Is Contempt Killing Your Marriage?

The full episode releases on October 1st!

Does contempt silently poison your relationship? Discover how a sense of superiority and lack of respect can erode intimacy and trust in marriages. My husband, Rob, and I share powerful stories of couples who faced these challenges and transformed their relationships through acceptance and understanding. Through real-life examples, including our own early struggles with acceptance, we reveal how recognizing and embracing your partner's flaws can pave the way to a healthier, more loving connection.

Join us for a compelling discussion on the importance of seeing your spouse as an equally flawed human and the profound impact this perspective shift can have. From dealing with mental health issues to learning to cherish each other's differences, we offer valuable insights and personal anecdotes that highlight the importance of acceptance in maintaining a strong, compassionate relationship. Tune in to learn how to build a more genuine connection with your partner and heal the wounds that contempt may have caused.

Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships


Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 500,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

That all comes from a position of contempt. How can a person, how can my spouse, who is beneath me, you know they're sick or they're just not capable, they're incompetent, they're stupid lazy, you name it.

Speaker 1: 0:18

How can they say anything worth my attention, worth my time? How can they make a logical point? Many men will take the position of you know, how can my wife raise a logical point? I know of another couple and I believe they stopped doing this. I say they, him, this individual. He has like a doctorate degree, phd, and his wife I don't, I believe she didn't even have an undergraduate degree. Those marriages can work fine as long as the person with the phd doesn't start thinking of themselves more highly than they ought. And I recall him making statements about her that she's just stupid and things of that nature. He would often do like a mocking voice of her when she would want something and he's like no, that's stupid. I believe they stopped doing that. Hence they are still married, they're not divorced. That's good.

Speaker 1: 1:21

But I feel that contempt is perhaps one of the greatest enemies to acceptance. I suppose in a nutshell so I can't tell you all the things he should have done besides accept her where she was at, I think he would argue he was doing that he's like, oh well, she's sick, but I accept her for her sickness. And it's like, maybe get out of that headspace. And it's like maybe get out of that headspace. And if you do have a spouse who really is, let's just say they're suffering from mental illness to the degree they have to sometimes be institutionalized Hopefully they're not harming anyone or themselves but let's just say they check themselves in every now and again to the psych ward because they're really struggling. I still don't think looking at them as a sick person is going to do you any favors. Looking at them as a flawed person, just as we all are, who happens to have a medical condition and you're going to stand by them through it, I think that's probably a better approach. And, by the way, in this marriage she was nowhere near checking herself into a psych ward, she wasn't harming herself or other people.

Speaker 1: 2:33

And after their divorce which it sucked, it wasn't great they did make some attempts to reconcile but ultimately divorce. They both went their own way and they both actually flourished quite a bit. She became a nurse, she. You know it sounds bad to say that she got her life together, but she did get a lot of things together that were previously, you know, and it was tough for her. And he also went on to have a stellar career. And they both now have children from other folks, so perhaps there was mutual contempt there in that relationship. As you said earlier, it makes people sick. It can cause people to have all kinds of adverse reactions that can translate over into their habits or lack of habits in life. That affects them constantly being around another person who has contempt for them and from the stories I heard from them, there was a lot of mutual contempt, yeah, which really stinks.

Speaker 2: 3:43

But it could have worked. It could have. It could have. It was close to getting saved at one point, but for it to it meant both of them had to change the way that they saw and viewed each other. And acceptance I think it's worth explaining and defining what acceptance means and what it looks like. So acceptance, as we know, is the key to love, because if I ultimately don't feel accepted by you in our marriage, then I will never feel like I can truly open up and be intimate or be vulnerable. Be open, be transparent, because you're never going to accept me for how I truly am and therefore it will keep a wall built between us. And that was a big issue the first two years of our marriage, probably. More specifically, and I mean, I can remember when on both of our sides like lack of acceptance in different ways for each of us. So I remember when we first got married and I wanted to be super controlling of what you ate. Do you remember that?

Speaker 2: 4:56

Cause I was at it which is it was a lot of better shape then.

Speaker 1: 5:01

Yeah, and that made me want to dig my heels in.

Speaker 2: 5:03

You did.

Speaker 1: 5:04

I totally did, I got fat.

Speaker 2: 5:07

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:11

And if you look at the love path, so the listeners if they have access at the love path, so the listeners if they have access to the love path. Or you could get on Google and type in Joe Beams love path and look at that image and notice how acceptance is a bridge acceptance is a bridge.

Speaker 1: 5:32

After you get past attraction and you get past all those things, you find yourself at the bridge of acceptance. And it's a bridge. Even those with the intent to cross it may not fully do so or may fall off and have to, proverbially, swim back to shore and try again. We did Our first two years. We had the workshop on the front end of our marriage and yet we, for the first couple of years, still failed to accept one another fully, full acceptance. And here's the thing If your spouse isn't accepting you, you can't control that. You can control if you accept them.

Speaker 1: 6:18

I believe you probably started just predictive nature of our personality. You probably started fully accepting me first and at some point I believe I started following suit you. So and if you look and again, if you're pulling up the image of Joe Beam's love path I'd Google it or whatever in the middle of the podcast, maybe press pause, take a look at that you look further down the love path and you will see the joint aspirations. But notice it's on the other side of the bridge of acceptance. You can try on paper to have joint aspirations with one another, but if you don't fully accept one another, those things are going to start falling apart.

Speaker 2: 7:06

If you enjoyed this clip from it Starts With Attraction then click here to watch the full episode.