Relationship Advice: I hate my husband. I can’t get a divorce, what should I do?

I hate my husband. I can’t get a divorce, what should I do?
Hatred is a very powerful life energy. Hating your husband and continuing to stay with him, expecting changes, is at the very least NOT logical and very destructive.

I hate my husband.

Hatred is a very powerful life energy.  Kind and smart Yandex says that people request “I hate my husband, what should I do” about 6 thousand times a month, “I hate my wife” twice less—about 3 thousand times, and “I love and hate” again 6 thousand requests.

“Why does my husband…”, “Relationship with my husband…”, “I love my husband…” and “What to do if my husband…” from 20 thousand to 80 thousand requests per month.

At the same time, divorce statistics are very indicative—there are many of them. People break up, families fall apart, and somewhere between tragedies, dramas, and spontaneous searches for the happiness of parents, their children somehow grow up.

And sometimes the opposite happens: when it is not just possible but catastrophically necessary to get divorced, women (and sometimes men) leave themselves and their children in unbearable conditions.

Once upon a time, when I first heard from a client, “I hate my husband; what should I do?” I was surprised and perplexed.

We live, fortunately for women, not in a dark time, not in a backward country—the possibilities of a civilized divorce are available.

I rarely encounter the difficulties of my fellow psychologists, whose clients are additionally bound by local religion and culture.

Novosibirsk is a very large city, with almost two million residents, and a woman who has chosen divorce should hardly be afraid of rumors and condemnation as in a small village.

Time passed, and I heard similar words from women from Moscow and from St. Petersburg and other big cities.

“I hate my husband; what should I do? I can’t and won’t get divorced.”

Reasons why a wife hates her husband:

1. A symbiotic union in which the woman plays the role of a donor. 

After a certain amount of time, her strength and resources run out, but there is no distancing, completion, or breakup of the relationship. The husband asks for more and more, such an endlessly hungry monster-baby who sucks and sucks his mother, demanding from her “give, give, give.”

Being in a rigid merger, subordination to him, she cannot in that state choose a psychological divorce and, even more so, an ordinary, civil divorce.

He cannot place his discontent, irritation, and anger in their relationship. They are suppressed, accumulated, and then manifested either through psychosomatics, withdrawal into depression, or illness.

Or they very actively close themselves off with various dependencies: alcohol, work, food, falling in love, TV series, dreams. Or they accumulate into a “nuclear bomb”: “I hate my husband. I can’t leave. What should I do?”

And it seems the best way out is for the husband of such a woman to “disappear” and even say out loud, “I want him to die!” For them, becoming a widow is acceptable and decent, but separating, remaining alone, and moving forward with divorce is impossible.

And what about the husband of such a woman?

What is it like to be a person who is hated every day, who is wished dead, who is wished to disappear?

How should one behave so that a marriage created by people in love turns into an arena where the wife hates her husband?

Usually, this is a very negative person who devalues ​​communication. The normal reaction to him is to distance himself.

If he comes for a consultation, then out of the ten sentences that he says, fifteen are criticism, devaluation, dissatisfaction, and the expectation that someone owes him something.

2. The second reason for a wife’s hatred of her husband is his rudeness, carelessness, and callousness in the sphere of sexuality and sensuality.

Words that seem possible to such a man sound rude, offensive, and boorish to his wife, and she begins to close herself off and distance herself.

He, naturally, begins to behave more harshly and rudely, latently striving to return closeness even through quarrels. She closes herself off even more; the grievances accumulate.

Such a husband does not listen to her explanations and does not hear them; he is perplexed, “What did I say?” and brushes off nonsense that is unimportant to him, hurting his wife again and again with his rude negligence.

And then she starts thinking: everything is fine; he doesn’t drink; he doesn’t beat; he loves the children; everything is in the house; he’s hard-working. Everything is fine. Her femininity, sexuality, sensuality, emotionality, and ability to love are completely shattered by his rudeness and boorishness.

But she chooses to stay with him. The pain and resentment accumulate. At some point, disgust begins to grow, and over time, a lot of hatred of the wife towards her husband accumulates.

For men, I want to note that the question to your wife is, “How do you feel about me? Do you love me as a man? Do you respect me as a man, husband, and father?” It is useful to ask your wife, hear her answers, and think about what to do with them BEFORE her hatred begins to kill everything valuable and alive in your couple.

3. A wife’s hatred towards her husband may be due to his infidelity.

But in this case, much more often, hatred is directed at the husband’s rival (mistress) and at oneself (it turns into resentment and is suppressed).

If you react adequately to the situation and directly, the relationship will end and be destroyed.

But there are some bonuses, fears, and memories of good things, relying on which a woman tries to save a marriage.

At the same time, she needs to do something in her inner world with her feelings and ideas about reality. Forgive the betrayal, gather herself again, somehow start living on, and resolve the issue of trust, which is suffering greatly.

4. The wife’s hatred of her husband because of drunkenness, beatings, and cruel restrictions (money only for food, ignoring needs, for example, for medicine, or not giving for what the child needs).

Here, helplessness and fear fuel hatred. Most often, such situations end in divorce at the first opportunity for the woman but can last for years.

5. Infantilism and passive aggression.

Here the reason for the wife’s hatred is the husband’s feelings and behavior. She expresses her irritation, anger, discontent, and feelings, which he does not express directly but formally agrees, then does something that greatly spoils her life.

The wife’s hatred is in response to the helplessness and impotence of her husband.

6. Another reason for a wife’s hatred of her husband is her unrealistic expectations of him and the fact that he does not satisfy her needs.

It often occurs in girls who were spoiled in childhood and imagine marriage as “life in a fairy tale.”

Such relationships are eventually broken off by men, after which the ex-wives understand and feel how much they have lost.

Hatred is a very powerful life energy. If a wife feels it towards her husband, then it is worth respecting the semantic content of her feelings.

Understand the reasons and outline constructive and realistic ways to resolve the situation.