It is quite normal for a wife to have feelings of insecurity once in a while. However, chronic insecurity can be toxic to a marriage; maybe your marriage is also being strained by your wife’s insecurity, and you must have encountered a lot of marital problems and challenges in this relationship, and sometimes you may hold a shallow and near-sighted view on what your wife did to you. Actually, a lot of marital problems and your wife’s confusing or crazy actions may be deeply rooted in her insecurity, but you may not realize that she just acted out of insecurity. In addition, the ways of expressing insecurity between women and men are different; after all, you are not a woman. This makes it difficult for you to spot her insecurity.
Anyway, when she feels insecure about you, her insecurity manifests itself in many ways.
The following points out 12 common signs of an insecure wife:
1 She becomes defensive:
Insecure women are more likely to become defensive than insecure men. When she defaults to getting defensive towards you, what you say or do to her may be perceived as criticism or punishment to her, even though you have no intention of hurting her. And with this mindset, she may act defensively without giving you a reason for doing that.
As she goes insane over-interpreting your behavior and accusing you of intending to do immoral things that you are not meant to do, you begin to feel puzzled and confused.
Remember that the majority of defensive wives are really insecure, and probably your wife also reacts defensively just because she perceives that you appear to pose a threat to your marriage.
2 She becomes controlling and authoritarian:
In a healthy marriage, both spouses need to retain their own individual identities. That is to say, every spouse should not lose himself/herself in a marital relationship. However, if a man goes out to meet someone without reporting it to his wife in time, an insecure wife may easily feel threatened in the relationship, even though it is totally unconnected to extramarital affairs, for example, a man just went out with his friends of the same sex to play sports, but his woman may inexplicably feel insecure.
And it is very possible that a woman may become inconsiderate and selfish when she feels that something or someone starts to go in her place that she used to occupy in her man’s heart; when she feels insecure about something or someone that is challenging her married life, she thinks that it is quite necessary to exert more control over her man; and the more insecure she feels, the more controlling and manipulative she is.
In real life, you must have ever seen or heard of some needy or clingy women who make their men tired and exhausted; for example, she wants to know where her man is with whom anytime. So if you are living with an insecure wife, probably the feeling of being controlled will slowly creep up on you too. If you always cave into her demands, sooner or later you will be irritated by her controlling behavior and then you will get downright crazy. It is difficult to achieve maintain happiness in a controlling marriage. Hence, if you can’t let your spouse stop being controlling in the marriage, the relationship tends to deteriorate.
3 She belittles you:
Belittling is a part of an insecure wife’s arsenal. To make herself feel better, she may manage to make you feel small. To create more chances to belittle you, she may frequently overreact to anything wrong you said or did, and then blow those things out of proportion. Gradually, you may feel like she is deliberately trying to turn everything into high drama when interacting with her.
Belittling is a form of behavior that can be used to attack a person’s self-esteem subtly and consciously. For her, the purpose of doing this is to drag you down to a level where she can have reasons to resent you.
Moreover, when your wife feels insecure about you, she temporarily loses the ability to exactly understand why you choose her as your life’s companion. However, she is always aware that she would do anything to keep you. Therefore, by ruining your self-esteem, she thinks that you are more likely to be with you eventually. It is like putting a dog on a leash, an insecure wife may also have the idea of putting her man on her mental leash.
4 She needs constant validation as well as reinforcement:
An insecure wife is usually not comfortable with herself. Therefore, while she is seeking chances to belittle you, she may also be seeking your validation. In doing so, she can make herself feel a little better. Generally, a woman’s self-esteem is based on her inner satisfaction; but as an insecure wife, she can’t find satisfaction within herself, and she is inclined to derive personal satisfaction from other people’s judgment, especially her husband’s. But the more she seeks your reassurance that she should be valued, loved, appreciated, or respected, the needier and clingier she is. After all, if a person’s self-satisfaction is obtained from others instead of the inner self, the feelings will soon fade away.
After reading the analysis above, you should not wonder why an insecure wife is often an attention seeker. So, if your wife feels insecure about you, she will manage to draw others’ attention in everyday life; maybe, sometimes she brags before others; maybe she constantly looks for others’ validation that she should be accepted as she is in the marriage, or maybe she starts to spend a lot more time on social media (the most typical instance is spending much time on Facebook)…
5 She is reluctant to see you spend time with others:
Has your wife ever made you feel guilty or ashamed for spending time with others, even though you just spent a little time with others? If so, your wife is insecure. And one typical trait of an insecure woman is trying to make her man feel insecure or guilty. Why does she act that way? Here is the explanation:
It is probable that your wife has been too clingy and attached to you, which means she may have invested herself too heavily in the marital relationship, and she has been highly dependent on you for company – because of you, she may have already alienated many people, with whom she had once been close before her marriage. Therefore, she certainly looks forward to equally constant validation from you, and meanwhile, validation from others may matter less and less to her, even though others give her the validation that she really seeks. So she may feel insecure about the fact that you can derive pleasure from someone else other than her.
By the way, when your wife thinks that her security is affected by other people (e.g. your colleagues and good friends), she may try to put a wedge between you and them. Even she may ask you to make one choice between them and her, and that may be really a dilemma. In such a case, someone who is involved may have to keep you at a distance due to your wife’s insecurity. If someone does that, your wife may also use it as evidence that someone is disapproving and attempting to get rid of her. Then she can justify her behavior that aims at getting rid of the so-called ”involver“.
For emotionally healthy people, they can derive satisfaction from a lot of areas of life, and a marital relationship is just one of the main sources. And a secure wife knows well that there is no need to command all of her man’s attention every day, let alone make her man feel guilty after he pays some attention to others.
By the way, if your wife clearly demands that you should stop trying to seek satisfaction outside of your marriage, then this can be identified as a sure sign your wife is insecure.
6 She holds a grudge:
Keeping score and holding a grudge should also be viewed as one of the signs of an insecure wife. When your wife thinks that you don’t feel worthy of her love, she may be tempted to keep score and hold a grudge over you all the time. To go on staying with your insecure wife, you have to walk on eggshells whenever you are around her. So you always have to be wary of making a mistake that may set her off. Then over time, the relationship with her tends to become tense; after all, you must have flaws that she can find in you, and it is also impossible to be a husband who makes no mistakes in marriage.
Furthermore, in the long run, holding a long-term grudge against a man may make it difficult for a woman to understand how to love him unconditionally and forgive him.
7 She abandons her own life:
If an insecure wife is unhappy with her own individual life before marriage, she may have the thought of completely merging with her husband’s life after marriage. As we all know, a healthy marital relationship should be like a Venn diagram – both sides maintain each other’s individual life, but there is also a significant overlap at the same time. And the married life represents the space that the two of you share, and then the rest space embodies your respective individual life.
When an insecure wife is unsatisfied with her own space, she naturally wants to jump more into her husband’s world. Over time, the marital relationship becomes more and more important for her, but meanwhile, other necessary relationships matter less and less to her. In the long run, other significant people like her friends, workmates, and even family members may play second fiddle to her husband. No doubt, it is harmful to both marriage development and personal development.
If a woman is overly emotionally invested in her man and even willing to abandon anybody or anything else to love him, almost certainly, she comes off as insecure.
Of course, it is difficult to notice this problem at the beginning of your marriage. After all, at the early stage, you may not know your wife well enough, and you can’t exactly foresee what will happen in the rest of your marriage life; plus, at that stage, probably you are so addicted to her that you fail to attentively notice. Maybe, it is not until things get particularly serious that you notice this warning sign. For a secure wife, she always tries to maintain a healthy balance among various relationships, rather than easily give up other necessary relationships to make the marital relationship work. So once you realize that your woman dives all into your relationship too soon, you had better keep a lookout.
8 She always looks for excuses to shirk responsibility:
An insecure wife is often not willing to do self-reflection, because she thinks that doing so means that she has acknowledged her weaknesses and limitations. Nobody is without faults and flaws, and she knows it very well too. However, it is rare to see an insecure wife admit her mistakes to her husband; instead, she is inclined to mask their faults and flaws or deny their existence. For example, once something goes wrong or things don’t go well for her, she may instantly make a statement that she was not at fault, and she may transfer responsibility to someone who affected or sabotaged her, or the external circumstances that were against her.
Because of an insecure wife’s stubbornness and irresponsibility when facing relationship issues related with her insecurity, she may deliberately refuse to admit her mistakes; so she can not draw a lesson from them, and she is very likely to repeat those mistakes; this creates extra difficulties in moving the marriage forward.
9 She also wants you to need her:
The words like “I couldn’t have lived without you” are often regarded as a romantic gesture. But in real life, our life still needs to move on when we have to separate one another. Even if a couple stays together happily for the whole life, death will also tear them apart ultimately; this is an unpleasant thing but this is real life.
Surely, it is also undeniable that married couples should stay together like a pair of chopsticks. But here, we focus on another fact – a secure wife understands that she does not have to physically need her beloved husband all the time. Even though a couple has lived together in a committed relationship for many years, they need to make enough room for each other’s personal space; yet a long-term marriage is based on mutual needs, instead of only one side’s needs. In other words, they stay together because they want to rather than have to. And every spouse should learn how to be needy and not to be needy in the long term relationship;
Then let’s shift the focus to figure out how an insecure wife wants her husband to meet her emotional needs: in her mind, her man should be with her whenever she wants him; and most likely, she also wants him to be needy as she is; because the more she makes her man needy, the less insecure she feels.
It is reasonable that a man will leave his woman if he no longer needs her. But an insecure wife tends to go extremes in this matter – An insecure wife has a series of authoritative, demeaning, or controlling behavior that aims at getting her man to conform to her excessive needs. For a man who feels secure and confident in his marriage, he would also not like to be too clingy or needy. So, the disagreement on how to be needy may put the marriage at risk.
In short, being too needy is a telltale sign of a woman’s insecurity. And an insecure wife is not only far too needy herself, but also encourages her man to be as needy as she is.
10 She doesn’t encourage you to chase dreams or success:
If you are in a happy marriage, it is clear that you and your spouse will both want the best for each other. However, when your wife is struggling with relationship insecurity, she is afraid of any slight change in the relationship. Underneath it all, she just wants you to spend most of your time with her. And this thought becomes particularly clear when she is going through a bad time because she easily gets into the negative mindset that if you have a better time than her, you may look down upon her and leave her. Therefore, she is prone to bring you down rather than encourage you to make achievements, no matter it is for your life or career.
Generally, insecure people suffer from a persistent lack of confidence and ambition. So if you have an insecure wife, she is less motivated to work towards a happy married life. Instead, she would want you to accept the present situation rather than rock the boat in any way. For example, when you share a promising plan for your career with her, she may instantly throw cold water on it, and remind you to become what you ought to be. Misery loves company – as an insecure wife, she will try to bring you down to her level.
11 She doesn’t want to talk about the relationship honestly:
What we see in others is a reflection of ourselves. And a marital relationship is a mirror that can point out each other’s flaws. When the romance is gone, you begin to notice each other’s flaws and shortcomings. As time goes on, conflict emerges.
It is necessary to have some open and frank conversations about sensitive issues in a relationship. That type of conversation is indeed uncomfortable but is needed for the healthy development of the relationship.
A key ingredient to a successful marriage is the ability to realize mistakes and be accountable for them. But the pity is that an insecure wife often fails to do this – she doesn’t want to reflect on all the mistakes/errors she has made, and she would not like to take constructive criticism from others, especially her husband. This makes it tough to have an honest and productive discussion about existing marital problems.
12 She is too jealous:
In many cases, jealousy is borne out of insecurity. Although a woman’s profound jealousy about her man is often triggered by sensitive issues (e.g. seeing him talking to an attractive woman, and noticing him staring at a pretty girl), the roots of jealousy ultimately lie in how she feels about herself. In an insecure wife’s mind, she has no enough confidence in keeping her man in place: in the long-term relationship, she is constantly afraid of being replaced by another better woman one day, because she has low self-esteem and doesn’t know how to value herself.
Again, although sometimes her jealousy is justified, most of the time, it roots from a deep sense of insecurity. For example, she may feel there is a need to regularly and frequently look through her man’s phone, laptop, and social media accounts; and she can make various excuses for such behavior, even though that is indeed unnecessary, abnormal, or even irrational.
Understandably, as humans, we all feel twinges of jealousy from time to time; it is normal for a wife to experience mild jealousy, but highly emotional or irrational jealousy is worth noticing – probably it is a sign that your wife is feeling insecure about you.
So how to respond to an insecure wife?
Regardless of how happy a love relationship is, a woman may have insecurity over her man loving her – when he seems angry or distant, she may fear it is about her. The problem is that when she assumes it is personal, her man chooses to respond in defensive ways. The more defensively he responds, the more insecure she feels. And that can easily trigger the insecure wife’s anger because she is apt to take what he said personally. And the negative communication loop that goes back and forth between them escalates the anger and frustration.
When the situation above happens to a marriage, both spouses assume the worst about each other as well as the relationship, and everything seems to become negative. When a couple takes everything personally in their married life, it inevitably causes a big loss of faith in the marriage.
Surely, when your wife is insecure, you still need to hear what she has to say; and when she says something harsh, angry, or critical, probably you respond in one of the three ways below without realizing it:
- You ignore it:
But if you ignore your wife’s feedback for a long time, it contributes to emotional disconnection. As we all know, many men don’t consider making significant changes until they realize that their marriages have been on the brink of collapse, but unfortunately, it may be too late. So it is inadvisable to always ignore your wife’s feedback when she feels insecure.
- You respond to everything:
If you respond to everything, she may take everything personally. When an insecure wife gets angry, she is tempted to find some way to reduce her anger. And if you always react by contradicting her when she says something suspicious, you will be stuck in a destructive pattern where you are always responsible for her bad emotional state.
- You listen to her carefully and you assume her emotional state is not a result that you want:
Although you sense she is sort of insecure, you still assess whether what she says has merit or not. In other words, you are open to considering what she wants you to change, and you don’t take everything that she said personally. Such a posture is not reactive, and you don’t build a wall that resists her opinion. By seriously considering the truth of her complaints or suggestions, you choose to make changes where necessary. That could be viewed as a proactive stance – you just seek to change what you need to change without assuming that you need to change everything.
Among the 3 options above, the third option is the best. In short, when your wife is insecure and judges you, you do not have to take everything personally; and don’t go to another extreme that you take nothing personally.
The final word on her insecurity :
As a couple, you can’t be around each other every minute of the day, there must be things that your wife misunderstands or does not exactly know, there must be some attractive women can make your wife feel unsafe in the relationship if she doesn’t stop comparing herself with other women, and there must be some times when you get angry at her… Under those situations, your wife can be susceptible to insecure tendencies. It is fair to say that insecurity is unavoidable in marriage. The only way to overcome insecurity is to develop mutual trust. And any solid marriage must be built on strong mutual trust.
Again, a little insecurity is normal; sometimes, we also have some insecurity over our spouses loving us. And building a happy marriage is bound to be an ongoing process of enhancing mutual trust, understanding, and overcoming unnecessary insecurity.
If you realize that her insecurity is sabotaging your marriage and you need more tips on how to fix the problematic marriage, you might go on to watch the video below to follow the comprehensive marriage-saving guidance that is offered by Brad Browning, a marriage coach with 12+ years of experience:
And you might also go on to read the post below to better understand what a woman wants from his man in a long-term relationship:
A wife’s emotional needs – what a wife wants from a husband.
Maybe, you are also interested in the related posts below:
How to make your woman feel secure in your marriage.
How to understand controlling behavior in marriage.
How to gain your wife’s trust back – Regain your lost trust.
How to get your wife to forgive you after cheating – Restore trust in you.
How to overcome codependency in marriage – Fix the marriage.
How to keep intimacy in your marriage – Improve marital intimacy
How to romance your wife again – Tips for romance with your wife.
What a healthy marriage looks like – How to maintain a marriage.