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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)
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I wrote this at the end of my marriage. It's been a year and I'm pretty sure that it was me remembering all the pain he put me through that i had forgotten about during all the times he was nice to me. I remember the push and pull in the beginning but after I had his daughter everything changed and he did alot of pushing after that. Accusing me of cheating, looking up my phone bill to call every single of my friends, vandalizing my house the first out of 5 times I left him. The first time I escaped to my mother's 2 hours away and he filed a court order to make me bring my daughter back to the county we lived in. He made sure I couldnt even survive financially without him let alone emotionally. By the end, he had me exactly where he wanted me. At the end of the world, isolated from my family and friends. I didnt figure out the game until he tried to turn me against my sons. It's weird how every story I read is all the same. People trying to put together this puzzle that doesn't fit. Most people try so hard to figure it out by thinking about what this person has done to them but until they actually figure out what they are doing to them on the inside and the scars they will leave behind, will they begin to understand.
June 17, 2016 - 5:36amThis Comment
I'm so glad you heard God again. HUGE hugs to you! I also had the experience of hearing my ex husband say hurtful things and then later on, when confronted, say - "I NEVER said that." I knew I was not crazy. Many of the same things you mention: being insulting and cold to my friends and then they would be distanced from me; feeling so numb that you couldn't even get angry at what was happening; then feeling like a wimp when my best friend said WHY do you allow him to talk to you like that; having family and friends tell me I didn't know what i was talking about because hes so CHARMING and NICE! (yes, around others he wants to fool - but behind closed doors you have no idea). You are not alone and the words... they will fade away. The more distance you can put between you and him the more the hurt will turn into a scar, and the scar will start to fade. Do I ever get "flashbacks" YES all the time. I"ve been away from him 2.5 years and they are not gone. But they have faded. Your daughter is not doomed to find a man just like her dad. Yes, she was exposed to him and his behavior. So were mine. But I continue to talk to them about it and I will keep drilling it into them for as long as I can speak that they deserve a man who respects them and treats them better than anyone else in their world. That the minute they start thinking, "Why doesn't he make me feel good? Why do I feel bad around this person?" they need to take it seriously and think about the way he's treating them. Keep praying because He is there to help you through it!
August 23, 2015 - 4:17amThis Comment
i look back and I hate myself, for not being a different kind of person. if i were a different kind of person, i would have kicked him out the first time it happened. instead all i did was cry and try to prove that i knew how to cook and i tried to lose weight and i tried be ambitious enough for him and tried to be good enough for him and i never was.
August 24, 2015 - 8:54pmBut... it makes sense. Me, thinking it was normal for the man I love to make me cry. After all, the first man in my life was good at making me cry. My dad was good at that especially when he was drunk.
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You did what you thought was right, please don't be so hard on yourself. It's often the nicest and most forgiving of souls that end up in these controlling relationships - and if our family of origin had issues, then these toxic people are familiar to us. Sometimes it's because we can see the good in others and think we can help, change and guide them along the way. Once we realize the only thing we can control is our behavior, we start using boundaries and ending the cycle. This is exactly the toxic aspect of emotional and verbal abuse that leaves us blindsided and second guessing our worth - the words, insults and attacks are something that linger...until we heal. AND then we see the pattern, the never-ending demands and realize it's our job to take care of ourselves. Just like you Anon, just like you - you've done it and you are healing, you can't make logic out of something illogical so know that you are strong, brave and on the path to healing:)
September 26, 2015 - 7:25amThis Comment
I am healing... and still have a long way to go. Last year was the hardest for me because i underwent extensive counseling and dug deep to figure out what got me to that point. The truth is... I was a child of abuse and neglect and i had to deal with all of it. And I have decided something... I have decided to go back to school to get my Masters degree to become a Therapist to help trauma victims become survivors like me.
I remember being a baby sleeping on a twin bed in a dirty room. I was waken up by something being put in my arms. I was tired but it seemed like being tired was the norm for me. My brother was coaxing me awake and all I understood was the word Christmas. He had placed a baby in my arms. It was a Christmas gift. He motioned for me to come with him and I did. I remember, my sisters playing amongst some presents in the living room with no one else around. No mom or dad and it was very dark like it was in the middle of the night. I sat on the couch with my new baby in my arms and I remember just... loving it but i knew it was different from the way I always felt loved.
I remember wanting my mother so bad, I remember just needing her all the time. It was probably the reason I was with her one weekend when she went to visit her mother when I was three years old. I can think of a million reasons that were my fault about why I was there. But i can't think of a single reason why she left me there with him. She knew what he was like, she knew what he already did to her. She knew what her stepfather did to me that weekend and she never once asked me if I was okay. Instead she hid behind forgiveness just so she didn't have to deal with it. She erased it for me, at least my feelings about it and tried turned me into a robot. No feelings just like her except I began to cry a lot more than usual and say things like no one loves me... because she didn't. She doesn't love me. She benefitted from me and always have and that's the truth.
She left all four of her children when I was 5 years old. She left us with a broken man who separated us but that wasn't the first time. I grew up hearing how she pulled up to our grandparents house, let us out of the car all the time and pulled away until she never came back.
What I can't figure out was why she came back years later. Was it because that's what mothers are supposed to do? Was it to appease her new boyfriend? Was it to hurt daddy? Was it for money, to claim her three daughters to get a tax relief she could spend on herself? Was it so she wouldn't have to pay child support? The reason doesn't really matter. What matters was that even though we were struggling with dad, we were okay. He got us to keep things clean and made us laugh. He interacted with us by playing games and having BBQs. He protected us, mostly... he even threw his friend out of the house when he took us to the park all day instead of taking us to school. Which is more than I can say for her. He wasn't perfect at all and we certainly would have grown up with wounds from an alcoholic parent who drove drunk but we were more okay than getting sexually abused by the man my mother chose over us.
I keep thinking about the way she never brushed my hair or made me brush my teeth. How she just let me walk to school with only my fingernail to scrape plaque off my teeth and hair bent in awkward places from sleeping in a dirty room. I imagine the clothes she dressed me in and I think about how much time she didn't spend grooming me with care. I remember walking around with holes in my shoes for along time and my sock kept sliding down and out of it. The first time I have ever felt like a normal child in style was with a family that wasn't even mine in a foster home. The first really pretty dress I ever owned was bought to testify against my stepfather in court which of course was purchased by my foster parents. I remember preparing to testify when I was 10 years old by doing twirls in my dress and fantasizing that someone would save me from having to look her in the eyes on the stand with the truth.
My father was angry because we chose to live with my mother in court. She sent us to be with a broken angry alcoholic father for a summer and then chopped all our hair off because she couldn't be bother to clean out tarnished hair as if we weren't traumatized enough after our dad tried to kill himself in front of us. She just sent us to school as tainted bald children so everyone would know we had bugs.
She never knew half the things we did as children because she never paid attention. She never knew that as soon as she left for work at the butt crack of dawn that we would wait for the right moment to run across a four lane busy as hell highway at the corner of our apartment at 7 years old just for the hell of it, she never knew that my twin burned my face with a match, she never knew that my brother would put us on our bicycles and have us follow him through the dangerous highways of Coronado to the park next to the library and that I was scared to death all the way there.
She never knew that we were desperately afraid of her husband. How could she not see the fear in our eyes every time he called us to the kitchen table to ground us to our room for weeks at a time just to get us out of her way. I see the fear in my daughter's eyes every day. How could she not see that? She never paid attention to our cries for help when our stepfather would creep into our room late at night to have oral sex with her 10 year old daughter. She never knew that my sister acted out what he did to her on me. She never knew that my sister would try to seduce men at 10 years old and if she did know, she'd think there was something wrong her, not with the situation she had us living with. I know because I remember her accusations when my twin confronted her at 16 years old. "You caused it by the clothes you wear. You want it... I have caught you looking at his penis." Well, it's easy to look when he pulls us on his lap in front of her with a hard on for her teenage daughters.
I look back and I think she let her daughters get taken away and she couldn't even be bothered to clean our room. I know, stupid right? But that's what I would have done, anything just to make up for being selfish.
I certainly wouldn't have let my baby girl come home to climb over mounds of rubble just to collect her things to live with someone else. No, I traveled all the way across the US to fight for my daughter. I left my husband just as soon as I knew he was trying to come between my children and me, to hurt them. I chose my children. My children have always been my target for me to find my way back to the light. Why wasn't I ever hers?
Instead she let us break in silence while she didn't believe. She put me in a position to need her, to depend on her so it could happen again and I couldn't have feelings about it because I became a teenage mother at 14 years old. No... I had to keep my mouth shut so my baby and I would have a place to live. She made me learn how to say "no" to her husband. She taught me that I couldn't say "no" to mine. I had to dodge my step father's advances while defending her to my siblings and completely ignore my feelings about it so that my son could have what she never gave me... a childhood.
Oh... but things got easier after my twin sent our stepfather to prison and left home. I made it easy for her to pretend nothing ever happened. I made it easy for her to pretend she wasn't guilty for letting another man hurt her children while one was living on the streets at the lake. I never spoke up. I lived in silence while she kept me in the dark of this trauma bond she helped create for control so she could take money from me. I remember her claiming us on her taxes and spending it all on herself. She used it for down payments on cars every couple years and then complained because i wanted to learn to drive so I could take care of my son. My son's father was the one who had to teach me to drive because she wouldn't. She absolutely refused to teach me... why?
I know why now... to keep me dependent on her.
I remember her buying computers and computer desks. I even remember helping her put them together and then she'd cry because our electricity would get shut off. She watched me work my butt off while going to school to try to make up for being a teenage mother when I should have been a child.
My college room mate was the one who clued me in on what she was doing with the taxes even after I moved out. I confronted her and as soon as she could no longer benefit from me, she pushed me out when I needed her again. She pushed me out with two kids and nothing... while trying to make it through college, feeding me with crumbs to keep me dependent... acting like she was trying to help me but then I'd have to pay her back knowing I couldn't. She left me vulnerable to a narcissist and watched me struggle every day until it destroyed me. If I actually had been lucky enough to find a healthy marriage after what she put me through, I could see how my ex husband was right. She did come between us.
Everything she ever did for me was disguised with her benefit. Inviting herself on my family vacations, guilting me into choosing her on family holidays made it absolutely horrible for me. From buying my house... she did it because we offered her money to do it. But again, I spent so much time trying to make up for that. So much that it almost destroyed me... I almost got prosecuted for taking all the money out of my husband's business account trying to make it up to her. I went backwards so much that I worried about feeding my kids trying to live in it for her.
But I never saw any of this, not until this last incident that woke up old wounds she says never happened. Why? Because she lived like it never happened. She never even tried to make up for any of it. She never tried to make up for it with my sisters or me or even my brother. But it was easy for her to push her religion on us. As if God could forgive her we should too. I never had the option to forgive her. I was so completely broken by her choices that I became a teenage mother, that my sister became addicted to cocaine and both of them lived on the street.
I watched her this past year, talking to a man who said he lived in Africa. He came up with this story that he was a widower and business man stuck overseas because he owed back taxes. I watched how easy it was to get her to believe him with a simple phone call from someone who said they were from immigration and all he had to do was dangle cash in her face. That's all it took was money but honestly, I didn't care what she believed. I was happy to see the smile on her mouth again until my son told me she took $500 from him and told him to keep it a secret. And then the lies started... I specifically remember asking what her what she thought he did with his money and she swore up and down that she didn't know. When she asked me to help send the money to Africa to random people is when everything clicked into place for me. The way she acted like nothing happened at church after her bank account was frozen from having $99 million sent to her account and threatened with an investigation. Shes really good at that, acting like nothing happened and turning on the tears when she wants something which was probably what happened when she asked the church for grocery money. Which is also what happened when we had a counseling session after I got pregnant. I just never knew that using tears was a form of manipulation to avoid responsibility until she told me how my sister did it in court. She would know right?
I'm glad she did what she did. It allowed me to confront her for the first time ever and I just can't get past it. At first I thought it was guilt I saw in her eyes but I was wrong. It was blame; I only saw guilt in the reflection of her eyes. My own guilt staring back at me. Guilt for being born, guilt that she had to take care of me, and the way she started to make me feel guilty for feeling mad at her. Telling me everything she has done for me as a reason for letting me go again for making things hard for her...for feeling.
Giving away guilt is easy for her but me... I avoided it. I made things easy for her and never spoke up, never asked any questions because i believed that everyone walks around with the same guilt I always did. But I finally got to ask her a really hard question and she didn't even flinch. I asked her if she stayed with our stepfather after what he did to us for money. All she did was deny like she always does. Deny...Deny...Deny. But I know one thing for sure now. She never felt guilty for anything.
In my healing process, I have decided to forgive my mother but you better believe I have put up a lot of boundaries. That’s the advice I would give everyone here. If you’re feeling bullied by the fog (fear, obligation, guilt), do something. Take action and place a lot of boundaries...
January 24, 2018 - 7:43pmThis Comment
it feels like i just woke up from a coma after 12 years. I used to write his words down... i knew they were bad but his words became my words. it started with our first Christmas together. i was wrapping presents and doing a terrible job. he started laughing, said i didnt do anything right. i didnt cook right, didnt dress right, didnt wear make up. after that i became the bad welfare mother he would never take parenting advice from. The night he said that, i cried all night and he sat there and watched. The next morning i was exhausted, red eyed and swollen, i took the kids to school and came back and cried some more asking him why he thought so badly of me why he was with me. he told me he never said it. it didnt make sense to me, nothing made sense. i started seeing everything through his eyes. he attacked everyone i got close to and i started seeing them as a threat too. He told me, look at the way people are looking at you and I did. They were looking at me the way he was looking at me. I was sure of it. I stopped talking to people, i stopped talking to them mostly because I couldnt explain in my words what he was doing because i had his words in my head. Every time I left him, i was drowning in the misery of his lies. it is only now that I remembered the fear he put in me, how when I started talking to a friend I had isolated myself from, my heart beat out my chest when he found out and I never understood why. At one point i even called a friend to tell him not to post on my status because it would make him mad. I remember now, all of the words other people have said to me, you put up such a fascade... how do you do it? You're in pain and you dont even act like it. You should be screaming at him, it's your life... why aren't you angry? I wasnt angry... i was confused. I was numb with grief. I was silently drowning. I could never understand how my friends could hold me while I cried but he couldn't. That's not true, he held me while I cried about the people i felt completely isolated from, asking me ,"Do you want me to beat them up for hurting you?" I literally had flashbacks about the things people would say, "What's the matter with you?" I told you that you were bad? "why don't you want to sit by me?" is there something wrong with me that you wouldn't want to sit by me? All of which confirmed everything he said about me, that there was something wrong with me. I remember all of it, all of the nasty things he ever said to me, did to me and I wonder how long it will stay with me? I also wonder after I leave him when the numbness will come and then the pain, the drowning...I remember I used to watch and wait for his lips to thin out, tried to prevent it with everything i had inside of me because I knew what it meant. It meant that those bad words were coming but would it mean that this time he would ridicule me like a child, point his finger in my face like last time, what name would he call me this time. The worst part is that my daughter will grow up and find a man just like him and he's gonna make her cry and he's gonna steal her joy and her hope and she's gonna wonder why she wants to die.
August 22, 2015 - 9:33pmi just wish he would have just hit me, atleast then I could have found the right words to explain what was happening to me. I tried to tell people but I didnt know how... i couldnt explain it... all i ever said was he was mean or he doesnt contribute... he's bad with money...or he mistreats me financially because I was trying to make sense of it by looking at his actions but i never thought about the words. I remember when i would pray out in pain, I knew in my heart God was trying to tell me something. All I heard was, finish your book, finish it... what you are looking for are in the words.
I remember when i first move to Texas, God was stronger. i would look at signs find words, put them in my book. And I heard God again. The words are every where.. now that i know and have found the right words... i want to shout it from the roof tops... I'm not crazy.
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I was married for 22 years to a woman with narcissistic personality disorder. She constantly abused me in front of the kids and her friends. After 22 years I was broken, I didn't care if I lived or died. I had PTSD and paranoid of every woman as being a potential monster. Abuse happens to men, but as with myself we tend to remain silent; not even my parents were aware of the abuse. The children are grown up now, they are just as dysfunctional as their mother. They never saw a conflict being resolved and don't know how themselves. There is no cure for NPD. When I divorced, I gave up on life. I didn't care about anything. I lost my job and went homeless.
Today I am recovering and found a menial job and live in a group home. Life is looking better now. They say that a rapist should get long prison terms, but so should these abusers.
July 23, 2015 - 4:34amThis Comment
NPD is nasty. I feel for you. I lived with someone who had that. They just play with people is all. Then you don't cow-tow to them and constantly admire them they no longer have any use for you. Inside them though lies a very, very fragile self-esteem. They're very insecure at heart!
July 28, 2015 - 6:01pmThis Comment
I, too am waking up to the fact that I am married to a narcissist woman how has emotionally abused me for 12 years of marriage. She knows I hate divorce and fear being alone. In the last year my father passed away, a close friend, and the family dog. Knowing I am more vulnerable than ever, she has drastically intensified her efforts in controlling me and making me reliant solely on her for emotional support. Amazing that someone would use this sorrowful time to further seat their control over you rather than just loving you.
July 24, 2015 - 11:53amWeekly, I get the cold treatment (not talking to me or answering calls, texts,etc. for a minor disagreement, always started or instigated with her). Lasts for two to three days, and I am the one who has to press to break the ice with humor or love,etc. The word sorry hardly ever passes her lips. If and when it does the word "but" is right behind it...
I have been out of work, so I am reminded of this all the time. Yet she doesn't contribute much to the household, I am doing odd jobs, selling assets,etc to pay 90% of the household bills. It is a struggle, but have managed to keep my credit rating stable and my head above water. I have tried to discuss her behaviors (non-critically) with her and suggested joint counseling, always to be told that she is fine- I just make her angry and I need to learn to stop that.I am filing for divorce and am renewing friendships that she helped drive apart. I will need the support as I am fighting depression from this and do not desire to be alone in my early fifties, but i will deal with it. Recently she made comments that are very clear that she will possibly do physical harm to me or us. (she was actually rather clear on this. I am sure if I confront her with what she said, she would gaslight it, denying it or writing it off as anger or a joke)
This was new, and what helped make this difficult decision for me.
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My wife and I are going through a separation for this exact thing. I truthfully realize how bad I hurt her, and I am getting help to attempt to fix our marriage. I now take medication to help with it after years of thinking I can fix myself. At times it seems like this separation is pointless because she doesn't seem to try. We have 2 children, I come home after work and she goes to her friends house for the nights I don't go to my aunts(where I am staying on days I don't stay at my house) this way I still see my children. She never wants to talk about anything about this whole situation which is where I'm starting to lose faith that we will work things out. I feel like that will kill whatever chances we have of saving our marriage. Especially after she told me she no longer loves me, but says she knows me without my anger issues can be an amazing person she loves. That makes it intensely confusing.
The other day, she told me she will heal, but not will be on her own time, this after she told me about 5 books she wants to get to help her heal, and to help me stop being abusive. I asked if that meant we would get back together in the future, she told me I shouldn't be jumping to conclusions, yet can see how i would get that from her saying that. I truthfully have no idea what to do to try and keep my family together. I feel I'm already putting in 70 % of the work to fix things, but she won't even give 30% to attempt to fix things.
She's even told me she can see how much I've changed, still she won't talk to me about it and feels everything she is doing is correct , without getting a professional opinion until next week,but am I just delaying the inevitable divorce? And just like wasting time even trying to fix our family?
July 20, 2015 - 3:16pmThis Comment