In Your Marriage, Are You ‘You’ Any More?
If you no longer feel like yourself, and your dear husband qualifies as THE CRAZY-MAKING HUSBAND, get ready for some startling news.
Your husband has wrung the ‘you‘ out of you, with years of relentless brainwashing.
Brainwashing, yes, by emotional and mental browbeating, to render you into the woman he needs you to be. A spiritless, put-up-and-shut-up wife whose primary purpose is to mirror and echo his every whimper and whim.
THE CRAZY-MAKING HUSBAND can’t have you any other way.
Sound chilling? Well, pause a moment and think. Are you permitted to be the woman you were, the day you married him? Does your husband cherish and honor your individuality? Or does he quash and ridicule you, whenever you dare let it show? Are your needs respected and validated? Or are they trivialized, and negated, then dismissed?
I’m brainwashed? you say. How preposterous! Well, ask yourself this: are your opinions and judgment genuinely valued by your husband? Or, is the only time you’re permitted to have a voice, the time when you voice his position?
Why women suffer far more than men from depression* is no mystery. Far too many of us are married to crazy-makers.
That brain-click, that aha! moment, that luminous [yet sickening] realization that the reason you are no longer ‘yourself’ is your husband has brainwashed you out of being you should bring along with it a HUGE sigh of relief. For the wonderful Truth is: despite his best efforts, at core, you are still you!
The proof is here, right here, in front of both our noses. You — the original, authentic you – are at your desk, searching for help, reading this blog.
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* Depression, simply put, is your Spirit crying out for your loving attentions. For more on women and depression, please visit my MARTHA TROWBRIDGE website.
Tags: brainwashing, browbeating, crazy, crazy-making, crazymaking, depression, emotional abuse, husband, marriage, mental abuse, mental health, Muffy Gibson, relationships, The Crazy-Making Husband, wife, women's issues
May 19th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
One time, my husband told me that it was my job to teach our boys his perspective of the world because he was away so much on deployment. (We won’t even say how often he’s “absent” even when he’s home…). He said that I should act like him and if I had any questions, I could email him and he would tell me what to do and say.
WHAT?!
I told him that he was not going to war, and that his AO had internet access and if that went down, he could mail letters for free in order to share his world-view with his children.
He said, “That’s ridiculous! You know I don’t write!”
The really funny thing is that if he’d said that to me a year ago, I would be emailing him every day to find out how to respond. Funny? or Sad?
May 20th, 2009 at 10:05 am
A story with a salient point. As we begin to emerge from the snares of marital crazy-making, we assess situations far differently. What may have felt amusing in the past is no longer funny; it is exquisitely painful.
Classic in its technique, a husband’s assigning more and more of his responsibilities to his wife, while ‘demanding’ that his world-views be the management perspective, clearly communicates his core assessment of her.
Be careful about what may be happening re: power. In healthy relationships, power is mutually shared, and never usurped by one spouse. Working with the brother of a woman who was murdered by her husband of twenty years, I am acutely aware of the dangers of life with a man who increasingly demands control of his wife’s life.
That said, military service today is dreadfully stressful. I wonder, were he not on active duty, would his attitudes differ? If he qualifies as THE CRAZY-MAKING HUSBAND, they would not. He’d just find different excuses.
An insidious fallout of this sort of marital interaction can be depression. No matter how we ‘know’ that our husband’s attitudes are faulty, no matter how much comfort we derive from friends and colleagues, still, the reality of his feelings about us exists. Intimacy = vulnerablity. No matter who we are, no matter how strong, our Spirit cannot help but feel deflated when the person with whom we have entrusted our lives negates, dismisses, and diminishes who we are.