Pattern Breakers Collective explores the psychology behind unhealthy relationship patterns and why so many strong women find themselves stuck in them. Learn how to recognize the signs, reclaim your power, and build healthier relationships.
You’ve never punched her, shoved her into a wall, or left a bruise.
So when someone talks about abusive, controlling, or coercive men, you can comfortably assume they’re talking about someone else.
But what if “I don’t hit women” is an incredibly low bar for deciding what kind of husband you are?
This bonus episode of Pattern Breakers Collective is for the men.
Lisa takes a direct look at the behaviors that often get dismissed because they don’t fit the stereotypical image of abuse: sexual coercion within marriage, pornography and sexual secrecy, financial control, emotional neglect, intimidation, punishment through withdrawal, controlling behavior disguised as boundaries, and repeatedly explaining a woman’s own experience back to her from a male point of view.
We talk about what consent actually looks like inside a marriage, including the uncomfortable question of whether your wife can say no to sex without having to manage your reaction afterward. Marriage does not create permanent access to another person’s body, and the absence of physical force does not automatically mean an interaction was freely wanted.
We talk about money and the difference between providing for your family and controlling access to financial security, particularly when one partner has sacrificed years of income, career growth, and earning potential to care for the family.
We talk about the woman who spent years saying she was lonely, overwhelmed, hurt, or disconnected until she eventually stopped asking you to understand. You thought the marriage was finally peaceful.
She was giving up.
And we talk about control that never sounds like “you’re not allowed.” Sometimes nobody forbids her from seeing her friends, building a career, wearing something, or becoming more independent. Instead, those choices simply become so emotionally expensive that eventually she decides they aren’t worth the fallout.
This episode isn’t arguing that every selfish behavior, bad argument, sexual disagreement, or emotionally immature moment is abuse. It’s asking men to look beyond isolated incidents and examine the patterns of power, control, entitlement, coercion, and autonomy operating inside their relationships.
And instead of asking:
“Am I an abusive man?”
Try a harder question:
“Is she free around me?”
Can she disagree with you without paying for it later? Can she tell you that you hurt her without ending up comforting you? Can she become more independent without you experiencing it as rejection? Can she tell you what it has actually been like to be married to you without being cross-examined, corrected, or reminded of everything you’ve done right?
Because the question isn’t only what kind of man you believe yourself to be.
What has it been like to be loved by you?
People can change behavior they’re willing to see. But accountability requires being willing to hear about your impact without immediately defending your intentions.
Maybe you’ve spent twenty years looking in the mirror and seeing the same decent man you’ve always believed yourself to be.
Meanwhile, the woman beside you has slowly changed her opinion.
I want to talk to the men today. Specifically, I want to talk to the men who would hear a woman describe an abusive relationship and immediately think, that's not me. Because you've never hit your wife. You've never punched her. You've never shoved her into a wall. You've never left a bruise. So when somebody starts talking about abusive men, controlling men, coercive men, you can listen comfortably. Because they're talking about those guys. Not you. You're a good guy. You work, you provide, you love your kids. Maybe you've been married for 15 years. Maybe everybody you know thinks you're a great husband. Maybe you believe that too. Here's the thing I want to talk about today. Your opinion of you hasn't changed, but hers might have. Welcome to Pattern Breakers Collective. I'm Lisa. This is a bonus episode, and it's gonna sound a little different from what I normally do here. I'm not talking primarily to the women today. I'm talking to the men, and I'm probably gonna irritate some of you. You know what? I'm okay with that. Because I think that we've created an incredibly convenient definition of an abusive man. He's violent, he's obviously controlling, he screams, he threatens, he hits women, and as long as you don't do those things, you get to place yourself safely on the other side of the line. I'm not interested in taking every difficult thing someone does in a marriage and calling it abuse. People can be selfish without being abusive. People can communicate badly, people can hurt each other. Conflict is not automatically abuse. Being a difficult husband on a Tuesday doesn't automatically make someone an abusive man. But there are men who have built their entire understanding of their own goodness around one incredibly low standard. Well, I don't hit women. And meanwhile, the woman living beside them has spent years learning how to manage their moods, surrender her boundaries, justify her spending, question her own perception, and make herself smaller just to keep the relationship functioning. And somehow, your opinion of you hasn't changed. So let's talk about it. Let's start with sex, because I want to talk about consent, not the kind where someone physically forces another person. The quieter kind, the kind that doesn't look like violent assault, but doesn't look like genuine desire either. There are men listening who would be genuinely horrified if someone accused them of sexually coercing their wife. You would say, well, I would never force a woman to have sex. Okay. But what happens when she says no? Really? What actually happens? Can she say, not tonight, and roll over and go to sleep? Or does the temperature in the room change? Do you sigh, roll away, stop talking to her? Do you start negotiating? Oh come on, it's been forever. You never want me anymore. Do you keep touching her after she's moved her hand? Do you ask again 15 minutes later? Do you become cold? Do you make her responsible for reassuring you that she still loves you? Does she know that saying no means she'll probably be managing your disappointment for the rest of the night and all day tomorrow? And here's something that doesn't get said enough. What about when she's asleep? If you initiate sex with your wife while she's sleeping, if you touch her in a sexual way before she's awake and conscious and able to say yes or no, that is not a compliment. That is not passion, that is removing her ability to choose. A person who is asleep cannot consent. And the fact that she's your wife does not change that. If she wakes up to find you already touching her and she goes along with it because she doesn't know how to object or because she's too tired to have the conversation or because she's learned that resisting creates more problems than complying, she did not want to be there. And you told yourself that she did. Marriage does not create permanent access to another person's body. And if your understanding of consent is simply that you didn't physically overpower her while she's awake or asleep, your standard is terrifyingly low. You don't get credit for not violently forcing your wife. You are supposed to care whether the woman you're having sex with actually wants to be there. Not whether you can eventually get her to stop saying no. Not whether she didn't wake up and make an issue out of it, whether she actually genuinely wanted it. And if that sentence makes you defensive, sit with that. Because maybe you've spent years telling yourself, well, I would never force her. And she has spent years thinking sometimes it's easier to just let him. And somehow, your opinion of you hasn't changed. Now let's talk about pornography. And before this becomes a debate about whether pornography itself is right or wrong, that is not this conversation. Different couples have different agreements. Some don't care, some watch it together, some consider it outside of the boundaries of the relationship. The issue that I'm talking about is something very specific: secrecy, deception, broken agreements. And what happens when the woman you're married to tells you that something that you're doing sexually is affecting her. Maybe she found the history. Maybe she found the hidden account. Maybe she realized how often you're watching. Maybe you promised repeatedly to stop and repeatedly hidden that you hadn't. Maybe your sex life with her changed, you stopped initiating, or what you wanted from her started looking a lot like what you were watching. Maybe she started feeling like she was competing with thousands of women who never have needs, never say no, never age, never require emotional intimacy. And she tried to tell you, and instead of getting curious about what this was doing to your marriage, you turned it into a debate about whether she was allowed to be hurt. Well, all guys do it. It's normal, you're insecure, you're controlling, it's not cheating, it has nothing to do with you. Maybe. But here's the question that actually matters. Why are you more interested in proving that she shouldn't be hurt than understanding why the woman you supposedly love is? That's the pattern. Not whether the internet thinks pornography is acceptable. Whether you can look at something that is hurting your relationship and ask, what is my part in this? Or whether your first priority is always making sure that you don't have to change. And somehow, your opinion of you hasn't changed. How about the fact that you provide for your family? You're proud of that, and you should be. Providing for people that you love is genuinely good. But let's look at what providing actually looks like in your house. Does she have equal access to the money? Does she know what you make? Does she know where all of the accounts are? Can she spend reasonable amounts without explaining herself? Or does she have to justify purchases while you don't? Is it our money when the mortgage needs to be paid, but my money when she wants something? Maybe she stayed home with the kids. Maybe that was a mutual decision. So for 10 years she raised kids, managed school calendars, bought groceries, handled birthdays, remembered which kid needed a post-abord on Tuesday and which kid needed a pirate costume on Friday. And during those 10 years, your career continued. Your resume grew. Your income increased. Your earning potential expanded. Your 401k grew. Hers didn't. And now, when she talks about being unhappy, and somewhere in that conversation appears, well, how are you gonna afford to leave? Maybe you don't even say that as a threat. Maybe you say it like you're being practical, but she hears it. Because financial control doesn't always look like handing your wife an allowance. Sometimes it looks like building a life where one person has all of the financial power and then reminding the other person what that imbalance means whenever she starts considering independence. Providing is not the same as controlling access to survival. And somehow, your opinion of you hasn't changed. This next section is about emotional neglect, not cruelty, not screaming, the quiet version, where she has spent years trying to tell you that she's lonely, and every time she does, you tell her why she shouldn't be. I'm right here. We spend every night together. We went out last weekend. I work my ass off for this family. Yes. And she's still lonely. She tells you she needs more emotional connection and you hear criticism. She tells you something hurt her and you explain why you didn't mean it that way. She tells you she's overwhelmed and you tell her what she should do. She wants you to listen and you call the conversation pointless because there's nothing to solve. She asks you to show up more emotionally and you tell her to just give you a list. So now she has another job, managing you. Eventually she stops asking and something interesting happens. You think things got better because she's not complaining anymore, not bringing up the relationship, not asking you to talk. Everything seems calmer and you call it peace. She calls it being done. And then one day she says she's leaving and you're completely blindsided. Why didn't you tell me things were this bad? She did. You just didn't consider it important until there was a consequence for you. And somehow, your opinion of you hasn't changed. Here is something that I want to name very clearly. There is a difference between disagreeing with a woman repeatedly and treating your interpretation of her experience as more authoritative than her account of it. She tells you something a man did to make her uncomfortable. You explain what he probably meant. She tells you she was afraid. You explain why she probably wasn't in danger. She tells you about being sexualized. You explain that men are visual people. She talks about sexual pressure. You explain male sex drives. She talks about something that happened in her workplace and you explain what she should have done differently. She tells you about something that happened to her body, her safety, her career, her motherhood, and somehow you decide what this conversation needs is perspective on why she is reading it wrong. Do you understand how exhausting that is? You are allowed to have different opinions. That is not what I'm describing. I am describing what happens when the pattern is that her account of her own experience consistently requires your correction before it's allowed to stand. Sometimes your job isn't to explain. Sometimes it's to ask, what was that like for you? And then shut up long enough to actually hear the answer. If she has spent years trying to explain herself to you and every conversation turns into a courtroom where she has to provide sufficient evidence for her own feelings, eventually she stops bringing you into her inner world. And then you complain that she doesn't let you in. And somehow, your opinion of you hasn't changed. So we've established that you've never hit her. But I want to ask you some different questions. Has she ever changed what she was gonna say because she could tell that you were already irritated? Has she ever waited until the weekend to bring something up because work was stressful this week? Does she listen how you close a cabinet, how you put down your keys on the counter, how heavily you're walking down the hall? Does she know from the way you breathe whether tonight is a good night to ask you something? Do you punch walls, throw things, drive aggressively during arguments, stand in doorways, get close to her face, follow her room to room when she's trying to end a conversation? Maybe none of those things. Maybe your weapon is silence. Three hours, a day, two days, until she finally comes to you, until she apologizes, until she fixes whatever disrupted the equilibrium, and then you say, I needed space. Space is healthy. Using withdrawal to punish someone until they surrender is not space. Anger is human. Creating an environment where everyone else has to organize themselves around your anger is something different. Or maybe you act like that, you have a blow up, and then you pretend like nothing ever happened. If your wife and children know your mood before you've ever said a single word, pay attention to that. But somehow, your opinion of you hasn't changed. Now let's talk about the ways control operates that don't look like control. You don't tell her what she can wear. You just tell her what you think her clothes say about her. You don't tell her who she can be friends with. You just make every night out with those friends so unpleasant before she leaves, while she's gone, when she comes home, that eventually she stops going. She missed her best friend's wedding because you didn't want to use your vacation days to be around a bunch of people that you didn't particularly like. Maybe you didn't say you can't go. You just made your feelings about it so present, so heavy, so consistently uncomfortable, the guilt, the inconvenience, the cost, the sighing, that going started to feel like it wasn't worth the fallout. And she stayed home. And somewhere inside her, something went quiet because she learned that your comfort costs more than her closest friendship. You don't forbid her from posting pictures, you just interrogate why she needs attention. You don't tell her she can't work, you just make maintaining a career alongside everything that you've decided is her responsibility nearly impossible. You don't tell her she can't leave, you just make independence expensive enough that staying becomes easier. And somewhere along the way, you learn some very useful language. So maybe it's not control, it's a boundary. Let's clear that up. A boundary describes what I will do to protect myself. Control dictates what you are allowed to do so that I don't have to experience discomfort. Those are not the same thing. Calling control a boundary doesn't make it healthy. And underneath all of it is this your emotions became her responsibility. Your sexual satisfaction became her responsibility. Your relationship with your children became her responsibility, your social calendar, your bad moods, your self-esteem, your ability to feel loved. And when she finally says, I can't carry all of this anymore, you experience her limit as abandonment because somewhere along the way, you stop seeing the things that she gave you as things that she was choosing to give. They became things that you believed you were entitled to receive. Entitlement is where I want you to pay attention. Because when we talk about coercive or abusive dynamics, we're looking at patterns of power, control, and entitlement. Not one bad argument, not one selfish decision, a pattern. So don't ask yourself, have I ever done one of these things? Most people have behaved badly at some point. Ask the harder question: what happens consistently when the woman I say I love exercises autonomy that conflicts with what I want? And somehow, your opinion of you hasn't changed. Am I an abusive man? Because you already know how you're going to answer that. No, of course not. That's why we're here. Try these instead. Is she free around you? Can she say no to sex or wake up and say no without having to manage your reaction? Can she spend money without feeling like a teenager asking for permission? Can she tell you that you've hurt her without the conversation becoming about how hurt you are that she thinks you hurt her? Can she disagree with you without paying for it later? Can she change her mind? Can she have friendships that you don't enjoy? Can she be successful without you feeling diminished? Can she have privacy? Can she have an emotional experience without you explaining it away? Can she ask you to participate in your own household without becoming your manager? Can she need you? Can she not need you? Can she become more independent without you experiencing her independence as rejection? Can she grow into someone different from the woman that you married without you trying to force her back into the version that made your life easier? And here's the one that matters most. Can she tell you the truth about what it has been like to be married to you? Not the truth that you agree with, hers. Can you hear it without cross-examining her, without correcting the details, without presenting your evidence, without explaining your intentions, without reminding her of everything that you've done right? Can you hear the impact you had without immediately defending the man that you intended to be? Because maybe that's where all of this begins. Maybe you've never hit a woman. Good. That is not the achievement that you think it is. That is the floor. Maybe you work hard. Maybe you love your kids. Maybe you've never cheated. Maybe you would defend your wife without hesitation if another man threatened her. Maybe everyone who knows you thinks that you're a good man. Maybe you are capable of genuine generosity and kindness. None of those things answer the question that I'm actually asking. Because the question isn't what kind of man do you believe yourself to be? The question is, what has it been like to be loved by you? What has she had to give up to keep that love? What parts of herself has she learned to silence? What happens when she says no? What happens when she disagrees? What happens when she stops taking care of you? What happens when she becomes more financially independent, more confident, less afraid of disappointing you? What happens when she stops asking permission? And maybe the hardest one, what happens when her experience of you contradicts your opinion of yourself? Do you become curious? Or do you immediately start building the defense? Because if your first instinct after listening to this is to catalog everything your wife has ever done wrong, you've missed the point. This isn't a trial. You don't get acquitted because she has flaws too. I am asking whether you're willing to look at yourself without requiring her to be perfect first. That is not accountability. That is a performance that she now has to manage. Accountability sounds like I didn't understand the impact this was having on you. I see it now. I'm gonna do something about it. And then you do without making her supervise the process, without asking her every few days whether you're doing better, without requiring immediate forgiveness as proof that your effort counts, without expecting years of damage to disappear because you've had one insightful month. You learn, you get help when you need it, you tolerate being uncomfortable, you stop treating discomfort like evidence that someone else has done something wrong to you, and you become genuinely curious about the experience of the people who live closest to you, especially when what they tell you is hard to hear. Maybe you have spent 20 years looking in the mirror and seeing the same decent man that you have always believed yourself to be. Meanwhile, the woman beside you has slowly changed her opinion. Not because somebody poisoned her against you, not because the internet taught her therapy words, not because women suddenly became impossible to please. Maybe she just finally found language for something that she's been living for a very long time. And maybe your opinion of you hasn't changed because you've never had to experience you from her side of the relationship. So, no, you don't have to hit her. The better question is whether she has had to become less of herself in order to safely live with you. If the answer makes you uncomfortable, good. Don't defend yourself from it. Do something with it. This has been a bonus episode of Pattern Breakers Collective. If you are a woman listening to this and this gave you language to something that you've struggled to explain, share it if doing so feels safe. And men, if you listened all the way to the end without spending the whole time building your rebuttals, start with the person whose experience matters much more than mine. Ask her. And when she answers, don't explain. Listen. Until next time.
