Recovery | EP 7 | Jenifer's Story

Hi, Betrayal listeners. This week, we just wanted to quickly drop a note to our listeners and say thank you. We've been taking the time to read through all of your emails that you submited at betrayalpod at gmail dot com because so many of you have reached out with your own stories, questions, and feedback. You plan to release bonus content with updates and resources, so stay tuned. But first, here's episode seven. This podcast discusses sexual assault. Please take care while listening.

I was packing up to go and was in my office and she surprised me. I think she said something like, what are you doing going home? I said, that's too bad, she responded. I was in shock and surprise by her closeness. Then I remember a kiss. It was so very and sensual.

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal Episode seven, Recovery. In the first year after Spencer's arrest, Jennifer fought hard to move forward and heal, all the while Spencer was sending letters from jail telling her how sorry he was.

I want to restore our marriage and I'll do whatever it takes for you to believe me about that. I promised myself to be real with you about my true feelings, and that promise also makes me say that I one hundred percent believe we can get through this.

Jennifer understood she was experiencing trauma. She sought help from wise, empathetic voices that helped her find her footing.

My name is Kim Gould. I am a betrayal trauma specialist and coach. It is my deepest passion to help people heal from trauma and reclaim their lives. Do this profound work at the Center for Relational Healing in Los Angeles and then in my own intimacy coaching practice, I help people take that healing to the next level.

Kim, I get so emotional when I think about you and the part that you've played on this journey with me, and I'm just really, really grateful. You know, when all this happened, I didn't know betrayal trauma was a thing, and it's.

A thing, certainly, yes, it is what we commonly refer to as a shattered worldview. Betrayal trauma basically takes away everything that you thought you knew to be true or safe or just in the world.

So you're literally like a little baby trying to to walk and talk and make sense of things in a nonsensical world.

And what feels like a very dangerous world.

In the beginning, especially, I walked around feeling like there was an elephant standing on my chest.

Yeah, it certainly is physiological, emotional, spiritual, cognitive, and mental. The trio trauma feels like and it does hijack the person going through it, and it did that to you at the beginning as well. Physiologically, a large part of that is because your nervous system has been shot, there's no place to find safety, and your nervous system will send you into a hypervigilant state, and the body and

I relate to that so much, and I think that's why I'm so consumed by needing to know who it was that I married, because I I didn't know him. I didn't know a whole side to him, and that's so scary. Honestly, my biggest fear coming out of this and sharing this story with everyone is I know people are going to ask, how could she not know? How did you not see any signs? And I just didn't.

Probably at least fifty percent of the betrayed partners I work with say it's like being with Jacko and Hie. These are not people who, for the most part, were mean or on caring to their partners. The majority of the women that I've worked with similar to you, Jen, were astounded. I'm surprised, and a very smart women and very intelligent, intuitive women. These are not women who have

You Listen to my conversation with the student I did. It was very touching talking with her and the other two women. That's what this whole journey has been about. It's really helped me understand the other side of this person that I thought I really knew. As the police were leading Spence out the front door of our house, handcuffed,

You know, I haven't been able to do any kind of sess or diagnosis or anything like that clinically. But I would guess that there are other things going on besides addiction, like what it feels to me like there were splinters, like of his personality he learned, you know how he was supposed to be a good, healthy husband, and maybe there was this other part of him that he didn't know how to express.

In the beginning, all jen had to make sense of her life, and all the lies were long confessional letters and apologies from Spencer. She wasn't falling for it, but that didn't stop him from attempting to manipulate her from his jail cell. That first Thanksgiving, he sent her a three page letter on all the things he was thankful for.

I'm thankful for getting to marry my dream girl. I'm thankful that you said yes. I'm thankful that one day there's a chance that you might forgive me. I'm thankful that at some point I might get a shot at life again. I'm so very thankful for second chances. I'm thankful that I will always have hope that my future could possibly have you in it. Jennifer. I'm thankful for you.

There wasn't going to be reconciliation. The apologies were hollow. She didn't trust him. How could she. Her eyes were wide open, and she wanted to see who he really was once and for all. Maybe then she could understand what he did and why this happened to her.

Knowing what I do about Spence's behavior now, I feel like there was this compulsion that he just couldn't control.

In another letters I'm from Jail, Spencer theorized that it must have been his need for attention that caused his problems, long before he and Jennifer reconnected after college.

I remember once getting a message from a woman saying she was thinking of me. It was such a rush I had never had that that became my search. This is all backstory. It's what I've discovered with so much thinking, meditation, and of course prayer. You asked me when the cops were coming to get me if I was a sex act My answer is still absolutely no. My problem was at a much more intimate level, attention seeking, approval seeking.

You can look at sex addiction just like you would with any other addiction, gambling, food, heroin, alcohol. Somewhere along the line they learned that if I have this thing, I'm going to have relief from pain, or it could be the oppressing I'm actually going to feel live for a little while. So it's whether someone feels too much, feels too little, and basically doesn't know how to have

Do you think people with these kind of addictions or compulsions look for a certain type of person to prey on.

You know, there's a big piece of this, which, in my opinion, is so deeply connected to our patriarchal society that teaches us that women are the most value when they are beautiful and getting attention from men, and they are trained that way from childhood. And here's, you know, a charismatic man who is giving them attention, and this feeds their own need for validation, making them so vulnerable to glooming and the way they are going about trying to find worth in this world.

Hearing Kim say this, maybe think of hope. In Jennifer's front, they said almost the same thing.

I got this text message, well, you're beautiful. Here's an attractive guy telling me I'm pretty.

I was stressed out, didn't feel pretty all the time, because you know, I had kids hanging off me, breastfeeding. I was greasy, maybe showered every couple days, maybe washed up with baby wipes. But then I would always hear, you know, like, you're so beautiful, You're really really well rounded, You're a great mom.

But he says that he never sought after any of this. He says it was always the women that were giving him the eye or letting him know that it was okay, when in fact, I have so much communication that proves otherwise.

Here is exactly what he wrote about Jennifer's friend, the one Spencer had sex with at the wine bar.

To my memory, she was staring at me a lot at the bar. I'm sure I noticed it and tried to dismiss it as just my imagination. I honestly have no idea how it actually started. I just don't. It's not really important anyway, It's just not.

It was important to Jennifer, and it seems Spencer had amnesia when it came to how the affairs started, but the women he remembered specific details.

I went into the bathroom and when I came out, he was there and mentioned, like, you know that we have this thing together. You know you're feeling is too right? And then he came in for a kiss, then held my hand and touched his crotch with my hand on the outside.

Of his pants.

What is is how it continued? I guess she had to be a willing participant. There were times when you or her husband were out of town, or when she might just linger at the bar. I can't give you details because I can't remember them. When it was over with her, you can't imagine my relief that problem in my life was over. I was so happy.

I think one of the biggest blessings of this situation was that Spence was arrested and has remained locked up. I haven't had to face him or deal with it except for in letters. It's truly a blessing because I can't imagine if that person was around to be able to lie about the situation.

Essentially, I absolutely agree his absence and removal from your space and from your life. While so painful allowed you to hear more quickly, and the extreme of his behing fears made things really definitive and clear for you.

Jennifer took note of how often he used the word love with other women. It's done. She pressed Spencer about that, especially with his colleague in the Air Force.

I really thought that he loved me. He had me convinced that he did. I mean, he told.

Me, Hope. I know you're really wondering how I used the word love with her. I don't know how I ever did or could have. I do not and never did love her. She's the same as anyone else. Whenever I did use that word, I can only assume it was to reciprocate her using it, or to maybe keep giving me the attention I was still wanting.

In that same letter, Spencer goes on.

To say any time spent with Hope was never romantic, anticipated or anything like that. Allowing these things to happen was just that, allowing Hope that I never had a thing that anyone could see or detect. It was that cheap and meaningless. I imagine it happened just as with the other one. Dumb looks that were accepted as attention and some kind of thing I wanted. After each time I was unfaithful, I felt disgusting and hurtful to.

All involve allowing these things to happen. Almost sounds like his participation was passive. However, each woman who has spoken has consistently shared that Spencer was clear about his intentions.

And what's sad to me is that in his letters that he writes, he really minimalizes the situations with the victim. It was consensual. She was looking at me, she made eyes at me. I find that there's a lot of denial and what he believes.

When people have built up these lies inside of themselves and the ways that they operated in the world for so long, it's hard for them to know what's really true and what's not.

He wrote to Jen about the sexual Saul victim as a warning, it is disturbing.

I had never ever looked at her in any inappropriate way, not at all. I tell you this so that you know how it all started. In fact, probably for the last ten to fifteen years, I have not looked at any teen girl as anything but that a teen girl. I had gotten older. There were no fantasies. That is one hundred percent true. In May, I can remember the students starting to stare at me longer looks more often. She was being very obvious and it started coming out

His account certainly differs from the sexual assault victim's acount on how they first became involved.

He had texted me that he had feelings for me. I remember feeling I don't know. I guess Shack it's an understatement. That was the first time the boundary was crossed, and he told me that he wanted to talk about it in person, and I agreed to because I thought maybe we could talk about it and that would be that.

Spencer continued his account of the story in his letter.

She was very aggressive most of the time. I was sure it was something she was super familiar with. In other words, I was never taking some leading role, if that makes sense. I know it was all my fault matter how she was.

What I remember feeling most was really confused.

It didn't feel.

Right, you know. I expressed to him that I was a virgin, and I don't know if I was ready for anything.

Spencer pushed for his court appointed attorney to argue his account of the victim's complicity in the case. His attorney wisely reminded Spencer that remorse was his best legal strategy. While reviewing all of the raw materials for the series, our team made a shocking discovery. In twenty fifteen, the same year that he started sending text messages to the sexual assault victim, Spencer made a hard play for at least one other student at l High School. And yes

You are so out of my league. Busy tonight, come by the bar. You're the focus of all my erotica. What about hanging after school?

One day?

We'd get away from this place. Well, since we both trust each other, I'm not worried. I think it'd be fun and totally cool, no issues, stress or drama.

And when he didn't get the result he wanted, he tried a different tactic her adulthood.

You're incredibly pretty and mature. You are a woman, are you not?

And this?

Do you ever think about me? In the flesh?

The text Spencer sent the other student were wildly inappropriate and upsetting, and while we did not see evidence that a sexual assault occurred in these tax exchanges, we did share this information with law enforcement.

Everybody gets these kinds of dopamine hair to fare on Facebook or Instagram, and they get a hard or alike, and these things start to train the nervous system like oh, I like that. We want more of those pleasure hormones running through our bodies. So every time he was texting, every time Spence was emailing and getting a response from these young women, it was released through those endorphins and the dopermine and keeping him in the addiction cycle.

Another detail that caught our attention was the way he described a fantasy to the student what their first kiss would be like.

I keep seeing this image of you and I hanging out wherever, it doesn't matter. But then at some point you lean into me as I'm talking and simply kiss me, almost like you couldn't wait any longer and couldn't wait for me to move towards you.

It sounded eerily similar the way he described the sexual assault victim in his letter to Jennifer.

I was packing up to go and was in my office and she surprised me. I think she said something like, what are you doing going home? I said, that's too bad, she responded. I was in shock and surprise by her closeness. Then I remember a kiss. It was so very consensual.

His fantasy with the other student, the one he attempted to seduce, was the same as his account to Jennifer of what happened with the sexual assault victim. A young girl simply found him irresistible, but the reality was quite different. The victim did not initiate the relationship. There was one last issue in the case, with which Spencer took great umbrage.

I would never, could never do anything to my accuser that would associate with the word assault. I will not leave court without the DA and judge knowing any different, Jen, I have never thought to force myself on anyone ever. I sure as hell wasn't going to do that with a student. Clearly, I was already sleeping around, so there was never a reason, none for me to treat anyone like she claims i'd treated her.

Here, he argues that with the number of partners, the availability of women he had, what reason would he have to be forceful? The victim must be lying. Then I thought about the words we heard earlier from Hope.

Looking back, I remember for a couple of times where you know, he would kind of put his hands around my throat and push down. That kind of caught me off guard.

Hearing that story from her, it's heart wrenching. She talks about how he was forceful with her at times, but then in a letter, he says to me, I would never I just feel like in his brain he really doesn't see the truth.

Again, I haven't been able to do any kind of sess man or diagnosis, but I would say that having that control and being able to manipulate and coerce was part of what fed him. None of it is about love or kindness, or connection.

Or even the beauty of sex.

It's abound wounds and control and manipulation and trauma to everyone involved, and avoidance of anything that feels like intimacy.

It's been about two and a half years since I spoke with Spence, and I really am curious about whether or not he still feels the same way in those letters that he wrote to me.

If that is all still the case, and that means very little healing has happened, because those are the beginning stages of what someone needs to face in order to heal, and those things are all things that also allow the addiction cycle to continue. We work with those cognitive distortions in therapy and coaching when we're trying to help the sex addicts heal. All those things rationalizing, minimizing, they help her and not have to look at themselves and take

Do you think there's any way that Spence has healed himself.

From my vast clinical experience, it takes a lot of hard recovery work, coaching and therapy groups, going through the twelve steps making amends. It's a long journey, but one of the first steps is being in some kind of recovery group where it will start to break down the lies and the identity that you've been telling yourself all along. I do believe greatly in the power of healing, and no people cannot hear from this level of addiction and

I can only work on myself, which is what I have been doing now for the last few years.

You've gone through one of the most traumatizing things I've ever heard of, and you who did that deep work of learning how to heal yourself every day so that you can come out to the world and say this happened, this is my story. It affected me and affected other women too. I'm hoping to heal those other women by doing this, and it's been such an honor to support you and be a part of your healing.

On the next episode of Betrayal, Jennifer confronts Spencer.

In one of the letters that you wrote me, you said that you never thought after it.

Do you still feel that way?

Well, yes, it's just an opportunity would present itself and then before I knew it, I was pursuing it. I wasn't lucky you got away with it. I was unlucky that I was getting away with it. It be better for it to all go on to ship the first time.

Truth.

If you'd like to reach out to the Betrayal team, email us at Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show was executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Kerry Hartman, also produced by Ben Fetterman. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and