How do I stand up to my husbands verbal abuse?
Question
I am a 30-year-old married woman with two children. From the outside, my life might appear normal, but inside I often feel depressed, anxious, and frustrated. I worry that my emotional state is affecting the environment I create for my children, which is why I am sharing this.
My husband, while in many ways a decent person, is consistently rude. When he treats me kindly, things feel hopeful, but those moments are rare. Most of the time, he subjects me to verbal abuse. He calls me worthless, says I am good for nothing, and insults me without reason. He can lash out at any moment, even in front of our children. He accuses me of having a large ego and insists his cruel words are meant to humble me.
I was raised in a loving and supportive home, where I was always encouraged to take pride in being a woman. My husband may have attended a more prestigious college and is more advanced in his career, but I have earned a master’s degree in engineering and have always worked hard with sincerity. Still, he regularly tells me I am stupid, that I know nothing, and that I should simply follow his instructions without question. If I share my thoughts or disagree with him, he accuses me of causing trouble.
There are days when he is rude and demeaning from morning until night, then suddenly acts as if nothing happened. By that time, I am already emotionally drained. If I show how upset I am, he dismisses me as mentally unstable. After nearly ten years of marriage, I feel like I have reached my breaking point. He has said things that have deeply hurt me, only to later apologize. But after hearing the same apology over and over again, it no longer means anything.
I know it is difficult to explain all of this in a few words, and I understand it may be hard to grasp from the outside. I have tried everything I can to keep going, to hold things together, to build some kind of normal life. I have forgiven him again and again. I go along with what he wants. I smile when he lets me. I stay silent when he vents his anger. He behaves as if there are no consequences for his actions and when I finally speak up, when I say I cannot take this anymore, nothing changes. It just continues.
So I am asking: what is the best way to deal with verbal abuse? How do you reach a man who believes that showing respect, care, or empathy toward a woman makes him weak? How do you make someone like that show even a little respect?
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Answer
On the contrary, I think you have plenty to be unhappy about. Just because the abuse you are suffering is verbal in nature doesn’t mean that it isn’t dangerous. While it is true that it is less acutely dangerous to be verbally abused than to be physically or sexually abused, verbal abuse is still abuse. It wears down your spirit and can make you depressed and feel bad about yourself. Your depression and anxiety symptoms are very likely to be a result and response to the toxic environment you’re in.
I don’t think there will be any easy way to get your husband to treat you with more respect, but I do have an idea about what might help. It seems you have sometimes taken a passive approach towards his belittling of you (when you have ignored and forgiven him), and you have also taken a fairly aggressive approach to dealing with him too (when you confront him and show your anger). Neither of these approaches has seemed to work. The problem with being passive is that your husband gets to treat you badly without challenge. The problem with being aggressive back towards him is that he is likely to see your anger and get angry himself, causing a fight to occur. There is a third approach, usually called ‘assertiveness’ that maybe you haven’t tried yet. The middle way, assertiveness, is a way to confront the abuse without attacking back yourself.
There are a few secrets to being assertive rather than aggressive or passive. You’ll want to give up on ignoring your husband’s behavior as this doesn’t work for managing him. Instead, you’ll want to challenge him most every time he says something disrespectful to you. By making a policy to challenge him most every time, you’ll get into a habit of doing so when you are not yet angry at him. Importantly, you don’t want to communicate anger in these challenges. Rather, you want to communicate your hurt feelings. It is vital that you not call him names, hit him, or say nasty or sarcastic things back to him. If you become angry, he will become reactive to that anger and there will be a fight that will go on and on. Instead, talk about yourself and what you are feeling, and remain respectful towards him while doing so. Use “I” statements to communicate these feelings. “I am hurt when you refer to me as an idiot. Please don’t do that.” In essence, to be assertive means to be like Gandhi: to defend yourself and assert your rights but to do so in a non-violent and respectful way.
Taking an assertive approach might help, but there are other things that might help as well. I’m not sure how available psychotherapy is in India, but if it is available, it might benefit your marriage if you both went to marriage counseling. If counseling is available, but your husband won’t agree to go, well then, it might benefit you as an individual to go. A sympathetic listener who can help guide you through the work of learning to be assertive could be a benefit. If psychotherapy is not available or affordable for you, perhaps you can at least read a book about assertiveness. Your Perfect Right is a classic work in this field and should be available used for an inexpensive price.