The Deep Insecurity of the Misogynist

What makes some men hate women?

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, the word “misogynist” is everywhere. Some of these men are in our faces, the leader of the free world for starters. Some are faceless trolls, hiding behind their screens.

Most, however, blend in. They are in our workplaces, families, sporting clubs and churches. Many women are in relationships with them. I use the word relationships loosely. Sure two people are living together, doing life together, but there is nothing healthy about a relationship with a misogynist.

Hate has no place in an intimate relationship, or in any relationship for that matter.

My first husband hated me.

To be fair, he never said he hated me. In fact, he used to tell me he loved me constantly and insist that I reciprocate his words. Sadly, every time I told him I loved him for the last 15 years of our marriage, I was lying. I lived in this abusive relationship for 24 years, 18 of those married. When I finally got out I was a confused fragile mess.

Five years later I’m still trying to understand how a university-educated, intelligent, reasonably attractive woman got sucked into accepting more than two decades of appalling treatment from the man who was supposed to be my life partner. Someone who promised to love, honor and protect me.

When I first opened up in counseling, I was told that my husband was most likely a narcissist. In some ways this made sense. He was certainly controlling, cruel, self-focused and had an inflated sense of his own importance.

He seemed to believe that he was entitled to treat me the way he did.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is defined as: a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism (Mayo Clinic)

Yes, my ex was full of himself and did not seem to recognize any of his (numerous) shortcomings but didn’t seem to crave excessive attention from anyone except me.

He was kind to me at times, particularly when I was recovering from surgery and when our son was first born; when I was less of a threat to him. He was also fiercely loyal. Until the last few months before I left, he never gave me any reason to think he would cheat or discard me.

Narcissism didn’t quite fit. Yet something was very very wrong.

True Narcissistic Personality Disorder is said to affect less than one percent of the population. I have changed my view of my ex-husband. I don’t think he is a true narcissist, despite him having some of the traits.

I have come to understand that I was in a relationship where I could never be good enough no matter what I did. Because I am a woman.

And I was married to a man who hates women.

In our early days of dating, my ex would tell me how wonderful I was compared to most women. I know, I should have called him out then and run for the hills. But I was 18, fresh out of high school and susceptible to falling into a relationship too quickly. I had been relentlessly bullied at school and just wanted someone to love me.

So instead, I took his relative praise and his criticism of other women as a sign of how special I was, how important I was to him, how much he thought of me.

He would make awful sexist comments about women all the time.

A woman he worked with was promoted to a management position at his work and he was convinced she had ‘slept her way to the top’. He always had negative comments to make about his sisters, my family and friends, and his work colleagues.

But it was his relationship with his mother that should have sent the warning lights flashing.

She was a bossy controlling woman. My former father in law was at her beck and call. She ordered him around constantly. She treated him like a doormat. Apparently she always had, right from when my ex was a young boy.

He told me, on more than one occasion, that ‘dad should have slapped mum in the face years ago’. The implication was, his dad had let her get away with pushing him around. Now I realize what I should have heard in those words is “it’s not going to happen to me”.

I lost four babies to miscarriage before my son was born, yet on our way to the 16-week ultrasound he said to me, “I am going to be really disappointed if this baby is a girl”. I was so relieved that the baby I was carrying was a boy.

Yet I still didn’t call him out on his behavior. I was so entwined in this relationship that I could not imagine ever leaving, despite how miserable I was.

Why do some men hate women?

My ex was abusive in almost every way possible. The only thing he didn’t do was actually hit me. He threw furniture, screamed, stalked me and abused me sexually. The list goes on and on. For years I asked myself what I did to deserve it?

About a year before I left him I stumbled across Dr. Susan Forward’s book “Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them”. I bought the kindle version. I was terrified he would somehow see it. I was too scared to read it.

This week, nearly five years later I did read it. This book answered every question of my confused abused mind.

• Why didn’t he just leave me if I was so awful?
• Why was he so fiercely loyal and yet didn’t discard me like narcissists generally do?
• Why was he so damn controlling?
• Why he could be so kind and loving at times and suddenly flip a switch and start ranting and raving over the tiniest thing?
• Why did he isolate me from my family and friends?
• Why did he criticize my career, despite me earning the bulk of the money?
• Why did I constantly feel like I was walking on eggshells?
• Why was he so suspicious whenever I was out of his space?
• Why did he check up on me constantly?
• Why did he hold me down and put his hand over my mouth during sex and then say I was frigid because I didn’t like it?
• Why did he me make me feel like the ugliest, most awful person on the planet one minute, and then act like men were just lining up waiting to steal me away?
• Why did I find it so hard to reconcile how he treated me with how much he said he loved me?
• Why don’t I know who I am anymore?
• Why am I so confused?

The answer is simple yet complex.

Simple: He hates women

Complex: Why?

I don’t profess to know exactly why my ex-husband is like this. I suspect it comes from observing his parent’s relationship. But it’s more than that. As Dr. Forward so gently and respectfully explains, these men are deeply insecure and fearful. She says this without making excuses for their bad behavior but rather to help women, who by this stage cannot make sense of the labyrinth that is their relationship.

He harbors a hidden belief that if he loves a woman, she will then have the power to hurt him, to deprive him, to engulf him, and to abandon him. (Forward, Ch 6)

You know that feeling when you read something and it jumps off the page at you? Suddenly I got it.

He found security in our bond, he hated that I had the power to take it away. So, as an act of self-preservation, he embarked on a journey to take away my power. My power to hurt him, my power to take away his safety and security.

He was on a mission to destroy everything that made me, me. Over time he eroded my self-esteem, my relationships with family and friends and my sense of worth. Eventually, I came to question my own sanity.

Misogynists are scared, little boys.

During the final couple of years of our marriage, my ex took to waking me at around one in the morning, making me get up and go to his room (we had been in separate rooms for years by this point, he only came in for sex). For hours he would rant at me, accusing me of either having an affair (I never did) or planning to leave him (I fantasized about leaving but never saw a way out).

He made me promise that I would never ever leave him. I promised that more times than I could count.

All I wanted was sleep, I would agree to anything. Then he would tell me he would kill himself if I ever left.

The men who love women,

During these two decades of chaos, I found myself fascinated by men who seemed to genuinely like and respect women. My brothers-in-law are beautiful examples. Men who are loving and supportive husbands to my sisters and fathers to their children. Men who are comfortable working on the car, earning a living, playing with their children, and cooking dinner.

Men who can hold a conversation, admire beauty, and encourage others to follow their passion. Men who adore their wives, children, family, and friends. Men who call their partner baby or gorgeous. Men who my ex referred to as ‘hen-pecked’.

I have been fortunate enough to meet one of these real men. He is now my husband, I have been given a second chance.

He is gentle with my scars and holds my heart with care. He loves women and gets on pretty well with men as well.