10 Signs Your Husband Secretly Hates You - Olubunmi Mabel
“Love and hate are two of the strongest emotions we feel in relationships”–Ava Max.
Ideally, marriage should be all about “love and light.”
Unfortunately, reality sometimes presents a bleak picture of marriage.
Sometimes, you wake up and can’t just feel the love, nor do you see the light.
But marriage is not really about the emotions or the feelings.
It’s more about the commitment, an intentional decision to love each other even when you are not feeling the butterflies in your belly.
Conflicts are also part of the course, and even the happiest couples have conflicts from time to time.
This doesn’t necessarily make couples hate each other.
So, I get the reason why you feel so uneasy about the notion that your husband secretly hates you.
Trust me, I do.
I know one part of you is trying to explain the feeling away as excessive paranoia, and I am especially hoping that it is…
For your sake.
Being married to a man who secretly hates you can be really scary and traumatic.
To help you decide if your husband truly hates you or if you are just overthinking, I have compiled the signs your husband secretly hates you.
Let’s get into this and see if we can rule out your uneasy feeling.
1. He is always quarreling with you
I know I always say, “A little conflict does your relationship a world of good,” but I wasn’t talking about this level of conflict.
Every couple has conflicts and quarrels, but if your home is gradually taking on the appearance of a war-torn region, it is a sign that there is something terribly wrong with the marriage.
When your husband consistently picks fights with you over trivial issues, it is a sign of deep-seated resentment and hatred.
When I talk about trivial issues, I actually mean very frivolous issues that even kids, not to mention adults, won’t fight themselves over.
I remember witnessing something like it as a kid.
This particular man got angry at his wife, started yelling at her, and soon started physically abusing her.
The ruckus from the fight was so loud that the neighbors gathered around to intervene and find out what happened.
The story we heard would have been funny if it wasn’t so terribly sad.
It was a tragedy that this man felt that he could lay his hands on his wife just because she pressed the toothpaste tube in the middle rather than the bottom.
Really, it was such a terrible display of immaturity, resentment, and hatred for his wife.
If this is how your husband picks fights with you over frivolous things, it could be a sign that he hates you.
2. He no longer initiates physical intimacy
Sex is an important aspect of every successful marriage.
I know we place emphasis on emotional connection but they are interwoven.
If you can’t remember the last time you had sex with your husband, it could be a sign that your marriage is in trouble.
This is especially true if your husband no longer makes attempts to initiate sex and consistently rebuffs any of your attempts to initiate sex with him.
It is really difficult to be intimate with someone you resent or secretly hate.
In fact, it would be the last thing on your mind.
However, I must state that lack of sex doesn’t automatically mean that your husband secretly hates you.
There could be several other causes of this like stress, anger, guilt because he cheated…
And of course, it could mean he secretly hates you and doesn’t want anything to do with you.
3. He doesn’t talk to you
Communication is one of the pillars of relationships.
The quality of your communication determines the success of your relationship.
The absence of effective communication can be a big billboard flashing red neon lights about your relationship.
If your husband doesn’t show any interest in talking to you and spends most of his time in the house either watching sports on TV or on his phone, it is definitely a sign that something is wrong.
If you were in this situation, I am sure you would have been wondering why he isn’t talking to you.
You would have even attempted to break the ice and talk to me only to be either ignored or snapped at.
This is a definitive sign that something is wrong.
However, there is not enough evidence to conclude that your husband secretly hates you.
Your husband may be distant and avoid talking to you for various reasons.
He could be troubled by something at work or just generally unhappy with life.
However, if you notice this sign in combination with the other signs listed above, it could be a warning sign that your husband secretly hates you.
4. He is not interested in your life
It’s sad but it happens.
The man who vowed to be with you through thick and thin now behaves like he is not interested in your life.
He doesn’t care to know how your day goes.
He just does his thing.
Wakes up, gets ready for work, leaves home, and comes back without wanting to know how you spent your day.
He doesn’t ask you what’s going on with you and whenever you try to share with me, you just get this distinct impression that he just can’t even pretend to be interested.
He fiddles with the remote or listens absentmindedly while he uses his phone.
When people love each other, they show interest in each other.
If your husband loves you, then he doesn’t just want to know what is going on in your life but he also wants to play a part in it.
When your husband secretly hates you, he shows a distinct lack of interest in you.
5. He is emotionally distant
Have you ever spoken to somebody and felt like you were talking to a stonewall?
No feelings, no emotions… just that distant disconnected look in their eyes?
I have, and it wasn’t a great experience.
I had some academic issues, and I needed to talk to a secretary so she could arrange for me to see her boss.
That day I felt like I was talking to a stonewall.
She didn’t care about my sad story.
She just refused to let me see her boss.
I later got to see him because he came out at some point and asked what was wrong.
My point is…
If it seems like your husband is so distant that you can’t even have a single conversation with him, something is happening in your relationship and it’s not good.
He refuses to talk about his feelings and emotions.
He avoids any attempt to make serious conversation and if problems arise, he will rather ignore them until they go away.
If your husband does all these, it may mean that he secretly hates you.
6. He compares you to other women
That act of always comparing you to other women that you think is so harmless, except that it hurts you a little bit, could mean your husband secretly hates you.
You just can’t seem to do anything that will satisfy him, and whenever he criticizes you, he never seems to run out of a list of women he believes are doing better than you.
He compares you to his brother’s wife, his neighbor’s wife, and perhaps the single lady who goes to your church.
He says, “Don’t you see how Sandra cooks special meals for her husband?”
Or “Alice’s stomach is still flat after five children. You just have one and you are so big”.
When he says cruel things like this to you and compares you to other women, it is a sign that he would rather be with them than with you.
It shows that he is dissatisfied and above all, doesn’t love you.
7. He never shows any form of affection for you
Now, this is not even related to sex.
Even in relationships where couples no longer have sex as much as they should, they usually show affection to each other in little ways.
A peck to the cheek, a light touch on the arm, holding your hands, light kisses, and hugs can all be classified as physical ways to show affection.
Walks, long talks, and thoughtful gifts are also other ways of showing affection.
If you are experiencing a drought of affection in your relationship, it is a sign that something is wrong.
Your husband may try to pretend that everything is okay and you may hardly ever quarrel but a lack of affection on the part of your husband is cause for concern.
This is especially true if he seems to recoil from every act of affection directed at him by you.
It is a sad thought but you may need to start considering that your husband may secretly hate you.
8. He speaks badly about you behind your back
It’s one thing for your husband to criticize you openly, it’s another for him to speak ill about you in your absence.
Ideally, your husband should be your defender.
He should never be found where bad things are being spoken about you.
He should even be ready to cut off ties with anyone who dares speak ill of you because he considers you a major part of him.
However, this is not the case when your husband secretly hates you.
When your husband is the “weapon fashioned against you,” he not only sits with people who speak ill of you, he leads the conversation.
He tells your friends, his friends, your family, and his family bad things about you to make them feel like you are a terrible person and that he is going through a lot.
The worst part is he probably doesn’t dare to say those things to you.
But why say it to you when he speaks ill of you and poisons the minds of people against you?
If your husband does this, you shouldn’t make any excuses for him.
He actually secretly hates you and this is a subtle manifestation of what he feels for you.
9. He encourages you to make decisions not in your best interest
That safe feeling you get when you know someone loves you and will never advise you to do anything that will cause harm to you?
You have no idea what it feels like because your husband seems to be so bent on encouraging you to make decisions that could very nearly destroy you.
This is definitely not a sign of a man that loves you and no matter how innocently he tries to explain away what he does, some behaviors can’t be explained.
I remember how a woman in my area who had already given birth to nine children lost her life in childbirth.
I know you are surprised to know that some people still make nine trips to the labor room.
The saddest part of the matter is that her last delivery had been a struggle and my mom was so concerned that she tried to encourage her to do family planning.
Her husband wouldn’t hear of it and he made this very irrational statement…
He said, “My wife will give birth to children until she dies.”
Unfortunately, that was what happened.
If he is asked, I am sure he will claim to have loved her but I really doubt he did.
No man who loves his wife will continuously encourage her to take so many risks.
When your husband encourages you to do things that could harm you, it is a sign that he secretly hates you.
10. He does things that can hurt you
Then, of course, there is the part where he deliberately hurts you.
I know it is possible for a man who loves you to hurt you unintentionally.
However, this level of hurt I am speaking about is the selfish type of behavior that can alter your life forever.
I remember reading about such a case on social media.
A promiscuous husband contracted HIV during one of his usual sexcapades.
He finds out about it later and rather than inform his wife and ensure that she starts taking prophylactics, he has sex with her without using protection and infects her.
It is crazy but these things happen in the world that we live in.
If your husband seems to go out of his way every now and then to hurt you, it is a sign that he secretly hates you.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be as grave as my cited example.
You must take note of the signs and act fast before things get even worse.