MARRIAGE: WIFE BATTERING

The main feature of wife battering is that the husband thinks he is unable to control certain issues in the home without resorting to violence. Such a man is usually a poor employee, poor partner, earns little and supports the family very inadequately. All of these are interlinked, of course, and an improvement in any one area makes battering less likely. Such couples have no talk ‘safety valve’ – they cannot discuss their problems. This often results in the wife nagging the husband until he gets so furious that he lashes out. Because communication is so poor the problem easily escalates to violence with other members of the family. Being brought up in this kind of home virtually ensures that the children are likely to copy it within their own marriages. The answer to wife battering is to get help straight away. Things rarely get better by themselves. There are refuges for battered wives all over the country now and the local Samaritans or Citizens Advice Bureau can help you find one.

Not every inadequate man need end up battering his wife. Many do very well if their wives understand the situation. A helpful wife will boost her husband’s confidence and build him up at every opportunity, so undoing the damage his mother did. The strong can afford to be gentle whilst the weak have to be vicious to achieve their goals. A couple who have such problems often find that their whole relationship is enriched if one can modify the other’s personality in this way.

From this rather dramatic example we can draw a general principle which holds good for marriage in general: that is that a couple should do everything they can to boost each other’s ego (self-esteem) and never do anything that attacks the other’s personality. Marriages are made between personalities and if they are attacked there may be nothing left.

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