Passive-aggressive people in your life

Mary!

That bitch!...

My mother!

Thanks OP, I enjoy your sense of the absurd.

Of all the things a bay leaf is what bothers you?

The monster!!!

Just pretend that they don't exist until they get it.

Op is a survivor

Better a bay leaf on your plate than a horse's head in your bed, OP.

Other things that drive OP nuts: a fork set to the right of the spoon.

Ignore their passive aggressiveness.

Partner, after serving bay leaf

Stuff those bay leaves under your partner's pillow.

I have coworkers who are very passive-aggressive. The one good thing during this covid crisis is not having to see them in person at all.

[quote]Stuff those bay leaves under your partner's pillow.

That's passive-aggressive

I found this thread from last year and am going to bump it. Despite the hilarity that ensued, OP brought up a genuine problem.

It's horrible to be intimately involved with a passive aggressive person. My partner is like this, and it ain't only an occasional bay leaf--although he does like to fuck up things he cooks for me, especially if I request that he cook. He's not a bad guy, in fact he's a fabulous guy, but I've heard enough about his family to know they included a narcissist with a codependent spouse (typical 1950s' couple, in other words and I suspect he developed the passive aggression as a coping mechanism. Passive means he rarely initiates anything in our lives, and that includes sex. Passive means he "omits" little details, like telling me there was a lien on his house before I sold mine and moved in. And aggressive means that you die the death of a thousand cuts from all the times he breaks things, messes up tasks, all the times you have to repeat what you've already told him, fix your own problems and his, too, etc.

I'm not co-dependent (caring more about him than he does himself) and most of our decades together I've lived my own life, but we are together, so it does affect me. I guess I'm sick of setting boundaries and patrolling them night and day. I'd like to be with a normally assertive person who knows his own games.

For God's sake, you bastard, I've been cooking that goddamned meal all day...can't you pick it out yourself!?

My cat. When she is displeased with me she does not even bury her poop.

R16 Is that exactly passive-aggressive behavior, though? It's more like, pouting, stubbornness, not cooperating. Not answering when someone asks a question. Like if you agree to have a talk about your relationship and the other person just sulks and give one-word answers. Or if you're looking forward to seeing a movie and they show up an hour late, or do this repeatedly.

R16, I'm not sure that's passive-aggressive behavior. Do you call him out when he does these things, do you have arguments after?

My partner is the same way with breaking things, making mistakes, "accidentally" forgetting things he's agreed to do, crossing boundaries we've agreed to, etc. The trick with passive-aggressives is that they're doing that to avoid an argument, but it's been years, my partner knows he is not going to get away with fake "forgetting" something or "accidentally" breaking my last glass tumbler 3 minutes after he got irritated with me over nothing, so it's more about starting a fight with him than it is about avoiding one.

[quote] [A]ggressive means that you die the death of a thousand cuts from all the times he breaks things, messes up tasks, all the times you have to repeat what you've already told him, fix your own problems and his, too, etc. I'm not co-dependent (caring more about him than he does himself) and most of our decades together I've lived my own life, but we are together, so it does affect me.

Decades together, dying from 1,000 cuts? Fixing his problems? This does sound codependent. Time to get out.

My boss - I avoid dealing with him on the phone. Try to keep it to emails. I’ll feign a conference call to avoid his instant message.

My mother's way of being passive aggressive is to go on and on about some dude who is supposedly great and perfect and doing all the things she wishes I was doing, in emails. I ended up cutting her off. I couldn't stand it.

What would your partner putting ground-up glass in your Liver Pate constitute as?

OP, not initiating sex EVER and not being forthright about a lien on his house before you moved in and sold yours, would be dealbreakers for a lot of people.

If you're feeling you have to "patrol" him and his behavior, that sounds co-dependent to me. If you want an equal and want to stay in the relationship, you'll need some professional help with your partner. Otherwise it may not be salvageable.

We're not in our thirties. I'm not leaving and of course he'd never leave me because he adores how I fix everything for us, all the time, and make our lives exciting. I even came up with the idea that finally fixed the lien, with him basically paying cents on the dollar. But he tries like heck to please me and through all our tragedies (dying relatives, health scares, financial crises, etc) he's rock solid on my side and OUR side. R25, I know I'm no prize either because of childhood abuse that has left me with some interesting coping/noncoping mechanisms of my own, but I work on myself constantly and have changed over the years 100% compared to him. He's a no-changer, so I accept that this is the way he is, but I'd love it if magically (without hurting him) I was free and met a guy who also has worked on himself and can be assertive, positive, proactive and give ME a few years of rest or mutuality before I die!

You won’t meet that healthy, positive attitude guy until you leave the current guy.

The lien- a lie, a betrayal, a red flag.

He hasn’t changed and likely won’t.

You’re afraid of being alone.

You seem to be stuck in magical thinking mixed with resentment.

That's not totally untrue, R27. No, he won't change much. The lien thing was an enormous betrayal and changed the way I viewed him from then on, but I was young and we'd just gotten together. Yes, I'm afraid of being alone because of severe betrayal/abandonment as a child. So I don't blame myself for those feelings. Of course my relationships featured repetition compulsion--how could they not? But I learned all along the way and found better and better partners, believe me. No comparison between #1 and my current partner.

We're financially tied and he is not going to live more than a few more years, due to recurrent cancer. My sincere wish to meet someone who is of the personality type to work on himself (it's not good or bad, it's just one of a spectrum of human personalities/motivations) and work on the relationship isn't magical thinking, imo. I think I deserve such a person, but I'm aware that at this late date it may be unlikely that I will find him. I'm venting on DL to relieve my feelings and get some perspective. I laughed at the mean responses, too, because being able to laugh at one's stupid human situation is a good thing that DL heartily promotes. Thank you for your thoughtful response, R27. As I said, you're not wrong.

[quote] My sincere wish to meet someone who is of the personality type to work on himself

R28, seems like your mindset is to meet someone who needs to "work on himself." Nobody's perfect, but there are people out there who don't have major flaws that they need to "work on."

You KNOW who they are OP.

Somebody in this thread is just being rude. Not witty nor wise.

I know someone who is tryjng to provoke me witb passive aggressive behavior. The trick is to not notice or respond to what they are doing,—but retaliate elsewhere accordingly.

People like this want to provoke a negative reaction, so give them one. Find ways to make unfortunate things happen. Keys that go missing and end up in the river. Flat tires. Mailboxes that are glued shut. Watering their plants with hydrogen peroxide. There’s a myriad of things that can happen. Suddenly they are no longer focused on being a dick to you.

R33 What if they don't live near a river?

Fuck this thread, OP. You should have started a new one and linked to this old one.

R34 bury the keys with their dog that suddenly went missing.

"My partner is like this. When he wants to indirectly show me he's upset, he serves me dinner with the bay leaf still on the plate! Drives me nuts."

And a new Datalounge Catchphrase is born, I sense!

THat's kind of long for a catchphrase

R35, how does one link to another thread? There are no instructions on DL that I can find.

I'm not R35, but I think how you do it is this: Copy the URL from the navigation bar at the top of your screen, and when you reply to the message, paste the link into the "Web Site Link" bar at the bottom of your reply.

Being immediately very assertive in response to passive-aggressive tests sends these sorts scurrying right off.

There’s rats in the cellar, Blanche!

Thanks, R40.

I’m sure you have nothing to worry about. Look at how well you’ve done even getting a partner as good as this one. So very thoughtful and noticing every detail, OP. Not everyone appreciates this kind of obsession but you’ve managed to find one who notices. Enjoy the ride.

[quote] I know someone who is tryjng to provoke me witb passive aggressive behavior. The trick is to not notice or respond to what they are doing.

I LOVED doing this to a former roommate of mine who came from the land of passive-aggression (Minnesota). I’d blithely ignore all his little muttering comments and then watch him seethe with impotent midwestern rage.

12th house person here, so this is my unfortunate default mode. In recent years I’ve been trying hard to work on it and change, but every now and then old kneejerk habits kick in.

Can’t speak for everyone, but for me it all stems from a fear of confrontation and a shame about my existence, basically. Better to suffer silently in my own anger than project it out.

This last year, though, I handled a very serious financial conflict at my former job with what I felt was textbook healthy-assertiveness, managing to curtail the evil of a very exploitative person who’d been getting away with abuse for years. It’s one of the few recent things I’ve done of which I can be really proud. We have to take our wins where we can.

And thank YOU, R43. Somebody needs to monitor these sloppy threads!

R45 Are you sure Minnesota is the land of passive aggression? I had a very passive aggressive roommate from Iowa once.

R48, the upper Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin) are chockablock with passive aggressive people. If you hear someone speak with that dreadful vowel shift, beware.

R49 The last couple of times I saw this Iowa friend (one was last Thursday) I told him he looked great, or good, and he said nothing back. I felt this was passive aggressive.

Passive-aggression includes withholding praise, compliments, etc., but you should realize they got that way because their families of origen were lousy--usually narcissist parents who demanded all kinds of attention and demeaned the p-a person, who protects him/herself by "not giving."

Or they came from withholding parent(s) who never modeled healthy direct communication or showed affection.

Although we may feel sad for our PA friends, there are some of us who also came from shitty families, who figured out how to be a decent person anyway. I have compassion for the disordered types, but don’t let them get away with much anymore.