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Ugh  I am just having one of those days! Need to vent a little.

Brief back story for those who don't know me. uBPDexh and I are living together again after a 5 year separation. We are not really back together but sort of. Really we are doing it mostly out of necessity - saving money being the main thing. Some days we get along great and other days, not so much. It requires a lot of me biting my tongue and keeping my thoughts to myself to maintain the peace for any significant length of time. Today I'm just not in the mood for it.

I am the nursing administrator for a building with 60 residents living there and about 75 employees. My boss has been on vacation for the last 10 days so I have been doing her job as well as mine. And it's a little stressful, to say the least. Lots of hours spent at work and on the phone at home dealing with work issues. So I'm the first to admit I'm probably pretty easily annoyed right now.

So uBPDexh has always had a very passive aggressive style of letting me know he's upset and of course is a master at pushing the right buttons to set me off and make whatever the argument is my fault. Over the years I've learned not to bite so much but last night and today I had just had enough.

He came home from work and was obviously in a foul mood. He yelled at the dog for basically no reason, yelled at one of the kids for something stupid and was just being generally obnoxious. I was attempting to open the lid of a bottle of juice and couldn't get it off so I tried to hand it to him and asked him to open it. He completely blew up on me, and said that if I wanted women to be treated as equals to men I shouldn't ask for help with something like that. That I was a sexist. (The 2016 election has not been helpful for our relationship. You can probably figure out we voted for different candidates.) so I just kept struggling with the lid until I finally got it off while he stood there and lectured me about feminism or sexism or whatever. And then I just lost it. I snapped off that it was just RUDE to not help someone with something when they ask. And I went to bed. He attempted to follow me and start/continue the argument but I refused to engage. So he reverted back to the passive aggressive behavior. Talking loudly to the kids in the hall right outside my bedroom door, opening and closing doors, turning on lights, etc. Doing his best to disturb my sleep. Ad it woke me up twice. So after the second time I got up and confronted him. And that went about as well as you would expect.

Fast forward to this morning and another one of his favorite tricks: pretend like nothing happened. But I was still very angry and I just wasn't in the mood to take responsibility for something I knew wasn't my fault. I told him I was still angry and that I felt like he owed me an apology. He turned it right around, per usual again, and said it was my fault because I had a "tone" when I asked him to open the bottle. We have barely spoken the rest of the day because I refused to continue to argue about something so STUPID but I also am not going to apologize for nothing.

What do you all do on days like this? Most of the time I would just drop it and move on but it's just so ridiculous. I still feel angry at him but I know nothing productive comes from arguing or attempting to reason.

"Feel" your anger... .and find a productive place for it.  We all have legitimate reasons for anger... I try to "use" it to "fuel" my determination to undo years of bad dynamics and to push through the associated stuff that goes with that.

IMO... .the best way to deal with a passive aggressive person is to be direct and calm.

"Hey... .it would mean a lot to me if you would help me when I'm struggling and I've asked for help.  I am interested in your thoughts on sexism and feminism and would hope, going forward, you can share those with me at a time when I can give them my full attention."

When you have had it and want to tell them off... .do so succinctly and then disengage.

FF