Maybe the question should be…
Should a wife ever be called the B word various times in a row? Could that be considered abusive?
Obviously no husband should call his wife that word. No one–especially not me— subtly suggested that she deserved that.
However–that her husband called her a terrilbe name is not the only thing we know about the situation. The op told us some things about what happened leading up to the argument where he called her a mean and nasty name. Her husband had taken a day off from work and they had planned a three day weekend to visit his brother. She got sick on her husband’s day off work and the family stayed home. She says she stayed in bed all day. Then she complained that the house was a mess, and wrote on this thread that “he just let the kids run wild.” (She did not further explain what she meant by “wild”)
It sounds to me like her husband gave up his day off to watch the kids while she was sick and she criticized him for how he did it. Does that mean she deserves to be called a bad name? Absolutely not. Did he deserve to be criticized for how the house looked and how he watched the kids while she was sick? No. (I will qualify that no by saying that perhaps she left out some critical details regarding what “running wild” means that would indicate her husband truly neglected of his parental duties while she was sick in bed.) As I see it, a tired husband changed his plans for his day off to watch the kids all day while his wife was sick, and then was criticized then by his sick wife for what the house looked like. They argued, and he got mad and called her a bad name. I prefer to save the word “abuse” for more serious sins, but if we’re throwing out the term “verbal abuse” we should also take a look at what was said to him too.
Asking women to take a closer look at how we speak to our husbands isn’t ***not ***a subtle way of saying women deserve mistreatment. Its a not-so-subtle way of saying husbands don’t deserve mistreatment either.
