I rarely get correspondence from wives telling me that their husband is too sweet, too sensitive, or too concerned about their feelings. Sure, I get the occasional complaint that a husband is too involved in the wife's life, but this is rare.
More often, I hear from wives who complain that their husband is insensitive and that he says hurtful things, even if he doesn't mean to. A wife might have this type of situation: "I honestly do not think that my husband is an evil or mean person. I truly do believe that he loves me. But he can be so insensitive sometimes. He hurts my feelings several times per week. For example, this morning, I chose a yellow dress to wear to work. I was feeling pretty good about myself and so as I was walking out the door, I asked my husband how I looked. His response to me was: 'fine if you like bananas.' I think he was telling me that I looked like a giant banana because of the color of my dress. I had no time to change and so all day at work I was self-conscious about my dress, even though I got a couple of compliments on it. This is just one example, but I could give you plenty. He just seems to flippantly say things that he has no idea might hurt me. He almost always says these things in a joking tone, but I do not take them as jokes. The other day, I was helping my child with homework and I made a mistake, which my husband overheard. He told my child: 'thank goodness you did not inherit your brains from your mother.' I could not just sit there, so I told him that was a mean statement. He told me that he was just kidding and said I should lighten up. He gave me a big hug and I truly don't think he meant to hurt me, but he did. Now, I'm reluctant to help my kid when he's around. Again, I don't really think that this is intentional. He's not a mean person. But I am not sure if it's good for me to be around all of the insults. He never out and out calls me stupid or ugly, but sometimes, I feel that way because of his remarks. Otherwise, he is a good husband and father."
Addressing The Hurt Feelings Without Causing More Negativity: This is clearly bothering you very much. No one deserves to live in a situation where they feel that they are being diminished. Since you firmly believe that your husband is not intentionally trying to hurt you and you say that he's otherwise a good father and husband, then I think it makes sense to try to address this head-on so that your marriage doesn't deteriorate because of this. (I learned this the hard way and it lead a separation. More on
that here.)
A loving spouse wouldn't want to hurt you, so I suspect that your husband wouldn't have a problem with your letting him know about how this affects you, as long as you do it in a careful way. You don't want to sound accusatory or to make him feel as if he is being wrongly criticized.
Here is a conversation that is only a suggestion. You know your husband and I do not. So you probably are aware of the words or phrases that are more likely to work. But the next time he says something that is hurtful, you might say: 'honey, I know that you would never hurt me on purpose. But when you say things like that, it does hurt me. I know that I may be overly sensitive. But you are my husband. What you say carries more weight with me than the words of just about anyone else. Can you be more careful about what you say?"
He may respond that you ARE being overly sensitive and that you need to lighten up. In that case, I'd suggest offering a compromise where you tell him that you will make an effort to not be as sensitive if he makes an effort to choose his words more carefully."
Evaluating Any Part You Are Playing: And you do want to ask yourself if you are being overly sensitive. For example, you did get some good feedback about your yellow dress so, at that point, you have to ask yourself how valid your concerns were. If 3 people said the dress was pretty and only one had anything negative to say, then you want to focus on those positive comments because it is the smart thing to do and it the choice that allows you to feel positive. (Plus, some men don't know very much about fashion.) And make no mistake. We always have a choice as to how we are going to respond.
Another suggestion that I would have is to make a big deal of it any time your husband says something sweet to you. When this happens, you want to dwell on how good it makes you feel when he says or does nice things. Why? Because this gives him positive feedback and this makes him want to make you feel good. After a while, when he does something that would make you feel bad, it will just feel wrong to him.
Also keep in mind that, as a general rule, men are just not as sensitive as women. My grandfather was known to be very insensitive. When we would call him on it, he used to say: "my joking with you is a sign that I care. If I didn't care anything at all about you, then I wouldn't joke with you." Needless to say, sometimes his jokes were at my expense. And it used to hurt my feelings. But now that my grandfather is gone and I can look back on it with more objectivity, I see that he did not mean to hurt me. His jokes were his misguided way of showing affection. And I know that he loved me deeply.
I suspect that the same is true in this case. But you have a luxury that I didn't have. Your husband is still there with you. So you have the opportunity to fix this before it continues to hurt you and to deteriorate your marriage.
From past experience, I believe that it is very important to address things that bother you. Because you don't want for small problems to morph into big ones. I learned this the hard way and ended up separated. And I had to
learn new ways to communicate in order to save my marriage. There's more at
http://isavedmymarriage.com