How Do You Stand Up to Verbal Abuse?
Question
I am a 30-year-old married woman with two children. On the surface, I have no obvious reason to be unhappy, yet I often feel depressed, anxious, and frustrated. I worry that my emotional state is affecting the atmosphere I provide for my children, which is why I’m sharing this.
My husband, while otherwise a decent person, is rude almost all the time. When he treats me well, things feel wonderful, but the problem is that he frequently subjects me to verbal abuse. He constantly calls me worthless, says I’m good for nothing, and insults me without reason. He can start at any moment, without the slightest provocation, and even belittles me in front of our children. He insists that I have a large ego and claims that his harsh words are meant to humble me.
I was raised in a supportive environment, always encouraged to feel proud of being a woman. While my husband attended a more prestigious college and is more professionally established, I have also earned a master’s degree in engineering and am a hardworking, sincere person. Yet he repeatedly tells me I am stupid, that I know nothing, and that I should follow his instructions without question. If I assert my own thoughts, he accuses me of creating problems.
He can be extremely rude all day and then, by evening, act as if nothing happened. By that point, I am already disturbed and emotionally drained, but if I show it, he dismisses me as mentally unstable. After nearly ten years of marriage, his behavior has pushed me to my breaking point. He has said the cruelest things, only to later apologize… but after a thousand apologies, I know his words are meaningless.
I don’t think I can fully describe my situation in just a few words, and I know it may be hard to understand from the outside. I have tried to ignore it, to move forward, to create a sense of normalcy—always forgiving, always enduring. I go along with what he wants, laugh when he allows me to, and absorb his negativity when he chooses to unload it. He behaves as though he can get away with anything. When I try to stand up for myself, express my anger, or tell him I won’t tolerate this treatment, nothing changes… it just continues.
I need to know: What is the best way to deal with verbal abuse? How do you make a man who sees respecting, understanding, and caring for a woman as unmanly show even the slightest 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.
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