How Can I Make A Marriage Work When He Sees Only Black and White?

Reader’s Question

I am not in love with my husband anymore. He has turned out to be a critical, controlling, hypocritical, lying, judgmental, know-it-all, who seems to see things only in black and white. I no longer find him attractive in any way, and having intimacy with him is revolting. We are constantly arguing and most of the time I’m just defending myself. For example, I wanted to bake a cake for Christmas dinner because my guests requested it from me. His first words out of his mouth were that I only wanted to bake a cake to impress my guests (which is not true) and that it was selfish of me for wanting to take away time from him and the kids to bake a cake for someone else. But the truth is that I wanted to bake it because I thought it would be nice to contribute a homemade dish for my guests, which meant I would need his help to watch the kids while I baked…is that really selfish? I don’t want a divorce because deep inside all I want is a happy family so lately I’ve just been agreeing with everything he says just to avoid an argument but this makes him even more furious. I feel like I’m in a no-win situation and I constantly feel like I need to get his approval for everything in fear that he will find a reason to criticize me. Living with him is very self-deprecating. How can I make this marriage work while living with a man who only sees things in black and white?

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

You can’t make this marriage work…not as a marriage anyway. You mention that you don’t want a divorce — but you want a happy family. How can you have a happy family when this level of stress, turmoil, disrespect, disagreement, and resentment exists? As your situation exists, you’ll be unable to have a marriage or happy family here. At best, you can hope to achieve a low-stress living environment. It sounds like you’ve developed a few strategies to keep his anger and behavior under partial control. I would imagine that the children are doing something similar — “walking on eggshells” every day trying to avoid their father. In reality, this is only likely to become worse over time. There is no option for “happy family” here.

As you think about your options, you need to consider a few things. First, when you mention that he “turned out” to be critical, controlling, etc. — was his original personality totally different? If this is a fairly recent change in personality, he may be depressed or stressed due to job or other factors. This would suggest that professional treatment would be helpful. If what you are seeing is an exaggeration of his “normal” personality — then it’s highly unlikely things will change. Under stress, our normal personality exaggerates — nasty people become more nasty, that kind of thing.

If you are interested in a happy family, you may need to check on the status of the children. They are likely to be as miserable as you are in this situation. If that’s the case, a divorce may be the only way to provide them with a happy family if your husband isn’t interested in repairing the relationship and changing his behavior.

Lastly, I think it’s important for you to recognize what you’re dealing with in yourself as well as the marriage. Many people see life in either black or white — but they aren’t abusive. You are describing someone who is verbally abusive — that’s why he is now repulsive to you and you are living in constant fear of verbal attack. People who behave in this manner have additional behaviors that I’ve outlined in my article entitled Identifying Losers in Relationships — available on this website.

You’ll need a long-term plan here. The first stage is to use strategies that avoid more abuse. The second stage is to build-up and repair your self-esteem and self-confidence. Third stage might be to develop independent living and other skills that may be needed should you decide to leave the relationship. Once you have repaired your self-esteem and have independent living skills, you can then decide if the relationship is worth keeping.