Imperfect People Part 1: Unfair Fighting in Marriage, Depression in a Marriage, Fighting with Husband over Discipline

By Anonymous

What does unfair fighting in marriage look like, and how can you mitigate it? Depression in a marriage can stem from unfair fighting and fighting with husband over discipline.

This author shares her experience with the cycle of depression in marriage stemming from these tough arguments.

Part I: Marrying an Imperfect Person

Did you ever sit with your friends and dream about the future? Did you ever debate about where that “line” is between marriage and divorce? “Oh, I would definitely leave my husband if he…”

There’s a problem with this game. You don’t know your spouse yet.

You don’t know how you work together in a marriage. You can’t analyze every single fight and disagreement until you’re facing them head-on. As it turns out, there’s a lot of gray area in relationships.

I feel inclined to start by mentioning all of my spouse’s positive attributes. I feel very lucky to be with this man. No one is perfect.

I think after learning about his great qualities, his imperfections will surprise you.

I can brag that my husband is driven, ambitious, personable, spontaneous, fun, and good-looking. He has faith in God and strives to follow Him.

My spouse has gone above and beyond to forgive me and keep our marriage together, despite some of the ugly mistakes I made before we were married.

He is hardworking, friendly, outgoing, and enthusiastic. He is extremely trustworthy and has never done anything to make me question his loyalty.

My husband can also be mean. He can be selfish and competitive.

Unfair Fighting in Marriage

I have vague memories of our first huge fight, the first time we entered one of those gray areas that I didn’t plan for.

To be honest, I black out our fights from my memory pretty well. Or maybe we’ve just had so many of them that I can’t pick them apart. But here is what I do remember:

We were on our way to an intramural sports game. We were on a team together. We started fighting in the car.

I don’t remember what the fight was about, but I was horrified by the way he was speaking to me. He probably told me to shut up and called me a name or two.

He probably tried to make me feel stupid. That was probably the first time he had done it.

I was stunned that my husband, the man I had been dreaming of all my life, could bring himself to treat me so unkindly.

I remember getting out of the car. I didn’t want to go in with him. It was dark outside.

There were people milling around, but I didn’t care. I stood in front of him, crying to the point of screaming, throwing out a word that I don’t often use.

I felt more frustrated than I had ever felt. I saw red, and I felt out-of-control. But he wasn’t going to let me win this fight.

I remember his surprised face. He hadn’t seen me act this way before. Honestly, I didn’t even know I had it in me. The worst part? He didn’t seem upset about it at all.

My best attempts at hurting him weren’t working. They didn’t even seem to be touching him. That only made me angrier. I told him I did not want to play in that game.

Guess what? I went in. I played in the game.

He had won that argument.

Depression in a Marriage

That was just the beginning. We had those fights time and time again.

He would say whatever it took to put me in that place of feeling out-of-control frustrated. He would get over the fight within minutes, and I would fume and tell myself I hated him for hours on end.

Fortunately, we would usually talk about it before bed. Sometimes I went to bed feeling okay about it.

Oftentimes I went to bed unsatisfied with our followup conversation, feeling completely numb and miserable.

I never before had problems with depressive episodes before marriage, but I got into some really bad patterns those first few years with him. Those patterns still haunt me at times today.

The confusion and darkness were overwhelming. The episodes would last for several hours before I could move on.

I remember lying in the bathtub with the shower running, pouring on me as I gasped and sobbed, wishing I could sink into the ground and disappear.

I told myself that there’s no way he could possibly love me if he could treat me this way.

This is very difficult to share. While suicide never became a real option for me (and for that I’m grateful), I found myself thinking about my husband’s gun. I thought about it a lot.

I would try to convince myself that I wanted to die. Really, I just wanted to disappear.

I wanted to hurt my spouse the way I felt he had hurt me. I wanted to win one damn fight.

For me, self-pity is a seductive temptation. I will talk more about dealing with depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts in subsequent parts of my story.

I have a confession: in addition to all of those gray areas that have popped up in my marriage, there is one “line” that has been crossed.

During those dreams of the future and discussions of marriage versus divorce, I remember saying something along the lines of “If my spouse ever so much as raises a hand to me, I’ll leave them.”

This is what I will say for now: I would never tell someone to stay in a physically abusive relationship. Mine is not physically abusive and never has been.

Read on in Part II: Raising a Hand.

Unfair fighting in marriage can cause depression in a marriage. Read more about fighting with husband over discipline in the next section.