Monday, September 24, 2012

Passive Aggressive Husbands Still Feel The Pain Of Childhood "Lessons"







Sometimes we hear about the challenges that passive aggression and other defensive
behaviors impose on marriages, but we fail to connect these present, adult behavior failures with the past conditioning produced in us by the family we grew up with.



Right now, in marriages across the world, there can be a wife blindsided by her husband's passive aggression and toxic attitude. That unhappy wife is trying to come up with solutions for the communication failure under the assumption that his response is connected to "something she must have done wrong."



In taking on this burden, she endlessly searches for the failure in her own behavior so she can "fix" it. Her belief tells her that: “if I do X differently, he will behave in a more loving and caring way...”



In short, this wife (and thousands of wives like her) tries to recover some control over a lost situation by making herself responsible for her husband's emotional constraints.




Unfortunately, no one is given a disclaimer when they say their vows, so that the wife can know what challenges present the territory she's entering to. If there was a disclaimer like that, it would have instructions on how to deal with her husband’s  passive aggressive behavior, all in capital letters:



"THIS IS A CONDITION YOU DID NOT CAUSE;
YOU CAN’T CURE OR CONTROL IT;
NOW, CAN YOU STOP BLAMING YOURSELF?!"

Wouldn't a message like that change radically the situation? So much happiness is lost to women who feel it's their burden to change their husband!

Any wife in a passive aggressive marriage needs to step back and re-evaluate her situation. She needs a mantra she can chant to herself when things get hard, like, "I did not cause his condition, and I can't cure him. He is acting on his childhood model, which means nothing he's doing or saying reflects on me personally."

This can be the beginning of a lesson on how to detach from this situation, and you can learn more about detachment at http://passiveaggressivehusband.com




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