7 Signs You’re Married To A Man Who Dislikes You - Olubunmi Mabel
As a true romantic at heart, it hurts me to think that people can be married to partners who dislike them.
I know I always talk about how marriage is a beautiful affair, but the truth is marriage, even when couples love each other, still requires a lot of work.
When you put in the work, you get to enjoy the beauty of marriage.
Even in successful marriages between people who are in love with each other, things can be tough sometimes.
So, I can imagine how much of an ordeal it would be to be married to a man who dislikes you.
As sad as it may be, this is the exact situation where several women find themselves presently.
It is a tough situation– one that makes a mockery of the vows taken at the altar to love and cherish you.
It is a realization that can shake you to the very roots of your very being.
I know I am not painting a really great picture.
The truth is that there is no way to sugarcoat this.
Ideally, marriage should be a union of people who love each other.
However, if your husband’s behavior makes you question whether he truly loves you, stay with me as I explain the unpleasant signs that you are married to a man who dislikes you.
1. He is overly critical of you
I used to be sharp-mouthed as a kid.
Those days, I didn’t know how to criticize constructively.
If anyone bungled something around me, my go-to conclusion was that the person was unintelligent.
I was that critical of other people, but I had this female friend I couldn’t treat that way.
Not even when she deserved it.
She was the one who taught me how to criticize constructively.
She fancied herself as a writer then, and she would always send her write-ups to me.
They were often terrible, but I didn’t have the courage to tell her what I truly thought about them.
I would tell her she did well and correct all the mistakes for her.
There were usually so many, but I didn’t want to discourage her.
The truth is that I felt that she was better off not penning a word at all.
Several years down the line, she writes, and my chest swells with pride when I read her works.
My point is my hesitation in criticizing her the way I criticized others was borne out of my love for her.
Tearing her down the way I had done to some others in the past wouldn’t have hurt only her.
I would have felt the pain, too.
When a man loves you, he weighs his words carefully around you.
Criticism is beneficial in relationships only when it is constructive.
There is no better source of constructive criticism than a man in love.
So, if your husband tends to nitpick and criticize almost everything you do, you may start wondering if he truly loves you.
This is especially true if he uses derogative words while criticizing you, telling you things like “you don’t know how to do anything” or close variants of it.
If he criticizes everything you do disrespectfully, it is a sign that you are married to a man who dislikes you.
2. He avoids spending quality time with you
There is one sign of love that hasn’t changed since the beginning of time: spending time with the one you love.
When someone loves you, they want to spend time with you.
It’s just that simple.
If your husband spends as little time as possible with you, you may want to make excuses for him.
“He is a very busy man.”
“He has too much work to do.”
But the truth is that even the busiest man would make out some time in his busy schedule to spend time with the woman he loves.
It’s that simple.
I am not saying that there won’t be times when a man will be so busy that he may actually be a little scarce at home.
Even in such periods, the fact that he still makes an effort to spend some time with you or communicate with you is very important.
I know a man who works at a job that requires him to travel on assignment to other states in the country.
Sometimes, he goes for weeks.
But his intentionality about keeping in touch with his family when he is on such assignments actually reflects his willingness to spend time with his wife, even in his busiest times.
If you just get the feeling that your husband would actually do anything to avoid spending time with you, it is a sign that something is wrong.
All of these are signs that you’re married to a man who dislikes you.
3. He takes you for granted
I am sure almost everyone has encountered people who took them for granted.
I have had so many, but there’s one that stuck with me.
In school, I loved to talk to my coursemates.
At least, I say hi to them when I see them somewhere.
One day, I was hanging out with the guys on the department’s football team when a coursemate came around.
He greeted and shook hands with everyone there except me.
It felt like I was invisible.
I didn’t say a word because I knew I would have an opportunity to show him how important it is to treat people nicely.
So, we had this difficult exam, and he was asked to sit beside me.
That day, he greeted me and even mentioned my name just because he wanted to ask me for answers to questions.
I laughed because, despite having never been involved in examination malpractice, I knew I would teach him a lesson that day.
I didn’t talk to him throughout the exam or even behave like I knew he was talking to me.
That day brought about a marked change in him.
He started greeting me and even trying to talk to me.
It’s my favorite experience of being taken for granted because I was able to retaliate.
If your husband makes you feel like your opinions are not valued or even required in the marriage, it is a sign that he takes you for granted.
Does he dismiss your feelings like they don’t matter?
He just brushes them off like you brush off a whining mosquito.
He makes decisions without asking for your input.
To him, you are a puppet, and his opinions have to suffice for you.
It is a sign that he doesn’t value you, and the truth is you can’t love someone without valuing them.
How do you say you love someone if you don’t respect them as well?
A loving husband wants to know what you are thinking.
He welcomes your opinion at all times.
If you can’t say the same about your husband, it may just be a sign that you are married to a man who dislikes you.
4. He is not affectionate with you
Even the least expressive husbands in the world know how to express their love for their wives.
Of course, this is only when they love their wives.
A loving husband expresses his affection for his wife in words, through physical gestures and thoughtful gifts.
Of course, he also spends time with her and helps her do things around the house.
The truth is that even with how much I detest stress and unnecessary physical activities, I am always ready to perform acts of service for the people I love.
These are all expressions of love, and when they are absent in a marriage, it could mean that there is no love in the relationship.
I know everybody can’t be obviously expressive, but if you can’t say that your husband has done anything to make you feel loved in a long time, it could mean that he probably doesn’t feel that way about you.
It gets even worse if he obviously avoids any form of intimacy with you.
It is beginning to feel like you are married to a stranger.
And as far as feelings are concerned, there is a high chance that your husband dislikes you if he treats you this way.
5. He quarrels with you all the time
Conflict is a natural consequence of human interaction.
Conflict is bound to occur occasionally in any place where two or more people interact.
However, this doesn’t excuse the fact that your husband may have turned your home into a warfront.
He is constantly angry over one thing or the other.
In fact, he seems to go out of his way to find things to get angry about when he spends time at home.
One time, I had accommodation issues, and a man agreed to take me in.
The only thing I was doing was sleeping in the house.
I had my food and even contributed to the general upkeep of the house, but this man had a fixed idea that I should be able to work for my keep.
One day, he packed all his clothes and told me to wash them.
A whole mountain of clothes!
He didn’t ask, “Do you have anything planned for today?”
Neither did he politely ask me to do his laundry.
Well, I had somewhere else to go.
So, I didn’t do it.
He got angry about that and called me rebellious.
From that day, anytime he arrived from work, he would check the whole house to see if there was anything he could get angry at me for.
If your husband behaves similarly, it is a sign that something is terribly wrong in your relationship.
He gets angry over trivial things and yells at you all the time.
This is not the behavior of a man who loves you.
I know a man whose wife gets terrified whenever he comes home because he could fly into a rage over nothing in just a split second.
If your husband behaves this way around the house, the odds are he dislikes you.
6. He belittles your achievements
I learned very long ago that true love doesn’t compete; it celebrates.
Since then, I have come to understand when people feel the need to compete with their partners; it is a sign that they haven’t let love overcome that competitive aspect of humans.
Competing with your partner’s achievements will only create a negative atmosphere in the relationship.
As terrible as it is for relationships, many men are still involved in this unnecessary act.
The worst part is when you share your achievements with your husband, expecting him to celebrate you, and all he says is, “Is that all?”.
It makes you feel really sad and unvalued in your relationship.
The truth is that any man who is so resentful of your wins that he tries to belittle them doesn’t like you.
He reacts to news of your achievements with jealousy and barely suppressed anger.
He tries to make you feel less about yourself and what you have achieved.
He could just be a really insecure man, or his behavior could be more sinister.
He could be acting this way because he dislikes you and doesn’t want to see you happy.
7. He physically abuses you
I am one of those people who think that no man would physically hurt someone he loves.
So, if you are married to a man who physically abuses you, I am sorry to announce to you that he doesn’t love you.
Getting angry is one thing; everyone gets angry.
Keeping a firm control of your temper is what makes you a disciplined individual.
When I was younger, I had anger issues.
I could get angry in a split second and physically hurt the person annoying me without a warning.
This behavior followed me into my teenage years.
And it was then that I discovered that while I could get angry at the girl I liked, I couldn’t hurt her.
I would rather walk away and ignore her for the rest of the day.
If your husband slaps you around, hits you, and calls you horrible names all the time, it could be a sign that he dislikes you.
Marriage to a man who dislikes you can be a scary experience.
It makes you question a lot of things.
Did he ever love you?
What did you do to make him change?
Or did he just change on his own?
All of these questions may be running through your head, and you may want answers just for the sake of closure.
Well, you could talk to your husband when he seems calm enough to talk to you.
Tell him how you have been feeling and hope that he can talk to you about what has been going on inside his head.
If your husband physically abuses you, I believe you shouldn’t even be waiting for closure.
You should be running out of that marriage for your own safety.
Marriages go through difficult phases, but when your husband dislikes you, there are no other phases.
