Why Does Passive-Aggressive Drama Flourish in Divorce? |
The Challenges of Divorce
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Passive aggression serves as an unhealthy defense mechanism in too many separations.
Accepting hard realities sooner rather than later halts vengeance, saving you time, money, and sanity.
Extended family, full of knee-jerk reactions, create risks with passive-aggressive acts, online and off.
Imagine the characters in a separation or divorce, amid overt and covert problems. How people end a marriage, who chatters to whom, what they think and do, and how they resolve differences all lead to a healthy restart or misery.
Quickly recognizable, external anger presents as shouting, pushing and shoving, throwing, or destroying. Less obvious is purposeful inactivity, defiance, defamation, obstruction—passive-aggression.
While one spouse might prepare for the end, others sit shocked. literally, staring into space, physically drained, losing weight in disbelief. One spouse, and often the children, may fit this description. Hidden anger has the capacity to envelop multiple players.
Why Some Dish Out Pent-Up Anger
Unbalanced or dysfunctional patterns ultimately cause explosive or implosive marital moments. A last straw occurs. That aha-moment bolsters one spouse. With sudden energy to live differently, he or she plans to leave or actually does. Some find a sudden voice while others still stonewall on important matters.
When little to no good communication evolves, rumination and plotted revenge simmer. It creates an angry stew that swirls around affected parties with sarcasm, name-calling, entitlement, false starts, and stalls on a forward focus.
Sound familiar? If domestic violence or rage forces one into silence for safety, these behaviors serve as a red flag, a signal that it's time to engage effective helping professionals.
Otherwise, register some awareness that you’re dishing out passive-aggressive behavior. That underground fight hurts you........