R8W8,
I've read bits and pieces of the thread, but I'm responding to your opening post.
It has to be a bad thing for someone to constantly hear criticism from the one they love, over and over. Nothing is good enough. It wears that person down after a while. So, if you reconcile, and I'll pray that you two do, this is something you need to be very careful not to do. Ask God to help you with it, and cultivate saying encouraging words to your wife. Express sincere gratitude for the good things she does, for her hard work, and give genuine, heart-felt compliments. But be selective with criticism and give it in a kind humble way. Consider how you would like to be treated, and be more gentle, since she is a woman and your wife.
I know others have recommended marriage counseling. That sounds like a good idea. I think you should screen your Christian counselor to make sure you find someone really committed to putting marriages back together. I knew a couple that met a secular counselor. The husband had cheated on her, and the wife was just brutal the way she talked to him. The counselor recommended they separate. The husband really didn't appreciate that. I understand why she said it, but I wouldn't want to pay for counseling to have someone to tell my wife to leave me.
The danger with separation is that it can end in divorce. Some people say it is good to take a step back, and that may be a positive thing. But if you separate from a wife who has some secular values when it comes to divorce, as many professing Christians do these days, too long a separation can make it hard to reconcile. On the other hand, you need to change, too, and not be a critical husband when you get back together.
It sounds like her mother is in favor of you two staying together. Especially if she were close to her mother, I'd consider that as a way of communicating with her. If I were you, I'd ask around about Christian marriage counselors, and through talking to pastors and people who've been with them, or looking online, I'd try to find one who was fair and very pro-reconciliation.
There are a lot of ideas and philosophies when it comes to abuse. It is possible that what you did falls into the category of verbal abuse. Some people think 'once an abuser, always an abuser' and think that if a man is a verbal abuser, then he is one hair away from beating a woman. They think that once he hits her, that's it, he's going to beat her forever. If a couple make up and argue later, they fit into their model where the abuser tries to make nice and then starts the cycle later. Some of the ideas about abuse come from a model based on a case study of one particularly abusive man.
The idea that once a man is an abuser, he will always be one, and the wife should leave is an idea that some secular feminists hold to. This is the type of thinking I saw from a domestic violence shelter when one of my relatives went to it when I was younger. I read a bit of it. In some ways, it is anti-male.
This type of philosophy isn't consistent with Christianity or the Bible, which teaches us that God sets us free, and that God works within us to will and to do according to His good pleasure. We no longer need to be slaves of sin.
So I would advise you to find a counselor whose idea about abusers in marriage is that the abuser needs to repent and the marriage needs to be reconciled. Don't go to one who thinks that once a man is an abuser, he is always an abuser, and the wife needs to leave, and that verbal abuse will lead to physical abuse until he kills her.
There may also be counselors, male and female, who like to blame everything on the husband, or the wife. Probably nowadays, blaming too much on the husband tends to be more the norm in the western world, though it may have been reversed in the past. You want to find a counselor who is fair in this regard.
Also, I believe the husband is the head of the wife, and the wife is to submit to her husband. The husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave His life for her. If I were to go to a counselor, I'd want to find someone with the same beliefs. There may be some counselors out there who do not believe this, even if they call themselves Christian counselors.
If I were you, I would pray about finding and lining up a good Christian marriage counselor, and approaching her mother about the idea, asking her advice. Her mother might pass on the suggestion to your wife if she agrees with it. She'd serve as a mediator.
The whole hired counselor thing seems to be a feature found for the most part in western, individualistic societies. It is relatively modern and grew up as individualism evolved in the west as more and more people lived in cities disconnected from more collective style social groups. An expert on collectivism and individualism pointed out that in collectivist societies, professional counselors are almost unheard of. He said many Indians live in one house with extended family members. The older relatives will give a young, newly married man, for example, advice that he should not come home so late at night, but come home early and spend time with his new wife. There are always relatives giving advice, and it is easy to go somewhere to ask for advice.
In my wife's people group, if a couple have marriage problems, their parents may meet together and try to mediate something to get them back together. My point is asking her mom for help in getting you back together is not that unnatural. If her mother is a kind, level-headed person who wants to see her stay married who can give her some wise advice, it would be better for her to listen to her than some sassy divorcee from work or the neighborhood who bad mouths men and tells her to move on and see someone else.
I'm sorry if the forum is judgmental. It sounds like you know you have done wrong. You seem willing to take responsibility. I don't know how bad you were too her. You could be beating yourself up over mistakes that are smaller than some of the ones posters on the forum who are throwing stones at you have made themselves. Or you could have treated her very badly. Either way, it doesn't make sense for people to judge you based on assumptions and not things stated in your posts or things they could actually know. I've had people accuse me of things like being in favor of wife beating and other nasty things like that for writing in these forums that I believe in wives submitting to their husbands and similar ideas like those found in this post. It does not take much to be able to post in these forums. Anyone with an Internet connection who can type can sign up. So I'm sorry if some of the posts are excessively judgmental.
