Dealing With A Self-Critical Wife In An Unhappy Marriage

Do you have a wife who is super-critical of herself?

Does your wife discredit and dismiss your every compliment in favor of her own negative opinion of herself?

Does your wife persistently talk about how ugly she feels?

If so, you’re not alone. There are many men who truthfully think their wife is beautiful and sexy and yet HER negative perspective of herself continues to be a major OBSTACLE in their marriage. SHE is blocking their marriage from being the happy, fulfilling union it is meant to be.

And, the more the husband tries to verbally or physically comfort her and reassure her, the more she goes negative.

So, what’s a guy to do – especially if his wife’s negative opinion of her self is destroying their marriage?

Well, here are some ideas for you to consider:

1. Consider taking a stronger leadership role in your marriage where you apply leadership principles such as the following:

  • Continuous “messaging” – think of yourself as having the responsibility of positively “brainwashing” your wife. You’re brainwashing her to believe that SHE IS LOVED BY YOU, that SHE IS ATTRACTIVE TO YOU, and any other messages that you want her to hold as true. When a person receives a message often enough, they eventually come to believe it to be true.
  • Authority dictation – consider taking a more authoritarian stance as a man who dictates in this area of weakness in your wife. For example, if your wife says she “feels ugly” then you firmly tell her, “I WILL BE THE ONE WHO DECIDES WHETHER I THINK YOU ARE PRETTY OR UGLY – NOT YOU! AND, IF I SAY YOU ARE PRETTY THEN THAT MEANS YOU ARE PRETTY, OK? NOW GET OVER HERE AND KISS ME LIKE A PRETTY WOMAN WOULD KISS ME!”
  • Role playing – in some cases, it works better to simply ask your wife to “play the role of a pretty woman”. This is exactly what I engaged when I used the phrase, “get over here and kiss me like a pretty woman would kiss me”. It doesn’t matter whether or not she thinks she’s pretty. All she has to do is kiss like she IMAGINES a pretty woman would kiss like. In this way, you get what you want and totally bypass any hang-ups she has. This can be a powerful tool for you.
  • Set expectations – while you are away – whether for the day or for a week, you can communicate to her what you want to have happen when you get home. So for example, if you’re away for a week on business, you can start telling her on Wednesday that you’re looking forward to returning home, that you’re excited to see her – and then go into descriptive detail of how you will be acting and behaving and how you want her to be acting and behaving. And, it’s not so much that you’re telling her how you want her to act as much as it’s you describing her acting and responding in a certain way. Think in terms of taking a group of kids to the zoo and you’re describing what they can do, what they can’t do, when they can do certain things and when they can’t do certain things. In this same vein, when you describe and set positive expectation for your wife, it redirects her mind to “travel” along with your way of thinking and off of her own way of self-critical thinking.

2. Help your wife understand that she lives in her body but she is not her body. That might sound a little weird at first but it’s important that every person understand that. Attractive women especially tend to have such an obsession with their physical characteristics that they never realize that they are a spiritual being who happens to be dwelling in a physical body at this time. So, WHO SHE IS AS A PERSON is far more important than what the body she lives in looks like. Yes, the body is important but it’s not the most important thing. Here’s another way to think of this, if your wife was 100 years old – inside of her shriveled, wrinkled, sagging, and weakened body there would still be a BEAUTIFUL, LOVING, WONDERFUL, YOUTHFUL person inside. That’s the part of her that you want to help her access and associate with more so than her physical body.

3. Do a double-check on yourself to make sure that you aren’t inadvertently saying or doing things that trigger insecurity within your wife. This can happen in all sorts of ways. What you might think is a benign remark about some other woman – even if it’s a sister or relative – can trigger massive insecurity or jealousy in your wife. So, watch out for this.

4. Be aware that the work environment you’re in or maybe the friends or associates that you associate with may well be triggering insecurity in your wife. For example, soldiers (men and women) are notorious for hitting the bars and hooking up for some sex on the side. You may not participate in any of this but if those around you are, then this can be very threatening to your wife.

5. Sometimes it’s useful to help people see how they impact others. In your case, when you compliment your wife and she starts self-deprecating, stop her right in the middle and ask her to consider how it might make you feel when you’ve given her a compliment and she dismisses that compliment as if you were some insignificant idiot. It may be that she’s never considered things from this angle. So, stop her when she dismisses your compliments and get into a discussion of what her thoughts and feelings are and how it is that has come to have those particular thoughts and feelings. Then, express your thoughts and feelings. After both of you have expressed, then work out a mutually acceptable solution.

6. Another approach is to have her consider how her self-critical perspective is an offense to God. In other words, if she thinks she’s ugly, then she’s in effect saying that God made something ugly. God doesn’t make mistakes, God doesn’t make junk – and she should stop making such false accusations to God.

Based on your knowledge of your relationship, you probably already recognize some ideas that are right for you – and you can now do the right things to get your marriage going in the right direction.

Copyright 2018 by Calle Zorro

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