Fed up with passive aggression!

[Passaggressfedup]

Username change due to professional confidentiality.

It's all there in the title! Today, after another round of dealing with passive aggressive behaviour, I want to shout that it really isn't ok!

We seem to have come to a point in society where physical aggression is more than ever shamed and punished. What progress we have made to get to this point, with yet more to be made.

This however seems to have been exchanged by a more than ever growing level of retaliation using passive agression. Worse is that many seem to think that it's an absolutely appropriate and even commended substitute.

MN is a minefield of it. Some posters seem to have become experts in the matter as have some people in the real world....and they seem to carry the glory with pride, seeing themselves as the beholder as of a life skill mastery.

Right now I want to shout that it really is not okay and the damage of such behaviour is polluting our society.

Today, start of week, only 13:30 and I've already had to deal with it three times with three different people. My OH, who always self congratulate himself for always keeping a very low level tone of voice and appearing calm and in full control, yet will use strident words, manipulating memories to make me doubt myself, and refusing to listen to me because my voice happens to be an octave higher than his, which is clear evidence in his view that I am rude and nasty!

Then the big boss, known to be a bully and hated by everyone, but people are choosing self preservation and therefore telling her what she wants to hear in her face. However hard I try to express my differences in a calm, professional and collaborative manner, she can't help herself by sending yet another array of rude emails, full of demands and sarcasm. I won't even describe the third instance today!

I pride myself in always trying to be kind, thoughtful and empathetic. I might not always succeed, but these are the values I hold closest to me heart.

I believe in honesty and openness when you disagree with someone and the whole let's agree to disagree with no hard feelings. If this means voices going up a bit, speech speeding up, it's ok, as long as you leave matters without resentment.

The way I feel now is emotionally shattered. Exhausted by people who value themselves so highly for dealing with things with such control when what it really is is subtle aggressive manners thrown to cause as much emotional harm as possible whilst coming out of it with flying starts.

These people have nothing to be proud of. They are more interested in controlling and winning the argument than in finding a reasonable compromise. They really are not nice people!

Rant of the day 😁

I’m sensing that you take offence at quite a lot in life
Well, this is the interesting thing. Its actually the exact opposite. I can laugh things off quite easily and do so all the time.

However, I do not like nastiness for the sake of it. If I were to put my foot in front of someone to see them fall and hurt themselves for no reason , most would be critical of that behaviour and attitude. Rightly so.

However, If I throw insults to someone that is meant to upset them, but it's not using poor language and not raising their voice, that seems to be perfectly acceptable.

The end result is the same though, someone is hurt by my choice of action.

@Speculating that you’re a shouter.

Speculating and making assumptions to generate an unpleasant response. Why?

PA is 'more acceptable' because it's subjective (you feel it's been used against you here, others would disagree) and the line between politely staying something a person doesn't like and what may be recieved as PA is difficult to draw.
Its also clearly preferable that people avoid actual aggression as its often intimidating. PA may be annoying but it's unlikely to make you fear the other person is going to hurt you.
PA is controlled behaviour. The person displaying it is angry, but is able to channel that away from more harmful aggressive behavior such as verbal intimidation, or violent behaviour. The aggressive person often appears to have lost control of thenselves, and is therefore percieved as a greater threat.
Its also often a learned behavior of people who have reason to fear that being assertive will lead to negative consequences or judgement.
Obviously it's better to be assertive than PA, but the difference between the two is in the eye of the reciever.
If I said to you "OP, you were PA yourself with your typical MN comment and the emoji that indicated you were laughing at us. The assertive behavior would have been to say some responses had irritated you", you would no doubt believe I was being PA towards you. Whereas I think I would be assertively stating my opinion.

@5128gap, you explained it very well. Indeed, the line can be blurry.

What is not really blurry though is the intention in most cases. I agree with you that it mainly used as a mean of control.

If you are going to make assumptions about someone and use them as an intent to hurt them, it is aggression. Just a type of aggression that is not as obvious.

It is not about people being offended easily. If you offend someone but genuinely did not intent to upset them and are genuinely upset that they feel this way, it's not passive aggressive.

If you however pick words that you know very well is going to trigger that person (but others might not know it, so they might appear innocent to them), and once that person reacts to it, you turn things around to pretend you had no bad intentions (but you really did), and make it that the problem is the recipient, that is very much passive aggression.

Just to add that 'assertion' can be used as an excuse for passive aggression.

You can be assertive without being hurtful. Assertiveness is about not taking a step back when you believe you are not doing anything wrong. That's absolutely doable in almost all instance without making the other person feel they have no alternatives but to withdraw themselves.

People who are passive aggression do want that person to withdraw and do it by keeping at them, but again, do so in a way they can justify.

I see passive aggression as the most hypocritical way to have a debate, or disagreement. It is used not so much to make your point but discredit the other.

I'm getting definite sea lion vibes from the OP...

OK no worries.

ps Ive not written you are not a nice person, yet you've addressed that comment to me. Maybe take a look from a different lens?

OP, you were PA yourself with your typical MN comment and the emoji that indicated you were laughing at us. The assertive behavior would have been to say some responses had irritated you", you would no doubt believe I was being PA towards you. Whereas I think I would be assertively stating my opinion

Just to add that I do agree with you (although I didn't use an emoji but that's not that relevant), my response was PA to an extent. And that's what I hate about it, because when you bombarded by PA, you find yourself pushed into a corner with nothing left to defend yourself but to use it back. Anything else either fueled more PA as you've become the perfect target, or leaves you even further stuck in the corner.

That's why I really really hate it in the first place. There was absolutely no need to turn my post in a person attack of my person. Now I genuinely don't care here, I certainly don't get affected by what strangers say about me but other posters certainly do.

So it comes down to why? Because I dared to give two examples of a situation to illustrate my point. Because I dared to write that I was a nice person? This warrants an accusation of being an emotional vampire? And in the end, I'm the unreasonable person for saying that I'm nice but the poster making the personal dig is just assertive?

It wasn't irritating as such, but yes, I did feel that these posts illustrated my point well.

Not everything in life that you dislike or disagree with is "passive aggression".

OP, you sound like hard work. Based on what you've written, it's not surprising you experience so much aggression from people.

An octave higher than calm is not shouting

Eh?? Do you know what an octave is? Higher doesn’t mean less calm 😂 calm isn’t to do with how low someone speaks.

The thing is, the opposite/preferred alternative to passive aggression surely wouldn’t be overt aggression. It would be clear, direct, rational, fair, right? No aggression needed in any form? Why does every option have to include aggression? People seem totally unable to have a polite disagreement these days.

Interesting. I'm not sure you always can be assertive without hurting the other person. Because sometimes it's the message that hurts, regardless of the delivery.
I also think that realistically in many cases of disagreement the aim is to get the person to 'withdraw' because then you have 'won'. Compromise and 'agree to disagree' is not always possible or desirable.
For example, a manager who needs a piece of work corrected does not want the engagement to end with an agreement to disagree. They want it to end with their staff withdrawing and doing as they're told.
Certainly PA is not ideal. However going around treating each other with (the more honest) overt aggression we may feel is even less so, and true assertiveness is a skill that many don't have. Particularly in the heat of the moment.
I think its also worth noting that PA is often sex based behaviour, with women more likely to display it than aggression. This is not only a socialised behaviour, but also a protective one. We know that if we speak our minds we can be especially vulnerable to consequences, so we may use other methods to indicate our displeasure.

@SoulSearchBeHonest, I didn't mean to make it sound like I was responding to you personally. I was just responding to the fact that it's hard to like comments that imply that I wasn't an nice person.

“If this means voices going up a bit, speech speeding up, it's ok, as long as you leave matters without resentment.”

So shouting then? Yeah, I wouldn’t be “passive” aggressive in that situation, I’d tell you to fuck off with your shouting.

I'm sadden that this turned into a platform to criticise me rather than debate on the matter of PA for most posts.

@5128gap, thanks for doing just that.

Compromise and 'agree to disagree' is not always possible or desirable
I would strongly disagree about this, I do think that in almost all cases, these are a much more desirable outcomes.

However, the main reason for my OP is to try to understand why PA is deemed (at least it would seem) an acceptable type of aggression when all other types are not (and again, rightly so of course). PA is still aggression, just a much more subtle way to punch someone and leave them injured, albeit not physically.

A poster was asking for an example. One that comes to mind is something my big boss does. He will right emails stating 'we've agreed that you would do x,y and z' and will go on in a curt manner how all these will need to be completed by the end of the day. Anyone not closely involved would think it was a completely reasonable email. Except all the 'aggression' is there hidden. Firstly, nothing has ever been agreed. As a matter, it has never even but discussed! End of day is unrealistic. Also doesn't state anything about the fact it was agreed (yes, agreed, confirmed in an email) that I could leave early that day. Yet, my assertive response clarifying the above will be deemed to be the unreasonable one.

So shouting then?
Okay, I'll address this as it's come up a few times. There is quite some room between talking very calmly and slowly and shouting.

You can speak a bit louder and faster without shouting. At least I can as do most people I know.

So no, in the instances I shared I wasn't shouting but I wasn't speaking like I would speak to a young child either.

Thats an interesting example, as sometimes it HAS been agreed x,y and z needs to be done by the end of the day, just with the powers that be, not the person who will do them.
I wouldn't actually call that email PA. To me that's assertive (sticks to the facts, involves no emotional manipulation) but could read as bordering on aggressive dependent on tone, or if there was a threat attached "any failure to comply may result in..." etc.
A PA email would be "I'm sure you will agree that's its important that this is completed by the end of the day. Its disappointing to be having to remind you, when I understood it was agreed. If you aren't able to manage your work to complete this, please speak to me so we can consider your time management training needs"

I don’t think the words are intended to hurt you. I think they’re intended to make you stop and think.

As PPs have said, coming up against such frequent (almost relentless) passive aggression is very unusual. The fact that it is happening to you calls into question your part in all of these scenarios.
Are you a bad listener? Do you take instruction badly? (from your boss)

In other words, are you adequately reflecting on these ‘episodes’ - why do people feel the need to be this way with you so frequently and persistently?

Being correct and putting in your own views on anything work related isn’t something you do in a job you want to keep.
From experience I have learned to keep my mouth shut and work doing exactly as I am told.
PA in an email is there to cover your behind if there are any consequences

I love my DH 100% but he can get passive aggressive during disagreements. It drives me mad. His whole family are, especially his mother. I can see he’s been created with this style of communication since he was born, and he sees it as normal. He even struggles to identify passive aggression around him, even though he agrees it exists. It’s just so normalised for him.

Whereas actual aggression was (sadly) the language of my childhood, and consequently I struggle with emotional regulation and temper during disagreements, which also drives my DH mad.

We continue to learn to try harder and do better.

As said multiple times on mn over the years we only your version, if people have issues in their life this may make them see things differently, people, maybe they are what you say maybe they are not

What is one person's plain speaking is another person feeling they are being picked on, a person may be acting badly towards another or the person on the receiving end may not be able to handle being told a truth

So it would all depends, of a third, not related to the situation, person saw it all played back who knows what they would think?

If it was your dp's voice that was "an octave higher" than yours, in other words, he seems to shout at you when you're disagreeing, would you want posters to agree with him? @Passaggressfedup

@Passaggressfedup I also agree with you about the passive aggression both on this thread and MN in general. Some of those posts (including those acting like they can’t see them) do confirm what you're saying.