I keep a therapy journal. My therapist suggested it three years ago when I started working through childhood trauma and anxiety issues. It’s nothing fancy—just a plain black notebook where I write down thoughts between sessions, process difficult emotions, and track patterns in my thinking.
I’ve always kept it in my nightstand drawer. The same drawer where I keep my books, my reading glasses, and other personal items. It never occurred to me to hide it. Why would I? This was my home. My bedroom. My marriage.
Last Tuesday night, during the worst fight we’ve had in our eight years together, my husband David said something that made my blood run cold.
“Maybe if you dealt with your abandonment issues like your therapist keeps telling you to, you wouldn’t be so fucking paranoid about everything I do.”
I froze mid-sentence. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me. You’re projecting your childhood abandonment trauma onto our marriage, and it’s exhausting.”
My abandonment trauma. The exact phrase from my therapy notes. The specific terminology my therapist and I had been using to describe the feelings I was working through regarding my father leaving when I was eight.
“How do you know about that?” My voice came out whisper-quiet.
He realized his mistake immediately. I watched his face change as he understood what he’d just revealed.
“David. How do you know the specific term my therapist uses?”
Silence.
“Have you been reading my therapy journal?”
More silence. Then: “I was looking for the insurance card in your nightstand and I saw it. I just… I glanced at a few pages.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. A few weeks ago?”
“How many times?”
He looked away. “Does it matter?”
That’s when I knew. It wasn’t once. It wasn’t an accident. He’d been reading my most private thoughts, my vulnerabilities, my therapeutic work—and he’d been storing it all away to use as ammunition.
The Violation Unpacked
I left the bedroom and went to my nightstand. My hands shook as I opened the drawer and pulled out the journal. I started flipping through pages, looking for the entries I remembered writing.
August 15th: An entry about feeling anxious when David stayed late at work without texting. How my therapist had pointed out that my father used “working late” as an excuse before he left, and how I was unconsciously applying that pattern to David. How I knew intellectually that David wasn’t my father, but the anxiety response was still there.
September 3rd: Notes about a session where I’d cried discussing how hard it was to ask for emotional support. How I’d learned as a child that needing things made people leave. How I was working on believing I deserved to have needs in my marriage.
September 20th: A vulnerable entry about my body image issues and how they connected to my mother’s constant criticism growing up. How I still heard her voice sometimes when I looked in the mirror.
October 8th: Processing a fight David and I had about my anxiety. How my therapist suggested I might be seeking reassurance in unhealthy ways. How I needed to work on self-soothing instead of constantly asking David if we were okay.
Page after page of my rawest, most vulnerable thoughts. The things I was too afraid to say out loud even in therapy sometimes, so I wrote them down first. The ugly, unprocessed emotions I was working through before they became healthier, more balanced perspectives.
And David had read all of it.
I walked back into the living room where he was sitting on the couch, head in his hands.
“The abandonment issues,” I said flatly. “That was from August 15th. You quoted my therapist almost word for word.”
He didn’t deny it.
“What else? What else from my journal have you used against me?”
“I wasn’t using it against you—”
“Two weeks ago, when we fought about me asking if you still loved me, you said I was ‘seeking reassurance in unhealthy ways’ and needed to learn to ‘self-soothe.’ That’s verbatim from my October 8th entry. You literally quoted my own therapeutic homework back at me like it was relationship advice you came up with.”
His face went red. “I was trying to help—”
“Help? You were weaponizing my therapy! You took the things I’m actively working on in counseling and used them to shut me down during arguments!”
“That’s not what I was doing,” he insisted. “I read it because I wanted to understand you better. To know what you were going through so I could be a better husband.”
“Then why didn’t you just ask me? Why did you have to violate my privacy and read my most intimate thoughts without permission?”
“Because you don’t tell me things!” His voice rose. “You go to therapy every week, you write in that journal for hours sometimes, and I have no idea what’s going on in your head! I felt shut out of your healing process!”
“So you read my private journal? That was your solution?”
“I wanted to understand—”
“You wanted ammunition.” The realization hit me fully. “You’ve been reading about my insecurities and then using them to win arguments. When I express a fear or concern, you throw my own therapeutic language back at me to make me doubt myself. That’s not understanding, David. That’s manipulation.”
Connecting the Dots
Once I knew what to look for, I started remembering other fights with new clarity.
Three weeks ago, when I’d gotten upset about him canceling our date night last minute, he’d said: “This is about control, isn’t it? You have control issues from your childhood.” Control issues from my childhood—a topic I’d written extensively about in September after a breakthrough session about my mother’s unpredictable mood swings.
A month before that, during an argument about household responsibilities, he’d accused me of “catastrophizing” and “black-and-white thinking”—both terms my therapist and I had been working with to address my anxiety patterns.
In July, when I’d expressed feeling disconnected from him, he’d said: “Maybe you’re emotionally unavailable. Have you considered that?” I’d written pages about struggling with emotional availability in June, working through why I sometimes shut down instead of communicating.
Every single time, he’d taken my raw, unprocessed thoughts from therapy and reflected them back at me as character flaws. He’d used my own growth work to make me feel like I was the problem in our marriage.
The worst part? It had worked. Each time he’d thrown my therapeutic language back at me, I’d doubted myself. I’d apologized. I’d taken full responsibility for whatever issue we were fighting about. I’d gone back to therapy and asked if maybe I really was being paranoid, controlling, emotionally unavailable.
My therapist had been confused by some of these sessions. “I’m not sure where you’re getting that interpretation,” she’d said more than once. “That’s not what we discussed.”
But I’d assumed I was misunderstanding her guidance. I’d assumed David was right and I was wrong. Because he was using my own words—words I’d written in my most vulnerable moments—to convince me that my perceptions were faulty.
The Fight That Followed
“I want to know exactly how many times you read it,” I said. “And I want to know every single thing you remember from it.”
“Emma, I don’t think that’s productive—”
“You don’t get to decide what’s productive right now. You violated my privacy in the worst possible way. The least you can do is be honest about the extent of it.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then: “I’ve read it maybe ten or fifteen times. Over the past few months. Usually when you were in the shower or running errands.”
Ten or fifteen times. This wasn’t a one-time accident or a moment of weakness. This was a pattern. A deliberate, repeated invasion of my privacy.
“And you remembered enough to quote it back to me during fights.”
“I didn’t mean to—it just came out sometimes. When we were arguing and I was frustrated, I’d remember something you’d written and it would just… come to mind.”
“That’s such bullshit, David. You didn’t ‘accidentally’ quote my therapy notes. You strategically deployed my own insecurities against me to win arguments. There’s a difference.”
“I was trying to help you see patterns in your behavior!”
“THAT’S NOT YOUR JOB!” I was yelling now. “My therapist is helping me see patterns. You’re supposed to be my partner, not my unauthorized therapist who uses my session notes as a weapon!”
“It’s not a weapon to point out when you’re being irrational—”
“See? You’re doing it again! You’re using psychological language to make me doubt my perception of reality. I’m not being irrational, David. I’m being violated. Those are my PRIVATE THOUGHTS. My safe space to process things I’m not ready to share. And you stole that from me.”
He stood up, defensive now. “Fine. I’m sorry I read your journal. I won’t do it again. Can we move past this?”
“Move past it? You’ve been gaslighting me for months using my own therapy work, and you think we can just move past it?”
“I haven’t been gaslighting you—”
“Yes, you have! That’s exactly what you’ve been doing! Using my documented insecurities to make me question my reality, my emotions, my valid concerns about our relationship. That’s textbook gaslighting.”
What My Therapist Said
I had an emergency session with my therapist two days later. I brought the journal and showed her the entries I remembered David quoting.
“Emma,” she said carefully, “this is a significant violation of trust and boundaries. What he did goes beyond just reading something private. He used therapeutic concepts—concepts you’re working hard to understand in a healthy way—to manipulate you during conflicts.”
“Is that… is that as bad as I think it is?”
“It’s worse, actually. You come to therapy to work on yourself in a safe, confidential space. You use this journal to process difficult thoughts before they’re fully formed. He took that raw material—the messy, complicated emotions you’re actively working through—and used them against you before you’d finished processing them. That’s not just a privacy violation. It’s an abuse of the therapeutic process itself.”
She explained that when we’re in therapy, we often write or say things we don’t fully mean yet. We explore worst-case scenarios, catastrophize, express fears that might not be rational. That’s part of the process. We’re supposed to have a safe space to be messy and scared and irrational without judgment, so we can work through those feelings and come out the other side with healthier perspectives.
“When David read those unprocessed thoughts and threw them back at you as character flaws, he interrupted your healing process,” my therapist said. “He made you afraid to be vulnerable in your own journal. He made therapy itself feel unsafe.”
She was right. Since discovering what David had done, I hadn’t written a single word in my journal. The thought of putting my thoughts on paper made me anxious. What if he read them again? What if he found new ammunition?
My safe space was gone.
The Larger Pattern
As I processed what happened with my therapist, I started seeing a larger pattern in my marriage that I’d been too close to notice before.
David had always positioned himself as the “rational” one in our relationship. When I expressed emotions, he’d analyze them. When I had concerns, he’d explain why they were unfounded. When I was upset, he’d tell me I was overreacting.
I’d internalized this dynamic. I’d started seeing myself as the “emotional” one who needed to be managed and corrected. I’d started apologizing for having feelings. I’d started going to therapy not to work on actual issues, but to fix whatever was “wrong” with me that was causing problems in my marriage.
But what if nothing was wrong with me? What if my emotions and concerns were valid, and David had been using psychological language—first in general, then specifically from my therapy notes—to convince me they weren’t?
I thought about all the times I’d expressed a legitimate concern about our relationship, and he’d responded by suggesting I was projecting childhood trauma or letting my anxiety distort reality. How many of those concerns had been real issues I should have pushed harder on?
I thought about how I’d stopped bringing up certain topics because I didn’t want to seem “controlling” or “anxious” or “emotionally unavailable.” How much of my personality had I suppressed to avoid being labeled with my own therapeutic terminology?
Reading my journal hadn’t just been a violation of privacy. It had been the final tool in a toolbox he’d been building for years—a toolbox designed to make me doubt myself so thoroughly that I’d never challenge him on anything meaningful.
The Conversation We Should Have Had
A week after the initial discovery, we sat down to talk again. This time, I was clearer about what I needed to say.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about why you read my journal,” I started. “And I think it’s because on some level, you wanted power over me.”
“That’s not—”
“Let me finish. You said you felt shut out of my therapy, but you never once asked to come to a session with me. You never asked me to share what I was comfortable sharing. You just took what you wanted without my consent. That’s about power, not understanding.”
He looked uncomfortable but didn’t interrupt again.
“And then you used what you learned to control arguments. Whenever I had a valid concern or a legitimate emotion, you’d use my therapeutic language to make me doubt myself. You’d make me feel like I was the problem, like my perception was faulty, like I needed to do more work on myself before I could have opinions about our marriage.”
“I really wasn’t trying to manipulate you—”
“Maybe not consciously. But David, intention doesn’t erase impact. Whether you meant to or not, you weaponized my vulnerability. You took the things I was brave enough to work on—my trauma, my insecurities, my growth edges—and you used them to shut me down.”
I took a breath. “I don’t feel safe with you anymore. I don’t feel safe being vulnerable. I don’t feel safe having emotions. I don’t feel safe in my own home, because you violated the most private space I had left.”
“What are you saying?” His voice cracked.
“I’m saying I need to move out for a while. I need space to figure out if this marriage is salvageable. Because right now, I don’t trust you. And I don’t know if I can trust you again.”
Where I Am Now
I’ve been staying with my best friend Sarah for three weeks. David and I are in couple’s counseling, though I’m not sure yet if I want to try to save the marriage or if I’m just looking for a structured way to end it.
Our couple’s therapist confirmed what my individual therapist said: What David did was a serious boundary violation that breaks the fundamental trust required for a healthy marriage. She’s working with us on whether that trust can be rebuilt, but she’s been clear that it’s not a given. Some violations are too deep to recover from.
David has apologized extensively. He’s started his own therapy to work on why he felt entitled to read my journal and use it the way he did. He’s acknowledged the manipulation, even if he insists it wasn’t intentional. He’s promised to never read my private writings again.
But promises feel empty right now. How do I know he’s not reading my texts, my emails, my new journal that I keep at Sarah’s apartment? How do I know he won’t find new ways to manipulate me once I let my guard down?
More importantly: Do I want to be in a marriage where I have to have my guard up at all?
I’ve started writing in my journal again, but it’s different now. I’m more careful about what I write. More guarded. I catch myself self-censoring even though I know David can’t access it anymore. He didn’t just violate my privacy—he took away my ability to be fully honest even with myself.
That might be the part I can’t forgive.
What I Want Others to Know
If your partner reads your therapy notes, your journal, your private communications without permission—that’s not love. That’s not concern. That’s not trying to understand you better.
It’s a violation. Full stop.
And if they then use what they learned against you? That’s abuse. It might be subtle. It might be wrapped in psychological language that makes it sound like they’re trying to help you grow. But using someone’s vulnerabilities and therapeutic work to manipulate them is emotional abuse, regardless of intention.
You have a right to privacy, even in marriage. You have a right to spaces where you can process difficult thoughts without them being weaponized. You have a right to work on yourself without your partner mining that work for ammunition.
And if someone violates that right, you have every reason to question whether they’re safe to be vulnerable with at all.
I don’t know yet if my marriage will survive this. I don’t know if I want it to. What I do know is that I’m not the problem I’d been convinced I was. My emotions are valid. My concerns are real. My need for privacy and safe spaces is legitimate.
David read my therapy journal and used it against me. My family says I should forgive him because “everyone makes mistakes” and “marriage is hard work.” But some mistakes aren’t mistakes—they’re choices. And some work is too hard when you’re the only one doing it.
I’m still figuring out what comes next. But at least now I’m doing it with clarity instead of self-doubt.
And maybe that’s the only growth that really matters.
