Do you know what contempt sounds like in your marriage? Steve Horsmon uses real-life blog comments to illustrate it for you.
I couldn’t help but shake my head in amazement while reading dozens of heated comments on a recent viral article on the Huffington Post website – The Thing All Women Do You Don’t Know About.
The author gave her personal account of the fear and discomfort she has felt at the hands, words, and eyes of misbehaving men. She passionately described the emotional triggers that happen to many women who feel sexualized, objectified, harassed or abused. Her final request from men was to “Just Listen”.
It was the perfect topic to set off a firestorm of reactions from the readers. Any article that says, “I feel this way when you do that and you need to stop.” is going to trip a few triggers – good and bad. Kudos to the many commenters who kept an even keel and added empathy, insight, analysis and value to the discussion.
Predictably, many others jumped in to prove how damn easy it is to transform a simple discussion about feelings into an all-out war.
Just like in marriage.
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Contempt Kills
My guys love real-life examples of how they can change their words and actions to create a closer, more loving and trusting relationship. They are trying to escape negative and destructive communication patterns which are sabotaging their marriage.
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Contempt isn’t always obvious. It shows up as keenly crafted words that sound rational, but have the intent to destroy.
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Many of the comments were a beautiful display of how NOT to speak to your spouse. Seeing real-life contempt in action can be helpful.
Contempt kills relationships. It erodes trust and respect. It creates wounds that never heal.
By identifying contempt and other destructive relationship behaviors between couples, marriage researcher, John Gottman, could predict eventual divorce with about 94% accuracy.
Contempt isn’t always obvious. It shows up as keenly crafted words that sound rational, but have the intent to destroy. Sometimes it easier to spot when blatant personal attacks and name calling come into play.
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What Contempt Sounds Like
Here’s a smattering of comments laced with contempt. It doesn’t matter if the comment came from a man or a woman. Contempt is not gender specific.
You’ve learned nothing at all except to hate women – that IS what you’re doing by refusing to see one of the most important issues women have.
I just don’t see it happening. Not sure who you’re hanging out with, but I don’t see it.
Men do not want to look at themselves, or change anything about themselves.
Maybe we should allow only women to carry firearms. Until men learn to respect their sisters.
I have no obligation to acknowledge or understand men’s “true fears and insecurities”.
When will you get it??
Poor men have it so bad. Newsflash…no, you don’t.
You clearly didn’t read the whole article. Otherwise you would not have made it about you.
The problem is for most of the male species, even if you tell them, they tend to belittle it.
You just make sh*t up. So, please, just keep your religion to yourself.
Whine, whine. Men find me attractive and that makes me uncomfortable!
You are so ignorant about the world that you could use a little education on other countries.
So, women smile and de-escalate when entitled men are obscenely rude and threatening but treat good men as losers to be used as whipping boys for the creeps. Pardon me while I don’t cry. Or have we been divided and conquered?
Of course the one thing she wants is something men are horrible at….listening. Someone should have warned us a boys we were all going to grow up to be the boogyman.
What an eloquent, well put together, WHINE about being a girl!
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Blood Pressure Rising?
Did reading that spike your BP at little? How about a little queasy knot in your gut? Twinge of anger?
Exactly.
That’s what contempt is designed to do. That’s how it sounds and feels. It destroys trust and respect.
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If you want to lower the pressure in your marriage and increase feelings of acceptance, approval and attraction, try listening to what you’re about to say…before you say it.
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I believe healthy marital debates and disagreements are a good thing. There should always be room for another point of view without fear of being attacked. But if we want to disagree without the fear of being attacked, we must learn how to do it without destroying the foundation of trust and respect.
If you want to lower the pressure in your marriage and increase feelings of acceptance, approval and attraction, try listening to what you’re about to say…before you say it.
Think about your intentions. Decide how you want your partner to feel when you’re done saying it.
If you smell contempt in your words, take a breather. You can do better if you want to.
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I wrote a special report for men in a struggling marriage. Download your free copy of “The Hard to Swallow Truth About Saving Your Marriage” by clicking HERE.
Photo kdtamre.wix.photography/Flickr
Hi, i like to think there’s a fundamental difference in anonymous online conversation vs. face-to-face with someone you know. But for the sake of argument, let’s say there isn’t. Then how are we supposed to respond to it? In my experience, we (men) are pretty much in a quadruple-bind in situations like this. Meaning we’ll get attacked for saying pretty much anything. – If we don’t say anything, we’ll get told to check our privilege. – If we try to come up with some kind of solution to alleviate the situation, we’ll get accused of “mansplaining”. – The next time,… Read more »
perfectly said
FlyingKal – Maybe the solution is that we all (men and women) ask each other what we’d like the other to do in certain situations and simply *listen* to each other. I think that’s a good start at least. Asking each other questions and actually listening to what each other has to say. But how do we get each other to listen to each other? That alone seems to be a mountain by itself.
@ Erin
There is an old saying. If you don’t want to hear the answer, don’t ask the question. Sometimes people just need to develop thicker skins. You can’t expect the world to be one gigantic safe space, but that may very well b why our safe spaces are so special to us.
Hi Erin,
You are absolutely right. We should do a better job and *listen* to each other.
But I also think we should do a better job and listen to *each other*.
There is, in my opinion, a vast majority of articles on this site telling men to shut up and do better, where the author of the article simply ignores the individual perspective of the man reading the article.
Hey FK, I think the foundation of personal strength is being able to ignore what we “get” from women when they disapprove of us. You spoke of how we get attacked, get told, get accused, get derided, get filed…etc. Who cares what they want to give you? When we are being the man WE want to be there is no longer the slightest concern for what we get from women – good or bad. They do not define us nor set the standards for how we think, speak or act. That is our job and only our job. We can… Read more »
Hi Steve, ”Who cares what they want to give you? … and… We can choose to respond in accordance with our own values .” Yes. My point was just that. We should really care less, if at all, what they want to give. Because they really don’t. I have a quote from a movie running around in my head that goes something like “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate, some people you just can’t reach”. (also sampled in the Guns’n’Roses song “Civil War”…) My point is that in these cases we should just ACT in accordance with our… Read more »
“Because in trying to react or respond to people who don’t take your opinion or experience into consideration in the first place, you do nothing but set yourself up for failure and an endless stream of hostility and unfounded critic..” Experienced this more then once here with the authors.
James, I love you, man. I didn’t need help in making my point, but I appreciate you taking the time.
Hmmm..was my comment right there contemptuous? Maybe. While I totally respect you and your journey, my gut doesn’t feel approval for your tactics.
HuffPo articles, like Steve Horsmon, do nothing but bash men. HuffPo and the Goodmenproject/Steve Horsmon have the sole purpose of holding up women and bringing men down. Men have to stand up for themselves and call out misandry.
I couldn’t agree with you more.
C’mon, when you saw the name attached to the article, you had to know where it was going to go!