Does He Know He’s Hurting Me? (Clarity for Wives)
What if my husband doesn’t know he’s hurting me?
“Some men grow up in dysfunction. Their inner world is so up-side down they don’t know how “healthy” looks like. What if my husband is just repeating behavior he witnessed growing up? What if he doesn’t know?”
Women in hurting marriages sometimes struggle with these questions. (I’ve spoken to a few.)
Typically it’s the woman in the process of accepting that perhaps she is not the problem she’s been told she is. That perhaps the issues in the marriage are more individual (aka husband) than shared.
In the process (and roller-coaster) of evaluation, she’s considering his background and wondering about the extent of his culpability.
Today, I want to explore those questions and hopefully offer affirmation and clarity.
As always, I’m approaching the topic from a marriage coach/writer lens. I’m not a licensed therapist and do not provide diagnosis, therapy, treatment, or mental care services.
What If My Husband Doesn’t Know He’s Hurting Me?
Dear wife, to the question, “Does he know he’s hurting me? If he doesn’t, can it even be considered abuse?”
- Have you told him his behavior hurts you?
- Are his actions consistent across all his other relationships, (workplace, family, friends, church) or is he only behaving this way with you?
- Does he accept the same treatment from others that he gives you behind closed doors?
- Does he have a private and public persona, i.e., does he seem to know how to regulate himself when in the presence of others/people he wants to impress?
- Is he only one way in your relationship (e.g., harsh, critical) or does he know how to switch up (can be “warm,” “kind”) when he wants something/chooses to?
- Did he present so well (not perfectly, just enough) before marriage that you believed he was a good candidate for marriage?
If your answer is “Yes,” he knows.
What If My Husband Doesn’t Know He’s Hurting Me: His Background
But what if he doesn’t know it’s abuse because of his past? What if he doesn’t have the awareness?
Let’s talk about the past and how it can impose itself on the present. It is true that an important part of growth and healing is learning how to ground ourselves in the present when we’re faced with circumstances that remind us of our past.
However, feeling the past imposing itself on the present does not absolve us from responsibility for our present behavior. We’re still responsible for how we act now.
It is also important to note that adverse experiences in the past do not automatically turn someone into an adverse experience to someone else.
Past stress or trauma does not automatically turn someone into a source of stress and trauma to others. There’s no appointment to become what hurt us.
Many people with traumatic/difficult experiences in the past choose kindness, compassion and empathy. They choose not to become what was done to them.
And they make choices (even long before they have access to external support like therapy, which they need, where available) because at the basic human level, they choose to be decent human beings.
All these to say, your husband knows. He might not have have all.the awareness. He might need to engage in more reflection, exploration, understanding of and acceptance of his inner world. But at a basic level, he knows what he’s doing.
(And you don’t have to help him do the work. Read More If Her Abusive Husband is in Recovery, Shouldn’t a Wife Stay?)
If you’ve told him, if he knows how to switch things up (or down), if he would follow orders from someone he deems superior or someone he wants to impress, if he presented so well prior marriage that you thought he was good marriage candidate, he has a basic awareness of his character and actions and their impacts on you.
What If My Husband Doesn’t Know He’s Hurting Me: Is it Real?
Abuse doesn’t have to be acknowledged by an abuser to be abuse.
Abuse and resultant trauma are about your experience: How you receive what’s happening to you: How the patterns of betrayal, abandonment, deception, addiction, coercion, and misuse of power (and the entitlement to do all those things) have impacted you.
YOU are the main story, the measure.
Not to digress but let’s talk about healthy marriage fundamentals because sometimes, there’s an assumption that certain people or relationships are exempt from observing them.
When a healthy marriage experiences normal (not necessarily acceptable) ups and downs, partners still get to define and own their reality. At least that’s the path. “Well, he doesn’t know that when he’s upset, he’s sharp with me so I really shouldn’t feel hurt because he doesn’t know he’s hurting me” does not a healthy relationship make.
Feelings, sensations and impacts don’t care about what someone else thinks. They just are. If a partner is unkind, your feelings won’t consult him to find out if his intentions were good or not to determine whether to feel or not. They.just.exist.
(Depending on your individual connection to yourself, you might explore beneath the surface of the feelings to find out the larger story. It doesn’t mean that emotions always take the lead. It just means emotions don’t get stuffed, denied, suppressed or labeled evil.)
There’s a lot to say about emotions and reality. Still, the invitation is to develop an awareness of our inner world and sensations, to explore what lies under the surface (within our capacity to do so), to listen, and to give ourselves what we need so we can resolve and ultimately take better care of ourselves and our concerns.
In a healthy marriage, partners don’t dictate/define their partners feelings or reality. We empathize with feelings. We talk and seek to understand our partners experiences and perception. We keep the individual and the shared bond in mind.
And we remember that our feelings and our reality are our own. We are responsible for our selves. Much as we express opinions and truths within honoring limits, we keep learning how not to impose ourselves on someone else.
Healthy relationships are healthy because, among other things, 1) Partners feel safe to voice their needs, limits, hopes and expectations, meaning they are aware of those values and needs themselves 2) Partners don’t try to foist their perceptions on their partner. And where they do, they work through that and do better.
The point I’m making is you don’t need a partner to rubberstamp your experience of them for your experience and feelings to be valid.
You have all the power to define what you’re going through. You own your reality. Nobody gets to define that for you. God gave you a brain that thinks, a body that feels, and a heart that comprehends for that very purpose.
What If My Husband Doesn’t Know He’s Hurting Me: Your Reflection
When our pasts (or present for those in ongoing harmful environments and relationships) are filled with high stress, dysfunction, harm, or chaos, assessing where we end and where someone else begins can be challenging.
Sometimes, we don’t even know there’s a differentiation because in the past, our survival depended on neglecting ourselves: It was not safe to show up as a person with rights and dignity.
It didn’t feel safe to have a voice, to have an opinion, to make a different decision, to feel, to correct someone, to have needs, to be happy, to want something. Sometimes, even our mere existence was considered an inconvenience.
And when those with more power imposed their will and views, there was no space to develop or exercise our own. Slowly, our sense of autonomy and our agency got erased.
And now it ends up being that we look to the outside – like we were forced to in the past (or present) – for validation: Our God-given internal map and ability to trust it has been sandpapered out of us, leaving us overly reliant on external validation in our decision-making process.
And even when we’re hurting or need to speak up, sometimes we feel the need to have the source of our problems (person or environment) agree with our assessment. We want to stand shoulder to them and help carry their burdens.
All of which leads to a very complicated relationship with ourselves and more problems on our plate.
Today is a gentle reminder that you can start that journey of beginning to trust yourself. It might be hard but the result can be an expanding capacity to see the truth, tell yourself the truth, and live in the truth.
The past should not be an excuse.
The past should never be used as a crutch.
The moment partners see how their habits are hurting others (in the off chance they didn’t know) they are supposed to do something about it.
And I mean do something about it. With long-term fruit to show. Making a nest and expecting a partner to “understand” is not a green flag.
To the wife asking, “Does my husband know he’s abusing me?” “Does my husband know he’s hurting me?” perhaps an important question to ask yourself is, “What is the truth?”
Remember: when it comes to maintaining a thriving connection, if a behavior hurts, it needs to be addressed by the relevant party. Nothing gets addressed until and unless the responsible individual takes ownership.
And this is true when a marriage is experiencing regular issues and absolutely important when the problems are chronic and corrosive.
So dear wife, it’s okay to let him carry his responsibilities. It’s okay to consider your needs, like safety and the actual truth of the situation.
Today’s invitation is to continue thinking along the lines of where you end and where he begins, and what that means for you. When you are ready, there are communities and resources committed to your clarity, healing, and flourishing. Check them out below.
Online Quizzes:
Community and Resources:
- Sarah McDugal (App, resources and online support communities)
- Natalie Hoffman (Podcast, resources and online support community)
- Gretchen Baskerville (Resources and online support community)
- Heather Elizabeth (Resources and online support community)
Other Resources
Hotlines
- Canada: 800.799.SAFE (7233)
- United States: 1-800-621-HOPE (4673).
- United Kingdom: 08 08 16 89 111
- Australia: 1800 015 188
- New Zealand: 0800 456 450
- Kenya: 0-800-720-072
- Nigeria: 0800 033 3333
- South Africa: 0800 428 428
- Find a shelter or program near you (United States)
My question is what does one do when a husband “feels abused”, “feels manipulated” etc when you are simply putting boundaries in place. Eg. Some hypothetical (not not far from reality) examples are:
– wife says to husband “if you hit me again I will take the kids and leave”, husband “feels” this “a threat”, “emotional abuse” and “manipulative” (and no joke – a social worker who heard a battered wife say this to her husband and the social worker fully backed the HUSBAND in his belief saying his wife
statement was those things)
– an ex wife says to her husband that unless he is willing to negotiate custody arrangements that are in the best interest of the children (instead of him taking the kids from her and, at best, seriously neglecting and emotionally abusing them), that she will take the matter to family court and will bring up proof of both the neglect/abuse and the exhusband’s previous perjured testimony, and as the exhusband works in a job where he will lose his job if found guilty of perjury so it’s a lot bigger deal than just custody issues, the exhusband claims his ex wife is “threatening him” and “trying to manipulate him” instead of the actual reality that the wife is trying to have him negotiate instead of dictate and trying to protect him from severe negative consequences by laying out the consequences of what will happen if going to court becomes necessary?
– same woman in second example points out she wasn’t able to put in the evidence of her ex’s perjury and violence previously to the court because she didn’t want to hurt him, instead of seeing that she cares and was trying to protect him from jail, he says his “reality” is she’s trying to manipulate him and doesn’t really care about him (manipulate him in what way? And to achieve what? No one knows)
In these situations why should the husband (or any abuser really) be allowed to “define their own reality”? Why can’t the victims say “your view isn’t actually reality”? Why can’t victims say “you may feel abused but I’m just putting in place boundaries?” Why can’t victims say “you may feel manipulated but that’s only because you and people in your family of origin do make up things like that to manipulate others, but when I’m saying these things, they are true and they are to express either boundaries or ways I’ve shown you love you and forgiveness, not to hurt you”?
Sometimes reality isn’t determined by individuals because some abusers genuinely think they are the victim and genuinely accuse the victim of having intentions and motivations that they don’t have (and are often the abuser projecting their own intentions and motivations onto the victim).
So how does a victim in this situation respond to the abuser when the abuser is claiming they are feeling abused/ hurt/ manipulated by the victim setting boundaries or engaging in other normal behaviours?
What can you say to an abuser whose “reality” is not actual reality?
From a victim going through abuse by an abuser who believes they are somehow the victim of a real victim of severe abuse trying to put in place boundaries.
This brings me so much clarity. Thank you.
You’re welcome. So glad it was clarifying ❤️🩹
This was great. Thanks for the external validation. 😉 When you haven’t experienced “healthy,” you might not know what to expect from a partner. It’s also mind blowing to good-hearted people that someone could callously hurt their partner. Hence the question, does he know? It’s hardly imaginable that he would continue the behavior if he knew, but I guess there you have it.
I’m so glad it was affirming.