The word gets used as an insult, which is a shame, because it stops people from recognizing themselves in it. Passive aggression is not a personality type and it is not evidence that somebody is manipulative. It is what anger turns into when a person has concluded that saying the direct version will cost them more than swallowing it.
That conclusion is usually earned. Somewhere, in this marriage or an earlier one or a childhood house, being direct got punished. So the anger goes underground and comes back out sideways, in a sigh at the sink, a task that keeps not getting done, a compliment with a hook in it. The person doing it is often not even fully aware. They just know they are furious and that there is no safe door to be furious through.
What it actually is
Anger with the return address removed. That is the cleanest definition I have. Every one of these behaviors is a message that has been stripped of the part that makes it answerable. You cannot respond to a sigh. You cannot argue with a task that is merely late. There is nothing to hold.
That deniability is the entire point. It lets the angry person deliver the anger and keep the position that nothing happened. And it puts the other spouse in an impossible spot, because raising it makes you the one causing a problem out of nothing.
Why it is so hard to address
The behavior is built to be unaddressable. If you bring it up you sound paranoid, and if you do not bring it up you absorb it. That double bind is not incidental. It is the mechanism.
Why a reasonable person starts doing it
In my office it is almost always one of three origins, and none of them is malice.
The usual sources
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Direct anger was never safe
In the house they grew up in, or in this marriage, raising a voice ended badly. So the anger learned to travel by a quieter route and it has been traveling that way ever since.
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Asking has stopped working
They asked directly, 4 or 5 times, and nothing changed. Sideways is what people do after direct has failed enough times to feel humiliating.
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They cannot name what is wrong
Not everybody has words for what they are angry about. The resentment is real and the sentence is missing, so it comes out as friction instead of language.
That third one is more common than people think, and it is the one that responds fastest, because the fix is not behavioral. It is vocabulary. Give somebody the actual sentence and a lot of the sideways behavior simply stops having a job.
What it sounds like in a real house
Not the textbook version. The version that happens on a Tuesday.
The sideways version
The sentence underneath
It is fine. Do whatever you want.
I have an opinion, I have given it before, and it did not seem to count.
Wow, you did the dishes. Look at that.
I do this every night and nobody has said anything about it in 2 years.
I said I would do it.
I do not want to do it and I do not feel allowed to say no, so it is going to stay undone.
No, I am not upset.
I am extremely upset and the last time I said so out loud it turned into a 3 hour fight.
You always know best.
I have stopped believing that my judgment carries any weight in this house.
Look at the right column. Every one of those is a normal, workable sentence. None of them would start a war if it were said plainly. The tragedy of passive aggression is that the underlying content is almost always reasonable and it arrives in a package that makes it impossible to hear.
The part where you are in it too
This is where the page stops being comfortable. If your spouse has gone sideways, there is a decent chance that at some point being direct with you was expensive. Not because you are cruel. Usually because directness got met with defense, or a counterattack, or a very reasonable explanation of why they were wrong to feel that way.
I am not assigning blame. I am pointing at a loop. One person goes indirect, the other person gets frustrated by the indirectness and becomes sharper, which makes directness even more expensive, which pushes the first person further sideways. Both of you are maintaining it and either of you can interrupt it. That loop is the engine behind most of what couples call stupid arguments and constant fighting.
Passive aggression is anger with the return address removed, and the deniability is the entire point.
Matthew W. Hoelscher, PCC
How to get it out of the house
There is an order here and most couples try step 3 first, which is why it fails.
In this order
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Make directness cheap. Before you ask your spouse to say the hard thing plainly, you have to become someone it is safe to say hard things to. That means the first 10 seconds after they say it. No defense, no context, no correcting the record. Just take it.
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Name the pattern once, not the incident. Not you sighed at me. Something like, I think when you are upset with me it comes out sideways, and I would rather have it straight. Say it once, calmly, when nothing is currently on fire.
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Ask for the sentence, not the behavior. What do you actually want here works better than stop doing that. You are asking for language, and language is what is missing.
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Answer it when it comes. The first time your spouse says the direct version, how you respond decides whether there is a second time. If the direct version gets a worse reception than the sigh did, you have just taught them that sideways was correct.
Step 4 is the whole thing. I have watched couples do the first 3 beautifully and then blow it in the 10 seconds after the honest sentence finally arrives. The honest sentence usually arrives badly phrased, at a bad moment, with too much heat on it, because it has been in storage for a long time. Take it anyway.
If you are the one doing it
Some of you read the section above and recognized yourself, not your spouse. Good. That is faster to fix, because you are the only person in this you actually control.
The move is not to become confrontational. It is to shorten the gap between feeling it and saying it. Sideways behavior is what a delayed feeling turns into. Say it in the hour, not in the week, and say the small version. I did not like that is a complete sentence. You do not owe anybody a thesis.
If asking directly has genuinely stopped working in your marriage, and you have the receipts for that, then the problem is not your delivery and no amount of better phrasing will fix it. That is a structural conversation and it is covered in conflict resolution strategies and, when the same fight keeps running, how to stop constant arguing.
When it is something else
I want to be careful here. Sideways anger is normal and coachable. Some things that look similar are not.
This is a different conversation
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When the silence is used to control
Days of withdrawal deployed to make somebody comply is not sideways anger. If you are managing your behavior to avoid a punishment, that is a different category and it needs a licensed professional.
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When it comes with anything abusive
Physical, sexual or emotional abuse is not a communication style and it is not coaching work. I will refer you out on the first call.
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When something clinical is driving it
If an untreated condition or an active addiction is under the pattern, a licensed professional leads. I do not diagnose and I do not treat, and I am happy to work alongside someone who does.
Talk it through
If the two of you have been running on sighs and closed doors for long enough that neither of you remembers how it started, book the free 25 minute call. It costs nothing, it is for people who have not worked with me before, and its only job is to figure out whether I am the right person for what is happening in your house. If I am not, I will point you somewhere better. The framework I use for all of it lives in the parent marriage.
Questions couples ask
Is passive aggression a form of emotional abuse?
Usually not, and the distinction matters. Sideways anger is what most people do when direct anger has stopped feeling safe, and it is workable. It becomes something else when withdrawal is deliberately used to control another person's behavior. If you are managing what you say and do in order to avoid a punishment, that is not a communication problem and it belongs with a licensed professional rather than a coach.
How do I get my spouse to just say what is bothering them?
You make it cheap to say. Almost nobody goes sideways in a marriage where the direct version has consistently been received well. Ask once, calmly, at a moment when nothing is already burning, and then pay very close attention to the first 10 seconds after they actually do it. That reaction is what decides whether it happens again.
What if I am the one doing it?
Then you have the easier job, because you control your own half. The fix is not becoming confrontational, it is shortening the delay. Sideways behavior is a feeling that sat too long. Say the small version in the hour instead of the polished version never. I did not like that is a complete sentence.
Can this be fixed without both of us in the room?
A lot of it can. Change one side of a loop and the loop has to move, because the other person is responding to something that is no longer happening. That said, this particular pattern is a two person build almost every time, and it goes considerably faster with both people in the room.