Passive Aggression: What It Is and Why It Damages Relationships

Passive aggression is a form of indirect hostility, a way of expressing anger, resentment, or opposition without doing so openly. It operates through withdrawal, delay, ambiguity, and the small behaviours that are individually deniable but cumulatively corrosive. It is one of the most difficult relationship dynamics to name and address, partly because the person on the receiving end often feels more confused than certain, and partly because the person doing it may not fully recognise what they are doing.

What Is Passive Aggression?

Passive aggression is behaviour that expresses hostility or opposition indirectly rather than openly. Instead of saying ‘I am angry’ or ‘I disagree,’ the passive-aggressive person communicates the same message through behaviour that is technically deniable, through silence, delay, subtle undermining, or the kind of compliance that is technically present but designed to fail.

The term ‘passive-aggressive’ is sometimes used colloquially to mean simply ‘indirect’ or ‘annoying,’ but clinically it describes a specific pattern: the consistent use of indirect means to express hostility that the person cannot or will not express directly. This matters because it distinguishes genuine passive-aggressive behaviour from ordinary social awkwardness or conflict avoidance.

What passive aggressive behaviour looks like

Concrete examples of passive aggressive behaviour include: agreeing to do something and then ‘forgetting,’ or doing it so poorly that the result is worse than not doing it at all; using silence or the cold shoulder as a weapon rather than as a genuine request for space; giving deliberately unhelpful or ambiguous responses to questions; making sarcastic or ostensibly ‘joking’ comments that communicate genuine hostility; consistently arriving late or cancelling in a way that denies others what they need without any overt conflict; and making the other person feel unreasonable for raising a concern, without directly denying the concern.

The common thread is indirect expression. The feeling communicated is real; the method is designed to avoid accountability for it.

Why Do People Become Passive Aggressive?

Passive aggression develops as a response to environments in which direct expression of negative feelings was not safe or permitted. This may have been a family system in which conflict was avoided at all costs, in which emotional expression was met with withdrawal or ridicule, or in which the person learned very early that what they felt did not matter and had better not be shown.

In this context, indirect expression is not manipulation, or at least, it did not begin as manipulation. It began as the only available way to have any emotional impact in a system that did not permit direct expression. The problem is that it becomes a habitual pattern that transfers into adult relationships, where it typically produces the frustration, confusion, and distance it is unconsciously designed to avoid.

Power dynamics also drive passive aggression. In contexts where someone feels unable to express opposition directly, because of a power imbalance at work, or a relationship dynamic that does not feel safe for direct conflict, indirect expression may be the only form of agency they experience. This does not make it harmless, but it does make it understandable.

How Does Passive Aggression Damage Relationships?

Passive aggression damages relationships through a combination of direct harm and the corrosive effects of the dynamic it creates. The direct harm is the impact of the individual behaviours: the promises not kept, the undermining, the silences, the sarcasm. These erode trust and goodwill over time.

The more significant damage is often the dynamic that passive aggression creates. The partner, colleague, or friend on the receiving end typically responds with increasing frustration or vigilance, they start watching for the patterns, bracing for the next withdrawal, feeling that they are walking on eggshells without being able to explain why. This defensive state is exhausting and produces distance, resentment, and a relationship in which both people feel fundamentally unseen.

What Is the Experience of a Passive Aggressive Partner Like?

Being in a relationship with a passive aggressive partner can be deeply disorienting, because the problem is consistently located at the level of interpretation rather than at the level of behaviour. ‘I’m not doing anything wrong’, technically true, because each individual behaviour is deniable. ‘You’re too sensitive’, the person raising the concern is made to feel unreasonable for having noticed a pattern that is real.

Over time, the partner of a passive aggressive person may begin to doubt their own perception, become hypervigilant about mood and behaviour, and feel responsible for managing a dynamic they did not create. The work of a relationship that involves sustained passive aggression falls disproportionately on the person trying to make sense of it.

The impact of passive aggression in the workplace

Passive aggression in the workplace follows the same patterns as in personal relationships, with additional complications: the power dynamics that drive it are often more explicit, and the consequences of naming it directly can be more significant. A colleague who consistently undermines, withholds information, or performs compliance without cooperation creates a working environment that is demoralising and difficult to function within, but hard to formally address.

For managers experiencing passive aggression from direct reports, or for those experiencing it from managers, the impact on professional wellbeing and function can be substantial. It is a dynamic that responds well to support, but only when the pattern can first be named accurately.

Can Passive Aggressive Behaviour Change?

Passive aggressive behaviour can change, but it typically requires the person doing it to develop an understanding of what it is, where it comes from, and what it is actually communicating. This involves acknowledging a pattern that has been invisible or justified, and developing the skills to express conflict and opposition directly, which for many people means learning something that was never modelled for them.

Counselling can support this process significantly. It offers a space to understand the origins of the pattern, to identify the emotions that passive aggression is expressing indirectly, and to develop the capacity for more direct communication. For couples, relationship counselling can help address both sides of the dynamic, the passive aggression and the responses to it, in a way that individual work alone cannot.

• Qualified & registered therapists
• LGBTQIA+ affirming support
• NCPS organisational member
• Online nationwide
• Face-to-face across England
• Established 2014

THE AUTHOR

Ian Stockbridge

• MBACP (Senior Accredited)

Founder & Clinical Director — Hope Therapy & Counselling Services

MBACP (Senior Accredited) · SNCPS (Acc) · BSc (Hons) CBT · PGCert Clinical Supervision

Founder of Hope Therapy, published author, clinical supervisor, and co-presenter of The Talk Room Podcast. Practising therapist with 25+ years of senior leadership experience.

Before Ian Stockbridge was a therapist, he was a leader. For more than 25 years he worked in senior management and directorial roles across commercial organisations — at times managing teams of more than 200 people. He was effective at it. But the longer he did it, the harder something became to ignore. The people around him were struggling. Capable, committed, often high-achieving people carrying invisible weight that had nowhere to go. Stress accumulated quietly across months and years. Anxiety managed behind professionalism. Relationships and mental health dealt with in the margins of a working life that left little room for either.

• SCoPEd Band C
• SNCPS (Acc)
• BSc (Hons) CBT
• PGCert Clinical Supervision
• Diploma — Person-Centred Counselling
• Diploma — Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy
• Certificate — Acceptance & Commitment Therapy
• Certificate — Trauma
• Certificate — CBT for Insomnia
• 25+ Years Leadership
• Clinical Supervisor
• Published Author
• Podcast Co-Host
• LGBTQIA+ Affirming

View Ian’s Full Profile →