June 2, 2022 • 32 mins
Jenifer learns more about Betrayal Trauma with her coach and expert Kim Gould MSW. Kim explains the ways Betrayal Trauma impacts its victims and how they search for safety. Jen shares Spencer’s jailhouse letters which place a surprising amount of culpability on the women with whom he had affairs. A found text chain drops a bombshell.
Kim Gould, MSW provides her therapeutic coaching services at The Center for Relational Healing in Los Angeles (www.lacrh.com) and Life & Intimacy Coaching practice (kimgouldcoaching.com)
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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,
(00:22):
here's episode seven. This podcast discusses sexual assault. Please take
care while listening.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
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
(01:19):
sending letters from jail telling her how sorry he was.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Jennifer understood she was experiencing trauma. She sought help from wise,
empathetic voices that helped her find her footing.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
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.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
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.
Speaker 5 (02:53):
So you're literally like a little baby trying to to
walk and talk and make sense of things in a
nonsensical world.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
And what feels like a very dangerous world.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
In the beginning, especially, I walked around feeling like there
was an elephant standing on my chest.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
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
(03:41):
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
the brain are sending you into fight or freeze. So
(04:04):
many behaviors come from seeking safety, the being a detective
and checking emails and texts all night long for hours
and hours and not able to sleep. This would look like, oh,
the betrayed partner or the woman who is going crazy.
And there are unfortunately times where women have been misdiagnosed.
(04:30):
As an example of this, many women have been labeled
as having a personality disorder when they are really just
adapting to this earth shattering trauma and did not even
have these symptoms before the event, and every single thing
we see a betrayed partner doing is safety seeking behavior.
Speaker 6 (04:50):
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
(05:11):
are going to ask, how could she not know? How
did you not see any signs? And I just didn't.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
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,
(05:45):
were astounded. I'm surprised, and a very smart women and
very intelligent, intuitive women. These are not women who have
had their blinders on. What we're talking about is the
acting out partners being so unbelievably skilled at gaslighting and
(06:10):
manipulation and such severe compartmentalization in the brain to be
able to go out during the day and do certain
things that are terrible and totally against the value system
of your marriage, and then to come home and act
like he loves you and things are fine. I trust
(06:30):
that Spence was really, really practiced and successful at that,
because you are a very intelligent woman, and you're not naive,
and you didn't see it, and most betrayed partners don't.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
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
(07:07):
were leading Spence out the front door of our house, handcuffed,
I yelled out to them, he's a good person. Even
after finding out that he just committed this awful, awful
crime against a young person, I still needed them to
(07:30):
know he was a good person, because in my head
he was somebody completely different. My reality was shattered and
it had not registered. And I'm still struggling to understand
the way he was with me and the way that
I know he behaved and treated many, many, many other women.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
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,
(08:21):
and maybe there was this other part of him that
he didn't know how to express.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
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
(09:12):
thankful that I will always have hope that my future
could possibly have you in it. Jennifer. I'm thankful for you.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
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.
Speaker 6 (09:42):
Knowing what I do about Spence's behavior now, I feel
like there was this compulsion that he just couldn't control.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
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
(10:26):
act My answer is still absolutely no. My problem was
at a much more intimate level, attention seeking, approval seeking.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
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
(11:12):
a little while. So it's whether someone feels too much,
feels too little, and basically doesn't know how to have
healthy coping mechanisms in life. But really, what makes something
an addiction or a compulsive disorder is that the person
keeps doing it again and again and again, and it
(11:33):
is bringing a lot of harm and dysfunction into their
lives and into others, and they keep doing it and
they're not able to stop.
Speaker 6 (11:42):
Do you think people with these kind of addictions or
compulsions look for a certain type of person to prey on.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
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
(12:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Hearing Kim say this, maybe think of hope. In Jennifer's front,
they said almost the same thing.
Speaker 7 (12:32):
I got this text message, well, you're beautiful. Here's an
attractive guy telling me I'm pretty.
Speaker 8 (12:40):
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.
Speaker 6 (12:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Here is exactly what he wrote about Jennifer's friend, the
one Spencer had sex with at the wine bar.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
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.
Speaker 8 (14:00):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Of his pants.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
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
(14:41):
my life was over. I was so happy.
Speaker 6 (14:49):
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
(15:10):
can't imagine if that person was around to be able
to lie about the situation.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
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.
Speaker 7 (15:54):
I really thought that he loved me. He had me
convinced that he did. I mean, he told.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
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
(16:24):
giving me the attention I was still wanting.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
In that same letter, Spencer goes on.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
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
(16:52):
and some kind of thing I wanted. After each time
I was unfaithful, I felt disgusting and hurtful to.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
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.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
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
(17:38):
denial and what he believes.
Speaker 9 (17:43):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
He wrote to Jen about the sexual Saul victim as
a warning, it is disturbing.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
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
(18:23):
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
of nowhere. She also started coming by at the end
of school, asking random questions for no reason. She then
(18:45):
started lingering. At the end of the club I started
to sense something. 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 and going home?
I said, that's too bad, she responded. I was in
shock and surprise by her closeness. Then I remember a kiss.
(19:08):
It was so very consensual.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
His account certainly differs from the sexual assault victim's acount
on how they first became involved.
Speaker 10 (19:19):
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
(19:39):
maybe we could talk about it and that would be that.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Spencer continued his account of the story in his letter.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
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.
Speaker 10 (20:01):
What I remember feeling most was really confused.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
It didn't feel.
Speaker 10 (20:07):
Right, you know. I expressed to him that I was
a virgin, and I don't know if I was ready
for anything.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
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
(20:48):
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
she was a tea. Was she also the pursuer another
girl making eyes at him? Here are some of the
messages he sent to that student. As a warning, these
(21:11):
messages may be hard to hear.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
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?
Speaker 3 (21:31):
One day?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
And when he didn't get the result he wanted, he
tried a different tactic her adulthood.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
You're incredibly pretty and mature. You are a woman, are
you not?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
And this?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Do you ever think about me? In the flesh?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
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
(22:42):
these young women, it was released through those endorphins and
the dopermine and keeping him in the addiction cycle.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Another detail that caught our attention was the way he
described a fantasy to the student what their first kiss
would be like.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
It sounded eerily similar the way he described the sexual
assault victim in his letter to Jennifer.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
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
(24:10):
last issue in the case, with which Spencer took great umbrage.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
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
(24:36):
was never a reason, none for me to treat anyone
like she claims i'd treated her.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
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.
Speaker 7 (24:58):
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.
Speaker 6 (25:09):
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
(25:31):
doesn't see the truth.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
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.
Speaker 9 (25:56):
Or even the beauty of sex.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
It's abound wounds and control and manipulation and trauma to
everyone involved, and avoidance of anything that feels like intimacy.
Speaker 6 (26:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
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
(26:51):
sex addicts heal. All those things rationalizing, minimizing, they help
her and not have to look at themselves and take
full accountability for what they've done. He has been manipulating
himself and believing all of his own lives for so
(27:13):
many years that he really can't see the difference probably
between reality and things that he's making up. There's also
this other part of him that feels like he needs
to hold onto that part that you needed to hold
on to Jim when the police took him away he
(27:33):
needs to hold on to some part of that within himself.
And even though he's done all of these things, the
part that he's holding onto so he doesn't disintegrate or
totally fall apart is they were okay with it. It
wasn't a salt.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
Do you think there's any way that Spence has healed himself.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
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
(28:16):
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
(28:38):
no people cannot hear from this level of addiction and
other compulsive behaviors without significant therapeutic help from specialists. True
recovery and hearing involves so much account bilit empathy, and compassion.
(29:04):
If Spence was deeply remorseful, maybe he would come to
you and say, you know, I'd like to pay you
back for the tens of thousands of dollars that you
needed for your coaching and your therapy. It's called making
living a mess. I mean, you wouldn't accept it, and
that would be a drop in the bucket. But I'm
(29:24):
just saying, when someone is truly healing and in recovery,
there is a very big part of them that deeply
cares about the pain and the impact that they brought
into other people's lives, and they do what they can
to try their best to clean that up.
Speaker 6 (29:42):
I can only work on myself, which is what I
have been doing now for the last few years.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
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
(30:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
On the next episode of Betrayal, Jennifer confronts Spencer.
Speaker 6 (30:35):
In one of the letters that you wrote me, you
said that you never thought after it.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Do you still feel that way?
Speaker 11 (30:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Truth.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
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
(31:27):
Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Kerry Hartman, also produced
by Ben Fetterman. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and
Jessica Crinchick. Special thanks to voice actor Todd Gans. Sound
editing and mixing done by Matt Tavecchio. Betrayal's theme was
composed by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by my Music
(31:47):
and For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Some names
have been changed to protect privacy.
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,
(00:22):
here's episode seven. This podcast discusses sexual assault. Please take
care while listening.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
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
(01:19):
sending letters from jail telling her how sorry he was.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Jennifer understood she was experiencing trauma. She sought help from wise,
empathetic voices that helped her find her footing.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
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.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
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.
Speaker 5 (02:53):
So you're literally like a little baby trying to to
walk and talk and make sense of things in a
nonsensical world.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
And what feels like a very dangerous world.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
In the beginning, especially, I walked around feeling like there
was an elephant standing on my chest.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
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
(03:41):
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
the brain are sending you into fight or freeze. So
(04:04):
many behaviors come from seeking safety, the being a detective
and checking emails and texts all night long for hours
and hours and not able to sleep. This would look like, oh,
the betrayed partner or the woman who is going crazy.
And there are unfortunately times where women have been misdiagnosed.
(04:30):
As an example of this, many women have been labeled
as having a personality disorder when they are really just
adapting to this earth shattering trauma and did not even
have these symptoms before the event, and every single thing
we see a betrayed partner doing is safety seeking behavior.
Speaker 6 (04:50):
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
(05:11):
are going to ask, how could she not know? How
did you not see any signs? And I just didn't.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
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,
(05:45):
were astounded. I'm surprised, and a very smart women and
very intelligent, intuitive women. These are not women who have
had their blinders on. What we're talking about is the
acting out partners being so unbelievably skilled at gaslighting and
(06:10):
manipulation and such severe compartmentalization in the brain to be
able to go out during the day and do certain
things that are terrible and totally against the value system
of your marriage, and then to come home and act
like he loves you and things are fine. I trust
(06:30):
that Spence was really, really practiced and successful at that,
because you are a very intelligent woman, and you're not naive,
and you didn't see it, and most betrayed partners don't.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
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
(07:07):
were leading Spence out the front door of our house, handcuffed,
I yelled out to them, he's a good person. Even
after finding out that he just committed this awful, awful
crime against a young person, I still needed them to
(07:30):
know he was a good person, because in my head
he was somebody completely different. My reality was shattered and
it had not registered. And I'm still struggling to understand
the way he was with me and the way that
I know he behaved and treated many, many, many other women.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
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,
(08:21):
and maybe there was this other part of him that
he didn't know how to express.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
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
(09:12):
thankful that I will always have hope that my future
could possibly have you in it. Jennifer. I'm thankful for you.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
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.
Speaker 6 (09:42):
Knowing what I do about Spence's behavior now, I feel
like there was this compulsion that he just couldn't control.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
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
(10:26):
act My answer is still absolutely no. My problem was
at a much more intimate level, attention seeking, approval seeking.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
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
(11:12):
a little while. So it's whether someone feels too much,
feels too little, and basically doesn't know how to have
healthy coping mechanisms in life. But really, what makes something
an addiction or a compulsive disorder is that the person
keeps doing it again and again and again, and it
(11:33):
is bringing a lot of harm and dysfunction into their
lives and into others, and they keep doing it and
they're not able to stop.
Speaker 6 (11:42):
Do you think people with these kind of addictions or
compulsions look for a certain type of person to prey on.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
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
(12:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Hearing Kim say this, maybe think of hope. In Jennifer's front,
they said almost the same thing.
Speaker 7 (12:32):
I got this text message, well, you're beautiful. Here's an
attractive guy telling me I'm pretty.
Speaker 8 (12:40):
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.
Speaker 6 (12:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Here is exactly what he wrote about Jennifer's friend, the
one Spencer had sex with at the wine bar.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
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.
Speaker 8 (14:00):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Of his pants.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
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
(14:41):
my life was over. I was so happy.
Speaker 6 (14:49):
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
(15:10):
can't imagine if that person was around to be able
to lie about the situation.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
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.
Speaker 7 (15:54):
I really thought that he loved me. He had me
convinced that he did. I mean, he told.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
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
(16:24):
giving me the attention I was still wanting.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
In that same letter, Spencer goes on.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
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
(16:52):
and some kind of thing I wanted. After each time
I was unfaithful, I felt disgusting and hurtful to.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
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.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
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
(17:38):
denial and what he believes.
Speaker 9 (17:43):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
He wrote to Jen about the sexual Saul victim as
a warning, it is disturbing.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
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
(18:23):
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
of nowhere. She also started coming by at the end
of school, asking random questions for no reason. She then
(18:45):
started lingering. At the end of the club I started
to sense something. 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 and going home?
I said, that's too bad, she responded. I was in
shock and surprise by her closeness. Then I remember a kiss.
(19:08):
It was so very consensual.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
His account certainly differs from the sexual assault victim's acount
on how they first became involved.
Speaker 10 (19:19):
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
(19:39):
maybe we could talk about it and that would be that.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Spencer continued his account of the story in his letter.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
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.
Speaker 10 (20:01):
What I remember feeling most was really confused.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
It didn't feel.
Speaker 10 (20:07):
Right, you know. I expressed to him that I was
a virgin, and I don't know if I was ready
for anything.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
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
(20:48):
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
she was a tea. Was she also the pursuer another
girl making eyes at him? Here are some of the
messages he sent to that student. As a warning, these
(21:11):
messages may be hard to hear.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
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?
Speaker 3 (21:31):
One day?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
And when he didn't get the result he wanted, he
tried a different tactic her adulthood.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
You're incredibly pretty and mature. You are a woman, are
you not?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
And this?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Do you ever think about me? In the flesh?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
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
(22:42):
these young women, it was released through those endorphins and
the dopermine and keeping him in the addiction cycle.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Another detail that caught our attention was the way he
described a fantasy to the student what their first kiss
would be like.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
It sounded eerily similar the way he described the sexual
assault victim in his letter to Jennifer.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
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
(24:10):
last issue in the case, with which Spencer took great umbrage.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
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
(24:36):
was never a reason, none for me to treat anyone
like she claims i'd treated her.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
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.
Speaker 7 (24:58):
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.
Speaker 6 (25:09):
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
(25:31):
doesn't see the truth.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
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.
Speaker 9 (25:56):
Or even the beauty of sex.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
It's abound wounds and control and manipulation and trauma to
everyone involved, and avoidance of anything that feels like intimacy.
Speaker 6 (26:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
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
(26:51):
sex addicts heal. All those things rationalizing, minimizing, they help
her and not have to look at themselves and take
full accountability for what they've done. He has been manipulating
himself and believing all of his own lives for so
(27:13):
many years that he really can't see the difference probably
between reality and things that he's making up. There's also
this other part of him that feels like he needs
to hold onto that part that you needed to hold
on to Jim when the police took him away he
(27:33):
needs to hold on to some part of that within himself.
And even though he's done all of these things, the
part that he's holding onto so he doesn't disintegrate or
totally fall apart is they were okay with it. It
wasn't a salt.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
Do you think there's any way that Spence has healed himself.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
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
(28:16):
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
(28:38):
no people cannot hear from this level of addiction and
other compulsive behaviors without significant therapeutic help from specialists. True
recovery and hearing involves so much account bilit empathy, and compassion.
(29:04):
If Spence was deeply remorseful, maybe he would come to
you and say, you know, I'd like to pay you
back for the tens of thousands of dollars that you
needed for your coaching and your therapy. It's called making
living a mess. I mean, you wouldn't accept it, and
that would be a drop in the bucket. But I'm
(29:24):
just saying, when someone is truly healing and in recovery,
there is a very big part of them that deeply
cares about the pain and the impact that they brought
into other people's lives, and they do what they can
to try their best to clean that up.
Speaker 6 (29:42):
I can only work on myself, which is what I
have been doing now for the last few years.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
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
(30:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
On the next episode of Betrayal, Jennifer confronts Spencer.
Speaker 6 (30:35):
In one of the letters that you wrote me, you
said that you never thought after it.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Do you still feel that way?
Speaker 11 (30:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Truth.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
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
(31:27):
Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Kerry Hartman, also produced
by Ben Fetterman. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and
Jessica Crinchick. Special thanks to voice actor Todd Gans. Sound
editing and mixing done by Matt Tavecchio. Betrayal's theme was
composed by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by my Music
(31:47):
and For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Some names
have been changed to protect privacy.
Host
Andrea Gunning
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