on passive aggression
now that i find myself in the idyllic - yet hard-won! - situation of not being regularly subjected to passive-aggression, now seems like an important time for me to write about it. after all, my past attempts to talk about passive-aggression were confounded by the fact that i was dealing with it in real time. and so the writing itself - no, the publishing of the writing - was itself a passive-aggressive act.
i have to remember this antiquarian distinction, between writing and publishing. it seems so quaint now, so fusty and depleted of value.
i subscribe to the interpretation of passive-aggression as aggression that is experienced as illegitimate, and so is expressed through oblique means. when it comes to the legitimacy of rage, it's clear that there are many of us who worry that if we flat-out say "i am angry" or "i am annoyed," we will have lost status within the workplace, the friendship, the family, or the partnership. and so we express it through behaviours, through the absence of behaviours, or through stinging words parcelled inside unfunny "jokes", and unhelpful "observations."
only joking. just saying.
passive-aggression is a topic that is offensive to everyone because we don't like to see ourselves as naturally venomous creatures. we remember when we were adorable. we see ourselves as neutral at worst.
i suffered terribly from the passive-aggression of others, and from the bizarre game of trying to prove that any aggression had taken place at all. it all felt like a game of ghost chess, on a spectral board of motives. as if i were a detective trying to prove that the person who had hurt me had on some level meant to hurt me. auden wrote "motives like stowaways are found too late." i never caught the motive behind others' behaviour at all. i found myself agreeing that my pain must be some kind of personal failing, some uncaused social aberration. i found myself apologising for being "hypersensitive."
it took a long time to accept my own feelings as legitimate, and to discard the ridiculous label of hypersensitivity, or at least, the association of sensitivity with weakness. the most powerful people in the world are often the most sensitive, the most easily upset. i'm sure you can think of examples.
and it also took me a long time to accept that i was also complicit in the passive-aggressive games of others, because i was determined to be passive-wounded, to reject my own hurt as illegitimate, and to express it obliquely through substance use, anxiety attacks, depression, avoidance, fawning, lying, or my favourite, completely shutting down. taking responsibility for the ways i insisted on a set of behaviours that both complemented and invited passive-aggression has been the work of a lifetime.
i was not just a victim. i was also one of the villains. i wanted people to know that they had hurt me, and i wanted that knowing to hurt them, but i didn't want to express it outright. i regret that. when i think of past scenarios, i cringe.
it was as if we had established a contract, that i would receive others' anger obliquely, and in return i would agree never to express pain. that was the deal. i fulfilled my side of the bargain in advance. i can't help but wonder how much passive-aggression i could have short circuited had i simply been willing to ask "Are you angry?"
but then, sometimes, i did ask "Are you angry?"
i remember asking. i remember the answer was always "No." I was only joking. It was just an observation.
and i always caved in eventually, accepting those non-apology-apologies: "if that's how it came across, then i'm sorry." non-apology accepted. ready for round two.
in the book "emotional vampires" j alfred bernstein pointed out that passive-aggressive personality types were often blind to their own hostile impulses. learning that was an absolute breakthrough for me. it encouraged me to look at the moral pretensions of others (as people who didn't suffer from moods) and my own moral pretensions (as a man whose feelings were always justified, and who never needed to fight). in every case, a lofty self-image set the stage for sadomasochistic mind games, especially in the workplace where a standard of "professional" conduct is often interpreted as being a moodless, emotionless outcome facilitator.
instead of a person. living a life.
i don't know that passive-aggressive behaviour can be named easily in others. nor can it be recognised easily in ourselves.
this is a matter, i think, of being in touch with your own instincts, and following the real and valuable information they provide. and that means being aware enough of your own thoughts and feelings to know where you're hurting.
a certain stillness is required. a certain patience. and a certain willingness to accept the fact that some specific people make you feel uncomfortable.
and it requires a certain ability to decipher hieroglyphic behaviours, unfortunately. this means it is very difficult to protect children from passive-aggressive bullying, because children simply cannot be expected to recognise patterns of dissimulation the way adults can recognise them. not in others, not in themselves. not being a parent myself, i am not sure how parents can detect and deal with the effects of passive aggression on their children. i can guess that children's voices must be encouraged rather than silenced, and that the details in children's stories must be regarded as expressive rather than incidental.
but so it is with ourselves. speaking up, and accepting the curious details of our narratives as expressive, is essential.
i have read hundreds of essays online about passive-aggressive parents bullying children - these have long been part of the ecology of the creative internet - but when it comes to older generations talking about how their passive-aggressive children have bullied them, this seems to have been more a matter of offline conversation. i am yet to make sense of that phenomenon. maybe the first person industrial complex really is a Gen X and Millennial thing, and that there is a wave of articles coming about how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have an ungrateful child. maybe i'm just looking in the wrong place, and the facebook comments section has captured and monetised the pain of parenting in ways that online essays have not. but i suspect it has more to do with taboos placed around real parental emotions.
i will leave off here, with an injunction for you to pay attention to your own discomfort, and to stop treating it is incidental, irrational, or as evidence of nothing. it is evidence of something. we live in a world where the feelings of some are valued more than the feelings of others. in this way, treating the envenomations of passive-aggression is a way of tending to the preconditions of social equality.
