Rebecca Ishida: Lying by Omission and the Double Life

Rebecca Ishida asks the question that stops a lot of people cold: if you had known, would you have chosen differently? That is what lying by omission takes from you. It is emotional abuse, and Rebecca argues emotional abuse is domestic violence, however hard that remains to prove in most courtrooms.

Our guest this episode is Rebecca Ishida, a licensed marriage and family therapist based in California who has been in practice since 2000. She works with addiction, trauma and narcissistic abuse recovery, alongside couples work and problematic sexual behavior, and she has been a guest here before. She also speaks from twenty years inside a marriage whose parallel life she pieced together only near the end, and she is candid that being a therapist did not shorten that by a decade.

In this episode Rebecca widens the definition. Most people hear double life and think second family. She includes hidden addiction, gambling that is taking the house, secret work, and a whole online life running under the shared one, and she explains why the underlying mechanic is identical: secrecy, deception and lies, which is also what sits under any addiction.

She and Lisa go through the markers. Travel and long unexplained absences. Meeting always somewhere neutral rather than at the person's own home. Devices guarded, histories and messages deleted, and privacy invoked as the accusation when something surfaces. Refusing conversations about finances or the past. Stories that do not add up, because someone in their truth does not have to keep track. Withdrawal used as punishment rather than as genuine space. They also talk about how these patterns form, including hyper-idealized children raised without accountability, and about the trap of believing that loving someone harder will heal them. Rebecca's closing point is that healing is your responsibility whether or not the harm was your fault, and that the same rule applies to whoever hurt you.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What lying by omission is, and why withholding the truth is a transfer of power
• Why a double life covers far more than a second relationship
• The markers to watch: unexplained gaps, guarded devices, deleted histories, meetings somewhere neutral
• Why stories stop reconciling, and what that tells you
• When taking space is healthy and when it is punishment
• Why heightened empathy makes you stay and keep supplying the explanation
• The three C's: you did not cause it, you cannot control it, you cannot cure it
• Why loving someone harder does not make them better

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Rebecca's practice, EMDR, and what narcissistic abuse does to the nervous system
6:00 Lying by omission, and why emotional abuse is domestic violence
9:00 Being disbelieved by your own friends, and minimizing what happened
11:00 Relationship education, and what films taught us to expect
16:00 Taking space: when it is healthy and when it is punishment
19:30 Defining a double life, from second families to hidden addictions
23:00 The markers: travel, neutral meeting places, and gaps in time
25:00 Rebecca's own story, and what compartmentalizing means
35:00 Guarded devices, deleted histories, and privacy used as the accusation
37:00 Stonewalled conversations, stories that do not add up
43:00 Healing is your responsibility, and why loving harder does not work

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Rebecca Ishida, LMFT: https://rebeccaishida.com/

🎧 More with Rebecca Ishida on this podcast
Ep 13: Sex Addiction, Gaslighting and Narcissistic Abuse
Ep 56: When Friends Take Your Ex's Side

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.