Is it abnormal for a husband to have no loyalty to his wife?

[steph410]

my husband never sides with me. whenever there is a small (or big) issue going on and I try to share my thoughts with him- he always sticks up for the other side of the situation. He makes excuses for the other person and literally tells me to “move on with my life” and that he “just doesn’t care”.

I have never known a person like this- it is just completely self absorbed and immature. He is 35 years old.

My opinion is that a husband and wife should be “one”, they should be loyal to one another, they should care about the feelings of the other- even if it’s a small thing.

i feel he belittles anything that I am interested or concerned about, etc.

is there anything i can do to improve this? he has been this way for years now.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

my husband never sides with me. whenever there is a small (or big) issue going on and I try to share my thoughts with him- he always sticks up for the other side of the situation. He makes excuses for the other person and literally tells me to “move on with my life” and that he “just doesn’t care”.

I have never known a person like this- it is just completely self absorbed and immature. He is 35 years old.

My opinion is that a husband and wife should be “one”, they should be loyal to one another, they should care about the feelings of the other- even if it’s a small thing.

i feel he belittles anything that I am interested or concerned about, etc.

is there anything i can do to improve this? he has been this way for years now.

Sorry to be negative, but there really is nothing you can do to “improve” or change your husband. You say yourself that he has been like this for years. If he sees no reason to change, then there will be no change. It sounds to me as though your husband has no respect for you as a person, thus, no respect for your views or your situation. I hope you have supportive family and friends.

 

[steph410]

so he doesn’t respect me and there’s nothing I can do to get him to respect me? really?
obviously at one time he respected me or i wouldn’t have married him and vice versa.

i guess i was looking for more helpful advice.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

so he doesn’t respect me and there’s nothing I can do to get him to respect me? really?
obviously at one time he respected me or i wouldn’t have married him and vice versa.

i guess i was looking for more helpful advice.

It’s hard to give advice on a situation like this without being more familiar with you and your husband. There are a multitude of factors to take into account, such as the validity of your opinions / statements. That’s not meant to sound harsh, so I apologize if it does, but when my wife has something wrong I’ll call her on it, not doing so wouldn’t be doing her any favors.

As you described it though, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Does he actively belittle you for the things you’re interested in, or does he simply not take an interest in them as well? For instance, my wife loves football, I do not. So, while I’ll acknowledge her when she says something about football, I don’t really -care- about what she’s telling me. It’s not being mean, she just recognizes that what she’s saying has basically no meaning to me, so I don’t really have anything to say on the matter either way.

Is it truly self-absorption, or is he just argumentative? I have a few ‘friends’ who will argue with me on just about anything, regardless of which side I take. It’s just their nature… and exceptionally annoying to…

So, you see, without being more familiar with you and your husband’s situation, it’s hard to give advice. The best advice I can give you is to talk to your priest together about it, and pray on it.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

so he doesn’t respect me and there’s nothing I can do to get him to respect me? really?
obviously at one time he respected me or i wouldn’t have married him and vice versa.

i guess i was looking for more helpful advice.

Well, what would you think you can do about it? You could try counseling if your husband will cooperate, or go alone if he won’t. Obviously going by yourself won’t fix his problems, but it will give you tools to deal with the situation, and someone to talk things out with.

What happened to change his estimation of you? Go back to when he did respect you, what changed? I know in my case, my husband respected me more when I was working outside the home. Once we decided that I would stay home with our sons, his respect for me started to erode. Is that the case in your home too? My husband’s mother always worked, and although he did agree that having one parent at home was optimal, I think he has always felt that raising children is really not enough for a person to do. It was more than enough for me, however.

Whatever the reason your husband lost his respect for you, if he did, that’s what you need to talk about. But a counselor can help guide you into that discussion, through it, and out the other side.

Have you talked to him about it? “Honey, I don’t know if you even realize you’re doing it, but when you side against me, I feel alone and as if you don’t even respect what I am saying. Can we discuss this?” or some such.

 

[Ophelia23]

There is this thing that I think should become an actual term, and I call it S.O.S. It stands for Spousal Oppositional Syndrome. No matter what I say, my spouse has to oppose me. It’s become a bit of a joke in my family, and we can laugh about it. Here is a typical conversation.
Hubby: What would you like for dinner?
Me: How about pizza?
Hubby: No, I don’t want pizza.
Me: Ok, well what would you like?
Hubby: I’d like spaghetti.
Me: That’s fine, we’ll have spaghetti.
Hubby: No, I think I’d rather have pizza.

No matter what I say, he has to disagree.

In all seriousness, I can joke about this because we have been working our way through it. My little above example is of course about something silly and unimportant, but we have certainly had much more serious disagreements. And, understandably, the disagreements become discouraging no matter how small they are if they are the majority of the time. Always being disagreed with is a challenging, troubling, and painful way to live out your relationship. Seek counseling. If your husband does not want to come, you can even go by yourself. It starts with learning how to respond to disagreement. As you grow, you can continue to encourage your husband to come with you. Or, you could learn some communication tools to try and facilitate the discussions at home about why this is so troubling for you.

 

[Julia_Mae]

I have never known a person like this- it is just completely self absorbed and immature. .

Really? I know scads of women’s ex-husbands I can introduce you to exactly like this. However, I think sometimes they react this way because they have the innate need to protect you and in these situations they cannot. It gives them stress, so, they escape that by just not wanting to hear it and shut you down. Their other option is to go find the person and punch them. Not a good option.

Or he’s just a cad. But you might find some help reading the Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus book. I know it sounds stupid, but it has some pretty good stuff in it.

 

[The_Bucket]

However, I think sometimes they react this way because they have the innate need to protect you and in these situations they cannot. It gives them stress, so, they escape that by just not wanting to hear it and shut you down. Their other option is to go find the person and punch them. Not a good option.

As a man I’d say that this happens from time to time. There are occasions where I ask my wife to think about the other person’s perspective but she’s usually pretty good about that anyway. Other times she’s talking about something about which I truly don’t care, but I’m usually good about not using those words. I don’t say “I don’t care” I say something like “I’m cool with whatever you want to do.”

Like Christmas decorations for instance. I seriously could not care less about them. Christmas is about family and Our Lord. I don’t care about decorations. I don’t care about making our house a home by decorating it. But my wife expresses displeasure if I don’t at least feign interest in it because it matters to her. So I’m trying to work on that.

She’ll know if I’m feigning interest, but it’s the EFFORT that matters to her. The effort to acknowledge that this thing that’s unimportant to me is, however, important to her and I’m behind her.

 

[Armor_of_Light]

my husband never sides with me. whenever there is a small (or big) issue going on and I try to share my thoughts with him- he always sticks up for the other side of the situation. He makes excuses for the other person and literally tells me to “move on with my life” and that he “just doesn’t care”. I have never known a person like this- it is just completely self absorbed and immature. He is 35 years old. My opinion is that a husband and wife should be “one”, they should be loyal to one another, they should care about the feelings of the other- even if it’s a small thing. i feel he belittles anything that I am interested or concerned about, etc. is there anything i can do to improve this? he has been this way for years now.

Could you describe a recent situation for us (me) please? I am a man and have some theories. The previous poster who says “I know scads of women’s ex-husbands I can introduce you to exactly like this.” might just know scads of women who have a knack of bringing this out this in men.

 

[Armor_of_Light]

There is this thing that I think should become an actual term, and I call it S.O.S. It stands for Spousal Oppositional Syndrome. No matter what I say, my spouse has to oppose me. It’s become a bit of a joke in my family, and we can laugh about it. Here is a typical conversation.
Hubby: What would you like for dinner?
Me: How about pizza?
Hubby: No, I don’t want pizza.
Me: Ok, well what would you like?
Hubby: I’d like spaghetti.
Me: That’s fine, we’ll have spaghetti.
Hubby: No, I think I’d rather have pizza.

No matter what I say, he has to disagree. .

This happens every night in our house! I’m the cook and usually stop for (or go out for) the necessary groceries. Also…I’m not the picky eater. The conversation you describe happens to me all the time, and in no way is it me trying to disagree. It is me compromising, because in our eyes (jeez I hope I can speak for all men here) your happiness is more important and your desire for dinner was expressed in your opening salvo suggesting pizza. To us…thats what you wanted all along so we’ll comply because we love you!

I’m working on it!! We usually have a good chuckle over it as well.

 

[Sebrina]

What is your husband like when dealing with other people? Is he argumentative with them, as well? If so, he may be honing his skills by playing the devil’s advocate. I’ve known a few like that. They’d make great lawyers and love a good argument. My husband is somewhat like that. We’ve been married for 13 yrs though, so now I just roll my eyes and walk away instead of reacting.

 

[steph410]

What is your husband like when dealing with other people? Is he argumentative with them, as well? If so, he may be honing his skills by playing the devil’s advocate. I’ve known a few like that. They’d make great lawyers and love a good argument. My husband is somewhat like that. We’ve been married for 13 yrs though, so now I just roll my eyes and walk away instead of reacting.

actually he is only like this with me IMO.
with other people (especially his mother or siblings or long time college friends in particular)- he will stick up for them even when it’s really not justified- he will make excuses for them over and over. But NEVER for me.

 

[Armor_of_Light]

What is your husband like when dealing with other people? Is he argumentative with them, as well? If so, he may be honing his skills by playing the devil’s advocate. I’ve known a few like that. They’d make great lawyers and love a good argument. My husband is somewhat like that. We’ve been married for 13 yrs though, so now I just roll my eyes and walk away instead of reacting.

Can I relate a story? OK…thanks.

I hate to argue…I hate confrontation. I am an engineer and it is in my nature to also hate sloppy workmanship, poor design, false logic, conclusions jumped to, etc, etc…

So sometimes I ‘have to’ argue those points. We hosted Thanksgiving in our home this year and during the clean-up, we had all the borrowed serving dishes and some extra dinnerware waiting to be delivered back to family.

Wife: “I’m going to put these down by the garage door to get them out of the way”.

Me: “I’ll just take them out and put them in the back of the mini-van for ya”

Wife: Aren’t you worried about them breaking in the cold? (Michigan is cold in November)

Me (thinking): Why woukld you think they’d break in the cold? They are pyrex and the dinner dishes go from hot dishwasher to room temp all the time…Do you think all these items went right from a warm factory to a warm store to a warm house without any sort of storage in a warehouse? WTF are you talking about??? Why would you think that??? ARGHHH!!!

Me (responding): Oh…OK.

A lot of people don’t know how or why to pick battles. If whatever it is is not going to matter in 5 years…let it go

 

[Garyjohn2]

My spouse and I had fights about pretty much the exact think you describe, even up to accusing me of siding with friends and family, but not her. So, I’ll try to share my experience and what we did.

It’s hard to be “one” and side with someone if you genuinely do not agree with them on a certain point. Is it ok to be “loyal” to someone if it means betraying your conscience? There should be plenty of situations you two agree on, but there can be others that you don’t. I’ve been through this sort of thing before, and I can see both sides.

My spouse values loyalty, just like you do. Pretty much exactly what you’ve described. However, sometimes I disagree with how my spouse handles certain social situations. If she handles a situation poorly, and it ends up coming back to bite her, she may come to me and say “so-and-so said this rude thing to me, what a jerk, right?”

If I’m honest, I’ll say…well why would they say that? People don’t do those things for no reason, you know. Eventually I may learn that my spouse did or said something uncouth and that’s what caused the other person to react so negatively. When I point this out, I am accused of being dis-loyal for not siding with her. It used to happen a lot, and we used to get in a lot of fights over it.

Once day, though, she sat me down and explained to me how she values loyalty and it hurts her feelings very much when I “take sides” with other people. I tried to explain that I don’t take sides of anyone, just the side of what I see is the objective truth of the situation and how it can be remedied. It turns out choosing the correct or polite word in a situation is not her strength…her strengths lie in other areas. But it is one my of strengths. So, naturally, I would not agree with her on situations that involved this. I wasn’t siding with other people over her, like she thought, I was just using my best judgement on a certain situation. Still, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so I had to adjust.

Now, I may hear of situations where my spouse does something I don’t necessarily agree with (handling a certain situation, or poor word choice when speaking to someone) and I just let her be, because I trust her. If some situation arises where I’d have to “take sides” like this, I will usually take her side to keep the peace of the moment. At the same time, I may later point out how I would have done things, in order to help her for the future. (example: “honey, maybe you could have said you don’t appreciate that person’s actions rather than saying you hate them”) This part can be tricky, because I have to reassure her I’m still on her side (example: “even so, the way they reacted was immature and not called for. It was a jerky thing to do.”).

I dont know if this will help you guys, but I hope so! I just wanted to share my experience since we seem to have gone through a very similar situation.

 

[The_Bucket]

Once day, though, she sat me down and explained to me how she values loyalty and it hurts her feelings very much when I “take sides” with other people. I tried to explain that I don’t take sides of anyone, just the side of what I see is the objective truth of the situation and how it can be remedied.

This is an excellent and salient point. I don’t know if it’s the OP’s situation, but I know this very likely happens a lot. It has happened with me and on both sides. And many times I end up in Armor’s shoes where my wife reminds me of something very obvious and I bristle at it and reply with something like “Yeah I know, I’m not an idiot.” Not the smartest of moves. She knows I’m not an idiot and I need to not take offense at these “reminders.” I’m working on simply replying “OK.”

But miscommunication between spouses can happen often and many times it’s not because one spouse does not respect the other. Sometimes it’s because the love and loyalty is taken as read, as I’m guessing is the case for you Gary. You feel like your wife should know that you always love her and you’re not trying to hurt her when you take the side of an objective truth. She doesn’t see it that way. Both sides need to understand where each is coming from.

 

[hurting]

It’s hard to give advice on a situation like this without being more familiar with you and your husband. There are a multitude of factors to take into account, such as the validity of your opinions / statements. That’s not meant to sound harsh, so I apologize if it does, but when my wife has something wrong I’ll call her on it, not doing so wouldn’t be doing her any favors.

As you described it though, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Does he actively belittle you for the things you’re interested in, or does he simply not take an interest in them as well? For instance, my wife loves football, I do not. So, while I’ll acknowledge her when she says something about football, I don’t really -care- about what she’s telling me. It’s not being mean, she just recognizes that what she’s saying has basically no meaning to me, so I don’t really have anything to say on the matter either way.

Is it truly self-absorption, or is he just argumentative? I have a few ‘friends’ who will argue with me on just about anything, regardless of which side I take. It’s just their nature… and exceptionally annoying to…

So, you see, without being more familiar with you and your husband’s situation, it’s hard to give advice. The best advice I can give you is to talk to your priest together about it, and pray on it.

I think there is definitely some good advice here. Loyalty is a tricky issue, even in marriage, insofar as while spouses are called to be loyal to one another, as in forsaking all others, a spouse should never cede on matters of conscience so as to go along to get along. Indeed, on these matters a spouse would be called to fraternally correct the other spouse.

Further, even in situations which could be described as “gray”, a spouse is not called to show loyalty to his/her spouse by way of subjugating his/her judgment just to keep the peace. Unless your husband is not arguing fairly, he is perfectly well entitled to his opinions, and you should really, sincerely consider his point of view in establishing your own position.

How he deals with other people in life is a relatively weak proxy for how he should relate to you both in general and in this regard. You are his one and only wife, and the only person to whom he has rendered the most solemn promise one human being can make to another. You are one flesh. If he’s not debating as often with everyone else in the world as he is you, it’s just as likely that it’s because the stakes are so much higher. Try to see the possibility for a moment that he argues with you because he holds true, heartfelt convictions and is trying to help you; he is investing time and energy in you to convince you of things that are important – not just important to him but metaphysically important.

This may sound harsh, but as much as we all like to feel we are entitled to be “right”, our holding of a position does not make the position right. To the extent that a position can be objectively determined to be “right”, as in morally defensible and based on facts and reasoning, we should adopt that position and not invert the cause and effect to salve our egos.

As others have suggested, there is not enough information here to ascertain whether your husband is doing anything wrong at all. Indeed, to the extent that the topics on which you disagree involve moral dimensions, you are both called to seek truth, and if he is leading you in good faith to examine your own possibly faulty positions and/or fraternally correct you from manifestly immoral ones, he is doing exactly what he is called to do.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

But miscommunication between spouses can happen often and many times it’s not because one spouse does not respect the other. Sometimes it’s because the love and loyalty is taken as read, as I’m guessing is the case for you Gary. You feel like your wife should know that you always love her and you’re not trying to hurt her when you take the side of an objective truth. She doesn’t see it that way. Both sides need to understand where each is coming from.

FH and I have run in to this issue several times, but I think we have it worked out. There is a person in our lives on his side who has never been very good to me. Actually the behavior has at times been downright nasty. When confronted he acknowledged what he was doing but was completely unapologetic. FH let this go on way too long without putting a stop to it. Of course this caused a huge issue. I wanted him to flat out say “You will not treat my soon to be wife like this and if you insist on it our relationship will change. Period”. He wanted to “get to the root” of the problem, see why the person was behaving this way, and see what he could do to make him “feel better” and nudge him in to behaving better. He did acknowledge that I wasn’t being treated right, but he didn’t want to draw a hard line because of the issues it could cause with his family right before we get married (which can be a sensitive time anyway). And because this person is younger and very immature he didn’t want to come down too hard on him without giving him ample opportunity to change.

Ok, so we fought a lot, and it came down to “I’m trying to be objective and I know you’re being wronged, but it will cause a lot more problems if I take a harsh stand instead of trying to be patient and gently change the situation.” He was absolutely right on every count, but the position that I had, and still maintain is “Objectively I’m your fiance!!!”

I felt as though he was being disloyal, he felt as though he was being put in the middle of a very difficult situation, and frankly, we are young and this is the first issue like this we’ve ever had. We got a crash course in communication and dealing with family, and in the end it was good for us. But it doesn’t mean that this wasn’t hard.

I value loyalty above all else. I am fiercely loyal and while I can have a fiery temper, nothing quite brings it out like someone hurting someone close to me. I need to feel as though he will stand by my side and show the same loyalty and protectiveness that I do. He’s more of a peacekeeper and always has the goal of keeping everyone together and everyone happy. Admirable goal, but I’m too cynical to think that it would ever work. In short: communication.

 

[cviolette]

My husband use to do this when we were first married. If I was talking about a boss or coworker, he would side with them. Explain why I was wrong. If we were discussing something, I was always wrong. He would never admit I was right even when I had proof. Slowly, I stopped sharing things with him. Why would I?

Not sure why your husband is doing it. Maybe to show you the other side and help solve the problem?

For me, I know it was to nip away at my self esteem. I feel this way from his other actions. The put downs, no compliments, never apologizes. But he would talk about how great I was to other people. Just never to me.

No good advice but I would definitely discuss how you feel with him and try to fix it. You want to be able to share your problems with the man you love. He should help you through your problems and not make you feel worse.

 

[steph410]

My husband use to do this when we were first married. If I was talking about a boss or coworker, he would side with them. Explain why I was wrong. If we were discussing something, I was always wrong. He would never admit I was right even when I had proof. Slowly, I stopped sharing things with him. Why would I?

Not sure why your husband is doing it. Maybe to show you the other side and help solve the problem?

This is pretty much what he does. I obviously don’t know why my husband does it. I have talked to him about it many times. Instead of him honestly explaining what is going on with him, he will deny it flat out. He will even try to talk as if I am crazy and imagining things. He will try to deflect the entire topic towards something that he thinks he’s doing right.

 

[steph410]

I Does he actively belittle you for the things you’re interested in, or does he simply not take an interest in them as well?

at this point, he actively belittles me. i know this may sound strange, but sometimes i almost feel like he has some sort of jealousy of me and this is how it comes out. he is more of a passive person who tries to get along with everyone even to a fault, whereas I don’t have a problem expressing my opinion. Sometimes I wonder if he is jealous of it?

Either that, or he just wants a quiet passive wife who never speaks up or stands up for herself? that is my other guess. I’m a highly educated person who just happens to stay at home with my kids. I’m not going to quiet my mind or spirit and not be myself, just to please him.