Are you looking for tips on how to save your relationship? Stop the name calling. Name calling is harmful and a sign of verbal abuse. It destroys the victims’ self confidence because they start to believe the insults and blame themselves for the abuse.

Name calling, like any other form of abuse, gets worse with time. Men and women who engage in name calling usually have a desire to control their spouses by making them feel poorly about themselves. As the need for control grows, so does the name calling. With time, minor put downs become hateful insults.

Dealing with Name Calling

People who engage in name calling are not necessarily bad people. They just lack the tools to deal with their anger without lashing out. Behind every angry insult lies an unmet need.  Therefore, the only way for spouses to stop the name calling is to look inside themselves and identify the unmet needs that are causing them to lash out in frustration. Once identified, these needs can be communicated to one another and fulfilled.

Communication in relationships is essential to ending verbal abuse. The way spouses communicate their needs and feelings to each other can make a whole lot of difference. For instance, beginning statements with “I” is better than beginning statements with “you.” “I feel sad” sounds a whole lot better than “you make me sad.” The former shows that the person is taking responsibility for his or her feelings instead of blaming someone else for them.

Some couples need help to identify the needs underneath the anger and communicate them in a productive manner. Couple’s counseling is often necessary for these couples. It helps them to unravel even the most complex of needs and decide how to go about fulfilling them.

Name calling is a cycle where spouses feed off each other’s negativity.  The victim contributes to the cycle through criticism, blame, shame and other forms of negativity. The abuser takes this negativity and turns it into anger and verbal abuse. Both parties have to be involved in order to stop the cycle.

Many couples spend too much time looking for advice on how to save a relationship when the answer is simple: stop the name calling. Verbal abuse will run any happy marriage into the ground and should be avoided at all costs. To avoid it, couples must learn how to identify and communicate their needs effectively.