There is something I’ve been thinking about from the conversation Thursday morning. When he told me that he wanted sex and asked what he had to do to get sex and said, fix the roof, fix the floors, buy cars for our daughters, it was like saying, if he spent enough money, would I have sex with him.
Could he pay me to have sex?
Is that what he was saying? That is what I have ended up feeling like. “I do something for you, you do something for me.”
To me, that is NOT what sex is.
Sex, rather, making love, is a loving expression of the whole relationship, a loving, a caring, a sharing, a giving of oneself, an enjoyment of the other.
Yes, we have a physical need for sex, built of hormones – and, believe me, I have plenty of hormones! But if I just wanted sex, or wanted money and was willing to trade sex for money, I am sure there are plenty of men on any street corner who would gladly oblige me.
(Even the Fed Ex delivery man was hitting on me this week.)
What I want is the relationship to go along with the love making. It’s a whole package. And it is not contingent upon someone laying out the money to fix the roof. I think I could live in a shack if I truly felt loved and valued.
What “WritesinPJ’s” commented (“What he didn’t seem to do was feel or express or reflect empathy.”) is absolute right. There was no empathy. I tried to tell him about my pain but it did not seem to even register.
And how do you explain anything to someone who has no empathy? How do you have relationship with someone who has no empathy? There can’t even be a starting place to improve the relationship. Yes, maybe I could be a “better wife” – I DO have empathy, maybe too much empathy at times – but if he has no clue about my pain, how can he have any kind of response to that pain?
Passive Aggressive Abuse 
And there ya have it…they have NO empathy!! When PA Man went to counseling last year, all THREE times, his counselor told him he has a “severe lack of empathy for others”….and to this day, PA Man has done NOTHING to fix that broken part of himself!
And I think that’s the problem….They don’t feel that way…WE have the problem…so why try to fix it, if it ain’t broken, right??
You are spot on. I do not believe it is possible to have a marriage when one of the spouses has no empathy. You said: “There can’t even be a starting place to improve the relationship.” Agreed.
I’m surprised no one has pointed out to you how passive-aggressive blogging anonymously about your problem is!
As a child of a nasty marriage and a subsequent and equally nasty divorce I can tell you that you’re not helping your kids by staying if things are as ‘bad’ as you say they are.
The more you ruminate about how much you hate him, the more he will continue to meet your expectations. You have spent three years bemoaning him on the internet behind his back; no wonder your relationship is in the toilet. If these feelings were addressed with him openly, maybe he would be able to change some of his behavior. Instead, you repress your true feelings and immaturely and passive-aggressively take your problems to an anonymous forum. Grow up and talk to your husband about these feelings. Show him this blog! If you truly feel this way, you shouldn’t be ashamed of it and certainly shouldn’t hide it from your partner.
If this guy is really just an asshole, please just get out of there for your sake and for the sake of your kids. Having Mom and Dad hate each other is not something that they should have to experience. It’s better to be apart than to expose the kids to that. Kids aren’t stupid, they can pick up on it no matter how subtly it’s expressed.
It’s time to put on your big girl pants and make a change in REALITY, instead of behaving like some teenager and going to the internet with your problems. If things are so bad, get out of the relationship. Rumination solves nothing!
Bill – you can tell someone until you are blue in the face to leave but if they are stuck in ambivalence (like I was for a long time) because of the fact that they keep telling you that they will change, that they love you and that they will “try” then you hang on to potential something better. This blogger has spoken to her pah, again and again, over and over, the same conversation, the same song. If she shows him this blog, she will pay in one way one another, that’s what passive aggressiveness is all about, you can tell your partner in a loving way that you would like to be treated better and they will make you “pay” by finding some unhanded way to annoy her (ie. one of her blogs was that he cancelled the family credit she used for groceries).
You are correct, she needs to get out but she will do it in her own time if ever…. Everyone stays in a relationship for different reasons. This blogger has her own, just like I had my own. I’m made my path and I’m now following something different but I had to do it in my own time at my own pace. Telling her to grow up makes no sense since this has nothing to do with it!! PS. Sometimes the way we deliver the message can be pa, just sayin….
You have perhaps never been in a relationship that uses control, manipulations, lies, and much much more to make sure your partner is destabilized and is unable to function. Some of us who have, completely understand.
I have no worries that when this blogger is ready, she’ll get out once and for all.
Bill you missed the mark. She doesn’t blog the good times but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any otherwise she wouldn’t stay. For her the good times are real, for him they’re a game. That’s the hardest concept ever to grasp because it’s admitting that a man couldn’t love you. Not that he didn’t want to but he couldn’t. It took me over a decade to get there. Telling her to show him this blog will solve nothing. She’s not writing this blog because she wants to talk about him behind his back, she’s writing this because she knows somethings wrong and she’s trying to find the path out, she’s looking for the answers, she’s getting out her own frustration. This is the first step, it’s a step those of us who are finally out recognize. It’s so easy to pass judgment on others. If we were all so perfect, psychiatrists wouldn’t be making a killing and half of America wouldn’t be on antidepressants. Codependence and PA go hand in hand. Codependence is a real mental issue that keeps you trapped for years. We have to go through withdrawal similar to an alcoholic. You can tell an alcoholic to just stop drinking but that doesn’t mean he can just stop drinking, sometimes it takes several tries. And this is worse because alcoholics know that the booze is the problem, people with PAs take several years to recognize that the problem is within them, not him. Also Mom and Dad don’t hate each other, mom and dad love each other that’s the problem, they just shouldn’t be together because they both have mental issues that they haven’t dealt with that doesn’t let them have a healthy relationship but it doesn’t mean they hate each other. If they hated each other, they would have left years ago. I left my husband, I don’t hate him, I just finally realized I’ve spent so much time “helping” him and trying to “fix him” that I forgot to help me and fix me.
I agree that bad marriages aren’t a good way for kids to grow up. I felt that way as a kid growing up in a bad marriage, and despite my best intentions and efforts, it was a painful awakening to realize that I’d repeated the pattern. I can’t imagine anyone plans to have a bad marriage.
I disagree that anonymous blogging is passive aggressive. That’s one perspective, but many others find it to be a process for growth, clarity, and support. Passive aggressive is aggressive; it’s sugar coated hostile aggression disguised in ambiguity and pleasantness. It’s also so mind twisting that over time, you lose confidence in your own thoughts, feelings, choices, and reality.
Those who actually read this blog, know that this blogger has openly communicated her feelings to her husband. Those who really understand what deeply passive aggressive people are like, realize that open and honest communications typically don’t alter their thinking or behavior. This isn’t just my opinion, but the consensus of professionals that work with them.
The woman that writes this blog has been on a slow and steady path of growth. This blog has been an essential part of her growth and recovery. Passive aggressive people are driven to sabotage and undermine things that make their partners happy or help them in essential ways; therefore, it would be self-sabotage to share it with him.
For the record, I have a blog and it’s not a secret to my family. It’s anonymous to protect my kids and my husband. My kids deserve that privacy, but they also express encouragement to me for my blog. My teenagers (i.e. dependents) read your response here. The older one quietly commented, “The problem is that he obviously doesn’t understand.” The younger teen said, “He’s the immature one.” Their opinions were expressed before hearing any of my thoughts. I only asked them to read what you had to say.
I discuss the options of stay vs. go with my kids, and what the currently available choices would mean. They support me if I need to leave their father, but prefer that I stay and that stability is maintained while they’re in school etc. I express my feelings openly to my husband, including my goals to recover physical health and financial independence with the goal of making separation reasonably viable. I tell my husband that my hope is that he’d work on his part so that we could heal our marriage, but if he chooses not to, then I’ll keep working at recovery until I can separate from him. It does absolutely nothing to change his behaviors. He wants us to stay together, but doesn’t change or get help. His intentions are good, but his behaviors are undermining to everyone.
My husband does know I blog about recovery from passive aggressive abuse, but doesn’t read my blog (although I’ve never told him that he couldn’t). He’s never asked for the name of it, or the link. He acknowledges that he’s passive aggressive, and we’ve been in and out of professional counseling over the years. In my particular case, it shoots down your theory that direct communication about the relationship (or the blog) would make any difference.
Perfect response PJ….my husband also knows I have a blog..and has never asked me about it either…and YES Bill….I have had talk after talk after talk with my husband…he knows exactly where I stand.
And I have found that blogging is a way of releasing negativity and stress…I am actually happier now that I’ve started blogging and have met such fantastic women, who totally get where I am coming from!
Everything I have read when it comes to affair recovery, or living with a PA, suggests journaling as a way of healing and I look at blogging as my way of journaling…
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I hope you don’t mind another first time commenter. My intentions are not the same as Bill’s.
It’s pretty clear to me that your PA husband found your most vulnerable spot…sex with him. Your reaction when he initially brought the subject up a while back gave it away. Since then, he’s been using it against you in every way he can, without ever having to as much as take his pants off! You didn’t mean to do it, but you gave him the perfect covert aggression weapon.
What you didn’t realize is that you’ve always had the power to prevail against any act of covert abuse…because no act of passive aggression is complete until you fulfill it. This article “How to Cope with a Passive Aggressive Mate”, by Deborah Koshoba (http://www.psychologyineverydaylife.net/2012/07/07/how-to-cope-with-a-passive-aggressive-mate-dr-deborah-khoshaba/) has given me the tools to keep myself safe and sane in a relationship with a PA husband.
I hope you can find the words to tell him that you will not consider having sex with him under any circumstances as a result of his abysmal behavior toward you, and that your position is not negotiable or open for any further discussion.
Good point Zombiewife!
After so many years of telling my pa that I have had enough and that he needs to treat me better and having told him how I would want to be treated, forgiven, forgotten and now have PTSD because of the whole experience, if a pah doesn’t want to change, he won’t and the message he tells you (usually whatever you want to hear) won’t match what they will actually do. Empathy?! What empathy!!
Kudos to Bill. Finally someone has com out and said what needs to be said here. I agree with absolutely every point he’s made. I really feel sorry for the husband.
Here’s the thing – if the husband doesn’t know he’s being a bad husband (and goodness me, the guy has been trying) then will he ever know? And if so, what is your goal? That someone who has no idea they are doing anything wrong will change after eighteen years? This obviously won’t happen. And so, you stay for your own gratification. Your revenge a blog that, though I’m sure you assume it makes him look bad, makes you look like a horrible, horrible person.
What? I am sorry, Bill is Right, but this doesn’t make much sense. Are you sure you commented on the right blog/post? How much history have you read here? And what do you mean by eighteen years? I am pretty sure this blogger has been with her husband more like 26 or 27 years. She has certainly communicated their marital issues to him repeatedly. It would be wise for you to do some more reading, starting with all the previous comments to this post. newshoes123 and WritesinPJ’s do an excellent job of responding to Bill.
In any case, just a little reminder to passiveaggressiveabuse.wordpress.com: Those of us out here who do understand you and do have more than a passing exposure to your blog know better. [I really do long for you to get out and the sooner the better, especially for you and your daughters, but I understand the difficulty]. We know you don’t do this for revenge, and you definitely DON’T look like “a horrible, horrible person.”
Thank you, again, for your blog and the incredible support it has been for me for so long as I fumbled around trying to understand my own situation. :)
This is for Bill and Bill is Right: Everybody is entitled to their opinion.As it has been posted many, many times that to an outsider looking in our relationships seem “normal” and we seem out of control and our abusers look like the long suffering spouse. You are only surface viewing and not seeing the deep, insidiousness of this type of abuse.
If you want to read a book to gain an insight to our plights, how about “Why Does He Do That?” by Lundy Bancroft?