It’s frustrating when a couple seeks your help — and then resists every effort you make. I’ve been there, and you have too – possibly too many times to count.

And in a lot of these situations, we’re seeing a couple whose relationship is filled with passive aggressive behavior.

Today we’ll explore specific ways to stay out of the frustrating labyrinth that passive aggression creates.

What Fuels Passive-Aggressive Behavior

If passive-aggressive patterns show themselves early, you can be sure that fear and defensiveness are already crouching in the corner, waiting to pounce the moment you pose a direct question that might expose one or both partner’s vulnerabilities.

These patterns began in childhood, when one or both partners discovered they weren’t going to receive the love and support they needed. Passivity became a way of dealing with grief and disappointment. Anger followed as they became enraged about their desires that went unseen and unsupported by parents, caregivers, or other powerful adults.

You’re watching what happens when hurt children grow up without learning how to say what they want, or receive nurturing and reassurance. Blaming others becomes a way of coping with the disappointments of life – a deeply flawed solution that spawns its own set of problems.

Not knowing what they desire protects them from the pain of trying and failing. When you ask a common therapy question about what they want, the responses describe what they don’t want or are vague elusive answers. It is very challenging for the client or therapist to get clarity.

Passive aggressive responses show up among people of many different personality types. These responses often take the form of complaining strongly about a problem or situation without participating in moving things forward.

Yes, a part of this client wants things to be better. But they are too frightened to release their entrenched dysfunctional coping mechanisms.

How You Can Shift This Harmful Dynamic

If you start by tackling this couple’s problems head-on, you’re likely to hit an immediate series of roadblocks. Neither person wants to take the risk. Or put in the sustained effort. Not to learn new skills. Not to improve listening. Not to examine their own part. Instead, they want you to do 100% of the work and change the other partner, because this is where they believe the problems all lie.

Incidentally, when you directly address these “problems,” you trigger a wave of defensiveness and behavior designed to lead you off course.

Here’s one way to approach this dilemma. Have a discussion with the couple about the difficulty EVERY person struggles with in attempting to improve habits, attitudes, and emotions. A part of every person seeks to be relieved of pain, anguish, insecurities, fears and bad habits. But another part of us is highly reluctant to give up self-protective coping strategies we learned earlier in life.

Try this:

“Take a moment. Each of you, think about how you’d like to be seen by your partner in a part of your relationship that matters to you.”

Then ask: “What effect would that have on you? And what would you need to do differently to be seen that way?”

Then discuss what they came up with.

Then say, “If change was easy or simple you would just go out and do it. So let's discuss why it would be hard for a part of you to actually go forth and create this change on a consistent basis.”

This approach sets the stage to do good two-chair work. The “aspiring self” talks to the “protective self” and the therapist guides the discussion between the two conflicting selves.

Tell your couple that whenever we talk about goals here we need to keep in mind those internal battles. It is not enough to say you want your partner to change.  We need to understand why it is difficult for your partner to give you what you want.

And it is also important to understand how you can make it easier for your partner to give what you want! When you make it easier for your partner to give you what you want you are working as a team.