Latest / Rooted & Real With Keenan / Contempt: When You Stop Respecting the Person You Love
Transcript
- Keenan: Alright, so we're gonna keep going with talking about the four horsemen. which goes over which is one of the Gottman things that they talk about. just wanna say thank you all for you know sticking alongside me in this time. We've had a l- we had a bunch of stuff happen last week. I'm like so tired, but I'm here to get this stuff out and I'm here to talk about it. So thank you all for being patient. And you know, feel free to check out the Instagram, Rooted and Real with Keenan, Facebook page, YouTube. and we're gonna keep going with all this. So we are gonna continue this series on the Four Horsemen, a framework talked about by the Gottmans, John and Julie. And so last week we talked about criticism. Just a little review here. Criticism says you are the problem. So today we're talking about something a little bit more destructive. Contempt. Contempt doesn't just say this. I'm frustrated with you. Contempt says I'm better than you. And that difference matters. So contempt can look like this: it can look like sarcasm, it can look like mocking, it can look like eye rolling, name-calling, belittling, talking down to your spouse. Intimidating them in a r disrespectful way, using humor to humiliate them, or communicating disgust without even saying a word. Sometimes contempt can be loud. Sometimes it's subtle. But it might sound like, wow, great job. You managed to mess that up too. Or I swear I have to explain every freaking thing to you. Or you're acting like a big child, a big baby. Or of course you forgot. And sometimes it's just a facial expression expression. You know. The eye roll, the smirk, the sigh, that look that just communicates, I cannot believe I have to deal with you. That is contempt. This next part is really important. You can be angry with your spouse without holding them in contempt. Anger says this, I don't like what happened. Contempt says, I don't respect you. Anger can still exist inside a relationship where dignity is intact. Contempt attacks dignity itself. That's why contempt is so corrosive. You're no longer addressing the behavior. You're communicating that the other person is somehow beneath you. And once that becomes normal, emotional safety starts to disappear. So contempt usually doesn't appear out of nowhere. It builds. And often slowly, very slowly. It can grow from unresolved resentment, repeated disappointments, feeling unheard, feeling taken for granted, unforgiven hurt, longstanding criticism, power struggles, or repeated conflict where nothing ever seems to change. Over time, People begin collecting evidence against each other. You start keeping like a mental file. Here's another example of why I can't trust you. Here's another example of how selfish you are. Here's another example of how I'm the responsible one. And eventually the story becomes this. I'm the mature one. I'm the one who actually cares. I'm the one who holds the family together. I'm the one doing everything. And they become the irresponsible one, the selfish one, the lazy one, the difficult one. Now the marriage has moved from conflict to hierarchy. One person standing above everyone else. The other is being pushed beneath. So from cognitive behavioral perspective, contempt is often fueled by repeated interpretations. Maybe your spouse forgot something. The thought becomes they don't care. Then they never care. Then they're selfish. Then eventually they are just a selfish person. And that's a huge shift. A behavior becomes a global judgment about identity. This is where thinking patterns like over-generalization, labeling, mental filtering, and all or nothing thinking can start driving the relationship. Your spouse seeing you stop seeing the whole person. You only see the worst. You only see the worst evidence. And once your brain starts filtering your spouse through contempt, even neutral behaviors can get interrupted negatively. They walk in five minutes late. Typical. They ask a question. They're clueless. They make a mistake. Of course. And eventually nothing they do gets interpreted generous generously anymore. So this is where the biblical perspective becomes very direct. Scripture consistently warns against arrogance, mockery, and treating others as beneath us. Philippians two says believers tells believers to act with humility and consider others rather than operating from selfish ambition or conceit. Romans twelve warns against thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought. Proverbs repeatedly connects pride with destruction. And in marriage, contempt is often pride wearing relationship clothes. It says, I'm more competent than you. I'm more mature than you. I'm more spiritual than you. I'm more reasonable than I'm the reasonable one. And sometimes Christians make this even worse by using spiritual language as weapons. You need to pray more. You're not leading this family. You're not being submissive. You're not acting like a godly husband. You're not acting like a Proverbs 31 woman. That's not spiritual maturity, by the way. That can become spiritualized contempt. Using scripture, using the Bible to shame your spouse is not the same thing as speaking truth and love. This is where I think Christian marriage has to go deeper than communication technique. Your spouse is not just your husband or your wife. They're the person. Created in the image and likeness of God. That means even in conflict, they have dignity. Even when they fail, even when they're disappointing you, even when they are wrong, you do not have to approve of behavior to protect someone's dignity. And you do not have to minimize hurt in order to remain respectful. You can confront, you can set boundaries, you can say something like, This is unacceptable, you can say, This behavior is hurting our marriage. But you do not need to humiliate someone to hold them accountable. Contempt always contains hidden comparison. I would never do that. I'm not like you. I'm the adult here. I'm the responsible one. I'm the one who cares. That kind of thinking can feel justified. And sometimes, maybe, you truly are carrying more responsibility in a certain area. But here's the danger in that. Correctness can turn into superiority. Insuperiority kills connection. Because once you believe you are morally or intellectually above your spouse, curiosity disappears. Comparison disappears. I'm sorry. Compassion disappears. Grace disappears. And eventually love gets replaced by judgment. So imagine this a husband forgets, a husband forgets to pick something up from the store. His wife says this, seriously, I asked you for one thing. One thing. And sometimes I feel like I'm married to another child. Notice the message here. The problem is no longer the forgotten item. The message is you are incompetent. Now, flip that around. A wife makes a financial mistake. Her husband says, This is why I handle the money. You clearly can't be trusted with it. Again, this issue. The issue is move beyond behavior. Now we're attacking capability and dignity. And once those statements start stacking up, the relationship becomes less safe. The Gottmans describe the antidote to contempt as building a culture of appreciation and respect. That does not mean ignoring problems. It means refusing to let problems become the only thing you see. One of the dangers of resentment is that your attention becomes selective. You notice every mistake, you overlook every contribution. So one practical intervention is retaining your attention. Ask this. What is my spouse doing right? What effort are they making? What will I do to respect? What do I do? What do I still respect about them? What quality do I originally admire? What do they carry that I sometimes take for granted? And then say it out loud, not just in your head. So scripture gives us language for this too. Philippians four talks about intentionally dwelling in things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and worthy of praise. Now that passage is broader than marriage, but the principles still apply here. If you train your mind to search only for everything wrong with your spouse, you will eventually find exactly what you're looking for. If you intentionally notice what is honorable and worthy of appreciation, that changes the emotional climate. I often do this exercise a lot with clients where I bring out a white mug and I say something like, Tell me everything this mug is not, or tell me everything this mug is is, is. And I talk about the comparison, how easy it is to do one more than the other. And I'm not talking about denying things. I'm talking about balance. So forgiveness does not mean pretending. We need to be careful with Christian language around forgiveness. Forgiveness does not mean that never mattered. Forgiveness does not mean you cannot have boundaries. Forgiveness does not mean there are no consequences. And forgiveness does not mean you must trust someone immediately after betrayal. But forgiveness does challenge us not to build our identity around permanent moral superiority. Because sometimes contempt becomes I will never let you forget what you did. The offense stays alive in every argument, every mistake becomes evidence for the same. Prosecution. At some point, either the relationship is working towards repair or the relationship is living inside of a courtroom. So here's the hard question. Do you respect your spouse? Not do you love them? Not are you still married? Not do you believe divorce is wrong? Do you actually respect them? Because you can stay committed to a marriage while quietly despising the person you're married to. And that's not a healthy covenant. Christian marriage is not just saying in the same house. It's learning how to treat one another with honor, humility, truth, and grace. So here's a challenge for men. Men listening. Sarcasm can become an easy shield. Sometimes men use humor to avoid vulnerability. You can turn your wife's concern into a joke, mocker emotions. Make her comments about her being dramatic. Dismiss her because the conversation makes you uncomfortable. But humor stops being funny when it becomes a weapon. So ask yourself this. Am I joking with my wife or am I joking at her expense? So here's a challenge from women. Contempt can also show up through disrespect disguised as frustration. I'm talking about eye rolling, talking to your husband like he's incompetent, correcting him in front of other people, comparing him to someone else's husband, using phrases like, must be nice to have a husband who actually dah dah da. Those comments make com may communicate far more than frustration. They communicate humiliation. Sometimes people hear all this and think, but I genuinely don't respect my spouse right now. And that might be true. Maybe trust was broken. Maybe there's been dishonesty. Maybe responsibilities have been neglected. Maybe years of hurt had piled up. Then the goal is not pretending respect exists. The goal is asking this what would rebuilding respect require? Accountability, behavioral change, repentance, consistency, new boundaries, repair. Respect does not is not rebuilt by slogans or social media. It is rebuilt by trustworthy behavior over time. But when that process happens, content still will not repair the relationship. Humiliation does not produce intimacy. So here's your challenge. For the next seven days, do two things. Catch contempt when it shows up. Pay attention to things like sarcasm, eye rolling, mocking, name calling, exaggerated sighting, whatever, talking down. Public embarrassment. And when you notice it, stop, pause, pit the brakes. Second, every day identify one specific thing you appreciate about your spouse. Not something generic like, you're great. Be specific. Thank you for handling bedtime tonight. I notice you checked in on me today. I appreciate how hard you work for our family. Thank you for listening earlier. I still admire the way you care for people. Appreciation is not manipulation. It is intentional attention. So final thought. Criticism says this you're the problem. Contempt says I'm better than you. Neither creates the kind of marriage God calls us towards. Christian marriage requires humiliate humility, not humiliation. Truth, not superiority. Accountability, not mockery. And grace that never requires us to pretend harmful behavior is acceptable. The question this week is simple. When my spouse interacts with me, do they leave feeling disrespected or diminished? Next time we're going to talk about the third horseman, defensiveness. Why we explain, why we justify, why we counterattack, and why being technically right can still keep a marriage stuck. Until next time, stay rooted, stay real, and remember. You cannot build intimacy while treating the person beside you like they're beneath you.