25 Signs You Are a Bad Wife

A marriage is like good food that is constantly being prepared. The partners are the chefs and their characters and actions are the ingredients that make this meal tasty and nutritious. If either or both partners put in sour ingredients, the food will be bitter and nobody ideally likes bitter food.

This is why it is important that both partners behave in a positive way to each other because anything else could dissolve the partnership and even if we hate to admit it, the wife plays a major role in doing this, oftentimes more than the husband.

Women are the foundation of the marriage and the glue that holds it together which is why a bad wife can make or break a marriage. You should therefore check yourself to see if you are being a bad wife or a good one that is more likely to keep your marriage going than not.

This article will include some signs that will help you decide if you are being a good or bad wife as well as some advice on what to do if you are the latter.

25 Ways you are a bad wife.

1. Rude to husband

The first and most obvious sign of being a bad wife is being rude to your husband when you talk to him. Being rude to anyone when you talk to them is not a good thing and this is even more serious when it is your husband because your husband is your partner in this game of life and being rude to him can lead to you losing the support of someone who is supposed to be the foundation of your support system.

2. Prevent husband from seeing his loved ones

A lot of wives do this and it really isn’t good. It is important to remember that you are not the only person in your husband’s life. He has family and friends and they should be able to participate in his life as well.

So if you find yourself restricting your husband’s time with his friends and telling him that he can’t see family or that they are not allowed to visit, you are ticking off some boxes in the terrible wife category.

3. Disrespectful in front of the children or in public

Your children should not see their parents fight as this undermines the respect they have for you and the authority you have over them. If you find yourself disrespecting your husband in front of your children by taunting or belittling him, you should know that your children are likely to go that route as well.

Another sign of being a bad wife is hanging dirty laundry in public by disrespecting your husband outside. This is bad because it diminishes the way people see him and will most likely impact on his self-esteem negatively.

Here are other ways a woman can be disrespectful to her husband.

4. Control freak

Do you find yourself needing to control every aspect of your husband’s life? This is bad and can be a sign of deeper psychological issues. Your husband is a human being on his own and should not be your slave.

5. Prefer not to spend time with husband

A marriage is simply a relationship on steroids which means that a lot of rules about relationships still apply. One very big one is that you have to spend time together. If you find yourself avoiding your husband by, for instance, finding activities to do alone all the time, meeting up with friends often or even spending most of the time with your children, this is bad and needs to change because your husband deserves time to be with his wife as well.

6. Are a burden financially.

A partner is supposed to help push a partnership to greater heights and a large part of this has to do with finances. A sign of a bad wife is one that drags the partnership down by making lousy financial decisions that burden the marriage. For instance, if you keep incurring debt or making outrageously expensive requests for one reason or the other even though you know the family cannot afford it, you are most definitely in “bad wife territory”.

7. Argue when you could discuss

Conflict is normal in a marriage. You and your husband will most definitely get on each other’s toes and will need to talk it out. If you find that instead of talking, you are normally instigating an argument with your husband then this is bad.

Arguments rarely solve matters because most parties become defensive and bitter. Try to calmly discuss the issue at hand instead of escalating it to argument levels.

8. A bit too clingy

Regardless of how much you love your husband or how much he loves you, it is important that you give him space to do things on his own. You should not try to tag along with him every waking moment of the day including when he tries to hang out with his friends. Doing this every now and then is not bad, it shows you really like your husband but everything should be done in moderation.

And even if he does not mind you being clingy, you still have to enforce this because it is not considered healthy for people to be too co-dependant on another person.

9. Lack goals and ambition

As we said, partners should try to push the partnership to greater heights. A woman without dreams and ambition cannot contribute much to a marriage and is therefore a bad partner and a bad wife.

Even a housewife can have goals and ambition depending on their duties. Whatever it is that you do, you can aim to do it better. The goal is to push the marriage forward in whatever way you can and in doing so, you would be considered a good wife.

10. Are unfaithful

This is a no brainer. If you are cheating – engaging in extramarital “activities” without your husband’s permission –  on your husband then you are most definitely a bad wife. When you were getting married, you promised to remain faithful to your husband and anything contrary to that is definitely a negative.

11. Pathological need to be right

Do you find yourself incapable of accepting when your husband is right? Or do you find that you always have to have the last word in an argument? These are signs of a bad wife.

Unless you are a perfect supreme being, you will make mistakes because that is what humans do and it is fine to acknowledge them. Refusing to acknowledge your wrongs is a red flag in a wife and one that can cause marital problems.

12. Critical of the little things

A running joke about marriage is that wives are naggers. While this is a stereotype, stereotypes are still rooted in truth and this is a stereotype that has been shown to be true a lot of the time.

A bad wife will constantly nag her husband about the smaller things for instance: picking up his socks, cleaning the room, washing the dishes etcetera. These can be very annoying to your husband and lead him to become defensive and will hurt your marriage.

This is not to say that your husband should not do those things, it is to say that a different approach is needed because nagging has been proven time and again to fail to convince the target to do what the person nagging wants.

13. Mask your true feeling

“What’s wrong love?” “Did I do anything wrong babe?” How often do you reply to those questions with a “nothing” or a “nevermind” even though you know something is definitely wrong?

If you do that a lot then rest assured, you are a bad wife. Refusing to tell your husband your feelings so that he can work on what he did wrong is something a lousy wife does because it will most likely lead to passive aggression and end with you taking out whatever was wrong on your husband in another way.

Your husband is not Professor Xavier, he cannot read your mind. You need to use actual words so that you both can move past whatever the issue is.

14. Use divorce as a bargaining chip in arguments

Threatening to leave your husband when you get into an argument is a trick that bad wives play. You are trying to guilt trip him into capitulating to your views even if they are wrong and this is emotional manipulation plain and simple.

15. Don’t acknowledge feelings of husband

Just like you, your husband goes through a lot of issues which could bring him down. A bad wife would not acknowledge this and would instead berate him and make him feel like less of a man in such times by saying this like: “be a man” and “suck it up”.

Another way you could be ignoring your husband’s feelings is when he expresses an opinion about something and you ignore his reservations and still go ahead and do it even after saying you wouldn’t.

16. Are distracted when you are together

These days you can go out to a restaurant to eat or to a park to relax and spot a married couple who are not talking to each other because they are both on their phones. If they can do this in public, imagine what they do in private.

Marriage like any other relationship is about communication. You need to talk to your husband. If you find that when you are together with your husband, you always have something to check on your phone or a television show to watch, this is bad. You should put down that phone or put off that device and talk to your husband.

17. Keep secrets from husband and betray his trust

You should not keep secrets from your husband relating to things that happen while you are his wife or material things that happened before the marriage that could affect it.

Bad wives would do things in secret such as seeing friends they said they wouldn’t, hiding their financial information for malicious reasons and even flirting with others. Secrets betray trust when they are found out and regardless of how well things are from then, they will never be the same.

18. Lie to your husband

Lying to your husband is arguably worse than keeping secrets because whereas with the former he has no knowledge of what is happening, with lying you are knowingly misdirecting him.

As your partner, your husband deserves the truth about whatever it is you are doing – surprise parties don’t count – so that you can both decide on it like the partnership that you are.

19. Always try to get husband to change himself

Apart from instances of arranged marriages, you most probably knew who your husband was when you married him and yet you still went ahead. It would therefore be unfair to try to change him after that and is something a bad wife would do.

Of course there are things that he does that need to be pruned to make him a better human but if you find yourself going for a complete or partially complete overhaul, you are not being a good wife.

20. Bring your husband’s self esteem down

As we keep emphasizing, spouses in a marriage should endeavor to push the marriage to greater heights and this cannot be done if you are using your mouth to pull your husband down. 

If you find yourself constantly belittling your husband and his efforts, disrespecting him in public and complaining about things you wish you had, you would be killing his esteem which is what bad people do.

21. Defensive about everything

A wife who assumes the worst of her husband would always be on the defensive when he talks. For instance, you suspect that he wants something when he pays you a compliment and so you downplay the compliment and ask him what it is that he wants.

If indeed it was an innocent compliment and this happens often, it is sure to lead to him stopping which cannot be good for the marriage. This applies to whatever other actions it is that you get defensive about.

22. Try to blame your husband for your problems

Bad people usually try to deflect the blame for things going wrong in their lives to others and if you find yourself doing this to your husband, it is safe to say you are being a bad wife.

I have seen a wife blame her husband for losing her phone because she left her bag open after she gave him some wipes he had asked for. This is a bad wife because she found a way to twist events to make it seem as though he was the cause of a problem.

23. Deny your husband sex or use it as a bargaining tool

A big part of relationships and marriages is being physical. A key sign of a bad woman is one that would use this to her advantage by withholding sex or even kisses from her husband because she did not get her way.

This can fracture a marriage and can lead to infidelity on the part of the man and while infidelity in marriage is plain wrong, goodluck trying to convince a jury that you did not push him to it.

24. Don’t make an effort

Some women believe that in a marriage, it is the husband’s job to please them and come up with things to do to keep the relationship going. They put in little effort and become surprised when the spark in the marriage dies.

A marriage is a partnership which means that both partners should put in work and if you as a wife are not doing this, you aren’t being a good partner.

25. Bring up old mistakes to guilt trip your husband

One of the most toxic traits in a spouse is constantly bringing up things that the other partner did in the past in an effort to guilt trip and discredit them.

If the spouse has apologized for what they did and you both decided to move on with your lives, bringing it up again to win arguments is just being plain evil.

Other signs that you are being a bad wife can be found in signs your wife hates you.

8 Ways to stop being a bad wife

If your behavior ticked some boxes from the signs above, then you may need to work on yourself so as to be a better wife.

1. Stop complaining about the little things and appreciate the things that are done right

Research has shown that if you want to get your husband to do something, appreciate the other things he does instead of nagging him on the things that he hasn’t. The sense of appreciation he will feel will spur him into doing more so that he can get more appreciation.

Here are other ways to make your husband feel appreciated.

2. Stop being clingy

You can do this by engaging more in things you find interesting or finding new things that interest you. You can hang out with friends every now and then or even focus on work. The goal is to give both you and your husband some breathing space. This is good for a marriage because it would allow for you both to miss each other as opposed to when you are always together.

3. Don’t deny your husband sex or physical intimacy

It is very important that you do not deny your husband physical intimacy unless of course, there are health reasons involved. Don’t use it as a bargaining chip either but instead treat it as something that you both could explore together so that you can learn more about each other.

4. Talk to your husband and acknowledge his feelings

Communication is important in a marriage and it needs to be done in a cordial manner. This means that you should try to discuss with your husband instead of arguing with him and you should express your true feelings about something so that you can both work through it.

Acknowledge that sometimes he will be down and would need you to psych him up without judgement and also try not to keep secrets from him.

5. Remember why you married him

When things are going really bad and you can’t help all the negative feelings that you are experiencing towards your husband, one way to get over this is by remembering why you married him in the first place. This can then serve as a foundation upon which to settle differences because nostalgia is a known recipe for bringing peace.

6. Accept that you cannot change everything

Sometimes you just need to let go and acknowledge that you, as a human, cannot change everything. You can’t force your husband to be who he is not and you can’t control his life completely. Once you make this realization, you can then begin to focus your efforts on ways to better manage those things that you cannot change.

7. Empathy

A big part of being a good wife is having empathy in your dealings with your husband. You should ask yourself what you would like to be done to you if you were in his shoes. This will guide you on how to treat him and lead to him being more appreciative of you.

8. Counselling

Some of the things that are making you a bad wife might be rooted in some deep emotional issue that you would best be able to handle if you went to see a therapist of sorts. Issues such as being a control freak or having the pathological need to be right are some of those issues. If you find that you are unable to get over them by yourself, there is absolutely no shame in seeking professional help.

Other ways to stop being a bad wife can be found in what to do when your husband hates you.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What makes a horrible wife?

A horrible wife will:

• Try to overly control her husband.
• Lie to her husband.
• Disrespect her husband.
• Keep secrets from her husband.
• Be clingy to her husband.
• Criticize and nag her husband about little things.

2. What is a toxic wife?

A toxic wife is a wife who will:

• Belittle her husband and reduce his self esteem.
• Prevent her husband from being with his family and friends.
• Bring up old mistakes her husband made in order to guilt trip him.
• Assume the worst of her husband.
• Deny her husband sex when she does not get her way.
• Refuse to acknowledge the feelings of her husband when he is down.

3. What are the signs of a loveless marriage?

If you are in a relationship that has lost its spark and one where you can no longer feel the love, you may notice signs such as:

• Feeling uncomfortable being around your spouse.
• You are no longer having sex.
• You no longer confide in them.
• You either argue a lot or not at all.
• You keep thinking about divorce
• You both assume the worst of each other and suspect each other’s motives for doing anything.

To sum it up…

This article was not meant to attack you but rather to show you the various ways you could be lacking as a wife. Your husband could equally be at fault by exhibiting these signs as well. The thing about marriage however is that even though it requires both partners to work at it, one of you has to take the lead and the other will follow. If that has to be you then there is no wrong in that so long as your husband follows.

It is also important to remember that a lot of these tips do not apply to a physically abusive marriage where you may act in a certain way to protect yourself. In such cases our advice is to leave as soon as possible as this usually ends badly.