Here are some ideas for how to deal with a situation where a partner is setting a bad example in front of the children.
Timestamps:
00:00 Father complaining about women and speaking inappropriately in front of young girls
03:10 Options of how to handle this. First be calm.
03:51 Take him into another room to talk to him - what to say.
06:02 Repeat this as soon as he makes another bad comment.
08:19 Kindly stop his bullying.
08:56 Translating the husband's admission.
09:25 Tell him lovingly what you'll do when he makes bad comments in the future.
Transcript:
This from mother who has really been working hard at learning and implementing the REPT. Her husband is a frightened man who tries to compensate by going to men’s support groups and spouting on and on about how men are treated unfairly.
Partner's Poor Example in Front of Young Daughters
She said that the kids (10 and under) were watching a Disney movie, and he spoke up every few minutes with something negative, like how the female characters are all narcissistic and the male lead was made to look disempowered (using word I don’t use out loud), that the plot is anti-male & women are looking for the bigger-better-deal.
He let out an endless barrage of hate and victimhood in a room with three girls under age 10. It was a terrible example of confident manhood. Horrible. Ironically, his behavior would teach his girls to find a similar coward as a partner, whom they would then control—exactly what he was going on about.
She added that she tried to stop him several times, telling him not to talk to the kids about his own insecurities and fears. She was getting pretty angry.
Mom: What could I have done?
1. Agree with him? Makes my stomach stick.
**No.
2. Stop the movie?
**Possibly, but you’d do it while you were angry, so the effect would be the kids just seeing their parents fighting like too brats in the schoolyard.
3. I leave the room where they’re watching the movie?
**NO. It would leave him teaching these horrible principles and examples with his children, and YOUR children.
How to Handle a Partner's Poor Example
**I’m going to describe some OPTIONS. They change with circumstances, so I’m just increasing your CHOICES, which you have to make. Can’t keep going like this.
**First, BE CALM. If you’re the slightest agitated, you’ll lose. It will turn into a fight. Everybody loses.
**Stop the movie, the instant he makes the FIRST negative comment, not after half an hour of him giving an anti-feminist diatribe.
**Touch his arm, and ask him to come into the next room.
**Then say to him, "I'm not telling you what to do. NOT telling you that you’re bad. I AM telling you that the kids are trying to have FUN watching a movie—fun—and they can't do that while you're making negative comments. It hurts them far more than you know."
**In this way, you’re giving him INFORMATION, not judgments about him, not criticism.
Mom: I kept telling him to be quiet and that he was showing the kids how not to be a man in his behavior.
**That is outright attacking from you, and he could never hear it. He’s already declaring that he’s afraid of women, so if you criticize him, you’ll only make it worse. Especially in front of the kids. What I just suggested that you might say is just a description of what he's doing. Information.
More Options, Just so You Have More Confidence
**What if he goes back into the room and makes more negative comments? Remember, I suggested you interrupt at the first critical WORD. You just do it again. You might have to stop the movie more than once.
Mom: What if he catches on to this and refuses to go into the next room with me?
**You might have to stop the movie and tell the kids that you'll have to watch the movie at another time. Don't give a reason. He WILL get the point. He’ll be embarrassed without you directly criticizing him. If you have to try watching a movie many times, fine. He WILL listen more and more if you’re not SNOTTY. You have to be CALM.
**He can't be allowed to do this. (I gave her the name of another mother doing REPT who had similar problems with her husband, so she could hear what had worked, and what had not.)
Mom: Trying to see my part: I felt unsafe, so I responded by attacking him.
**Yes
Mom: He’s working from home for a couple of weeks, and things are heating up. They always do because we used to be so entrenched in trading imitation love...and now we just don't connect so much or its rough.
**Hence the need for absolute consistency in your loving and teaching the kids. And stopping his lectures and nastiness (bullying, really), but KINDLY.
Mom: He told me just before we went to bed that I need to give him time, that he's growing up, and it's rough in the beginning and that he's better than where he was 2 years ago...
**This is REALLY BIG. No kidding. He was admitting that he was WRONG in his own little way. Imperfect, but so what? So what can you do? THANK HIM for saying that to you. Really. Thank him for trying. He needs it. He's a small person.
**Also tell him what you'll be doing when he makes comments during a movie or otherwise. You will remove him from kids and talk to him, or you'll remove kids from room. They simply can't hear him talk like that. No more. AND you’re grateful for his efforts.
Partner Explains His Bad Behavior
Mom: He told me he has been badly treated all his life by the women in his life & he's not going to stand for it & he's drawing a boundary...
**Agree that all that was true in his life, and that sometimes YOU were one of those unkind women. BUT tell him that all that was in the past, and his problems are NOT women NOW. Now he's reacting to the past, and the solution is for HIM to feel more loved and to make his own decisions instead of just reacting to his past pain. And that you’re learning to love him better. Then let it go, because he'll listen only a little (but not none).
**Loving and teaching in the presence of an uncooperative and even combative partner is difficult, but you CAN learn. We all can.
