My time with Dr Phil
 

So I had a stomach bug yesterday and spent the morning on the couch before getting into work. I stumbled upon the dr Phil show and I could swear it was my ex sitting there. Dr Phil just leveled the guy-calling him immature, narcissistic, abusive, a liar and a cheat with little empathy and all of it stemming from his lack of a good role model as a dad. One thing that stuck out to me....as this guy is responding he's making little jokes....covering stuff with humor. Dr Phil called him on it and told him all the things you're trying to joke about are the real issues in you. I recalled one of my exs infamous quotes during our marriage and even before. He would joke about " men are superior , women are inferior". I used to crack up (like ten years ago). But I witnessed that attitude come full and center for the first time a few weeks after we got married during a drubken tirade. And throughout the years his drubken tirades got more and more and closer together and I realized that was his true self....the night I called the police on him he had been using me as his verbal punching bag telling me how I didn't make enough money (thank God I didn't choose to stay at home bc then I really would have been worthless in his mind by making no money!!), that I was worthless and wouldn't amount to anything without my dad's money and that I should be thanking him endlessly bc he paid for our families health insurance for years while I did nothing. A week or so prior to that fateful night I had gotten home from a long day at work and gymnastics and I came home to drunk husband that screamed at me cursing me out telling me "God, you can't do ******* anything....you can't do one GD thing I ask you to do....." Bc I forgot to pick up a light bulb on the way home. Who he truly was and is shined more brightly than his lying words. I was told constantly I was a p*ssy and weak and over sensitive after being abused. About a year or so prio to that there was an issue with his cousin and his wife-my drunk husband went to their house and physically cornered his wife - she felt scared and wished her husband had been there with her and I told her I understood-welcome to my life. He got back home and I told him how awful that was to do to her and he called her a p*ssy, too. And then called his cousin a p*ssy bc he wasn't a man (according to my husband). Man, in his mind, literally everyone is a p*ssy-especially women that have feelings.

Talk about entitlement and women issues. He hadn't been joking-he really felt that way.....he felt superior and therefore I was ok to abuse.

Any of y'all deal with this, too? The off handed jokes that you realized were not jokes at all?

Anyway , just got me thinking that another time actions were not at all aligned with words.

Well, things like this are probably the reason I am not married and have no desire to be married ever again. I was raised by a strong woman whose husband (my father) left us when I was in 4th grade. My mom had never worked but she managed to raise me and worked in factory jobs all her life because she had no training for anything else.

She instilled in me the need to make sure that I always worked; that I never had to depend on any man to get me through life. While that may have jaded me a bit, it has been my saving grace. I tended to choose partners badly, but I never allowed anyone to ride roughshod over me. I divorced my last husband 10 years ago and decided I do much better on my own.

I read that dr. Phil is no longer even a board certified doc. I take his program with grains of salts.

I wasn't saying he is a know it all....he's not....the point wasn't thst it was dr Phil-it could have been any dr, therapist, priest, person. My point was the question i posed....if anyone else had dealt with the off handed jokes that turned out to not be jokes at all.

Yes, I get your point on the jokes. Sometimes they cover something that is pretty important. Humor is certainly a double edged tool.

Pretty close; Dr. Phil was never a board certified anything. He was a licensed clinical psychologist up until he retired said license in 2006. ...and a grain of salt is more than his show is worth.....

(o:

I gotchya, For. They weren't really "jokes" at all. Great to point out hoW to look for signs. Something else I learned to look for when joining the dating pool and after my divorce is to find out how they feel about their own mother and if there's respect there or not.

I've found that what were 'jokes' when people were young gradually become their truths as they get older and maybe a bit of senility creeps in. Out go social inhibitions and the real attitudes pop out.

I often thought social inhibitions were a bad thing, but after spending time with people who've lost them has changed my mind.

"The perfect woman is a deaf mute nympho whose father owns a liquor store."

One of my ex's favorites...except it was a life goal disguised as a joke.

"I want a 50s wife who brings in an 80s paycheck."

Yeah, he had a lot of them...warnings disguised as humor. He really had no sense of humor, just misogynist, racist, or bigoted jokes he saved up. But just like yours, if I was offended or hurt, he was just "kidding" and I had no sense of humor...then he'd be mad for three days.

It's been 25 years since I've had any contact with him, thank goodness, and I hope he and his new wife (the marriage counselor) are very happy. Bless their hearts.

I agree that jokes are often the "real" feelings and you were wise to pick up on this--

I think I do it too when talking about myself--often
I am self-depreciating and negative about me, and I try to make it funny
but really it is something to pay attention to and change.

Helpful thread--thanks!

Yep-another one was always joking about how (jokingly said) that women should just stay at home in the kitchen and take care of the kids....always said jokingly. During multiple drubken tirades I was told that my only duty was to feed fun and f**k him-so, yeah....he really thought that.
Aries-same for my ex....racist, mysogomost, bigot....all disguised in jokes at first until they weren't humorous. :/

Yikes Aries. Pretty scary. Even more scary that he married the Marriage counselor!! Wow. Just. Wow.

As an elementary teacher, I used to tell students when they said, "I'm just joking." that jokes were funny to both the listener and the teller. If the one listening didn't think it was funny than it was't joking it was just being mean.

Yes, it's very interesting to watch someone call them out on their BS who has no involvement in their life and does not care how they feel about being called out. I watch Dr. Phil sometimes, he has done some good work for some people. I know it's entertainment, but he can access alot of resources the general public cannot for themselves.

I have been amazed how many times it seems like my X sitting up there the similarities are so much alike.

I was told the perfect woman would be a mute (no nagging), and that I scored highly in his list of candidates because I´m not very talkative. All of this as a joke, supposedly, but I soon found out he was only interested in talking about himself, not ever asking much about me. He even changed the subject whenever I was telling him something that was bothering me about my life, he didn´t care at all!

And yes, misogynist, racist, homophobic - he was all of that. Took me a time to accept it was true, because it is so different from the values I was brought up with! But when the "jokes" repeat themselves you can assume they aren´t jokes at all.

Refiner: very true about the mother thing, XABf had no respect at all for his own mom. In the beginning I would get caught up in this, trying to see how she mistreated him, but then it dawned on me that there was nothing wrong with her, she did love him as best she could only he wouldn´t let her - I suspect some concern about his drinking on her part.

Mine was joking that it is all women's fault because Eve ate the apple. I never liked it, never considered it funny. But now that I think about it, there is something creepy about my ex's relationship with women, especially his mom. In the end, I started getting the feeling that the role he had for me was taking care of him the way his mom never did, kinda compensate the motherly caretaker role. I'm pretty sure Freud would have a blast with my ex.

OMG, I just wrote my post and saw this! Yes, yes, and yes.

Well, I wasn't very clear there...my ex married a marriage counselor, not one we had seen.

I will say, though, that unless a whole lot of evolving happened after I left him, she's got her work cut out for her,

Bless her heart. :lmao:

Oh Healthy-you have no idea the level of creepy and dysfunction and secrets and lies with my ex and his mommy. Freud could write a book on just the two of them!

Aries....

Bless her heart indeed. :c011: Ha!!!!!!

You're definitely not alone in this. AXH joked about a women's place. He'd make jokes about different racial stereotypes, including about my own heritage. When I objected I was too sensitive, a kill-joy, a stick in the mud. Geesh, he was JUST kidding. He'd joke about going to Japan to get a real wife who knew her place was to always be a few steps behind her husband. (That one was lovely on several levels: racist and sexist all at the same time.)

At the beginning of the relationship they were much, much fewer and farther between, and he'd brush them off, "TU, you know I'm friends with So-and-So, they're FROM Pakistan." He'd have an example of a friend of whatever nationality he'd just laughed about. "And I'm with you. How could I have meant a racist comment, really?" or "I'm dating you, a math major who went to college on a merit scholarship. How could I think women are dumb? I don't. It's just a joke." It wasn't a matter of me being strong or smart, it was trusting that the initial few jokes were what he claimed them to be, that they just odd one-off comments.

It was only over time that they became more frequent and more blatantly not really jokes. It wasn't one day: no jokes, next day, bam: a million horrendous slurs. It was gradual, it escalated slowly, both in frequency and level of disrespect, it was insidious and sly. It was hard to see much less grab a hold of and understand when stuck in the middle of a storm. It's only after being away from him and safe, that I've been able to see how it progressed.