But let’s focus on why men kill their wives. 

First, if a man begins to abuse a woman while they are dating, does she thinks that a wedding band will absorb his meanness? 

Is that woman fatally optimistic or is she not emotionally intelligent? 

Can any woman be that desperate to marry? Or does pride keep her from admitting she made a bad choice? 

From the crime shows I’ve seen, it seems spousal murder usually involves adultery or money:

 

1) Nice woman, typical wife, dedicated to husband and children. Laci Peterson-type. He has a wandering eye, and decides he wants to move on, but without sharing the money with the wife. Sometimes he doesn’t want kids to support. He kills her and perhaps the children. 

2) Unhappy, unkind wife. She is a continual grief to her usually compliant husband. Even her siblings have trouble tolerating her. Her husband finds another, softer shoulder to cry on. The girlfriend (though she knows she is an adulteress), makes the angry wife seem that much less attractive. He wants to move on. Same ending as #1, except he is less likely to kill the children. 

3) The wife is unhappy and is preparing to leave. The husband doesn't want to split their assets or pay alimony. 

4) Wives making threats. I have seen/read repeatedly where a wife was killed after telling her husband that if he divorced her, 

he would never see their kids again. Does this tactic make sense to anyone? Those words push some men over the edge, 

because the woman takes the approach of a terrorist. Who but a terrorist would deprive a man of his children? 

The children are left without father or mother. She is dead, he is in prison.

 All for a 30-second exchange where the wife insists on having the last word. 

Matricide Additionally, some women are killed by their sons. 

The week of January 24, 2019, I watched two afternoon episodes of NBC ‘Dateline’ where sons killed their mothers: 

Setting 1: Husband, wife, one adult son, one teen son, living in their own house. White family. The mother berated her teen son for following in the footsteps of his druggy, under-performing older brother. Later that night, the teen went into his parents’ bedroom and literally blew her face off with a shotgun, then also had to kill his dad when the blast woke him. 

Setting 2: Grandmother, her single daughter was a mother with a gay son in the house. Also, the matriarch has another adult grandson living there. The two young men are cousins. Black family. The single mother was murdered by her openly gay son when she began telling people he was sexually active with her nephew (his cousin). The mother and son argued in the yard about this and he attacked her with a shovel, finished killing her with a kitchen knife, and then burned her body. 

Mean women die. But so do timid women. 

Timid women die because they won’t heed the warning signs. 

Mean women die because they bully others and help create the hatred that kills them. 

A 100 lb. woman will take more guff from a 200 lb. man than a 200 lb. man will take from a 100 lb. woman. 

Size matters. Please learn from the mistakes of others. 

Eric J. Rose