Self-Loathing is bad news for any marriage. By it’s very nature, self-loathing generates
negativity and drains energy from your marriage relationship. Just being around someone who loathes themselves is a drain.
They often turn any compliment or nice thing you say into something negative. They reject any attempt you try in saying something nice about them.
When you reject attempts at people saying nice things to you due to self-loathing, it’s as if you have a negative force field around you. Nothing positive gets in, while everything negative is accepted without question. That kind of ‘force field’ distorts reality.
Self-Loathing presents problems on several levels. Spiritually it is a rejection of the loathers own image. Since they are made in the image of God, they are not only rejecting themselves, they are rejecting the image that they were made in.
Self-Loathing also presents a challenge on a glandular and cellular level of functioning. The messages you tell yourself activates programming. What you tell yourself does have consequences.
When that programming is of a self-loathing nature, your body executes your programming commands. When the commands are of a negative nature, your body goes into a self-destruct program. That self-destruct mode starts weakening your body, interfering with your digestion and takes away from your attractiveness.
Self-Loathing also destroys relationships. Not only does it make it hard to get close to someone who loathes themselves, it can play a role in affairs and affair recovery.
For the spouse who was betrayed, self-loathing makes it hard, if not impossible for the cheater to resume their relationship with you. It pushes them away and shutting the door behind them.
For the cheater, self-loathing is often activated in relationship to affairs. The cheater may tell themselves that they don’t deserve you. After programming themselves with such a message, they gravitate toward someone who they feel is more fitting, which is often someone much sleazier or abusive. In those cases, the lover is a reflection of how they feel about themselves.
If you wondered, “How could they have an affair with someone like that?”, the answer likely goes back to self-loathing.
In many ways it’s self-punishing. They want someone who will make them feel trashy enough on the outside in order to match how trashy they feel about themselves on the inside.
There are many reasons for self-loathing which would require a whole series of posts. This will give you some ideas on the effects of self-loathing in a marriage.
If you struggle with self-loathing, the e-book “Why Wasn’t I Enough?” addresses many of these issues.
Best Regards,
Jeff
