Quarrelsome Wives

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tony22279 said:
In regards to my duty to achieve change, it think that is slightly mis-stated. My wife is responsible for her salvation, as are my children
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Your wife, however, isn’t here asking us for advice. You are.

You can only change yourself, something my great-grandfather figured out, to the benefit of his wife, his children and their marriages, and his grandchildren and their marriages. Some picked up on his model; others did not. The ones who did were far happier.

You can be a leader by how you act and by how you respond to how your wife treats you and your children, but you cannot directly change your wife and you cannot directly change your children or your co-workers or any other human being. That is because the Creator deemed it best to give them a free will such that even God cannot force them to comply with the will of God.

Meditate on how you can be a peacemaker and whether or not there is anything you can do to bring greater harmony to your home. Be very certain that with respect to your wife it will not be anything you force her to do but rather something you lead her to do. If she doesn’t come around with a willing heart, it is not happening. It may be that through no fault of yours, it simply isn’t going to happen. What is certain, though, is that you cannot force it to happen. That is not how leadership works.
 
Never once asked for advice. Asked for testimonials. People read my comments and have a personal connection which is driving them to reply with what they think I need to hear. I’m not saying it’s all wrong, but just like you guys don’t know me, I don’t know you. I do seek advice, but not from strangers. I can however, learn from your stories. I can learn from your perspectives as well and understand how the perspective that the problem is deeper than just quarreling is related. I think it is deserving to appear in this thread, but should not be center stage.

In regards to leadership, I agree. You have not lived my experiences and have not been in the situations I have in which you are forced to do your best to minimize or ignore an argument when all attempts at peaceful recourse are met with defensiveness. These are my experiences, and I am seeking testimonials to inform a much greater understanding of the situation.

I mean this sincerely, thank you. I know it takes time to respond to these posts and you are providing well thought ideas. If you’re posting for the good of others who read this, then sure, keep on. If you’re posting for me, I’ll be honest, I’m reading it but it’s falling on deaf ears. I have learned that marriage is not something you learn how to do once and you are always great at it. It takes work. I try to do that work. I pray, I learn, I work at it. Just trust that is true. I am not trying to “force” my wife to do anything and believe I have been mentored by wise Christians about my responsibilities as a husband.
tony22279 said:
I’m not intending to seek random counsel or complain/gossip about my spouse anonymously in a public forum. In doing my own research in preparation to address the issue, I noticed a complete dearth of material addressing quarrelsome wives so decided to ask a Catholic forum for thoughts on THAT issue - not MY issue.
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JMMJ said:
My best advice is to not lace the situation with a religious view. Religion really has little to nothing to do with this. Get into a good marriage counselor and do the good, hard work that will reap rewards. If your wife won’t go, then go by yourself. The only way this will be completely fixed is for both of you to really want it.
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On the one hand, I know that this may sound kind of terrible and un-Christian to the OP, but on the other hand, I really have to agree with this. You can’t fix your wife by reading religious stuff at her–especially if you have some serious history of bad behavior yourself that hurts your credibility. There is potential for overuse of Christianese or Catholicese to shut down communication.

As people have described previously, with a non-abusive, non-mentally ill spouse, you can often achieve very good results just by responding appropriately. If an appropriate response does not help, we have to accept the possibility that abuse and/or mental illness are in play.

Also, I really have to caution the OP that his wife is not his personal fixer upper project, no matter what Fr. Ripperger says. While it is an excellent thing when spouses are able to help each other toward heaven–we’re not supposed to drag them kicking and screaming there. That would be disrespectful to them, as well as unlikely to work.
PetraG said:
You can be a leader by how you act and by how you respond to how your wife treats you and your children, but you cannot directly change your wife and you cannot directly change your children or your co-workers or any other human being. That is because the Creator deemed it best to give them a free will such that even God cannot force them to comply with the will of God.
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I agree with every word of PetraG’s post (which I’ve only excerpted here).
 
Well, for personal testimony of sorts, my parents never fought or bickered in front of us growing up. Now that I’m out of the house my mother is more open about things my dad does that annoy her, like never throwing out paperwork.

My aunt is a bickering sort of person who always wants to be right, and if she isn’t then she will find fault in how you spoke to her or the small details. While I can’t comment directly on what growing up in her home was like, her oldest two children have very severe anxiety problems and her next two children also bicker incessantly and are unpleasant to be around. My younger sisters have no desire to include her or her family in their weddings or other family events.
 
I don’t want to drag her in without her volunteering, but one of our posters has a mom who resembles Zzyzx Road’s quotes from the Bible about constant dripping. Her mom would follow her around yelling about stuff and would understand any disagreement or lack of full-throated agreement as disrespect. That poster finally was able to move out and we all cheered. Not a solution for married people, though!

Edited to add: That poster’s mom had an almost total lack of self-awareness. There was never any hope that the poster would be able to talk her mom out of her awful behavior. This is a depressing thing to say, but the more consistently terrible the behavior, the less likely it is that the perpetrator has real control over it or real responsibility for it.
 
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tony22279 said:
Are you even Catholic? And active?

Also, do you even know what my original question was?
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Tony I think that was out of line. It was personal, and insulting. Defending it won’t be very convincing I think , it’s about you, not about the person you addressed it to. And it brings passive aggressive to mind.
I drew in my breath as I read it. Is it an indicator, I don’t know. But certainly wouldn’t appreciate that from anyone.

I respect some of what you said,
But you do show a controlling tendency. This isn’t a philosophy logic forum, where the question must be logically adhered to but one of real people with good intent, who saw beyond the question, which isn’t unreasonable. And you do on more than one occasion go to what is regarded as internet shouting, responding in capital letters.
I only point these things out in fairness to the other posters who have genuinely tried to shine light on the question which after all cannot be taken in isolation. Relationship issues cannot be taken in isolation, their roots are extensive.

Your long paragraphs are difficult to read, , so if not all have responded precisely as you intend, perhaps some digressions are perhaps understandable

Anyway, people do generally respond in good faith, and usually in the forum people allow for a range of legitimate associated suggestions, as having associated relevance.

And yes of course parental argument, and aggressive parenting can be harmful. That particular question almost doesn’t need to be asked. How could we not know? We see the effects everywhere, on the news, in the courts, in the disturbed teens, the cycles of abuse … which is probably why some who responded didn’t take your question at face value…

I tend to be a kind poster, and empathetic, but also have a sense of justice, so decided to stick my silly neck out for the posters you’ve tended to verbally chastise.
 
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Since our words fail to convince or change the behavior of others, perhaps it is best (at times - no flames please) to simply retire to prayer and allow the Holy Spirit to act.

Pretty darned powerful, that Spirit.
 
A bit of advice, walls of text without paragraph breaks are VERY difficult to read.

Take a pause where one would naturally pause in conversation, it makes your posts clearer.
 
tony22279 said:
Never once asked for advice. Asked for testimonials… I do seek advice, but not from strangers. I can however, learn from your stories. I can learn from your perspectives as well and understand how the perspective that the problem is deeper than just quarreling is related. I think it is deserving to appear in this thread, but should not be center stage…

In regards to leadership, I agree. You have not lived my experiences and have not been in the situations I have in which you are forced to do your best to minimize or ignore an argument when all attempts at peaceful recourse are met with defensiveness. These are my experiences, and I am seeking testimonials to inform a much greater understanding of the situation.
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OK…I think I get what you’re saying. You don’t want theory. You want concrete examples. Well, as you know, some couples seem to “fight” all the time, but stay married and report being happy with each other for a lifetime. Others cannot continue to live in the same house together, even if their marriages are valid and they wind up living separately with the marriage bond remaining. What is the difference?

I do have an idea for you. There is a marriage researcher named John Gottman who observed how a great number of married couples communicate with each other. These couples actually agreed to spend time together and allow him to videotape how they interacted, and after compiling mountains of observations his research team looked for communication patterns. He followed the couples and drew conclusions about which communication patterns were damaging (usually leading to divorce) and which allowed complaints or even conflict to take place but nevertheless ended in a reconciled or even an improved partnership.

If you look up his work–many of his books are carried by public libraries, so you can look at them for free–you’ll find lots of actual examples of how “quarrelsome” people communicate, which communication habits work and which ones don’t, but particularly which ones work and don’t work when a couple is going through a conflict. When he gives examples, he describes how each party experiences the interaction that takes place. I don’t think any of his books include observations of children, but our children do use many of the same communications strategies (or avoidance strategies) that they learn at home.

He has more examples and explains them in more detail than I could give you if I described every couples quarrel I have ever seen. I hope that helps.
 
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I’ve seen this and can say the most noticeable impact on children I’ve observed is withdrawel/avoidance. It is also what the children have told me.
 
Ok everyone, I guess this thread got flagged by the moderators and will close within the next day. For everyone that posted, I sincerely thank you even if we disagreed (or perhaps even quarreled?). Anyways, I thought the topic was a worthy one of discussion although I did not introduce it well to begin. I didn’t know where it would go, but I did gain some insights from the whole thing. Hopefully you guys did too.

I think the key points were:
  1. Most believe I might be a key cause for the “quarrelsome” attitudes, and some self-reflection is in order. It’s possible (and likely) that I am not meeting her needs or that she is feeling an unusually high demand. Others suggest a possible mental health issue if I’m as decent a person I claim to be.
  2. Many of you believe marriage counseling is in order when there is a persistently difficult spouse.
  3. Despite the resiliency of children, most of you that have seen argumentative households have observed very tangible (and mostly negative) impacts of the constant stress. Some HAVE witnessed a positive impact of just one spouse keeping things together. Either way, most of you validate that it is as significant an issue as I suspect.
  4. Takes two people to have an argument, but only one to steal some of the joy. In these instances, you guys have faith that if I push through it with a good attitude and emphasis on being a good parent, she may (or may not) come around. (I’ve been trying this for a while…)
  5. Perhaps my writing style isn’t the best for internet blogs/forums (and perhaps some would rather be contained to a dungeon with dripping water rather than read my posts🤣).
  6. No spouse can force change on the other.
  7. A few actually validate my situation with their own experiences.
  8. Multiple recommended reads: John Gottman’s work, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, The Seven Story Mountain, How Not to Hate your Husband after Kids, and the Institute for Marital Healing. (Sorry if I missed a few)
  9. And my favorite: “Take that for what it’s worth; free advice is worth what you pay for it.”
I think I captured the highlights. Thank you all again.
 
tony22279 said:
…
I think I captured the highlights. Thank you all again.
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Nice summary!

I’ve been ‘lurking’ on this thread, with one post.

Apologies if what follows doesn’t recognise advice which has previously given. It’s been a great thread, but a long one.

Firstly, I remind the OP of my own post where I commented on the important question of whether the wife displayed this behaviour before marriage. If so, then I’m afraid you can regard the problem as something you’ve voluntarily taken on. It was “part of contract”.

If the behaviour has appeared since marriage then you have very reasonable grounds to ask her to change. Many have advised on how you should go about this, starting with self-reflection - you’ve listened and taken it on, so I won’t go over that again.

At least two posts also indicated that change may be impossible, and your best efforts may be fruitless.

I’ve been waiting for more references to Proverbs, where you obviously took the phrase “quarrelsome wife”. If the problem is fundamental enough to be referenced in sacred scripture then it is valid to refer to it with those exact words, and scripture should also be the starting point for a response.

One post (@Zzyzx_Road) has specifically answered from Proverbs, and has most useful expansion on it.

Google ‘"quarrelsome wife proverbs’ has many results, and the first is Proverbs 27 “Quarrelsome Wife” (Kaylene Oder) by a Christian women who assembled all five quotes from Proverbs and discusses them.

Of these quotes, the most significant to me is: A quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping on a rainy day, restraining her is like restraining the wind or grasping oil with the hand.

Bad news, I’m afraid.

If I could describe my ex-wife as “quarrelsome” then I’d be happy to contribute my experiences, as requested, but I would describe her more as “domineering” or “willfull”, so we don’t have much of a fit.

The closest I’ve seen in real life would be my brother. His partner (not wife) constantly found fault with him, including in public, pushed him to do much of the housework and childminding while he was also working to provide (and with no recognition), and she sought out arguments and always had to win. She was astonishingly good at playing the “victim” in the relationship - I fell for it several times. The impact on their child was devastating as she both neglected the child and prevented him from giving her better care. Fortunately for the woman the child had a mild disability (probably caused by her smoking in pregnancy) which gave her an excuse for constant reference to the child’s all consuming “needs” and my brother’s failures in that regard. The child continues to suffer retarded development because of the mother’s insistence she is “disabled”. The child also models the mother’s behaviour, especially finding fault with and insulting others, including my brother, and being impossible to please.
 
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tony22279 said:
And before future posters become as hasty (and sometimes judgmental) as some of the previous ones, I do on a regular basis seek self-improvement for my own struggles and LISTEN to my wife when she complains about something I need to change.
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tony it is not enough just to listen.

and here is the most important and significant clause in the entire thread
tony22279 said:
We have both seen mental health professionals to sort things out in the past. We have at times engaged marital counseling; sometimes it’s effective.
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we cannot give you any advice or (name removed by moderator)ut. you have consulted mental health professionals in the past, as you state, and engaged in counselling. You need to do so again

It is against CAF TOS to advise or recommend or give a thesis about your situation
 
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And as such this thread will be flagged, There is a huge danger here that the words or advice given will do immense harm to your situation.
 
Trishie said:
Tony I think that was out of line. It was personal, and insulting. Defending it won’t be very convincing I think , it’s about you, not about the person you addressed it to. And it brings passive aggressive to mind.
I drew in my breath as I read it. Is it an indicator, I don’t know. But certainly wouldn’t appreciate that from anyone.
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When Trishie posts in this manner, we should all heed her words.
 
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tony22279 said:
Did you acknowledge the hateful, foul language directed at my wife?
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where, in this thread? please repost what you feel is

hateful foul language directed at your wife

Also I direct you to CAF terms of service under the FAQ tab
tony22279 said:
Posters beware, if you for any reason whatsoever in the past have seen a medical professional about anything, others cannot comment on a general topic you wish to discuss with a Christian audience.
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And when I did repost some of their quote, my post was removed. I didn’t do it…
 
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