8 Ways That Compliant Spouses Can Calmly Resist Being Controlled
How compliant spouses sometimes react to control
I’m going to coin a term (it’s not a term I’ve ever seen anyone use before). It’s the term “passive assertive.”
No doubt you’ve heard the term “passive aggressive.” Passive aggressive means to passively try to stick it to someone. It’s someone being aggressive without being aggressive (gossiping, for example). It’s being mean without looking like they’re being mean (like using sarcasm or criticism passed off as a joke). It’s trying to get control without looking like they’re trying to get control (like the silent treatment or making promises they don’t intend to keep).
But sometimes the term passive aggressive doesn’t quit capture what a person is doing. Sometimes what someone is doing isn’t an attempt to be aggressive and hurt someone or control someone - it’s an attempt to be assertive and get your power back from someone who is controlling you and is not allowing your autonomy.
Here’s an example: when your spouse has unreasonable demands on you, and you want to be compliant for the sake of peace but don’t really hold to the same standards or expectations that your spouse does, you may twist the truth about things you do in order to avoid getting in trouble for things that seem reasonable for you to do but that you know your spouse will not like. Perhaps your spouse says that they don’t want you to help your parents as much, but you feel that that isn’t a reasonable request for whatever reason. So when you feel the need to help your parents, you say they’re going to the grocery store (and perhaps you do go there) but you stop by your parents’ house to help them with something. This is what I would call passive assertive behavior. You aren’t trying to be aggressive and hurt your spouse or stick it to them, you are simply trying to be assertive without being assertive - you are trying to assert your autonomy, your freedom to make your own decisions.
Passive assertiveness can happen when you feel afraid to speak up, perhaps because of a history of these unhealthy tactics being used when you try to bring something up. You’ve learned that assertive communication keeps the peace but doesn’t make true peace, so your communication wanes and you turn to passively assertive behaviors instead.
It can also happen when you become so focused on what other people think, want, and feel that you don’t honor (and may not even know) what you think, want, and feel. When your choices revolve around pleasing others, you will find yourself trying to juggle too many balls at one time, and in order to avoid the pain of failing anyone, you may find yourself trying to make up stories, reasons, and explanations to manage how someone feels about you or thinks of you, especially when you feel like you’re not able to please everyone.
Passive assertiveness can also happen when you have a tendency to rescue or protect someone from the consequences of their own actions. This can happen when you are so enmeshed with them that pain for them is pain for you, so you try to help them avoid the pain of reality.
Here are some signs that you may be passive-assertive:
Leaving out details in order to avoid being punished or to be able to do what feels reasonable to you
Feeling afraid to be honest
Admitting that you’re failing but, on the inside, wondering if it’s not all your fault
Saying you’re going to do something that someone asks you to do, but then you don’t because it doesn’t align with what you think is right or reasonable
Doing things for others but not for your spouse (a subtle rebellion to avoid their demands)
Using your spouse as the scapegoat when you set boundaries and expectations that they have that you don’t fully buy into (e.g. declining to help someone by saying “my wife would never let me do that” instead of taking responsibility yourself for saying no)
Exhibiting reactions or behaviors that you know are wrong (yelling, anger, slamming doors, name-calling, blame-shifting)
Making excuses for someone in order to rescue or protect them because you can’t bring yourself to admit that they are not doing what is right
These can all be behaviors that are designed to help you feel comfortable and in control of your autonomy without rocking the boat. They are an attempt to avoid conflict and keep the peace while still trying to do what you want when you know that your spouse doesn’t want you to do it (or avoid doing what you don’t want to do when you know your spouse wants you to do it).
If this describes you, you may have a controlling spouse, since it’s a common dynamic in the context of a relationship that doesn’t have a balance of power.
Signs that a spouse is controlling:
They’re often looking over your shoulder (watching and listening to what you’re doing)
You can’t share concerns about the marriage with others because your spouse will get upset
Unreasonable expectations or demands
You feel like you are often defaulting to your spouse’s perspective
You find yourself making excuses for why your spouse is right and you are wrong or bad
No matter what you do it isn’t good enough
Your spouse micromanages everything: what you should think, what you should or shouldn’t do, whether you have a right to feel the way you do, etc.
You take their criticisms as facts and determine that you have to work harder and be better
They expect you to know what they mean when they say something and they don’t like it when you take what they say at face value because you should listen to what they mean and not take things literally
The control is the problem
If you’ve been feeling like you don’t know how to overcome your problems and feel like the problems in your marriage are your responsibility and are due, at least in part, to your “bad” behavior, know that sometimes “bad” behavior is not the problem - it’s the symptom of a problem. And the problem is with the dynamic that’s happening between you and your spouse. It’s a dynamic that you don’t know how to handle the right way, so you react, stuff and blow, or use passive assertiveness to try to keep the peace while getting your power/autonomy back.
Even within a marriage, each person has autonomy - the right to think and behave based on what feels reasonable to them. When you have a spouse who doesn’t honor your autonomy but, instead, criticizes your decisions or places unreasonable demands or expectations on you, it’s confusing. It creates cognitive dissonance because you believe that you are right but you are being told that you are wrong, and you try to reconcile the two. But they can’t always be reconciled. What I mean is that you might not be able to do what your spouse wants you to do AND feel good about it.
Often, when you feel that cognitive dissonance, you may choose your spouse’s perspective over your own, trying to convince yourself that doing it your spouse’s way is the right thing to do, even if you don’t agree with your spouse. And while that might bring an illusion of peace, it’s just that: an illusion - because it doesn’t make things better in the long run, does it? The reason it doesn’t is because you find yourself becoming resentful that you don’t get a say in your own life. You can only keep defaulting to your spouse’s perspective for so long before you cannot contain your frustration and resentment. It’s at this point that many people realize that something has to change. But what? As you know, you can’t change your spouse. So you have to change you.
How to overcome passive assertive behavior and calmly resist being controlled:
Drop the passive and just be assertive
To drop the “passive” and just be “assertive” means that you start stating your boundaries and opinions and desires even if they aren’t well-received. You might say “I know you aren’t going to like this, but I am going to go help my parents for an hour this evening.”
Stop caring if someone gets upset with you
The reason you find yourself being passively assertive is because you don’t want someone upset with you, but you have to stop trying to manage someone else’s reaction to you. If they get upset, those are their feelings to manage, not yours. You aren’t doing anyone any favors by trying to make them feel OK while you abandon yourself. You have to stop concerning yourself with things that aren’t your responsibility - like others’ thoughts and feelings.
Embrace the fact that you have a right to who you are and how you manage your life (your time, your personal habits, your thoughts and feelings)
If you’ve spent your life feeling responsible for how other people think and and feel about what you do, it’s likely that you’ve been doing things to try to please others, but in doing that, you’ve been forsaking yourself. Start letting others manage their own thoughts and feelings and you start managing your own. You have a right to who you are and what you think, feel, and do. Just do your best and live your life.
Decide what your boundaries are (what is OK with you and what isn’t)
There is a difference between expectations and boundaries: expectations are what you have of someone else, and when someone doesn’t meet your expectations, there’s a tendency to want them to change. That’s not healthy. Boundaries, on the other hand, are what you have in place to protect yourself from things that are not OK with you. Boundaries create the space where you can love both yourself and your spouse simultaneously. When boundaries are violated, it isn’t up to someone else to change, it’s up to you to take action to decide what you need to do to protect your boundary. It may be helpful for you to get crystal clear on what your boundaries are - what is OK with you and what isn’t - so that when someone crosses the line, you know that you have to do something.
Communicate your boundaries assertively
Don’t be afraid to be clear about what your boundaries are. If your spouse doesn’t like your boundary or doesn’t respect it, that’s OK - it’s not your job to get them to understand your boundaries or agree with your boundaries, but it is your responsibility to communicate them. If they aren’t received well, move on to #6.
Don’t expect your boundaries to be respected
Someone who is a boundary-buster is not going to like your boundaries, so don’t be shocked when they don’t. If you were with someone who respected your boundaries, you wouldn’t be spending all this time trying to figure out what your boundaries are and how to communicate them. Healthy people discern other’s boundaries and respect them without having to be told to. The only reason you need to communicate boundaries is because they’re being violated. Accept that so you aren’t thrown off balance when there’s pushback.
When your boundaries aren’t respected, have a plan to protect them
It’s common for people to not know how to enforce/protect boundaries. Many people think that the only way to enforce them is separation or divorce. But there are many other options, and part of how they get enforced depends on how you word your boundaries. If you say “my boundary is that I will never be with someone who gambles” and then your spouse has a habit of gambling, you’ve backed yourself into a corner by saying you’ll never be with someone who does that while at the same time realizing that you are not willing to leave because you’ve made a covenant to your spouse. So change your wording instead of violating your own boundary: “If I have a spouse who gambles, then I will….” (finishing the sentence with what you will do to protect yourself from the behavior or the effects of the behavior that you fear). You may have to brainstorm all possibilities before deciding on what you will do - this guide will walk you through how to do that. For example, you might finish the sentence with “…then I will take over the management of money in order to protect our finances.”
Commit to loving someone well even if it doesn’t feel good to them
Loving well doesn’t mean always pleasing them. You can’t always try to do things their way because, in doing so, you will be forsaking yourself, and that’s when you become passive assertive (or, perhaps, even passive aggressive). Do the hard thing and be yourself - and let them be responsible for their response to that. It’s then that you may find that……
hope isn’t found in our situation changing, it’s found in our situation….
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