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!