How My Husband Uses Discounting
My husband loves to tell me that I don’t understand how the world works. In this way, he’s able to dismiss and make fun of my observations and ideas. If he’s the only one who knows about the “real world” then he can discount anything I say as naive or worthless.
Whenever I have had a business idea or pursued my own business, he’s found every way to make me believe my ideas couldn’t work. He says that by being critical he is only trying to help me avoid problems. But how is, “Are you sure you’ll be able to keep up with that?” supposed to make me think constructively?
Or, “I’ll tell my friends about your web design thing, but your integrity is going to get me in trouble at work!” It’s a long convoluted story about how that could happen, but here he’s telling me that something he “admires” in me is my downfall. I guess I need to reconsider my integrity…
How to React to Discounting Types of Verbal Abuse
Other Types of Verbal Abuse
- Abuse Disguised as a Joke
- Abusive Anger
- Accusing & Blaming
- Blocking and Diverting
- Countering
- Denial
- Deprivation or Withholding
- Forgetting
- Judging and Criticizing
- Name Calling
- Ordering & Demanding
- Threatening Behavior And Words
- Trivializing
- Undermining
Based on the book The Verbally Abusive Relationship
by Patricia Evans, ISBN 1558503048, Adams Media, February 2003 and my experiences with verbal abuse.