Why Does My Spouse Hate Me?

Join Dr. Joe Beam and CEO Kimberly Beam Holmes as they delve into the challenging dynamics of love turning into hate in marriages. This episode is inspired by Dr. Robert Sternberg's insightful research, exploring how feelings of hate can emerge from the very elements that once strengthened a bond: intimacy, passion, and commitment. We'll examine how these foundations of a relationship can become sources of deep resentment, especially when trust is broken.

In our journey, we share a compelling story from an AA meeting that highlights the fragile nature of trust and its impact on a marriage. We discuss the intricate process of rebuilding closeness between spouses, emphasizing the importance of patience, empathy, and daily gestures of acknowledgment. Our conversation is a beacon of hope, offering practical steps and strategies to heal and rekindle the flame of intimacy. Whether you're looking to save your marriage or gain a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between love and hate, this episode provides valuable insights. Tune in to discover how resilience and shared experiences can strengthen the bonds of a relationship.

Relationship Radio is hosted by CEO of Marriage Helper, Kimberly Beam Holmes, and founder of Marriage Helper, Dr. Joe Beam.

Regardless of your situation, what we teach will not only make your relationships better, but will also help you to become the best version of yourself along the way.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

Have you ever heard it? Somebody you care about says I hate you. Have you ever said it? Somebody that you care about that you actually in a bit of anger at some point, frustration, whatever said to them I hate you. It gets used a lot and the word hate can mean different things in different contexts. It can actually actually mean, in some contexts, a mild dislike, like I hate broccoli, and in some contexts it's extremely intense because it's considering an emotion that can rage, can almost become violent, and there's a whole lot of things in between. So what is hate, and particularly, what about it? When one spouse maybe both one spouse says it to the other, or they both say it to each other, what does that mean and how in the world can you deal with it? Well, let's talk about that. I'm Dr Joe Beamwood, mary H Helper. This is Kimberly Holmes, our CEO, and as part of your research for your PhD I know you're getting closer to the end had involved anything about hate.

Speaker 2: 1:32

No, quite opposite. Some emotions with self-esteem and goal attainment and more of well-being, the well-being aspect of a person. No, not hate.

Speaker 1: 1:42

So in reading about hate which I've done the person that I think has the best insight into it is Dr Robert Sternberg. Now, sternberg and I are the same age, but he's far more accomplished than I had so many ways. The last time I looked was in 2015. So that's been quite a while ago and he already had like just shy of 1600 scholarly articles published in scholarly journals peer-reviewed scholarly journals plus his books. The man is brilliant.

Speaker 2: 2:10

Very brilliant. However, you have also helped save well thousands of marriages, so I don't know that you can compare the accomplishments of the two of you I know.

Speaker 1: 2:19

I'm just telling you, the man is a brilliant man.

Speaker 2: 2:21

Very brilliant researcher for sure.

Speaker 1: 2:23

Absolutely, and so some of his research about love that we picked upon a long time ago years ago, we think is the best stuff on love out there, because it makes it so much easier to understand and to know what to do about love.

Speaker 1: 2:36

Well, he's also studied hate, and he says hate is not the opposite of love. Now that might sound surprising to you, because people say this, but he says no, no, no, hate is not the opposite of love. Hate actually is something parallel to love, in the sense that the same things that will lead you to want to be closer to another person and have positive emotions about them in a different context are done in a different way, would be the reasons that you don't want to be around them, and so it could be a mild form of that, where you don't feel love or hate, just say I'm just done with you, I don't even think about you anymore. But just like, if you went in one direction and increases the positive emotion, which becomes love, if you go in the other direction, it increases the negative emotion, which becomes hate. Now, we won't have time in this podcast to go through all that.

Speaker 1: 3:27

As a matter of fact, we have a toolkit about hate, do we not? We absolutely do?

Speaker 2: 3:31

Why does my spouse hate me?

Speaker 1: 3:33

And we've spent a lot of time in there talking about Sturmburt research, the eight different kinds of hate and all those kinds of things, and we can refer you to that, but right now let's just sit this way. There are various kinds of hate. Some he would call a cool hate, some he would call a hot hate and basically what it boils down to is is when you have hurt me in an area that's very important to me and that is evoking very negative emotions toward you. Now Kimberly Sturmburt would say that happens in a lot of areas, but that's where we look at would be intimacy, meaning openness, transparency, vulnerability, passion and commitment. So how could one violate the commitment that the other person expects, which would create or evoke those negative emotions?

Speaker 2: 4:23

there's. Maybe one of the best ways to think about it is thinking of commitment as a Spectrum. Not that there's I'll explain what I mean and maybe we can think of a different word. But there are the things that are smaller, that you expect your spouse to do because you have entered into a committed relationship with them and you just have expectations, not just for them to stay monogamous per se, but expectations of we are gonna share the workload of the house, the Disciplining and upbringing of the children, all of those things.

Speaker 2: 4:55

And so when Trust begins to be broken, and even the smaller things such as that, then it can begin to erode a commitment. But then of course there's, if we go to the other end of the spectrum, the much larger issues, such as we committed that we were gonna be monogamous and now we're not. Or we committed that we Whether it was spoken or unspoken we committed that we were gonna share a similar faith and now you don't. We committed we were gonna live a certain way, share a certain set of morals and behaviors, and now you have changed. And so that's where deeper infractions of the break, the, the brokenness of the commitment and the infractions of trust can come.

Speaker 1: 5:31

Okay, so let's think about commitment in this way, then that's very good. It's doing whatever it takes to keep the relationship alive. And so commitment is this is the pledge I've made, because I know this is important to you to continue our relationship, and I think your idea of a spectrum actually makes sense. And so let's say it's a wife who's kind of insecure about herself and C? C's our husband at a party talking to another woman. She might see that as a violation of commitment You're supposed to be committed to me but she might not see it as being massive Enough that it hurts her, but not enough to make her end the relationship. We're on the other end of it. If she comes back home early from work and finds her spouse in Bed with another woman, that would be like a major violation, right of the commitment, right. So it is time to trust. So commitment is what does the other person actually expect of me and If I am fulfilling that or not fulfilling that. And so if my spouse says he or she hates me and the last solo spouse workshop I did we had a guy there who said I'm, the spouse is straight, I had the affair.

Speaker 1: 6:36

He was very open, he was very transparent. He was very penitent, very sorry about what he had done, and he said but my wife now hates me. Okay, well, that's the kind of hate that comes from. I had myself committed to you, you committed to me, and then you violated that commitment, and so it can come from that Passion. That's the kind of hate that can ebb and can come and go fastest. Why is that?

Speaker 2: 7:03

Well, passion is, and the positive side of things, passion is one of the quickest to come and quickest to go, because it really is more of. I mean, passion in a good relationship is oh, I want to be with you, I want to be intimate with you, I want to do some of these, you know, more sexual things with you. That's the premise of passion, which some days you feel and some days you do. Some minutes you feel and you know, some minutes you don't. So it can ebb and flow on the positive side, quicker, and so on the flip side, when it's then, I guess, the hatred part of passion, we can understand why it would ebb and flow as well. You've really pissed me off just now, like I am really angry at you about that and if you define passion as a craving for oneness?

Speaker 2: 7:47

Yeah. So then when someone does something that you don't like and you don't want to be around them, because they're being a jerk right now, or because they said you know, you can't believe that they said that, or they didn't do what they said they were gonna do, you don't want to be around that person in the moment.

Speaker 1: 7:59

So it's no longer craving for oneness and therefore there's a lapse in passion and that's why I said some people call that a hot hate, but it can change Rapidly. I remember being in an alcoholics and I was meeting a few years ago when woman a woman who is going through the 12 steps of AA One of the steps is to go and make, try to make things right with people you know that you have.

Speaker 1: 8:22

So she goes to this woman and says I just need you to know that one night at a party I had sex with your husband. Now, first of all, I should have never happened. That was the husband's responsibility to tell, not her, of course the wife. Instantly it's furious. I mean like to the point of let's shred his clothes, let's throw his stuff out in the yard, let's, let's do all these things. And then finally the woman who was in AA, she's as she tells the story. She said, and then finally I realized, oh no, it wasn't that guy, it was another guy. No, he had never slept with that woman's husband a terrible mistake.

Speaker 1: 8:59

And so when she comes back and tells the woman I I was really drunk that night I finally realized it was this guy. Now that guy, I've never, ever been with your husband. Now, of course it took a little time for her to decide if she were gonna believe that, meaning the wife like, how did that story change? But once she did, her emotions changed dramatically. And if the woman had said, as a matter of fact, I hit on your husband that night and he said, no, honey, I'm happily married, the emotions were to become even more positive. And so those things can move the fastest.

Speaker 1: 9:29

For sure and the big one is intimacy, mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: 9:32

That's the third one. So intimacy in the triangulation of love is the, the, the friendship aspect of it. It's we are Connected, we're transparent and vulnerable and honest with each other. It's the, that deep connection that you have with the person. So then, in the does he call it the triangulation of hate. Yeah the try. Yeah. So then, in the triangulation of hate, the intimacy is where that person has now become an enemy. Not only are you not close and not transparent, but you truly feel like this person is against you.

Speaker 1: 10:07

But what they do brings negative emotions right.

Speaker 1: 10:10

So, for example, if you had a best friend and and you became very transparent with each other and your friend would talk about his or her things They've done idiotically over life Everybody has some. Maybe you have done the same. You have shared deep, intimate details about men. I messed up that time, I did over there. And if somewhere along the line, that friend, the person, whoever he or she maybe could be your spouse, but that person that you've trusted with all these intimate details about you Starts using them against you Actually had a young man I tried to mentor a few years ago and it's mentoring him. Sometimes I would talk about my weaknesses to help him talk about his, and Then suddenly at least it appeared suddenly to me one day he decided he wanted to go a different direction. And the next thing I know he's sending people emails Saying did you know that Joe once did this, joe once did that, joe? Just one said the other and, of course, instantly Trust is obliterated.

Speaker 1: 11:05

Absolutely but not only that. The sharing positive emotions increase feelings of love. I want to be closer to you. And and those evoked strong negative emotions. Another guy, as you know. I actually helped him get out of jail by giving him a job, got him out on probation and and and he stole seven thousand dollars from me before I could catch him just so people know, this was decades ago and that is not work at Maritel for decades ago.

Speaker 1: 11:32

And then he went back to prison because I had to tell a probation officer that was part of the deal. So they put him back in prison for a while and he got out and he called me and said okay, let's go do great things together. And I said no, no, I don't hate you in the sense that I've got all these strong negative emotions about you, but I don't have any positive emotions towards you either. And so what if you're trying to redevelop in a messy? You see you wouldn't start with commitment. Well, actually, in a sense you wouldn't. So let's talk about the guy that was in the solo spouse workshop recently. He could make a commitment to his wife, whether you believe it or not, whether it even matters to you or not, but I've committed, I'm never gonna be unfaithful to you again, even if you're divorcing. He could do that. So you can start with a commitment there, but the other person's not gonna believe it, right? So what you have to do is start with intimacy. So how would you rebuild intimacy to get past tape?

Speaker 2: 12:26

Yeah Well, what were the things that broke intimacy? It was the things that broke trust, the things that evoked emotions within the other person that they did not enjoy feeling. So, in order to rebuild the trust and rebuild intimacy, you begin by doing the things that will evoke motions that the person enjoys feeling. And this is actually the third step in our process of rescuing a marriage. Step one is to calm down, step two is to get clarity, but then step three is to stop your pushes and start your pulls, and, whether your spouse hates you or not, it's the place to start to bring a marriage back together and make it better than it ever was before. So that's where we start Identifying what were the things that I've done that's pushed them away. How can I then replace those with things I can do to begin to pull them back?

Speaker 1: 13:16

And a couple of things about that that are really important. Number one is extreme patience, because just because you want the other person to forgive you, let's get past it, let's move on doesn't mean it's gonna happen. Even if they say I forgive you, it doesn't mean all those emotions have changed at that point. And so we point out to people as you redevelop intimacy, which is the way to get past hate. It's gonna take a while and you have to be patient and you cannot force it. Like the man I talked about a minute ago. Decades ago stole money from me. He said well, because you're a Christian, you have to do this. Well, I am a Christian, but I don't have to do that and you're not gonna guilt me into trusting you again. That's not gonna work. Even more of a red flag, exactly. But we're negative emotions. And so if my spouse says I hate, if my spouse says to me I hate you, does that mean they'll hate me for the rest of their lives? Possibly, but not probably, Because what they hate is what you did. That evoked those negative emotions. You can't make those disappear. You can't find a time machine and go back on the other side of that and do it differently. The only thing you can do is live consistently enough understanding that no human being is 100% consistent that you live consistently enough and patiently enough, doing the things to redevelop intimacy not trying to push it on the other, not trying to force it on the other and hope that with time, they begin to see the difference.

Speaker 1: 14:45

So, kimberly, there's a guy who was very good friend of mine when I was 19 years old, which was like 300 years ago. We were very close at a lot of things together and then over the years he got out with me because we believed things differently. As a matter of fact and I actually have all right, I don't have them now people would send me recordings where he would speak to big audiences, call my name and tell them how bad I was because I believed this in that and the other. I mean, I'm here, we're buddies again.

Speaker 1: 15:19

What I'm saying is it's not going to be there forever, people, or it's probably not going to be there forever. People change and so you just need to make sure that you keep changing for the better and as that happens, and as we maturate, as we get older and wiser, we begin to see things a little bit differently. Now I'm not saying that if your spouse waits, hates you when you're 25, you're going to be 65 before it starts turning the other way. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that it absolutely will change, because if your spouse wants to hang on to the hate, they can, which will make a very miserable lifestyle for them. But we're saying can you get past it? Absolutely, but you have to work on you patiently, slowly, without pushing.

Speaker 2: 16:03

So what I hear you saying is that it's actually better that their spouse is saying that they hate them, as opposed to their spouse saying that they feel nothing towards them.

Speaker 1: 16:13

In a sense that's right. We have witnessed that so many times. The spouse who has completely become unemotional about you is hard to re evoke those positive emotions. Now it can be done we help people do it all the time but it's much more difficult Because if they're feeling emotions like hate, it's actually not as difficult to change the emotion as to change the apathy into a positive emotion.

Speaker 2: 16:38

Yeah, absolutely, and this is one of those topics that one of our core values at Maritulpa is unshakable truth, and there's definitely parts of this that some of our listeners probably didn't want to hear, such as possibly, but not probably right.

Speaker 1: 16:53

We tell the truth.

Speaker 2: 16:54

We have to tell the truth. But if you're listening to this and you're feeling frustrated, like well, ah, like this is where my marriage is stuck and I am struggling with patience and what to do moving forward. That's exactly why we have the Save my Marriage membership, where, inside of it, not only can you go through the entire why Does my Spouse Hate Me toolkit, but then you can also go in and begin understanding the things that you can begin to do to have the best opportunities and chances to turn that hate around and bring love back into your marriage. Instead, and as a listener of the podcast, you can receive 25% off your first month of the Save my Marriage membership by going to marriagehelpercom slash podcast. Again, that is marriagehelpercom slash podcast, and I don't even think you need a coupon. You just go straight in and the offer of 25% off the first month is there for you.

Speaker 1: 17:47

And does it really help people change your marriages?

Speaker 2: 17:49

Absolutely. We actually have a story.

Speaker 1: 17:53

That's what that is. If I had my glasses, I wouldn't know that.

Speaker 2: 17:57

Don't have my glasses on, we received a testimonial, a story of hope, as we like to call them. This is what the person said I'm so entirely thankful that God led me to marriagehelper. I prayed so much for help in this season and I just kept seeing marriagehelper over and over and over again in all of my searches both on Google and YouTube. So, after a massive blowout fight, two months after D-Day the day, everything kind of blew up, which resulted in me losing my voice, which means it must have been quite the blowout, I finally joined marriagehelper.

Speaker 2: 18:31

I only wish that I had joined sooner. So thank you, marriagehelper. I sincerely feel happier as a person because I have been such an emotionally driven person my entire life, and your practices have really made me step out of my comfort zone and caused me to not be so reactive to every little thing. I truly feel like I'm growing as a person. I have always had faith in God and I am so grateful your practices have taught me to realign myself with not relying on my own understanding and also not to believe my feelings.

Speaker 2: 19:02

I heard from my husband today for the first time in weeks. He's almost two weeks late in paying me an agreed bimonthly amount. There have been a lot of extenuating circumstances as to why he couldn't, but nonetheless I could have chosen to be frustrated that he took me off the access from the bank account without warning me three months ago, but I chose to accept that he did it and thanked him when he sent me the money today. I never mentioned anything about him being late about it, not even once. Nor did I belittle him or harass him for being late on his payment. I have found that acceptance really is huge. I believe my interaction today just put me one step closer to our reconciliation.

Speaker 2: 19:39

I am proud of myself today. I am thankful that God has given me so much peace in the hardest season I've ever had in my life, and I'm thankful for marriage help or for instilling such important values that I will carry the rest of my life one day closer. I love that she said. I love that she said I'm proud of myself today and in a lot of the research I have been doing, people don't take the time to sit in the good things that happen. They tend to just ruminate about the negative, and it's part of a much deeper training on habit loops and how our brain forms processes and thought processes. But the fact that she said I'm so proud of myself today, I think everyone should do that Find something every day.

Speaker 1: 20:27

Good deal, and it really feels good when somebody else pats you on the back as well, because they see it. So this is what you'd recommend right now. They join in the sense you just talked about a good first step of being involved with Mary Chelper.

Speaker 2: 20:39

Absolutely. If you would like to experience some amazing turnarounds and wins, such as this story of hope that we just read, then again I encourage you to join the Save my Marriage membership 25% off your first month as a listener by going to marriagehelpercom slash podcast Until next week. Remember, there is always hope.