Shakespeare said it first. In a play he titled, The Taming of the Shrew, he put these words into the mouth of a newlywed named Petruchio:

This is a way to kill a wife with kindness.

But what Petruchio calls kindness, I call abuse. See what you think …

Boasting to his friend Hortensio, Petruchio refers to the start of his marriage as the start of his “reign.” In the same breath, he calls his new wife Kate, “my falcon” – and describes his tactics for taming her, as he would a falcon or hawk.

Specifically, he has denied his bride food and sleep.

My falcon now is sharp and passing empty;
And till she stoop [to do whatever I want] she must not be full-gorged,
For then she never looks upon her lure …
She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat;
Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not;

As with the meat, some undeserved fault
I’ll find about the making of the bed;
And here I’ll fling the pillow, there the bolster,
This way the coverlet, another way the sheets:
Ay, and amid this hurly I intend [pretend!]
That all is done in reverend care of her;

And in conclusion she shall watch all night:
And if she chance to nod I’ll rail and brawl
And with the clamor keep her still awake.
This is a way to kill a wife with kindness;
And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humor.¹

“Done in reverend care of her”

In this play, Kate isn’t looking for a husband. Petruchio doesn’t love Kate.

Ah, but Petruchio’s friend wants to marry Kate’s beautiful younger sister Bianca. And the sisters’ wealthy dad has decreed that no one can marry Bianca until someone marries the “mad and headstrong” Kate.

Dad is offering a large dowry to any taker. Yet no one has come forward to claim it. No one has spoken for a woman who so obviously does not want to be bought and sold.

Then Petruchio steps up, to claim the money and break the woman. Proudly announcing his tactics, he cries, “He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him speak.”²

Oh, Petruchio! Your words paint your bride as subhuman – and deserving whatever treatment you use to control her.

Oh, Shakespeare! You wrote those words. You authored that caustic portrayal of Kate. You justified her abuse. And you told her story, not as tragedy, but as comedy.

Did the Elizabethans who attended the play laugh at Petruchio’s ways of taking “reverend care” of his bride? Did they cheer him for putting her in her place? If they knew a “Kate,” did they dehumanize her, too?

Tragically, it still happens. The powerful and power-hungry among us can stir up that thing in us that sees cruelty as needed, delightful, good – when it enforces “our rules about who rules.”

Two ways “to kill a wife with kindness”

The might-makes-right approach

Certainly, a husband today may kill with kindness using the same in-your-face approach that Petruchio chose.

Verbally, emotionally, physically, he may abuse his wife shamelessly. And yet, for example, he may have established himself as a good man, perhaps even a man of God.

In addition, he may hail from a church system that teaches:

• “Women, submit!”
• “Anyone who questions a man of God rejects God.”
• And (subtly, if not openly): “Might makes right.”

Such a man and such a system can brainwash people to see whatever he does as good, godly … kind.

The same dynamic can label his abused wife in a way that demeans and dismisses her. Thus, the people in the fog may count her a hindrance to her husband’s ministry and a burden on his life.

And because “his flock” reveres him, the very ones who should see the truth look right at his cruelty – and see a long-suffering man, taking “reverend care” of a difficult woman and seeking only her good.

The fake kindness approach

Other abusive husbands prefer less “hurly” and more fakery.

Such a man may make sure people see him always helping his wife, supporting her, “taking care of” her. “What a kind man,” they may think, “What a wonderful husband!”

Ah, but:

His kindness is feigned.
And it is weaponized.
It does not arise from selflessness.
He uses it to control.

For example:

• He may give her only what he wants her to have – and withhold what she needs and repeatedly requests.
• His gifts come with strings attached.
• He may bombard her with over-the-top “help” that constricts and belittles her.³
• If she politely declines a gift or an offer of help, or dares to get herself something he has refused to give her, he has a whole arsenal of passive-aggressive tactics he may use to punish her.
• He can twist all the above to shame and manipulate her – and to label her as ungrateful and unkind.

In addition:

A husband who uses fake kindness to catch and cage his wife
uses the same con to fool the “witnesses.”

As they note how nice he seems … his sighs, his eyes, his body language convey the other lie too: So sad that what he does for her so often goes unappreciated, even scorned.

Soon, they begin to think, “That woman is a …”

Thus, he trains people to see the illusions he wants them to see – and to believe they are seeing the truth.

Others who weaponize kindness

Of course, people other than abusive husbands use kindness selfishly. In fact, the authors of one article about fake kindness state:

What we see around us is a world where displays of kind-looking behaviours are ubiquitous [everywhere!] but largely disconnected from actual kindness.⁴

Anyone can do a kind act from a selfish motive. Yet not everyone twists kindness into a means to abuse. Typically, those who do:

• Already hold some measure of power-over in the relationship.⁵
• And also, want (or need) to appear caring, benevolent, kind.

Further:

• Women are more likely than men to “strategically use fake kindness to advance their own interests.”
• Yet also, “in patriarchal societies like ours,” women are “overall much likelier to be on the receiving end” of weaponized kindness.⁶

I’d suggest: In church cultures where power and the appearance of godliness both matter, controlling men may routinely weaponize kindness. And boys and men are certainly among those abused by it.

One example from the past in my church culture. When slavery ruled the US Deep South, most slaveholders counted themselves Christians, regularly attended church and even served as church leaders.⁷

Thus, as my friend Rhoda Witmer recently wrote:

More people should know that slave owners could brutalize a slave and turn around and demonstrate kindness. Acts of benevolence are a tool of oppression in some contexts. They are part of the pattern.⁸

Sabotaging a kind heart

Recently, I watched a TV show, a fictional show, in which a community comes very close to destroying a stranger to their town, with the kindness that isn’t kindness at all.⁹

When a stranger comes to town

At first, the people welcome the stranger, after he walks into a local mall, looking disheveled and lost – and sits down at a mall piano to play piece after piece of beautiful classical music.

Then, a group of teenage boys sets upon him, and passersby just let it happen. When the stranger takes the abuse until he can’t, and angrily lunges at one of the boys, a policewoman clubs the man and takes him to jail.

Another policewoman discovers he has no clue who he is.

Then, a DNA search of missing persons matches the stranger’s blood to that of a masked man who has committed multiple armed robberies. Fleeing the scene of one robbery, the thief committed cold-blooded murder.

What we can completely miss

Naturally, the police and the town believe the DNA report. Of course, kindness to the victims requires that the offender pay for his crimes.

Yet slowly, the police chief realizes: The stranger doesn’t behave at all like the bandit-murderer has behaved. Except when defending himself against the gang that attacked him, the stranger has proven gentle, thoughtful, kind.

What’s more, this man who plays the piano so movingly wants to know who he is, even if it means finding out he’s done terrible things. He is devastated when he thinks he has.

Meanwhile, a detective, who has spent his whole adult life on the force, keeps inserting himself into the case in the “good cop” role. Virtue-signaling that he wants justice for the victims, the detective keeps pressing in to get the stranger convicted ASAP.

By now, you may know where this story is going. But in real life, we can completely miss it.

→ That whole little town misses it – when evidence that was tainted, planted and amplified by the real killer makes a kind person, who has been victimized, look like a cruel criminal.

→ The wrongly accused man feels the full weight of the false guilt laid on him. His memory gutted by trauma upon trauma, he starts to self-destruct. Suddenly acting crazy and violent, he seems to confirm that he is, indeed, a man without a heart.

→ What exposes the truth? One man finally begins to verify, and to say, where he is seeing real kindness – and where he is not.

Double jeopardy – a kindness con

That story took me back to an aha! moment I had years ago. As I struggled to see through trauma’s blinding fog, Don Hennessy’s book, The Mind of the Intimate Male Abuser, taught me:

Such a man typically does what that corrupt detective did – but way more intentionally. He works to cage, disgrace, erase someone who is kind.

Determined to control his wife or other intimate partner, he starts by seeking “a woman who will put the needs of her partner before her own.”¹⁰

Thus begins his kindness con – a long con and a particularly deceptive and cruel one. It may unfold like this:

Step 1: Target someone who is kind.

Hennessy explains:

The word kind is inadequate to describe the totality of the person who becomes the target of an abusive man but it captures the essence of what the abuser is looking for. As his needs are paramount to himself he is seeking a woman who is capable of putting his needs before her own. (p. 29)

Step 2: Create an illusion of kindness.

Especially at first, and then as often as needed to get what he wants, he treats her with favor. Skillfully, he creates the illusion:

• That what he does for, or to, her is kind.
• That he himself is kind.

Step 3: Use her genuine kindness, and his feigned kindness, to control and exploit.

Abusers will certainly exploit a person’s woundedness and real or perceived weaknesses. But they also know how to turn a person’s good qualities against them.¹¹

Hennessy emphasizes the intent behind it all:

• To teach her always, only, to do what he wants.
•  To keep her from realizing the truth about what he is doing, and what it reveals about him.

Endgame: Undermine and destroy her spirit

[He] manages to attack and undermine the core element of her personality which is her kindness. He can convince her that she is not being kind enough to him and if she only understood she would realise that a small improvement in her level of kindness would result in a much more respectful relationship and a happier time for her. He can manage to get her to believe that when she is challenging him she is being cruel or vindictive (p. 86)

So first, he may teach her, “I can tell you are trying, but you are just not kind enough.”

Then, at any point that she tries to exercise a kindness that includes being kind to herself, or a faithfulness that yields to God and challenges his control, or a selfless love that risks identifying and calling out his wrongdoing – he switches gears.

His message becomes, “You are so mean!” And to others: “I just want the best for her, but she keeps jerking me around!”

Ultimately, he makes it seem to her, and to everyone else, that he is the kind one in the relationship, and the long-suffering victim of her.

Along the way, he enlists as many allies as possible, not only to believe the false story he has spun, but also to join him in the cruelty on which it is built.

“The objective is to destroy the spirit of the woman,” Hennessy says (p. 79).

Like sheep in the midst of wolves

To kill with kindness is no joke. It’s an abuse tactic designed to bind. To bewilder. To shame. To isolate. To suffocate. And to look like goodness itself.

Imagine: A wife, a worker, a church member, an outsider dares to suggest that a respected husband, leader, boss is smothering her or him … with kindness.

Who wouldn’t scoff? Who wouldn’t think, “Someone’s showing you too much kindness? Wow, are you ungrateful!”

The lie most likely to blind us and bind us
 to an abuser who kills with kindness?
The belief that we can always tell
a wolf from a sheep.

Jesus said,

Listen carefully: I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; so be wise as serpents, and innocent as doves [have no self-serving agenda]. (Matt. 10:16 AMP)

Oh dear one!

→ Ask the Lord to show you where you’re seeing real kindness – and where you are not.

→ Keep looking when he opens your eyes to “acts of kindness” that have nothing to do with selflessness and everything to do with control.

→ Warily, wisely, resist the plundering of the lovely qualities the Lord is developing in you.

And when you see someone using a kindness con to destroy someone else?

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness but rather expose them. (Eph. 5:11)

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See also

• Trauma & witness – lessons from a frazzled cat
• Trauma and truth-seeking: Desperation, spirit, life
• Sisters uncover cruelty hidden in plain sight
  
  
• Illusionists! The abusers we have not seen
• Treachery and divorce: When God sees betrayal
• Behind the scenes at Living Proof Live (women weaponizing kindness)
  
  
• Whatever happened to loving one another?
• Adulthood and the church that rejects it
• This “good Christian girl” is a woman now
  

Footnotes

1. Quoted from The Taming of the Shrew, Act 4 Scene 1. ↩︎
2. Shrew, Act 4 Scene 1. ↩︎
3. Emma Rose Byham, thepersonalgrowth.project, has written, “Weaponized kindness uses guilt, obligation, and restricts autonomy (free will). It also uses shaming to undermine independence.” ↩︎
4. “Fake kindness, caring and symbolic violence,” National Library of Medicine website, accessed 5/27/2026. Quotes that follow are also from this article. ↩︎
5. “A core characteristic of fake kindness is that it is mostly used by dominant agents in social relations that are already asymmetrical.” (Fake kindness) ↩︎
6. Both these quotes are from the “Fake kindness” post. My post, “Behind the scenes at Living Proof Live” shows how it may look when women in a patriarchal church culture use fake kindness against other women. ↩︎
7. “The majority of masters, small slaveholders and large planters alike, were evangelicals.” James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 97; see all chapter 4, “The Convenient Sin.” Also, my post, This “good Christian girl” is a woman now. ↩︎
8. Rhoda Witmer, Facebook post, 5/24/2026, writing about the book by Charles Colcock Jones, The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States. ↩︎
9. Episode 2 of the British miniseries, Wild Bill. ↩︎
10. Don Hennessy, The Mind of the Intimate Male Abuser: How He Gets into Her Head (Cork, Ireland: Atrium, 2012), p. 29. ↩︎
11. The post, “Targeted and Exploited by an Abuser” by Helena Knowlton names kindness as one of a number of positive traits that abusers target and exploit. ↩︎