Ways Husbands Come Across Unlovingly

My wife answered a comment the other day where someone asked if she had a list of things that husbands do that come across as unloving.  So, she came up with the list below.  She gave me the opportunity to put a title to it so after many attempts I settled on the one above because it was the shortest.  Other potential titles were “Ways Husbands Come Across as Unloving to their Wives…Intentional or Not!”, “Behaviors that are Viewed, Seen, Come Across, or Probably Are Unloving toward your Wife”, and “Let’s Stop Doing this Stuff and Learn to Show our Wife we Love Her.”  So,  my challenge for you is to comment with what would be your best title to this list.

Ways Husbands Come Across Unlovingly

• don’t look at her
•  don’t answer when she speaks to you
•  refuse to touch her
• refuse to have sex with her
• flirt with other women
• ogle other women
• be overly friendly with women online, on FB, at work, in public
• leave messes for her to clean up (dishes, dirt tracked through the house, dirty clothes on the floor, urine all over the floor/toilet)
• don’t smile at her
• don’t hug her
• don’t email/text her or only when necessary (wives LOVE to get loving emails and texts just because)
• don’t call her when you get somewhere and you know she is worried about if you are safe or not
• don’t answer you phone or text messages from her
• demand that she do things perfectly
• refuse to forgive her
• bring up everything she has done from the past frequently
• yell, scream, cuss at her
• get violent with her
• ignore the children
• act like work is more important than time with family
• act like the tv/sports are a bigger priority to you than your marriage or children
• don’t brush your teeth before bed/ avoid basic hygiene
• be super critical of her appearance, her weight, her figure, her make-up, her hair, her housekeeping, her mothering skills. etc.
• don’t compliment her
• be as negative as possible
• call her horrible names
• criticize her in front of the children, undermine her authority
• badmouth her to your family
• demand sex without having any emotional or spiritual connection (makes her feel cheap)
• refuse to pray with her
• force her to make decisions that really belong to you
• don’t tell her what you really think, act like you are fine.  Then secretly resent her and become bitter towards her
• tell her that she isn’t beautiful, insult her looks
• watch everything she eats and tell her she can’t/shouldn’t eat certain things
• act like an angry father
• don’t allow her to feel safe with you emotionally, spiritually, physically, sexually
• avoid disciplining the children
• don’t help with caring for the children
• let her handle ALL of the parenting , ALL of the housework, ALL of the bills and finances and insist that she must work outside the home too
• expect her to think like a man and never be emotional
• refuse to give her grace when she is hormonal, sick or exhausted
• act like her ideas are stupid
• act like she isn’t as intelligent as you are
• dismiss her feelings as if they are ridiculous
• be harsh with her
• tell her not to share her heart with you, that she should just “Be quiet and smile” and everything would be fine
• be irresponsible with money, the children, anything (that is SCARY for a woman and makes her feel like she needs to take over control and not trust)
• stay far away from God, be as un-Christlike as possible – forbid her to go to church
• isolate her from all of her family and friends
• get angry very easily, have a super short fuse
• have double standards.  It’s ok for you to talk to other women secretly, but if she should dare to look at another man, grill her about it and make sure she knows that she went way over the line and punish her for it
• treat your biological children with favoritism over her children
• be inconsistent and unpredictable
• keep secrets
• hold on to addictions
• turn to porn instead of your wife
• compare her to other women
• tell her how beautiful other women are and point out her flaws
•  act like children are a burden and her problem, not yours
• never get up to help with the baby at night.  Be tired.  Don’t care that she has been getting up every 3-4 hours for a year and a half – and is past the edge of a nervous breakdown
• give her an impossibly strict budget for groceries and intimidate her if she doesn’t follow it, but buy lots of expensive toys for yourself
• quit your job and stay home and play video games all day
• demand that she work when she longs to be home with her children
• demand that she stay home when she feels like she can’t do it
• try to force her to submit to you and show you proper respect

I hope this might be helpful!

Posted in: Husband, Integrity, Leadership, Listening, Love, Marriage, Woman's Mind