R ecently, two people wrote me. How do I ever move on? In this piece, I share not what I wrote to them privately in response to their emails, but rather, my thoughts on emotional damage, relationships, and our American culture. Emotional destruction by a spouse: there are few things more difficult to heal from. In the case of divorce or the severing of a long-term, intimate partnership, it can feel this way for a few years afterward β especially in the case of physical or emotional abuse.
Husbands and wives are extensions of cultural value systems; we are all products of one culture or another. Husbands in patriarchal systems often have more leverage for exerting a destructive force in the lives of a wife they want to control.
Aside from their physical strength and the aggressive influence of testosterone, they also often are the ones in a marriage with more financial clout, status, and authority. If a husband from such a culture wants to wreak destruction, havoc and abuse, they are more in a position to do so than wives who may still be limited to hearth, home, and child-rearing rather than out in the world earning money. Damage and destruction take many forms within a marriage. There is yelling and verbal abuse, physical abuse, or threatening the family pet.
Gaslighting , or a constant need to be right, addiction, financial recklessness, lying, manipulation, and chronic anger are also destructive. Do you question if your marriage is unhealthy? This is not the case. Men are not the only gender who can destroy emotional well-being, just as women are not the only victims of emotional toxicity, the only single parents, or the only gender to survive abuse.
Women are survivors of this kind of damage, and yes, emotional abuse and destruction. There is no doubt about that. But so are men, and as a culture, Americans have not successfully socialized men to understand or even talk about their feelings. This website is for women, but if we women are to welcome the wholeness and healing that we say we seek, then we must recognize that we also damage emotional well-being to the point of destruction. And we need to improve how well we listen and take responsibility for our own hurtful behaviors.
