Passive aggressiveness is passive anger.
One of my followers has asked me about this recently:
(My partner) was never aggressive, violent or angry but after doing some research I do believe he was passive aggressive. So what I am wanting to know is: is passive aggression a form of emotional abuse?
Yes, it is.
Passive aggressiveness is confusing as someone who behaves like this acts passively. But they are covertly aggressive and hostile.
Passive aggressiveness is a sign of insecurity. It belies a deep sense of shame and low self-esteem.
A person who is passive aggressive needs to feel dominant and in control. They also need to make others feel inadequate to relieve a feeling of deficiency within themselves.
They can be unreasonable, uncomfortable to be around. They express hostility covertly and use manipulative subterfuge over time.
All designed to make you feel insecure, walk on eggshells and at times, to punish you.
They do this in a number of ways:
Characteristics of passive aggressive behavior:
Sarcasm and teasing
Sarcasm can be humour used as a weapon to hurt you.
Hostile humour that can be disguised as teasing you about your appearance, gender, cultural status or whatever personal to you.
If you get hurt or angry, they’ll say:
I was just kidding
And gaslight you by telling you:
You’re too sensitive
Picking fights
This is where they’ll pick a fight out of thin air. But it will be because of something you’ve said or done they blame as causing them to do this. You’re responsible for their anger.
Or, they’ll be resentful and occasionally let nasty comments slip out.
The silent treatment
This is a form of punishment aimed at creating insecurity within you. It may be sullen resentment. Social exclusion or neglect.
Not speaking to you for days, as punishment for their behaviour you may have questioned. So you become the problem, not them. And they avoid accountability for it.
Negative criticism
Negative criticism of anything from your appearance to how you talk.
Telling you your friends or family are no good for you.
Passive aggressive comments
But, then they’ll say:
I’m only trying to help you. Who else will tell you if I don’t
They may say negative things to others about you. Or, address you like a child.
This is all aimed at making you feel inadequate to relieve their own sense of deficiency. For them to feel superior and in control.
Psychological manipulation
Using tactics like gaslighting. Blaming you for their abusive behaviour.
Lying to you, then telling you you’re the one making things up.
Making excuses for their behaviour to avoid responsibility for it.
Throwing unexpected things your way to always keep you on eggshells.
Making you feel guilty for their behaviour
Holding you responsible for their moods and behaviour. Their unhappiness and lack of success.
Expecting you to change your behaviour so they don’t have to be accountable for theirs.
Stonewalling
This is where they don’t say no. But do everything to block things. There’ll be broken agreements, endless red tape and a lack of follow-through.
They’ll keep you thinking progress will be made, but covertly they’ll be stonewalling you.
Stubbornness
Where they passively appear to be going along with you, but constantly come up with excuses or reasons why you can’t.
Which stalls progress or inhibits you coming to a decision.
Secret Subterfuge
This is where they undermine you in any way they can. They’ll ignore deadlines, sabotage projects.
Make you look like you’ve failed and you get the blame for it.
Again, this is about making themselves feel good, by crushing your self-esteem encouraging your insecurity.
Threatening to hurt themselves
This is passive aggressive manipulation at its best. Threats such as:
If you leave me I’ll kill myself
The tactic is to teach you a lesson. Saying: I’ll hurt myself to hurt you.
It’s appealing for your sympathy, aimed at making you feel guilty. It’s attention-seeking drama aimed at you and gaining control again.
Playing the victim
[bctt tweet=”Narcissists are masters of at playing the victim, especially in their smear campaigns against you. ” username=”beingunbeatable”]
Making others believe they were the victim of your behaviour, not the other way around.
Others play the martyr – not magnanimously, but so they can have control and feel better about themselves.
Victimhood can be a form of co-dependency. Where you have a need to be needed.
Even if the other person rejects your desire to rescue them. Your obsession for fixing them, is at the expense of your own needs and wellbeing.
Passive anger
Passive aggressiveness can be frustrating to deal with, as the passive aggressive person can transfer their inner anger onto you.
They covertly and passively press your buttons and push your boundaries. If you become frustrated and angry they’ll then turn it back on you, asking:
Why are you so angry?
If you’re in a relationship where this behaviour is happening then chances are you are codependent.
Their covert manipulation is a form of coercive control and emotional abuse.
By staying there and accepting it you are also enabling them to continue with it.
It’s a form of hidden anger and resentment towards others they seem are more fortunate than they are.
They have an exaggerated sense of their misfortune, which they deem to be caused by others.
They can be sullen, argumentative and resentful and it can be so uncomfortable to be around them, it can be easier at times to take the path of least resistance.
Passive aggressiveness can be found in relationships, in the workplace – your colleagues. Even your friends can use passive aggressive behaviour.
Don’t enable this behaviour. It’s emotional abuse.
Dealing with passive aggressive people
The best response is not to engage with any of it.
If you nag them, scold them or pull them up for it, then you will most likely be gaslighted anyway. They’ll project their behaviour onto you.
And unwittingly force you into the parent role, which they can rebel against even more.
The only response is an assertive one. Which is neither passive or aggressive.
Don’t blame them or judge them. Take emotions out of it.
Simply, describe their behaviour and explain the affect it has on you and the relationship in factual terms. Using words such as:
When you do X, I feel Y and I believe it would be better for our relationship if instead we try Z
It’s all about having strong boundaries, which are key to signalling to them how you expect to be treated.
There are even times when you can find yourself acting passive aggressively. I have.
There was one time when I started to use sarcasm and put downs to covertly bully my husband. I wasn’t even aware I was doing it at the time.
It was when certain events impacted our relationship and we fell into an unhealthy parent-child dynamic.
Thankfully, I recognised this and that it was coming from a place of insecurity within both of us.
I learned love is a verb, not a noun. To get us back on track I needed to show him I loved him with my actions, not just words.
We both needed to nurture our boundaries, sense of self-esteem and self-worth.
So, back to her question:
Is passive aggressiveness a part of the dynamic? A form of emotional abuse?
The answer is: Yes. In codependent relationships, definitely.
Passive anger or passive-aggressiveness is a form of emotional abuse. Coercive control.
It’s aimed at making the other person feel small, so they can feel greater about themselves.
Are you experiencing passive aggressive behaviour from someone? Let me know in the comments below.
I’m in a 7 year relationship with a man who very much likes to control everything. I do my best to stand my ground and not let him push my boundaries but somehow he always gets the better of me and I end up giving in. I really just don’t know what to say to him to get him to stop treating me like I’m just there to benefit his every need and want. He constantly needs help or for me to do something for him, throw in a lack of intimacy (it’s been a month) and what happened last night and I’m feeling very resentful. Last night he put his head on my shoulder and asked for a kiss but the way he was positioned I was having a hard time kissing him because his nose was in the way and he wasn’t moving to accommodate the kiss so I turned my head hoping he’d sit up more. He just asked what I was doing. Then he started blowing in my face for some reason. So I turned my head away from him again. This time he sat straight up, grabbed my face with both hands aggressively and kissed me then ‘threw’ my head backwards and turned around with a pissed off look on his face. I was stunned and I went in the bedroom crying. He apologized and said he handled it wrong and was just frustrated. I feel like it was abusive behaviour because I wasn’t doing what he wanted and the way he wanted. I’ve been ignoring his calls all day (we don’t live together) because I don’t know what to say to him and I’m afraid he’s just gonna manipulate me into feeling bad for him and I’ll be back under his thumb again. He has a lot of issues but also a lot of good qualities I love and we’ve been together for a long time. It all feels hopeless that anything will change and I’m doomed to be miserable the rest of my life. Help!
This is emotional abuse and it most likely will get worse. You can’t change him or fix him. But you can change you. You deserve better than this. If you need help and support to work through this I’ve listed some free and anonymous helplines here: https://www.vivianmcgrath.com/domestic-violence-resources/
Wow this sounds all to familiar people if you think you can fix him or her your wrong you will end up in a ball on the floor scared confused angry and no where yo turn for help they will make u not recognize ur own self you will loose everything cause your not allowed to have anything they can have.
What an insightful article; thank you, Vivian.
I’m struggling with my partner’s adult daughter. We both made mistakes. I apologised for my part and asked how would she like to move forward. She could never respond and just said I’ve hurt her too much.
It’s been going on for 3 years. Each time she made contact or I tried to support my partner and see her, she would snigger at my personal life choices such as being a strict vegan. Saying, it’s pathetic how anyone wouldn’t want to eat vegetables if they’d been cooked on a meat grill. Comments like this at every chance. I stopped sharing anything with her as she would turn it around, being dishonest about what I’d said.
If I tell her know how such behaviour hurts me then she says it’s my behaviour that hurts her more and she’s only trying to protect herself from my abuse.
Finally, I said to her that our interactions are affecting my mental health and for self care I am suspending all contact.
She took it out on her dad and told him she wanted nothing to do with him.
He thinks I need to have more empathy for her and the trauma she suffered at her mother’s hands. It causes a lot of tension between us.
I feel she cannot accept me, but tells me I’m her family and only doing her best to create a bond that I resist.
My partner carries a lot of guilt and doesn’t always confront her or put in consequences. This goes against everything I believe regards family values.
So, I am at a loss and feel maybe I need to break away from my partner.
Are you able to suggest anything I can do to help us all in this distressing situation?
Many thanks,
Pam
You have done well to stay respectful, to keep emotions out of it whilst maintaining your boundaries as to what behavior is acceptable to you or not. You can’t change anyone or anyone else around you, but you can change how you respond to unacceptable behavior, and leading by example is key.
What do you do when your spouse tries to put guilt trips on you for not wanting to visit his family members who are often disrespectful toward you… and have even caused fights between you at times?
Just for example, he asked me if I wanted to go with him to a birthday party (for one of his great nephews who is turning a year old) this August. He also wants to see his mom since he hasn’t seen her in 2 1/2 years now. While I’ve no problem with his nephews or seeing his mom… I really don’t want to go since his sister and her husband will be there. She is becoming quite unraveled these days and suffering from clinical depression due to a couple of deaths in the family. Not to mention who has always been snotty toward me anyway since she thinks she’s better than I am, which I don’t have the patience for anymore. (It’s like being around a 15 yr old immature high school girl who treats you like sh– because she thinks she’s prettier than you. Or doesn’t know why she doesn’t like you, but just doesn’t like you, and has done the same thing to my husband’s brother’s wife). Her husband is also an ass sometimes.
He mocks the way I say things and they both even talk to me like I’m slow and stupid; something they also do to my husband’s brother’s wife. They’re also the kind of in-laws you get who think they’re better than you are and you and your husband will never be in their league.
They also did some things to cause a huge fight between my husband and I a couple of years ago in which I even unfriended her on facebook. Yet my husband can’t understand why I don’t want to go to the party. I don’t want to fight with his sister due to the bad moods she’s always in anyway. Nor do I want her picking a fight with me over the fact that I unfriended her on facebook. And my husband might not stand up for me either.
This is despite the fact that not even her two daughter in laws want anything to do with her either, and even announced that they don’t want to spend any more holidays with her but “proper people” instead. And even though she got therapy and took anti-depressants she stopped doing both.
I’m still fuming from the fight they created between us– so much so that if I were to go to the party and she got cross with me even once over anything (even something minor like sitting in the wrong chair) I’m pretty sure I might just start screaming at her, you know? I’ve really hit my SATURATION POINT. She doesn’t even see anything wrong with the fight she caused and is very patronizing toward me, thinking I should just be over it… as if I’m some little kid (probably since she’s 12 years older than me is my guess). Nevermind that I’m 47 years old and she’s 59 years old.
I calmly told my husband that my parents (who live clear across the country) were going to be here at the time of the birthday party so I didn’t want to go. And he got mad saying that they were going to be here for 2 months, and that he knew I didn’t like his family, and it was only a weekend…. and then practically hung up.
Now I’m worried that these arguments are going to continue throughout my marriage so much so that I am going to be nothing short of ELATED when his mother dies… then maybe I won’t have to be guilt tripped into going to see his idiot sister and her husband ever again. I am done with these people and don’t ever again want to even have to THINK about them.
And there is no point in trying to explain to him that I’m angry about the fight they caused between us since he just says, “Well if you hadn’t done such and such… it never would’ve happened” and still blames everything all on me.
Stick to your boundaries. If they treat you disrespectfully then you choose not to go.
My adult daughter has been actively punishing me for over ten years. Limited access to grandkids is the worst part.
After years!!!!! of therapy / at age 74/ I finally came to a place of NOT jumping through her hoops.
All my friends KNOW KIM!!!
It’s heartbreaking for me.
But/ self care and a good therapist can bring you to a place of acceptance.
I ended a 27 year relationship and have been trying to figure out what happened. My partner did not intentionally hurt me and wasn’t malicious. I had become emotionally numb. As I attempted to analyze things, I explored passive aggression. I believe this is another thing that I have been dealing with as well as his negativity and long term stress. I feel that the relationship caused me to have complex ptsd but I can’t find any info on this. I am also looking into disassociation as something that I’m also dealing with as an affect from the relationship. Sadly, it’s a death by a 1000 wounds and I normalized myself within this situation and am now completely confused.