Sometimes I hear from wives who feel that they are not an equal couple in their marriage because they do not have the same opinion. Some feel that their husbands care more about their own feelings than theirs.
I heard a wife say, “My husband is so self-centered. He only thinks about his own feelings and himself. He never thinks about my feelings or the feelings of our children. My husband is like a spoiled child who never grew up. When not He likes his job, decides to uproot us and move out. If one of his friends or family says they miss him, he automatically invites them to a long stay without consulting me. He doesn’t think about offering him a spare room that we don’t have. He never considers how our would feel family. It never occurred to him that we might be tired of moving or that we might want a little more stability. It’s like his feelings are the only thing that matters. He never does anything nice for me or compliments me. When I ask him to consider my feelings, he says I’m being mean or I need to let go. I’m so tired of this. I can’t live this way anymore. I’m so close to asking for a divorce. I love my husband and I want him to my family intact. But he doesn’t care how I feel, he gets so old. What should I do? “
Regardless of the reason your husband is acting this way, a marriage is an equitable partnership. Everyone’s feelings count: Some men were raised in a generation in which the man’s desires or feelings counted roughly twice that of the wife. And in this same era, women were seen as either too emotional or too needy. I had no way of knowing if this wife’s husband was raised in such a generation, but that’s one perspective.
Another possibility is that some people are raised to believe that they are the only ones who matter. Some fathers pamper their son so much that these same men grow up thinking that their opinions and feelings count the most. And while your husband may not have had any control over your upbringing, he is certainly in control of your actions now.
It is very important that you do not remain silent and allow him to dismiss or belittle his feelings. You are not being mean or asking too much to want your feelings to matter. You hope to have the same voice in your marriage. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, your children will grow up with your marriage as a model for yours. Nobody wants their daughter to think that her feelings don’t matter, and nobody wants her son to think that her feelings are the only ones that do. So I fully support you here and support your insistence that your feelings and needs matter as much as his. You can’t expect to have a healthy marriage if you don’t.
How to handle it when your husband doesn’t seem to value or care about your feelings. (Attack the behavior and not the person). I think the worst thing you can do is say or do nothing and hope this will resolve itself. Also, many wives will try to blame, shame, or coerce their spouse to do better. The thing is, negative strategies often don’t work. You don’t want to use negative reinforcement for positive change. For me, the best strategy is to be very direct and firm with your request and then rack up praise once your request is fulfilled.
So in real life, this is what that strategy would look like. The next time the husband dismisses the wife’s feelings, she might respond with something like, “We will have to discuss that. Two people make the decisions in a healthy marriage based on the feelings of both people. But you are the only one making the decisions. decisions. decisions based on your own feelings. I know you wouldn’t deliberately hurt me, but when it seems like you don’t care about my feelings, it hurts a lot. I need to have the same word and I need to know that how I feel matters to you. I am your wife I know you love me. But I need your actions and your behavior to reflect that love. And when you don’t consider my feelings, I’m just not feeling it. “
Notice that she has not made nasty accusations or hinted that her husband is a horrible and selfish person for not caring about how he feels. Sometimes you can act selfishly, but there is a big difference between acting indifferent and self-centered and being an unpleasant and self-centered person. It is very important to understand this distinction. Because when you go up to your husband and make it sound like it’s a personal attack, he’ll get defensive. But if you oppose the behavior and not the person, then it’s a completely different story.
The next step would be to catch your husband worrying about your feelings or considering your feelings and then praising him to those who will listen. Because in order to stop this behavior, you have to draw your attention to it, then you have to make a conscious effort to stop it. And when he does, he should be given positive reinforcement so that he wants to keep doing it. People will act in ways that are beneficial to them. If he sees that worrying about your feelings makes things better for him, then he probably wants that to happen.