I’d like to quote from “Living With the Passive Aggressive Man.” I think these paragraphs completely describe what I wrote about in my recent post “non-communication.”
“Marriage to a passive-aggressive man can be a solitary experience, where you feel as if you’ve been frozen out of his life, emotionally and physically. When you’re warm, he’s distant; when you need his attention, it’s elsewhere. He can coolly shut you out of his innermost thoughts and feelings, failing to respond to your openness, your affection, your humor and your vulnerability….”
“A man who prefers to watch a television program that makes no real difference in his life, for example, rather than deal with a wife who needs him, both denigrates and abandons her. Wives who complain to their husbands about such an insult leave themselves open to further rejection. It’s a double bind: some wives continue trying to break through to their detached spouses; others, at some point along the way, implicitly accept the situation and the solitude their marriage has brought.”
I didn’t get married to be in a solitary experience; I wanted to share life, emotionally and physically, with a man. I tried for years and years to “break through,” continually trying to get there to be closeness. Sometimes, I still do. Witness my trying to connect in the “conversations” I wrote about in the “non-communication” post. In one way, I accept the solitude of my marriage, because I realize that is the way it is. But in another way, I don’t, in that I want to rebel, to leave, to just get away from it and not deal with it any more. I want to be free to pursue a healthy, whole, loving relationship, where I can be warm and open and affectionate and humorous. And not be rejected. But rather, loved back.
Passive Aggressive Abuse 