Healthy relationships take many forms and look different from person to person, but it has never taken the form of walking on eggshells, being subservient, or being constantly shut up.
If that forms part of the characteristics and reality of your current marriage, your husband is nothing but a bully.
You´re already part of the statistics of women who are in abusive relationships and probably do not know it.
One of the reasons I stated that is the fact that you´re reading this, and you are probably trying to establish or deny the fact that you are being bullied in your marriage.
The reality is that bullying in marriage is much more common than we can ever admit.
There are a lot of women who actually experience this than you´d ever know, and that means you´re not alone.
Let us take a critical look together.
6 Signs Your Husband Is Bullying You
1. He Subtly Controls Your Choices
The first step in any abusive relationship, be it marriage or dating, is control.
The funny thing about this is that it never starts as control.
It starts out masking as concern.
He tells you not to do certain things, convinces you to dress in a certain way, and makes you see the beauty in only his own choices on matters that concern you.
In fact, he might be the one to make the choice of your pad or tampon, and this might be because he prefers the brand color of one to the other.
How you react to it does not concern him.
It might sound hilarious to you, but this is the reality of certain women.
It starts on the subtle level till it graduates to the bigger things, like you not talking to some set of people, cutting ties with your childhood friends, and even family.
I used to know a woman back then in my childhood church.
Her husband made sure she didn’t communicate or relate with any of her family members and even had people watching her.
She wasn’t “allowed” to engage them beyond casual greetings.
Before it got to that point, I am sure it started from those little things that masqueraded as “love” and “concern”.
2. He Constantly Criticizes You
The next step a man takes after taking control of his wife´s life is to strip her of her confidence and dignity.
This comes in the name of correcting you, which is nothing but pure criticism.
It doesn’t matter how confident you are or how much you believe in yourself and your abilities.
If your husband, whom you so love and cherish, constantly talks down on you, you will gradually crawl into a shell.
When I mean constantly, I mean he doesn’t hesitate to give you the morning dose over breakfast, the afternoon reminder(he does this over the phone), and the one that you´d sulk over to bed at night after dinner.
Only a bully who doesn’t want to let go of the power he so weilds will constantly do this.
I remember when I was working as a judicial assistant and I had a boss who constantly trampled on my skills and personality. I became a shadow of myself in an instant.
I moved from being an ambivert to a complete introvert.
That is similar to the case between husbands and wives.
When you notice that your husband gives you no benefit of the doubt and does this verbally, humiliating you by saying things that are against your self-respect or hurting your self-esteem, it is a sign that he is bullying you.
You may also notice how he keeps track of your shortcomings, always saying it to your ears and bringing it into conversations, either jokingly or directly.
This behavior tears people down in marriage; if your husband does this, it suggests he is a bully.
3. He Publicly And Privately Disrespects You
When the agenda to keep you in your shell through criticism succeeds, another tool that a bullying husband deploys is disrespect.
A bully and respect have no business whatsoever together.
The first reason for this is that he has successfully stripped you of your confidence and self-esteem.
And to put that to a test and assert that power, he has to disrespect you.
Name the disrespect you can think of, both privately and publicly.
He will be so arrogant when he speaks to you.
He will yell at you in public and in private.
He might even spice it up with a sprinkle of infidelity.
This unfaithfulness might be visible to others, and he still won’t care.
He mistreats you and gives people no reason to treat you any differently.
This is because your self-respect and the way people see you might change.
4. He Begins To Threaten You
A man who wants to take total control of your life will not stop until he achieves his goal.
If his subtle means do not work, he will resort to using threats against you.
He will use fear to “communicate” with you.
He will slam doors, destroy things, and even make threats about what will happen if you don’t obey him.
This is more of him trying to assert his power over you, and the best way he can do that is to threaten you.
He will resort to calling you names and even using hurtful language on you.
Nothing can be used to excuse actions like this. It is a sign that he is a bully.
5. He Shifts Blame and Guilt-Trips You
These are some of the most glaring signs that your husband is a bully.
Whenever there is a misunderstanding, he will go ahead to break it down and analyze the issue.
After this, he will “factually” show you how the issue is an effect of something you did or did not do.
It doesn’t matter if it is glaring that he actually defaulted at that point.
God forbid that he takes responsibility when there is a misunderstanding.
It is always a justification after an evaluation to show where you actually defaulted and how the breakdown is indeed your fault.
Even when your husband doesn’t hit you or make a move on you, you still do not feel safe because you don’t know what the next accusation will be.
6. He Normalizes The Cycle
Eventually, when he sees you´re trying to do something different or break free from his hold, he will make you see it as normal.
He convinces you that that is how marriages work.
It is only a marriage that will outlive time that will go through all of those “hurdles”.
He couches your concern as you being too sensitive and could even go as far as blaming it on your period.
The cycle becomes a rinse-and-repeat pattern, which ends up draining you and makes you question your worth in the long run.