Category: Passive Aggressive

Victim Mentality

2/15/2015

Why Is the Passive Aggressive always the Victim?

The passive aggressive feels they are treated unfairly. The passive aggressive is always the victim of your unreasonable expectations, an over-bearing boss or that slow clerk at the convenience store.

Why Does the Passive Aggressive Play the Victim Role?

I find human behavior fascinating. Not only human behavior but the reasons behind the behavior. There is a pay-off for all of us when it comes to the way we conduct our self in life. If we weren’t getting something out of it, we wouldn’t be doing it. Simple huh? Simple until you become involved with a passive aggressive!

What is the pay-off for the passive aggressive who plays the victim? It is a ploy they use to turn the tables and make them appear to be the injured party. The passive aggressive knows something about the person they are intimately involved with. They know that most people involved with passive aggressives are empathetic, most are co-dependent and most don’t like the idea of others suffering…in other words they are very easily manipulated. That is the pay-off, being in a relationship that enables them to have the upper hand.

In What Ways Does Playing the Victim Pay-Off?

•   If you are the “victim,” you don’t have to take responsibility for any problems in the relationship.

•   If you are the “victim,” you don’t have to take responsibility for any bad behaviors.

A glaring example of the ploy used in his need to be the victim is how he dismisses people and then acts as if he is the injured party. For example, he refused their request for him to spend more time with them. In his skewed perception of reality, it was his wife’s place to maintain a relationship with him by engaging in activities he was interested in, and if she didn’t comply, he was the victim of her perceived neglect.

It did not occur to him that his refusal to allocate time for her, listen to her or show any interest in her life plainly showed him to be the victimizer, not the victim. His only concern was building his career and having an excuse for not including her in his life. What better excuse than being the victim of your wife’s abandonment? His new circle of family and friends don’t know his wife, don’t know the issues surrounding his desire for a divorce and you can bet, being passive aggressive means he once again surrounded himself with people who didn’t like to see others suffer.

His friends and new family see him, as the long-suffering man who “wishes” his relationship with his family could be different. He tells them that he will always be there for his children if they ever seek him out for a relationship. Just imagine the out-pouring of sympathy he gets? It keeps him from having to accept responsibility for his behavior toward his wife and helps him hold onto the wounded, good guy image that is important to many passive aggressives.

How do You Keep From Becoming the Victim of a Victimizer?

Get rid of self-doubt. If you are in a relationship with a passive aggressive the manipulation is meant to cause you to doubt what you do, what you hear, what you see and what you experience. If you give into the manipulative ploys of the passive aggressive, you will soon not know which end is up. Somewhere inside is the nagging voice that something isn’t right. Do not ignore that voice!

•   Don’t make excuses for bad behavior.

•   Don’t feel guilt if your passive aggressive doesn’t like the boundaries you’ve set.

•   Don’t allow anyone to disregard your emotional needs or doubt that you have a right your needs be met.

•   Don’t accept a refusal to communicate about marital problems.

•   Don’t settle for less than you want from your spouse.

* Don’t make yourself responsible for his/her hurtful words and actions.

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Ambiguity

2/14/2015

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Ambiguity

Dictionary.com defines ambiguous as, “lack of information regarding feelings or intentions. If your spouse’s behaviors are ambiguous, you are constantly receiving mixed messages. More than likely you spend a great amount of time trying to figure out what was meant by certain words or actions.

Ambiguity is often a trait you will find in a passive aggressive person. The passive aggressive does harm by consistently failing to honestly express what they are feeling and thinking. It is impossible to work through conflicts with someone who sends unclear and insufficient information.

Being in a relationship with someone who either can’t or won’t open up and be honest about how they are feeling or what they think will leave you anxiously wondering what your spouse’s intentions are. You end up either doubting yourself or questioning your spouse’s commitment to the relationship. Below are a few examples of ambiguous behaviors.

• John is a very affectionate husband. He holds Jane’s hand and cuddles with her on the couch. Get John in the bedroom though it is hands off. He is all over Jane in the kitchen but doesn’t seem to even realize she is sharing the same bed with him. John is sending Jane ambiguous, mixed messages. Jane begins to feel paranoid. Why does he not want sex with me? Is he having sex with another woman? More than likely John is faithful to his marriage but having conflicting feelings toward his wife. He can’t come out and express his negative feelings honestly so he expresses them by rejecting her sexually. Instead of opening up about his negative feelings and finding a solution that will strengthen the relationship, John is subconsciously choosing to deal with his negative emotions by punishing Jane. Not only are his negative feelings damaging the relationship but the way he deals with those feelings does further damage. 

• June is upset with Jake over an unkind remark he made to her. June tells Jake that her feelings were hurt when he told her the house was not tidy enough and she spent her days wasting time. Jake reacts to June by saying, “fine” and walking away. June is left to wonder what “fine” means. Does it mean Jake will no longer make unkind remarks? Does it mean that Jake could care less whether her feelings were hurt or not? June has no way of knowing whether she was heard by Jake or whether or not her feelings are important to Jake. June will naturally begin to make assumptions about Jakes feelings for her and you can bet that those assumptions will be negative. 

Jill and Joe have been talking about buying a new car for several months. Joe wants to buy Jill a car and Jill has a definite opinion about what car she wants. One day Joe comes home with a new car. Not the car Jill wanted but a car Joe felt was more appropriate. Joe was willing to discuss what kind of car they would buy but when it came to making the final decision, he shut Jill out. He has sent Jill the message that although she can have an opinion, in the end those opinions weren’t of any value to Joe.

The one thing common in all three examples is the devaluation of feelings by a spouse. A spouse whose behaviors are ambiguous not only devalues their own feelings they devalue those of their spouse. When a spouse begins to feel his/her thoughts or opinions are of no value they begin to withdraw from the relationship. They are, after all in a relationship with someone who doesn’t seem to care so why should they care.

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Covert...

2/14/2015

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What do Passive Aggressive behavior and domestic abuse have in common? When someone hits you or yells at you, you know that you've been abused. It is obvious and easily identified. Covert abuse is subtle and veiled or disguised by actions that appear to be normal, at times loving and caring. The passive aggressive person is a master at covert abuse and, as a result can be considered an abuser.

Passive aggressive behavior stems from an inability to express anger in a healthy way. A person's feelings may be so repressed that they don't even realize they are angry or feeling resentment. A passive aggressive can drive people around him/her crazy and seem sincerely dismayed when confronted with their behavior. Due to their own lack of insight into their feelings the passive aggressive often feels that others misunderstand them or, are holding them to unreasonable standards if they are confronted about their behavior.

Common Passive Aggressive Behaviors:

•   Ambiguity: I think of the proverb, "Actions speak louder than words" when it comes to the passive aggressive and how ambiguous they can be. They rarely mean what they say or say what they mean. The best judge of how a passive aggressive feels about an issue is how they act. Normally they don't act until after they've caused some kind of stress by their ambiguous way of communicating.

•   Forgetfulness: The passive aggressive avoids responsibility by "forgetting." How convenient is that? There is no easier way to punish someone than forgetting that lunch date or your birthday or, better yet, an anniversary.

Blaming: They are never responsible for their actions. If you aren't to blame then it is something that happened at work, the traffic on the way home or the slow clerk at the convenience store. The passive aggressive has no faults, it is everyone around him/her who has faults and they must be punished for those faults.

•   Lack of Anger: He/she may never express anger. There are some who are happy with whatever you want. On the outside anyway! The passive aggressive person may have been taught, as a child, that anger is unacceptable. Hence they go through life stuffing their anger, being accommodating and then sticking it to you in an under-handed way.

•   Fear of Dependency: From Scott Wetlzer, author of Living With The Passive Aggressive Man. "Unsure of his autonomy and afraid of being alone, he fights his dependency needs, usually by trying to control you. He wants you to think he doesn't depend on you, but he binds himself closer than he cares to admit. Relationships can become battle grounds, where he can only claim victory if he denies his need for your support."

Fear of Intimacy: The passive aggressive often can't trust. Because of this, they guard themselves against becoming intimately attached to someone. A passive aggressive will have sex with you but they rarely make love to you. If they feel themselves becoming attached, they may punish you by withholding sex.

Obstructionism: Do you want something from your passive aggressive spouse? If so, get ready to wait for it or maybe even never get it. It is important to him/her that you don’t get your way. He/she will act as if giving you what you want is important to them but, rarely will he/she follow through with giving it. It is very confusing to have someone appear to want to give to you but never follow through. You can begin to feel as if you are asking too much which is exactly what he/she wants to you to feel.

•   Victimization: The passive aggressive feels they are treated unfairly. If you get upset because he or she is constantly late, they take offense because; in their mind, it was someone else's fault that they were late. He/she is always the innocent victim of your unreasonable expectations, an over-bearing boss or that slow clerk at the convenience store.

•   Procrastination: The passive aggressive person believes that deadlines are for everyone but them. They do things on their own time schedule and be damned anyone who expects differently from them.

The Passive Aggressive and You:

The passive aggressive needs to have a relationship with someone who can be the object of his or her hostility. They need someone whose expectations and demands he/she can resist. A passive aggressive is usually attracted to co-dependents, people with low self-esteem and those who find it easy to make excuses for other's bad behaviors.

The biggest frustration in being with a passive aggressive is that they never follow through on agreements and promises. He/she will dodge responsibility for anything in the relationship while at the same time making it look as if he/she is pulling his/her own weight and is a very loving partner. The sad thing is, you can be made to believe that you are loved and adored by a person who is completely unable to form an emotional connection with anyone.

The passive aggressive ignores problems in the relationship, sees things through their own skewed sense of reality and if forced to deal with the problems will completely withdraw from the relationship and you. They will deny evidence of wrong doing, distort what you know to be real to fit their own agenda, minimize or lie so that their version of what is real seems more logical.

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P.A. and Anger...

2/12/2015

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Anger and the Passive Aggressive.

I’m about to fill you in on a little secret. Anger plays a role in passive aggressive behavior. Yep, that passive aggressive spouse that is driving you insane is angry as hell and full of grief. The passive aggressive deals with anger in one of two ways. Either they have no control over their anger or they have problems expressing their anger.

Anger Out Of Control:

How we handle our anger comes from lessons learned during childhood through our family of origin. Below is an example of an early childhood experience that will produce an adult who expresses their anger passive aggressively.

The little girl who grows up in a family with an alcoholic parent learns that the only way to get her needs met is to throw a tantrum. Mom or Dad is too invested in their addiction to put the little girl's needs first. She grows into a woman who caries the belief that if she wants something out of a relationship the only way to get it is to act in an aggressive manner.

Unexpressed Anger:

Some children learn through their family of origin to become so passive that they allow others to walk all over them. They bend over backwards to please their spouse, keeping their own desires a secret and internalizing any anger they feel. Below are examples of early childhood experiences that produce adults who don’t know how to express anger.

• The little boy whose mother never shows love or affection. His mother is so emotionally closed off that not only does she not show love and affection, she doesn’t allow any expressions of anger. She avoids both the pleasant and unpleasant aspects of being a mother and raises a boy who becomes a man who is also emotionally closed off.

• The little girl whose father is too busy or too afraid to show her love and caring. Her father works long hours. When he is home, he sits in front of the computer or television. When the little girl seeks his attention, she is scolded and learns that asking for what she needs means being reprimanded. She learns that getting her father’s attention means being a good little girl. She grows into an adult who is angry over her needs not being met but too afraid to express that anger.

Adults who have no control over their anger and those who have no idea how to express their anger are grieving. They are grieving the loss of something that was rightfully theirs; their right to entertain themselves regardless of societies or their parent’s beliefs of what was right or wrong. The right to be heard and cared for regardless of how addicted a parent was to alcohol or drugs. They are grieving the right to express love or negative feelings or a desire for parental attention without fear of punishment.

It is about loss, the loss of normal things any child should expect from a parent. Instead of grieving that loss in a normal way, they internalize it and compensate by being overly aggressive or overly passive. The grief shows itself in behaviors that are destructive to themselves and anyone who engages in a relationship with them.

A man who abuses his wife is often motivated by feelings of loss and grief. Feelings are expressed through rage. Women who emotionally manipulate their husband by withholding affection are motivated by the same feelings of loss and grief.

The aggression or passivity hides their fear of rejection and helplessness when it comes to getting what they need from their spouse. The spouse is left reeling and wondering what he/she did to deserve a slap across the face or the withholding of normal loving affection.

The spouse feels responsible in some way. That is the sneaky thing about living with a passive aggressive individual. They don’t know how to properly express anger but they are geniuses when it comes to shifting the blame and projecting their own bad behavior off onto their spouse.

Next time you are trying to make sense of some nonsensical behavior by your spouse remember you are dealing with a wounded, damaged child. Don’t make excuses for him/her. Don’t take responsibility for their inability to properly express their grief and anger. Understanding why someone acts the way they do does not mean excusing their hurtful actions.

Knowledge is power. Learning what is behind the actions of your spouse will enable you to make an informed decision about how to interact in the future.

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