A marriage counselor might say that verbal abuse is unacceptable and grounds for a divorce.
Intimacy skills show you how to stop the culture of verbal abuse and restore the peace and emotional safety to your marriage.
“You don’t have to show up to every argument you’re invited to.”
—Mandy Hale, Author
In the early days of my marriage, I’m not proud to say I used to rage at my husband. I would unload some really nasty words meant to tear him down and hurt him to the core. Nothing was off-limits in those out-of-control incidents where the toxic combination of fear, hurt, and anger would overtake me. It was terrible, and it left me with an awful hangover of remorse, as well as even more fear that I would eventually drive my husband away and be abandoned.
Amy was also a rageaholic. The resentment would build until she’d reached her limit, and then, she said, Godzilla would come out and wreak havoc throughout the land. Like me, she would say every hurtful thing that came to mind to demean her husband, even adding, “This is when the truth comes out!”
But after practicing the Six Intimacy Skills for just a few months, things changed. Amy found that she was no longer compelled to rage at her husband. Instead of sacrificing her own desires to please her family and employer, making herself happy every day and being grateful left her completely free of the urge to unload verbally.
She especially noticed her new freedom from her compulsion one day when her husband said, “I was thinking maybe you should plan and write out our meals for the week in advance and make a shopping list so we don’t waste so much food.”
Amy listened to her husband and thought about how adding a chore like that would crowd out her self-care. She said, “Oh, I can’t! Sorry.”
While that might sound pretty flip, Amy was just staying squarely on her own paper and being honest that this task was beyond her capacity. Her husband was still getting used to the new Amy and seemed surprised at her response, but a moment later he said, “You know, you’re right—I should do it.”
She smiled at him and said, “That would be great! Thank you.” She felt so good because Godzilla was not getting strong. She knew there would be no ugly outbursts in the future because she had honored herself in that moment, preserved her time for self-care, and maintained her dignity. She was better able to meet her own needs and not find herself in that desperate place where the only way she could get relief was by hurting the man she loved.
I’ve had the same experience. I don’t know where that mean-spirited, angry woman I used to be went, but she doesn’t live here anymore, and I don’t miss her. So it’s not a stretch to say that the Six Intimacy Skills are a powerful form of anger management.
But what if you’re not the one who’s angry? What if it’s your husband who does most of the yelling and saying mean things at your house?
If your husband is the rageaholic in your marriage, you might wonder if saying “Ouch!” when you’re hurt will work. You might think he’ll never change, no matter what you say or how you react. Maybe you’ve tried saying nothing to him when he’s raging and he still continues to do it, even when you’re not engaged in the conversation. It can be devastating to have to endure that kind of treatment. But there’s hope for putting an end to verbal abuse in your marriage.
As I mentioned in Chapter 1, there are three men you’re not safe with: the active drug, alcohol, or gambling addict; the man who can’t be faithful; and the physical abuser. These are the kinds of men who are also likely to engage in serious verbal abuse, which is why I recommend leaving.
But if you have a good guy (not one of those three), in my experience, verbal abuse is a symptom that the wife hasn’t learned the Six Intimacy Skills yet. This does not mean that his temper is your fault; it just means you haven’t yet discovered the best way to express yourself while preserving the emotional safety. So if your husband is saying some very harsh things to you on an ongoing basis, I have good news: You have the power to change the entire culture of your relationship by practicing the Six Intimacy Skills so that verbal abuse is no longer a part of it. It simply melts away.
Your husband could be an exception, but you won’t know unless you experiment with the skills.
Wanda was fantasizing about leaving her husband when she first heard about the Six Intimacy Skills. She told me he was constantly verbally abusing her. When I asked her for an example, she said, “Just yesterday, we were trying to get out of the complex where we live and there’s a security arm that comes down after each car. But it was broken and we couldn’t get out. My husband drives a very nice car, and he decides that he’s going to try to squeeze around this broken security arm. So I told him, ‘That’s the stupidest idea I ever heard.’ And he started yelling and swearing and calling me names I can’t even repeat. He’s just so angry! I don’t think he’s ever going to change.”
As you likely noticed, Wanda was not exactly an innocent victim, even in her own telling of the story. From her point of view, her husband’s anger was unprovoked, and therefore qualified as verbal abuse. But it’s not hard to imagine that her comment made him feel disrespected and defensive. Wanda really had no idea that her words were just as biting and detrimental as her husband’s mean comments to her. She felt that she was saying what needed to be said, not that she was undermining the self-worth of the man she chose to marry.
When Wanda started treating her husband more respectfully, she got a completely different response from him. He didn’t even seem like the same guy who had yelled at her in the car that day. “I thought he was such a hostile person, but he’s really not,” she said. “I hate to think that I was the one causing him to be so hostile, but now I can see that I was part of the problem. He’s like a different man now.”
When I asked her if she would still describe her husband as verbally abusive, Wanda said no way. And she’s not the only one. I hear similar stories from many clients. Before she starts practicing the skills, often a client will tell me that her husband is verbally abusive, but as she describes the “abusive” situations, she also reveals the names she called him and the insults she threw at him. Once the specifics emerge, it’s hard to see it as a clear-cut case of victim and abuser—more like a melee where a marriage should be. It’s a culture of verbal abuse that they both cosign.
I’ve also noticed something curious about the phrase “verbal abuse”: While I often hear women describe their husbands that way, I have yet to hear a man describe his wife that way. Even when Amy and I were raging at our husbands full-bore, neither of them thought of themselves as verbally abused.
Excluding those three unsafe men, if most incidents of verbal abuse are actually two-way streets, and only the women are identifying themselves as the victims, perhaps saying your husband is verbally abusive is really about feeling like you’re getting beat up during fights, even though your husband is likely also feeling beat up during those same fights. It’s human nature to want to defend yourself and make the other person wrong for mistreating you—which is what is happening when you feel verbally abused. But in my experience with thousands of women, cleaning up your own side of the street goes a long way toward eradicating verbal abuse in your home.
You might be shocked that I would minimize verbal abuse by lumping it in with regular old bickering. Verbal abuse conjures a really angry, hostile, threatening person saying very degrading things and a victim who suffers through this horrible treatment.
Hearing those mean, ugly things said to you is certainly painful and degrading. That’s something nobody should have to live with. But I’ve yet to hear about a case of verbal abuse that didn’t go away when a woman who was with a good guy learned and practiced the Six Intimacy Skills.
In my experience with more than 150,000 women, verbal abuse is a temporary, curable condition. Any wife who practices the Six Intimacy Skills can learn how to create a peaceful, emotionally safe relationship. In other words, you can put an end to verbal abuse in your home. It all starts with treating your man with respect and teaching him how to treat you by saying “Ouch!” when you’re hurt.
If you find any of this overwhelming or feel like your relationship is an exception and that this just isn’t going to work for you, that’s usually a sign that you need more support. Consider getting it at skillsforlove.com.
You may have had an experience similar to Erica, who wrote about getting support: “I wanted a passionate and loving relationship with my husband, but I just didn’t know how to make it happen. We fought often and hurt each other all the time. I told myself I was justified in my arguments and complaints. Learning the Six Intimacy Skills was one of the most valuable self-improvement projects I’ve ever taken on. When I learned to stop controlling the way my husband did things, practiced gratitude, and focused on self-care, the atmosphere at home became so peaceful. Suddenly we were laughing and holding hands like newlyweds. And my marriage became the one I dreamed of as a little girl.”
Andrea said, “Each time I applied Laura’s principals in my relationship, something amazing would happen in my marriage. Soon I found myself enjoying the peaceful, intimate relationship I had been longing for. It was an eye-opening, humbling, and life-changing—or should I say marriage-changing—experience.”