11 reasons not to bitch at your man

Bitching is overbearing complaining in a whiny, hurt or angry tone of voice. The complaint usually stems from a conflict of interest and implies a specific call to action: The recipient should feel bad and change their behavior so as not to conflict with the bitching person’s desires.

Bitching is abusive.

Psychologists have coined several terms to describe whining, nagging, complaining, guilt-tripping, insulting and threatening another person to motivate them to change their behavior. They call that emotional blackmail, psychological abuse, bullying, relational aggression, passive-aggressive behavior, a personality pathology and toxic.

The definition of mental disorder is, “a behavioral or mental pattern that may cause suffering or a poor ability to function in life." All of these terms are considered mental disorders. They're literally symptoms of insanity.

I can’t tell you how you’re supposed to live, but you don't need a prophet to tell you you're not supposed to behave abusively and insane. No matter what happens after death, no good will come from that being the legacy of your life.

Bitching is hurtful.

Bitching causes suffering on the recipient. Every time you bitch at your man, you should poke him in the chest with a fork, because that’s what you’re doing to his mind. When you finally get what you want and walk away feeling victorious, look over your shoulder at his bloody chest and ask yourself what you really accomplished. Regardless of who was more right or wrong in the conflict, the person who intentionally hurt the other to get what they wanted was the villain.

I can’t prove it’s morally wrong to hurt people, but most of the world believes it, and it’s the basis of most of our spiritual and secular laws. So in the eyes of God and the human race, bitching makes you one of the bad guys. You can say, “Nobody can judge me,” but when it's all said and done, you chose to stand with the pain-makers, and the chance you’re on the wrong side of the meaning of life is dangerously high.

Bitching is stressful.

Men understand and accept they’re going to have to put up with a certain amount of verbal abuse and manipulation from their girlfriends/wives. Every man’s patience level is different, but nobody’s is infinite, and bitching gets old fast. Living with a bitching woman is like having a giant smoke detector that follows you around beeping at 80 decibels whenever you try to be yourself and do things you enjoy. The only way to stop it is to either hit it or grovel in front of it and give it money. Even then, it only stops beeping for a few hours before it starts back up again.

You shouldn’t be proud or indifferent if that analogy applies to you. You should be asking yourself what you’re doing with your life. You're like a mad psychologist who turned your house into a Skinner box that shocks the man of your dreams when he tries to be happy.

You may as well carry a hand-held chalk board with you all day and scratch it every time he enters the room. If you don't understand why that's a bad thing, you need therapy. If you believe you're entitled to act that way, then you need an intervention.

Bitching is unfair.

Does your man bitch at you constantly? Does he control you by drowning you in guilt, shame and fear? Do you know he’d throw you and everything you’ve done for him under the bus at a moment’s notice if you stood between him and a trivial desire? If so, you know how soul crushing it is to be treated that way. If not, you probably know a woman who has been in a toxic relationship. You’ve seen the suffering in her eyes and probably told her that her man is a no good jerk, and she deserves better.

What does your man do for you? Does he buy you thoughtful gifts? Does he tell you he loves you? Does he work hard and make sacrifices so you can have a better life? Would he die for you? If he even tries to act like a knight in shining tuxedo, that says something about him. If you repay his kindness with impatience, greed and malice, that says something about you. If life were fair, your man would have a woman who treats him like a hero, and you'd be alone.

Bitching isn’t what you agreed on.

The premise of a romantic relationship is that you care about each other so profoundly, you want to spend your life reciprocating your love for each other. That's the unspoken agreement.

Conveniently for women, most men want to be a knight in shining tuxedo for their princess and build her a castle, and in return for everything they put into the relationship, all they want is motherly kindness and sexual relief. Men aren't looking for princesses because they want to install a dictator in their home. They commit, because they need an ally in this hard, dark, thankless, stormy fucked up world who actually cares about them and will be their shelter from the storm.

Every time you bitch at your man, you break your contract, make a liar out of yourself and leave your knight out in the rain. That’s not being clever. That's being a parasite.

Bitching weakens your man.

Studies have shown people are more likely to believe something is true the more they hear it, even if they know it isn’t true. This is known as the illusory-truth effect.

Even if you don’t explicitly tell your man he’s a useless, worthless failure who isn't good enough to do anything right, treating him like it can condition him to believe it, which will create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Even if his confidence and self-worth are strong enough to withstand being chipped away by the constant condemnation of the person he wants to please most in the world, the mental effort will drain his stamina. You don't need a degree in psychology to understand this. Men can't endure living with a giant smoke detector constantly tearing down their self worth at 80 decibels while stabbing them in the chest with a fork. It wears them down into miserable, broken zombies.

Even if you lack the humanity to care how horrible it is to do that to a person, just know that bitching might get you what you want from your man in the short term, but it will increasingly diminish his ability to provide every kind of support in the future.

Bitching erodes your relationship.

If you know a notorious bitcher, give them a copy of the book, “How Full Is Your Bucket?” To quote the book's Amazon page, “The authors, a grandfather-grandson team, explore how using positive psychology in everyday interactions can dramatically change our lives. They suggest that we all have a bucket within us that needs to be filled with positive experiences, such as recognition or praise. When we're negative toward others, we use a dipper to remove from their buckets and diminish their positive outlook. When we treat others in a positive manner, we fill not only their buckets but ours as well.”

This isn’t rocket science. Treating people like shit makes them feel like shit, and treating them great makes them feel great. The more you treat your man like shit, the less reason he has to be nice to you, and the more reasons he has to count you among his enemies and get as far away from you as he can.

Bitching is a foreign language men can’t understand.

The differences in men and women’s brains cause them to communicate slightly differently, which can cause major misunderstandings. Bitching may be one of them. In the same way Americans often mistakenly assume Chinese people are angry, because the Chinese language uses intonations liberally that are reserve for aggression in the English language, maybe women don’t realize they’re bitching, because in their mind, they’re just expressing their feelings. But in men’s goal-oriented minds, a woman bitching sounds like an angry football coach bitching them out for losing the game.

Women can argue that men just need to understand how they communicate and be patient with them, but men can argue that women just need to stop bitching, when they know it triggers an instinctual psychological response in their brain that puts them into fight or flight mode. We can argue who should be more accommodating all day, but ultimately, if you want someone to do something for you, you have the best chance of succeeding if you speak in the language they understand.

Bitching is counterproductive.

There’s an old saying, “You can catch more bees with honey than vinegar.” A woman I know and respect expressed this timeless truth another way, “If you’re nice to me, I’ll bend over backwards for you, but if you’re disrespectful, I’ll do everything I can to not do shit for you.”

This is as true in relationships as it is in life. If you bitch at your man, he’ll do the bare minimum for you, but if you give him a blowjob, he’ll give you 110% for the next week.

Bitching creates negative karma ghosts.

Karma ghosts are a metaphor for the way your actions have ripple effects across society. It’s an extension of the premise to the movie, “Pay it Forward” and "How Full Is Your Bucket." When you do nice things for your man, he goes out into the world with a full bucket that sloshes over into the buckets of everyone he meets.

When you tear down, stress out, and piss off your man, he goes out into the world in a bad state of mind. He’s less patient, kind and enthusiastic. This causes him to empty other people's buckets, and the damage he does to other people will affect how they treat others.

Your negativity will spread like wildfire until the whole world becomes depressed and angry. You may hate the world and say good riddance, but the point is, the problem will eventually come back to you in ways you could never predict.

Bitching creates negative immediate karma.

There probably isn’t any spiritual force in the universe that sucks up your negativity and drops it back out of the sky into your life in the form of personalized inconveniences. Spiritual karma would be redundant, because the damage is already done the moment you think or act negatively. You experience reality through your mind. When you think and act ugly, that’s what you experience. It’s how the universe looks and feels to you. The effect is just as real as if you had a tiny cloud above your head raining anxiety and anger.

Anytime you justify bitching, you’re justifying painting the walls of your universe with shit. If you don’t care about anyone but yourself, the best thing you can do for yourself is be as nice as possible to everyone, especially the people you spend the most time and share the most bills with. Immediately, and in the long run, the better you treat people, the better life is for everyone, whereas bitching turns your life and everyone else’s to shit.