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 😁

Thank you to the posters who have provided an opinion on this.

I think it highlight a few things:

• people don't fully understand what is meant by PA. It's not about agreeing Vs disagreeing. It's the way some people express aggression in a non obvious, overt way, but still with intent, conscious or not, to hurt.
• the way it is received is indeed open to interpretation and some will see PA when there was no ill-intended to upset.
• PA often result from people making assumptions and using these to generate a reaction (as seen on this thread for example).
• PA has become such a mean of expressing agression without having the finger pointed at them that I do believe it's become a casual skill for some and they are not even aware of it.
• you can only speak calmly and softly. Any other tone of voice is shouting and therefore the only aggressive manner by default.

Personally, I much prefer to have an arguement or disagreement with someone who might express their feeling in a visual or auditory manner than having the same with someone who think they gave the upper end because they appear calm in the exterior but deep inside would be prepared to exterminate you if they could! I think culture plays a big role in it, as well as gender too, although not solely.

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?
I genuinely didn't post with the hope that people would agree with me in relation to the two examples I gave. I was hoping that it would open a discussion about PA as a whole. How people define it, see it, interpret it, how it affects them etc...which indeed some, include yourself have done.

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
I definitely didn't see this coming, at least not to the extent it has. It does leave me wondering whether it has indeed, become such a normal and acceptable way to communicate, that people don't even see it when it's there, or are aware they are doing it themselves.

To be fair, I didn't say PA is about agreeing or disagreeing. I also didn't use PA (if you're implying I did?). I simply picked out the part of your post where you were trying to show that your OH is unreasonable because he believes you're shouting while you believe you aren't but your "voice is an octave higher than his" (your words). This is subjective. You're both seeing things differently.

However, my question was simply based on that specific part. If on mn a woman was saying her OH shouts during disagreement but her OH is disputing that with the same excuse, would you expect posters to agree with the woman's OH? Isn't it more likely that posters would believe the OH does shout even if he thinks he doesn't. Because at the end of the day, tone can land a certain way even if it's not intentional. That's all i was trying to get you to see there.

In fact, the reason I made my second post was to faily let you know that my first post doesn't ignore the fact that i think you're right in general.

On my second post, I agreed that some posters' sneery posts (like the one you strongly pointed out) were truly a case of PA and it's all over MN. Posters acting like they aren't PA or don't know what you're talking about is also part of the insidious nature of PA. People agreeing or disagreeing with you isn't the point I was making here.

I agree that it is a normal acceptable way of communicating though but by those who do so themselves.

If everyone you're communicating with is behaving in a certain way, then it's unlikely to be the case that they're all arseholes and you're not contributing in any way to the dynamic of the conversation.

Passive aggression can indeed be soul destroying: I have a highly passive aggressive boss who makes my life miserable.

But I think you are presenting a false duality here. Its not a choice between passive aggression and aggression, its a choice between passive aggression and calm, respectful and non-emotional pushback.

If your alternative to passive aggression is to raise your voice then I am not surprised people are getting exasperated with you. Raised voices are not automatically more direct and honest, a lot of people find them frightening and exhausting.

You must be able to find a way to counter someone being passive aggressive without having to raise your voice. It sounds like you are swinging between two unpleasant extremes when you could just learn to be politely assertive.

If everyone you're communicating with is behaving in a certain way, then it's unlikely to be the case that they're all arseholes and you're not contributing in any way to the dynamic of the conversation
Thank god its not everyone! I don't think I've implied that it was. It is still a minority but sadly something that seems to be becoming more common and normalised. Dealing with three such instances in a row yesterday got me to post. Thankfully, I've only communicated with pleasant people today !

I find it very strange how the thread evolved focusing on me shouting, especially when I really really really wasn't shouting! It's my OH who suddenly lowers his voice and slows his tone when he delivers his unpleasant words and I noticed other people do the same. Ultimately though, the tone of voice was nothing compared to the words chosen to strike where it hurts.

This thread is quite an interesting way to show how it takes one poster (or two) to make an assumption and totally derail the course of the matter.

You’re shouting at themThey aren’t shouting backYou are interpreting their self-control as “passive aggression
I didn't shout. I know what shouting is, I can very well tell when I am shouting. It wasn't the case then. It is so odd to find myself having to defend it when at no point I said that I did, but it was convenient for a PA poster to decide that it was obviously what I did.

Again though, it very much illustrate my point. If you have someone talking faster, stuttering, struggling to express themselves, they will quickly be labelled as lacking self control and the message she is trying to convey, which might be very valuable, will be dismissed.

Take a calm person, speaking eloquently and showing complete self control, even if inside they are enraged. They can strike where it hurts the most with well chosen words, but they will be considered reasonable, because of the manner in which its been delivered.

It's really puzzling that this thread would gave led to two posters writing such unpleasantness that it was deemed needed to be deleted. Why?

I didn't read the latest, but I really can't fathom it.