9 Signs Your Husband Undermines You - Olubunmi Mabel
Ideally, marriage is meant to be a union built on love and mutual respect.
In reality, successful marriages are built on this foundation.
This isn’t going to be one of those times I will tell you that the ideal is not possible.
The fact is that marriages have to be built on this foundation if they are going to stand the test of time.
And if some other couples can do it, you can do it too.
Of course, there will be tough times.
There will be times when it feels like respecting your partner is mission impossible.
Don’t give in to the temptation of undermining your partner.
Where I come from, it is quite common to see men undermining their wives.
While some do it subtly, others do it without any form of sophistication.
When it is done subtly, it can be quite hard for wives to recognize that they are being undermined.
Even when it is not done subtly, some wives may still find it hard to believe that their husbands are undermining them.
Well, if the signs we are about to explore are evident in your relationship, your husband is actually undermining you.
I won’t just leave you with the knowledge of this.
We will also look into how you can address this issue in your relationship.
Come along!
1. He belittles your achievements
Downplaying anything that has to do with you has to be the most obvious sign that your husband undermines you.
In normal, successful marriages, husbands are usually their wives’ biggest cheerleaders.
They are always ready to sing their wives’ praises.
One time, I met a man who behaved this way with his wife.
He was totally proud of her and loved to talk about her achievements.
Coming from the environment I was brought up in, it was surprising to me.
He met me at a seminar.
Soon after we introduced ourselves and started talking about our personal lives, he mentioned that his wife also studied statistics in school and graduated with a first-class degree.
He said it with pride and then went on to say, “My wife is really smart. I feel so blessed to be married to her.”
The gesture was so sweet.
This was a man who wasn’t threatened by his wife’s achievements.
When your husband is threatened by your achievements, he will do everything within his power to make them look insignificant.
If you got promoted at work, he would mention that you are still not even at the management level.
If you got yourself a new car, he would find a way to make it seem like you got yourself a secondhand jalopy.
It’s not like using a secondhand jalopy is bad.
It’s just that he belittles your achievements because he wants to make you feel less about yourself.
It is a direct attack on your sense of self-worth.
If you feel like you always have to defend your achievements to your husband, it is a sign that he undermines you.
In normal relationships, wives literally have to downplay their own achievements because their husbands have already done a good job of exaggerating them.
2. He constantly questions your decisions
In marriage, decision-making is usually done together, especially when it affects the family.
However, you reserve your right to make personal decisions yourself.
These decisions don’t need to be about anything really important.
They could be your choice of dress, whether to use makeup or not, style of hair to make, or something quite similar.
These are decisions that are not necessarily important, but if your husband keeps questioning your choices when you make them, you may start wondering if he is trying to undermine you and control everything you do.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s normal to make suggestions to your partner.
I don’t enjoy being drawn into the whole choice of clothes or hairstyle conversation, but if she asks me, I answer.
Really, it should be that simple.
Some husbands, however, have this habit of asking their wives leading questions.
They ask questions like, “Are you sure you are doing the right thing?” derisively, making you feel like you are doing the wrong thing.
Then, there is also this condescending behavior of letting you make the wrong decision before hauntingly correcting you.
He lets you make such terrible mistakes because he wants to ensure that you are less confident in your decisions moving forward.
3. He criticizes you in front of others
Beyond making you second guess your decisions, another sign that your husband is undermining you is that he doesn’t hesitate to criticize you publicly.
I spent some time with one couple, and I sincerely wondered how the wife coped with her marriage.
She made one tiny mistake, and you just need to see how the man pounced upon it like he had been waiting for an opportunity to attack her.
He said so many terrible things to her, and I felt sad and embarrassed for her.
No one deserves to be treated that way.
But that’s the way the world works; people are usually treated unfairly.
The fact remains that public criticism can be particularly damaging.
If your husband makes negative comments about you in front of friends, family, or colleagues, it not only undermines your confidence but also affects how others perceive you.
People could begin to get the feeling that you are a bumbling, incompetent wife, which is most likely far from the truth.
From what I have learned, negative perceptions have this unique way of spreading fast.
4. He dismisses your feelings
We all need someone who pays attention to us, right?
Well, that’s supposed to be one of the perks of marriage: a companion who is attentive to your feelings without dismissing them.
It’s not that we don’t know how we feel, but when we discuss our feelings, we do so because we want someone to tell us they understand why we feel the way we do.
That’s why we tend to rant to our friends when we are angry.
Apart from having an outlet to release pent-up emotions, the fact that they join you in your outrage makes you feel better.
However, if your husband trivializes or totally ignores your feelings, it is a subtle sign he is undermining you.
So you are angry about something, and he just chalks it down to you being an emotional woman.
He tells you that you are overreacting.
Now, I am not saying that you don’t overreact sometimes, but if your husband tells you that you are overreacting all the time, it is his way of dismissing your feelings.
The truth is that many people do this in relationships.
One time, I was angry at a female friend, and we had an argument.
An acquaintance came to settle the argument, and the only thing he could say was that I was behaving like a woman.
That statement alone was disrespectful to my feelings and disrespectful to women.
Everyone has emotions, and they should be able to express them (in the right way, of course) without being made to feel weak.
Emotional invalidation is a subtle yet powerful form of undermining.
If your husband frequently ignores or trivializes your emotions, it is a sign that he is undermining you.
If you feel unimportant and unheard in the relationship, the chances are you are being undermined by your husband.
5. He sabotages your goals
You know, when I hear people speak of haters and enemies, I feel strange because I have never even thought about the fact that someone somewhere could hate me.
Sadly, it is possible that I have enemies somewhere, but I don’t spend my time worrying about what they are doing.
It is even sadder when it seems like the actual “weapon fashioned against you” is your husband.
If you notice that your husband takes intentional actions to hinder your progress, it is a sign that he is undermining you.
Some husbands actually sabotage their wives’ chances of success.
If I hadn’t seen it happen myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.
I have seen a husband write a letter to his wife’s company requesting that she should be sacked.
Imagine such witchcraft!
There is no explanation that man can give for that action except the simple truth…
“I am the headquarters of evil. Evil resides in me”.
When you see that your husband does things like withhold support or intentionally obstruct your path to achieving your goals, it is a sign that he is undermining you.
He believes that your success is a threat to his control in the family.
6. He doesn’t listen to you
There’s this sad thing that happens in many marriages.
I have seen it a lot of times.
In some marriages, it feels like the husband makes decisions on his own.
He doesn’t consult his wife or ask for her permission.
He just does things and tells her about them later.
If you don’t have a say in what goes on in your marriage, you are being undermined by your husband.
He doesn’t ask for your opinions or input in decision-making because he feels like you can’t contribute anything of worth.
He wants you to feel this way too so he intentionally make decisions on his own and expects you to follow them to the letter.
When your husband acts like this, it is a sign that he doesn’t value you.
7. He prioritizes others over you
Have you noticed that your husband seems to have a reputation for being a nice guy among outsiders, even if you know that “nice” shouldn’t be used to describe him even vaguely?
The fact is that many men who undermine their wives usually present a different personality to others.
He is attentive when speaking to others.
He doesn’t seem so critical when he talks to his friends and even subordinates at work.
He seems like the opposite of himself when he is relating to others.
This is his way of making people blame you for the things he does to you.
So, when he criticizes you publicly, people may conclude that you are at fault because he doesn’t behave that way on a normal day.
When your husband constantly prioritizes other people over you, this is the result.
Other people think he is an angel, but he is different at home.
Most of the time, this is usually a way to further undermine you and make people dismiss your complaints about him.
8. He isolates you from your family
When we marry, we are actually creating a new family.
However, this doesn’t mean that we should be isolated from family and friends.
Many men isolate their wives from family and friends.
It is a way of undermining them and ensuring they are always dependent on their husbands.
He may say he is doing this because he is trying to protect his marriage from third parties.
While that is actually a good thing, you don’t need to be isolated to avoid the third-party influence in your marriage.
All you need to do is to set firm boundaries in place.
If you are married and you realize that your husband keeps you so occupied that you have little time for family and friends, it could be a sign that he is isolating you from them.
This is especially true if he doesn’t like you meeting up with friends or visiting your family.
You may want to chalk it up to possessiveness.
But it probably isn’t.
It could just be an attempt to ensure that you are only dependent on him.
To achieve this goal, he isolates you from your support system.
9. He doesn’t respect your boundaries
Setting boundaries in relationships is very important, even in marriage.
Especially in marriage.
I know that marriage can be a very intimate relationship.
However, there are certain things your husband shouldn’t do to you.
There should be boundaries for things like proper and polite conversations, even when having arguments.
I know how hard it is to keep your voice under control when you are angry.
I have noticed one thing, though: No matter how angry I get at someone I respect, I am really careful about what I say to them.
In University, many of the guys used cuss words to play with each other.
I didn’t roll that way and made it known to them.
Throughout my stay in school, only one of them mistakenly cussed at me, and he immediately apologized.
If your husband yells and says terrible things to you all the time, it is a sign he doesn’t respect you or your boundaries.
When he consistently does this, it is a way of saying he doesn’t value you.
This has a general effect of making you feel weak and disrespected.
The fact is that the general idea of undermining a person is a product of disrespect.
No one undermines someone they respect.
If you are seeing these signs in your marriage, you need to address these issues before things get even worse.
The first thing you need to do is to discuss it with your husband.
Discuss specific instances of undermining behavior with your husband, focusing on how they make you feel.
After discussing how you feel about the things he does to you, you need to establish clear boundaries.
He should treat you with the same respect he expects from you.
And even in disagreement, respect and politeness should never be lacking.
You are the only one who can enforce these boundaries, so you need to be determined to stop taking nonsense from your husband.
Reach out to trusted friends, family, or a therapist for support and guidance.
Having a strong support system can help you during this challenging period.
Lastly, you need to prioritize your well-being.
If you are being undermined in your marriage, your mental and physical well-being is at risk.
If your husband refuses to change his ways, you may have to choose between staying married and your well-being.
I hope things work out so you don’t have to make this choice.
