In a passive aggressive relationship, underhanded and sneaky attacks are his preferred “weapons of mass destruction.”

You have been asking for a detailed plan to nullify your passive aggressive husband’s arsenal. Here it is: you will learn how to call the attack for what it is and then respond in a way that preserves you from being manipulated.

We have been offering our experience before, like Tips to manage PA Behaviors

Take our suggestions with a grain of salt:

we offer them as an extreme response for some of our women readers who really want to learn the most straightforward way of managing his passive aggression, experienced as a direct attack against them and their marriage.

Here’s a step by step process for counter-acting a passive aggressive attack.

Stop Listening and Start Looking

This step is based on the idea that, in a passive aggressive marriage, many interactions are foggy and vague (purposefully). Thus, the most important thing to remember here is that you must separate words and deeds, and look only at the facts. Regardless of what your partner says about “forgetting” and other promises, start asking yourself is there is:

• Discrepancy between promises and delivery, causing delays;
• Non-acceptance of responsibility;
• “Good” words abounding, but no deeds.

These can be signs of passive aggressive punishment, provided they are consistent and often centered around one particular type of activity. Here’s a good example: if Robert generally is dependable and is home on time for Tina to attend her meetings, the one “miss” may not be motivated by passive-aggression. However, if he often only sabotages Tina’s attendance to a particular event (her therapy sessions or her female friends’ group monthly dinner) while denying he is intending to do so, an attack pattern is emerging.

Start “Operation Consequence” if there is no match between words and results:

In order to nip his passive aggressive attack in the bud, you must show that you are going to handle it in an adult way, not with the child-like temper tantrum that he wants to see you degenerate into.

Your task is then to:

• Suspect sabotage and resistance;
• Suspend expectations;
• Terminate cooperation.

Learn his hidden anger indicators:

You can halt future attacks in their tracks by learning his patterns and indicators. People are creatures of habit, and passive aggressive husbands are no different. Here are some examples of indicators that he is hiding his anger and is trying to attack/punish you:

• Vengeful “accidental” actions, such as ruining belongings, deleting files, burning food, etc.;

• Withdrawal of emotional response, such as refusing to share your joy over an accomplishment;

• Detaching from family connections, such as deliberately ignoring family members you love.

Confront efficiently:

• Collect proofs by having another person around or taking notes;
• Prove connection between actions and damages by showing how one leads to another;

Control Your Desire to Attack Back

• Do not respond emotionally, as in throwing a tantrum (discussed above);

• Remember that outraged reactions to passive-aggressive behavior emotionally reward the passive-aggressive husband.

Practice Self-Discipline

We say not to throw a tantrum at your husband, but anger and frustration is of course normal, and must be dealt with in a healthy way. So, you need to:

• Work on yourself, to sort out any deep animosity you may have towards this person;
• Examine the relationship and find moments in which you gave control, responsibility or power to this person;
• Link the power given to him with the results obtained, and ask yourself: “Am I being shortchanged here”?
• Pay attention to your first reaction, the emotional one, because this is probably the most truthful. You are allowed to feel resentful, frustrated or angry at his skillful defection; it’s a natural reaction. And it is the tantrum version of this reaction that your husband is setting you up to have. You can take back control by handling that anger in an adult way.

• Now, you want to confront this person in the most productive way, diverging from showing this person how much he can hurt you. The “emotional outburst” type of confrontation will not serve your purpose. If you allow yourself to show your disappointment, then he has fulfilled his mission!

Decide what you want to accomplish:

Your counter-action rides on knowing what you’re trying to accomplish by recognizing and handling his passive aggressive attack. Ask yourself, what is your real goal upon seeing him attack you? What goal will help you live a better life and not be brought down to his level? It is to…

• Let your husband know of your frustration?
• Have a cathartic show of your own hurt?
• Get him to finally deliver?

All of these are worthy aims, but remember that the first two are dangerously close to the tantrum throwing result that he wants to see. Finally, what you want is to get him to deliver, right?

Is time then to do some Fair Fighting, in a calm, rational but direct way. Remember that the best way is to detach emotionally from any result, and see if he can recognize his involvement in this marriage and moves towards cooperating with you in making it happen.

How to Deal With a Passive Aggressive Husband? is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband

We have a great article on this issue, (Yes: the “Five Questions…”  with Their Answers, too!)

Do you want to read it?

5 Questions to Ponder Before Divorcing A Passive Aggressive Husband

And of course, you can leave your comments, critiques and questions here!

Divorcing A Passive Aggressive Husband: 5 Questions to Ponder Before Moving On is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband

However, what if it wasn’t just the heart of your relationship that was damaged by your passive aggression? Passive aggressive husbands, listen up: your behavior might just be putting your own life at risk.

According to a new article published on Medical News Today by Catharine Paddock, PhD, men who resort to passive aggression because of a feeling of superiority, self-importance or an unwillingness to see the other person’s point of view (narcissism) may actually suffer physically for it, putting themselves at risk for heart problems.

In a study published in PLoS ONE, many men with these personality traits (explotativeness, entitlement, arrogance) have higher than average levels of cortisol in their systems – which puts them at a higher risk for heart problems. According to Sara Konrath, quoted in the article, these men “may be paying a high price in terms of their physical health, in addition to the psychological cost to their relationships.” What is interesting about this new study is that men with these personality traits have high levels of cortisol even when they are not under stress.

Cortisol is the hormone that is released when your body goes into “fight or flight” mode. As a passive aggressive man, you may have high levels of cortisol/a “fight or flight” hormone in your system – does that sound about right? In your daily life, is your brain telling you “I can’t deal with this, let’s run”? Perhaps it’s saying “How dare my wife say that, I’m going to get her back”? When you feel threatened, it’s definitely telling you those things, isn’t it?

Why does your body release cortisol, even when you’re not in a stressful situation? One of the study’s authors, also quoted in the article, stated that this was perhaps due to the fact that ”[e]ven though narcissists have grandiose self-perceptions, they also have fragile views of themselves, and often resort to defensive strategies like aggression when their sense of superiority is threatened.”

This creates, in a sense, a feeling that the body is constantly under stress – it doesn’t matter if it is real or imagined, because the consequences are the same on the body. They lead to higher blood pressure and greater heart problems – we all know this!

Read the entire article at Medical News Today

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to suffer alone in an unhealthy relationship for one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.You can begin with our passive aggressive system created just for men, at  Stop Your Passive Aggression, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

 

What is Passive Aggression Doing to Your Heart? is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband

It was really surprising for us to begin receiving letters from the wives, just telling about their experience taking the test! Yes, they are taking the test in place of their husbands…using his very frequent responses she can play the game of being him for the test and finish it. And receive the answer…

Why are they doing this? Because they need answers! What we find now is that receiving this answer can be very liberating…today, some wife wrote about:“My epiphany day!” Hear her words:

“Actually, I just did the test, in the way that i see my husband. Been married nearly 38 years. I’ve been reading on your site, and what a HUGE revelation. I’ve always seen him as passive aggressive, even though i really didn’t know the definitive meaning of that word; but just the sounds of it, fits him.

I’ve always seen him as Mr. sabotager; did a lot of reading today..OMG…it hasn’t been my imagination; it explains almost everything. In so many ways, I have seen that I married a man who is still emotionally a child.

But I have figured out enough, finally, that this is not because of me; this is his problem; I was always told that everything is my problem and that I’m ungrateful…on and on the story goes.

But reading the test results today, it feels like the veil has been lifted from my eyes; mainly that there really is a name for this behavior…”

So, you are using the test as a tool to validate your own perceptions! And in this process, you are having what this reader shared with us in her letter: a GLORIOUS, REVEALING “EPIPHANY DAY”!

What are the three products of this epiphany?

• You are out of the brain fog;
• You stop blaming yourself;
• You recover your own mind!

And, last but not least, now you can recover your own power: the power of your ideas: the power of thinking clearly and trust your brain again.

NOW: having an epiphany is good, but it’s frightening if you don’t know whatever you are going to do with this insight:

• You could use this information to kick the table off;
• You could use this new info as a permission to fight back;
• Or you could use this power to redefine the rules of the game.

NOW WHAT? women in the situation like you are in, are probably looking for guidance for their next step. Where to leads the road ahead…?

Is it true that you need help to be able to see the next steps? Or perhaps what you only needed was having some external tool to clarify your mind, recover your power of planning your own life and now you can continue your path by yourself?

We will be waiting for your answers…meanwhile, you too can take the test, use what you know about your husband’s motivations to do what he usually does when answering the questions, and get the response you need so much. Go ahead, take the passive aggressive test….we will be waiting for you here!

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!

 

Women like you are taking the passive aggressive test: you are not alone! is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband

People have different times to process emotional contents…when one person is fast to acknowledge that for them there is a need to stop interactions and protect themselves, other person could still go on and deny their personal hurt a bit longer.

There is also a gender difference; where women are trained to use self-examination as a daily tool (“am I adequate? did I do right here?”) men thend to fix their views on external factors and therefore are not so used to self-examinations.

All this talk leads to a tentative answer to the question:

What is the point of no return in a passive aggressive relationship? When one side finds out that “meta talk” (that kind of conversation that reflects on serious questions such as: how are we doing together? are we making each other happy? what could we improve?)  communicating about the relationship is impossible with the other person.

And why is it so hard to talk with a husband about his PA reactions? Well, the answer is here:

In “ASK NORA” (http://passiveaggressivehusband.com/asknora)  we have a person telling:

“Because admitting to a problem is equivalent to an immediate negative judgement against him and being told “you’re a failure”.

This is the reason men can’t get involved in a conversation about how they could improve: they are always positioning themselves in the very demanding situation of:

examining yourself=failing=rejection risk

Why is this attitude of ONLY focusing the self-examination on their own failures? What about their good behaviors that deserve recognition? Is there no self-esteem that can balance the automatic negative evaluation and include the positive aspects that each of us has? Whatever the hidden cause, men block self-examination and thus they lack opportunities to learn how to improve their wrong actions. This is a tragic result because puts people in a direct way to failure, as you can see reading this woman’s story:

“I truly believe, based on my own personal experience, that my PA husband never gave it a thought that his anger, stonewalling, sarcasm and long weeks of pure silence etc. etc. would cause him to eventually lose his marriage/family.

Never being one to threaten divorce unless I really meant it, I mentioned the “word” 3x over our 30+ yr. marriage.  I wanted it to be taken serious as in “last chance”.

The first 2 times he did not answer; walked out of the room and that was enough….I followed through on 3rd time & have never looked back. Personally at 56 years, divorce is not what I wanted; I just could no longer “continue my slow death” from loneliness, lack of physical or emotional love & his continued  ”under current” of anger & blame waiting to go off at any moment!  Why his anger? I never understood it before & now I no longer care! “

Tragically, we can see that is this falsely protective behavior of the passive aggressive person which leads to rejection. It produces (in a magnificent example of a self-fulfilling prophecy) the same results it tries to avoid. He ends up rejected! This time, because he is not man enough to own his 50% responsibility in making the marriage relationship happen with full involvement, disclosure and communication.

There is no other way: if you want to stop the falling out of love, the destruction of trust and the loneliness of both of you in a marriage, you need to know how to identify toxic behaviors, signal to your spouse that you respect and value her as much as to examine and change what needs to be changed and get on in the program.

Isn’t facing now some fear about being rejected better than ACTUALLY being rejected when you can’t face up to hurting your family?

Every journey starts with a single step. Our “Six-Step System to Stop Your Passive Aggression” is ready for you at Passive Aggressive System, but even if you’re not ready to commit to such an undertaking, you can talk to one of our conflict coaches to see if the system is right for you and your family.

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 Conflict Coaching Session, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

 

A Passive Aggressive Marriage Breaking Point is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband

Miscommunication in marriage is a common problem. Men and women, depending on the ways they were raised or how their parents communicated, can both talk in ways that don’t always fit the bill for making communication easy and comfortable for both. Often, men are accused of not being “open” enough, and sometimes, they are also labeled as “passive aggressive” by their frustrated wives.

Whether or not men think they are talking enough and supporting their wives emotionally, there is still the fact that some women feel the communication in the marriage is not sufficient. It is as if a whole generation of boomers (and perhaps even younger people) never understood how to fulfill each other’s communication needs; now, they get into couple conflicts about this gap.

If women remain feeling isolated and not listened to enough, marital grief is present – plain and simple. Can this situation be improved?  Conflict Coach, through years of research, family mediation and finding innovative solutions that work, believe that this situation can be turned on its head. First, the label of “passive aggression” must be dealt with; the one that is now so easily to attach to men’s behavior. How true can is it that being reserved, non-communicative and harboring hidden anger is part of a person’s natural, born-with-it personality? Conversely, how much of that “personality” is a conflict-causing trait that he may have picked up or learned without realizing it?

Conflict Coach is exploring this question deeper by studying childhood experiences. Their research has led to interesting conclusions in the realm of passive aggressive psychology. In discovering what is a personality trait and and what is defensive behavior in a relationship, Conflict Coach proposes that passive aggression may be largely dependent on the attachment model learned within the child’s relationship to their guardian.

For example, when a man was a child, was he restricted from expressing his anger toward his parents? If he had a need, and was feeling it keenly, what happened when he expressed it? If he was guilt-tripped for being too “needy,” shamed for being a baby or a whiner, he probably taught himself to just shut up when he needed something from other people. In order not to feel pity for himself, he would have then taught himself that repressing emotions and sucking things up was an admirable trait – a feat of skill, something only a manly man could achieve.

A future passive aggressive man, in order to learn how to control himself and not open up, would have shown his frustration in ambiguous ways, like falling behind in school, even if he was very smart.

Conflict Coach is using their findings to help the passive aggressive man heal the behaviors that are causing miscommunication and pain in his marriage. They help a man identify the lessons of his childhood, and appraise the real situation at his home, where these old defensive mechanisms may still be at work. For example, he may be going silent for days or weeks, reflecting the lessons he taught himself in childhood. The truth remains that this behavior is destroying any intimacy he was able to build within his marriage. His wife feels condemned to loneliness by his withdrawal and silent days, and the man himself is trapped in a lonely jail of his own making.

If a husband wants to know how to solve this frustrating challenge, Conflict Coach invites him to identify here and now what inner forces are sabotaging his marriage.

It is now possible to take a free, short online test on Conflict Coach’s new website, Passive Aggressive Test. The test is an intelligent strategy for getting to know a husband’s personalized answers and communication style; whether the results are normal, passive aggressive, or mixed, he can know exactly where he is on the spectrum, and this crucial definition can then be explained to the frustrated partner.

For men interested in assessing themselves and learning how to heal miscommunication and conflict in their marriage, the next step is simple: take the Passive Aggressive Test at

http://passiveaggressivetest.com/passive-aggressive-test/

If a husband is found to have no passive aggressive behaviors, he will know that there is something besides just his personal behavior going on to create a wound between him and his wife. Alternately, in the event that some of his behaviors are passive aggressive, he will receive immediate options for change from Conflict Coach’s growing collection of resources, such as life-changing products, coaching and community support.

 

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. 

Conflict Coach offers a complimentary phone consultation , with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

New Test for Passive Aggressive Husbands is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband

It is a pattern learned from the interaction with the mother or caretaker, who taught him in his first year of life either that he should not depend on her (and thus you should not depend on him) or instilled in him a fear of rejection or ambiguous security (thus, he will not open up to you or doing anything to make himself look bad).

What are the three most common attachment styles?

• Secure: Secure attachment is a healthy attachment. It is confidence and security in both the permanence of the relationship, and the honesty of the significant other. Secure attachment people tend to trust that their partners love them and find them attractive. This was learned from a secure mother, who was there for the child when it needed her, and provided love and attention on a continual (rather than spotty or random) basis.
• Anxious: Anxious attachment deals with fear of rejection and relationship stability. An anxious attachment pattern in a mother is one where she alternately smothered and ignored the child, bouncing between thinking she didn’t love it enough and thinking she loved it too much. This undependable and erratic behavior translates to the adult relationship, making the terrain of any relationship unreliable and fickle for the child.
• Avoidant: Avoidant attachment deals with a lack of desire to depend on others, as well as an abhorrence of opening up or being vulnerable. This is learned in childhood when a mother is avoidant – she will deny the child attention, avoiding giving him what he needs if he asks for it. A caregiver figure may not have been emotionally present at all. Often, avoidant partners will call their significant others “needy” and “overemotional.”

Avoidant and anxious attachment styles often appear together and reinforcing each other in a passive aggressive person. At his core, his inner child still worries about rejection from others, especially you as his wife (anxious attachment). To isolate himself from this inner child’s fear and resentment, the passive aggressive man uses avoidant attachment to prevent you (and perhaps himself) from seeing the scared, anxious child inside.

Often, what we learn is that your own attachment style can affect how your passive aggressive husband’s style manifests. Your own style can determine whether or not he reacts anxiously or avoidantly – for example, if you are anxious or insecure yourself, he may be more avoidant. If you are avoidant, he may be more anxious, his actions driven largely out of fear of/perceived rejection by you. If you have a secure attachment, and know what happens with him, perhaps living with you and acting as a secure, supportive spouse will help transform his primal attachment style into one more mature.

How are attachment patterns influencing the outcome of your passive aggressive marriage? If you have learned a little more about both of you by reading this post, but are unsure how you can apply that knowledge, we have many resources for you.

The best place to start would be a free consultation with our conflict coach. Coach Nora can guide you through the process by which you can learn to reach a compromise between your attachment styles, and even learn to rewire old patterns into new, secure ones!

Passive Aggressive Attachment is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband

“Understanding Why Your Husband Uses Passive Aggressive Behavior!”

is a post on Ezinearticles.com, a site where other of Nora’s articles are published.

If you are so kind to click here, you will find it on the site of Ezinearticles.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5957902

Or you can go here: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Nora_Femenia

Thanks!

Understanding Why Your Husband Uses Passive Aggressive Behavior! is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband

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

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!

Defending yourself from love with passive aggression? is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband

There are four main things a passive aggressive person will try to control or violate, in order to protect themselves from rejection and/or confrontation.

• The Right to Know
• The Right to Feel
• The Right to Have Impact
• The Right to Space

When he violates your right to know, he gives you unclear information, withholds information that you don’t “need” (like the finances), or gives you too little or too much information. With too little, you are left shaky and uncertain, realizing after he leaves that he didn’t really answer your question, or in fact made the situation look worse than you thought. This is where you may feel as if you’re expected to draw your own conclusions or “mind read.” With no information (“the silent treatment”) you feel like you’re walking on eggshells – or a mine field. When you are given too much information (anger attacks or blaming), you are not given time to speak, defend yourself, ask for clearer information, or set boundaries.

Your right to feel is violated when he tells you what you’re feeling, what you’re about to do or how you’re going to react. He may make claims about how you “always overreact” or how you’re just being “emotional.” He’ll make emotional demands about what not to feel (“Don’t cry”) or what you shouldn’t feel.

Crazy-making situations really start to show when your right to impact is violated. This is when he denies (by ignoring you, by overriding your needs with his own, by refusing to meet your needs) that you have an impact on his life. We measure our existence by how much impact we have on others, both physically and emotionally. If you feel like you don’t matter to him (don’t have an impact), it’s like being told you don’t exist at all! He can make this worse by “thinging” or objectifying you. He may treat you like a piece of furniture, coming to you only when he has certain physical needs. He may also deny your impact on him by denying contact – in other words, anything you say about his faults will bounce off and come back as something to use against you.

The last way he may violate your rights is to deny your right to space. In many ways, this is your right to individual power – the thing he wants you to have very little or none of. He may violate your right to emotional, physical, time, or mental space by saying that you doing x violates his right to do y (thus painting you out to be the bad guy, every time). For example, your right to be alone in your office violates his right to come visit you. Your right to have friends and family over violates his right to privacy and quiet. And so on, and so on.

These are the four main ways a passive aggressive husband exerts his crazy-making control over his partner and other people. Looking at them as your rights helps to understand this behavior as abusive – a denial of your personal rights to sanity and respect. Which of these ways is your husband using against you? More than one? Maybe all?

We encourage you to explore our blog, videos, and discussions (under “Ask Nora” and “Your Voice”) to learn more about these abusive behaviors and how to defend yourself against them. But for immediate action and sanity-saving help, please visit Coach Nora, and receive a free coaching session.

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!

Passive Aggression Abuses Your Rights is a post from: Passive Aggressive Husband