A passive aggressive husband protects himself from intimacy

Living with a passive aggressive husband is a very disconcerting experience. You’re fighting the shadows, and it may take you a long time to realize the true nature of the relationship. By “fighting the shadows”, we want to convey the meaning that there is never a concrete, real and constant obstacle. Since it relies on an emotional resistance to intimacy, then you get the full gamut of denial, avoidance, silence, and all the forms of “not really being here with you” that he can muster.

This style of communication is usually perceived by the victim as in this case:

“My husband never says my name; he does not acknowledge my presence, he does not pay me any compliments or offer me help or voluntary information. He rarely asks me a question of any kind, or God forbid, he asks me about my wants, needs, feelings, etc. “

The wife’s experience is one of emotional abandonment, including the rejection of any intimacy. Their safest movements are usually related to the basics of shared life: food, household items, the weather, car problems.

What is missing here? the very heart of marriage, which is a level of openness and intimacy – the ability to connect with intangibles like feelings, perceptions, and dreams.

“He has severed almost all the connections between us and does not participate in our marital relationship. He never drinks, smokes, yells or hits me, but I would rather he did so I can know what is inside him …”

WHAT IS PASSIVE AGGRESSION?

Passive aggression is caused by a person’s deep and learned fear of expressing his anger directly to whoever (in this case his spouse) is aggravating it, having to resort to covert abuse to express his frustration and anger.

The passive-aggressive person is a master at covert abuse. Covert abuse is subtle and is veiled or disguised by actions that appear to be accidental. A passive aggressive personality involves a set of “resistance” behaviors, from harmlessly dropping things off or appearing to forget tasks, to procrastinating tasks.

It can escalate to total sabotage, in which case we recognize that there is an intention of a passive aggressor to take revenge on their partner without that person being able to recognize their underlying anger or do something to resolve it.

Passive-aggressive people have a keen interest in past situations in which their right to anger was not allowed to surface. Probably in their family of origin there were threats of abandonment or any other punishment that prevented them from being honest with their feelings, so they never learned to be able to express them in the most appropriate way.

Now, as adults, their goal is to resist work, dating and other social demands, because they identify them as coming from the hated enemy of their past: as parents and authority figures. This matter of unresolved anger, a holdover from his past, is now being re-enacted on a daily basis against unsuspecting partners: bosses, spouses, parents, teachers, or anyone with power or authority.

AP husbands enjoy the here and now of frustrating their spouse, seen as a “stand-in” or replacement for authority figures from their past. Any spouse can play the role of an absent parent, teacher, or teacher, unknowingly “invited” to play this game while thinking that they are instead in a cooperative partnership of equals.

A passive aggressive husband may drive his wife into a state of confusion and dementia, but he seems sincerely shocked when confronted with her behavior. Due to their own lack of understanding of their feelings, the passive-aggressive person often feels that other people are misinterpreting them or holding them to unreasonable standards when confronted about their behavior.

What are possible strategies for handling a passive aggressive husband?

There are three types of strategies you can choose to deal with PA:

a) You may decide to put severe limits on your behavior in an oppositional way, which runs the risk of an all-out war (you will escalate into isolation, extreme silence, leaving the house, carrying doors, withholding affection and sexual intimacy and every increasingly emotionally detached and resentful) and divorce;

b) It can support your need for your problem to be understood: you can see it as a person who is using old and antiquated defense mechanisms (“playing dead with your own emotions; denying anger; continuing to belong”, etc.) in a new different situation (marriage) that addresses him as an adult, temporarily. You need to realize that you are in a different situation now.

In this case, it is good to have a clear deadline to review the situation and plan for improvements on a regular and incremental basis.

c) Find a way to balance the need to protect yourself from your actual aggression with a compassionate attitude toward your immature feelings. You will have to accept the loneliness of the single parent by having to start a family with little support and without company and with the hope of the best.

This acceptance has to be temporary or you run a very real risk: being in a marriage for a long time sustained by an unconscious relationship: he fears loneliness, that’s why he stays, and he can be who he is forever, denying the passage of time and the fact that people (eventually) mature with age.

IN CONCLUSION:

The PA’s husband is waging the wrong war: he is defending himself here and now against his parent’s perceived intrusion into his inner being and does not see you, his partner, as a different person in a different cooperative relationship ;

You cannot distinguish between different types of humans and different types of relationships, so your reaction is always as if you are in the past, having to protect yourself from that person who oppressed you. The tragedy is that now that person is the person who claims to love …

How do you make him understand that you are NOT that person from his past and that your marriage is NOT the concentration camp he imagines it to be? You need a lot of support from family and friends, a lot to learn about the different aspects of this behavior, and to convince yourself that you are worth a lot, regardless of their lack of appreciation or connection to you.