3 Examples Of Misogyny Your Husband May Be Doing Right Now

Most women would probably not describe their husband as misogynistic. But some examples of misogyny are so subtle, you may be surprised to realize your husband is doing them.

3 EXAMPLES OF MISOGYNY

1. HE NEEDS A LIST FOR EVERY HOUSEHOLD CHORE

Your husband might say he is happy to help around the house, but only if you tell him exactly what to do. He might expect you to write detailed lists, remind him to finish chores, or walk him through basic childcare tasks. By waiting for your directions before lifting a finger, or leaving things unfinished, he forces you to carry the entire mental load of running your home and maintaining your relationship.

When your husband doesn’t help with the housework it shifts those responsibilities completely onto your shoulders, because of misogyny, leaving you feeling more like his personal assistant or his mother than his equal partner.

2. HE CHOOSES INAPPROPRIATE MATERIAL OVER TRUE INTIMACY

Many women might not even know this is happening. He might hide his misogyny. What a woman might notice is that her husband doesn’t seem truly interested in her. He might ignore her by spending long hours in his office or on hobbies, until he needs something from her. He may give excuses like, “I have a ton of work to do. You go to bed. I’ll come when I’m done” or “I’m stressed and I need to go cool off,” while he secretly uses that time to pursue fantasy over his real-life marriage.

This behavior undermines the emotional and physical intimacy that is foundational to a healthy marriage, leaving you feeling isolated, unwanted, and unloved.

3. HE APPLIES DIFFERENT STANDARDS TO YOU THAN TO HIMSELF BECAUSE OF MISOGYNY

Misogyny often shows up when your husband holds you to different standards than he does for himself. For example: he might criticize you for buying clothes or something for your home, while he spends freely on his personal hobbies, or he expects you to keep a tidy house while leaving his belongings scattered in every room.

This double standard often extends to shared finances. He may hide money, refuse access to bank statements, or pat you on the head with phrases like, “I’ll take care of the finances, you don’t need to worry about it.”

This behavior strips you of your voice and agency, leaving you in the vulnerable position of not having access to betrayal trauma resources you need to live in emotional safety.

To find out if your husband is using any one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse, take my free emotional abuse test.

For strategies to deal with this type of abuse and establish peace in your home, enroll in The BTR.ORG Living Free Workshop.

Key takeaways from the interview:

• Recognizing Patterns of Misogyny in Relationships
• How Misogyny Interferes with Truth and Healing in Therapy
• When Your Husband Uses the Truth to Lie
• The Connection Between Misogyny and Inappropriate Media

TRANSCRIPT: FINDING SUPPORT AND NAMING THE REALITY OF EXAMPLES OF MISOGYNY

Anne: Welcome Virginia.

Virginia: Thank You for everything you do. I would be lost without BTR. You have seriously brought me back to life.

Anne: Oh, I’m so glad to hear that. How did you find out about BTR and betrayal trauma in marriage?

Virginia: It was the oddest thing. Something came up on YouTube that showed BTR.ORG. I tell you fate, whatever you wanna call it, I checked it out and that’s how I found BTR.

When I started attending the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions. The first session, I couldn’t believe in a sense of relief that, oh, I’m not the only person living in this world. And not that it’s relieving to know that other women suffer in this manner.

You feel like you’re on your own planet. And you don’t know what to do. Hearing the other women’s stories in what they’ve been through is just heartbreaking. But the ability to share and validate each other is amazing. And the coaches listen so well. The feedback they give is invaluable. They’re on top of it and they remember everything. I don’t know how they do it. I’m not on very often. I know other people are on much more often than I am. But I’m telling you, this is a lifesaver. It really is. I don’t know what else to say. I can’t say enough about it.

Anne: I am so grateful. It’s helpful. I think our coaches are incredible. Our whole team is incredible. I think one of the reasons we’re incredible is because we’ve all been through it with misogyny, so we understand it on such a visceral level. And then we have really great training and we know what we’re talking about.

UNDERSTANDING WHAT EXAMPLES OF MISOGYNY ARE IN MARRIAGE

Anne: I’m really happy that it was helpful to you. Let’s start with your story and the misogyny you endured.

Virginia: So I married my Chuck in 2002. I married once before for seven years. I have two children from that first marriage. It occurred to me after realizing what was going on in this current marriage. That I was also experiencing more physical abuse and sexual abuse in the first marriage.

So this has been an eye opening experience. The entire beginning of our marriage, he made me feel unattractive. That he did not want to be intimate. He was tired, too busy, and worked so hard and all this. And I would think to myself, that doesn’t seem to add up to me, and I couldn’t quite understand.

But as a woman, you take it out on yourself and think, what am I doing wrong? What am I not doing right? Am I not pretty enough? I had discovered so many things, pornographic materials, books, cross-dressing clothes in his car. Magazines everywhere. And I confronted him on this. Because here I am, newly married, with two small children of eight and six years old. My thought was, I can’t put them through this again. I can’t have another divorce, it will devastate them.

And I knew at the time that it was wrong. He told me he was going to get help and take care of this. He brushed away a lot of it as nothing. I was just in shock and trusted him.

FINDING INAPPROPRIATE MATERIAL – MY HUSBAND BLAMED IT ON OUR SON

Virginia: Fast forward a little bit. My son was about 10 and the basement was not finished at the time. I had it set up so the kids could play. And there was a little TV down here for them. Well, I found pornographic videos tucked into the couch and behind the couch. I went to my husband and said, “You’ve gotta be kidding with me right now. The kids play down there. You can’t do this. This is unacceptable.”

And his answer was, ” Oh, it must be our son’s, he must be looking at the videos.”

Anne: It’s just so offensive to me that they don’t even care about kids. They’ll exploit and use children. There’s no excuse for the misogyny.

Virginia: Right . then three or four years later, I had upstairs in the kitchen, a computer. Because I want them to do their homework in there.

This one night they went to bed. I was going to play solitaire and I find porn. So I called him out into the kitchen and again he swore, “I will get help. I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that.” And went to therapy and all of this.

So here we are. He’s been going to a 12-Step program for all this time. It’s been 20 years. This is an interesting thing, and I find common through conversations that I’ve heard through the other women. You know something is wrong, and I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was wrong.

DISCOVERING THAT HE’S HIDING MONEY

Virginia: The first thing I found was the money. He was hiding money all throughout the house in books, you name it, thousands of dollars hidden. I didn’t tell him I knew that there was money hidden everywhere. He figured out that I found it, because all of a sudden the money was all moved out of the hidden places. I still, till this day, have no idea where all that money went. This is evidence of misogyny.

He said, “We spent it”.

I said, “No, we didn’t.”

Then we started to redo the basement. I cleaned out the basement, and found every single one of those magazines. He supposedly threw away 20 years ago. I was furious and didn’t say anything.

I packaged every single one of them up in trash bags. And I put them in the back of my car with a bunch of other boxes that I had cleaned out. And when I dropped off the donations, I was going to bring the trash bags with the magazines to the dump. He emptied all of those bags out of my car, every bag. And I never told them I found them. I didn’t say a single word.

And I found them in the garage. I took them, and again, I didn’t say anything. I brought them out to the fire pit, and God forgive me, I burnt every single one of them because I was so mad. And two weeks later, he went out to the fire pit, and he came and he said, ” Hey, do you wanna help me clean up that mess out in the fire pit that you made?” And I said, “No, I really don’t.”

EX