How Are You Supposed To Respond When You Still Love Your Spouse But He Says He Hates You?
By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from people who have reached a very explosive or troubling period within their marriage. I might hear from someone whose spouse has just admitted to feeling hatred toward the other spouse or toward the marriage. I heard from a wife whose marriage had been struggling partly due to money issues. Her husband had lost his job and every time the wife purchased something that wasn’t an absolute necessity, a huge fight erupted. The wife had purchased a new heater for her mother but neglected to tell her husband about it. Needless to say, when the husband saw the credit card bill, he exploded. The wife recounted: “he held up the bill and followed me around the house asking if I was trying to destroy us financially. I tried to explain that my mother’s house was freezing and I really had no choice and he blurted out ‘are you determined to put us into bankruptcy with your spending and your lies? I hate you at this point. I can’t even stand to look at you. It’s like you’re constantly going behind my back and trying to sabotage our lives. I don’t think I can take this any more.’ I didn’t know how to respond. The sabotage comments have happened before, but to hear him express pure hatred for me is almost more than I can take. How should you respond when you love your spouse but they blurt out that they hate you?” I’ll tell you my take on this in the following article.
Many Times, Your Spouse Really Means That They Hate Your Behaviors Or Your Actions Rather Than That They Hate You: Probably about ninety-nine percent of the time, a couple is fighting or in a high-stress situation when the “I hate you” comment comes at a very volatile moment. There’s usually a fight and hurtful words are exchanged. I am not trying to excuse your spouse’s hurtful words or to insinuate that he didn’t mean any of the sentiment behind the words. But it’s important to understand that typically when you hear words like this, it’s because tensions are running high.
Often, your spouse is reacting out of frustration and if they are being honest when they calm down, they will sometimes admit that while they might hate your actions or your behavior, they don’t actually hate you. There’s a huge difference between hating the thing a person has done and hating the person themselves. But none of this means that you shouldn’t pay close attention to what your spouse has said and ask yourself if there is any validity to their concerns.
How To Respond When Your Spouse Says He Or She Hates You: The worst thing that you can do is to reply that the feeling is mutual when this is anything but true. It’s also not a great idea to retaliate with a hurtful response that is just going to make the fight worse or perpetuate the disagreement. I know that the words are hurtful, but try to stay calm. The best response is typically something like: “well that hurts, but I understand that you’re angry and frustrated. I don’t hate you. I love you and I want to work this out. Can we discuss this when we both have a chance to calm down? I really want to work through this, but now is probably not the best time. Let’s calm down, regroup and address why you’re so angry.”
I know that diffusing the situation is asking a lot when the person you love has just expressed the emotion that is the exact opposite of love. But staying and continuing to argue or debate the point when emotions are that high is usually not the best idea. If you can make it clear that, despite the high amount of frustration, you still love your spouse and want to make things right, this can usually bring about a faster resolution.
Once The Whole “I Hate You” Comment Blows Over, Understand That You Should Still Examine The Underlying Cause Of The Words: Typically, once everyone calms down, apologies are sometimes made, or at the very least both people try to just move on. It’s normal to not really want to discuss what happened because it’s so painful that no one really wants to dwell on it. But it’s important to not just brush this under the rug. Because if you don’t solve the problem that leads to the “I hate you” outburst, then the issue is likely to come up again and again and it will sometimes just get worse and worse. In the example above, the money issue was still going to be there even after the husband calmed down. So while moving on from the hurtful comments was the goal, this couple needed to come to an agreement on finances that they could both live with or this probably wasn’t the first time this topic was going to cause serious problems.
The bottom line is this. Often, your spouse doesn’t really mean it when they tell you that they hate you, but they are desperately trying to get your attention. It’s in your best interest to listen before things get worse and your marriage continues to be damaged.
My husband would make hurtful comments like this to me and we would eventually make up and I’d try to forget it. This was a mistake because we never solved the underlying problems and this eventually lead to us separating. It wasn’t until I got serious about finally addressing our problems that things finally changed for us. If it helps, you can read the whole story of our reconciliation that saved our marriage on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com
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