I have a question I find myself asking more often than I would like: Where in the world did we learn that it is okay to call our spouse names?

I am not talking about teenagers learning how to navigate their first serious relationship. Most of the couples I work with have been together for years, sometimes decades. These are adults who have built careers, raised children, managed households, weathered losses, and figured out how to function in complicated parts of life. And yet sometimes, in the middle of conflict, one partner will call the other a bitch, an asshole, a loser, a baby, a whore, a piece of shit, and so on.

Often, when it comes up in my office, it is described almost as an unfortunate but fairly ordinary feature of a bad argument. Someone got really angry. Things escalated. Words were exchanged. Everyone said things they shouldn't have said.

I don't think we should be so casual about it.

Anger and degradation are not the same thing

People get angry in relationships. Sometimes very angry. That is not inherently pathological, and the goal of a healthy relationship is not to eliminate anger or to communicate so perfectly that no one ever raises a voice, becomes defensive, or says something they wish they had phrased differently.

But there is a difference between expressing anger and degrading the person you love.

You can say, "I am furious with you." You can say, "What you did really hurt me." You can say, "I don't believe you," "I can't talk about this right now," or even, "I cannot believe you did that." Those statements may be difficult to hear. They may need to be worked through. But they are fundamentally different from turning toward your partner and using a word intended to diminish them.

Name-calling isn't simply an ineffective communication strategy. It is a particular form of contempt.

And contempt does something to a relationship.

Trust is about much more than fidelity

Sometimes I will tell a couple sitting in my office, "You don't trust each other."

If there hasn't been an affair, financial deception, or some other obvious betrayal, they may initially look puzzled. What do you mean we don't trust each other? Neither one of us has done anything like that.

But I am talking about emotional trust.

Can I trust you with me when you are angry with me? Can I tell you something vulnerable without wondering whether you will use it against me later? Can I make a mistake without being humiliated? Can I disagree with you without being punished? Can I say no without being degraded? Can I trust that even when you are hurt, frustrated, disappointed, or furious, there are places you simply will not go?

Couples often recognize this kind of mistrust immediately once it has a name.

You can trust that your spouse is not having an affair and still brace yourself when you realize they are getting angry. You can trust where they are on Saturday night and not trust what they will do with your vulnerability on Sunday morning. You can love someone deeply and simultaneously learn that conflict with them is not emotionally safe.

That distinction matters.

"I didn't mean it" doesn't undo what happened

One of the most common responses after someone has said something degrading is some version of, "But I didn't mean it. I was angry."

That may be completely true.

The injured partner may even know it is true. She may not actually believe her husband thinks she is a bitch. He may not actually believe his wife thinks he is pathetic. The literal meaning of the insult is often not the primary injury.

The injury is: You were willing to degrade me.

That is different.

Your partner has now learned something about what happens when you become angry enough. There may have previously been an assumption that certain things were simply outside the boundaries of the relationship. Now they know that, under the right circumstances, you will go there.

That can be surprisingly difficult to unlearn.

It is also one reason that "I already apologized" sometimes doesn't produce the repair the apologizing partner expects. An apology matters, but emotional trust is not restored by convincing someone that they should no longer be hurt. It is restored through repeated experiences of safety.

"You're too sensitive" asks the wrong question

Sometimes the response to all of this is that the other person is simply too sensitive.

I don't find that particularly compelling.

There are behaviors we do not have to become more tolerant of simply because they happen during conflict. Having a boundary around degradation is not the same thing as being unable to tolerate disagreement, criticism, frustration, or uncomfortable emotions.

Personally, if a partner called me a degrading name, I would take that extremely seriously. That isn't because I consider myself particularly sensitive. I don't. It is because I don't believe contempt belongs in the toolbox of an intimate relationship.

That distinction is important. Instead of asking, "Why does this bother you so much?" I think there is often a better question: How did degrading someone you love become an acceptable way to express anger?

Perhaps you grew up hearing it. Perhaps previous relationships normalized it. Perhaps your family fought viciously and then acted as though nothing had happened. Perhaps you learned that anything said in anger doesn't really count.

Understanding where a pattern came from can be tremendously useful. It can help us understand our triggers, our emotional reactions, and why certain behaviors feel almost automatic when conflict escalates. But understanding the origin of a behavior is different from excusing it.

At some point, adults get to decide what they bring forward with them.

Losing control isn't strength

I sometimes wonder whether we have culturally confused being unfiltered with being strong. There can be a certain admiration for the person who "lets it rip," says exactly what they think, doesn't take anything from anybody, or isn't afraid to go there.

I don't think that is toughness.

If I can only manage my behavior while I am calm, I haven't demonstrated much emotional strength. The harder task is experiencing anger—sometimes enormous anger—and remaining in charge of what I do with it. Emotional regulation isn't passivity. It doesn't require becoming agreeable, suppressing anger, or allowing someone to mistreat you. You can be forceful, direct, angry, and boundaried without becoming degrading.

In fact, I think that is a much better definition of emotional maturity: I can have a feeling without requiring everyone around me to absorb the full force of it.

This matters enormously in intimate relationships because safety is not only physical. When people tell me they want to feel safe with their partner, they are often describing something much more subtle. They want to feel secure in that person's presence. They want to trust that their partner has enough control over their own emotions that anger will not suddenly become cruelty, intimidation, humiliation, or punishment.

When that trust isn't there, people adapt. They watch tone. They monitor mood. They think about how to phrase something before bringing it up. They avoid certain subjects. They brace when they see irritation coming. They may begin organizing themselves around another person's emotional state without even realizing they are doing it.

That isn't the kind of safety most people are hoping to create with the person they love.

Some words carry particular weight

There is another layer to this conversation that I don't think should be ignored. Not every insult has identical cultural meaning.

There are gendered forms of degradation that carry particular weight. Words such as bitch, slut, whore, and cunt have a long cultural history of degrading women through their gender and sexuality. There isn't a neat male equivalent. Calling a man an asshole may certainly be contemptuous and hurtful, but it does not carry precisely the same cultural freight.

Men can, of course, be deeply degraded by their partners. The target may simply look different. Attacks on masculinity, weakness, sexual adequacy, competence, earning ability, or vulnerability can be extraordinarily painful. Calling a man a baby or a bitch specifically to humiliate him for showing emotion is not somehow harmless because the gender dynamics are different.

The larger issue is that intimate partners know where the soft tissue is.

Over time, we learn each other's insecurities, histories, fears, shame, and tender places. That knowledge is part of intimacy. When we use it to injure one another, the wound can be especially deep precisely because it came from the person entrusted with that knowledge.

What happens after contempt enters the relationship?

The consequences are not always dramatic or immediate. Sometimes they are much quieter.

A person may begin sharing less. They may become more guarded during disagreement because they are anticipating where the argument could go. They may become anxious when they notice a shift in their partner's tone or expression. They may defend themselves earlier and more aggressively because they are preparing for an attack that hasn't happened yet. They may avoid difficult conversations altogether.

Eventually both people may find themselves arguing about the argument rather than the original issue.

One person says, "I can't talk to you because you attack me." The other says, "I only get that angry because you won't talk to me." One pursues harder, the other withdraws further, and both become increasingly convinced that the other person is the problem.

This is how a relationship can lose emotional safety even when neither person has committed the kind of betrayal we traditionally associate with the word trust.

It is also why learning to regulate ourselves inside relationships matters so much. Emotional regulation does not mean never becoming angry. It means that anger does not get unrestricted access to our behavior.

Some things simply shouldn't be in the toolbox

I think we sometimes talk about communication skills in such complicated ways that we lose sight of some very basic standards of relational behavior.

You are allowed to be angry. You are allowed to need space. You are allowed to disagree with your spouse, dislike something they have done, set a boundary, say no, bring up a problem, or tell them that they have hurt you. Healthy relationships require room for all of those things.

But contempt does not need to be one of the tools available to you.

That doesn't mean a relationship is irreparable because someone has crossed this line. Human beings behave badly sometimes, and people can change patterns that have existed for a very long time. But repair starts with taking the injury seriously. It doesn't start with explaining why the word wasn't technically accurate, why the other person provoked you, or why they should be over it by now.

For couples considering marriage, this is worth paying attention to early. How someone behaves when frustrated, disappointed, jealous, hurt, or angry tells us something important about the kind of relationship the two of you are building. Compatibility isn't only about how much fun you have together or whether you want the same things from life. It also includes whether you can remain fundamentally respectful of one another when things are not going well.

For people who recognize themselves on either side of this dynamic, it can also be useful to become curious rather than merely ashamed or defensive. Why do I become so activated in conflict? Why do I tolerate treatment that I would tell someone else is unacceptable? Why do I have trouble stopping once I feel attacked? Why does my partner's anger make my body react before I have even decided what I think? Those questions often lead somewhere more useful than deciding which person is simply "too sensitive."

Ultimately, I think there should be an internal boundary that exists before the argument begins: There are things I will not do to someone I love, even when I am angry.

Your partner needs to be able to trust that anger does not revoke their right to dignity.

Because love isn't demonstrated only by how we treat someone when we feel loving. Some of the most important evidence of love may be what we refuse to do to them when we don't.