I don’t get a lot of comments from men here, but I think it’s definitely worth a mentioning. We don’t have to be romantically involved for a female’s passive aggressiveness to affect us. We have passive aggressive mothers, sisters, girlfriends.
I do have to say though, that I find the m.o. of a female passive aggressive vs. what we women go through with our male passive aggressives, to be quite devastating for the average man.
Now, that’s not to say what happens with women isn’t devastating, but somehow I think we are more equipped to handle what is happening. As women, we get right down to the research, reach out to others for support and understanding. Men aren’t used to working like that, so they have more of a tendency to keep what they are going through private, thus not taking advantage of what support systems they may be able to utilize.
A big disadvantage the man has is that most of them have never understood women period, let alone a passive aggressive woman. Most of them succumb to tears, temper tantrums, because they have no idea what else to do. This makes at least these two expressions of emotion great manipulative tools for a passive aggressive female.
There are two cases I know of that are almost identical. One is from a mother-in-law’s point of view regarding her daughter-in-law, and the other is from a dear friend of mine who got involved with a passive aggressive female a couple of years ago, and hasn’t been sane since. LOL.
In both cases the passive aggressive females had been abandoned by their mothers at a rather early age. One was raised by her relatives, the other by an alcoholic father who decided he really couldn’t take care of her, and abandoned her also. Needless to say, when it came to nurturing, neither of these women received what they needed.
In both cases, neither of the passive aggressive females will go to counseling. My friend’s girlfriend agreed at first (I think just for posterity) but then seemed to keep coming up with excuses not to go. The therapist ended up quitting on them as she never knew if they were going to show up or not. Both women seem to be “not” dealing with abandonment issues and are quite needy because of it.
What’s funny to me, is my friend even calls his relationship “crazy-making”, understands that his girlfriend is passive aggressive in “some ways”, but really doesn’t get how incurable it is, especially when she doesn’t want to address any of her issues.
In both cases the passive aggressive female, like the passive aggressive male counterpart, wants to cut off all outside relationships their spouses or Significant Others have. My friend who is a mother-in-law, is lucky if she ever sees her grandchildren. Her son has been so manipulated by his passive aggressive wife, he hardly has anything to do with his mother. When he does, many times it’s backing up his wife’s passive aggressive behavior, hurting his mother even more. The other passive aggressive female has been trying to build a wedge between my male friend and his mother almost since the very beginning of their relationship. His mother is quite elderly, and he has a very real sense of responsibility toward his mother, so his girlfriend is finding that relationship a little harder to break up.
He and I don’t hardly speak anymore because she was threatened by our relationship. Passive aggressives usually understand they are being unreasonable and don’t want their spouses or Significant Others talking about their relationship with anyone else. In my male friend’s case, his girlfriend said he should be talking to her instead of me about the things that bother him, which I agree if that’s possible. Yet when he tries, she goes into a huge crying jag, or a screaming match. Then she totally breaks all communication stating if they can’t have the perfect “fairytale” relationship, they shouldn’t have any at all. After 3 yrs. I’m hoping my friend is starting to see that he may be better off letting her go to find that kind of romance, instead of being the brunt of everything bad that ever happens. There is no way he can ever win with her.
Unfortunately, in both these cases, all the people on the outside can do while getting their hearts broken, is wait for the one in the relationship, be it son, friend, brother, etc., is wait until they’ve finally had enough. As we can see from how long passive aggressive relationships can last just from reading the comments on this blog, that could be a very long time.
Filed under: causes, coping, passive aggressive, passive aggressive behavior, passive aggressive female, passive aggressive relationships, passive aggressive spouse | Tagged: coping with a passive aggressive, living with a passive aggressive, passive aggressive behavior, Passive Aggressive Female, passive aggressive relationships, passive aggressiveness |
P.A. Don't Stand For Palo Alto 
[…] The Female Passive Aggressive February 28th, 2014 — “About the female passive aggressive for the man who is going crazy in the relationship.” […]
I have been married to a passive aggressive woman for 12 years. Her behavior started literally from the day after we were married. All affection stopped and she rapidly became less and less interested in any form of intimacy, never connected with me on an emotional level, would never speak to me about anything, and would manage to screw up even the most menial tasks, despite having an incomplete PHD, and gone to college on a scholarship. At first I could simply not understand her behavior, and whenever I confronted her on it she would shift the blame to me with by saying “you want me to be perfect” or “everything is always my fault” which drove me insane as I don’t think its unreasonable for a husband to want his wife to hug him, kiss him, touch him and want to have sex with him, much less talk to him. No matter how many times I tried to get her to open up I was always met with silence, sulking, lack of affection of any kind, eye rolling, she wouldn’t even make eye contact with me, and displayed total apathy. I couldn’t understand her lack of interest in dealing with her behavior, and was met with more excuses and denial, so my response was anger and frustration. We have 2 preteen kids, and she barely shows them any affection either, this was most heartbreaking especially when my daughter would ask me why mommy doesn’t ever play with her.
As time went on and her inexplicable behavior persisted, I went from being a happy friendly guy always easy to laugh, to always feeling stressed and being angry. At one point a few years ago I was at my wits end, because I had no answers for her bizzare behavior and emotional detatchment from me and the kids, I didn’t understand what the problem was and my wife refused to speak to me about anything in any detail. When I would tell her how I was feeling she would say “I don’t know what you want me to say” or “that’s not true” so I started speaking about it to a psychologist friend of mine. My friend said to me “your wife sounds like an extreme passive aggressive” at which point I informed her that I didn’t know what that was. She recommended a good book to me called “The angry smile”. I also began to google passive aggressive behavior and it was like the heavens opened up and imparted the wisdom of the gods on me. The more I read these sites the more it seemed like they were describing my wife to a tee. from the withholding of intimacy, to the eye-rolling, deliberate incompetence, sulking, ignoring, indifference, and lack of communication. It was as if they knew her personally. I even went so far as to print up several pages and give them to her to read. She read them and had no comment, which was dumbfounding. When I asked her what she thought, her response was “I don’t think I am passive aggressive.” Its been 4 years since that day and her PA behavior has gotten worse. I have tried to reach her every way I could, to no avail. It seemed the more I tried to reach her the more distant and disinterested she became. Finally, 3 nights ago I tried reaching out to her for the final time. We were in our bed, and I had once again been rejected for sex and then I just began to tell her how unhappy I was, that I was angry all the time over her lack of communication, empathy, affection, and everything else. I went on about how stressed I have been and how massively unhappy I was and that I could no longer live like this. Through all of this I got no response, so I look over and she was asleep. This was that final straw. This is what did it for me. Right then and there it finally hit me that her being passive aggressive and closed up was more important than my feelings and happiness and there was nothing I could ever do, she would never change, I now knew that it was time for me to leave.
For the 14 years we have been together, I have tried to give her everything she has ever wanted or needed. I gave her all the love I could, affection, and took care of her when she needed it, knowing that she came from a poor childhood, with a mother who was not very much of a mother and a father who drunk, only to get nothing but apathy in return. I have been reluctant to deal with leaving before because we have 2 young children, but I just cant do it anymore. I know now that she will never ever change, and because of that if I have to preserve my sanity and health, I have to be the one to change because she cant or wont, or she will destroy me. And so I have decided to move out, and get a divorce. This tears me apart as my father abandoned me as a child and I don’t want my children to think I am doing the same to them. They are my world. But I know deep in my heart that staying with this toxic person will be not only bad for me but for them as well, and so I have begun to look for an apartment, I have to do this, because she cannot and will not deal with her own PA disorder and I am left with no other option.
The advice I offer to others in toxic relationships with PAs: Get out, leave, before they destroy you, before its too late. In almost every case I have read the passive aggressive will never change because they will never admit to being a PA and thus never deal with their PA behavior. Believe that you deserve better, its time to think of yourself for a change.