BPDFamily.com

My H just apologized for being passive aggressive! I think I might pass out from surprise. 

So this morning he was amped up. Over the last few days I could tell he's been looking for a fight and I have successfully dodged them. I almost stepped in a landmine this morning. He wanted to talk about subjects that ramped him up--politics, religion, philosophy. I added to the conversation a little, but I hate having these conversations first thing in the morning. I mean, let me get some coffee in before talking please? So then the bomb got thrown, "You aren't listening to me." My response was, "I added to the conversation just a minute ago. You were talking and I was listening." He couldn't respond to that because it was true. He continued to talk a little longer and began to work himself up a little more.

I tried to change the subject and asked if we could do our morning Bible reading together. He began to accuse me of only wanting to do what I wanted to do. He wants to talk, but what he wants to do gets ignored for the sake of what I want to do. I told him I was a little confused because I thought he enjoyed us reading the Bible together each morning (because he told me he did ljust 2 days before). He said, "You can read it, but I"m going to talk while you are reading." I said, "If you do not want to read it right now that's ok. We can talk and read it later this afternoon. You just have to say so." He ignored my statement and continued with the conversation. I knew this was the best I was going to get and engaged in the conversation. I actually enjoyed it. I could see his mood lift a little. When I left for work, he had calmed himself quite a bit.

I texted him just a little bit ago, and I told him "I enjoyed our conversation this morning."
His response, "Thanks. Sorry for being passive aggressive about it."

Can someone help me parse this out? What did I do right in this conversation?  I know one thing for sure is that I did not JADE, but I've stopped doing that for the most part. Anything else you can see here? I want to try to repeat whatever it is in the future.

Nice job  :)

Throughout the conversation you reassure him that you want emotional closeness with him, and give examples of ways that you are working to do that, without judging his contradictory statements, and also without letting him run right over you.

Reassuring, and gentle, while being firm.  |iiii

LnL

Wow! I didn't even notice I was doing that. Thanks!

TH,

Thanks so much for sharing! Amazing job and encouraging for the rest of us, that when one partner changes their interactions it can change the other partner's responses. The, you can only control you part, so refreshing to see it actually applied successfully.

Prior history is him trying to engage you--negatively since it seems to be what he knows how to do--and you used to let him pull you in that way. When you did it, he was able to distract himself and avoid whatever feeling he originally had by distracting himself with the conflict with you.

When you take that away from him, it gives him some room to see what he was doing, since you don't "cooperate" in giving him a distraction. Thus he had a bit of self awareness  :thought:

The way this kind of progress works is that you cannot MAKE him grow or learn like this. You can't even do much to lead him to it. You can stop participating in what he does to stay stuck. And someday he may well figure things like this out.

I remember a day years back that I got the first sincere apology for something my wife had said or done to me. It was a shock. I'd heard the words "I'm sorry" many times before, but they were usually in the form of "I'm sorry I'm such an awful person." which isn't a real apology.