Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack

How to Help Your Mean Husband to Be Nicer

• Jack Ito PhD, Psychologist, Author, and Relationship Coach • Season 4 • Episode 1

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On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.

On today's episode, Coach Jack teaches why men's behavior can become mean and how to get your husband to be nice once again.

After listening to today's episode, you may want to:

How to Help Your Mean Husband to Be Nicer

(Podcast Transcript)

(0:00)

[Introduction to the podcast]

Announcer: On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.

(0:29)

Coach Jack: Is your husband acting mean lately? His behavior making you feel confused, hurt, and angry? Well, don’t start getting ready to divorce. Get him to change instead.

Whatever you do, don’t blame yourself for your husband’s mean behavior–even if he is blaming you. He has other options open to him, regardless of whether you did something wrong or not. He does not have to be mean.

(0:53)

His being mean can make you feel like a victim. You will be a victim if you let it go on. Once you know how to help him change, you will go from victim to helper–creating a win-win for both of you and becoming close again.

First, let’s go over some possible reasons why he is acting mean and distant towards you. After that, I will give you some strategies so you can start to make your relationship better. Marriage counselors would recommend you tell your husband how his behavior makes you feel. Most people find that just creates conflict. There’s no harm in giving that a try, but if it doesn’t work, don’t keep trying it. 

The last thing most men want to discuss or work on is how to stop being mean. Mean people blame others. They see no reason to change themselves.

A challenge for you may be to approach the situation with empathy, patience, and love. You have to care about your husband enough to want him to change his behavior for him and not just for you. You might feel like you shouldn’t have to help him stop his destructive behavior, but for better or for worse, that is one of our responsibilities as a spouse.

(2:08)

Above all, God wants us to love our spouses. That means in part not allowing them to continue behaviors that will get them the worst from us and our relationship.

This usually isn’t too hard to figure out, but let’s look at some…

Common signs of mean behavior in husbands

Husbands don’t generally become mean overnight. It sneaks up on you like mold on that cream cheese you opened but didn’t use up. The signs are subtle at first and escalate over time.

Five of the most common verbal, physical, and emotional indicators of the onset of mean behavior are:

  1. A noticeable change in his tone and choice of words. He may become more sarcastic, dismissive, or even verbally aggressive during conversations. 
  2. Another sign of mean behavior is withdrawal from shared activities or family time.

(3:07)

  1. Spending less time with you. 
  2. Body language that conveys disinterest or hostility, such as crossed arms, avoidance of eye contact, or an overall tense posture. 
  3. He may seem uncomfortable in your presence, making it difficult to have meaningful interactions. 

So what is going on between his ears? Let’s take a look at…

Psychological factors that may contribute to mean behavior

It could be that he has unresolved anger from some past experience with you–something that you did or didn’t do. I have worked with many women whose husbands had unsuccessfully tried to forgive them for some past behavior. If this is the case for you, you probably have heard him bring something up just about the time you thought he got over it. That’s an indication he was suppressing anger rather than forgiving or letting go.

(4:05)

Similarly, he may have been harboring resentment because of some unfulfilled expectation he had for you when he married. Did he used to try to get you to do something but has since given up on it? If so, his hopefulness may have turned to anger. He may at some point use it as an excuse to have an affair or divorce.

If you notice that he is mean not only towards you, but toward others as well, he may be harboring resentment about something else in his life, but taking it out on you or others. Did something change for him at work, or with his family? Is there some dream he has had to give up on? Is there some sensitive area that triggers him if you bring it up?

(4:49)

Depression or anxiety can also contribute to his becoming irritable and mean. Many men did not learn as children how to express their feelings in words. People who are not good at using words to express their feelings use their behavior to show them. You can tell if his reasons are due to a psychological disorder by observing whether he has other symptoms that would go with that disorder. For example, depressed people tend to have low energy, appetite, and sleep changes, and a loss of interest in usual activities.

His mean behavior might be something he learned from his parents. We have internal scripts that help us to do all kinds of things without having to think much about what we are doing. A man may have a script for single relationships that guides him to be kind and respectful. After marriage, his script of how marriage should be may cause him to behave in a mean way. Scripts typically don’t change unless they stop working. 

(5:51)

If your husband’s father is mean to his mother, it’s a pretty big clue that this is a learned behavior.

If your husband has always had mean or demeaning behavior towards most everyone, his personality is probably a large part of the problem. Low empathy for others combined with a sense of entitlement fosters mean behavior. In this case, you will see him be nice to others only when he has to. He is also not likely to say anything nice about others. Likewise, he will show appreciation or give compliments only when he has to. 

His mean behavior could be a ploy to facilitate separation

Men who are wanting to separate will often create interpersonal conflict with their wives. They can then use the emotional distance to justify separating. Typically, they will still participate in family activities and seem warm at times and cold at others. That is an indication he is trying to adjust the distance in your relationship to one that fits his plans, without ending his relationship with you.

(6:59)

How you respond to his meanness can maintain or stop it.

People do what creates some benefit for them, even if a different behavior would bring more benefit. Many a man or child has discovered that being mean or controlling gets them more of what they want. You need to consider what payoff there is for your husband in being mean to you.

It could be he gets your time and attention.

Children are not the only ones who will act out in order to get the attention of others. People who are good at getting what they want by being nice don’t have to be mean. People who are not good at that may try to force it from others with mean behavior. If people are already satisfied with how much time and attention they are getting, they are unlikely to try to force more with their bad behavior.

It doesn’t occur to many women that their husband’s mean behavior is his attempt to recover the time and attention he used to get from her. 

(7:58)

It could be gets to feel powerful and effective.

Everyone likes to feel that they are powerful, effective and that they matter to others. All you have to do is to consider the opposites: powerless, ineffective, and unimportant. No one wants to feel that way. We must always strive to make our spouses feel important, capable, skillful, and desirable. If they don’t get that, all kinds of bad behavior can happen to force us to recognize they are. 

Being able to get a spouse to argue for an hour is pretty powerful. You may even be able to see a look of satisfaction on your husband’s face when he hurts you. The reward of power is what accounts for most of the evil behavior people do in the world. For many, it pays off. When it does, you can be sure they will continue to do it.

It could be that your husband gets your submission.

(8:56)

Does your husband get you to submit with his mean behavior? For him, getting what he wants may be much more important than whether he hurts you or not in the process. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care about you. He may be very caring as long as it doesn’t conflict with what he wants. Many people don’t mind having a win-lose situation, as long as they are the ones who are winning.

It could be that your husband gets your help.

Many men are too prideful to ask for help, but they don’t mind being critical to get help. And, some men have found that asking nicely really doesn’t work very well. Many women will help their husbands if they have to in order to prevent a conflict but are less likely to help otherwise. Many children are criticized and insulted into helping their parents. It’s the same dynamics.

While these types of responses reward husbands who are mean, they also create more distance in the relationship. Women often respond this way because it is easier than fighting and because they are used to it.

(10:03)

It takes two people to maintain a pattern, but only one person to break it. My clients discover this quickly when they learn to respond differently.

When women can stop rewarding their husbands for their mean behavior, and help them to get what they want in good ways, the mean behavior often (but not always) goes away.

Strategies for addressing mean behavior in husbands

If you think that having a sit down, heart felt talk with your husband is the thing to do, then go ahead and try it. There is little risk in doing so. But please don’t continue to do that if it is making your relationship more distant, it creates conflict, or nothing improves between talks. 

Talking about problems is really only helpful when the other person wants the same outcome as us. Otherwise, it leads to conflict.

(11:00)

I think many people continue to have conflicted discussions because they don’t know what else to do. Giving up the discussions, for them, means giving up on the relationship. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are many ways to improve a relationship that don’t involve conflict.

It is a false teaching that you need to fight for your relationship. Actually, you need to love for it. 

How do you do that? Let me give you one good method…

A three-step approach to stopping a husband from being mean.

The first step will be for you to make sure that you are not aggravating the situation by treating your husband badly with any of your own needy behaviors. That creates a chicken and egg situation. It matters not whether he is the chicken and you are the egg or the other way around. You must stop your negative contribution. 

(11:57)

The second step is to gradually increase the amount of positive time you spend with your husband when he is not behaving in a mean way. That may mean only a good minute here and there at first. it is important that your husband be able to get time and attention from you. You also need to make him feel desirable, important, and effective.

A man is not going to try to force from you what he already gets enough of.

The third step is to remove any payoff your husband gets when he behaves meanly. He talks to you nicely or he doesn’t get anything at all, including your argument. Make sure you do the first two steps before this one. If you don’t, he may not care about your boundaries. It is the same principle as with children–we must improve our relationship before we deal with their bad behaviors. Otherwise, we will fight until we have no relationship. 

(12:59)

Success is always a matter of doing the right steps, in the right order, at the right pace. 

Let me give you an example.

One of my clients, who I will call Misty, was fed up with the way her husband was treating her. He had occasionally said mean things in their marriage, but recently it was getting worse. She had always tried to just let it go but was finding that harder and harder to do. She had confronted her husband several times about his tone of voice and the way he put her down in front of the kids. All he had done was to blame her for the problem, without making any changes.

Her husband also stopped helping around the house and told Misty that she was a whiner who should feel lucky to have a man who works all day so she doesn’t have to. Trying to convince her husband that taking care of two young children and a house was a big job did not get her the empathy she was hoping for. Instead, she and her husband talked less and interacted less. 

(14:01)

Misty asked me for help because she didn’t want to divorce with two young children, but also couldn’t stand to continue with her husband the way things were. He was not the man he used to be and she didn’t like the man he had become.

Misty and I looked at possible reasons for her husband’s changes and the most likely reason seemed to be that since having their last child her husband no longer got much of her time and attention. Misty admitted that if her husband approached her nicely she still wouldn’t have much time and attention to give to him and she had prioritized the children over him.

Helping Misty to make things better started by improving her behavior toward her husband in small interactions. As expected, she initially got rejected for these behaviors. Her husband had no reason to trust they would last and wasn’t about to open himself up emotionally to her very quickly. 

(14:59)

Misty at first felt it was not fair to be relaxed and friendly with a man who was mean to her, but she changed her mind when her husband started to become more friendly with her. Another thing we needed to do was to find a practical way for her to make time for her husband each day, without the children, and to create a willingness in her to go out with her husband without the children. 

As often happens, most of her husband’s meanness went away. When it occasionally showed up, she walked away rather than give him attention for it. 

In Misty’s case, her husband was resentful about their lack of time together and he was able to force it from her with his bad behavior–at least for a while. Once he was able to get what he wanted, the mean behavior wasn’t needed anymore. If what he was wanting was not appropriate, then I would have helped Misty to have stronger boundaries. Each situation is different.

(15:57)

Let me summarize these things for you.

Rarely do men become mean because they just want to hurt their wives as much as possible. In fact I have never seen that be the case. They are either acting out their frustration and resentment, intentionally distancing in preparation for separation, or are trying to force something out of their wives. 

All of these motivations can be dealt with by following a three step process of stopping one’s own damaging behavior, using relationship building skills, and then implementing boundaries. When the behavior is in preparation for separation, good boundaries need to be used both before and after separation. In many instances, the separation can be prevented.

Where are you in this process? You have three choices with a mean husband, you can tolerate him, you can leave him, or you can help him change. God loves us enough to do that for us. That’s what he wants us to do for each other. That’s something you can do for your husband, isn’t it? There is a big payoff for you when you do.

(17:09)

 [Podcast wrap-up]

Announcer: Thank you for listening to Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack. Visit coachjackito.com to learn more skills for reconnecting with your spouse and restoring your marriage.