Your article has enabled me to feel lucky that the abuse I received in two relationships was nothing as compared to the example you examined. I was able to extricate myself fairly easy in each of the relationships.

I know I was drawn into the relationships with these two women due to being a survivor of childhood ritual sexual abuse. Revealing and calling out the perpetrators after having received multiple flashbacks in my late 30s was too devastating for me to bear in the 90s. Now the perps are all dead and some had already died when I had begun experiencing the memories.

Shame is much more difficult to deal with than embarrassment. It cuts to the bone.