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Money Kept MeTrapped in a Marriage

How financial abuse stole my freedom

Colleen Sheehy Orme
5 min readFeb 21, 2020
Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

My husband doesn’t believe I will ever leave him.

“Why would you leave the Golden Goose?” he asks. A self-inflated nod to ‘his’ financial success.

But I do leave — believing this will free my children from a bad situation.

Or perhaps I should say ‘I try to leave.’

I retain an attorney to file for divorce. Unwittingly beginning a terrifying five-year journey.

The starting point of the divorce avalanche.

Grocery and school supply money is immediately withheld.

My ten-year-old Volvo is left at the service station for weeks at a time. I am at his mercy for getting my kids where they need to go and forced to borrow my neighbor’s car.

My husband says, “Get a job.”

I say, “I need a car to get to work.”

He says, “You wanted to leave me, you get yourself a car.”

I say, “I need a car to get a job and I need a job to buy a car.”

He refuses to send our oldest son back to college. Shortly after, I begin to receive foreclosure notices. Our pediatrician’s…

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Colleen Sheehy Orme
Colleen Sheehy Orme

Written by Colleen Sheehy Orme

National Relationship Columnist, Journalist & Former Business Columnist. I cover love, life, & relationships— #WomanResurrected colleen.sheehy.orme@gmail.com

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