Improved
6112 HealthChanged
3786 LivesSaved
3568 Lives0 lives impacted in the last 24 hrs Learn More
Photo: Photospin - Auremar
Physical and verbal abuse are forms of “visible” abuse. Scars and bruises, raised voices and demeaning and hurtful words are signals to others that something is not quite right in the relationship. It’s also easier for a wife to see and recognize that’s she’s being abused.
Emotional abuse, however, is much more insidious and not quite as visible. Certainly, a wife’s self-esteem and spirit are battered along with her body in the case of physical and verbal abuse, but a husband can kill his wife’s spirit without even raising a hand or voice against her. For this reason, many women don’t even know they’re being abused, or if they do it’s a long and difficult battle not only to work to repair the damage done themselves, but to get the abuser to recognize the harm that he’s done.
What are the signs of mental abuse?
“Emotional abuse is any nonphysical behavior or attitude that controls, intimidates, subjugates, demeans, punishes or isolates another person by using degradation, humiliation or fear” (www.focusonthefamily.com).
“Nonphysical behavior or attitude” can safely be interpreted to mean neglect, invalidating another’s thoughts and feelings, and refusing to acknowledge the needs of the other (whether intentionally or not). Over a period of time, this kind of emotional climate in a marriage can squeeze the life out of a marriage and out of a wife.
There is a difference between experiencing or inflicting emotional hurt and being emotionally abusive—it is important to make this distinction. Abuse is a cycle. It is not a once-in-a-while event that happens and hurts someone else. In many “ordinary” hurtful cases, apologies can be offered if truly sincere and heal the rift that the hurt has caused. Many hurts are unintentional, and if they were, there is (hopefully) remorse on the part of the person who inflicted that hurt, once the anger, frustration, etc., calms down and cooler heads prevail. With emotional abuse there is none of this. Like other forms of abuse, there can be apologies and promises to never do it again, and there is hope in the beginning that behaviors and attitudes will change—often referred to as the “honeymoon phase”—but somewhere in the back of many a wife’s mind, she knows that it’s only a matter of time before the abuser settles back into old routines.
The Profile of an Emotional Abuser
At the heart of an emotionally abusive husband is his need to ultimately be in control. He feels inadequate and harbors distorted beliefs about women and marriage, usually learned from an abusive father or other dominant male influence, or sometime due to lack of decent male role modeling in how to treat women. In many cases, but not all, an emotionally abusive husband can be manipulative and heavy-handed in keeping his wife “under his thumb”. The abusive husband is “self-referenced”, which means he only sees and considers things from his point of view; he deliberately refuses to or is incapable of looking at things from another’s perspective. “Selfish” and “self-referenced” are two different words and can be described this way: the “self-referenced person would give you the shirt off his back, but he doesn’t know you need it. The self-referenced person frequently violates the marriage partnership by acting without thoughtfully considering his partner’s point of view and needs” (Amy Wildman White). The abusive husband is also emotionally dependent on his wife; that is, his feeling of self-worth comes from being married. Most emotionally abusive husbands are unable to look at and examine themselves and why they engage in such spirit-killing behavior against a person they have avowed to love and cherish.
The Profile of an Emotionally Abused Wife
Women who find themselves in an emotionally abusive situation often have low self-esteems even though they may appear confident and in control of everything. An emotionally abused wife “looks to her husband’s acceptance of her as the measure of her worth” (White).
Unlike a man, who typically finds his identity through work, and academic or athletic achievement, “[a] woman’s identity is often based on her relationships” (White) this makes her vulnerable to abusive relationships.
One of the most common characteristics of an emotionally abused woman is that she is unable to enjoy sexual experiences with her husband. This is due to the deterioration of the trust and the lack of friendship and intimacy over the time of the relationship. Add on top of this societies’, her husbands’ and the church’s views that she’s not a good wife if she doesn’t meet her husband’s sexual needs and she may feel perpetually trapped in her marriage. What many people (including counselors and pastors) fail to realize is that “[t]he wife in these situations experiences intercourse as an indignity, almost as rape, because the physical and the deeply personal, loving aspects of sex…[i]ntimacy and trust, which lay the necessary foundation for a woman to respond sexually, have been removed from the relationship” (White) and she is left to emotionally detach herself from the situation just to survive—at the cost of her soul and spirit.
Call to Action
It’s time to lift the veil from these situations and recognize how much a person’s soul and spirit can be damaged without physical and verbal abuse. Abuse doesn’t have to come in the form of acting out a form of punishment, or lashing out with temper and words. Abuse can also be withholding affection, or never saying a kind word. It takes a strong woman to stand up against what everyone is telling her is her duty and recognize that this kind of situation is not okay, and to talk about it until somebody listens.
If you believe you are in an emotionally abusive marriage—which can take many forms to keep a wife dependant on a husband (a virtual prisoner in her own house)—or you’re not even sure if what you’re experiencing is emotional abuse, please join us in the Marital Discovery and Recovery group and share your story.
Sources: www.focusonthefamily.com; “The Silent Killer of Christian Marriages” by Amy Wildman White (http://www.safeplaceministries.com/pdf/The Silent Killer of Christian Marriages.pdf)
Add a Comment380 Comments
My husband and I have been married for 42 years. I have health issues which have prevented me from being independent of his support. Our daughter and her two children live with us and she is also an emotional abuser. My husband controls almost all our money, I get access to less than 1% of our funds. He makes decisions and I'm supposed to rubber stamp them. If I raise objections or question him, I'm wrong. I once told him it looks like I won't have any say in how our savings are spent unless he dies or we get a divorce. He looked at me and calmly agreed.
From the first part of our marriage, he moved us further and further away from my family. When my mother came to help after the birth of our first child, he let her know we didn't need her help anymore after only a couple of days. I developed a severe kidney infection and she didn't feel comfortable coming back to help.
I went to my parents when the children were small, but they thought I was exaggerating the issue. It wasn't until my dad came to live with us after my mom's death, 30 years later, that he saw the truth.
I've had friends offer me a place to go to, including our son. Some days are okay, as long as I don't say anything that sets one of them off. She yells, he gets cold. I feel pushed into a dark hole.
I'm trying again to get us into counseling. I have a new grandbaby coming in February and I want to be here for her. I pray to God for the strength to get through this and for help for all of us.
November 13, 2014 - 10:44pmThis Comment
Update: We began counseling with a warm and generous person. Praying for improvement in our family.
November 27, 2014 - 8:50pmThis Comment
Update: We began counseling with a warm and generous person. Praying for improvement in our family.
November 27, 2014 - 8:50pmThis Comment
I have been married for 22 years but have been with my partner for 30 years, before we were engaged he was the epitome of love and adoration but once we became betrothed he changed or at least back then I thought he did, with hindsight I see that he was always this way.
He began his destruction of me slowly at first, I had a great job and lots of friends but he didn't like that, he berated them and chastised me for having a social life outside of us, even though he was free to see his friends whenever he wanted.
Against everyone else's better judgement we married and a year later we had our daughter, that's when it started in earnest, jealousy, he convinced me to quit my job and I reluctantly agreed, how stupid was I, it was the beginning of the end for me .
Our baby has now grown up, he didn't want any more children, I have lost my family, my friends but most of all my hopes and dreams to him but I know that I am beaten and I give up.
I am a warm, loving person, deprived of affection, judged at every turn, I spent my life walking on eggshells because I know I must have done or not done something, I smile at the world but inside I am crying, I feel lost
November 13, 2014 - 6:12pmThis Comment
Thank you for reaching out. I'm always stunned at how long men and women spend in these kinds of relationships. They know there's a problem, but are quite literally trapped by someone else's decisions.
Regardless of what your husband is doing, I encourage you to wholeheartedly defy him, regardless of what he will say afterwards, and start building a support system for yourself. What he is doing is not right. I have the suspicion that if your family has an inkling of what's going on, they're waiting for you and will help you get out of this. No one wants to see their loved one in such a relationship.
Will be praying for you that you can find a way out.
December 15, 2014 - 12:33pmThis Comment
My friend, please don't give up. Look, I was married to a wonderful woman who unfortunately was suffering from depression and an addict. She would be addicted to alcohol, food and anything she could get her hands on. I was raised by alcoholics and I didn't see the warning signs as she fell in deeper and deeper. She married me because I could get her booze. Plain and simple. She never actually loved me really... that still hurts. We have four children together and 15 years when she accused me of abuse and called the police on me. In my marriage, I cannot tell you one time when she did anything nice for me. True. I can tell you that I gave up my life for her, I raised the children, worked full time and tried to save her from the alcoholism. I would force her to socialize with the neighbors to have a life outside of the house! I felt she needed to unwind. The depression was obvious, the addiction too. She emotionally abandoned me so many years ago that little by little I died inside and I forgot who I was but I was still my children's father! I loved them and her, I took them out for playtime, fed them, cleaned them and helped make sure she would come home from her part time job to a clean house. R&R for my girl is what I aimed for but instead she had an affair, several of them and blamed me for being abusive. Was I abusive? Yes. How? After all those years of giving and giving and getting nothing in return I was exhausted and I gave up. I became depressed and bitter. I yelled at her for spending all of our money on booze and not the bills... nightly. Shame on me. She would get drunk on the weekends and fight me saying just hit me once is all I need. She hated me and still does. I foolishly tried to keep our marriage alive and in doing so I hurt my wife's feelings daily. I am to blame for my % of the breakup. Now, I love my wife and I always will but I can never look at her again after she admitted to extra marital affairs, lying to me for years and hating me. Life goes on. I focus on my children and pray for my wife who has a PD. I am still recovering from the abuse I took and the guilt of causing so much pain to the one woman I love.
December 13, 2014 - 11:06amWhat I am saying is get out of that relationship now. It cannot get better without change. I leave my wife alone now and she still cheats and lies but someday she will wake up and see I am not to blame anymore and on that day maybe she will change. The children call her, "new mommy" and they don't like her. They want to live with me but we have to wait. My wife's personality changed seemingly overnight and my oldest son said it best when he said, she acts and looks like other people when she has too. It's like she just changes to meet the situation. Don't do that. Get out now. Save yourself. Don't feel guilty. Just run like hell. Don't look back. Let the dead bury the dead. Run my Friend! RUN!
This Comment
Gosh this is making me cry. Please you have to stop this. Please do find some help for your self. Counseling. You can start by calling some help line thay are free and confident. Please start to talking to somebody. I went throu the same like you. I become physicaly ill very ill. I thought I will not make another week. But now I have got my life back again. Miraclesly I have my husband back. He is loving, caring, sharing him self with me. He would ask how I am. If I am upset he would come and comfort me. In the past he was only ignoring me. I was no important to him. I neglectet me and blamed me for everything. Now he says SORRY every day. I somethines wonder if he had a brain surgery or how didi that happened. Please lady do something to save your life. I was separetet from my husband over a year knowing I can not come back into the same mess. Please save your live. Miracles do happen. But If not in your case please save your life anyway. It is your responsibility. GO baby and do what you have to do. you are a woman. You have got the strength as you put up with all of this for so long. Go and save your life. By doing that you my safe his life too and life of a lot of other people but remember dear you come FIRST. Do not wait, just do to. God BLess you Will pray for you
December 8, 2014 - 4:29amThis Comment
Why does everyone imagine that it is only the wife that is abused?
A day does not go by when my wife does not yell and scream at me for abusing her? If I so much as disagree with her on what to make for dinner, its abuse. If I meet up with friends, I'm abusing her by ignoring her. If my relatives visit, they're insulting her by talking primarily to me (she wont talk to them, and gets snappy if they try to talk to her; anyway nobody from my side has been to our home in 10 years now). If I cook breakfast without checking with her about the menu, I'm being self centered and don't care about her opinion. If I let her cook, I'm making her do all the work. I'm constantly ignoring and aggravating her because, apparently, I plan to kill her by raising her BP till she has a heart attack or a stroke.
She's sent all "our" savings to her parents. She demands instant gratification in everything, so she spends money in ways that we can't even keep track of, so we never save anything. If I try to talk about it, I'm trying to put her down and insult her, most likely because I plan to kill her by making her have a stroke.
I can't even leave; after a lifetime of hard work I'm broke (I'm thrifty, but in 15 years she's never put a penny into our investments, and after the first few years, spent so much we had nothing from my end to put in either). We have the house, but half of what's left after mortgage isn't much anyway.
Yesterday she screamed at me because I wan't in bed by 11. I had a 3-am deadline. So she stayed put and screamed at me until well past 3am, ensuring I wouldn't meet it. Then she accused me of raising her blood pressure with the express intent of killing her, and threatened to call the cops on me. Then she punched me and told me if I continued to threaten her life she would kill me. *I* was required to apologize in the morning, and more screaming ensued about how I'd humiliated her in the night and tried to kill her.
I've never touched her in anger ever, yet, somehow, I suspect that if I'd called the police when she hit me and threatened to kill me, *I* would have been the one suspected of abuse; she'd have been defending herself.
Are all women like that? She's the only woman I've had in my life.
November 9, 2014 - 10:02amThis Comment
We don't make the assumption that women don't abuse. I did actually do an article on wives who abuse. The focus of this site, though, is towards women, and unfortunately most women, like men who abuse, won't recognize these behaviors in themselves for the article to really have the impact I would hope.
My heart aches for you. No, not all women are like that. I would suspect, however, that there is something in her background or history of a mental illness of some kind. People who cannot even recognize what their behaviour is doing...there must be something there, and I would dare say it sounds like the female version of a self-referenced person.
I will pray that a door will open for you to get help and get out of that toxic relationship.
December 15, 2014 - 12:19pmThis Comment
Dear friend no, normally woman are not like this. I would very strongly advise you to leave the lady to give her a chance to see what she is doing. It might give her a chance to put everything right. Please buy a book call Love must be tough and do everythin they say and than you will see. Please don't worry about money. God will provide but you have to make the first step. Stop this abuse, please. Only you can my friend. She will never stop because you are allowing her to behave as she is. God BLess You Man
December 8, 2014 - 4:37amThis Comment