'After my divorce, all my friends cut me off. Then I learned what my husband had done.'

From the outside, Rachel's* life looked perfect. A nice house in a well-heeled suburb, two kids, a husband with a good job.

But behind closed doors, her relationship was slowly unravelling. The man she had fallen in love with was transforming before her eyes.

"You're like a frog in a pot," Rachel told Mamamia. "The person you marry is not the person you divorce."

Things started to change in their relationship after he started a new job.

"He got a high-powered job while we were married, and I watched him change over the course of about two months," shared Rachel.

Suddenly, he became very controlling when it came to finances, and Rachel needed permission to make purchases as small as a newspaper.

Watch: How to support someone going through a separation or divorce. Post continues after video.

The couple began fighting, and eventually sought marriage counselling. But to no avail.

"We had one session with someone who didn't work out, and then we had two rounds with another person that I think did more damage than good," she said.

After the sessions, Rachel says her husband would change his behaviour for two weeks, before reverting to toxic habits. 

"I saw this pattern repeating and I just thought, 'I'm not up for this'," Rachel said. "I had two young kids. I'm in this horrible position. What am I going to do?

"I just kept asking the universe, 'Is it the right time to leave? And I kept hearing this voice, 'No, no, not yet. Not yet'."

As the months progressed, Rachel felt increasingly isolated as she struggled to confide in her loved ones about her relationship.

"I was embarrassed. From the outside, looking in, I had a really lovely life," she said.

Loved ones struggled to see through his facade, said Rachel.

"He is one of those people that's very good at presenting a certain image, but is a very different person behind closed doors," she said.

"The only thing I remember saying to a few of them was, 'When you've been married to my husband as long as I have and live my life, then you can judge, because you've got no idea'."

Then came the turning point, when Rachel knew she had to leave for good.

"There was a health crisis in my family and one of my parents died," she shared.

"I just realised when they were in the ICU and I knew they were going to die, I was like, 'Life is way too short. Like life can change on a dime'."

That week, while Rachel's loved one was in hospital, "he picked a fight".

"I thought, 'No way, I'm not doing this.' And he just went, 'Fine, we're getting a divorce.' He'd been saying that as a threat for years and years, thinking that it was something that I would never take him up on."

Liberated but terrified, Rachel realised she had to start over.

"I was like, 'How the hell do I do this? I haven't worked in nearly 10 years," she said.

Her situation was made even harder by her living situation.

"We ended up separated under the same roof for five months, which was really, really horrible," she said.

Rachel avoided him as best she could, staying in a different room as she figured out a game-plan.

When she finally had her "ducks in a row", Rachel moved out. 

"I was so poor. But I knew that I couldn't stay; I knew that I would just try to figure it out," Rachel explained.

While the mother-of-two worked to regain financial freedom, she was dealing with another setback. 

"Pretty much overnight, none of our joint friends would talk to me," Rachel said. "I'd been friends with these people for 16 years."

She was particularly close with the female partners of her husband's guy friends.

"We would go out for girls' nights, and they would come over and help me with the kids, and I did the same for them. I thought we were friends," Rachel said.

And yet, they all took his side.

"It was really horrible. He did a really good smear campaign," Rachel said.

"He told them I'd gone crazy, that I wasn't good enough for him when it was the other way around. It's almost like he got all the guys on side and the women just followed. It was a boys club."

Though the friends cut off contact with Rachel, they still followed her on social media. Until one incident caused her to block them all.

"I was posing with a male friend on Instagram, a really old friend of mine. It got back to my ex-husband, and he got really angry," Rachel recalled.

Rachel's ex-husband had been blocked on social media since their breakup, so she knew one of their joint friends had shown him the photo.

"I just felt like I couldn't trust anyone," she told Mamamia.

Even Rachel's own family "weren't particularly supportive" of the divorce, not believing their daughter's claims about her ex-husband.

Then, one incident changed everything.

"Last year, my children were staying with my mother, and my ex-husband picked them up; he yelled at her and her partner," Rachel said. "The kids were crying and scared. And she suddenly understood. She was like, 'Oh, he's a pr***'. And I was like, 'Yeah, he's a really horrible person, that's exactly what I've been trying to tell everybody for years'."

Five years on, Rachel is finally in a good place.

"I'm much, much happier. I've got a new partner. He's gorgeous. My life is so different now in this relationship. I feel like I can talk about these things without it completely distressing me," Rachel said.

As for her friendships, it's quality over quantity.

"I'm really glad that I have three really close friends that are mine," she said. "You only need a handful of friends who believe you, and who are on your side. You don't need all your friends and you don't need your family. I know that sounds terrible, but you almost get to a point where you're like I don't care what everybody else thinks, this is my life."

Rachel's name has been changed for privacy reasons.

Feature Image: Getty (Stock image for illustrative purposes only).