PASSIVE AGGRESSION AND SELF ESTEEM
A few years back, my boss at the time told me that I was a very unusual woman, because what I wanted was always absolutely clear to him. He had difficulties with his comparatively feminine wife, because she would flirt around the topic and he would be expected to guess. I replied that as a former head chef, who had worked my way up in the industry when women were a tiny minority, and as someone who has habitually avoided other women in the course of my life because of my family, I had something of an advantage in that respect.
Women are guilty of expecting themselves and each other to compromise, which is why they tend not to have been as good at perfectionist roles in the past. Relationships that I have had with women have always involved a lot of social jostling, which I have never had to worry about with my male friendships. Where men will talk about sport and how attractive women are (regardless of their own attractiveness) women use minute social interactions to tell each other who is boss, often playing dirty over very small things to get the edge. If this is the type of power that they seek, they can take weeks or months to batter you with information that you did not want, faux flattery included.
Ironically my sick friend, male, is the most feminine dude I have ever come across, with a side order of passive aggression. He is blissfully unaware of this, because when he is not spiralling off course, he is a helpful person and reasonably good company. The problems seem to arise on a time basis, not really associating with anything that is actually going on. I have learned over the years to escape this part of the relationship by opting out until it goes away. To give you an example of this – one time I admired a large well dressed lady we had spotted, he assured me that I was tiny in comparison, and later on the same week when I was unusually well dressed in a public place suggested that I was far bigger. This is very minor stuff, but when you rarely see anyone, it really affects you. Currently he has decided to use my home as a stick to beat me with, which means I do not feel like inviting him back. Since I never get to go anywhere, I do not feel like having my home (and impending loss of fertility) assaulted so that he can get his jollies, whatever they are.
Passive aggression takes many forms, and can be very subtle. I, being of a rather exuberant nature, do not really have time for it anymore, having fallen victim to it in the past. The gradual wearing down of your confidence and general self-esteem is even harder to take than your siblings getting in your face and assuring you that you are worthless even as you out earn and out work them. I used to be very laid back, but since this has led to, in some cases, years of misery and doubt about doing anything at all, I am now more careful about extricating myself at the first few signs of trouble. I also avoid messages if I think they are likely to rock my little boat. I can only imagine how upset I would be if I got a ‘Who are you?’ from Wolfe, rather than his taking the time to actually do some background research.
By far the biggest problem with passive aggression is that the perpetrator rarely has anything to replace your perfectly adequate judgement with. They just want to be on top, with no actual content whatsoever. It would not be so bad if they had fun, complex and intelligent contributions to make to your life, but in my experience, they never do. They are inevitably far more lost than you are, which is why they sought their little bit of power in the first place.
I suppose that this ties in with all those memes suggesting that you should rid yourself of negativity. With my creative hat on, this is no use to me. I like constructive discussion, if there is a useful idea, I want to hear it. If something isn’t working, even if I am rather annoyed at wasting a month, I need to put it away and think about how to improve it. By all means, get rid of the passive aggressive behaviour, get rid of the abusive people, get rid of the jealous and unusually moronic. Keep the ones that are just a bit down, however, because they tend to be quite useful, and they probably need you.