My Husband is Too Controlling
Question:
“Your cycle of resentment and anger describes my marriage to a “T”. My husband thinks a marriage should be a husband having power and leadership, a wife should submit, be quiet and loving and absolutely not challenging at all. As a Christian, I’ve tried to break the cycle in many ways, to see if love will drown out the hatred and anger. Trying to affirm him, be respectful and please him more, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. His view is – “Finally, she’s getting it”. Question is: If I break the cycle on my end, and let’s say maybe his actions become nicer to me, and we get along more, will that change his core thinking? I feel I’m stuck in an “Arabic marriage” so-to-speak but in America. The only thing that keeps me here is that divorce is terrible and will hurt my kids. But it’s been 10 years doing things out of discipline and the cycle keeps going because the root remains.”
Answer:
Thank you for submitting this question. I seem to receive quite a few about husbands that are too controlling or have a distorted view of the concept of the man being the “head of the household”.
First of all, I appreciate the changes that you have made in your marriage, but I am concerned about your motivation. You wrote:
“I’ve tried to break the cycle in many ways, to see if love will drown out the hatred and anger . . . but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.”
Love is not giving so that the other person will bend to your will or make the changes that you deem to be appropriate. This could actually be a form of control, and it could be that even though your husband is not able to verbalize his frustrations, he senses that this is the case.
I Corinthians 13:5 says that true love “seeketh not her own”. Translated, true love does not give to get, but rather, it gives no matter what the consequences may be.
Most married couples exchange marriage vows that say something to the effect of “I will love you for better or for worse.”. I actually bring much of my coaching back to the wedding vows, and, in this case, I would have to point out that the phrase was not “I will love you when things are at their worst as long as everything looks like it is going to get better.”. No, the phrase is “I will love for better or for worse.”, and that’s it. There is a difference, and I think that if you will tweak your motivation, you will be much better off.
One of my favorite expressions is that every person is a “psychologist” deep down inside. In other words, people can sense true, unconditional love, and it may be that your husband is waiting for this type of love in the relationship in that very few men will change because their wife is overtly or covertly pushing them into it. I often say that men can sense when they are being controlled just as much as a women can, however, they often are not able to verbalize their feelings so they resort to either backing off, retreating into an emotional or a physical cave, over-emphasizing their rights as the head of the household, or just getting into survival mode in the marriage.
To answer your original question, the answer is that one person can break the cycle of resentment and anger in a marriage even if the other person is not willing to change. Our 2-Step process which we have on our Audio Cd Series called How to Break the Cycle of Resentment and Anger in a Marriage teaches people how to do this. Nevertheless, even if the cycle is broken by one person in the marriage, there is no guarantee that the other person will necessarily become the man or woman of your dreams. Nevertheless, if you do make the appropriate changes you will often accomplish the following:
1. You will release much of the tension that has been dragging your relationship down.
2. You will force the emphasis to be on the other persons mistakes rather than your own. I often say that even if only one person is willing to change, they can often pull their sins and mistakes off of the battle field so that the other person’s vision of seeing their own sin’s and mistakes will not be blurred by your’s. Wordy, yet still true.
3. You will create the atmosphere so that change has a higher percentage of taking place. One thing is for sure, by continuing the cycle of resentment and anger in a marriage, you will only decrease your chances of the other person becoming a better mate.
4. You will have a clean conscience because you are doing everything that is within your power to help and save the marriage. At the end of the day, a clean conscience is worth more than all the gold in Fort Knox (if there is any left).
For more information about our Audio Cd Series called How to Break the Cycle of Resentment and Anger in a Marriage, Click Here.
Watch this Short Video to See if Your Marriage May be Caught in the Cycle of Resentment and Anger
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Answer submitted by Christian Marriage Speaker and Coach, Dr. Raymond Force
