Emotional Castration Most people think of castration as the physical destruction of testes or ovaries. But there is a much wider and more disastrous behavioral definition that occurs within intimate relationships.
When one partner uses words or phrases that are intended to invalidate and destroy the other partner’s pride in his or her gender identification, it is equivalent to emotional castration.
Exempting physical abuse, it is the most destructive behavior that one person can do to the other’s core sense of self. Emotionally castrating statements most often occur during angry disputes, but I have also seen them exchanged during other times as well.
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