Again I can only speak from my own experience. In my own case, I was not being passive aggressive, but I was struggling. It's very difficult to end a long serious relationship. It's painful. No matter how much I resented my husband, no matter how angry, hurt, frustrated and annoyed I was with him; I still loved him. I was not in love with him at the time. But we had four children together and I made a commitment to him that I fully intended to keep when I made it.

Part of it was guilt. Why couldn't I make this work? Part of it was a balancing act. He was happy in the marriage (to this day I don't know how he could have been) and did not want to end it. I knew it would hurt him. I truly did not want to cause him any more pain, but at some point I knew that I too deserved happiness and I was not going to be happy with him. And a part of me was so angry with him. He could see (I thought) how miserable I was and yet his desire to remain married to me was more important that my happiness. He claimed to love me, but that alone convinced me that he did not. If he truly loved me (I thought) he would understand how very difficult this all was and not make it even more difficult. By forcing me to flat out say the words, over and over again made me despise him even more.

In my case until he actually let go of me, I could not let go of the anger and frustration. As I sit here now, I do not know how we were able to overcome those obstacles. It took a lot of hard work, but our love is stronger than ever.