After all those married years, one fine morning the view got projected into your vision, and you discovered the real name of this empty, cold and disappointing relationship. You understood that you have spent your married life in this barren state of mind that is a passive aggressive marriage.
Lost are the initial illusions of intimacy, support and warmth. You had to learn to survive in a battle field of empty promises, cold shoulders and general loneliness. The abandonment scenario has been there all the time, it's only now that you get to really see it....you are married to a passive aggressive husband!
What are you going to do now? How can you reconcile this reality, the same you've been denying all these years, with your needs? And, even a deeper question pops up: how are you going to see your own history up until now, as one of wasted love or something else?
You are confronted now with a fork in the road. One side takes you to the usual path: deny the loneliness, the love starvation you have been up until now; the other fork of the road takes you in a new direction.
Are you going to begin to be true to yourself? Have you won the right to say your truth, no matter what happens? Stop walking on egg shells and say out loud: "this is too lonely for me, and I need something different?"
This point is really also a breakthrough for the marriage. If sometimes the spouse of a PA person puts up with a lot, and in the process developing a deep resentment never addressed, getting to the moment of truth frees you from this tacit contract.
You are not supposed to continue going along with the charade that his behavior is enough company, enough support, enough love. It's the time to learn how not to be silent, how to be aggressive in the good sense, and begin asking for what you really need.
Being self-assured means that you know your needs; know that what he gives you is not enough food for your heart and soul, and that you need this time a real satisfaction of your needs for connection, love and respect.
And the old way of yielding to his sour mood in order to please him, to only keep the peace? it's gone with the wind; you can't sustain that pretense any longer. Your own integrity is demanding that now, for the first time, you have to put your own needs first...and follow through.
It doesn't matter if he gets furious; it doesn't matter if he goes into a hostile silence that lasts six weeks...your own integrity demands now that you'd be coherent with yourself. If there is something you need to do to procure more company, recognition, or support outside of the marriage, now is the moment of reaching out to your friends and family, and change your past response of accommodating to his passive aggression to one of self-assertion.
And, what happens with our basic question: was your love for him a wasted love? Of course not! it was only your own process of getting to love yourself first, which took some time to develop.
How come? Let's see....How often did you put up with his rejection, only to be able to continue believing that you were part of a couple? Your being accepting of his quickness, wasn't it also your need not to be alone, and to avoid getting other person angry at you?
In life, the more we prostitute ourselves for acceptance, the less we are accepted; in comparison with the price you paid, there was never any real appreciation, any real acceptance. This is your lesson.
If and when you are back into the person you really are, you will see that the learnings are deep: from now on, you know what do you want in life; you are not afraid of expressing your needs, and you also know that, as you did your individual spiritual development, he has to do his own process...
Who knows what is inside him and needs to be expressed, instead of his constant sulking? Whatever it is, now it is only his business...This is not your business any longer!
You did your best, and learned your lesson...Now, can you take the new, not the old road and see where it takes you to? It could be pretty educational, and also fun!
