Q. My husband is chronically complaining and often in a bad mood. He finds something wrong with everything and frequently has a pity party for himself. I don’t know how to help him or even how to live with him in a godly way. I don’t want him to ruin the holidays for our children – again! What can I do? Diane in PA
A. It is extremely difficult to live with a negative person. Check out my blogs on October 20th and November 10th to see if your husband might be depressed. However, some people are just habitually negative and don’t understand how miserable they are making themselves as well as the toxic effect they have on others. Bad moods and negative attitudes are contagious like the flu and you will need to do some things to protect yourself and your children from catching it.
You ask if there is something you can do to help him? The answer is yes and no. Yes, if he wants help with his negativity and sees it as his problem. No, if he doesn’t see it as his problem and blames you or the world for everything that doesn’t go the way he thinks it should.
You might try talking with him about his attitude, but I suspect you’ve tried that already with more negative results. We all are somewhat blind to our shortcomings, and this is true for a negative person as well. However, another approach would be to help him see what his pessimistic outlook costs him. When someone is chronically negative they are miserable, but what the person doesn’t grasp is that it’s not his life that’s the main problem. It’s his internal attitude. It’s the way he habitually thinks about life and responds when he doesn’t get what he wants or what he feels he deserves. When nothing is right on the inside, then nothing can be right on the outside.
No one thinks or feels positively in every situation nor is it always beneficial. But what our mind and emotions habitually dwell on, directly affects our mood, our attitude and our behavior. When we regularly brood on things that we don’t like or that are wrong, painful, negative or hurtful, we can’t feel happy. It’s impossible. The psalmist cried out, “My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught” (Psalm 55:2).
Constantly complaining and comparing one’s lot in life to others more fortunate causes us to feel upset and unhappy. God has hardwired our thoughts to be influenced by our feelings and our emotions are directly impacted by the thoughts we think. Dallas Willard, in his excellent book on spiritual formation, Renovation of the Heart said, “If we allow certain negative thoughts to obsess us, then their associated feelings can enslave and blind us—that is, take over our ability to think and perceive.”
It’s important that you not take responsibility for his feelings or try to cater to his bad moods. That will just make you and the children feel like you’re walking on eggshells and reinforce the lie that somehow you and everyone else is responsible to make him happy. When he vomits his negativity on you, do your best to shake it off as quickly as possible. Don’t retaliate. Don’t brood. And don’t get caught in your own pity party that feels gypped because you’re married to this kind of man. Distance yourself from him when he’s in this state so there is no secondary gain for him. If he doesn’t want to participate in something, do it without him. By doing this, you’re not punishing him, but helping yourself not “catch” his bad mood, as well giving him an opportunity to see that even when things don’t go as you want them to, we all have a choice in how we respond.
I’m currently writing a new book, Lord, I Just Want to Be Happy, which will help us uncover the obstacles to experiencing greater peace, joy, hope and love as well as how to learn to be a happier person. More on will be available on my website throughout the next year.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I took responsibilty for my husband's foul moods for years.I thought "If only I try this" "If only I be very careful".When he blames me for his anger, I have started having the courage to tell him that he is misdirecting all his anger at me & that he won't be happy until he fixes what's going on inside him. The problem since I've been doing this is that he explodes at me saying,"So, it's all my fault? You're so perfect, and I'm so terrible?" After years of having the patience of a saint I finally started exploding back when pushed to the limit and saying,"Yes, I'm not perfect but this is 95% your anger and emotional abuse." Now he has convinced himself and his family that the real problem is my lack of accepting any blame. I have told him and them that we all have things to work on but I will not accept blame for his anger and abuse (they know of outrageous examples of him raging at me when I truly have just been sitting there minding my own business. He banned me from coming w/to celebrate Christmas Eve w/his family and took our children leaving me alone. I called his family to let them know that he had exploded and was on his way w/o me. I cried and said I wish that we could have some type of intervention for his anger, anxiety, and alcohol abuse. His sister said,"Well, what is your part in this - what are you doing to make him angry? He says you're the only one he has problems with." I am so disappointed that his family won't help. Anyone who knows him knows he is hot-tempered, drinks too much, and prone to irrational paranoia when angry. I am so hurt that they think I have contributed to this.Maybe my expectations for their help are overly optimistic because his sister treats her own husband terribly and berates him in front of others. My husband has told me that his parents fought badly, and I do see the misery his mother has been in. All of a sudden after years of trying so hard to take the high road, swallow my pride, and remain calm in the face of outrageous treatments, I receive no credit and things are being perceived as "well, sometimes two people just can't get along" or "it takes two to". I have a lot of resentment against him and his family right now because of this and I don't know how to get past this. I truly have been emotionally and verbally abused over the years and just can't stomach the perception that I caused this in some way. I am most concerned about my children and the effect this has had on them, but I will admit that this issue of blame is what is eating away at me this weekend and I hate feeling such resentment.
Dear Anonymous,
You are not responsible for your husbands anger. You are only responsible for your own reactions to it. I too, took emotional and verbal abuse from my husband for 20 years, thinking I was somehow to blame and could somehow just be good enough or careful enough so he wouldn't get angry with me. It just doesn't work that way. I came to a point that I just couldn't take it any more, it was affecting my children and my own health, till I ended up hospitalized for severe depression. It was then I realized I had to DO something for my own sake and the sake of my children and my marraige. Leslie Vernick's books, The Emotionally Destructive Relationship, and How to Act Right When Your Spouse Acts Wrong, were of great help to me during this time. They taught me that I could do something about this. You need a good support system. either friends, family,a christian counselor or your church is a good place to start. Also you will need to learn to Stop and look at the situation, Standup for yourself and take responsibility for your part in it, and Step back, from the situation creating some space between you and it. that was the hardest part for me...because for me it meant separateing from my husband. But during that separation( which wasn't easy by any means) something happened to me and to him. I realized that I was A PERSON, and it was ok for me to have wants, needs and desires. I learned that I was stronger than I had thought, and I gained a new confidence in myself. My husband learned( after much resentment and temper tantrums) That his behavior was unacceptable, he realized his anger wasn't towards me at all...I was just the easy target. and He realized he didn't want to lose me so he took the nessesary steps to change the way he dealt with his anger. We reconciled 5 months later and continue to work at our relationship and communication. Leaving the stiuation was the hardest desicion I ever had to make and you don't nessesarily have to physically leave like I did but you can say to your husband. I love you but I will not accept this kind of abuse anymore. I will not stand here and listen to this I am going out for a while and we can talk when the two of us have had time to cool off. You don't have to get drawn into his rages and you don't have to sit there and take it. My husbands abuse became physical and so I had to go. You are right to be concerned how this is affecting your chidren. It definitly does and it is our reponsibility as parents to teach them what a healthy relationship looks like. If they see you standing up for yourself in a mature and confident way that will speak volumes to them. you need to do so without blaming their father but by taking responsibilty for your own reactions and part in it. God doesn't call us as wives to be a door mat for our husbands, but a help mate and helping sometimes means standing up and letting them know that their behavior is unacceptable. It is not right to allow them to keep sinning against us. It doesn't help us or them. Before you make any desicions, please take time to pray to our loving faithful God, ask Him for direction, wisdom and strength to carry out what you will need to do. I hope this has helped. Take care and I will be praying for you, your children and your husband.
I am in a similar situation with my husband. We do have financial issues. Every argument we have no matter what it is about rotates back to our financial situation. Any thing that is out of place or any opinion that I hold contrary to my spouses is met with negativity. It is difficult for me because I am a generally a very happy person. I am often accused of not caring about our problems. I do not know how to respond to this name-calling or charges of “you don’t care about anything” “you don’t care about our finances” etcetera. I want to go back to school to get a certification for a better job now after he has promised to help me I am afraid he is going to renege. I suspect he has started our recent argument to either not help me with school as he promised or to get out of going on a planned outing. He is very passive aggressive. I once suggested counseling to him in a very kind way and that did not go over well. I am now considering divorce for the sake of my sixteen-year-old daughter and myself. I feel sad as I do care for him but I cannot go on another seventeen years with this kind of assault on myself and the environment is not healthy for my daughter.
My husband is not an angry complainer, more of just a whiner. I realized recently just how much this is going on and found this blog with hopes of finding a way of dealing with it. I can't tell if he is comparing the state of his life to others or just is habitually complaining. Today it was the drivers on the road, the church service, my mother (I can go there, also, so can't blame him for that), the idea of having to move a couch three days from now, taking our son to apply for a job, the possibility of having to go back out an clean the end of the driveway in case the plow went by....you get the idea. Not all of these things may even come to pass, but it's becoming kind of a daily mantra. He does have problems with boundaries, with telling anyone (including me) no, or not now. I've tried to encourage this, even asked him to practice on me, to no avail. He doesn't want to let anyone down, but this complaining is starting to get on my nerves. Also because a lot of the complaining is simply the stuff we or he has to do (work, care for the house, do things for the kids), I'm starting to feel like the only adult in the house. I just do what has to get done. I don't complain about the cooking, my job, the laundry, etc., I just accept it and do it. I do think it comes down to his inability to say no to the things he can say no to, but there may be something I am missing. I love my husband, but this is extremely unattractive. Any ideas?
Post a Comment