Have you ever wanted to scream at your partner, “Will you please just tell me what the hell did I do?”
It’s horrible isn’t it? You sense they’re angry, but they refuse to express it, so you start getting anxious. You try to remember every shitty thing you’ve done recently, carefully analyzing it to figure out if it could’ve triggered their resentment, and the more you think about it, the more anxious you get, so you ask them repeatedly… They say nothing, and that makes you even more anxious, and so on, and so on. That’s what a passive-aggressive person does: instead of communicating their emotions, they bottle them up and hint at them through small acts of hostility, which they camouflage so you can never tell if they’re actually happening at all. This is their way of exercising control over other people, by making them feel guilty and insecure.
Obviously, this is not the ideal place to be in a relationship. If your partner does this from time to time, that doesn’t means you are in a passive-aggressive relationship, but silent brooding is one of the many weapons in a passive-aggressive person’s arsenal. So if it that happens constantly, you should start getting suspicious and look for other signs. These are five clear indicators you should keep an eye out for:
1. Contradictory behavior
Such as the silent brooding. If your partner shows signs of being mad but gives you the silent treatment and won’t admit they’re mad or tell you what you did to make them feel that way, it’s a form of contradiction between the way they act and the way they feel. It’s their deliberate way of punishing you without the risk of you fighting back.
2. Victimhood
They always portray themselves as the wronged ones, even if it was them who behaved inappropriately. Whenever you start to argue, they signal you as the one who hurt them and forced them to act like they did. No matter how much you try to reason with them, they’ll constantly create this sense of them being in the worst position.
3. Unfair expectations
They blame you for not living up to their lofty standards. They expect you to behave a certain way towards them –their ideal version of what a relationship should be–, and when you can’t deliver in a way that satisfies them completely, they accuse you of not caring enough and of hurting them with your insensitivity. And, of course, they don’t feel obligated to treat you in an equivalent manner to how they expect you to treat them.
4. They damage you without you noticing it
The problem with passive-aggressive people not being upfront with their anger is that it makes them go behind your back to punish you for something. They can start fake rumors about you and make other people distance themselves from you to undermine your confidence and establish their dominance. For example, they could make you look bad by blaming your wanting to spend time with them as the reason why they can’t go to a party.
5. They don’t keep their word
If they agreed to do something for the betterment of your relationship, they don’t commit to it. It doesn’t matter what it might be: whether they promised to stop doing something that hurts you or told you they’d help you on something. They leave you hanging and make you feel like you’re not good enough to deserve them.
Passive-aggressive people can cause a lot of pain to those closest to them. If you realize you’re dating someone like this and don’t want to break up with them just yet, you need to confront them without losing your head, and avoid them changing the subject to demerit your arguments. It’s hard to appeal to their reason, but it’s worth the shot.
You might also be interested in what to do if you’re dating someone scared of commitment and 10 red flags to look out for on first dates.
