Abuse. Just the mention of the word conjures mental images of broken bones, cuts repaired by surgical stitches, and dark purple bruises. For a victim of physical abuse this mental image would be correct.
   Verbal Abuse. If someone mentions that phrase most people have no mental image at all. In fact they will usually just shrug and think "Words. It was just words. What harm can that do?"
   What harm indeed. While a victim of verbal abuse, especially if it has been leveled by a spouse, shows no outward cuts or bruises they carry those same marks. Trust me. The difference is that for a victim of verbal abuse these bruises are carried entirely inside. Words do as much damage as fists and often the damage is much longer lasting. Wounds to the body heal within weeks or months. Wounds to the soul and the psyche take a lot longer to heal. Sometimes they never do.
   Spousal verbal abuse is usually an insidious thing. At first the spouse will seem to be attentive and charming. This is one of the characteristics that is always mentioned when a victim describes their abuser. At the beginning the relationship will seem to be almost perfect. In fact too good to be believed. And that should wave a red flag right there. There is no such thing as a perfect relationship. The potential abuser normally sucks his victim in by hiding his true nature in order to get the person to commit to marriage. Once the marriage has taken place the abuser drops the mask very quickly.
   The hateful name calling and demeaning remarks will start surprisingly soon thereafter. Goodbye perfect relationship. The honeymoon is over. The victim of these denigrating remarks will be puzzled and in total amazement. Could this be the same person that I married? How could that wonderful sweet man that I fell in love with be saying these hurtful things to me?
   It is all about control. A verbally abusive spouse wants to be in complete control of the marriage and that means that he has to be in total control of the woman he married. The method that he uses to control her is mental in nature rather than physical. He uses the power of denigrating, cruel words to weaken her emotionally. If he is successful she will eventually tire of fighting the emotional battle of trying to understand him and will just give up. At that point he has the control and he is content. Control. It is all about being in complete control.
   Because of her bewilderment as to the sudden change in her marriage the victim will initially take the blame upon herself. It is instinctive that like a victim of physical abuse she will start asking herself what she could be doing wrong that has caused this change. She thinks the problem lies with her. Once that mindset has set in she will then progress to trying to do anything she can to please her verbal abuser. The victim thinks that if she changes her looks or loses weight or learns to be a better cook then this man will go back to the man that she fell in love with. She could not be more wrong on both counts. In the first place there was nothing wrong with her that triggered the hateful words. So there is nothing in the world that she can do to make them stop. Nothing. In the second place it was the man's hidden nature to be a verbal abuser. He enjoys it. It gives him a sense of control and power. The problem is his and his alone.
   To make the entire situation even worse most verbal abusers will only unleash their hurtful remarks when the couple are alone. In front of other people the abuser will appear to be the perfect husband. Congenial, kind, considerate. In fact many women will look at this couple and be envious of the wife. Remember then that all things are not what they appear to be. It is all a mask that the abuser puts on for the public. It is characteristically inherent to the verbal abuser's personality to need to appear to be the perfect spouse to others. The victim will sit and watch the looks of admiration on other people's faces as she and her spouse interact socially and cry inside. She cries because she knows that once they get home that this same man will turn on her viciously and begin hurling the hateful comments criticizing her for something that she said or did at this gathering that he did not like. She never knows what might have set him off, but she always knows that there will be something.
   Words. Just words. So you will ask what type of damage could words do to a woman. The primary damage is to her sense of self worth. If you were criticized almost daily in the harshest terms when you really did nothing that you were aware of and had in fact worked diligently to try and make yourself as close to what you thought he wanted then eventually the words will begin to be believed. The victim's initial reaction is puzzlement and resentment, but the longer the verbal abuse lasts her reaction changes to one of acceptance. She actually begins to believe that the words hurled at her just might be accurate. Perhaps she really is that dumb; or that gullible; or that fat; or that inept. Invariably the victim will lose her self confidence as her self esteem plummets.
   The victim will often stop doing many of the activities that she enjoyed when she first married especially if these activities involve her husband being present. If she is not there then how can she be criticized for something she may have said or done? Of course, this only leads to verbal attacks once the abuser gets home criticizing her for not going in the first place. It is a vicious cycle of the worst kind.
   The victim may draw into a shell avoiding social situations to the point where outsiders begin to notice and to ask questions. This infuriates her abusive spouse even more. Afterall she is ruining his image of the perfect marriage. In retaliation he will often begin telling the ones who ask that she has become severely depressed or even mentally ill as a cover. Invariably one of these people will mention to the victim what her husband is saying about her mental health to others and the knowledge of that leaves a scar of its own. How could this man that she had loved with all her heart be telling people that she was mentally ill when she knows that he is actually the one with the problem?
   So we have a perfectly normal woman who falls in love with a delightful, loving man only to find herself being belittled and demeaned at every turn to the point that she starts believing that she is all the terrible things that he says that she is. She feels completely alone in the world because no one has ever heard the stinging words when they were heaped upon her. I cannot think of anything more cruel that a spouse can do to his wife than this: breaking her spirit; causing her to see herself as being almost worthless as a human being; totally robbing her of her joy in living. But this is exactly what happens in the majority of cases of spousal verbal abuse.
   Next time I will describe more fully the personality traits of a verbal abuser in the hopes that such a man may be spotted before the woman marries him.

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