If you’re thinking, “My husband is paranoid and angry,” this interview will help you sort out what’s really going on. It’s likely that you’re experiencing emotional abuse. To find out, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

Transcript: My Husband Is Paranoid And Angry

Anne: I have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’re gonna call her Louise. She’s here to share her story. So many women share a similar story. They talk about how their husbands are paranoid and angry.

One of the reasons women think their husband is paranoid is because they don’t realize he’s lying. So when he says things like, you’re trying to control me, you don’t respect me, nobody respects me. Women take it at face value, they don’t realize he is lying. And so he sounds paranoid. And maybe he is, or maybe it’s just manipulation.

Louise, Welcome. let’s start with your story.

Louise: Thank you, we married at 19, and we knew each other all our life. I noticed he was mean to his sister, and I talked him out of that. So I thought he’d learned his lesson. I mean, the stories are all the same, but talking at me in the evenings in bed. And sometimes in the day for hours on end. Always disagreeing until I cried, and it took me years to figure that out.

We were raised in that patriarchy setting. Where women just didn’t have a say, right? In the Mennonite church, and then we went into the Bill Gothard stuff. And I wanted to be the perfect wife and mother. And, and the way to do that was to be totally submissive and obedient. So then he was always saying, “But you’re not obeying me.” And when I did, he would, in front of the children, say, but I told you different.

Anne: Wow, fundamentalism and patriarchy fuel abuse. And so he would move the goalposts?

Louise: Basically, that crazy making, right?

Early Marriage & Patriarchal Challenges

Louise: We were married in 1972, and in those days, there was no information, there was no internet. We had seven biological children and three from an orphanage in Haiti. That was a difficult time. I went to the library one day, and there a little book caught my attention, called Men Who Hate Women. That was the beginning of my education.

Anne: Before you found the book, what did you think was going on? Can you talk about your feelings at that time?

Louise: I felt like I was never good enough. Why is he always paranoid and angry? And I thought if I was good enough, maybe something would work out. Or if we could get counseling, you know, the old story.

Anne: You didn’t just think that, by the way. He was actually telling you that. He said to you, the problem is you. If you would cook better, if you would do this better, if you would serve me more, then it would solve our problems. Which kept you in this hamster wheel. Your husband manipulated you to think that. He wanted you to think that.

Louise: And when he sensed that I thought that, then of course he used that, right? And pastors were no help, they said the same thing. And the teaching we had from Bill Gothard was that, as long as everybody was obedient to whoever was above them. That umbrella scheme, then everything would work out, right? A person is attracted to the promises that if you do this, everything will come out right.

Anne: Exactly. This is one of the signs of spiritual abuse.

Manipulation & Counseling Struggles

Louise: I opened up this book in the library, and found a list. If your husband does six of these 20 things, then he is abusing you. And I got to number 11 or 12, and I slammed it shut. Because you don’t want to hear that, then what do you do? That’s the end of your life. And I snuck it home and read it, but there were no answers in it either. They didn’t have any answers, just explanations.

And yeah, you’re supposed to be strong. But when you’re raised to think you’re not strong, and that you don’t have a say, then you can’t be strong. And then the next thing was my sister gave me the Boundaries Teachings. And that was a shock, that I was actually allowed to say no to anybody in this world. So I listened to that over and over. And very slowly, started to do that.

And finally, one day, I prayed, and I read 1 Peter 3 and 4, and I read it several times. I thought, Okay, God, what do you want me to learn from this? And a light went on. This is not a formula, but this is what I feel I was told. And so I went to him, and I said, I think God told me you can have all the sex you want. And he goes, oh, and I said, but you have to choose.

There are two types of relationship. There’s a master slave, and there’s Christ’s church, and you have to choose which one. If it’s a master slave, you command me to do, and I’ll just let you.

My Husband Is Paranoid And Angry: Living With The Consequences

Louise: And if it’s Christ’s church, you have to win me back, because you have lost my affection. Both options require humbling yourself, right? That’s not gonna happen. And first he yelled at me and said, “You’re my wife, you’re supposed to obey me. I command you to feel affection for me right now.”

We slept in the same bed for three more years and never had it again. Because he couldn’t admit he wanted a slave, and he couldn’t humble himself to be Christ like. On the other hand, this gave him a lot of fuel with counselors. She hasn’t let me touch her in three years, right?

I know he masturbated about four times a day. He did admit it , and then I figured out why I was finding him sleeping in the hay all the time, because he tired himself out with it.

Anne: Wow.

Louise: If he had magazines, I have no idea, because I didn’t think of it. I mean, we were married 25 years. And I only found some of this out right at the end. It didn’t cross my Mennonite mind, you know. So that was all that was on his mind. If I ever smiled at him, he would come rushing over and say, “You want it? You smiled at me.” That’s all that was on his mind. He was in Fantasyland. And if I tried to talk to him, I interrupted the fantasy, and he would be angry.

He was paranoid and angry all the time. When I blew up once in a while, he accused me of being too angry and having to protect the children from me.

Seeking Help & Facing More Abuse

Louise: He would talk at me for hours and hours, just in circles, the crazy making thing. And I cried out to God, I said, God, what should I do? I actually heard the words shut up, in a nice way. And I said, what? It was like this never goes anywhere. Stop engaging in these conversations. So I did. And then he would tell counselors, she won’t talk to me, and if only she would communicate with me, we would be fine.

And they would agree with him. Then I started writing things down, and when he caught me, he says, “You shouldn’t keep a record of wrongs, that was evil.” He was so paranoid. And we flew all the way to Minneapolis to this well known, good counselor. And I showed him my notes, he read them that evening, and the next day he said, “If this is true, we have a big problem.”

Then he sent me out, he took my husband in, an hour later he brought me in, and he says, Your husband reassured me that you made all this up.

Anne: What?

Louise: Yeah, it was a Christian counselor. He and his buddy had written some books. I forget what they were called, and I don’t remember his name either.

Anne: Wow, wow.

Louise: Another time, my sister took me to her counselor in Vancouver. I told him one or two sentences of what was going on. And then he perfectly got it, and he said there’s only one thing you can do, and that’s an intervention. Get his friends together to intervene, and tell him he’s got to stop this behavior. Or else they’re going to help you get away.

Psych Ward & Separation

Louise: So I called my friends and they agreed to do that. And then they picked me up from my sister. And when I got to their place, they had called him to come get me, because I was all mixed up in the head.

Anne: Oh, so they turned on you.

Louise: So finally toward the end, we went to Elijah House in Washington. It was Christian counseling, they do prayer counseling. Throughout the counseling, they asked God, what’s going on here? And they figured it out, they said it was abuse. But he said it didn’t work. He said to me, don’t you know you’re always wrong?

And when I told him I wasn’t going to talk all night. I said, if you can make me cry in five minutes, then you’ll suddenly see my point. And if it takes five hours, and he says, “Oh don’t you know that if I can make you sick or cry that makes a man out of me?

Anne: Wow.

Louise: It was shortly after that when I checked myself into the psych ward, because I just felt like I couldn’t take it anymore. And there was a counselor there, a psychologist, who talked to both of us and said, See, you just have to communicate with him. But the doctor in charge came to me on the third day and said, “Listen, the nurses