Do you want to learn how to stop your own passive aggressive behavior? Perhaps you’re just now realizing how much your past marriage struggles have had to do with your own behavior, (after taking the PA Test?) or perhaps you’ve come to terms with the fact that you need help stopping some action that you didn’t even know you were doing.
There are many sites that tell husbands how to identify their behavior and actions, and many sites that help wives identify it, too. You can even find internet resources for why passive aggression exists in the first place. However, very few resources help you, as the passive aggressive man, understand how to STOP your behavior. It’s like learning how a bomb is made, but not learning how to turn it off in time to save the world!
Your reasons for changing are your own, but the first step in your healing process is to accept the past and move forward. Don’t be beaten down by guilt or anger at how your passive aggression has hurt the marriage – focus on what you can actively do TODAY to change your life TOMORROW. So where do you start? What are your options? How can you change your behavior instead of just coping with it?
The best place to start with your own self and your own story:
Yes, you may have read a lot online about why passive aggressive people behave the way they do… in general. You need to look closer at yourself and see where your past pain lies. For some, this may mean some hard (but necessary) sessions with a professional grief or abuse counselor. Your past pain will often dictate how you react: so if you understand your past pain, you can almost predict which situations are going to set you off! Begin compiling knowledge about your “trigger” situations, and start thinking now about the bad and good ways of handling the emotions that surround that situation.
Need some help? Let’s look at an example of a reaction:
You realize that in your interactions with your wife, you often remember something one way, while she swears you did or said something another way. If you know that a common passive aggressive behavior is to defend, deny and rationalize, you’re on the right track to getting to know yourself better. In what ways might, say, last week’s interaction be a case of you rationalizing an event? A good sign of you doing this is that you don’t actually remember what happened, only what you suppose happened, based on “This is how I would act.”
Need more help identifying basic passive aggressive behaviors, and applying them to your situation? You can find all the information you need in our system, called “The 4 Steps to FREE Your Marriage of Passive Aggression”! You won’t just learn about how and why you act passive aggressively, but how to use that knowledge to STOP your passive aggression once and for all.