Do you feel like your husband is not there for you while you need him? Do you come to feel that he doesn’t care about you? Does it seem to be a stretch for him to do things that are involved with you? Do you feel he despises you in some way? Or does he act like he can’t stand to be around you? I bet you must feel sort of confused and lost when you feel like your husband hates you, and the following may help you better understand his psychology in the process of pushing you away emotionally.
Does your man hate you when he is pulling away emotionally?
A marital relationship can get tough at some point. And sometimes it is challenging to know what your man secretly thinks and wants.
In general, men’s psychology is not as complex as women; but after all, women and men are of different genders, the understanding deviation between each other is unavoidable.
As a woman, you have got used to seeing things and handling problems from the female perspective. Before your marriage, you have already established a thinking pattern that is comprehensive and uniquely female. Even if you are sure that you have gained deep insights into how your man thinks and behaves, you still can’t guarantee that you know well every nook and cranny of his emotional system.
Hence, there is no need to jump to conclude that your man has hatred in his heart only because you sense that he is pulling away emotionally.
So you might slow things down when you feel like your husband hates you:
Sometimes, a woman may pick up on some negative signals which her man is projecting; and once she adds them all up, she fears that her man is harboring hatred in his heart and that the marriage is taking a turn for the worse. If you have a similar experience, you are advised to slow things down. Of course, when you strongly sense that recently your husband always behaves strangely, the abnormal behavior may not be a figment of your imagination, and it may indicate something is wrong with the relationship.
Understandably, your husband’s current state of mind makes you feel bad. But anyway, it is not wrong to take a timeout from the pent up negative energy that you are processing; just wait and see how he acts next, maybe some misunderstanding can be avoided. The cases below may make this point clear:
- Sometimes, your husband’s moods that you are picking up on are just fueled by self-protective emotions. In other words, sometimes he may hide a secret or critical thing for which he feels shame or inadequate in some way; over time, as he feels increased stress, he may take the stress out on you; but eventually, he may straighten out his thinking, and open up his heart to you and tell you what went wrong. With the increase of mutual communication, unnecessary stress can be relieved quickly, and his seemingly hateful attitude towards you can pass away correspondingly.
- When you see your man withdrawing emotionally, a thought may flash through your mind – “does he fall out of love with me?” although sometimes you may also be disinclined to believe in it. Surely, this simple suspicion lacks grounds, and further observation is needed before a definite conclusion can be drawn.
- When your husband is angry, you may feel assaulted by his mean-spirited words, and thereby erroneously conclude that he hates you as a person. However, in the heat of the moment, he is easy to go to extremes – he may act like he is fed up with you, and his serious tone may make you feel like what he says is true.
- A man may also get annoyed and upset with his woman for certain reasons, particularly after they have lived together for many years. For example, as a man feels increasingly insecure about himself in a long term relationship, he may act out in a manner that can be easily mistaken for hatefulness by his woman.
It is vital to understand the two aspects below about your man when you feel like your husband hates you:
(1) You are not able to always figure out what is on his mind:
There can be a dark impulse inside of a man’s soul. Sometimes when the dark impulse takes over him temporarily, he can act out what he has in his mind, and hence his hateful behavior emerges. Likewise, when a woman is having hatred for his man, she may also do the same on her man, but a woman usually does not show so great intensity of feeling.
Sometimes spiteful and mean behavior can be exhibited during a serious conflict/fight between wife and husband, but the problem behind the behavior may stem from certain deeply held resentment and anger that have yet to emerge but need to be seriously dealt with; resentment can linger for months and even years; unless a man bares his heart to his woman, it may never cross her mind that he has taken a certain disagreement or conflict to his heart.
There are all sorts of things that can invoke the vagaries of a person’s mind and emotions. So much information can be hidden behind our words and actions.
As explained above, you should know that it is difficult to accurately read a person’s mind all the time. It is even tough enough to know yourself really, so you do not have to ask yourself to psych out your husband’s mind. Even though you believe you know your husband very well, there will always be cases where he will behave and handle issues in a way that is beyond your expectations. And you must have also encountered a situation where your husband’s behavior as represented by his actions, words, and tone that seem somewhat out of his character. Again, too many women assume that they have already known their men through and through; but the fact is that they don’t quite understand some things about their men.
Furthermore, part of the reason for the difficulty in getting a handle on your man’s true feelings is because you have got used to handling things from the perspective of a woman. After all, you are a woman that greatly differs from a man, and it is perfectly natural to process things from a different perspective. Therefore, you need to accept a fact – more or less, every couple has misunderstandings inevitably. Even if your husband complains that you misunderstand him, you needn’t blame yourself too much as long as you have tried your best to understand his feelings.
(2) Your husband has a fragile ego:
When facing all kinds of difficult situations, a husband may secretly want to stay relatively independent and feel capable of dealing with them on their own; he tends to internalize this kind of feeling; surely, he has the desire to overcome difficult situations, but he doesn’t want to tell it to his woman, and he chooses to hide it. However, if he meets with more and more difficulties or failures when dealing with one, probably he will look upset in front of his woman because he feels that his ego takes a blow.
On the other hand, when a man feels that he doesn’t fulfill his ego’s needs in his marriage, he can resent his woman and thereby behave badly in front of his woman. There is selfishness in such behavior. Of course, a woman also has an ego. But compared with females, males are somewhat more selfish, it can be thought of as a relic from human evolution as a species. And a husband’s upset feelings are contagious for his woman – when those negative feelings can cross over into her emotional life, she may repeatedly ask herself, “Why is he acting so hateful towards me?” hence, it is easy for her to misunderstand that she may be to blame for something else; but the fact is his expectations for the role in the marriage are falling short of his inner aspirations, he chooses to express his dissatisfaction by striking out at his partner. As regards his ego, usually he blames his wife instead of himself.
If you want to learn more about how to boost your husband’s ego, you might go on to read the post below:
10 tips on how to boost your husband’s ego – Stroke his ego.
When you feel like your husband hates you, you might hold the two principles:
(1) Give him some space and distance:
Although it is not surprising that a wife gets caught up in the vortex of her husband’s internalized emotions, it does not mean that the wife should embrace his husband’s negative feelings as something that she needs to be responsible for. In that situation, the husband often tries to work through his feelings by himself, and he would not like to openly talk about those feelings because that is the way a man is. If his wife gets in the way, probably she will feel like she is being bulldozed by hateful vibes. Sometimes no matter what you say or do to understand the genesis of his feelings or help soothe him, he ignores you or doesn’t listen to you. So you do not have to personally embrace what he is feeling, and just let his bad feelings run their course. Surely, it is not easy to do when you are in the line of fire. But sometimes you just have no better choice than to give your man room to work through his negative emotions.
So remind yourself to give him some space and distance when he acts like he hates you. As long as you do that way, even if you just take a mini timeout, later your husband will be more likely to quell his temper and find a way back to you with apologies.
(2) Take a timeout:
Surely, giving him space and distance does not mean that he is allowed to strike out at you in a vile way when things are not going his desirable way. You have got to set a critical red line that he is not allowed to cross – the “abuse” line. So, try to underscore something clearly; for example, let your husband know that there is no excuse for hurling verbal abuse at you; once it happens, adopt a zero-tolerance policy that has already been mutually agreed upon. Remember, whether his abusive behavior lasts for several minutes or hours, let him know that he should not treat you as a punching bag in any case.
In fact, it is not so difficult to take a marriage timeout when you feel like your husband hates you. For example, if your husband becomes highly emotional when arguing with you, you can leave the room; there can be no reasoning with a person who is making ugly assertions or bombarding you with hateful language. So, taking a timeout seems to be the only sensible choice at that moment.
It can’t be stressed enough: when you feel like you are the recipient of his hateful language or behavior, you had better instantly remove yourself from the environment. Otherwise, that only enables your man to continue releasing the inner demons that may have been caged up inside of him.
The final word:
There are some times when we get upset, scream, and even spew hateful words at people who are closest to us; sometimes your husband also does that way. Yes, that kind of behavior is abnormal, and it is damaging to a relationship. However, if your husband just does that rarely, usually it does not mean that he hates you as a person; you need to be aware of one thing: how a man speaks his mind in the heat of emotion versus his actual core thoughts are not necessarily the same. However, if recently you have always felt unloved and unwanted, that may be a serious relationship issue – there is a need to take action to improve the relationship, even though your man still remains indifferent in such a situation.
For more tips on what you should do to improve your marriage when you feel like your husband hates you, you might go on to read the page below to follow the comprehensive guidance that is offered by Brad Browning, a marriage coach with 12+ years of experience:
Is your husband pulling away? Marriage ‘on the rocks’? Do yourself a favor and watch this video!
Maybe, you are also interested in the related posts below:
4 matters you should pay attention to when your husband hates you.
What should you do when your husband says he hates you?
What a husband expects from his wife in marriage – a man’s needs.
Don’t miss these subtle signs you are in a loveless marriage.
9 tips on how to make your husband loyal – What he needs in the marriage.
Signs your husband is pulling away – Why he seems distant.
How to mend the marriage when your husband says hurtful words.