you are right, when the penny dropped I was extremely angry I told my PA W that she is in fact not the nice person she thinks she is.
At they moment I would happily have not had anything to do with her again. Sadly life is not like that.
Her reaction was to go to a counselor with a list of my observations about her behavior to prove me wrong. The counselor told her that if that is the way she has behaved he was not surprised that I thought she was Passive Aggressive.
One month ago she said 'I am in a crisis I am not the person I thought I was': very encouraging. She said she would speak to the counselor/therapist again.
She has not and now says she does not need fixing. Back into the tunnel. Any real admission of imperfection is emotional suicide to the PA they cannot do it. Yesterday she admitted 'everything was her fault'
My opinion is that as they have built a life around covert actions, lies and deception you must not ever ever trust a word they say. They have no integrity. They will tell you something different everyday to try to manipulate you. You are right they are toxic.
You would not stay with a physical abuser why should any of us put up with mental abuse. Angry, damn right I was angry when I realized what had been done to me for 20 years.
Passive Aggressive spouses do not want the truth 'they can't handle the truth'.
My opinion is as both MLC and PA are routed in childhood hurts they are really pretty much connected. The passive aggressive will at some point carry out the crisis behaviors and either change or not. My W would happily carry on her PA behavior for ever had I not stopped enabling it. She had an affair because I stopped chasing (and therefore enabling) and got on with my own life - she needed a victim. There is a crisis now because I called a halt to enabling.
You are right they will always claim to be 'happy people' but still continue the PA behavior. They equate never getting their anger out as being happy. It looks good to the world but it is just a facade, another lie. They still need a target for their PA behavior. To deal with a PA is to deal with an illogical child.
I am not sure there is any fix we can do to ourselves to stop us being punished for something that happened before even we met our spouses. I suspect most of the victims are very nice kindhearted people, not necessarily co-dependent. who ride the roller coaster for a variety of reasons. The only fix is as you say to stop enabling.
We can only learn the lessons and move on older and wiser.
