Hostile Dependency: Is your Wife, Girlfriend or Ex a Child Masquerading in the Body of a Woman?
Does your wife or girlfriend believe it is your responsibility to take care of her emotionally, physically and financially? Worse yet, does your ex-wife or ex-girlfriend believe the same despite the fact your relationship is over? If so, you may be dealing with hostile dependency.
The Root of the Problem
Children rely on their parents for their care and safety needs. Good enough parents do their best to respond to their children’s needs while teaching them how to meet their own needs as developmentally appropriate. Even infants can learn to self-soothe by sucking their thumbs, chewing on a blanket, holding a toy and reaching for their bottle or pacifier.
Unfortunately, not all parents are “good enough.” Some parents shame their children or become angry/frustrated/impatient with them for expressing wants and needs.
When a parent punishes a child or tells them that they’re bad/selfish/demanding/inconvenient for expressing needs and feelings, the message is: It’s unacceptable to have needs and feelings and to depend upon me. Since most children actively avoid parental disapproval, these kids intuitively find indirect ways to get their needs met.
A child who has to disavow or mask their needs and feelings from a parent eventually develops an ever-growing anger and resentment. Since it’s especially unsafe to directly express anger and resentment toward their parent(s), these children often develop passive-aggressive behaviors and attachment issues.
Passive-aggression is not necessarily less aggressive simply because it’s passive. Essentially, passive-aggression is an indirect form of aggression–not necessarily a milder form of aggression (Seltzer, L.F., 2008).
Attachment issues arise from the conflicting messages and discomfort these children are made to feel about being dependent.
It should come as no surprise that adults who weren’t able to get their needs met directly, who didn’t have parents teach them how to self-soothe and who were made to feel bad, guilty or ashamed about being dependent upon their parents, bring these leftover childhood issues into their adult relationships. In more extreme cases, these issues are manifested in personality disorders and other emotional disturbances.
Healthy relationships between adults are interdependent:
Interdependence is a dynamic of being mutually and physically responsible to, and sharing a common set of principles with others. This concept differs distinctly from “dependence,” which implies that each member of a relationship cannot function or survive apart from one another. In an interdependent relationship, all participants are emotionally, economically, ecologically and/or morally self-reliant while at the same time responsible to each other.
A woman stuck in hostile dependency maps her unhappy childhood, dependency needs and anger about not having every single need met, no matter how small, onto her partner and/or her ex-partner. She is inappropriately dependent on her partner/ex while simultaneously furious about her self-imposed dependency. This kind of woman casts her intimate partners and ex-intimate partners into a parental role.
Women who have a hostile dependency upon their husbands, boyfriends or exes are, emotionally speaking, children in adult bodies. They’re stuck in a state of arrested development on a continuum of infancy to snide, bitchy, ungrateful teenager. This kind of woman-child doesn’t know how to meet her own needs, that is, if she even knows what her needs are. Many of these women are ambulatory masses of unmet, unnamed needs.
“I want, I want, I want. I need, I need, I need,” but damned if she knows what it is she wants and needs. She just know she wants and needs . . . something and your job is to figure it out and give it to her. Adult partners are expected to magically know and meet her needs and if they fail to deliver—look out!
This woman is very much the infant who uses the same distress cry for wet diaper, physical pain, “Validate meeeeeee!” and, “Pick me up, I’m bored!” Every need and want, no matter how trivial, is experienced and expressed with the same extreme urgency.
On the other end of the continuum is the woman-child who knows exactly what she wants—everything. She tells her partner or ex in excruciating detail everything she wants, needs and is “owed,” well, more like demands. She wants total financial and emotional support, blind loyalty and unconditional love—especially when her behavior is horrid and abusive. Furthermore, you must not expect her to reciprocate. Ever. This is the selfish, haughty teenager.
Kids are basically selfish beings; they’re supposed to be. The lid off the id-enfant terrible can sometimes be cute—in actual children. However, the same behaviors and attitudes in adult women aren’t at all cute. They’re obnoxious, contemptible and abusive. In her mind, it’s your job to provide her with the unconditional love mommy and daddy didn’t provide and/or the over-indulgent, permissive, no accountability, “you’re wonderful and special” parenting that created this overgrown child.
Childhood Development
During adolescence, parents help teens individuate into autonomous, responsible adults. Meaning that teens stop attributing their difficulties to parents and others and begin to assume responsibility for their own actions (Bios, 1968). The other developmental tasks of adolescence are identity/personality formation and consolidation, separating from parents, sexual maturation and sexual identity formation, and mature time perspective (Buhler, 1968; Neugarten, 1969).
Identity consolidation is “a process of investing oneself in new adult roles, responsibilities, and contexts and evaluating one’s ongoing experience in order to construct a coherent, grounded, and positive identity” (Pals, JL, 1999). Mature time perspective involves “being able to foresee the future implications of [one's] present behaviors and envisage how [one's] present behavior can serve the attainment of future goals” (Simons, Vansteenkiste, Lens and Lacante, 2004).
These are essential developmental milestones that many HCP (high-conflict) and abusive personality disordered individuals (histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, etc.) fail to achieve at the age appropriate time. If you’re dealing with a woman whose hostile dependency is part of a personality disorder or personality disorder traits, I don’t know if it’s possible to successfully navigate this developmental task in adulthood. In fact, it may be impossible.
All about the Anger
Most children experience hostile dependency primarily in adolescence. It’s part of growing up. You see it in teens who want to be treated like independent adults, but are still dependent on mom and dad for food, shelter, etc.
Teens still need their parents, but resent their parents for needing them; much like women who resent and hate their husbands/exes for their own self-imposed dependency. This mentality is obvious when a hostile dependent woman angrily asserts, “Screw you! I don’t need you!” while she has both hands out to jack her ex-husband for spousal support or her husband’s/boyfriend’s hard-earned paycheck and when she relies on her partner/ex for an ego massage to make her feel good about herself.
The telltale sign of hostile dependency is the anger it generates, in both the dependent person and the person depended upon. Most ex-husbands are incredibly angry and resentful about having to financially support their ex-wives—grown adults who either refuse to support themselves or who erroneously believe they’re entitled to a better lifestyle than they can generate on their own. This is also evident in husbands who have to play nursemaid to their wives’ every emotional need and/or are stuck shouldering the entire financial burden in their families because their wives refuse to work.
Given that these women project their unresolved mommy and daddy issues onto their partners/ex-partners/children, it makes sense that they feel entitled to ungodly amounts of lifetime spousal support/attention/time/special treatment/etc.
Unfortunately, since these women’s parents failed to teach them how to self-soothe, to be responsible for their choices, to have empathy, to experience consequences for their choices and raise them into responsible adults, we’re stuck with these perpetual greedy infants, terrible two-sters and arrogant, nasty adolescents. Worse yet, these women-children are passing their dysfunction on to the next generation.
These women are children and you simply can’t treat them like adults or try to reason with them like adults; nor can you use logic. They are children and are not capable of reasoning beyond an adolescent’s mind on a good day.
You can also forget gratitude for their “allowance,” ego massages, blind loyalty and acceptance and humoring their delusions of grandeur to keep the peace. Much like a child, this woman believes it’s daddy’s/mommy’s (i.e., her partner’s) responsibility to take care of her and make her feel good. She sincerely believes she could be a CEO, have her own successful business or be a prima ballerina/president/astronaut/cowboy if she hadn’t “sacrificed” everything for you.
When you try to point out the flaws in her reasoning, you get the same convoluted reasoning you’d get from a kid. Ultimately, it comes down to this: “You’re supposed to take care of meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” and, in many cases, thank her for the “privilege” of doing so.
The bottom line: You can’t have a reciprocal, mutual, interdependent relationship of equals with a child and this includes a child masquerading in the body of a woman. You either need to resign yourself to the thankless parental role in which she’s force fitting you, find a way to get her into long-term psychotherapy that focuses on re-parenting her to help her achieve the missed developmental milestones, emotionally detach from her and the relationship or end the relationship.
Shrink4Men Coaching and Consulting Services:
Dr Tara J. Palmatier provides confidential, fee-for-service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. Her practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Shrink4Men Services page for professional inquiries.
Sources:
Bios, P. (1968), Character formation in adolescence. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 23: 245-268.
Buhler, C. (1968), The course of human life as a psychological problem. Hum. Develop., 11:184-200.
Pals, J. L. (1999), Identity consolidation in early adulthood: Relations with ego resiliency, the context of marriage and personality change. Journal of Personality, 67 (2): 295-329.
Neugarten, B. L. (1969), Continuities and discontinuities of psychological issues in adult life. Hum. Devel., 12:121-130.
Simons, J., Vansteenkiste, M., Lens, W., & Lacante, M. (2004). Placing motivation and future time perspective theory in a temporal perspective. Educational Psychology Review, 16, 121-139.
70 Responses to “Hostile Dependency: Is your Wife, Girlfriend or Ex a Child Masquerading in the Body of a Woman?”
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Hi All
The problem in a nutshell (no pun intended) is I don’t want to break up my family. I love my Wife and at times actually feel sorry for her that she is not capable of expressing herself. I long ago gave up the notion she wouldn’t share with me. She just can’t and that must be a very lonely place to be.
I am just stuck on how I can help bring about change. I have detached over the years, but later accused of “not being present.” I even consulted with an attorney when I was very convinced there was zero hope, but relented for marraige counseling instead. The result was my Wife beat me to the punch and started seeing our former marriage counselor alone w/o even discussing it, before, during or after she went. This is her MO. No discussion, no problem. Stand in a room with your eyes shut and nobody can see her.
Now our son is going through some heavy duty emotional stuff, drugs, sex, booze and outragious behavior and verbal abuse. We did reach out for a family counselor, but my son refused to go. I wanted to go back to marraige counseling, but stopped making and cancelling appointments when she became indifferant to the idea “It’s all about you, it’s all about you!”
Any ideas? I am toying with the idea of just calling the former marraige counselor and telling her the day and the time and then following up with the same for a family counselor. At this point what do i have to lose?
tomg, you need to read some of Dr. Ts older articles. You are “looking for validation from the one that will never give it” (paraphrased from Dr. T.)
Some of the older articles will explain how the NPD mind will never never accept any culpability and as I posted before, the withholding of affection is a form or a way of abusing you and keeping you at bay. She has to keep you at arms length as you are a threat to her and letting you inside is a threat. She withholds affection as way to abuse and control you…….I can’t verbalize it like Dr. Ts articles can.
When I found this site (or Dr. ts old blog) I spent over a month consuming every article and every reply written under the articles. I was quite the eye opening experience and so many…..SO MANY things were fully explained.
Now days, I just watch my NPD and chuckle inside as I now know her playbook (thanks to Dr. T.)
Like you, I have decided to stay (see post below) as my kids need some sort of balance from the parental department. It is hard and as a man I am very very lonely. I have learned to deal with the BPD personality and how to keep from setting her off(by non threatening behavior). And by threatening, I mean, I cannot even come home and describe some sort of victory at work…..She see’s this as me “getting ahead” or “flaunting” my good fortune while she sits in mediocrity or total failure. Understand, if I land a big deal at work, the whole family benefits from that monetarily, a normal woman would be happy or proud. Not the BPD, they see it as a threat to their pecking order of the family and that they are now out of control of me. So, the sour look on her face a few months ago after I announced that I just got a $36k P.O. for job I was working…….I lost my edge for just a moment as I was happy….then I snapped back to reality and remembered who I was talking to and I immediately dropped the subject and left the room.
Sometimes I revert back to my old self with her….I am just me being me…but then I have to remember who it is I am dealing with….a BPD. If I tailor all my comments and replies with the BPD in mind….things go so much smoother in our household.
Sad, but that is the way I have to work it with her to keep the peace. I’ll be free one day…but today is not the time…..
The last thing I wanted to do was to break up my family. I spent literally years waiting before finally leaving. Now that I have left my kids 11 and 13 with the ex, I have found that my relationship with both children has drastically improved. Granted, I did have some excellent support from a Counselor in maintaining post-separation contact between parents and children. My children treat me with far more respect than they ever did before and in a funny way, I believe that I am more “psychologically present” in their minds as a father figure than I ever was before even though I only see them for a few hours each week. Before, I was abused by the “hostile one” and ignored and treated disparagingly by the kids. Now I am respected by them all. “The hostile one” now treats me with a good deal of respect and I am loved by my children. Go figure! It doesn’t make a lot of sense from a rational point of view but these people are not rational or reasonable.
So here I resist coming here for almost a year. I resist as I don’t want to face what I have to face.
The ongoing hatred of me from my wife has escalated as of late since I got laid off and then stricken with illness. Luckily we have disability to carry us for a while.
But, the fact that I don’t make enough to finance two houses is why she doesn’t kick me out. If we were to divorce at this juncture, her alimony/child support would be a mere pittance and she knows it as she has consoled with an attorney and there is a set calculated formula. Understand that I made great money until last summer where business took a turn for the worse
So, here we sit, she is too stubborn or lazy to get her own job and depends on my income for the whole household.
This article describes her very very well. She won’t do anything to help herself rather, she would just like to take pop shots at me for being such a loser and only being able to buy a house and two cars in SoCal.
I stumbled in here and the first article up….explains things that I have been seeing for years and often felt yet couldn’t articulate in such a way that Dr. T is able to do.
I tried to leave last year as Dr. T suggest (and I know is the only answer) but I have two little girls. It may have been this time last year (to the day)while in my apt. everything hit all at once and I broke down. I missed my girls so much that I cried for almost two hours uncontrollably.
I closed down my apt and moved back in with the fam after that. I know what I have to do, I just have to wait for a few more years to pass and my daughters to grow a bit older.
Jham: I feel for you. I have a friend who tried to get out a couple of times last year, but has recently seemed to resolve himself to staying, and in so doing must (I believe) put his head back in the sand and buy into her b.s. (cognitive dissonance) the whole “…everything is just fine. She’s not to blame…it was her childhood / her job / etc…it’s not her fault…I really am a stupid idiot. i should be thankful for her continuing to put up with me (and my 3x income plus all the other goodies and chores I do for her)…” sad as hell.
I will say this from my own personal experience ~ you want to wait for a few more years for your daughters to grow a bit older…and in the meanwhile, they will grow sicker and will come to believe that ‘love’ means pain, control, treating others like possessions, and abuse. Children who grow up in abusive homes (even when they are not consciously aware of the abuse) tend to choose to either be abused or become abusive.
Isn’t it time you give them an option C?
Option C is me leaving and her getting custody and me getting visitation rights……how is the better than me being here everyday to balance what the children see and absorb.
People think that the kids don’t understand, but I have non-verbal queues with all the kids…even the 8 year old….they understand a lot more than the adults give credit for. Read the post from the woman that was made to clean the house, she fully understood her Dad working on the car or doing household repairs in order to alleviate the mothers wrath on the children. Kids know what is going on and who is sane and who is “touched”
I am under no delusions that “things” will get better between My NPD and myself, but this is bed I made. I have to not think of myself in the period of life and make sure I give what I can to the children so they get a good start in life. They aren’t stupid, they know and they see me pampering the NPD and also walking on Eggshells. The also see a very strong stable man that uses logic and tactical skills to circumvent the tantrums of oldest child in the house…….my NPD wife. You have two parents, Children understand who is and who isn’t able to coup in life. The 18 and the 15 year old boys know all too well. They know how to deal with a difficult woman as they have had to grow up with her. They know when they have a real issue to deal with that they can come to me and get centered, balanced help or advice. Funny how me and my 18 year old (nearly 19) don’t have near the Father/teenager issues that I had or that are so typical in teens. I think it is due to our strong bond from me being near home his whole life.
I’ve heard this referred to as King Baby:
“…she wants—everything. She tells her partner or ex in excruciating detail everything she wants, needs and is “owed,” well, more like demands. She wants total financial and emotional support, blind loyalty and unconditional love—especially when her behavior is horrid and abusive. Furthermore, you must not expect her to reciprocate. Ever. This is the selfish, haughty teenager….”
I wonder if doing ‘inner child work’ would help these people….not that I’m necessarily interested in helping them. I did some of that myself by going back in my memory and visualized parenting / comforting myself during / after traumatic situations in which my mother rejected / emotionally mindgamed / overtly abused me.
You have to have the humility to realize there is something wrong with how you are acting and reacting to people and the world around you before getting to that place where you can be receptive to working through childhood trauma/ spoiling. Humility is a trait rarely, if ever, seen in Cluster Bs.
Doctor Tara,
… is right! A close to complete diagnosis of my ex-wife.
Denial?
The Nile? or as us French say “De Nile”
It simply is NOT another word for an African river or a large number of “self-entitled” women in the U.S.A. Funny? The women I have met for business in Canada do not seem to act this way.
-Michigan
Bonjour Michigan… Thank you for your comment. I’m from Canada (Québec, in fact) and met my American ex-girlfriend while living and working for over two years in the USA. in Canada, we barely even hear the word “entitlement” and almost never see it in people.
All you Americans, please don’t take offence to my comments which follow. Cultural differences are like the air we breathe – they’re all around us, we never pay attention to them, and we don’t even realize that they exist. But when we become immersed in another culture, we certainly see a lot of things that the “natives” cannot.
I lived in the huge New York City metropolitan area, and entitlement was absolutely rampant! All you have to do is watch the news. Most recently, much of the talk has been around the faltering US economy, mountains of debt, record unemployment and heated political arguments around cuts in social services (humorously referred to as “entitlement programs” in the USA) versus increases in income taxes.
Where I live, we have what most Americans would consider incredibly high income taxes (the top bracket is over 50% for someone single and self-employed as myself), pay an additional 13% in sales taxes on everything we buy, and gasoline costs $1.40/litre (well over US$5.00/gallon). But we have universal free medical care for everyone, regardless of age or income, free dental care for children, and a guaranteed basic pension plan that’s not much, but enough to pay for a small apartment and basic groceries when you retire.
All these social services cost money, and someone has to pay for them. Here, the taxpayers do, and the government has a reasonably well balanced budget. Canada will not be downgraded by S&P anytime soon, because our citizens generally don’t cheat on their taxes, nor does our government spend trillions of dollars on massive homeland security programs, waging wars on banana republics, and then yet another trillion on bailing out a bunch of clueless, filthy rich Wall Street morons who couldn’t run your local Quik Chek (an American convenience store chain for all you foreigners) let alone a major investment bank. No, they put one of those idiots in charge of the US Treasury. Sigh.
Hello, is anyone home? These are incredibly large sums of money, much bigger than most of us can even imagine – someone has to pay the bills! The typical American “man on the street” answer? Not me! I want it all and I want it now. Let someone else pay for everything, or borrow more money so that future generations are forced to pay for it. This, my American friends, is entitlement at its finest.
If you’re a registered voter and still not convinced that this is the majority view, will you vote for a political representative that will raise taxes and reduce the national debt? If not, you’re not accepting responsibility for your situation and you have a strong sense of entitlement. And please don’t use my ex-girlfriend’s non-sequitur escape pod whenever I caught her lies and denials: she’d so often say “Well, that’s different!”
I’m especially concerned about the deception of the American public by the mass media. Last week, Congress passed legislation to increase the debt ceiling. Each American I’ve talked to since (and even many Canadians) think that’s like increasing the borrowing limit on your credit card.
My friends, you’ve been deceived. What Congress did amounts to printing more money so that you can pay higher minimum monthly payments on your credit card – without paying down your existing debt at all – that are the natural result of increasing your card’s credit limit and charging more to it.
Again, I cannot stress enough that it’s this pervasive, universal sense of entitlement that has created the USA’s precarious economic situation. Most people don’t and cannot see this, because it’s everywhere and has been ever since they were born. Politicians and the media use “weasel words” (deceptive ways of speaking) to ensure that the general public remains ignorant of the true gravity of the situation.
I’m sure I’ve offended many readers by now, so I offer this analogy for cultural blindness. The last car I bought was a Volvo wagon, which I thought was a rather rare and unique automobile. I remember the first day driving it down the highway, and suddenly noticing how many other Volvos were on the road. I was shocked! Previously, I had only noticed Volkswagens and even that eventually faded.
So it is with entitlement. When you really, fully and deeply understand what entitlement entails, you’ll come out of denial and begin to recognize it everywhere.
If you’re a Wall Street type, I freely admit that I’ve been nasty and insulting to you and offer no apologies whatsoever. You think you’re entitled to make disgusting profits without contributing to the economy (in fact, you did serious damage), deceived investors about the risks inherent in your products, refused to accept responsibility for the outcome of your incompetence, continue to gaslight the American public with Orwellian doublespeak, and bend and break all the rules to achieve your nefarious objectives. Sure sounds like Hostile Dependency to me.
Dr. T, I apologize for ranting on such a politically-charged topic. But it is loosely related to your article, and upon thinking about it carefully, decided to put my thoughts on my hard drive. I’ve saved the file – maybe I’ll send it to the New York Times someday, but it will need a serious introduction on narcissistic and psychopathic traits – so don’t hesitate to delete this comment if you don’t think it belongs here.
My God! This describes my soon-to-be ex-wife to a T. She actually says most of the things you say in the article. She is always saying “It is your job to take care of me”.
The crazyiest thing is she is now saying the same exact things about me that she said about her ex-husband when we were dating. He was bad with money, he never gave her enough money, he was cheap. Now he is a saint, in her words a “very honerable man” and I am the devil.
The kicker is I make $72K per year and she wants $1500 a month in child support. Her ex makes $125K and he pays her $1400 for 2 kids.
When I told her there was no way that I was going to pay her $1500 a month her response was, “Well how am I supposed to live”? Ah, get a job.
She actually is thinking that she should be able to live on what her 2 ex-husbands pay her in child support and that she should not have to work because she has kids.
The saddest thing is her boys from her first marriage (15 and 17) have inherited this “I should never have to work for anything” attitude. It really is sad and I feel like such a fool for getting involved with this child-woman.
I hope the ex’s third husband has been taking notes.
The Entitlement Monster (or, How to Leech off Everyone)
Hi bpdvictim2011…
Entitlement – it’s not just a set of deteriorating American social-services programs.
My ex-girlfiend also started saying precisely the same things about me as she did about her ex-husband: I was cheap, stingy, never paid my fair share of the expenses, and even accused me of hiding money from her. I had heard it ALL before about her previous ex; it was as if she was playing back a recording she once made many years ago and used every time she needed to devalue and discard (D&D) someone. In fact, I suspect that it’s a full chapter in the HCP Handbook.
Note that this strategy has a dual purpose; it’s not only great for D&D, but it’s also highly effective as a Pity Ploy when luring in the next victim. In my case, it helped her ensure that my initial cash flow in her direction (in the form of gifts, subsidies, restaurants, and later, shared living expenses) started at an unusually high level, because her stingy husband was now adding injury to insult by burdening her with considerable legal fees related to the divorce. As I pointed out in another post, I later discovered that the “stingy husband” had completely paid for her university tuition, two years of mortgage and living expenses plus some major home renovation work. I figure $100,000 total, if not more.
Then of course, she would constantly raise the bar – more “rent” because my presence “greatly increased” her hot-water bill, more grocery money because “I had such expensive tastes” (not!), something new and creative every month. HCP Handbook, Leeching Tactics, page 631: “Inflate your living expenses by at least 100%. Never, ever provide documented evidence of your true expenses. Pay all your bills on the internet so that a real paper bill can’t inadvertently arrive and be seen. That would be disastrous, so shroud everything in secrecy and accuse everyone of violating your privacy should they dare to question anything.”
Her most creative attempt to leech more money: One Friday evening I offered to take her out to a nice restaurant for supper. I arrived home in jacket and tie at the agreed-upon time, and found her wearing a tank top and jean shorts, ready to go out. I looked at her inappropriate attire, smiled and said, “I guess we’re not going anywhere too fancy?” She got all sad and almost weepy, felt that I had insulted her, and then said “well, if you bought me some new clothing maybe I might wear it.” HCP Handbook, page 632: “Never pass up a chance to leech more money – turn everything into an opportunity!”
Second most creative attempt: I paid her enough each month to have a cleaning lady come regularly. One day, she announced that she had fired the cleaning lady “because she didn’t do an adequate job” (not!) and informed me that I would now do half the housework. OK, I replied, but I expect you to lower my monthly “rent” accordingly. “No way. You don’t pay me enough as it is.” At that point, I was already paying more than her entire monthly mortgage-and-property-tax bill. HCP Handbook, page 633: “Don’t forget that time and effort, like housework and home repairs, are just as good as money. And always remember to raise the bar regularly.”
When I lost my job and could no longer afford her “ambulatory mass of lavish monetary needs” (thanks, Dr. T!), I quickly became the stingy bastard who was obviously hiding my significant savings from her. The fact that I too owned a house (in a different city) and had paid not only her expenses but also my own – that was irrelevant, and just went in one ear and out the other.
Perhaps the most saddening thing about getting involved with an entitlement monster is that you completely lose the pleasant feelings associated with doing anything out of simple generosity, for her or for anyone else. You have no choice but to protect your money from her, and then the monster turns you into a “stingy bastard.”
On one occasion, I made my annual $700 donation to an animal shelter (they do some truly effective and remarkable work) by pre-paying their internet and telephone bill for the entire year. This elicited a visceral attack on me for “not keeping the money in the family.” Yeah, our family of one, the spoiled little woman-child. I have never felt so bad after making a charitable donation.
One of the things that my ordeal has indelibly etched on my mind is to avoid women who crap on their exes like the plague. If they can vehemently criticize someone who they claim to have loved for years, they’re going to do the same to me one day. And if their criticism includes stinginess about money, me and my wallet are standing up and heading for the door in a flash. Life as a couple should be financially advantageous to both partners, not just one.
Thank you Dr. T. for another insightful article.
These types of women are walking curses. They’re a curse when you’re with them, and they will continue to curse you for the rest of your lives. It’s really a horrible sham.
I’ve seen this entitlement/dependency deal with both my Xws as well as a sibling.
In the case of my first wife, she was serially cheating and would berate me with her justification for spending most nights out until after midnight, while I cared for our young sons. Her main justification was “I have more friends than you (re affair partners, apparently). Of course I am going to get more nights out than you.”
My sister dates a nice , successful writer.She was enraged when he would not spring for a house for them, despite the fact that she was putting nothing toward the down payment and had broken up with him multiple times, citing a lack of attraction and dissatisfaction with him (so, he is supposed to buy a house for them?).
I was also told by my first wife that , despite the fact that she was a successful attorney who had graduated with honors, that she felt that she should stop working so she could go to the health club and play tennis during the day and have leisurely lunches with other rich housewives.
Bottom line, if you meet a woman who expects you to do all the heavy lifting, financially or around the house, run.
I should send in a picture of my wife as the poster child for hostile dependency.
Shutting down. Passive aggressive crap. The excuses over not doing simple chores. The HUGE fight the first time I told her she was acting like a little kid.
The, “Oh by the way (insert chore), I forgot / didn’t get to it”", method of getting me to do stuff. Constant lateness. My inability to read her mind and anticipate her needs. ANY heavy lifting chores, repairs, car maintenance, etc.
The worst is that I am the closest target for her rage. If she is pissed off at anything or anyone I bear the brunt of it. (Daddy make me feel better!) She saw nothing wrong with it after 18 years of dating and marriage, until counseling brought it out. She apologized (briefly and w/o sincerity) and now just resorts to shutting down, crying and acting the victim.
“The worst is that I am the closest target for her rage. If she is pissed off at anything or anyone I bear the brunt of it.”
My mother does that. For instance, while I was staying with her and working at the dining room table, she made a reference about her ex-boss and said something like, “another man to fuck up my life.” My stomach just turned, and my immediate response was to internalize the comment as if it was being directed at me. It was the same energy anytime she had to fuss with the printer, or the dog, or the remote control not working right, or some other trivial thing. Types of behavior that I know she would never do in a work environment, or around other relatives. For some reason I seemed to be the repository for her anger in which she was expecting validation.
When I would bring up how that made me feel, it was MY fault for being too sensitive, and she would more, or less, shut down…or go run at the mouth to her daughter (my half sister, where the other half went I don’t know), or her own sister about something negative about me. Which would ultimately create divisiveness. It’s been a never ending pattern throughout my life, and it never really changes when I’m in close proximity to her for an extended period of time.
I fear that it gets worse with age…the older someone gets, the more set in their pathology they become. It’s really dis-heartening, especially when these are people you’re supposed to love and care for.
Dr Tara,you hit another home run on this one.You would have to see her actually purchasing old Barbie dolls and clothes at a garage sale to believe it.
Sometimes she even talks in baby talk to get what she wants.(Like the episode of King of Queens where Doug keeps on faking his injured leg to keep Carrie fussing over him)
Thank you for giving reasons to why this is happening.I am always going back to re-read the older articles…..which never get old,by the way.
Sometimes,I get a little creeped out when women put postings up here.
This site to me is a lifeline for men.
Thank you Dr Tara…again
Hi JPJ,
You’re welcome. However, I’m happy when supportive, kind women who have also been the targets of female abusers and/or whose husbands/sons/brothers/fathers post here and they are welcome. We need more women to openly state that women can be just as abusive as the most abusive men, that it’s wrong and that laws need to change so that these women are held accountable just like their male counterparts. The more people who are aware of these issues the better and that includes women.
I’m creeped out by the women who try to post here going on and on about how some man abused them thereby trying to negate the reality that many, many, many men are being abused by women. I’m disgusted by women who think the material here is “misogynist” or “woman bashing.” It’s not misogyny or bashing to criticize abusive women. It’s called accountability. I’m creeped out by women who don’t think women can be abusive because they’re women and only men can be abusive. I am grateful and relieved that there are women who come here to support and be supported. We’ve got a long way to go to raise public awareness about the plight of abused men and we need women to help do that.
As a woman, I couldn’t agree more that more women need to admit that they can be just as abusive as men can be. I think everybody should have the right to be safe from violence and have access to domestic violence services. But try telling some women that… A lot of times, they try to throw up “statistics” about domestic violence that show how women are more often victims. And maybe they really are, but how many men actually stand up to be counted? I don’t see how anyone can trust statistics involving domestic violence and relationship abuse. They simply cannot be accurate.
I will never forget the day my husband admitted to me that his ex wife had abused him. We had only been married a year and he was telling me about his time with his first wife. As he described some of the crazy stuff that went on when they were married, the realization hit him and he said, “My God, was I abused?” It really took a lot for him to say those words. Since then, he’s run into other guys in the same situation. They’re with women who prey on the fact that women are much more likely to believed than men are when it comes to claims of abuse.
I am a woman and read here (posting infrequently) because I know a man I believe is in an abusive relationship with a woman. I’ve tried saying so; I think he has a hard time believing it or possibly finds it too embarrassing so that he seems unable to admit it. About the most he can admit is that the woman is “difficult”. I do believe that women can be just as abusive. I think that though there are, no question, women who are physically abusive, even sexually abusive, that possibly the much more common form (though no less destructive than these other forms of abuse) women engage in is verbal, emotional, psychological, and financial abuse. I speak up whenever I hear women making disparaging remarks, sexist remarks, against men; I also tend to speak up about abuse against children of either gender. I’d like to see all abuse treating equally, no matter who the perpetrator, that is, that the abuser should be seen as abusive and treated accordingly. Not only do women need to admit that women can be and are abusive, but men need to be able to admit that’s what’s happening to them. I think sometimes when it doesn’t involve physical abuse people do have a tendency to minimize it, believing it isn’t really abuse.
Hi
I can list a few times (two) when my wife either physically struck me or loomed in a way that suggested she was about to or wanted to. She is by far a very quiet person and very much a forgiving and helpful person. Everyone likes her.
The problem is she witholds emotions.
I often tell people who I work with who feel put upon by a boss that if this boss were treating you different than anyone else, then your fears probably have some validity. In my case my wife is freindly, helpful, and enthusiastic around others including our children, but I often see her feelings for others stop on a dime when she is in the uncomfortible presence of me. I often feel (today for example) of what I can do to make this relationship better. Is it something I say/said? Is it my approach? Maybe I can’t make her comfortible enough to share with me?
I discuss these things with her and am treated with a resounding stare, or the ignomity of her asking me the same things I asked her + the newly acquired Shink Talk of “What does that look like to you”? I want to pull my own teeth out thinking of how I’m portrayed in and out of therapy.
I’m at this very moment feeling shame that I am not mature enough to deal with my wifes therapy (maybe it will help, but I doubt it).
I’m all over the place.
That sounds great Dr.Tara.Then it is full speed ahead and with everyone on board we can turn this ship around.I am relieved to know that there are now women out there that realize how serious this situation really is.The fact that women are actually going that extra mile is certainly encouraging.Dr Tara,you certainly are setting the biggest example for women,that is for sure.
Amazing the consistency of their behavior. One minute we can be talking about our life together, the next minute she is going through her I want, I need list, and then threatening divorce. Beating me up, literally, after I was trying to comfort her and she got out her emotions she couldn’t handle and pushed me away. I would let her go even though I love her except I have two young children who need an influence more than every few weeks and I can’t imagine my life without them in it daily.
file for custody. asap.
thanks. I’m coming to that realization
I can’t begin to tell you how helpful this article has been in helping me understand & deal with the aftermarth of my relationship break up, so a huge thank you from me.
I broke up with my ex-gf 8 weeks ago, after being together 2 years. Whilst the chemistry between us was fantastic there were just too many signs it had become a one way relationship and I realise I’d been turning a blind eye to unacceptable behaviour for far too long. It has completely and utterly shattered my world since but it’s getting easier day by day. I’m lucky that I still have my self-confidence but I was loosing sight of myself whilst she was able to do exactly as she pleased. I know in time I’ll realise I’ve had a lucky escape – esp considering thre were no kids or marriage.!