Fact: Studies have found that more married women complain of serious depression than single women do. (Studies have also found that married people, including men in the statistics, complain less of serious depression, and that single women who have serious depression or major mental illness are much more likely to remain single...nevertheless.)
Whether or not a person has a disease with serious depression as a symptom, some things are just emotionally depressing to see.
Actually celibacy is good for women's health. You've not heard about this; you've heard about studies that show that marriage is good for men's health and, for women who were married when they had a heart attack, staying married to the same man may be healthier than being divorced. However, all statistics for women's health agree that women avoid a lot of diseases just by eliminating the possibilities of pregnancy and domestic violence. Marriage boosts men's health at women's expense. (Though either wanton promiscuity, or the messes people describe as "committed monogamous relationships" today, are admittedly even riskier than marriage; obviously those options expose women to a lower grade of men.)
Anyway, one of those old nostalgic songs I heard over the weekend did a good job of illustrating why, even in the absence of problem pregnancies and domestic violence, many women seem to find married life depressing. Nobody could possibly feel good about living with someone who says this kind of things, but after marriage, if a man turns into someone who says this kind of things, neither divorce nor murder promises much in the way of emotional improvement.
(The song also does a great job of illustrating why editors pre-screen out novels by male authors who aren't already rich and famous. Seriously, one reason why I like John Scalzi and Piers Anthony is that either one will happily promote novels by men that are funny, speculative, and not either pornographic or elaborate attempts to self-excuse for failure in personal relationships. I also like Raconteur Press's efforts to expand the scope to include adventure stories that aren't necessarily funny or speculative...but still, we've all heard more than enough from men who tell third parties anything about sex.)
Women need to take responsibility for our own well-being so, for unhappily married women, I offer this guide to decoding what men mean when they say things like...
* "I know I had a drink or two..."
Translates to: "I'm either a genetic alcoholic or a disgusting drunk. Either way, I'm not fit to be the father of anyone's children. I stink, and I'm about to get emotional and possibly violent, and I may also become incontinent, and I disgust you. It's all right to be disgusted with me. However, it's not your fault that you're stuck with me--it's my fault that I've become disgusting."
* "It's high time you knew the truth about the way you make me feel..."
Translates to: "I am emotional, not rational, about my emotional problems, which probably go back long before I met you. Specifically, they go back to my overinflated, brittle self-esteem. I can't deal with any tiny hint of awareness of how disgusting and repulsive I am. The world will be a better place when I'm gone, and I'm too much of a wimp to improve myself, but I feel very, very bad about my negative value to humankind."
* "You lie, you curse, and you provoke, and then you treat it as a joke..."
Translates to: "You've really learned to match the kind of verbal abuse that you've been getting from me. You're a good learner. Maybe I should be paying for you to finish an advanced degree so you can qualify for a job that will replace whatever financial contribution I may have been making. Lying, cursing, and provoking are a classic male behavior pattern but look at me, projecting them onto you as if you learned them anywhere but from me!"
* "You go too far...How could we hope to make amends?"
Translates to: "We can't. If there are children, let's try to be celibate roommates until they're grown and on their own. If not, I should sign over my share of our property to you and get out of your life. It's too late to offer anyone else a real marriage but we can at least stop talking to each other before blood is shed."
* "You look a sight...your stocking seams not even straight."
Translates to: "I'm staring at you because I already know I look a sight. I don't look into the mirror because the sight of me might break it!"
* "I gaze at you in sheer despair and see your mother standing there."
Translates to: "Most people's mothers are not professional world-class Beauties. Even so, you could do worse than look like your mother. I'm trying to say you look 'old,' which, if true, reflects on the effect continual exposure to my company would have on anybody. In any case, it would do me good if, when I said that, you immediately replied, 'Really? That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all year!'"
I'm not sure I even believe this one, but it's on Google. But even if that's your mother...when she relaxes that ugly-photo-contest-winner face and washes the Halloween dye out of her hair, she looks better than a male verbal abuser ever will.
* "You don't mind putting me to shame."
Translates to: "I'm ashamed of myself so it's dead easy to put me to shame. Even when you say good things to or about me, I hear them as reminders of how many other things I'll never hear anyone say about me. Probably we're not even talking about turning 'He was elected president of the High School Band Boosters Club' into '...but he'll never be elected president of the United States,' either. Probably we're talking about my turning 'Thank you for taking out the garbage' into '...while I do all the other chores including scrubbing the stains you leave off the bathroom floor'."
* "You contradict each word I say."
Translates to: "My irrational emotions are distorting my awareness that I'm wrong about a lot of the things I say. I could just go and look things up, or accept correction, when I start saying things like 'It happened six years ago...no, wait, I remember that (whatever) was on the news that day just before it happened, so it would have been in 2024, which was only...', but I'd rather blame you for contradicting me even if all you did was smile. I do not really want to be married to someone who'd believe that a story about the allied soldiers, Sammy, Tommy, and Ivan, is a true anecdote that happened to me. I only feel that way when my burgeoning cardiovascular disease predisposes me to angry emotional moods."
* "You're cruel beyond control."
Translates to: "I really am a jerk. I know it. I can't even make the minimal effort to stop all these insults spewing out of a yap-hole I ought to put duct tape over...and I feel really emotional and really bad about being so ineffectual and incompetent. I'm in so much emotional pain about the great yawning abyss of difference between what I am and what I know I ought to be, that it feels to me as if anyone who spends any time with me, whatever they do or say or don't do and say, is causing me this pain. But if I made the effort to tell the real truth about what I feel, it would be that allowing myself to be such a jerk is a way I hurt myself. I am cruel beyond control. To myself, even before everyone else."
* "You know, you'd lose a little weight if you would watch all that you ate."
Translates to: "We all know that you'd lose weight even faster, and in the right places, if you took more exercise. And if you did stick to a diet and exercise routine that worked for you, you could be sure I'd be doing all that I could to sabotage it, because I like to distract myself from realizing how old and ugly I've become by fat-shaming you. Even if the amount of fat we are talking about is that you've gone from 95 to 97 pounds."
* "A little style, a little grace..."
Translates to: "When you've been dead three days you'll have more of those qualities than I have. Even if you are a lifelong klutz (which is actually a mild form of cerebral palsy, and in no way your fault) and have a kind of face, figure, and hair that was admired in a different time and place but doesn't fit into current fashion, I am a jerk, which is much much worse."
* "And try to show a smiling face..."
Translates to: "I should try to give you a reason to smile again. I should put all my worldly goods in your name and die. Pass me another cheeseburger! I'm working on that! Remember, every time I get drunk and emotional like this, I'm a little closer to that goal! There won't be many more weekends of cheeseburgers and beer on the couch!"
* "Try, try and be the girl I knew!"
Translates to: "If only time could be turned back to the years when you were at least physically attracted to the way I looked, or even at least socio-emotionally attracted to the car and the pocket money my parents gave me, or if it was even the way you convinced me that you were more appealing than that junior horrorcow who had kicked your dog and never paid back the money she owed you...oh the days, oh the days, oh the golden days of youth when nobody knew how I was going to turn out! Can you possibly remember when anyone thought I might grow up to be a Real Man?"
* "Come close to me--let yourself go!"
Translates to: "You've heard all these insults, one after another, spewed at you in a male voice, and you're ever going to feel any attraction to a man again? Well, that'll be the day! If that day ever comes, I certainly can't hope to be the lucky man!"
You only ever get one chance to be a virgin bride but, if you've made a mistake and kissed a snake, at least you can learn how to interpret what he says, ignore him, and make something out of the other aspects of your life.
There is a slightly more encouraging possibility. If you were married for a few years before this nastiness started, and he was a delight to live with for those years, there is a chance that it really is just a symptom of cardiovascular disease. For some men angry emotions become a real physical addiction. They may try to direct their rage toward targets outside the family, at first. If you keep a diary and notice that he's yelling at phone sales pests, slamming doors, shouting "Call the manager!" at clueless cashiers, threatening violence on the street, and saying ugly things to you, at predictable intervals every few weeks, he has an anger addiction. As with other addictions, he'll crave more of the drug--in this case, adrenalin--over time and will show more damage from more indulgence. Some men can learn to control this and other symptoms of cardiovascular disease. If he's willing to recognize his anger as a disease before he starts hitting people, he may be worth keeping.
Meanwhile, if you're single...if a man with whom you're on speaking terms ever says things like this to you, or any woman, dump him now, before it's too late!
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