I've noticed something lately dear reader, when I am on my own and left to get on with my life I have less anxiety than I've had for over 15 years.  There's something about living your life constantly walking on egg shells but I spent a lot of the time which has passed before me never knowing what would be the next thing to trigger the dark cold silences.  When they happened all emotion would be switched off like a punishment and situations could become so tense that in myself I would want to just explode and break down.  I remember in the early years of our marriage and I would go and hide in the loo and cry before coming out like nothing had happened because that's another thing about people with passive aggressive tendencies, they can't can't handle emotion.  I was actually told "I can't handle your emotions so if you want to talk to me about something you better not cry"  and so of course I learnt to shut those emotions away and I went from being someone who cried at most things (kittens, puppies and romantic movie endings) to someone who has massive problems unlocking her own emotions to be able to let them out.

I want my children to be able to express all of their emotions whatever they are, don't get me wrong, give me a primary school nativity play and I am still a weeping mess which is exactly as it should be but I've lost the ability to break down and get deep seated pain out of my system, this has of course over the years lead to anxiety and panic attacks and during my marriage if that happened that was as bad as being emotional, there would be anger and almost a "pull yourself together" attitude.  When I went through my years of dark emotional mental health I really wasn't as supported as I should have been, it was only ever when it got to crisis points and I was just about to see doctors that the darkness would soften and kindness would be shown because of course the passive aggressive person never wants anyone else to think badly of them.  You know they're often the kind of people who will do anything for anyone, it's not a selfless act though, it's so they can believe that people will think highly of them.

I spent my life proclaiming our love and telling everyone how amazing my husband was, he loved it, he drank it up, before nights out he would ask me how he looked and expect compliments, it wasn't exactly reciprocated and if anyone else gave me compliments he hated that, possibly because of his deep seated jealousy issues, there been more than one or two male friends warned off over the last fifteen years even though I would never ever have done any misdeed and it's just a case of me having lots of lovely male friends as well as lovely female friends.

There's worse stuff of course, deeper darker stuff which I'd prefer to not put out there, I have no problems with my children reading this blog because it's the truth, a document of my life and they themselves will only read it when they feel able but I don't want to cause more mental scars than they already have.

If you are in a similar situation you must know that you are never to blame, no matter how bad you feel and if you are reading and you recognise these behaviours in yourself please consider going and getting some help, I think it is possible to change but therapy needs to occur so you can deal with the very deep seated issues which caused the behaviours in the first place, passive aggressive is definitely a learned behaviour and so perhaps with cognitive therapy it's also possible to unlearn those destructive personality aspects.

I hope this post hasn't been too depressing for a Friday, the good news for me is that given 6 months I think I shall probably not suffer from anxiety and panic attacks anymore, I still have times but that's because of the last grasps of control which are still occurring despite me being free, one day though, full on sparkle with no hint of ever being frightened again!

How to recognise and survive a passive aggressive relationship

When I think about it now, the man I married and spent my life with was always hot headed, irrational and possessive but I chose not to see it.  We do that don't we?  We meet people and then we ignore all of their flaws because we want to see only the good in people, we want to believe in true love and meeting that special someone you can spend the whole of the rest of your time on earth.  If there's one thing that life has taught me about the passive aggressive relationship it's that you can never win.  I have literally trawled the internet and read books seeking to find the person who managed to stay in a successful relationship despite having a partner who was passive aggressive. Often the problem with passive aggressive personalities is that the cause is so deep seated they're often not aware of their own controlling behaviour. 

I think it can almost be an involuntary compulsion to control and if you couple that with a heady hint of a narcissistic personality then they're so far to believing that they are perfect and everyone else is at fault that they'll never acknowledge control or indeed ever doing anything that was less than perfect behaviour.  In my own personal case even the alcoholism was justified as being something he had to do to remain married to me.

People with control issues, particularly passive aggressive personalities can often be the loveliest most charming people you could hope to meet, they will lavish you with gifts (they want others to know how perfect they are) but often they'll set you up to fail at something and that can be quite difficult to understand, for instance they'll forget that special date that you had booked and if you confront them they'll just deny all knowledge and then they may huff or strop so you feel that it's your fault until you actually start questioning if you ever had the conversation.  They really do thrive on you thinking it's all your fault but if you are reading this and nodding along let me just say now, it's not your fault, you didn't do anything wrong and this is all part of the game of control.

Let me give you another example of control which is so subtle that you can mistake it for someone being in love with you, so you're out with friends and you get text messages asking when you are coming home, they miss you so much, they can't survive without you for hours, they want you to come home so they can love you and hug you and be with you, you are their world.  Let me just put this out there as being a huge warning sign.  In the 15 years of my marriage I've lost count of the times when I felt I had to go home from nights out because of the above or angry calls because there was nothing for dinner or they couldn't remember how to order dinner, when I look at these things now I ask myself if I was actually crazy myself, a grown up adult should always be able to source food/cook something/have a few hours on their own.

If dear reader you are in this kind of situation please don't ever let yourself feel that you are anything less than good enough, I've struggled for years thinking I am a bad person and not good enough and I would hate others to go through the same thing, I guess that's one reason I chose to record this journey, to get it out there, because the victims of silent control might not have bruises but that doesn't mean the damage isn't there.  I don't wish to be categorised as a victim however, I am most definitely an expert in survival and no matter what happens in my future I'm going to survive and grow and flourish like the sparkly person I have inside of me.

Moving onwards

The first thing I need to do is thank so many of you for getting in touch after yesterdays blog post, the sheer amount of support from people who've been through similar things and some who are still going through it, it seems to me that it's something that we're just not talking about, maybe we need to have more open conversations about control and passive aggressiveness so that people know how wrong it is and how much damage it can actually do to someone.  I was heartened to hear from so many who were much further on in this turbulent journey, people who have been able to find themselves again and move on, many in wonderful new relationships which actually came as a shock or surprise because they didn't contain the same behaviours.

Well for now for me I can see what lies ahead and that is time spent with my children, hopefully a new forever dog (Beagle Welfare home check on Saturday afternoon) and of course my beloved kitties.

One of the things I am building up slowly to do is going out more and not being so scared by that prospect, I definitely seem to have lost the ability to be socially confident, even in recent weeks with Slimming World I find myself going, getting weighed and then coming straight home again. but I do know there's a sparkle burning in there somewhere and once it's at it's brightest no one is ever going to take it away from me again.

Day off today and Tuesdays are my favourite day, my cleaner is coming, my groceries are arriving and later we're moving about 20 bags of junk downstairs for collection by a charity tomorrow, the council are coming to take lots of wood and more rubbish on Thursday and by the end of the week I'm hoping Abigails room will be finished, Iain's room is getting there, yesterday he got black curtains which are far superior to the pink spotted ones he was using, they're not really befitting of an 18 year old teenager you know.

I've been sneaking odd bits and bobs out of the Christmas collection so I hung up a fabric wreath on the inside of the front door and I got down a china ornament from the top of the cupboards in the kitchen, it's like if I do it slowly no one will notice and before you know it we'll be in Christmas land! It is of course only a month until Santa pops down the chimney now so the rest of my week is mainly taken up with photo shoots and the editing that goes with all of that, those 2 weeks off at Christmas though are firmly in sight and I can't wait!  I might just have actually finished my Christmas shopping by the end of the week, well I should have at least cleared the Amazon wish lists with any luck, oh and if you're an Amazon fan, remember that it's Black Friday deals week on Amazon and there are bargains amongst the various effluvia on offer but you have to be quick!

And so off into Tuesday I go and I hope it's terrific, not just for me but for you too dear reader, may it be the best day of your week so far!