How can you love your Passive Aggressive Husband?

November 18, 2011 By

What are some things you can do to improve the atmosphere in your marriage? What are the little things that count when trying to seek happiness between the two of you? Here are some ideas for what you can do.

Remember why you’re still here: In a PA relationship, it can be extremely hard to remember why you’re sticking it out and staying with your husband. You need to remind yourself of his good qualities (the things he does right rather than the things he does wrong). Try this: every day, write down two or three things that he’s done lately that you appreciate, or qualities you love about him, or memories that make you happy. It can help boost your perception of him and bring positive energy back into your interactions. When he’s trying to use PA behavior with you, these positive things will help you focus on using your own techniques, instead of breaking down.

Show him you still care: Valentine’s Day isn’t the only day that we need to show our spouses some love. Reading our blog has hopefully taught you the wounds and fears underlying your husband’s use of PA behaviors. Sometimes, what works best to counteract his behavior is to simply show him that he doesn’t need to fear your rejection. You can write him little notes by the coffee maker, or greet him warmly at the door, or even play with him and tickle him like you do with the kids. These are the kinds of things that make you feel refreshed and positive (you’re focusing on loving him instead of fighting him) while also soothing the voice inside him that’s asking, “Does she still want me?”

Ask for feedback: This one might be hard for you, and you may want to practice doing the others first. But it can be extremely beneficial for both of you, as a sort of icebreaker, to simply ask your husband how he feels about your treatment of him. Ask him, “How do you know that I love you?” or “Did I make you feel that I didn’t love when I said that?” These questions may sound like something you’d ask your child when he or she is upset, but guess what? It works the same way. It helps both of you to understand each other’s communication and perceptions better, while the simple questions offer a less confrontational outlet for your husband’s true feelings.

You can get more tips for improving your marital happiness by talking one-on-one with our Conflict Coach.

Neil Warner
Neil Warner
I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.We can begin by you having a complimentary consultation with Conflict Coach, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

 

Filed Under: assertiveness, impact of passive aggression, passive aggressive behavior, Passive Aggressive Husband, passive aggressive marriage, passive aggressive personality Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Being Less Passive Aggressive Means Appreciating More

September 9, 2011 By

In a relationship, because we see our partner as someone we “choose,” we expect them to give us all the attention we crave. This is contrasted to relatives who are given to us, not chosen, and who don’t always give us the support we need.

All humans are self-esteem machines – like expensive cars, we run best on steady doses of high-grade appreciation. That is the only way we can develop our true capabilities. What is more surprising in passive aggressive behaviors is that they produce unexpected effects: they dry the provision of appreciation to the other, yet still expect it in return. Husbands, is this you? Are you expecting your wife to give you the support you need, without giving her the sustenance she needs to survive and feel happy?

In a passive aggressive relationship, nothing is provided for the other person to feel valued, appreciated or even seen. This is the most maddening of the consequences of PA behavior. Even when the passive aggressive is doing this because of his defense mechanisms (doesn’t want to connect for fear of rejection; because imagines he will be rejected), he ends being the main source of rejection for his spouse. It’s as if his brain is saying, “It’s okay to do it to you, if that’s what it takes so that you don’t do it to me”!

Husbands, in order for this appreciation business to work, you need to go beyond only thinking and move on to doing something.

  • You need to say the words: “I like it very much when you wear this dress, because…”
  • You need to express your gratitude: “When you are there to keep the house running even when I can’t help you, I feel so supported and grateful…”
  • You need to do things for the other: “Let me do this heavy task for you…”;
    “I just put gas in your car, so you don’t have to wake up earlier tomorrow”;
    “All the bills have been paid, so one thing less to worry about for you…”

So here is the formula, in case you are inclined to try the easy way to stopping your passive aggressive resistance.

Find something positive in the other person, and find a word to describe it:

  • When you ______ (take the dog out, are beside me at my dad’s funeral, took care of driving when I was sick)
  • I feel ________ (grateful, supported, relieved)
  • Because _________ (having you in my life makes it so much better).

Once you find the formula, you always have choices about how to do it in a way that you’re comfortable with:

  • You can say that in person;
  • You can write a short phone message;
  • You can tell her that in a phone conversation
It doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it! And watch the wonderful results!

 

For more explanation of this and other new strategies for stopping your passive aggressive behavior, visit Passive Aggressive System.

 

Neil Warner

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.We can begin by you having a complimentary consultation with Conflict Coach, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

 

Filed Under: impact of passive aggression, passive aggressive behavior, passive aggressive definition, Passive Aggressive Husband, passive aggressive marriage, passive aggressive personality, toxic relationship Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Relationship repair: The anger you hear is her pain

June 22, 2011 By

When disputes are frequent and people don’t bother even listening to the other side, the gap widens and relationships get sour. Hatred and contempt fill the gap with negative emotions difficult to dilute. You can be tempted to fight fire with fire and answer perceived aggressions with more aggression.

We need to remember that each dispute is a request for understanding; each confrontation a hidden search for recognition from the other side. When the other side is yelling at you, don’t follow your first impulse to escape or shout back. Listen and own every word that comes out of her mouth. Validate what she says; repeat what she says back to her, and ask if you got the whole version or if there is something that escaped your understanding.

Then go into apology mode, by saying things like, “I’ve been such a selfish person. Please, forgive me; I don’t want to be that person anymore, because I don’t want to hurt you anymore.” And mean it.


If the other person i’s repeating the same rant over and over again, it means that you haven’t responded to her complaint in a way that makes her feel you HAVE heard her.

You’re probably responding in a defensive way, explaining again to her whatever she already knows that can improve your situation. This is not what she needs. She doesn’t care at all about your excuses, real or imaginary. Can’t you see the pain below the surface?

She needs you to hear exactly what she’s saying to you,  and to grieve, as she is grieving, the insensitive, selfish, out of control human being you have been with her for as long as you have. And she is grieving for the lost opportunities for love, for understanding and mutual support that are all in front of you two now.

If you want to do real relationship repair, begin for taking care of her needs. Accept her anger, as a fact of your life; hear her words of pain, validate her feelings as true and legitimate, and never forget that this marital strife is originated in the years and years of insensitivity towards her.

But, if you want to be really married to her, as a grown up and not as a child, you need to understand that this is what a woman wants in a relationship with a significant other. She needs and deserves your honesty. This means that you have to take a good look at yourself and discover, accept and heal those parts of you that are not matching her reality; those aspects of your life that don’t reflect adult commitment yet.

 

Neil Warner
Neil Warner
I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.We can begin by you having a complimentary consultation (by clicking here), with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

Filed Under: impact of passive aggression, passive aggressive behavior, passive aggressive definition, Passive Aggressive Husband, passive aggressive marriage, passive aggressive personality Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Defending yourself from love with passive aggression?

May 25, 2011 By

In this dance of connection and isolation named marriage, it is possible to see that the two people have different models to get together…basically how near can you get to people without fearing to be swallowed by the relationship?

The national assumption about us being independent individuals crashes with the task of forming a new “WE” entity when we marry or establish a permanent relationship; both are antithetical.
And so, we find several degrees of permission to be near, and or permission to create distance from the other and be by yourself, depending of course on the attachment style we developed when children. If you have a secure attachment, you can go back and forth between your own needs for individuation and the merging with your loved one: neither will scare you either with abandonment or with engulfment. In the case of persons with insecure or anxious attachment who could express the following feelings:

  • I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others;
  • I am nervous when anyone gets too close;
  • I often worry about someone getting too close to me;
  • I am not comfortable having other depend on me;

we can perceive that there is some insecurity there, either trying to get close or to accept the inevitable dependence  on each other generated by a “WE.”

Where is this conversation going? Easy, the best way to keep a fixed distance with an intimate partner is using some of the techniques of passive aggression!

Let me explain: when you do the icy silence called “the cold shoulder” what you are really doing is regulating the distance….telling the other person:

“I’m not leaving you, but I’m in my cave, don’t get near me so I don’t get too scared of intimacy…, and the “WE” project goes into the fridge up until the moment I can reattach again”

When you do the nasty comments, and the put downs, and the inconsiderate critiques what you are doing is controlling the possibility of the other person getting dangerously near, by doing hurtful behaviors that will force her to withdraw in order to protect herself.

Having an insecure attachment marks a person for life, because he can’t ever trust completely the other person when she gets too near: what if she finally leaves him? what is he feels too dependent of her and so has to be too worried about his own survival without her?   Better to detach constantly from the other with passive aggression, so nobody can be so near him as to make him feel dangerously intimate!

Now we understand better this dance: when he withdraws, she chases him with her love and so forces him to withdraw more….escalating the passive aggression attitudes so finally get her to reject him.

And all this in the name of love, would you say? Probably, yes. This is the relationship that lots of people call love…not knowing something better as how to generate a more secure attachment.

 

Neil Warner

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today. 

We can begin by you having a complimentary consultation (by clicking here), with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

Filed Under: assertiveness, impact of passive aggression, passive aggressive behavior, Passive Aggressive Husband, passive aggressive marriage Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

How passive aggressive can you be?

May 13, 2011 By

There is a long standing conversation about husbands and wives having a difference of opinion… about the husband being passive aggressive, no less!

It goes more or less like this:

  • She complains; he denies all responsibility;
  • She suffers; he ignores her suffering and walks away;
  • She gets educated or a therapist; he laughs at them;

And this can go on for years! Most of the women writing to this site begin their letters saying: “I have been married to this guy 20 years…or 15, or 25…”

This is because only recently have they put a name to this situation, and having a name situates them into a new category: “I’m married to a PA person! That is the reason for all those indicators I didn’t knew how to understand before…!”

How can she really know? Well, as with some psychological disorders, the victims are the telltale indicators that something is not right. By compiling the victims’ narratives, we get the picture of a behavior that is real because we can now observe its impact on its victims.

Because victims have this pain of the gap between expected behaviors and their own reality, they observe, compare, and get educated about the differences between loving, healthy relationships and the toxic ones.

There is now a lot of information coming out, and we know more and more about how passive aggressive behaviors work and what is their impact on marriages. In fact: we know that it surely kills trust-based relationships such as marriages!

As a result, for him it is becoming more difficult to deny that those separated and isolated incidents now fit into a large, ominous picture where he is now seen as the culprit of her unhappiness.

So, is there no good place left to hide, husbands? Well, there is still your well-used resource: deny and deny that you have these tendencies… and attribute the situations your wife complains about to “bad luck,” misinterpretation or any other accidental cause… the purpose here is to divert, confuse and obfuscate your wife; never taking personal responsibility for anything.

How long can this work? That is the main problem with this strategy… it can work in the short term; in the long term, people tire of your endless “It wasn’t me….” answer and withdraw from the emotional connection with you.

So, what’s going on?

Basically, the lesson life is teaching you is “Grow up! Review those strategies coming from the times when you were a defenseless boy, and learn how to really, really have a deep connection with the people you say you love.”

Because is not how many times you say that you love them, is how much sensitive you are to their inner wishes and needs. Is not how good a provider you are (that’s not enough now…) but how deeply you get to know and support the growth of the people around you.

Helping them grow will help you grow and mature at the same time… which you can’t do when you withdraw into your silence.

So, next time you are tempted to go into your cave, clam up, keep the silence and individual “business” for two weeks and wait for the storm to pass giving everybody the cold shoulder, remember:

Perhaps this is the last time life is giving you an opportunity to look around, see the wounds of the people who (still) love you, and take a deep breath: this is your life.

Isn’t there something more courageous you could be doing with it? Like asking around to your wife the magical question: “Please, can you tell me what hurt you? This time, I’m ready to listen…?”

 

NoraNora Femenia is a well known coach, conflict solver and trainer, and CEO of Creative Conflict Resolutions, Inc. Visit her blog and signup free to be connected to her innovative conflict solutions, positive suggestions and life-changing coaching sessions, along with blog updates, news, and more! You can even begin a conversation about your possible passive aggression with her!.
Filed Under: impact of passive aggression, passive aggressive behavior, passive aggressive definition, Passive Aggressive Husband, passive aggressive personality Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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