Leslie Cane Articles

I recently heard from a wife who said she was “so tired” of her husband’s passive nature. When they were first married, this didn’t bother her as much. But over the years, it had really started to grate on her and it had become so much of a problem that she admitted that she didn’t know how much longer she could stand it.

She said, in part: “I used to think of my husband as laid back and I actually used to like this trait. But now, I just see him as sort of spineless. Nothing stirs up any emotion in him. If things are awful or wonderful, you get the same result from him. There’s never any ups or downs. There’s never any dramatic reactions. It’s as if he’s just there but doesn’t really care about anything. If something does something unfair or unjust to someone in our family, I want him to speak up, but he doesn’t. I can’t count on my husband to stick up for me or our children. Nothing seems to register on his radar. At this point, I am losing respect for him. And, I think you need respect for a marriage to work. If I can’t get to change, at least a little, I can’t see staying with a man who is so passive.”

There’s no doubt this is a tough situation. The thing is, the husband had always been passive. In the beginning, the wife actually like this about him. She came from a home where both of her parents were quick to get worked up, shout, or over react, so him being so laid back was actually a safe haven for her.

But, she herself was also a bit passive. Growing up with highly emotional parents, she had learned to push down her own emotions and reactions. So, because she herself was passive, it frustrated her when no one in her family ever stood up to wrongs or had appropriate reactions. And, when this upset her, her husband accused her of overreacting or of being overly emotional when in fact her responses were quite understandable.

While You Probably Can’t Demand That Your Husband Become More Assertive, You Can Use Positive Feedback To Encourage Him To Do So: After a bit of conversation, it became clear that this wife wasn’t at all shy about telling her husband how she felt about his passiveness. She was often verbal and critical about this, which of course only caused her husband to withdraw even more.

Not only that, but he became defensive and more introverted as the result of her criticism.  So clearly, the strategy that she was using now was just not working.  Instead, I encouraged her to use some positive feedback.  On the rare occasions that she saw her husband being assertive, she should think about praising him and drawing attention to how this made her feel positively toward her.  It never hurts to give some physical encouragement either.  Because when husband’s see that their actions make their wives feel move loving toward them, they are much more likely to repeat this behavior.

When You Call A Man Passive With Criticism, You Are Criticizing Who And What He Is (There’s A Better Way:)  Just for a second, I’m going to look at it from a man’s perspective.  Because I also hear about this from the man’s point of view and I can tell you that hearing their wife say that they are passive is akin to hearing their wife say they aren’t much of a man.  And of course, the sometimes think of this in sexual terms which wounds them quite deeply.

When you offer up phrases like “you are so passive!!  Why can’t you just be more assertive?,” they can take this as though you don’t love and understand who they genuinely are.  They can internalize this to mean that you don’t like and respect the person rather than the behavior.

I hear this a lot from men who have had affairs.  They will sometimes justify their actions because their wife gave them the impression that she didn’t respect him and of course when someone else counters this, it’s very tempting for him to act on this because of course he wants to feel some self respect.

I’m not saying that you don’t have a right to ask him to be more assertive. You do.  My point is that you have to be very careful about how you phrase and portray this.  You never want him to think you are being critical of him rather than the behavior.

Things You Might Say To Inspire More Assertiveness In Your Husband Before This Hurts Your Marriage:  This was clearly a very serious problem for the wife.  She had a valid concern so it was important she didn’t keep this inside.  But as I said, you have to be careful with this.  You don’t want for this to sound like criticism so that he becomes even more introverted.

So the next time this bothered the wife or she hinted that she wanted her husband to act on her behalf, she might say something like “This is so upsetting to me.  Can you support me and address this?  It would me a lot to me if you would come to my defense.  It makes me feel so cared for when you go to bat for me and seeing emotion from you is a real turn on for me.”

I know that this sounds somewhat corny in written form but I guarantee you that it is likely to get you a better response then what this wife had been doing which was criticizing and berating her husband for a personality trait that he had always had.

I strongly suspected that if she presented this in the right way and then heaped on tons of praise and physical affection when she saw more of what she wanted, she was going to start seeing a whole lot more assertive behavior and this problem was going to lessen quite a bit, which in turn could really help the marriage.

Filed under: Uncategorized by admin