Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums Midlife Crisis MLC or Passive Aggressive or Narcissism

Kimmerz, If I'm being totally honest and humble, I can explain why they can admit they have a problem and then put it on others, because I did the same thing. I had anxiety issues my whole life that really snowballed the more XH sheltered or cared for me or validated my anxiety by never saying get it together but just patting me on the back. In the years before the end of the marriage, I had this episode of claustrophobia in an MRI machine and never knew I was claustrophobic, and then it snowballed to me having fears of being trapped elsewhere. I flew 2 times and was ok with it and then suddenly I couldn't fly without major panic attacks. I also started having issues teaching/standing in front of people. I stressed all the time and he would say you need to do something about this, and I'd say I needed to do something, and I never did. I just practiced avoidance behaviors and tried to go fewer places. I never got treatment for my anxiety until it came up when I was in therapy for him cheating on me and divorcing me. Only then did I really do the work needed to face the anxiety problem, and there are still some things I havent' dealt with, like getting back on a plane.

People put their problems on others if they are too scared to face them or too lazy to do the work needed to fight the problems. I did it myself, so I get it.

This is why I think that realistically unless the bottom really drops out of my XHs world, he'll never get help but put his problems on others. It takes a former avoider to know a current avoider. He and I were peas in a pod.

This is why even though he did an awful thing to me, he set my life on a path that I'd never have chosen to take that has completely made my life better.

So I'm one of those people who definitely would say now, "My XH's affair was the best thing that ever happened to me."

I know me enough to know that it was the only thing that would ever destroy me badly enough to have to decide to either end it all or fight back and rebuild "me".

More like an addict fighting a horrible addiction is how I can understand it.

Hi AntoniaB,

I read your reports of anxiety and claustrophobia with interest. I too, in the past have have suffered an exaggeration of what were previously very mild anxieties or fears. I think possibly this may be at least in part a result of the undermining or erosion of confidence or self-esteem caused by the continual PA behaviors of your spouse.

Naturally when we are happy, confident and optimistic we all have few fears and feel anything is possible for us, but when the reverse is true....

Being on the receiving end of PA behaviors will erode your self-esteem, your confidence and make you feel old before your time. No wonder that any latent anxieties come to the surface.

Be aware that your PA spouse may well possibly be delighted to help highlight any such 'disorders' in you. This will help re-enforce and validate their view that you are a flawed individual in need of 'seeing someone' whilst they are of course perfect.

Kimmerz: you are right they are addicted to a 'lifestyle'they adopt to deal with their inner anger and frustration. They will go to extraordinary lengths to feed their addiction and 'stick it to you'. To give up the lies, deviousness and deception and admit a they have a problem, never mind seeking help is to admit there is something wrong with them. remember the 'Passive Aggressive has no faults, it is the rest of us and we must be punished for those faults'.

If they admit their faults, cold turkey for them is emotional suicide.

Your thread continues to resonate with me. All my friends tell me I look years younger since my xh left me . . . the enduring anxiety has taken longer to go, but it is noticeably better when I have no contact,

And they CANNOT be wrong. It just doesn't enter into their world. Even when the fact are presented, even when they are very bright [I think highly intelligent PAs are a particular menace!] They have got it right. . . . and the rest of us don't understand the real situation.

And I agree admitting their faults is more than they can do. We used to have a family joke game in which we had to suggest the thing that the person was least likely to say, and guess what for my xh it was 'I could be wrong on this . . . . ' And he sort of laughed, but it was quite uneasy. They do not see this huge side of themselves at all. A

Hi Beatrice,

12 years ago after I first realized my wife was not the person I had believed her to be, but believing that maybe my reaction was unwarranted and over the top, I did an online personality quiz. Took me about 20 minutes but no real surprises tending towards introversion etc etc. Having seen me do this W decided she had to do the same personality quiz. Took her about 2 hours, mulling over each question very very carefully, Guess what? No surprises either she was able to demonstrate she was exactly who she had decided to be. She even admitted this some years later.

I think the phrase 'don't confuse me with facts my mind is made up' is very apt. Other times of course they will deliberately do the wrong thing just to stick it to you, and then feign ignorance/surprise but generally no remorse.

I don't know about your XH but this careful control of self means virtually no spontaneity. It seems to me the PA just simply not enjoy life for its own sake. My W is very competitive in hobbies etc. she simply cannot enjoy something she is not seen to be good at. Possibly this indicates a lack of self-esteem, I sometimes think my W will go to any lengths to look good.

She has turned our relationship into a battleground with a winner and a loser (the way she pays monopoly as well!!). You are not even allowed to surrender gracefully, she must deliver the coup de grace. 3 1/2 years ago when she ended her affair she said 'okay you win!'. Didn't feel like I had won anything except 7 months of anxiety and misery.

I think as children we quite often want to win, to be the best, but as you grow up/get older you realize life is short, there is always someone better than you, its not that important, and it really does not matter as long as you enjoy what you do.

In their relationships the Passive Aggressive possibly never considers: 'its not whether you win or lose its how you play the game'.

It seems to me, from all I have read and seen, the PA the MLCer is still a child having a childish tantrum over what they were denied in childhood.

Wow, this just keeps getting more informative. I appreciate this. I've lived with this PA all my marriage. I will still have to deal with it even after divorce do to the children. Knowledge is power, and it helps keep my sanity in this case.

"I think the phrase 'don't confuse me with facts my mind is made up' is very apt. Other times of course they will deliberately do the wrong thing just to stick it to you, and then feign ignorance/surprise but generally no remorse."

^^^^^^This is classic PA and crazy making. My stbx has been horribly cruel and mean during this seperation. Giving mixed signals like you wouldn't believe. He still wanted a sex life with me after he left, yet in the same breath and filed for divorce behind my back, and didn't even tell me. He acted like nothing was wrong and then the papers were served. I called him on it, and his excuse " well you were my first everything. I don't know how to break up with someone".

I find my PA/ stbx considers everything a competition, and he always must win! He's been a gaming addict for 8 years now. I sometimes feel like he treats life like the game. Only to score and aquire the highest level of all, but only in what he wants and at the cost of everyone around him. If one stands up to him, he must destroy. I think part of the reason he gets so angry at me, is that he can't destroy me like a video game character. I represent reality.

I agree that these people are just having huge adult tantrums. I've felt that my stbx has the emotional maturity of a 9 year old, but with the smarts of a teenage bully.

My xh is somewhat older than yours, I believe, and the PA came on more gradually, as he failed to address his childhood/teenage issues.

So I would say that the first 10 years of my marriage contained little noticeable PA behaviour. For my XH it was classic MLC drivers, like his previously good career going nowhere. He took refuge in PA behaviour which is why I think I failed to see it for a while. I wasn't used to it, and I knew he was stressed. Anyway it got worse and worse until I switched almost overnight from being the most wonderful woman in the world, to being public enemy number 1.

Well I worked at being wonderful, I realise, to keep him happy. So when I became PE1 my initial and rather sick response was 'What did I do wrong?' This is why the boards were so good. They showed me that MLC is not your fault, and that you make changes for you, not for the WAS.

Understanding that it was nothing you did is huge when you have been dealing with an increasingly PS person, who has been subtly persuading you for years that everything is your responsibility and much of it your fault.

After he left my xh accused me of undermining his career, driving away his friends, trivialising what he did, and making him live where he didn't want to. Oddly enough I left the town and he stayed . . . I could go on. We have all been there and heard much of what they say.

Another time he asked me why I acted as if everything was my responsibility. What I wanted to scream at him was 'Because you have made *** sure that Someone, and usually me should take responsibility for everything that happens'. Even now he occasionally asks me for explanations of things - during the summer he wanted to know who had caused the European monetary crisis. I realise he didn't hold me responsible for that, but he certainly wanted to blame someone!! This question came out of the blue. We have very little contact. I have not seen him in nearly two years. Honestly they are deranged in very special ways!

Is this his dependency need followed by his denying his dependency perhaps? I am not always sure that my W is deliberately cruel but certainly their self-obsession and lack of empathy means they do not realize how cruel these 'mixed signals/sucking you in and then spitting you out' tactics are.

Here are some quotes on leaving a PA partner:

This thread is just shooting off epiphanies left and right.

Look at this illustration: I flew in 1999 with my colleague and was nervous but totally fine. She sat on the other side of the aisle and just smiled and said, "you're fine." It was a good enough experience that a year or two later, I booked me and XH a flight to New Orleans so I could give a paper at a conference. NO PROBLEM. After my MRI experience, I suddenly was a person living with extraordinary anxiety. Even a small shower would unnerve me. The MRI experience I was told was VERY normal. The transference of it to other situations was not. When he and I next flew, I was a terrible anxious wreck with panic attacks. He would look scared out of his wits at me. He didn't know what to do. The look in HIS eyes made it worse. So at one point he said, look, you know that tv show we saw last week, where that guy had to smuggle his sister through the airport, get her past the guards? Let's pretend. I'm going to save you. I'm going to get you through this flight and get you out of this airport.

Any time I had anxiety issues, he went into the role of the savior. I needed to be "saved." I thought this was romantic. I didn't realize it only made me completely dependent on him.

When he first met me he said I reminded him of Scarlet O'Hara. He in fact once said "You need to be kissed, and often, by someone who knows how to kiss" (I'm ruining the line but there is a Rhett Butler line like that in the film). We played the roles of those characters. He had several pics of Vivien Leigh as Scarlet in his room. He just kept saying I was like the living embodiment of her. What I think he failed to realize is that Scarlet changes in the story. She becomes quite different and very self-sufficient.

But here is the scary part that is part of the P-A: the minute I started to have anxiety problems, he started to say that I was going to end up like the real Vivien Leigh--not the character--but the actress, who became highly neurotic apparently and this is all documented in some biography. That she became this tragic neurotic actress with mental problems. He kept saying he feared that this would be me someday. My father has some mental issues of agoraphobia. He kept saying I'd end up like my father, unable to leave the house, afraid of people, etc. All these accusations that I was a "crazy" person came out in full force when he left me. They were "the reason" he left.

When HE started to have MLC issues, I mobilized the troops. I said look, this is the kind of thing a person needs a good therapist for. In fact, you shoudl probably have bloodwork done. At your age a simple shift in testosterone levels can cause the anxiety and depression you feel. It can cause insomnia, and with insomnia comes feelings of despair and low self-worth, because you're just exhausted.

His response? "You're trying to make me out to be crazy and neurotic and I'm not. I'm not the heroine in "The Yellow Wallpaper" (a short story about a woman with postpartum depression who is told by her husband to need "rest" as he believes she suffers from hysteria). I'm not crazy or neurotic. I don't need a shrink. I love you but I'm not in love with you."

The thing is I was basically saying at the time that I thought his MLC was BIOLOGICAL, that he had hormonal imbalances, that he had insomnia that was leading to him feeling terrible.

And to get back to Scarlett, when I was the older, wiser Scarlett, who became more take charge and trying to really FIX the problem of his health (I always lose my anxiety and become quite strong if someone else is in need), he could not take it.

He "needs" a passive woman who is needy to function. It's the way that he is able to deflect the attention from himself and his own needs. As long as there is a princess who needs saving, he can spend his time rescuing her and not himself.

Gosh I'm sorry to go on so long but this all makes so much sense now that I cannot believe it.

All this time. I was living with a P-A person.

Side note: after he left me for OW, a week later he went on a trip out west to meet 2 male friends. He had told me he was going and was going to stop at my house on the way to the airport I guess to say goodbye. I never responded to the email and I made sure I was out of the house when he would have driven by. I never contacted him. I thought, why should I? He betrayed me. Let OW calm him down before he flies.

After he got back, maybe a week or so later, he ended up confronting me angry as could be that I did not see him or speak to him before he flew. He said "do you have any idea how hard that was for me to get myself to the airport, to find parking, alone, to get into the building, to get on that plane, to change planes midwest, and you didn't care?"

A year after getting with OW, he made a point to tell me that he had flown to Spain with her. That he did it without an itinerary, that they just got on a plane and flew and I guess made it up as they went along. Despite the fact that it was SO out of line to tell me all this, he could not contain himself. He used to use my "not flying" as a MAJOR REASON why he had to leave me for her. Because, he said, SHE would just go anywhere alone, no problem, and she was "only 27" and here I was 42 and couldn't do what she did.

I don't know why this flying thing is a major issue with him post-breakup, but it shows a lot of this P-A stuff.