Are you looking for encouragement today overcoming passive aggression? Why not read this story from Lori M, posted here. Her story started as one of the many tales of heartache and self-blame that wives of passive aggressive husbands know by heart, with the destruction of her self-esteem as a consequence:
"Very slowly, I began to lose myself, as I call it, but at the time, it was happening so slowly that I didn't recognize it. The passion that I had for life started to fade. Even when I was doing something that I loved, I felt empty inside. I began distancing myself from family and friends, even to the point of dreading making a phone call to one of them. I felt trapped. I felt scared to death (which is NOT my nature). I thought at one time that he was psychotic, but I also felt I was becoming paranoid. My reality had been ripped out from under my feet so many times that I didn't know WHAT was real. I began to second-guess myself on even the simplest things. I found myself being very afraid of him. Not of physical abuse, but I had been hurt so many times by him by using our children, his family, friends, by distorting reality, etc. Our relationship had no stability or security or reality."
But Lori found the key to overcoming her husband’s passive aggression!
"It takes two people to play the passive-aggressive game, so if you bow out, they either have to find someone else to participate, or it's over. In my case, one of the reasons that the roller coaster ride went on for so many years, was that I was a willing participant (without realizing it). Only (and if you don't listen to anything else I have written, PLEASE listen to this) ONLY until I started focusing on myself, and not on him or his pa ways, did things really take a turn for the better with my life. I do believe that passive-aggressive people find mates that are independent but are also very caring, giving, rescuing, outspoken, secure with ourselves, etc. We generally have very big hearts, and the pa person zooms in on that right away. In my case, my pah knew exactly what buttons to push to get me to play the passive-aggressive game. If I didn't play the game, then I felt like I was showing him that I didn't care about him or us, and I loved him and wanted my marriage to work. And, it's not that I did NOT want to be the "bad guy", but I DID want to be the "good guy", because that's what I had been taught as a little girl. I was taught to take care of everyone else's needs and problems, and I learned that it made me feel good and important inside. If I wasn't helping them out, then I wasn't showing them that I loved and cared about them, at least that was my thinking. If I wasn't focusing on them, then I was being self-centered and that was wrong of me to do. It took me a lot of soul-searching to realize what I was "thinking" about me. When I started writing down the things that I would tell myself in my head, I realized how distorted my thinking really was. I've never ever thought it was selfish for someone else to put themselves first, why did I think it was selfish when I even thought about doing that for me?!?"
Lori points out the most basic concept in healing a passive aggressive marriage: find yourself again. Live for yourself again, and don’t just feed all your energy into the other person, who is using it to hurt you. By learning to detach, you get perspective, and perspective helps you see the situation in a way that makes solutions and future actions more clear. You will not get the power to change others, but you can change into a stronger, more confident version of yourself simply by remembering that you have to be taken care of, too. And if your partner isn’t doing that, well, you have to start taking care of yourself!
Here’s more of what Lori did in her situation, in order to feel stronger and more free in her daily life:
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Trusting herself more and more;
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Having hope and faith in her possible future (not putting all her faith in her husband);
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Putting herself and her needs first;
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Taking care of her health;
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Doing fun, spontaneous, out of character things (so to stretch your self);
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Keeping promises and fulfilling commitments;
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Being aware of who her true friends are;
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Loving herself for who she is;
Lori also talks about how her husband is now making progress through counseling sessions and their own practice at home. She notes down the most important things a passive aggressive has to achieve in order to start making progress:
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Admitting fault;
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Accepting that we each choose the roles that we act out. so he has to be responsible for his PA actions;
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Trusting yourself and others more;
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Submitting to others/letting go of the need for control;
These are things you can be working on with your own husband, because these four areas are really the passive aggressive husband’s weak points, the places that create the fear that drives his behavior. Working on them together will help alleviate the tension and irrational ways of thinking that make recovery from passive aggression harder than it needs to be.
Remember, if you need help with any of these steps that Lori mentions, Coach Nora is always free to talk with you!