Marriage and Low Self-Esteem

Mar 02

By Jay Slupesky

: St. Michael Church, Livermore; Photo © 2009 Jay Slupesky

There have been many marriage, relationship, and love books written over the years, some quite good and very popular, but in my opinion, not enough has been written about the corrosive effect that low self-esteem inflicts upon a marriage, a problem that I see on a daily basis.

Individuals with self-esteem problems may view themselves in one or more of the following ways: deficient, lacking, a “loser”, hard to love, or unworthy of love. Now, since I believe the key relationship question is: “how much do I matter to you?”, those people with a self-image of unworthiness are going to be haunted frequently by doubts about how much they matter to the spouse, because they don’t feel deserving enough.

As a result, low self-esteem individuals tend to be on-guard to an extreme degree for perceived slights from the spouse or for any sign of a problem in the marriage. They typically will react defensively and strongly when they feel some type of threat. This means there will be more conflict than is normal when self-esteem is an issue.

Another problem exacerbated by low self-esteem is non-communication, and I’ll talk more about that in my next post.

Tags: conflict, self-esteem

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Attachment.

3 Responses to “Marriage and Low Self-Esteem”

Bill Coffin Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Jay

What books would you suggest for those with low self esteem?

Bill
Jay Slupesky Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
“Breaking the Chain of Low Self-Esteem” by Marilyn Sorenson. The book is oriented towards women, but I think men can still benefit from it.
Heart Broken Says:
May 21st, 2010 at 11:21 am
My wife, soon to be ex-wife has an extreem low self esteem. Every attempt to give her praise was deflected; You look great/I’m fat, Love your hair/its grey, your eyes sparkle today/i have wrinkles. No matter what I did. it was so defeating, but I accepted it as her. Eventually she became quite, couldn’t tell me what she was feeling - wouldn;t tell me and then had an emotional affair (at least), lied about everything, blamed me for eveything and told me I had all of thes bad thoughts about her, didn’t love her, etc. She moved out, filed and just last week - a year later… Told me she “Thinks” she has an overly sensitive self esteem. I couldn’t get her to counselling (2 sessions she just spewed out lies and projection) before she filed. I ended up with heart surgery due to stress and heart brake. My two daughters are doing better, bu the family is broken and she though she admits to having problems and wants to start from square one, she wants a divorce still. so sad.

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