My Husband Embarrasses Me in Social Situations (11 Tips)

A happy married life is not concerned merely with things that occur within the bedroom but also outside it. You should pose as a happy couple and inspire the youngsters. You might dream of becoming your children's best parents and becoming great examples for their future. 

However, all this comes to a halt when your husband says something or does something that evokes a sense of disgust in you. It makes you wonder why you selected him as your husband after all. If you have been feeling this lately and questioning all your decisions regarding your marriage, worry not. I am here to help you figure out what to do when your husband embarrasses you in social situations. 

Reasons why your husband embarrasses you socially 

He is not aware that he is causing embarrassment. He thinks that you like that sulkiness. Perhaps you have always pretended to like it but now you are not able to do it anymore. However, there can be more than one reason to fit a scenario. Read below to know more.

#1 He hates you 

Perhaps your husband is as embarrassed by you as you are of him. The difference is that he is embarrassed because of your class, culture, education, or networking, whereas you are tired owing to his actions, conduct, and misconduct. 

He might be doing all this deliberately. If you are from a well-off family and have high-class people in your life who love to throw parties every weekend but you have always been more grounded in your means and you don’t enjoy yourself in such parties. Initially, he might have been putting up a facade or trying hard to mingle with your sets of people to please you. 

However, now if any of your folks try to talk to him in a condescending tone or take up a mocking and challenging tone against him, he has vowed not to spare that person even if it is at your cost. His fondness for you is gradually changing into hatred. 

Give him a break from society and spend some time as a married couple together. Go for a staycation if possible. You need to make your priorities sorted. Your husband comes first before other relations. Those are social, this is personal.

#2 You cheated on him 

If you cheated on your husband, he would use every opportunity he gets to let you down even if he does not give you a divorce. The choice of not giving you a divorce might be due to children. The grudge remains and it sustains when they see other happy couples around. It burns their heart to see them happy. 

Moreover, he might start fantasizing about you with every other guy he sees. He might be wondering with whom did you sleep. He might also think if you have been out with multiple partners. He might not be able to get intimate that way with you in bed anymore and might even choose to sleep on the couch instead. 

He is having a tough time and won’t be able to trust you again. Although he might pretend to have forgiven you, that is not the case. You might want to consider separation. Either your husband will become non-cooperative in the long run or will cheat on you at the nearest moment possible. 

Either way, you both will not be able to thrive together anymore. It is better to go separate ways. This is not as bad as it sounds. When you separate your ways, life allows you to see if you can survive despite each other. 

If yes, it is better to keep it that way. If not, you have discovered strong reasons to stick together despite all the shortcomings. Hence, now when you move in together, you won’t hold any grudges or differences and will be in a better disposition to let go of the begotten fears and past resentments.

#3 He is having an affair 

Perhaps your husband is having an affair and it is due to his sense of guilt-ridden conscience that he is not being able to act himself. It is becoming awkward for him because every time someone makes a social commentary or uses witty satires to disregard men who cannot keep themselves happy in their pants, he thinks that they are targeting him or fears that someone knows about his secret. 

This makes him behave awkwardly in person. At such moments, he breaks into a burst of uneasy laughter because he is not able to share the same sentiments. The words of condescension towards such husbands escape him because he is one among the lot. 

Everyone might eye him when he fails to share the joke and guys understand that your man is in trouble. They have this bro code that they share. It is somewhat like they too have been there and done that but they are better at keeping their pants up or at least pretending to be gentlemanly.

#4 You disrespect his parents 

A guy can bear anything but not a woman who disrespects his parents or treats them the wrong way in his absence. Even if your husband is not fond of his parents or keeps complaining about them, he won’t appreciate it if you treat them wrong. 

There is a reason why he is complaining and not putting them in some senior citizen's house. The reason is that he respects and loves them. You need to find ways to come around your in-laws. 

The first step is to think of them as your parents. Had your parents been in their place, you wouldn’t have disrespected them, right? There are always better ways to voice your opinions. While your short-term goal is to reach the end, your long-term goal is to touch people’s hearts. 

You don’t need to spoil your relationship in order do to something that you feel will benefit all. Take it one step at a time and things will be fine. When your husband notices the change in your behavior, he will calm down and behave properly. 

You will understand if your husband is doing it deliberately when it is only before your side of the family that he ambushes you. He is making the case even by doing what you do to him. His parents too might give him turmoil of verbose on the subject of choosing the wrong wife. 

Your parents will do the same to you on the subject of choosing the wrong husband. He feels that that is how you will decide to come together in unison and voice up your opinions. He is creating a pool so that you both get out of your pretentious comfortability and do things the right way.

#5 You don’t listen to him 

If you always function against the wishes of your husband and force him to do things your way, his colleagues might have started calling him funny names and he might think that you have reduced him to a puppet. 

This happens when one of you is too dominant to give the other person space to breathe. It becomes a tough situation for them and though they bottle up their temper because they like to avoid unnecessary wars, their anger takes different shapes to come out of the situation.

Learn to have a one-to-one conversation with your husband. Many times you might feel that everything is good and healthy between you but the situation might be otherwise. It evades your knowledge. 

Ask your husband to pin down the problems he might be facing with you. There is nothing out of the natural here. We will face problems and tough situations when we choose to live together with someone. The real win is how we choose to stay with them. You need to work as a team so giving and taking feedback should be a natural process. 

Many times, you will see that the message is not being decoded properly by either of you due to certain hurdles, hence, do it in person when you are in your bedroom with no one to dictate or manipulate the situation. When the situation is resolved, the bitterness of the residue can be gulped down with some wine and love-making to forget all about it and move on. 

#6 He is a buffoon 

Your husband might have an awful sense of humor but he thinks that he is Chandler Bing! Even if you try to confront him and show the absurdness of the jokes he makes, he might not believe you. It can also be that your words hurt him badly and trigger him to do something damaging. 

Hence, you might consider taking him to a counselor. 

Digging his history, his experiences in his school, and at his workplace, and understanding how he was brought up at home will show you a pattern emerging. Either he was a spoilt brat in the hands of his parents or too neglected as a child. 

There is also the possibility that he did not have a good group of friends and they all lay drug-induced and wasted their time. As such, he does not know how to behave in social gatherings because his social gathering has been way too small and narrow. 

From your end, you need to understand that no matter how awful the situation you are stuck in might be, there is always a way to overcome it. When you give your best to the situation and try to brainstorm possible remedies, you will get a fix. Moreover, your efforts will be seen so the other person will also try to meet you midway in trying to help you sort out the problem. 

#7 He is dumb 

Perhaps your husband comes across as a dumb person. It would be so if he never interacts, participates, or replies to people who are attempting to engage him in a dialogue. He either lacks opinions or doesn’t care for them. It might be that he is too introverted or antisocial, perhaps misogynistic and parasitic to care for anything at all. 

Such people are often narcissistic. They are so full of themselves that they don’t know how to empathize with others. They think that they are minding their business but what they are doing in the process of minding their business is spoiling their relationship with others. 

You cannot mend a dysfunctioning rusted equipment in one day. It will need a lot of cleaning, followed by lubrication to even start the engine. Then comes the process of polishing the nooks and corners and painting them to make them presentable. Furnishing it with new installations of apparel will be expensive. Hence, to make this marriage work, love and a roof would not suffice. Doing it all by yourself will need more than caliber, it would call for near about Wonder Woman powers. 

It is never too late and you can save yourself from the disasters of dumbness by appealing. Most people will fail to see the problems because such people enjoy living with sundry people in sundry situations. The better alternative might be to start avoiding and showing together in social situations. 

When you are confronted by your husband, perhaps tell him about the challenges in a way that he understands, if you feel that reasons shall escape him, go the leeward way and make excuses. Force him to appeal for separation on account of an un-cooperative wife. That is when you make your case and show the court how you are the victim. He will be mousetrapped and you will have a strong case by your side. 

#8 He is among the newly rich 

If your husband is newly rich, he inherited a fortune in his name from some distant relative, the chances are that he has the money but doesn’t know how to use it. While he buys fancy things, he lacks the skill to carry them. 

You might have dreamt of having a lavish life when you were considering his proposal but it turned out to be awful. He lacks table manners and doesn’t know how to do polite talks. While you have money to flaunt, you don’t have a presentable partner to flaunt it with. 

Such cases are not very new or few. But he might not be entirely hopeless. As you are spending all your time together, you might as well mentor him. If you have children, you can teach them how to behave nicely before their father so that he also takes notes, knows how you prefer things to be, and does not mind it as it is an indirect method. 

If he is smart enough, he will understand that you are talking about his habits and will rectify them the way you have been explaining. If he is arrogant, he might snap at you and tell the kids to not care about society. This is where you bring in a counselor, ask the teachers at your kid’s school to raise their voices against the kid’s unsocial behavior, and take help from your neighbors. It will enable him to see with clarity that he has been in the wrong and his funds will drain out if he doesn’t learn to keep people happy by coming to an understanding.

#9 Gets too personal 

If your husband is a very nosy personality, it might get difficult to cope in certain situations with him. He doesn’t know when to shut up and asks absurd or too personal questions. In such cases, you can form a code word with him to hint at him that he is doing more than is needed and putting the other person in an awkward situation.

Socially awkward people can be put under various categories, some of it is when they don’t know how to mind their business. They want the table to sink with gossip. They are considered to be jobless in the eyes of others because they are so infused into other people’s kitchen sink dramas. 

They make a comic play out of them and they won’t understand what they are doing unless someone of their mocks them in public. While this someone cannot be you, it could be your children or your brother-in-law. He will be pushed o introspect on his actions and think about how and why he did what he did anticipating its long-term consequences. 

#10 He is nasty

If you have a nasty husband who picks his nose in public, and burps and farts loudly, the situation will get too out of hand unless you are as nasty as him. While if you are not, teach him to clean himself properly, and blow his nose while using the washroom in the morning. 

If he avoids having high-carb food, he will be able to cut down on junk and that will stop messing with his digestive system. This automatically will resolve his indigestion. Further, since you care about his food intake, you can make the ingredients such that it keeps him healthy. 

Start crossing him every time he does something awkward. Eventually, he will stop at it before you open your mouth. And gradually, his habit will be fixed. Remember to get annoyed will bring you nothing. Whereas perseverance will buy you everything. 

#11 He is an addict 

If your husband is an addict, the challenges will increase with every passing day. You need to take measures immediately. Put him under rehabilitation. Let him get his problems and habits fixed. Be a strong woman who can shoulder all the responsibilities. Don’t let situations go haywire unnecessarily. Some things are better to be resolved immediately. 

You can take the help of your friends and family to sort this matter. If you have encouraged him in the past or you used to be an addict too, the case becomes worse. Whatever you do, doing it under someone’s supervision would be the best thing to do here. 

What to do when your husband embarrasses you?

Make your husband aware of the embarrassment that he is bringing on you. Perhaps get mad at me and leave the part if you want to make a strong impression. When you become stubborn in your demand for adjustment, he will have to listen to you. 

For other alternatives, continue reading below. 

#1 Make a code language 

You need to work on a "couple of things" to achieve the couple of goals. Not everything that life offers is perfect, you need to make them happen. As the saying goes, when life throws lime at you, fix yourself a mojito. 

Similarly, when life pushes you into awkward situations, develop a code to skip or to get ahead of it. To alert your husband that he should stop talking because the temper of the other is getting high and they will burst at any moment, you can develop a code language. This code language will help you to handle the unseen and prevent something unwanted from happening. 

#2 Recreate the situation at home 

To help him understand where and when he went wrong, try to recreate the social situation at home and pause at the precise moment to make him see the difference. 

The easiest way to teach someone a lesson is by impressing the exact moment in their mind and heart so that whenever they attempt to do it next, they would know the consequences beforehand. 

#3 Mimic him 

If you want to keep it lighthearted but make it poignant and pungent at the same time so that your husband refrains from committing such a folly, mimic him. 

It will be fun and convenient. He won't mind when you act him out for you will be doing it out of love. Your husband knows you are doing it to protect him from the scrutiny and commentary of the world. If anything, he will be a sport and appreciate it. 

#4 Gift him a book 

There are many guidebooks available in the market that makes up a good and humorous read while serving the purpose to nail the lesson in the minds of the readers. While some of these books use satire as a weapon, others use moral stories like the ones in Bible to didactically teach how to behave socially with decorum. 

Gift one such book to your husband. Let him acquire a taste for reading. Sit with him regularly before bed in complete silence to absorb each word that he reads there. Once he gets a hang of it and develops a taste for reading, not only will his manners stand corrected, he will have humorous tales to tell the people he socializes with. 

You would feel proud rather than getting embarrassed in his company. Moreover, you could join book clubs to enhance your social group and reading skills. Your conversations with your husband will get a new spark and you will never be out of topic to talk. 

#5 Take him to counsel 

A little schooling can do him good. The counselor will help your husband figure out his awkward punctuation in a delivery. He will be able to candidly show him how his lingo, body language, tone, and speech deviate from the homogenous category and creates difficulty for him to exchange meaningful dialogues. 

Your husband might come along readily with you when you tell him that you have made a new friend. You can accompany him in all the sessions. Do this, if you feel the man is a bit retarded. If he can accept taking counseling and doesn’t snap at the mention of the word, he understands he is in trouble and will be in a better disposition to fix his troubles. 

It matters a good deal as to what is your perspective regarding the whole matter and do you believe in fixing and enhancing the experience rather than eluding at the first sight of the trouble. Signing off will take you nowhere. When you try to expand your horizons by bringing in all kinds of positivity, you will have the scope to not only survive but thrive well.

#6 Take the help of his friends 

If your husband’s friends don’t fall under the same category, they might help you to fix the problem and have the conversation in a way that you as the wife might fail to do. The comradeship might create a deeper impact on your husband’s mind. Moreover, when he sees that it is not only you who is facing all the challenges and troubles with him but it has become all-encompassing, he will be more determined to fix himself. 

However, to open up to his friends, you will have to be certain that they are trustworthy. You cannot share your marital challenges with everybody openly. Remember, everything fails before the male ego. If he feels that you are unhappy with him or worse, that you are facing your private matters with one of his friends, it could take a very bad shape. 

However, if you know a friend who is kind and caring, the trick might work wonders. His friend might be able to brainstorm ideas that are sure to click. In such cases, try to pick a childhood buddy who has seen your husband’s ups and downs. He won't think twice before helping you in whichever way he can. 

#7 Give him a taste of his medicine 

If you feel your husband is embarrassing you in social situations deliberately because he gains pleasure, he is sadistic, enjoys dark humor, and has a deviated way of thinking, you cannot go kind with him. 

You should switch to a tit-for-tat policy. Embarrass your husband before his colleagues, the way he embarrasses you. Let him down for once and perhaps he will understand that he has been treating you unfairly. 

However, will that save your marriage? Perhaps not. The chances are very less. He will accept that the marriage has been a disaster and might give up on it completely. So what to do? Begin by asking yourself if you are looking for vengeance or resolution. 

If it is the latter, respect him and make him proud before his colleagues if he has been deliberately treating you unfairly. It will have a terrific impact on him. He will be forced to either confront you with his problems or people care how you behave despite their love for you. 

#8 Develop a sense of humor 

Perhaps all the flaws might not be in your husband alone, in some places you are to be blamed. You cannot act like a school principal all the time. Cut him some slack. If he tries to chill down for a bit with his friends and family or in a gathering, let him be. 

It is not that they don’t already know your husband’s behavior, so technically speaking, it is nothing new to them. Hence, let them be in his company. If you don’t find it comfortable, don’t participate. Speculate from far or avoid it altogether. If his misbehavior is regular, take a break.

#9 Use stick notes 

A tactic that comes in handy is that of the stick notes. You can use it to help regulate behaviors and set ground rules in your household. It is somewhat like dictating certain terms and conditions that are acceptable and the ones that are not. 

You can put it on the refrigerator as it is the center of the living room and all eyes will fall on it to remind not just your husband but all the family members of the DO’s and DON’Ts. It will be something that all of you will abide by. Your husband won’t mind it when he watches other members of the family sticking by it. 

#10 Confront him 

If your husband is deliberately doing things to embarrass you before people, he might be having some motive, perhaps an affair. He is creating the situation in such a way that you voluntarily decide to step back from the relationship or become non-cooperative. 

It might also be that you have an irrational man who is sick and is doing all this so that you hate him, leave him and find someone else. You just can’t say with the timeline of people these days. We all come with an expiry date and when we love someone too much, we just cannot take it to leave them behind to cry all their life. 

While this might be an extended situation, it is not impossible. Hence, it is better that you check the medical record and get your husband and yourself examined medically before making your decision.

#11 Take a break 

If your marriage is getting so overwhelming that it has become difficult for you to sustain it any further or if it is happening at the cost of your happiness, it is not worth it. While we are made to think that we should nourish a relationship even if the plant is a cactus and holds nothing good for us, we should refrain from it.

A break will do both of you good as it will give you ample amount of time to do whatever you feel like and to figure out if you indeed want to spend the rest of your life together. If you decide to continue, there will be a rejuvenation of sorts and you will be better able to explain your requirements and the elements that you missed the most while you were away. It will help you to understand why you seek each other. 

If not, it is a great time to call for divorce because you have arrived at it mutually and are not in a hurry. Always hear out your partner before making the final call. Whatever you do, try to keep it mutual and well-balanced. 

Fights, irrational behavior, and getting too sentimental over trivial things will not bring you sustenance. A change of lifestyle and behavior might. Moreover, love is always in the sir. Whether you can find that love in the renewed relationship or after ditching the worthless for something priceless is for you to figure out.

Summing up 

To sum up, if it is a rare occasion when your husband has embarrassed you, the chances are high that it is a deliberate mood. Whereas, if it is something that has always been happening and you were tolerating or ignoring it because love had a charm on you, the chances are that your partner is not aware of it and is doing it unconsciously, being completely ignorant that he is bringing displeasure to you. 

Either way, try to have a candid conversation with him to understand where you are lacking as a couple. He is your husband, you have won the rights to talk to him openly without any deliberation.