© Lela Lee

All your life you’ve been trying to make it work. We all know that even good intentioned efforts can fail when you try to live with other people in love and harmony, and it’s natural to assume that differences will bring some frictions.

Here, I want to let you in on a secret, the hidden motivation to connect and have a good, healthy fight. Once you understand this, it is easier to look at your current “enemy” – your partner –with empathy; to see their hidden motivations; and perhaps come up with some solutions to fill this deep need for confrontation. In this way, you can fight to save your love, instead of fighting in a way that hinders your love!

Why is winning or losing a dispute so important? Why is there it so essential to our self-esteem? Because we think that we fight mostly for control of things, like time, money, the car, clothes or a good job. But really, almost every fight actually has at least something to do with the rarely acknowledged need for us to get some recognition from the other.  That person is so important because she can give us the acceptance or recognition that we crave!

Go back in your memory to the last three fights you had with your loved one… Imagine that each fight is a heartfelt quest for support, recognition and respect from him or her. If so, having your partner say out loud, “Yes, you are right on this issue,” validates you and makes the world right again.

Does it feel good? Now, compare that with the pleasure you get when obtaining the thing you were ready to fight about… how does it compare? No way!

Why can’t we even mention our deep need for validation from our spouse? Very simple, it has to be offered, spontaneously! That is the crux of the matter: If we have to beg for it, it doesn’t taste so good, right? It has to be proffered because it is an evident, undeniable fact that we are right, that we are intelligent and beautiful and lovable… not because we ask people to say so! And that, by the way, is the reason we get married: to have someone, freely elected, who can say to the world that we are such a beautiful person they want to spend their lives with us!

And then, very shortly, this admiration we managed to achieve goes missing, and sadly the only way to get our partner’s attention back on us is to have a good fight.

OK, let’s assume that you have decided that having a fight is the way to receive attention again. Remember that it has not to be destructive. Positive conflict helps you organize a respectful confrontation, following some simple rules.

We need to remind you that “love” as it is known in songs and popular conversations, has no meaning if it not carried along a certain set of behaviors. Those love behaviors have to be learned, and applied. Once you accept this, you will find that your life is infinitely more satisfying and rich, because people will recognize immediately that you know how to treat them well!

Want to know more about saving the love in your relationship? See our case study at Relationship Repair.

Are You Fighting to Save Your Love? is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband

Many researchers (whether of the brain, psychology or communication and conflict) will agree that when we communicate with others, we are attempting to connect with those people on some deeper emotional level.

This is true of a hurled insult as well as a warm hug.

That means that when you are fighting, say, over which way is best to punish your children for misbehavior, you are not just fighting to establish house rules. As hard as it may be to wrap your head around, your brain is also trying to renew some feeling of being connected – essentially, you are able to fight with each other because you are emotionally close enough to do so.

In that case, wouldn’t you say that an angry connection is better than the indifference and lack of connection between strangers? Which association would you rather have with your partner?

We know – you’re thinking to yourself, “What about the really serious fights?” Thinking about fighting as a means of connecting can help you here, as well. Usually, after a serious fight, you fall into despair about the future of the relationship, right? Everybody does. However, thinking of a serious fight as our brains searching for intimate connection can help us override that sense that “fighting equals division.” If you begin to think about fighting in this negative way, the relationship can suffer even more – each of you avoid raising issues that will cause conflict, inhibiting any possible growth.

Thus, a healthy relationship can sometimes be linked by anger as well as love – both are normal ways the brain seeks connection. It’s the way we’re designed to work and interact with one another.

In Hold Me Tight, Dr. Susan Johnson (a research expert on intimacy) states that it makes sense scientifically that couples fight over silly things. Beneath the content of what partners say to one another in fights, each wants to be assured of their value in relation to the other, essentially asking basic questions like, “Will you be there for me?”

What happens when one of the partners has learned to do passive aggression since childhood? It becomes a weapon of sabotage – by “defending” against and “avoiding” both anger and love, the passive aggressive person refuses to answer those questions his partner is asking. Given his inability to feel a deep connection with anyone, because of his childhood trauma, he can’t connect with others or feel others’ need for connection.

His partner can escalate the search for a positive response by continuing the fight, but the passive aggressive husband will retreat more and more until finally abandoning the interaction. He will say his partner is “full of anger” or “making all this drama,”  or whatever reasons he can give himself to cover up the fact that he can’t feel any compassion for her distress; he can’t offer any assurance that he is there, and that he is connected. He will do the opposite behavior: either leave, clam up or express disgust for the other person’s needs.

Sadly there is no way to nurture the abandoned partner when this passive aggression happens. Some wives call it “the wall of silence,” referring their communal sensation of knocking at a wall without any emotional response. The perception of being let down and ignored in their need for reassurance is difficult to avoid.

Because we can see fighting as the intent to make the other person pay attention to us, and to make them answer the question, “Are you connected with me?” we can also see passive aggression as making a mockery of this intent. The husband will retreat and he will never confirm that he understands the deep need for connection motivating the confrontation; he  will end up blaming the other side in her desperation as “aggressive” and “out of control.” The need of the brain to experience the security of connection will be frustrated.

Fighting is a way of making the other person pay attention to us; it is a weird form of re-connecting. If your ability to re-connect with your partner, via fighting or loving, is being thwarted by passive aggression, the very life of the relationship is being threatened. That is why, if your relationship is important and something you want to strive to keep alive, it is important that you work toward stopping passive aggression in the marriage NOW.

If you are not clear where this healing of the relationship would start, we have many resources for you to begin with:

• A Passive Aggressive System specifically designed for the passive aggressive husband himself.
• A coaching session with Coach Nora to assess your options.
• “Recovering From Passive Aggression,” and “The Art of Living with a Passive Aggressive Husband,” two books specifically for women married to passive aggressive men.
• A Passive Aggressive Test for men to determine if they are using passive aggression in their interactions.

Don’t wait a minute longer for things to “just get better.” All relationships require effort, both on your side and his. That is why we often suggest that you take advantage of both the resources for you, and the resources for your husband.

Passive Aggression Means We Can’t Fight to Connect is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband

Here we will learn how to interpret more silence as anger, repressed anger from a partner.

There is no reason someone would fell suddenly silent, if she is not trying either to control a reaction or to show something that can’t be conveyed in words. Here we have non-verbal behavior, and this behavior has a message: “I’m very angry at you, or at the situation, or at something”

You’d better pay attention now, because your loved one is swallowing his/her feelings, ignoring and denying that there is a conflict to be resolved, but with anger festering inside.

The result is that, with broken communication between both of you, there is a growing withdrawing of cooperation from shared daily life.

Without knowing the reason why, you can see yourself excluded from some projects or find that there is no follow-through to previous projects, and no explanation is given…

This is the time to ask yourself: could it be that my partner is angry as hell, and can’t show it?

Scary as it can be, it’s true that some angry reaction is brewing inside, and you are left with the task to bring it up to a level where it can be confronted and resolved.

NOTHING will happen, but more hidden anger, if you don’t step up to the plate and do something. Whatever you plan to do, is better than ignoring the silent partner, because silence is a communication that you can’t ignore.

The first task is not to feel invalidated or criticized by the silence; perhaps you can maintain your self-esteem thinking of the situation as produced by his/her non-existent skills at fair fighting in a marriage. It’s not your fault, OK?

Refuse to match the denial and begin your talk about “our present concern” in terms of a shared responsibility.
Offer a supportive mood: “we’ll talk about it as soon as you feel ready”
Keep being clear about the issue: “we both need to have a shared decision on this issue, because it’s important to both of us.”

And clarify your expectations: if this person has a way to discuss things with you, and this is a momentary situation, be encouraged and keep supporting. If he has not the disposition or habit to discuss things with you, and focus only on his hurt feelings, you can have a steeper battle in front of you.

Marriage is a shared endeavor, and we need talk to share opinions, ask questions, and decide issues. As much as your silent partner bails out from this task, and leaves you alone deciding things for the two of them, you don’t have a husband but a dependent child. It’s now the time for you to make that distinction?

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.

The Silent Partner is an Angry Partner is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband