Sometimes you'll hear from other "experts" that passive aggression is not emotional abuse. This is wrong!
This conclusion can limit your resources and limit the way you think about your relationship with a passive aggressive husband. Passive aggression (as you know) is about control and command of the relationship. This behavior not only disconnects you from your husband - it keeps you isolated and ostracized as "punishment" or "retaliation." As a result, a person who uses passive aggressive behaviors on others is actively producing pain, by controlling the interactions and what they mean ("I will do this to create that effect").
Here are some traits of passive aggression (from Buzzle)
- "It is observed that passive aggressive people often indulge in fights with their near and dear ones. They, actually, invent ways to start quarrels with a close friend or a relative. This is because, they fear intimacy. They are afraid of getting too intimate with others.
- Another common fear shown by passive aggressive people is the dread of dependency on others. In order to beat such trepidation, they try to control and command others.
- Passive aggressive traits victims rarely hold themselves responsible for any wrong deed that they actually have done. Most of the time, they are found to blame others for the things that go wrong because of them. And the worse, they want others to be punished for their baseless obligations.
- People suffering from passive aggressive traits are found switching between hostile rebelliousness and contrition. They keep on making exaggerated and persistent complaints of their misfortune. They are often sullen and argumentative."
As you can see, these are all behaviors that engage in and produce psychological trauma, anxiety, depression and fear in the receiver - the definition of emotional abuse! For some, realizing and accepting that passive aggression is emotional abuse can be a new and forbidding territory, but for others, this conclusion is nothing new. However, it is a realization that needs to take place in order to name the abuse for what it is.
Are you suffering from your husband's emotional abuse? Talk to us today with a free coaching session, or seek solutions for your husband at Stop Your Passive Aggression.
Here is a letter:Thank you Nora, it was a help reading the book. Just that I wonder about something that was said; that the abuser never changes… for some of us who think divorce is not an option, what happens?
Especially when the spouse thinks that he is doing nothing wrong whatsoever and it is you that needs to change. HERE IS MY RESPONSE:If divorce is not an option, then you need to position yourself psychologically “outside of this marriage.”In my view, passive aggression is the default behavior left after some psychological injury in childhood, like abuse or abandonment. He is right seeing himself as right, because he can’t see or perceive that there other ways of being in the world; for him, this pathetic interaction is “reality.”If you accept this reality, you begin to see yourself married to a functional blinded or crippled person who only sees a part of the world, and mistakes it for “THE WORLD… ” and can’t see whatever is missing. Meanwhile you, like me or any other person, have to continue our mission in life, which is growing, developing our gifts, maturing into the best person we can be….His vision of the world doesn’t include your personal growth; even worst, he is scared to look at you as a developing person, so he wishes you not to develop or change, and will force you “to stay the same,” which is impossible.If you see that he is blind to the “you” who needs change and development into a more mature you….but you need to go ahead, think of ways of staying put while you develop yourself. You are already paying the price of being abused, so you can plan for doing things you want to do…like learning something, doing something new (a skill like writing, weaving, etc) or something that interests you.You have the obligation to respect your own needs for respect and growth. If you stay, accept being married to a crippled that can’t develop himself, but find ways of supporting your own development. Go to church and make new friends, go to school and learn a language, buy a book and teach yourself something….don’t stop feeding yourself. At least, you can develop a healthy self-respect, looking at all the things you are able to do without his support or permission!
Ironically, what I’m saying is that he is right: you need to change. But, it is not a change to please him….is a change to support and develop you, his wife.Is all this clear for you? Sending you a big hug,