Dear Jil, I’ll advice you quit nagging your husband. You’re going to turn him completely off you. Men can’t handle nagging. It’s emotionally and psychologically debilitating to them, and very disturbing. I’ve told you, you need to understand the male psyche. It’s a knowledge investment you ought to make. You’re married to one. Nagging is a grave irritability to men. It’s like the constant dripping of water from the faucet on a tin roof. Note that Solomon likens a quarrelsome woman to same constant dripping of water. And so your husband sees you as troublesome and quarrelsome, just because you nag!
And to a man, a quarrelsome woman is the vision of a street tyrant… Always getting into altercations with neighbours. Her mouth agape with vituperation, she has the thermostatic constancy of boiling blood. She constantly gets into scrapes, and there’s always an issue, there’s always someone to report. Think of a woman who deliberately parks her car in the parking spot of her neighbour while hers is empty. That’s a man’s vision of a nagging and quarrelsome woman. It’s that of a provocative hypertensive individual. I’m just painting for you how a nagging woman is visualized on the screen of a man’s soul. The man can’t take it. And he’ll take to the attic or the equivalence in deference to Solomon’s advice. By the time your husband is running from you, you can imagine what he thinks of you. You don’t want that.
The soul of a man lacks the capacity for the antonym of peace. Men want peace in marriage. He wants to come home at the end of the day, and there’s no packaged problem in red ribbons waiting for him. He wants to come home to love, peace and harmony; not nagging, accusation and pushiness. Now I know there are men who nag too, and that’s equally bad. It’s no justification for us not to address your tendency. Marriage shouldn’t be class warfare. It’s not men versus women. It’s a man and a woman.
What is nagging? It is the insistence on a matter through repetitive reminders and commands. Nagging is the belief you can force someone to do something through vocal pulling of the ears. Nagging is the terrible use of an imperative through repetitive vexation of the spirit. And it’s oppressive. Nagging is cessation of peace- until someone does what you want! It is henpecking into irritable submission. Naggers often seek to exercise powers they don’t have, in a stubborn and insistent manner. And it’s not enough for the nagger that the instruction is carried out. That won’t satisfy a nagger. A nagger insists that the particulars of the instruction be carried out in exacting detail and dictated sequence. At the end of the day, nagging is the exercise of dominion through threats of lack of peace.
When you nag, your husband will be afraid of even picking up the phone to answer a call from you. So debilitating can the fear of nagging be that a man can slip into depression when he sees no way out. The man will be in constant fear of the grating of his soul through the agency of his wife’s tongue. Nagging is one piece of dangerous technology. It’s phonic war, a surround sound of accusation. And when a nagging woman can’t have her way, she’ll go into a mood, hoping for the worst to happen as vindication. If you’re not careful nagging can turn into hatred from a feeling of being ignored.
The funny thing about naggers is that they often hate instruction. But they love to give instruction.
If you want your husband to love and want you, quit the nagging. It’s unnecessary. If you want your husband to seek your opinion on things, quit the nagging. If you don’t want constant shut down from your husband, even before strangers, quit the nagging. You’ll make him disgrace you in front of third parties because you’ve so wound up his spirit. He’ll be so irritable. The alternative is for him to allow you to berate him into cowardly and fearful submission. Your real worth is highly devalued when you take on the priestly robes of a nagging minister.
And like I tried to explain to you in the past, men and women process information uniquely. What you call constant reminder can actually come across as you giving him instruction, and he’ll resent it. By nagging you’re telling the man you know better than him as a matter of course. Even you will resent that. And he’ll resist you like one resisting the devil. What you want from your husband can be achieved by gentler and loving means. Objectives can be attained with wisdom without nagging.
Once you get a man locked up in resistance mode, nothing you say or do will matter. He’ll tense every time you want to say something. His mind will race ahead trying to forestall your perceived intention. He’ll shut you down before you even start. As it turns out it may just be an innocuous thing you want to raise. He’ll feel he HAS to shut you down to preserve his soul… that you’ll destroy him otherwise. It’s that serious for men. No one does well under constant accusation, which is what nagging is, really! It’s accusatory instruction. It’s a terrible way to seek to assume control of a relationship. It’s full of presumptuousness.
All that coming home late you spoke about… It may just be avoidance- fear of exposure to nagging. You’re like a scratched vinyl record playing music from the 50s on a gramophone. It’s pitchy grating of the nerves. Nagging produces a mind-numbing quality that makes a man want to say, “Not again!” while shaking his head.
If I were you, I’ll walk up to him tonight and just apologise. Tell him you know you have this terrible quality and you’re trying to change. That you only want the best for him and the family. Ask for forgiveness. And then work things out from there. As it is, your marriage is at an impasse. It’s sitting at the junction of unhappiness. You’re being ignored and your husband is angry. And the longer this takes, the more unhappiness is incubated. You can work this out. Work it out.
Your mentor, LA
© Leke Alder | talk2me@lekealder.com