Is this normal?

>>>>>It has nothing to do with self esteem. I am fine with myself.


And, this is the MAIN reason why posts like this pains me. I've seen it over and over and over.

Someone posts about a situation that, to outsiders, is obviously abusive and unhealthy. Many posts follow urging the original poster to seek help, get out, etc., etc., and then the original poster comes back defending the situation, abuser, or whatever.

If your self-esteem was intact, you would have told this @sshole excuse of a husband to get his act together and stop saying things to hurt you. AND, you wouldn't be on an internet forum asking complete strangers who don't know you whether or not your husband's actions are normal!!!

Argh!!! I am just kicking myself from responding in the first place!!!
 
I disagree that this situation is "obviously abusive and unhealthy" -And I disagree that the poster's self-esteem is fragile. I really think people are over-reacting and jumping to conclusions! I've said to my husband many many times over the course of our 30-year marriage, Sweetie, it's hard to hear you sometimes, you need to speak up. (He tends to mumble.) He usually says "Oh I'm sorry I don't realize I'm doing it...", which I'm sure he doesn't. He's also said to me countless time "Baby you keep on slamming the front door when you leave and remember it's hard on the lock" and I usually laugh and say "I can't believe I cannot get over this childhood habit." I really don't think either of us is an abusive spouse, and I've never "told my @sshole excuse of a husband to get his act together and stop saying things to hurt me". I also don't think either of us will be on any forum saying OH WHY DIDN'T I SEEK HELP/GET OUT while this HORRIBLE abuse was happening. This is NOT abusive behavior. And the wife has a right to be bugged by it without being told her self-esteem is unhealthy!!!

Take a chill pill, folks.
 
With all due respect you are comparing apples to oranges. If you tell your husband that he mumbles or needs to speak up (same problem with my DH :) ), it is a totally different situation than if your husband tells you that you bore him to death with sharing your ideas and that other people also talk negative about you.

Your communication with your husband sounds like a normal conversation between husband and wife. My DH doesn't tippitoe around me and vice versa. But I think this is a little different than what Mariela described.

Carola
 
You might be right, Carola. I guess maybe I'm reading the original post differently from how others are reading it. The husband didn't say she was "boring him to death" by sharing her ideas, the way I read it he just said she spoke in a monotone and it was boring listening to her because of that speech pattern, and that others had noticed this too. Mariela did admit that she speaks in a monotone sometimes. It's hard to really tell how the comment was made without being in the room at the time!
 
I agree with you Diane, that it is hard to tell how the comment was made without knowing them or being in the room at that time! It's always a problem, especially when you only hear one side of the story.
However, a lot of things that Mariela said were raising red flags for me and I refered to them above and I don't want to rehash it.

It's funny (not in a haha kind of way) though how two or more people can come to different conclusions, hearing and reading exactly the same thing. I guess it all depends on our experiences and backgrounds.

Carola
 
Mariela,

In this situation you both need to talk about it.

Janie

"If you can't say anything nice about someone, then don't say anything at all."
-My mother, Mary Cooper-
 
Yeah, he's a jerk.

"You can't win them all - but you can try." - Babe Zaharias http://www.clicksmilies.com/s0105/musik/music-smiley-004.gif[/img]
 
Since this is my thread I feel entitled to end it here. But before I should say a few words: Thank you everybody for responding and showing concern. You did answer my question. Since he is the only adult I see on a daily basis, I wanted to know what OTHERS think. My own thinking was/is that it is a mild abuse and you confirmed it. About being a highly sensitive person...I never said it to justify my husband's behavior, only to explain that people are different and while I may appear to you to be low in self esteem or have a "weak" personality, that is not how I see it. I believe that people that is genuinely concerned for others selfesteem do not criticize and demean others for having a "low selfesteem", anyway.

Edited to add: I am extremely assertive and of course I have talked about it with my husband.
 
>>>>Edited to add: When meeting with other people, I usually see a big contrast between what DH has tried to make me believe that others feel about me, and how others actually feel about me.



Diane,

This is the sentence that is very telling for me. This sentence makes me believe that he is telling her that people think negatively about her but, in fact, they don't. This is crazy. I doubt your DH tells you things to make you question and wonder how you appear to others.

You may not see an abusive/unhealthy relationship, but trust me when I tell you that some abusers are so subtle and insidious that they get away with it for years and can change the brightest, most confident person into a shadow of who they once were.
 
BTW, Mariela, from your picture, you are just absolutely beautiful on the outside and from your posts you are just beautiful on the inside. I hope you know you deserve better than that. :)

Hang in there,
Marie

ETA - oops, sorry, didn't realize you were done with the thread, obviously I didn't read all the posts before responding!

ETA #2 - I can understand why Mariela feels defensive (sorry, don't mean to speak about you in the third person, just using this post to make a general statement)... I think what happens is, a person is looking for validation of feelings about a bad situation, and then we all sucker-punch the guy (or roundhouse kick him, depending on personal preference), so of course the original poster ends up feeling defensive about the person. I mean, it's her SPOUSE. And that's not meant to absolve him of the original sin being discusssed here, and it doesn't mean that she doesn't recognize there's a problem or that she is going to slink into the woodwork; just that she loves the guy and feels compelled to rise up in his defense. Haven't you guys felt that way? Like with my ex; he drives me crazy but I still feel bad when my friends make rude comments about him, you know what I mean? And the rational part of my brain knows they do it out of love for me, I just still feel like I should defend him.
 
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