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Old May 31, 2003, 10:38 PM
penna penna is offline
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Member Since: Jun 2002
Location: pa, usa
Posts: 50
i'd be very careful here. from the brief description you've supplied here, your boyfriend sounds pretty passive-aggressive and controlling. try to remember that he is responsible for himself and his own happiness. don't give up doing things for yourself just to keep the peace with him or in an attempt to make him happy. it's verrrry tempting to do this if only to avoid the negativity that seems to occur whenever you do something he's not happy about. it's certainly a bad pattern i've fallen into several times in the past.

my husband used to be very passive-aggressive with me (not consciously) and one thing my therapist suggested that really helped is whenever we would have a disagreement and my h would try to make it my fault i would just ask him questions about what he said and not let him blame everything on me. for example, if i made a comment that offended my h, he would usually respond with something like "well i *was* in a good mood"--the implication being that i had single handedly destroyed his good mood through my insensitivity. so i started asking questions like "what was it about my comment that offended you?" or "why is this such a sensitive issue for you?" at first he would go on the attack, but i would keep turning his arguments around and asking him why he was choosing to respond to me in that way. it took a lot of effort, but by questioning him and remaining calm throughout the discussion, i took away all his ammunition and made him defend his position. he might still be pissed off, but at least i didn't let him blame it on me.

but like i said, this is just based on the few sentences you wrote about him here. there might be a whole lot more going on to which we're not privy...