Note: I love it when Brittany Wong, an editor with the Huffington Post Divorce section emails and asks me to write something for her on a certain subject. She’s usually polling several therapists and usually needs only a few comments, but her requests always get me thinking and I end up making a whole blog out of it. This one was, “Things you should never say to your husband.” Here goes …

I’m a therapist whose practice is in the Bible belt area of the southern United States. I’ve worked in other areas of the country and do internet therapy with people from all over the world, but here in Arkansas a therapist must tread carefully around entrenched conservative values. Although I hate it that so many people think this way, a huge percentage of the couples I see involve a husband who believes he’s mandated to be the boss, and a wife who thinks she must keep her mouth shut and bear what she believes are his domination and unreasonable requests, demands and rules.

Still, a person can only hold their tongue so long, and many southern belles end up dishing out a little of what they’ve been getting after a while. When they do, it isn’t pretty.

I don’t care how unfair your spouse has been, hitting below the belt is never acceptable, and there’s always a better way to tell your spouse what you need without verbally annihilating him. When it comes to dishing the venom on a man, there are subject areas that can cause permanent wounding and resentment that is exceedingly difficult to get past. Here are some of the things I’ve heard in session and are things a woman should never say to her husband:

• You are such a disappointment (or failure). Telling a man he hasn’t been good enough cuts to the bone. It’s like taking a knife to his ego, slicing it into pieces, and then putting it in a blender. It preys on every man’s worst fear of not being man enough to be all his family needs him to be. Even if it’s true, he may not be able to recover from his spouse saying it out loud.
• I should have married (put the name of a former lover here). Expressing regrets about your marital selection will make your man so angry and shame-filled that I suggest you wear body-armor when doing it and live in an identity protection program afterwards.
• You don’t cut it in the bedroom. Enough said.
• Are you gay? So he’s not a jack rabbit in the bedroom, asking a heterosexual man if he is gay will do nuclear-weapon level damage to his ego and won’t improve your sex life.
• I’m not attracted to you anymore. This is a game changer. Once you let your husband know he is no longer an object of your sexual desire, every sexual advance he may make will be dread and anger-filled instead of the emotionally connected act of love it’s meant to be.
• Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? Insinuating that his body is no longer the Porsche-like machine it once was will shrink any chance that he might have confidence within the marriage and maybe anywhere else, and he’ll probably up his calorie intake just to spite you.
• If you have a heart attack, I won’t call 911. Now he knows you wish he was dead. It’s not a real motivator for self-improvement, but it is for him to start considering only himself in decisions moving forward.
• You never finish anything. The woodwork in the house is half painted and has been sitting for two years. You never got certified as an IT tech so you could make more money, and you are three classes short of a college degree. Your family is waiting and you know it, still it hurts to be called out on being fearful and unmotivated.
• I should have listened to my family when they told me not to marry you. Hindsight is 20/20 they say, but this insult stings – especially if you know deep down inside she is right.
• You’re not a man.

Even though I hear these things in sessions, couples still manage to stay together after much damage is done and suffer in a miserable state for many years without correcting it. This is a choice I would never make, and if it’s something you’ve been doing then ask yourself:

1. Why is this acceptable?
2. Why you don’t take action to change it?
3. If you can’t do #1 and #2 why don’t you move yourself to healthier waters and leave the relationship?

Subjecting yourself to terrible things and behaving terribly is not a healthy way to live. I recommend reading the book, “Healing the Shame that Binds You” by John Bradshaw if that’s where you find yourself. You really need to start treating yourself and others a whole lot better.

One of the biggest mistakes couple’s make in therapy is to come to the first session, leave feeling validated and hopeful, only to find that one partner is still screwing up and doing stupid things. The offended partner gets angry, says something like, “See, I knew you’d never change!” Then they pick up the phone and cancel their second appointment.

Really, people? Were you thinking that couple’s therapy would give you a magic bullet in one single session? Did it not occur to you that therapy is a process that takes a lot of time and practice and that things may be up and down along the way?

Canceling your second therapy appointment after one person makes a misstep guarantees:

• You will get more of the same of what you’ve been getting.
• You’ve missed an opportunity to understand and learn what happened and what parts of your personality and relationship skills need tweaking, and
• How to make better relationship choices in the future.

Every person I have ever met would benefit from extensive training in how to choose the right mate, like a couple I saw recently, Joe and Suzie Blow*, who have been dating for less than a year.

The story is common: Joe met Suzie online, he was very attracted to her and proceeded to seduce her by being romantic, attentive and thoughtful. Like a hungry fish in the sea, affection-starved Suzie fell under his spell. Five weeks later the truth was revealed – he is a complete and total emotional avoidant who is insanely jealous and skeptical of every move the woman makes, certain that in his frequent absences (he’s avoidant, remember?) men flock to be near her. She was crushed and baffled by his emotional withdrawal and jealousy, but was still fighting to get the original 5-week wonderful Joe to return to the relationship. It had been 10 months since he’d shown up, and now they were seeing me.

“I feel like I am chasing a butterfly,” said Suzy. “This beautiful thing I want so badly flits around and won’t let me catch it in my net. I just want to be with him and love him and he won’t let me. I desire no other man, only Joe.”

The problem Joe and Suzie have is very common, unfortunately. Yes, he has an emotional and intimacy disability that requires him to be walled-off physically and emotionally. You’d think people like this would avoid relationships altogether, but no. Being the human beings that they are, they always return to the dating pool and attempt a relationship, only to emotionally torture the person who falls in love with his seductive wonderful self on the front end of the relationship. These men and women always run for the hills emotionally when they perceive they’re being smothered, asked to change, or about to be hurt, and that’s when the dysfunctional dance of pursuit and avoid begins. Suzie admitted that she’s been so frustrated with him that she had told him, “I’m done,” at least 14 times in the time they’ve been together.

“Don’t say those words anymore or anything like them while we’re doing this work,” I said, and she agreed.

So in our session I explained the pattern to them, told them what we needed to do would take much work, but it was definitely possible to break the pattern and to move into a functional, adult relationship. They seemed relieved and left my office holding hands, laughing and flirting.

A few days later she texted to cancel their second appointment. “He went back to his job (in another town),” she said. “And he wouldn’t make plans to see me in the next few weeks because he said I sent a picture of my legs to a man I know at Cross Fit.”

I shook my head at the phone.

“He must have hacked into my computer or phone,” she said. “But he didn’t pay very close attention because it was actually my girlfriend’s legs, and it was she who sent the photo to the guy. I’m done.”

Typical. But what makes me the saddest is that these two people probably won’t break up for now. They’ll just keep engaging in this pattern of craziness. One day they will break up for good, and then they’ll both return to the dating pool and repeat the pattern with someone else. How I wish people who really need it would stick with their therapy.

*The Blows are a composite of some recent clients who dropped out of therapy.

When I go to the grocery store I almost always see a shopping cart left in the middle of a parking spot. If I can, I take it and use it or put it in a spot where it’s supposed to go. When I see someone abandoning their cart or leaving things around anywhere that someone else will have to pick up after them, I wonder, “What are you thinking? Do you not think about how you are creating unnecessary work for others?”

I also bristle at seeing someone abandoning an unwanted item on a shelf and aisle nowhere near where it came from, or trash thrown out a window, graffiti on a wall. My feelings rev up to a higher level when it comes to animals or children that are abandoned … don’t get me started!

So the thought occurred to me, why do I care so much about these things? Am I arrogant and self-righteous and being a harsh judge or is it reasonable to be annoyed? A voice in my head took me back to my teen years when I would backpack and camp with a group from a local outdoor outfitter’s store. Our guide told us before we left, “The golden rule of camping is to pack out what you pack in, so don’t leave any trash anywhere and leave the land looking like you weren’t there.” It made total sense. Come into nature, enjoy it, and leave it the way you found it so others can enjoy it.

I think I took the whole idea on as one of my life’s ore values that day, and it still shows up in lots of ways, all of them having to do with the theme of leaving not just people, but the world the same or better than we found it.

I’m talking about your stuff, my stuff, other’s people’s stuff, you, me, people, places, things big and small. It’s a positive way to live, and I really like living this way.

In the therapy room I sometimes deal with clients that are leaving the universe a little worse for the wear, as opposed to making the world a better place. Legal crimes, destruction, abuse, molestation, addiction, stalking, cheating, lying, and the nightmare of how all of those things affect others. It is truly painful for me to see, especially when a person just doesn’t seem to care about the effects at all. I will never understand it, but if I get to ask questions when this life is over about why some people care so much, and others so little, I will.

Now, did I mention that I have the issue of not putting things away or back in their place immediately in my home? Yes, the Becky who loves to clean up the environment and gather up shopping carts is not so adept at home. One of my biggest personal challenges is in keeping my home tidy. Whereas I notice things out of place in a store, community or parking lot, in my own home things will sit on the counter, shelf or table for months before I will notice them and put them away. I have come to believe I have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), unique to the home. Where did she come from? My mother is the most disorganized woman I know, so I simply never saw it done when I was growing up.

I work very hard on the Becky at home, I must say she is much better than her mother is, but she remains a work in progress. As I was writing this I noticed a cast iron skillet that has been sitting on my kitchen counter for a couple of months. The truth is that I didn’t even see it, until I did see it.

What I am wanting to point here as that all the parts of our personality have their polar opposite. The good and bad, the black or white, the up or down. There is the awake and aware, organized, socially responsible Becky, and the absent-minded, cluttered and disorganized Becky. If I want to be mentally healthy, I need to learn to love and accept them both, and ideally, to understand them both. To do that I might see through the lens and get into the mind of organized Becky and note how she thinks and processes things, and then do the same for cluttered Becky. Bringing these precious parts together and accepting and understanding them is the best way to overcome the parts of them that you would prefer not to have. I put the skillet up this morning before work, and hopefully when I get home tonight I will scan the kitchen counters for other errant items. I will feel good about putting those things away. And next time I go to the store and see a cart not put away, I’ll probably grab it and roll it to where it needs to be. Clearly I like the deeds of one part of me a little bit better than the other, and that’s OK!

This skillet has been on my kitchen counter for at least two months.