How does passive aggression impact you?
The same one where you go through months and years of silence, confrontation, and no love connection at all? From the answers to our readers,
We spend months and years with the gnawing feeling that things are not OK. Going from one crisis to another, our own needs go starving for years. You could even deny your own needs for love and connection promised in the marital vows!
It’s only recently that the real impact of passive-aggressive behavior on a relationship has been identified in all of its destructive wallop. It hurts women subject to the silent treatment, cold shoulder, or other ways of emotional withholding from their partner. It causes them to experience a growing feeling of being abandoned precisely in the most intimate of relationships.
The hurt caused by the emotional detachment from the marriage damages their self-esteem in very profound and long-lasting ways. Basically, there is a frustration of basic emotional needs caused by the silent marriage, followed by mental confusion, imprecise guilt feelings, the impression of walking on eggshells to avoid being rejected, together with extreme loneliness and constant sadness to no end.
This chart helps name and evaluate the individual damage caused by those passive aggressive behaviors. From here you can go on learning strategies and alternatives to counter his passive aggression communication style.
It is designed also as to be used as a map that, when shared with your partner, could prompt a much needed conversation about the state of your marriage so as to plan for improvement. From here on, take courage and ask for change!
He knows that this is the way he feels better, because he is in control of your mind and heart…On the other hand, he doesn’t have another, better communication style to choose from. This is the way he learned to use to survive his childhood controlling parents and carve a niche of privacy around himself. In short, he still reacts (to you) as he reacted in the past (to his parents), because it is his only way of doing things, and because it was successful with you. There are no consequences for him doing the same thing, because you are always there!
Stop asking yourself the same question:
he knows what he is doing has a heavy toll on you;
he knows no other way to treat you, and is not willing to search and find a new style to learn and use with you. It’s comfortable to be as he is, because you don’t do anything that changes his comfort! you are there, regardless the way he treats you, so he doesn’t see any motivation to change!
Step back, gather yourself, look at your own life, identify your goals and begin working on getting what you want for yourself…In short, detach from his toxic spell, get your own life back.
Here, after 25 years of prison, I release you to find your own life, and be happy out of this prison. Go find your life back!
This site has helped me so much in learning it IS him and not me thats the problem,but the way I react to his silent play dumb abuse has made me mental. Its time to use Nora’s tools on how to deal with him and help ME for a change. Thank you Nora so much
Everyday I feel I barely have my head above the water, sometimes he throws me a crumb rather than picking up the ones he drops, I hold on to hope that today will be the day I will actually get a slice of the cake rather than same ole crumbs he expects me to be content with. MY BIG QUESTION IS, ”DOES HE REALLY KNOW WHAT HE IS DOING TO ME WHEN HE PLAYS DUMB AND TAKES ME AROUND AND AROUND YET NEVER A STRAIGHT ANSWER??? DOES HE KNOW THAT THE THINGS I POINT OUT HE IS DOING AND NOT DOING ARE CAUSING OUR PROBLEMS AFTER ITS BEEN DISCUSSED 10000000 TIMES IN 25YRS????? I am exausted mentally and physically !!!
I can’t believe how much this hit home for me. I sobbed. And I finally grasped that these behaviors are actually real…that I am not imagining things..