After a long period of frustration, and confusion, you realize that the pain in your marriage is produced by passive-aggressive behaviors. That discovery alone cleaned your brain fog and gave you fast relief!
You know what’s going on: It is not you; it is the relationship!
Armed with this new insight, the next logical step is to get some help and search for a counselor.
This decision brings a new wall of frustration with several points of solid resistance awaiting you:
1.- Your husband refuses to share the visit with a relationship coach or a counselor. He sees no marital problem, is satisfied with things as they are, and denies the harmful impact of his behavior on the relationship.
2.- Bravely, you pushed ahead and called a therapist for help:
“I’m searching for a counselor or therapist, but when I explained my issue, he told me he didn’t address his passive aggression. Instead, he insisted on telling me I had to be his client and focus on my own shortcomings.”
Now you feel like being dumped by the helper!
What you need is therapy for the harm caused by his passive aggression toward you!
“The one doing such nasty behavior is my husband and if he rejects any external help…
how can I get support to survive this passive-aggressive marriage?”
If your husband doesn’t want to take up the responsibility for his own behavior, it doesn’t mean that you are condemned to suffer it alone.
What other channels has she left? What other ways are there to express her anguish, her loneliness, and the pervasive wish to be understood, deeply understood by the most important person in her world?
This serious and repetitive argument is but the tip of the iceberg, as underneath is the anxiety about defeating loneliness and separation by connecting. If a man sees this aspect of the fight, as a desperate claim for reconnecting, he is now on the right path.
Real emotional strength from a husband has nothing to do with passive-aggressive calm and restraint. He could stop withdrawing and start to connect by asking about her experience….But this is not the case, and both feel trapped in this dynamics.
Women discovering that they are trapped in this passive-aggressive isolation, express a common question:
“I would like to have the help of a counselor or therapist, someone to bridge the gap and help us talk more humanely, but when I called one, he told me they didn’t address passive aggression. What I need is therapy for his passive aggression. The trap is that the one doing such nasty behavior is my husband and he rejects any external help…how can I get help for my passive-aggressive marriage then?”
If the husband doesn’t want to take up responsibility for his own behavior and refuses to go to the couple’s therapy, it doesn’t mean that she is condemned to suffer alone forever.
What am I teaching my clients here? I’m teaching them how to optimize the visit to a coach or therapist. She needs to get an individual counselor who understands this particular style of marital interaction, knows the progressive hurt happening in her personality, and can prevent or repair the damage while supporting the wife to recover her identity.
But, all therapists know about passive aggression, right? Not in all cases. The wife will have to explain to the therapist that she wants to have the focus of the conversation on how to manage the impact of the husband’s behaviors. Only later she can focus on how or why she is depressed, demoralized, or low in self-esteem in this poor situation. This book will shorten the time in the therapist’s office, because the client will know exactly what her pain points are, inviting her counselor to provide solutions to urgent issues. Once they are addressed, she will be empowered enough to manage or transform her participation in a passive-aggressive marriage towards a more satisfactory one…
