Husband Is Immature. Keeps Aulking and Aaking How Did He Meaa Up Again

"Bullying builds character like nuclear waste creates superheroes. It's a rare occurrence and often does much more damage than endowment." ~ Zack W. Van

Have you ever been in a human relationship with an emotional bully? I have.

I once dated a girl who would fairly regularly yell or weep or call names almost every fourth dimension I disagreed with her, even over silly not-issues. Any annotate that was in any mode at odds with her position was taken equally a frontal attack. It was really quite remarkable. And frustrating.

Have you been there? Are y'all at that place now?

Keen is as Great does

Emotional bullies are not happy folk. No swell is. Bullies are much more than likely to come from less-than-ideal circumstances — a broken home, a single parent, alcohol habit in the family.

Fear often therefore motivates the swell's behavior. Insecurities plague the darker parts of their hidden hearts, so they effort to control external atmospheric condition to go on their anxious insides from spinning out of control.

Inside, they are barely hanging on so they overcompensate by tightening their grip on everything (and oft anybody) exterior.

Or they push button others around in a vain endeavour at feeling improve almost themselves by comparison. Merely whatever the reason, the problem is that they create the very social context that undermines their relationships, emotionally isolating themselves even more, further reinforcing their insecurities and giving fuel to their fears.

Emotional bullies practise the same matter for the same reason. But instead of hands, they use words (and book). Instead of lunch money, they rob relationships of trust and kindness and respect and depth and maturity.

In the cease, it's not the reason bullies button and shove that makes them bullies. It's the pushing and shoving itself.

Cocky-Awareness and the Emotional Corking

What are your arguments like? Are they calm discussions or are they punctuated by acrimony and rage and abusive words meant to hurt? Are yous an emotional bully? Maybe y'all suspect you lot may be, but are not quite sure.

We often go through life with blinders on, very enlightened of what others are doing, seeing "clearly" what motivates their behavior, while not then clearly seeing our own. Instead, nosotros justify and excuse in ourselves the very same beliefs we would never tolerate from others.

That existence the all-too-frequent case, the following characteristics should provide insight into what may accept largely been ignored until at present.

The hope is that if you come across the signs of being an emotional bully (fifty-fifty if only edge-line or occasional), you accept note, and then have the proper steps in your personal growth to overcome tendencies that are likely putting stress and strain on relationships that can but bend and so far.

Remember, cocky-awareness is the kickoff pace to an exciting life of emotional growth and happiness, even if the initial expect in the mirror hurts.

15 Characteristics of Emotional Bullies

ane. You Interrupt

When things get heated, your feelings and thoughts become pushed to the front of the line. The other person'southward thoughts and feelings get pushed to the back seat or right out the door onto the street and into oncoming traffic.

You constantly interrupt and stuff your points down others' throats. You don't let them finish a coherent idea. Y'all proceed at it until they give in or surrender and otherwise lie downwardly and let you have command of the conversation.

Merely really, at that point no real conversation exists. One is doing all the talking (perhaps yelling) while the other is doing all the listening (or pretending to).

Still, you know you are right, later on all, and so why wouldn't you be given control of the conversation, correct?

The thing is, all emotional bullies accept "expert reasons" why they dominate disagreements. The reason is not what makes for an emotional neat. It'south how a fight is played out.

two. You Throw Fits

Acrimony is an constructive manner to control an argument. It allows yous to avert discussion, give and take, compromise and the vulnerability of seeing the situation from the other side, maybe fifty-fifty beingness wrong.

And then just explode and be washed with information technology! No need to negotiate. No demand to discus. And if the person you lot start yelling at has a low threshold of tolerance for disharmonize or fears the escalation affecting the kids or neighbors, then throwing a fit is perhaps the all-time way to always become your manner.

And that'due south what bullies do, subsequently all: They button and shove until they get what they want. The difficult work of becoming the kind of person deserving of respect is traded in for the relative ease of instilling fear.

Merely fear has never been steady ground for building healthy relationships or personal happiness.

3. You lot Accuse and Arraign

"You lot make me …" "You lot're such a …" "Yous ever …" "If yous actually loved me, yous would …"

By leveling accusations (especially the unfounded or exaggerated or all-inclusive or all-exclusive kind), you effectively push your opponent into the corner. Past blaming them, you remove the responsibleness of trying to understand their position or playing by the Golden Rule from your shoulders.

When you run across the person you're arguing with equally an opponent to be beat, someone you're in battle with, rather than a partner working toward agreement, coming to a shared agreement, what's said matters less than who wins—when in truth, nobody wins in such circumstances, at to the lowest degree non in the long-run.

This way, you can feel justified in taking some course of action a responsible person never would. After all, if it's someone else's fault; you're not responsible; they brought this all on themselves; information technology's their fault I'k blaming, accusing, interrupting or crying!

4. You lot Cry

For nearly people, crying is not likely a tool used to intentionally manipulate the consequence of a disagreement. At least not consciously.

The tears are often a learned response to stress or disagreement or confrontation. You translate the disagreement equally somehow a slap in your face up and equate it with rejection. And, of class, there are many who are simply more prone to emotional responses to emotional pain or acrimony. Just crying tin, nonetheless, manipulate a disagreement to your favor.

A bully who bullies because his parents bullied him is all the same a bully. So it is with chronic criers who use their tears to go their way (this does Not mean that all chronic criers employ their tears to finish or command an argument. There are people who cry easily but allow their brains and values to determine the outcome of a fight, not their tear ducts). Still, if your tears are used to regularly finish the debate, and then information technology must exist said that intimidation past other means is still intimidation.

five. You Arm Your Kids for Boxing

This is a low blow even for full-fledged bullies. Putting your own kids in the way of emotional trauma is indeed a cruel thing to do. And all the same many parents do it anyway. They use them as ammunition or as witnesses against their spouse.

When winning a fight is more important than protecting your kids from it, you take jumped caput first into the thick moral mud of the bully. Only now you're bullying the children as well.

6. You Yell and Scream

When you shout, you're essentially saying, "Your thoughts and opinions are irrelevant." Yelling over some other person is the same as saying they have no correct to speak, to limited their unique opinion and point of view.

This is the equivalent of a verbal wedgie, except it'south your position that yous've yanked upward the other person's cleft.

7. Yous use Profanity

Cussing is an intimidation tactic. It insulates you from having to recollect. Depending on how the cussing is used, it helps you avoid the real result. If the other person is a blanking son of a hipshooter, then, by flippin hockstockers, why heed to the bum at all?

Ignominy the person by depersonalizing him or her equally a flapjacketed goshomatic and the message he's bearing no longer matters. Case closed. Bullied into a corner. Win!

eight. Y'all Tie their Tongue to Lengthen Yours

Have you ever been in a fight with your spouse, a swain or the next door neighbor when they say, "Okay, okay! I don't want to practise this anymore! I'g done arguing, and then just finish it!"

Then they continue arguing with the pause push on your mouth firmly pressed and no such restrictions on their ain wagging tongues.

That's the emotional equivalent of maxim, "I'll keep my lunch money … and I'm taking yours besides!"

ix. You Slam Doors and Throw the Remote Command beyond the Room

This tactic for bullying your manner deeper into what yous want is just one step downward from actual physical bullying. Throwing objects around the house, even if non at the person is still an human activity of violence. Information technology'south intimidation. And it'southward incorrect.

If y'all feel the urge welling up inside, put yourself on timeout. Get cool off. Come back when the bullying impulse has disappeared and the developed has come back home.

If when you return, the urge to break something comes back, become absurd off once again, as many times as it takes to stay in control — of yourself, that is!

ten. You Punish

This sort of passive aggressive beliefs is meant to punish the other person into submission. And if this isn't emotional bullying, nothing is!

You lot ignore, hang upward and give the silent treatment. You let them know in no uncertain terms that they are (or soon will exist) in the doghouse for daring to argue with you lot.

11. You lot Seek Revenge

Silent treatments and the like can exist a sort of revenge, for sure. But revenge-seeking includes and then much more also.

Withholding sex, leaving chores undone, coming home late on purpose, going to the bar, moving out, even sustained anger can be used equally a course of getting back at some other person.

All such beliefs is immature, selfish and mean-spirited. They are tactics of the bully and have to stop.

12. You lot Threaten

Have you e'er threatened divorce, suicide or unfaithfulness during an statement? If so, as the self-appointed marital and relationship ref, I call foul!

Advanced emotional bullying practitioners will be familiar with the threat-card. It'southward a powerful tool for getting what y'all want … and sometimes even more than.

Those who are emotional bullies are usually those who have deep emotional wounds, tender and painful. The problem is that in their panic to hold on to something they experience has slipped (or is slipping) abroad, they practise the very thing that loses the others' respect, love and empathy.

It is cocky-sabotage. Information technology is a self-inflicting wound. And trust is the blood the relationship loses equally it drains from the open up wound self-inflicted.

13. You Unbury the Expressionless

Do you reach dorsum as far as you can get to brand the point you want to make, dredging upwardly what should rightly be left in the past?

Are you more concerned with winning the point than honoring the right to keep past mistakes that accept long been overcome, stopped, corrected, made up for, repented of, buried there?

Are you more interested in beating your opponent into submission that honoring human decency?

People have the right to change. And once changed, to be treated as that changed person. Otherwise, you may win the battle, but at a tremendously high toll.

fourteen. No one's Feelings Count … (but yours)

If you have placed your eye in the position of being the lifeblood of your human relationship, information technology becomes easier to justify great tactics considering your feelings are the only feelings to be considered in a fight.

Just tears should never justify bad beliefs. Feelings should never trump values and human decency. Anger can be communicated without viciousness. Simply if only your feelings count, then what yous say in an argument and how you say it becomes irrelevant.

After all, it'due south only your heart that matters, right?

15. Preemptive Anger

If your temperature guess is ever gear up at anger equally your first response to, well, everything, you can successfully dispense disagreements to your favor nigh every fourth dimension by virtue of your reputation.

Knowing how you volition likely reply (considering that's how you nigh always take) your partner may throw in the towel long before the main effect fifty-fifty begins just to avoid an emotional slugfest.

A preemptive win, perhaps. Simply a huge personal development and relationship loss.

Now What?

The good news is that emotional bullies don't have to remain emotional bullies. And while the steps to move abroad from emotionally bullying others in an argument may be difficult, those steps are very much worth the endeavour and the discomfort the effort will likely produce.

Afterwards all, the very reason emotional bullies smashing is non existence met by the bullying. Certainly non in the long-run.

While the reason one person will bully their way through an argument may exist different from some other, the long-term effect is the same: another strain on yet another relationship, further pushing that relationship to the edge, sacrificing love and trust and compassion for another win.

And then, what if y'all recognized yourself in ane or more than of the arguing styles above? Don't worry. All is not lost. Happiness can't be swallowed in i bite any more than an elephant tin can be. Just a seize with teeth at a time volition practise.

The following are some of those minor bites to consider …

3 Ways to Stop Being an Emotional Bully

1. Accept the Cyclone

For some, the idea of letting someone else "challenge" their opinion is tantamount to existence kicked in the gut. It hurts. They experience their person, not just their position, is beingness ripped apart. They don't differentiate betwixt who they are and what they think about a given topic.

Their identity equals their opinion. 1 is the other. So when such a person'due south opinion is challenged, they feel their very being is being challenged and invalidated. At that place is nothing left but self-defense. And so anger and shouting and cursing becomes the emotional means of circumvoluted the wagons while under assault.

The affair is, they're not under attack. The person is not being ripped apart. No spears are being thrown at their very existence. They are just words. Opinions about a topic. An argument as an expression of two differing ideas, non the rejection of a person.

It might be scary. Yet, walk into the openness of an open up-ended disagreement anyway. Let the blitz of doubtfulness and unpredictability and even chaos wash over you. Allow information technology. Be curious about your growing anger or frustration or fright or anxiety.

Accept life as something bordering the chaotic, as terrifying equally that thought may be to yous. Let go of your grip on information technology. See where the discussion takes you lot.

Maybe information technology will reinforce the opinion you had to begin with. Maybe it won't. Peradventure you lot'll compromise. Maybe you'll discover yourself convinced.

But where you terminate up on the other side of a disagreement is null to what the quality of the relationship is afterwards.

Disagreements tin be opportunities to nourish love, respect and mutual understanding or to poison such essential traits to a salubrious relationship.

So value the human relationship more than than the emotional wall you've built. Because ultimately it's the protective walls in our lives that keep others from getting inside of us. And when we keep others out, nosotros undermine the very relationships nosotros promise to provide u.s. with the love nosotros may have missed growing up.

2. Care more than near the Person than the Win

As you enter a disagreement and the pulse starts racing, stop and tell yourself that they too have a correct to disagree, that they tin can disagree with your position without discounting or discrediting or invalidating yous equally a person. Remind yourself that to the degree they disagree with yous, you lot are in fact as well disagreeing with them.

This cognitive acceptance is an of import first step to emotional acceptance. And often (over time), belongings this kind of dialogue with yourself is enough to open up your centre too.

3. Take it a Stride at a Time

Don't push yourself faster than you can become. But don't use your comfort zone equally an alibi to stay put and make everyone else pay the price of your insecurities. Own them. They are yours. Non your spouse's or your kids' or your friends' or anyone else'due south.

They may have been ingrained past someone in your past, only even they don't ain them today. You exercise. Never justify making someone else pay the price of keeping your insecurities safe and well-fed.

Brainstorm today to see life from the vantage point of another persons' perspective. You'll be amazed at the broadening of your own.

Brusk Term vs. Long Term

So often, when we find ourselves acting the function of the emotional bully, nosotros are thinking very brusk term, correct at present, this fight, what I want this moment. We are effectively 3rd graders using adult words to express adult themes in extremely immature and self-defeating ways. Nosotros should know better.

And, in fact, we often do. Perhaps you meet yourself in some of the characteristics of an emotional bully, but feel you don't really "use" the yelling or crying or acrimony every bit a "tactic" to win a fight as much as it is simply an emotional reaction in the moment.

Nevertheless, the reason or motive is largely irrelevant to whether the bullying is happening. Whether consciously planned or habitually acted out or emotionally and spontaneously reacted to, the behavior is what identifies a bully as such, not what's in the groovy'southward heart.

Maturity and compassion requires something of u.s.. Information technology takes work. It demands internal growth. Sometimes it requires a good solid dose of humility to see what we've been hiding from. Sometimes information technology means getting on bended knee. Sometimes it means seeking professional or clerical help.

Fear and pain and a very thin layer of emotional skin can make dealing with the larger consequence very scary. Simply there is a larger effect than the immediate statement. The larger issue is y'all. We are often our ain worst enemies. We then often stumble over our own feet.

But the hope of peace at home, adults being allowed to exist adults in their own homes, rationally discussing what has been emotional volcanic activity so far is a goal worth pursuing.

As well, what's the alternative? Keep shoving others into emotional corners, disallowing them a phonation, preventing them from speaking their minds? Or fighting and then hard to stop them from hitting you square in the heart of your insecurities with yet another onslaught of disagreement and challenge and opinion?

None of the alternatives lend themselves to happiness. So terminate pursuing them. Practise the courage to take a higher route.

Afterthoughts

Of course, it takes two to tango … and to argue. That'due south a given. We all brand communication blunders. We all bring baggage to every relationship we enter. Only since we can never truly change someone else (they have to change themselves), I advise starting with the only person we have any real command over.

Hither'south the promise, the calorie-free that flickers at the terminate of what may appear to be a long and lone tunnel: Often, when we choose to change, the relationship does too, sometimes in unexpected merely marvelous ways.

Agree on to that thought equally you lot brainstorm the procedure of looking securely in the mirror at your naked soul and seeking assistance to change.

Self-awareness can be a powerful thing. But whatever the next stride is for you, please take information technology. Your relationships and your happiness very well may depend on it.

A Note to the Bullied

While this mail is directed at the emotional great, arming them with the power of self-sensation in hopes of igniting the want to brand some changes to their lives, their relationships and therefore to their happiness, I tin can't leave the bullied out of the discussion altogether.

No one should ever live under the yoke of tyranny. The first matter a tyrant does when he ascends to power is to obliterate the complimentary press, complimentary spoken language and the right to assemble.

Those rights tin't end inside the walls of a relationship. When voices are stifled, resentment replaces the words. When ideas and opinions are pressed down, other things get squeezed out, similar love and passion and self-respect.

But verbal communication is not the only way to communicate. If things are bad, try the written word. It may give the bully in your life time to recall. Go deadening and build from there.

Teach the emotional not bad in your life the higher values of the right to speak your mind. Don't shove it downwardly their pharynx if yous value the relationship, but don't submit to silence either.

If even the written expression of your thoughts and opinions and disagreements keeps erupting in ugly confrontations, then it may be time to press for exterior help (even if only for yourself), mayhap seeking inspiration from above and insight from a marriage and family counselor.

If that doesn't work, there may be bigger decisions for you to consider that a person on the outside is sick-equipped to aid you lot make. Still, freedom (where it is beingness seriously threatened) seems worth protecting even if at the expense of commitment to things like vows.

Final Discussion

I've laid downwardly over three,600 words in this post because I'm convinced emotional bullying goes on a lot more than nearly people retrieve. I wanted to be adequately exhaustive in my discussion of a serious block to people's happiness. Our relationships matter. They matter a lot.

My hope is that some of yous volition have to center what I've written here, that lives volition exist reevaluated and steps taken to improve what may accept been a festering sore in the happiness of your relationships.

YOUR Turn!

Then, what do y'all think? Have a overstated the idea of emotional bullying? Take yous seen signs of borderline emotional bullying in your own life? In others? And how have y'all handled emotional bullies y'all have encountered? This is a question I oasis't addressed here in the post, simply would love to go some feedback, perhaps to apply in a future follow-up post.

If you call back others would benefit from reading this article, please share it using your favorite social media.

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