, and I was over the moon.

I finally had something beautiful and knew in my life that I could shift my focus to.

But unfortunately that time is when the abuse probably was at its worst.

He began to start strangling me.

So he would smother me with pillows and then he would strangle me.

And I remember I was about eight months pregnant, so I was very pregnant, and I remember him being on top of me on the bed and he had his hands around my neck and I would usually just wait for the anger to pass them, for the situation to pass, but I remember feeling this innate of like just absolute fear, and I remember looking at him just begging him, please, I've got your baby, Like, just for your baby.

I don't care about me, for your baby, because I thought, in that moment, if he doesn't care about me, but I'm holding his child, I'm growing his child.

To the point that it's I'm close to giving birth.

This is a full baby.

That scared me because I thought, I don't know what's going to stop him from maybe one day taking this too far.

I throughout my pregnancy was very very anxious, so I was very depressed.

There was a lot of abuse.

I mean, I gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy, and the joy I felt on the day that I had him was like nothing I've ever felt in my life.

And I remember feeling so full of adrenaline that I was like, I think I could run a marathon.

And I felt like the only woman ever in the world that had ever given birth to a baby.

And I remember just walking around my ward with my baby and just looking at people, going, have you seen my baby?

I just had a baby.

I was so proud and I was so happy.

It was just the best time, and my child just brought a purpose for me.

At that point, all of a sudden, I had this greater purpose and this light it felt to be able to love something and maybe for this little human to love me back, and for me to have something to focus on that would bring me some joy.

Luke was over the moon and was just obsessed with our sun from day dot.

He was super emotional on the day that I had him, and he was very active in his life, and you know, it was really beautiful to see that bond between them.

And we got home from the hospital and unfortunately things started to just go really bad again.

I began to really struggle.

I was, as I mentioned, not great during my pregnancy.

I was very low and post baby blues, I think hit me and he started to then really criticize me as a mother.

From the day we got home.

I wasn't doing anything right.

I wasn't holding him right, and I wasn't coping.

I was overwhelmed with becoming a new mum that in itself is a lot, and then just being critiqued.

And then he would call my mom and my mom would come over and they would talk, and then she would be there critiquing me as well, and it was almost like they were tagged teaming it and I felt I remember feeling like I'm also a shit mum.

I'm a shit person, and now I'm a really shit mum.

And I had this instinct of just wanting to run away, like I thought this was my out, this was the thing that I wanted so badly, and I've got it, and now these people have come in and they're going to take that from me as well.

It was probably three days after I had my son.

We'd just gotten home from the hospital and was standing in the hallway and he was yelling at me over something and he was holding our son.

And this was the only time he had slapped me with an open palm across the face before, but he took his hands up and he just punched me straight in the face and essentially knocked me over and broke my nose.

And I couldn't believe that he had just so openly just done that in front of a newborn baby.

Here's me.

I had had a cesarean, I was very weak, I had just given birth.

I'm feeling overwhelmed as a new mum, I'm being critiqued, and then that and that did it for me.

I just I switched off.

After that, I completely disconnected.

I was completely dissociated, and I struggled to bond with my son from that point moving forward, I didn't even feel like I was on planet Earth.

That was a really weird situation.

I didn't even know what it was, and I ended up seeing a psychologist because it began to really scare me.

And that's disassociation.

Yeah, I guess that sort of started my journey of figuring out, maybe this situation that I'm in isn't right.

Why am I feeling this way?

Maybe this isn't normal, Maybe he doesn't love me, maybe I'm not a terrible person.

But it was also very difficult because I felt like I didn't have anyone in my corner helping me.

I felt incredibly manipulated, and I was quite manipulated, really brainwashed from a child growing up in this church, and I had never thought for myself.

I'd never even researched about abuse or even what I want.

I was taught the religion that we have is that you die to yourself, meaning this life, you die to what is good.

You sacrifice if you live a hard life here, if you bear those burdens of the choices that you've made and the repercussions of those, your reward is in heaven.

But I remember thinking, I'm not going to survive much longer.

I can't keep living like this.

So what do I do is just the ultimate sacrifice to God, that I am completely sacrificing my well being, my happiness life for him.

Does he actually want that from me?

I don't understand why he would want me to suffer.

Bella and Luke had been married for almost twelve years, and in a last diage effort to find some answers and reassurance, Bella went to speak with her pastor, the same one she and Luke had sat down with when the abuse had originally started.

I wanted to let him know that due to like his negligence, that things had escalated so bad, and how much that had impacted my life and really ruined a lot of my life and my sense of self and my quality of life and so much.

And I mighted him and I was like, look, you know, I remember coming to you all these years ago when I was so young, and you didn't nip it in the bar.

You didn't sit him down and say, hey, if you're feeling angry, you need to learn how to manage your emotions.

You need to figure out you can't do that.

Doesn't matter how angry you get, you can't do that.

And I went in detail into all the abuse and what I had gone through, and he sat there and he smiled at me, and then he said, after telling him everything, he said, I just want to thank you for being so loyal to your husband and for protecting him for all of these years, And my jaw almost hit the floor.

I just looked at him and I was like, you're never going to get it.

Like at that moment, I realized these people, there is no getting through to these people, like there's no getting through to it.

And what if I wasn't here anymore?

What would you say?

Would you be proud?

Would you be happy?

And that's exactly the narrative that I had in my own mind, and that backed up exactly why I felt like I didn't have an option was because you endure that that's a part of life, that's what you should put up with.

And just something inside of me didn't feel right.

I just was like, this can't be okay, this can't be.

I remember calling around different churches.

I was so terrified of going to hell, like so terrified of this idea of like eternal torture, which is what we were taught, that I started calling churches and I said, hey, like, what would you say if you were an abusive marriage and someone left, or someone committed adultery and had an affair.

Do you think that's still burn in hell?

And I remember the past is going well, well, no, I mean that's not I don't think where in the Bible does it say that I need to know in the Bible.

There were very much a took the Bible literally in what they preached, and there was nothing in there about that.

And I didn't feel sure that what they were telling me was right, because we were also taught in my church that we were the chosen ones that all the other churches we weren't allowed to mix with because they would call it their doctrine or their teaching was incorrect, and they made it suit the current times where it shouldn't.

You need to stay faithful to what the Bible says, and so I didn't even believe that.

So at that point I decided I knew.

I was like, well, look, I think that my fate is hell, and I think I'm going to be cursed.

Fate asighed Bella was sure of one thing she needed to get out.

After that punch, I stopped loving my husband.

I just I hated him.

I hated him.

I was so angry at him.

I felt numbness towards him.

I felt numbness towards most things in life, but I felt this sense of just disgust, and I used to ask him.

I asked him every day.

I think, for like two years, I want to go.

I want to leave.

I want to leave.

I want to leave.

And the thing to understand the context here is that in the church that I was in is that if you leave a marriage, you don't just lose your marriage, you lose your whole community.

No one is allowed to talk to you ever again.

Ever, Every lifelong friend I had, every support person I had, would go, and so I was like, I didn't feel like I had the strength to do it on my own.

I don't know why he wanted me to stay so bad.

When he I felt like he hated me so much, and I would ask him, let me go, let me go, We're gonna go.

Who's gonna love you.

No one's gonna love you like I love you.

That was his line, and that stuck in my brain so much.

I didn't think I was worthy of love.

I didn't think I didn't think I was worthy of anything.

But all I knew was that I couldn't keep going.

I would get boils that would come up on my skin ever since I got married, these big boils, and I've got scars all over my hands and my feet from them because of the toxicity in that environment.

My body was just it was just dying on the inside, and I felt dead on the inside.

And it got to a point.

My son was four, and at this point I had lived for at least two years just completely having no feeling about anything.

Not even about my son.

I looked after my son.

I always made sure I'd fake it.

I would fake the love.

I'd fake hug him, i'd fake kiss him.

I loved him with every ounce of my being my son, like I can't even put into words, but I couldn't feel like I couldn't And it was the most horrible experience that I was like, I can't actually do another day of this.

And in that moment, I made a decision that I had two options, that I actually physically couldn't live in that environment anymore, and that I either end my life or I get out, and I knew how to get out, and that was to sleep with someone else.

And the only thing that made me choose that second option was my son, because I had this glimmer of hope in me that maybe one day I would feel maybe one day I would feel happy again and I could love again, and I just had to take the chance of that could be a possibility.

So sleeping with someone outside of marriage in the church that I was in is called committing adultery, and committing adultery that and death is the only ways that you get divorced and don't burn in hell.

But if you are the one that has an affair, you can be forgiven.

You can never remarry, you can never have a relationship with someone else, because if you do, or you're sitting every time.

And I was taught to believe that when that happens, your fate is hell, and hell is burning eternally.

I wholeheartedly feared that because that's what I had been told my whole life.

But then also suicide.

I believed was a sinner as well.

So I wasn't gonna win either way.

And I knew that by having an affair, I would need to live with the shame of that as well.

That didn't align with who I was as a person, but I felt like I didn't have any other option.

And so there was a guy that sent me a DM on Instagram that I had bumped into at the gym, and I hadn't entertained it, And then I entertained it.

I messaged back or messaging back and forth.

I had never had sex with anyone else.

I'd never kissed anyone else.

I've never held anyone else's hand.

I'd never done anything ever with anybody else but my husband.

So to go and actually have sex with another man was a huge deal, and at this point I was completely disassociated.

I went over.

It wasn't something that was, you know, like hot and heavy or lustful on my end.

It was genuinely to go there, do what I needed to do.

And I went back and I told him, and I said, let me go.

Can I go now?

And his response was exactly what I thought.

He just looked at me in absolute disgust and called me every horrible name under the sun, and looked at my son and said, Mommy's leaving you because she wants other boyfriends.

And I left.

Leaving meant I knew the narrative in my community would be that I cheated and that I had an affair, and I knew that he would gain sympathy from that as being the faithful husband.

At that point, a few people knew about the abuse, but it still wasn't.

I actually remember one of his friends saying, I don't care about what you did, like she's a hoe, and that's what I was.

You know.

I knew that was going to be in the narrative, and that was something I had to carry with me, that I was a cheater, that I wanted to sleep around.

But at that point I didn't care, because I didn't care.

I just had to get out, and I knew that that was kind of the choice that I needed to make if I wanted this potential of another life and I lost everything.

I told my parents.

My mom was obviously very disappointed in me, and I knew that my mom wouldn't support me.

She wanted me to get back with him.

There was no way I was doing that.

I lived in my car for a few months.

I lived with that guy from the gym that I met, and he actually took me in.

He was very kind, I'm very thankful.

Wasn't exactly ideal situation, but he knew I had nowhere else to go.

I was just I was just surviving.

I didn't see my child for a while because he wouldn't allow me to.

I had nowhere to live.

I ended up living in eight homes within a space of two years.

I jumped from place to place, living in people's lunge rooms, living in people's homes while they were away.

I just was surviving.

I was just surviving.

That's it all, is it?

Big blur?

I've lost a lot of memory of that time.

I was able to eventually I reckon about six months.

It took me to get a rental and I started to sort of start to rebuild.

I didn't have any furniture or anything like.

I didn't even own a fork.

I had nothing.

So I started from scratch and started to like have a sense of building my own life.

It was very hard.

It was very lonely, and I realized at that point, like I need to try to make some friends here, which is difficult when at this point I'm thirty one, so I'm a grown woman.

I've never lived life.

I've never stepped foot into a bar.

I'd only had my first drink of alcohol.

I think at twenty nine, I had no idea about the world, never done anything.

I was like a fresh sixteen year old stepping out into the world, very naive and so as you could imagine, had to learn some hard lessons that you probably learn when you're you're a teenager.

But I'm in my thirties, and it's not as cute when you're in your thirties and you try and explain to people, never up bringing, you know, like I didn't pick up that red flag, you know.

I took people for their word.

I just thought the best in people, because why else would I not, you know, And I started to rebuild.

Bella wasn't the only member of her family forced to leave the church in hopes of rebuilding a life free from the abuse they'd suffered.

My youngest brother I was quite close with, and he had left the church and he had experienced some quite severe bullying from some older people.

When I say older, he was started I believe when he was eleven and they were maybe sixteen seventeen, these boys people in the church.

Yeah.

So I remember being at a youth camp and I had beaten him up and they broke his collar bone and taking him into hospital.

And this went on four years, and he eventually came out and spoke about how he was actually being sexually abused by this boy.

I remember him telling my mom, and my mom telling me, oh, I don't know if that's true.

And I remember thinking, like, no, what are you talking about?

Why would he make that up as a grown man.

He was twenty seven, and it's humiliating.

He was struggling a lot with depression and there was obviously something that was affecting him.

Why would you think he's making it up?

And it was about six months later that he ended his own life.

He was getting married that weekend.

He had a little boy, and my brother was just the most beautiful, empathetic human.

He felt he was too I always think of him as an angel, like he was too kind for this yucky world.

And I really dug my heels in off to that, and I got angry and I was like fuck it, you know, like this is not on.

And something that I really struggle with and I'm working through is my relationship with my mum.

I hold a lot of hurt from her, as I don't quite understand being a parent myself, like why you would do that to your child?

But I think we're all very complex and we're multifaceted as humans, and sometimes putting our head in the sand means that we don't need to take accountability and maybe we don't want to feel that guilt.

I don't think that my mother doesn't love me or didn't love my brother.

I think she didn't know how to deal with the heaviness of the reality.

But I wanted to fight for my brother and find she did.

I just that I wanted to report a lot of the abuse.

So after leaving the marriage, my son still has his father in his life, and his father still, although there's that proximity of distance, doesn't treat me kindly.

He won't look at me in the eye.

He looks at the ground because he doesn't think I'm deserving of respect of his eye contact, and always critiqued still, and I just got fed up with it one day and I thought, you know, I've just I've allowed you to steal so much of my life, like you have destroyed my life in ways, not now you know I'm rebuilding, but like you have destroyed so much of me.

I can see it for what it is with the distance, with a lot of therapy, I can see what you're trying to do.

And I decided to report the abuse.

And I did it as an exercise for me to feel like I was taking back my power from him, and I really didn't expect it to go anywhere.

And the report got given to the investigators and it was about two hours later and they arrested him and he's been charged.

He's got several charges.

I've aggravated assault and strangulation.

So his court dates coming up.

And when I got a call from the investigator, almost fainted and I thought, my goodness, what have I done?

Like this wasn't my intention.

I didn't want this to happen to him.

And it's been an interesting exercise where I've protected him for so many years, and instinctively I still feel this need to protect him, and I remind myself that he's never protected me and he doesn't care about me.

Why do I feel such loyalty to someone that has done that?

And I think that's the nature of an abusive relationship, is that there is that power dynamic there and the only way that I can overcome that is to begin to have the self love and respect to put my foot down and go, no, you don't treat me this way, and there's repercussions for your actions which he now needs to face.

I'm not responsible for what happens moving forward now that's due to his own choices, and it's been uncomfortable, but it's also been incredibly empowering to feel like I've finally got that support that I never got, where I was asking people, hey, like this isn't on.

I don't think this is right, and just constantly getting told like no, no, no, it's fine to now by law, you know you can't do that to someone.

And the church also currently have a parliamentary inquiry happening at the moment as well.

There's a lot of cases of abuse that have been hidden, Lots, lots and lots lots of terrible, terrible stories in particular, mostly unfortunately targeting women, mothers in very violent, abusive relationships and all types of abuse.

In honor of her brother and the many women and children who had suffered at the hand of the community she'd once called home, Bella dared to cast light into a place shrouded in darkness.

Yet even as she exposed its shadows, her heart remained tangled in conflicting emotions.

I didn't feel any guilt about what I had done, but I felt a lot of shame, and I actually felt a lot of anger towards Luke at the fact that I almost felt like he wouldn't do it because his image was everything to him, that I was forced to do it, and that I had to bear the brunt of that, not only bear the brunt of that, but bear the brunt of the trauma of the whole marriage, and then to walk away being looked at as someone that was a low character, person that wasn't loyal to her marriage, which wasn't who I was, and I knew I had to carry that, and I did hold shame over that.

That's something I've worked on.

It's still not something I'm proud of.

But until you're in that position, until you feel like you have no other option, it's very hard to describe how difficult it is to make a decision like that, when you feel like you're forced into a corner with no other option.

I've done a lot of therapy.

I still struggle with it a lot.

I still struggle with setting boundaries.

It's very uncomfortable for me.

I've never been told how to do that, so I let bad behaviors slide because I think as women growing up, and even those women that have experienced that abuse as well, you are taught that you don't make anyone else feel uncomfortable, so you put up with a lot of bad behavior, and that runs into different areas and aspects of your life.

This is like thirty years of conditioning for me that I need to undo and I'm only really like three years into it, which seems like a while, but it's really not in the scheme of things, And I think what has been the most beneficial thing is actually distance is distance from the church and is distanced from Luke.

With the bail conditions.

Now he's unable to communicate with me.

And it has been amazing because every time the relationship between us still isn't great and I would revert back, I just did because I haven't had the time and the space to be able to heal from him.

I go back to who I was with him, which was someone that is very meek, who doesn't stand up for herself, who will put him before me and his needs before me instantly.

And the only way I think you can break out of that is to have good people around you.

I have like a reference grip of a few friends that I'll go to and I go, hey, I got this text message.

Am I in the wrong here?

Because I'm confused because I live a lot confused with what is right, what's not right?

Am I being selfish?

Am I just standing up for myself?

I'm not sure.

I don't know, and I think that's only going to be a matter of time to heal that.

But also that space and distance as well.

I look at the behavior of all of these men and it's very clear to me they're just very misogynistic and it was all self serving.

So it's not even biblical, Like if you look in the if you actually understand the Bible, none of it's biblical.

It's been news to controls.

Then I go, all right, well, then this idea of like having a woman and she's not allowed to do this thing, that's for their own benefit.

And I think a great way to scare people is to say you do this and then this is what happens.

And so just remembering that, and then also to me, my husband broke my marriage vows very early on in the marriage.

To them, they don't perceive it that way, but to me, he has.

He's broken his marriage vows to me.

So it probably took a good couple of years, like I'd say, only like really last year, I reckon.

I felt kind of okay about it.

And as for her relationship with her son.

I didn't have my son for I saw a couple of times, but really was about a two to three month period.

Yeah, it was terrible, and that was mostly because I was just living in people's lounge dreams.

It took a lot of rebuilding with my son.

He felt comfort with his dad because his dad was in his home.

He was the consistent one.

He didn't understand what was going on.

He also had said some not so nice things about me.

But what has been the greatest, the most beautiful thing to come out of all of this, my son is I can't even put into words like the joy that he is everything good in the world to me.

He has saved me selfishly.

But more than anything, he is my opportunity to almost I don't want to say lived through him, because it's not that.

But I can give him the life that I wanted, and that is such a healing gift.

I can love him unconditionally.

He doesn't need to perform for my love.

He doesn't need to embey certain rules for my love.

He can mess up and make a mistake and I will be there and I'll say, hey, I'll kick him up the bum when he needs it, and I'll tell him, you know that's not on.

But I'll also tell him that I think he is the most incredible, wonderful human being, and I will always love him regardless of what he does.

He will always have that from me, and that being able to give him that love has been so healing and it is such a gift that I am so grateful for and I know that through the stress of the past couple of years, I've really struggled with my mental health, and I know that he's kept me here.

I just love him.

I think going back to having that initial love with someone, when you fall in love, you love without limits, and I think it's such a beautiful thing.

And I since getting out of my marriage, I really struggled with romantic relationships.

But I can give that unconditional love with no limits to my son.

And there is nothing purer, there is nothing more beautiful, and there is nothing more fulfilling.

But Bella has continued to suffer one unbearable wound that's been the silence from her own family.

We don't have a relationship anymore.

That's been probably actually the hardest thing out of all of this is losing my family.

Has been very challenging, but there's not much I can do about it.

I hope to one day get to a place where I think I heal enough to be able to accept it for what it is.

But at the moment, it's just it's too hurtful for me to see it as a rejection.

It's just hurts.

She's had the same response from the church.

I haven't heard a peep from anyone, from the pastors, from no one.

I've not heard a word from anyone they Luke.

I believe they helped him with a lawyer.

He kept the house, he's kept everything, and has felt very entitled to all of that.

I think by hearing these other stories of what women have gone through, there's a sense of real anger within me.

I feel absolutely infuriated at the idea that women are looked at as almost second class citizens, that we are deserving or need to put up with behavior like that, and the men have been protected.

It is a boys club.

Men are protected.

It just so much.

And hearing the harrowing stories of what women have gone through even longer.

Being in marriage is over twenty years, and that's a massive chunk of their life that has been taken now, and it's angers me a lot, like it's not okay.

Everything as well came from fear.

So that's how they could control where.

I think, like, if you give people options to make a decision for themselves, they can go, oh, they can go either way.

But with this, it was like, you won't do that, Well, we're gonna shame you and you'll see you're gonna burn in hell?

So what do you want to do.

Above all else?

Through every trial and every loss, and despite everything, the one thing that has endured is Bella's faith.

I feel pretty like traumatized by religion.

I still believe in God one hundred percent.

I believe in God.

I think unfortunately, what a lot of us humans do is we come in and we ruin things that are beautiful, and I think religion, some religions, are used to control people and that's not what I believe God wants for us.

So I still have a faith to a degree what that looks like.

I'm still working out.

I can't step for in a church.

I don't really want to, and I don't feel ready to do anything like that.

I also don't feel like I need to at this point.

But I've been able to separate God from religion, and I think that's been really important because I think I merged the two where what I see that particular church that I went to as a very controlling place that does wanted to control, and I don't believe God wants that for us.

I think that He's made us all for a purpose to live at our own purpose, to make a positive impact.

And to live our lives and to enjoy our lives, which is we are allowed to be happy and make our own decisions and not have other people make decisions for us and feel like we need to live within this very small box in order to quote unquote please him.

My hope for my future is to get to a place where I'm not as fearful of love, that I can accept love more freely.

I am very good at giving love and very hesitant and hyper vigilant of a lot of people and why they would want to love me, because I actually don't think.

I think I've definitely been loved by my parents, but I don't think I've ever been unconditionally loved, and I want that.

I hope that one day I can welcome that into my life.

My goal at the moment is to just love my son and to just give him as much as I possibly can, and for us to make memories.

I mean, I've actually had the best time over the past couple of years.

I've done a little living, I've made up for lost time.

I've actually had a ball and it's been great.

I've lived so much life in the past couple of years, and I've it has been a real struggle, Like it's been the worst time of my life, but the best time of my life, and it's exciting.

I try to look at life as a bit of an adventure.

I feel like I've lived a few different lives and I am excited for the future and I just hope to get to the point where I'm accepting of love.

That's what I would love to be able to receive and to also like, I would still love a family and to have a family unit, but more than anything, just that self love and having a really strong relationship with my son as well.

Yeah, I'm free, That's what it feels like.

I'm finally free.

Everyone Has an Ex is a Minti Media production and proudly part of the Mum and mea Network.

This episode is written and produced by Linda Scott.

Interview conducted and episode narrated by me Georgia Love.

If you have a story you'd like to share, email us at podcast at momamea dot com dot au.

You can support us by following the show in your favorite podcast app and leaving a five star review.

We'll see you for the next episode.