Passive aggressive or me going nuts?

[Koekie]

Hello everybody. I would love your feedback, I'm going to give you a lot of detail, but I really would appreciate any input, especially from people familiar with passive aggressive people.

 

Since we got married we have had some trouble with him expressing emotions other than anger. I have recently started wondering if he is in fact a passive aggressive personality. I'm a bit confused over this, since he will display anger. Getting him to talk about things is another problem all together. I'm not talking about him opening up like he is my best girlfriend, but getting just an opinion out of him is really torture for me. When I cry he takes this as him failing personally, even when Im crying over the cat. He gets very nervous at my display of emotion and will often times just make himself scarce. Our sex life is really suffering and I really need some emotional intimacy and attention. I have told him this. This leads to a terrible fight, where he will be pacing, looking cornered, terrified and not getting that it is not a personal attack, but just me being very serious now, about what I need from him. He will always say I contribute to the problem by pushing him and constantly bringing it up. I am at a loss as to how he thinks it should happen. He keeps saying give him time, he is trying, this is a year and a half later and he still just forgets me and my needs. He will for a while try. And then it's like he is off in his own little world again. He will talk to me like I am his best mate. He always wants to take me with him when he does sports and things. When I ask him to do other things, he will straight out say no if he doesnt want to (actually he is quite the crouch). And if he does do it he does it well, no sneak attack half performances. The same goes for his proffessional life. Except with our emotional life, here he will agree to try to change, but he never follows through. He gets uncomfortable if I hug him and look in his eyes. He will hold me at night but only if my back is to him. He rarely kisses me passionately but he always kisses hello and goodbye and will every so often, though rarely give me a peck kiss. He does try to keep saying he loves me and he want to fall to pieces when I want to leave. Which is where I am at now. Its awful feeling rejected and unnatractive. We spend months sometimes not having sex. He just keeps withdrawing. He says he feels like a failure compared to me (this only comes out after a ferocious fight where he really is cornered and has to reveal whats going on, no normal sit down and lets solve the problem conversations) I have a little business and I am successfull in my own right. He has had some financial difficulties and has never taken the risks I have taken to get where I am. He has a good job now and he is better of financially, but he still feels emasculated I guess. Thats his theory. I feel the only emotion I get from him, is anger or his hurt after we have had a massive fight, when I tried to talk calmly about problems I feel is affecting our relationship.

 

Does this sound like a passive aggressive person or something else? Because if this is passive aggressive I am not going to stay around for it. I don't think I can cope with that.

Edited August 22, 2012 by Koekie

[whichwayisup]

He will hold me at night but only if my back is to him. He rarely kisses me passionately but he always kisses hello and goodbye and will every so often, though rarely give me a peck kiss. He does try to keep saying he loves me and he want to fall to pieces when I want to leave

 

Sounds like he has trust issues too, scared to fully open up and be totally intimate/let go with you. Maybe some hurts from past relationships or something from his childhood. Just odd that you two are married, yet he is so emotionally distant from you, especially in bed.

 

I would lay it all out for him. Tell him you love him and want him, but you are so hurt and fed up by his lack of affection, lack of communication. either you two do counselling (and he goes on his own too) together or it's separation time.

 

All in all, some men just cannot handle seeing or dealing with emotions. They are taught from an early age to 'suck it up', 'be a man, don't cry'. This is why I believe many men (not all obviously) are able to not show what they are truly feeling inside, and when those emotions do hit, they don't know how to deal/cope with it.

[freestyle]

I think he sounds more emotionally phobic than passive-aggressive.

 

P/A types won't straight out tell you "no" if they don't want to do something , or go somewhere---they'll agree, and then "punish" you by sulking about it the entire time.

 

They won't be direct---at least your H is direct & honest, and doesn't put you through the fake pretending to go along with what you want.

 

 

Like WWIU said--it sounds more like a fear of intimacy. You might want to do some reading on Avoidant Personality Disorder.

[Koekie]

Thank you, I think we do need professional help. I was so worried that he might be passive aggressive. The walls he has around him is super thick and high. From what I have gathered his parents were authoritarian parents. Im trying so hard to connect and it just seems so impossible

[Feelin Frisky]

No, there is nothing in what you said that implies passive aggression. Passive aggression is when someone does things they know will get someone else angry just so they can manipulate that person into appearing to be the aggressor. My ex-fiance did that a lot and I don't think she even knew she was doing it. There was just something screwed up inside her that wanted to test the limits of tolerance on every front and never let us settle into just acceptance, happiness and love. What a horror for me because I had been the victim of passive aggression so much as a child. The sister who is a year younger than me--she being second child in my parents eight children--would constantly try to win favor or her sense of "love" from my parents by secretly needling me and doing things to purposely upset my serenity to the point that I would get angry and then she'd immediately whine to may parents that "I started" menacing her in one way or another. I was often beaten and on many occasions very hurtfully with belts and other objects. For a while I went to the school yard and threw a ball off the wall pretending it was a rock and that my parents were tied up in front of the wall. That is how much I was cornered into emotional pain by my sister's passive aggression.

 

Some of the things my sister would do is make bodily sounds like forcing herself to burp. And doing it over and over and closer and closer until you just have no peace. Well, my g/f would do stuff like look me in the eye while we were eating and start chewing with her mouth open with a glib look on her face to apparently test how long this stupidity and lack of manners could go on until I felt I had to say something. I didn't take the bait but I could tell what she was doing because she didn't always do it--she was just acting like a child in the manner much like my sister. She was a disturbed BPD sufferer and getting along was impossible because of her catalogue of these weird quirks.

 

What you have is different. There is obviously a big discomfort with direct communication where it is taken negativity and provokes a contentiousness. Also you seem to have some basic compatibility issues where you two don't like the same things. It takes both parties to want things to get better and for both to admit that they can do things differently or better. Couples counselling can help, one or both getting a psychiatric evaluation can help greatly as well. Medicine today is very transparent and if one or both are too emotionally raw to communicate, reason and reason alone may not be the answer. One or both may have to try to improve their emotional composure to be able to communicate without melt-downs. And taking medicine for a month or two to find that clarity is not too much to ask in the way of an investment in the future to address these ongoing impediments to happiness. Good luck.

[Koekie]

@ Feelin Frisky,that must have been horrible. You must have felt so powerless and so frustrated. How is your sister now that you are adults? I had BPD but fortunately I got help and sorted myself out. Its harder than for other people in a relationship because I have to look at all my emotions twice to ensure that I am reacting correctly. I am happy to say that I function calmly and normally in relationships now and have not slipped into the pit that is BPD again, although I am older now and I know it mostly goes away in your thirties.