Traditional marriage, like any other type of marriage, is not exempt from frustration, and both husbands and wives have to deal with it at some point. One common source of frustration for a wife in a traditional
marriage, especially during the first few years of growing into the traditional
marriage role, is the inconsistent handling of rule-breaking. When the husband
puts a rule in place, he should communicate what the consequence will be if
the rule is broken. If the wife breaks the rule, and realizes what she has
done, she expects the promised consequence to follow.
What happens if the expected consequence does not follow?
What happens if the husband doesn’t even seem to notice that the rule he
insisted on having has been broken? Or imagine that the husband does notice (and the wife observes this),
but he ignores the offense for reasons he doesn’t communicate to his wife.
The non-responsiveness of the husband typically elicits a
chain of reaction from his eager-to-be-submissive wife:
1. If the husband is in the same room, the wife may actually
respond physically by tensing up and catching her breath when she realizes she has crossed
the line. If the realization comes a little later when she is alone, the
reaction may not be so physically noticeable, but it will trigger the start of
a period of anxiety. As she waits for her husband to speak about or act on the
broken rule, her state of anxiety may expand to match the magnitude of the
consequence she expects.
2. After an appreciable time has passed and the wife finally concludes
that her husband either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t appear to care, she may
initially feel relief. Facing an unpleasant consequence is stressful, and
having that consequence vanish after an anxious wait can evoke a rush of soothing
calm. (For wives who are expected to confess their offenses to their husbands,
they may only feel relief after the confession.)
3. The relief is often short-lived. Anger and disappointment may follow quickly on the heels
of relief. Faced with the unfairness of being subjected to a stressful waiting
period for no apparent reason, the wife may feel that anger (or at least some measure of irritation) is
justified. Disappointment may flow from making the situation too personal - in the midst of the emotion she feels, the wife may convince herself that her husband doesn’t care as much about the marriage and her
as she previously thought, simply because he didn’t notice what she did wrong or care enough
to say or do something, if he did notice.
4. Uncertainty or confusion about the rule and its
importance in the marriage follows. The wife is understandably confused by why
her husband would make a rule that he himself does not respect enough to
remember or defend. It’s not that she wants to experience the consequence that was promised
- she probably dreads it - but the consequence brings some closure to the event
which has (by this time) taken up a substantial amount of the wife’s thought
life. Without the closure, the memory of the broken rule just gets pushed aside
as unfinished business. If it takes substantial effort for the wife to obey
the rule, it flies in the face of logic to continue to observe the rule if
the husband behaves in a way which communicates that the rule is unimportant. Her previously clear
expectations of the consequences for breaking the rule are now clouded by
uncertainty. The husband's response to the rule-breaking is his opportunity to exercise his authority - by responding with no words or action, the husband is sending a subtle message that he is unable or unwilling to exercise his authority.
If the husband continues to repeat this behavior (of
disregarding consequences that he put in place), his wife’s
frustration will grow as her confidence dwindles. The wife’s frustration will gradually breed
disrespect for the house rules and eventually for the husband’s authority. The
end result? A husband who doesn’t feel respected, a wife who feels her
submission has been a wasted effort, and a home and marriage in which the harmony
and co-operation is eroding.
I think you touched on an important point, the decision to deliver a consequence or not is the husband's decision. There may be a reason that he decides not to, but if he doesn't communicate it she will feel that perhaps his mind is not on the welfare of the marriage.
ReplyDeleteWard and I have an agreement that any discipline or correction will be handled as immediately as possible because it does induce anxiety, and I don't feel right about having anything between us. I crave to have the air cleared as soon as possible.
Thanks for your input, June. You are spot on! Communication is definitely the key. If the husband changes his mind about leadership decisions that affect his wife, it is critical that he communicate this to her. Clear communication does bypass so much of the troubled water that churns up many marriages. Your agreement with Ward regarding swift correction is also wise - extended periods of anxiety can be unhealthy and should be avoided, if possible.
DeleteOh my word, YES! You explained this so much better than I have ever been able to. I feel like I should be relieved, but I am not....and then I get angry...and feel like a crazy hormonal mess. Poor Ryan. I am going to have him read this....
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lucy Lou. I don't think many husbands who are not consistent regarding the rules they make are actually AWARE of the stress it causes their more conscientious wives. And when wives wait until they want to burst from frustration before they say anything, the words often come out in a disrespectful way (which makes the husbands less likely to listen). Definitely get Ryan on board so he understands your situation better.
DeleteI haven't experienced this too much, maybe a little at the beginning, but I have read a number of posts and comments from women who are experiencing anxiety about their reaction to their HoHs inconsistency.
ReplyDeleteYour post explains it very well and is something that HoHs should read, whether they struggle with this or not.
Good post. :)
Thanks, Lillie. I think most couples grow out of this frustrated and uncertain stage as their relationship matures. In the beginning, when there is so much to learn and understand about each other, both husbands and wives are seeking predictability. When that expectation is disappointed, it does shake things up a little.
DeleteI agree. I knew the principle, but I haven't read it stated so clearly before. It helps me understand why consistency is important even when she doesn't fully agree with the rule.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your perspective, Kevan. I think the consistency does help to stabilize the growth in the relationship. And perhaps it is even more important when the wife doesn't agree with the rule. I believe the husband's consistency will help her reach a place of acceptance much faster than if he appears to falter on his own rules.
DeleteI agree. I also think that the wife has a responsibility to continue to communicate. It's easy to go down all those negative roads but my husband has told me that at times he really is just plain clueless. He needs to know what I'm thinking and feeling. While we didn't really have a hard time with consistency, the few times we did I could help by going to him and pouring out the frustration. He didn't want me frustrated so he began paying much closer attention.
ReplyDeleteI am actually quite okay with being given a "pass" but it needs to come with some discussion, not simply because he didn't notice something.
Absolutely, Susie. As with so many other difficult marriage issues, the lack of consistency in a husband responding to broken rules is going to grow as a problem if the husband and wife withhold information from each other. Sharing is the key to growing closer and growing through any problem areas.
DeleteThat happens all the time at our house. My husband's method of discipline is to ignore me and pretend I didn't exist. If I try to "get in his face" so to speak, I am then very severely punished. I can tell you, I don't know how many times I would have preferred a spanking like is described here. It's total agony. I hate it, hate it, hate it. I finally got used to it. To survive, I found a good girlfriend in whom I could confide. She is also in a difficult marriage but with different problems, so we just keep each other going and encourage each other.
ReplyDeleteMy husband does not pay any attention to me. Period. It has certainly been effective, at least in making sure I do not disturb him, or cause any disruption in any way. I work hard at keeping my mouth shut, but sometimes I just can't seem to do it, and then I receive a more severe punishment. Those are especially painful, both physically and emotionally.
Sometimes it's difficult just to comb my hair in the morning. I think it would be easier if I worked outside the home. Do any of you have husbands who use invisibility (that's the term I coined for it) as their brand of discipline?
Thanks for your comment, Anonymous. I must admit that I don't know any wives who actually enjoy a punishment. You are not alone in expressing your sentiment about punishment. Unlike other types of spanking which are not as severe, the punishment spanking does hurt - A LOT. In severe cases, the spanking may leave the wife’s buttocks tender (or even bruised) for days after the punishment.
DeleteYour comment left me a little concerned for your wellbeing. You didn’t provide enough information to know the nature of your punishments (other than that they are physically and emotionally painful), but it concerns me that you say that an everyday task like combing your hair can be a challenge, presumably following a punishment. I understand that this may be due to your emotional state, where the hopelessness you are feeling drains your energy. But you should not struggle with simple tasks, because you are injured physically. A loving, physical punishment given by a husband to his wife, meant as correction and for the purpose of enriching the marriage, should be administered to the wife’s buttocks and the back of her upper thighs. This part of a woman’s body can take substantial punishment without causing harm - there may be pain, but no injury. If the husband strikes other areas of her body, he may indeed cause bodily harm - this type of beating is dangerous and abusive. If you are sustaining physical abuse within your marriage, I encourage you to seek help. Local churches or law enforcement authorities are a good place to find help.
Oh, no, by severe punishment I mean complete and total withdrawal -- meaning, he leaves the house and I am further isolated. By "painful", I mean it is so mentally and emotionally painful I feel like I could die. Just combing my hair in the morning is hard to do because I just feel sort of like "what's the point, he doesn't care," which I know is immature and a pity party, and I have to kind of force myself to do it.
DeleteBut no, no, he would never physically hurt me, ever. He just doesn't understand how profoundly depressed I get sometimes. The pain of seeing him just walk out the door to leave is so great, and I used to cry, but that made him angry. Now I just sort of watch him and make a mental note not to do it again -- meaning, if I don't want the agony of him walking out the door, I need to keep a good poker face on. That is the lesser of the two pains.
I'm sorry to have given you the impression my husband physically hurts me. He would never, ever do that.
And the physical pain I am referring to is mostly a stomachache because I just feel so sad. One time I thought I had an ulcer. I didn't. I figured I was just a whiner and felt kind of ashamed that I took up a doctor's time with nothing but a plain old stomachache. I just crave his attention sometimes that it hurts.
DeleteHe buys gifts for me that I really don't like at all. Most of them I keep out for a while and then put away or eventually end up giving away. I don't like getting a ton of things. His dad used to buy his mom roses and wine a lot, and I guess she liked them. I don't like the taste of wine and only drink it because he likes a glass of wine with dinner -- I sort of choke it down, I really, really hate the taste of it...and an occasional glass of red wine is good for you, so I've been told, so I swallow it. The roses are lovely, but we have rosebushes in front of our house that he planted. Why buy roses when we have lovely ones with a beautiful fragrance for free out in front?
I hope that OFM does not mind if I respond to your post. From a submissive's point of view, the worst thing that Ward could do to me would be to ignore me. And he says that he knows it would do more harm than good. It is distancing, in the worst possible way, and damaging to the relationship. Ward and I, as many others in the community, have a no distancing rule.
DeleteThat applies to Ward as well as myself. When I feel Ward is pulling back I respectfully share with him that I feel that distance. As much as we are accountable to our HoH's and our relationships, they is also accountable to us and the relationship.
I would also like to ask for clarification. You say that he buys you gifts. Do the gifts come after he enacts the distancing behavior? Emotional abuse is as damaging as physical abuse. If he is showering you with gifts after distancing, this may be his way of acknowledging and apologizing for this behavior. But this is not healthy for either of you.
As OFM said, if this is the case, if the behavior is at the level of abuse, so much so that it is causing you to experience physical manifestations of stress, you need to get assistance.
As far as not liking the gifts he gives, if the gifts are dependent of the distancing perhaps you dislike them because accepting them is saying his behavior is acceptable. If the gifts are independent of the distancing behavior, part of submission is grace, so perhaps you could look beyond the material 'thing' to the thought that may be expressing how he values you - by giving you things he values.
In either of the above, communication is imperative. If the gifts are abuse related, you could share with him that the gifts mean far less than his loving behavior and the closeness you crave. If the gifts are simply gifts, part of submission is grace, and maybe look past the substance to the expression of his affection,and you could share what things are meaningful to you, which again might be more of his time.
If you cannot communicate with him, or if you fear communicating with him,then please take OFM's advice and seek help.
I'll keep you in my thoughts and prayers.
Thank you for sharing more of your experience, Anonymous. And thank you, June, for adding your thoughts - you are always welcome to chip in when you have something to share. We learn from others when we open ourselves up and listen to their ideas, so I am glad you took the time to leave an insightful comment. Comments enrich and add value to a post, and you provided some wonderful insights for Anonymous. You already provided a lot to think about, June, but I’d like to add a little more to what you have already shared.
DeleteThe pain and isolation you have experienced, Anonymous, have clearly caused damage: to you and to your marriage. But what you have shared most recently has actually given me a hearty boost of hope for your marriage. At the risk of sounding like I am condoning your husband’s distancing and siding with him, I want to invite you to step back from what you are feeling so you can see your situation a little differently. What if your husband truly does not know how to talk to you? What if he feels overwhelmed every time he sees the expectation of conversation in your eyes, and crashes when he can’t find adequate words to articulate what he thinks you want him to say? What if the “walking away” that you experience as so hurtful is nothing more than him running from the site of his own humiliation? Perhaps he is not running from you, but from his own inability to please you with intimate conversation? Is there any chance you could consider that he isn’t trying to hurt you as much as he is trying to protect himself?
I don’t know the reason he buys you gifts (June did speculate a little about that, and provided some valuable insights), but it is significant that he does. You are not invisible to him - he notices you enough to bring home a gift. You may prefer a long conversation as your gift, but it is important to recognize that you have been given gifts by the very man who isn’t speaking to you. Yes, he messed up by buying gifts that don’t suit you - clearly he has a lot to learn about his wife. But he also is trying to mimic what his father modeled for him - his father pleased his mother by giving her a particular type of gift, and perhaps because he doesn’t know how to please you (again, he has a lot to learn), he repeats the behavior of his father - if it worked to please his mother, perhaps he thinks it might also work to convince you that he loves you and appreciates you. Perhaps those roses (which he planted and which he continues to buy for you) mean something to him? That would be a great place to start getting to know him better - in time you may find out why roses in particular are his way of blessing his wife. This perspective is not meant to devalue the pain you have experienced, but rather to encourage you to consider that your husband’s behavior may have motivations other than ones you have already considered.
Your comments stirred my curiosity, Anonymous, so I started doing some research on husbands who take the silent route. The first post on this topic is at http://bit.ly/RoDuxO, and includes a reference to an engaging article that I think you will benefit from reading.
When I read your comments, I see something that I want to encourage you to see: a marriage that has been through a harsh winter season, but is on the brink of spring. You may feel as if years have been wasted and you are married to a man to whom you are a stranger, but perhaps you could view that differently. You and your husband know so little about each other that you are like a brand, new couple with a lifetime of exciting learning ahead of you. Will that communication happen overnight? No, but what matters is that is CAN happen. Don’t lose hope. If you suspect that your husband is not being emotionally abusive (if he is, seek help), then take the risk and look at your marriage a little differently.
Thank you for your kind words. No, I don't think the years have been wasted; I have lovely children and they are not wasted years at all. Also, I have good friends. It's just hard to do things with my husband because he and I simply don't speak the same language, and while I am sad about that, my life is very full. I am totally wrapped up in my children and the challenge of raising them and cleaning fingerprints and muddy footprints and loving an adorable baby. :-) We have music and sports and homeschool going and there is no time to be bored! :-) Aside from that, I love my life. When you've been at anything long enough, it becomes second nature; we've been married ten years and now it's pretty much an accepted thing, I guess. I did sort of fight it for a while, but it just wasn't worth it.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested in reading your other posts. Thanks for your kind words again. I think that gifts and actions of service, as denoted in the Five Love Languages book, are my husband's love languages, which I've also discerned from what feedback I do get (usually when the day went crazy and dinner didn't get done on time, and his shirts aren't ironed!). Mine are totally different.
The fact that each of us expresses our love differently makes relationship building such an exciting process. We will never do or say things exactly as our spouses so, and that means there will also be room for misunderstanding. But it also means there is room for discovery, and that spices up a relationship.
DeleteThe gifts he gives me are for the special occasions; every birthday he gets me an ice cream cake because that was always the rage when he was a kid. I really don't like ice cream cakes, but our kids always look forward to it, so that's fun and OK with me. Also, he doesn't give gifts as apologies.
ReplyDeleteSometimes he has seen a lot of disappointment and pain when he sees my face, because I frequently get very tense when he does talk to me. I run a very full and hectic schedule with a lot of small children and I was from my earliest days expected to work under tremendous pressure -- I taught school and ran several other things, but those were in the days when the children went home at three o'clock. I could decompress from all the stress of teaching, and I was commanded to go into education, I had no choice in my profession because my mother dictated my every move and since I wanted my Mom's love, I did what I was told. Now the kids are all mine and all at home and I now deal with major anxiety attacks and depression issues I never dealt with before, and it doesn't make any sense to him. He can't understand that I can't absorb the overstimulation and that the things he expects from me are sending me into massive panic attacks. I have learned to squelch oncoming panics by shutting down mentally and emotionally, or by sending my children outside so it is quiet and I can focus on tackling the mess in my house one step at a time. Homeschooling is also extremely stressful for me as well. I cannot keep it up along with all the other things. He says that's what's most important and that I need to learn to let other things go; but on the other things he is not specific. I do not operate well at all in a house that is chaotic and messy. My boys get noisy and it stresses me out terribly.
I eat to relieve that heart-stopping stress, which is another thing that my husband cannot fathom, because he would never do that. But I find if I don't eat, I end up talking at him non-stop, and the consequences of talking to him are not pretty. I sometimes eat as many as ten dark chocolate bars one after the other until my mind finally stops racing. I guess the phenylanaline makes a difference. I do have a friend I can call, but she has a family, too. When I talk to her sometimes I can avoid the chocolate binge.
My weight, blood pressure, LDL cholesterol and blood glucose are through the roof. Household help and a housekeeper to help keep the chaos under control are not in the budget, and my husband absolutely insists on homeschooling. My kids are ages nine and under, and there are six of them, four of them are boys. I take medications for anxiety and go to a counselor to try to decompress from all this. My counselor keeps saying that I have to communicate to him, but how? How do you talk to a brick wall? How do you tell him your head is about to split open from stress? Because he's under stress, too, at his work, and if I tell him about my stress he'll say I don't care enough about his. I'm a mess.
I agree with your counselor - communication is the life blood of a relationship. It may be a good idea to ask your counselor to work with you on some communication strategies you can employ at home. Role playing is helpful for some people as it allows them to rehearse different conversations and build confidence - your counselor may be able to suggest and work on other confidence-building activities. The truth is that none of us are born with perfect communication skills. We all have to work on some or other aspect of being a good communicator. What is important to me is to always focus on identifying where I need to grow as a communicator and then to work on those weaker skills. I try not to focus on the communication weaknesses of my spouse, because the stronger I become as a communicator, the easier I will make it for my spouse to communicate with me.
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