When ever I hear about someone dealing with someone in their life being annoying or rude, I think about what they may be doing to encourage the behavior. I know this sounds like blaming the victim, but i’ve learned we can be our own worst enemy and can self sabotage ourselves.
For example: I have a mom that is a control freak. It has to be done her way, every time. I used to resign myself to the thought “thats just how she is”. But now I’m rejecting that phrase. When I got engaged, I finally realized I was passively encouraging the behavior, and that my own (in)action would unfairly affect my wife. So I started standing up for myself. I confronted her about Thanksgiving, how we wanted her to be there and were hurt they refused to go, instead going to her cousins like they do EVERY year. She acted shocked and played dumb about it, and guilt tripped me about how I was being selfish for daring to suggest she miss thanksgiving for ONE year so she could go to her sons in his new renovated house with his in-laws (who like my family and dont understand why they dont visit). I stood my ground through the drama and feel better, because it made me realize a lot of her behavior was based on what I was doing. When I wouldn’t play along, they couldnt push me around and get me to accept things a different way.
Now I see a lot of people drama a different way. Folks being “just the way they are” is often because nobody wants to call them out on their bullshit, so they never change. It happened to me too- my friends never pointed out my mannerisms that people found annoying- they just accepted it as who I was. But my wife was honest about it, and while it was hard to hear, it helped me get rid of some bad habits I built up over the years.
Our behavior doesnt happen in a vacuum. It is influenced by others, and they are influenced by us. P
Anyone else have this revelation? I noticed people are quick to feel impotent about changing a persons behavior but pretty convinced it couldnt be anything on their end.
In general, yes. It seems to me like humans are wired to enable.
My mom is really bad about this. She will whine about how she “hates drama” while simultaneously thriving on it and encouraging it through email and facebook–she just can’t admit that she likes it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard her say she’s never going to speak to x again, then next week they’re best friends. It’s so… high school. I gave her advice on how to *actually *avoid drama in the past, with no results whatsoever. She wasn’t willing to listen. So I have a rule: don’t talk to me about family drama. I don’t care, I don’t need to know, I don’t want to know. I am fucking Switzerland.
Cutting intolerable (not merely annoying) family members and friends out of my life, and thereby increasing my own happiness, has made me see that I don’t have to put up with that shit. If you (general you) want to, that’s your bag. I’ll be over here (in Switzerland :p) enjoying my life and not whining about drama, mkay?
As a child of divorced parents, I’ve always had to cope with compromising by alternating which family i’d visit. I did this because I wanted to see both families. My mom always goes to her cousin’s. She wasnt willing to spend one thanksgiving with us- we have to revolve things around what she wants. I didnt think it was fair she wasnt willing to compromise the same way we were.
Absolutely. But, as you say, it’s really hard to talk about without sounding like you’re blaming the victim, even if that “victim” is you. I’ve mentioned before that my ex was something of a jerk. Abusive, possibly. But you know what? Some of the way I treated him absolutely did contribute to it. He’d yell, I’d retreat, I’d sulk, I’d walk on eggshells and then because he couldn’t communicate with me because I’d shut down, he’d yell louder. So I’d retreat further. It was a sick cycle, and I couldn’t figure out how to break it short of leaving him. Which I did, and now he’s a much nicer human being with his current girlfriend. Our dynamic didn’t work, theirs does. He still yells, but she deals with it in a totally different way and it doesn’t (appear to) get abusive.
If someone had pointed out to me about 3 years earlier that my shutting down was making things worse, I might have been able to change my behavior, and indirectly his. But what they saw was him being a jerk, and not how I was (completely unintentionally!) encouraging him to be a bigger jerk. And of course, once the first person whispered “abusive”, no one wanted to blame the victim for the abuser’s behavior.
Of course, I’m also way happier with my current SO, so I’m rather glad things worked out as they did!
Dealing with your controlling mother is not the same as dealing with your annoying coworker. I agree that some situations need to be handled with tact and if that means enabling someone to continue to be a minor annoyance, then so be it. Confrontation doesn’t always solve the problem.
I run with hippies and pagans, where “hating drama” is something of a religion. I’ve never heard the phrase from an undramatic person. The statement, in fact, is rather dramatic, is it not?
In fact, I used to say it, too, back when I was a drama queen! One year, I actually tried to change, to eliminate “drama” from my life. Y’know…I’ve been successful at it for almost 7 years now. Things have happened, sure, big things like the above mentioned divorce, new loves, emergency surgeries and weeks in the ICU and homelessness and nursing school and new careers and and and…but the disassociation that is associated with “drama” has been absent. No flurries of emails to various community members, no gossip, no “performances” or fights or public disputes. No trying to get this person on my side against that person. No f-ing witch wars. And you know what? It’s easier, but it’s kind of boring, too.
ETA: Now I know…I don’t hate drama. Drama is actually kind of fun. I just choose to minimize it (or indulge in it online, where I can walk away and get stuff done IRL), because it’s f-ing exhausting. Drama in moderation!
We all have bad habits and do things that enable others. Do not confuse being a doormat as showing tact. People that try to be pleasers, “nice” guys, and people that avoid conflicts make themselves vulnerable. Someone more assertive will see it a mile away. “I can always dump my grunt work off on John because he never says no”.
I am sorry, more people i know that work in customer service either on the phone or in a retail location have to put up with being treated like shit because management ahs decided that they have got to let their employees be treated like shit to retain customers - all the way up to passing out giftcards like candy for such stupid reasons as ‘they didn’t smile at me’ or ‘they refused to take this <obviously used and abused item> as a return’ [when there was no reciept, or it was plainly not following the rules laid out for returns]
Go read Customers Suck message board. People are not lying about this crap. I used to work CS< and U used to work retail, and I used to work in a restaurant. This abuse happens and the peons are forced to suck it up without being able to fight back. Qhy do you think the average peon dreams about their last day of work somewhere and abusing back the customer that abuses them, or the management that abuses them? I am amazed that more going postal killings don’t happen.
If your tactics in dealing with a person don’t bring about the desired result then its up to you, the annoyed to change tactics. I don’t see that as blaming the victim. Don’t be stubborn. A tactic that had never worked before is highly unlikely to be successful now. The “victim” needs to be the one who adapts.
WhyNot, a good example is my friends vs my wifes friends. My friends are drama queens- relationship drama, kid drama, friend drama. None of them like to directly confront others. They tend to talk behind each others backs and act passive agressive. My best friend complains about living with his hoarder in-laws, but the prospect of standing up for himself, getting his wife to support him with his in laws was never on the table. Its always him being stuck in an Impossible Situation with people that cannot be reasoned with. Confronting them is “too much work”.
My wifes friends, by contrast, are low drama. They stand up for themselves and show consideration about the way they act around others.
I know what you mean, i’ve been there, but theres something else i’ve noticed- it always seems like the “asshole” co worker/boss never seems to get fired. I think a big factor is the difference between fearing termination and not caring. The people who dont care seem to stick around, dont seem to get bullied, etc. the people afraid of termination or tying to get promoted tend to be over-accomodating. We dont want to be homeless/unemployed over pride! So we try to take the high road. But you gotta draw the line somewhere.
My wifes “jerkass elixir” is to speak nicely, completely mask her fear, and act understanding but not overly apologetic. people tend to react in extreme- they either fight hostility with hostility, or they act meek and fearful. This just emboldens end enables jerkass behavior.
I totally agree, and I would add “do not confuse being tactless as being self-actualized”.
I’m thinking, for example, of various IT people I’ve known in my business career whose attitude seems to be “If I’m helpful this time, people will expect me to be helpful all the time, and we can’t have that!” (Cf. Mordac the Preventer, BOFH)
In my experience, it can be a really fine line to walk, and you don’t always know exactly where you should draw the line. Sometimes you should give in for family or job or friendship harmony, and sometimes you should stand up for yourself and be assertive. The trick is knowing which is which, and it’s something I’m still working on.
Incubus, I recently went through something similar with my mom, and I finally told her that her behavior was unacceptable to me (she says very cruel things to me under the guise of helpfulness – things she doesn’t always remember saying because she was under the influence of alcohol). The entire family was shocked that I said anything, and now no one in the family is speaking to me.
I finally learned that it’s ok for me to put up boundaries to protect myself and my family. Your mom may not admit she’s hurting you, even if it’s obvious to you that she is in the wrong. You probably can’t change her or her ways, but you can change the way you react to her – i.e., removing yourself from the situation. It’s been so hard for me to do that with my family, because I really miss them sometimes. But in the end, I recognized them for the poisonous bunch they are (even if they all have redeeming qualities, and I still do love them all deeply) and I have made the effort to protect myself.
Good luck! I started seeing a therapist about the whole issue, and I feel a lot better. (Do a search on my posts I started and you’ll find links to my family-realted ones – maybe it’ll help you to take a look!)
One of the things I love about having my own business…
Just this week:
The guy who came in insisting to my partner that I told him on the phone it would fixed while he waited. When he demanded a discount for being so “inconvenienced” by our “slow” service (it was ready the next day) he was told no.
Customer that called because I transferred files to her new computer but she was now having trouble opening a few of those files and felt this was a warranty issue on my service that I should come fix at no charge. I offered to do a no obligation check via remote but she got extremely paranoid about it and decined. If it was a week ago I might be more inclined to look into it…but her job was in May…of 2009.
Hey maybe you know my mom! She’s a pagan dating a hippie pagan, and runs with both! I also like the phrase, “Drama in moderation.” I can definitely see how someone who is highly extroverted would find a lack of drama to be boring. The problem is, I’m highly introverted and avoidant. Drama directed at or around me makes me physically ill and exacerbates my mental illness, so I really prefer to play keep away. Even just *hearing about *someone else’s drama raises my heart rate and makes me uncomfortable enough to excuse myself from the conversation, which is why I LARP as a neutral country.
This has been a basic principle I adopted several years back, I still suck at applying it as much as I should, but even acknowledging it makes these sorts of situations different. I don’t look at it as blaming the victim, instead I state it like this: You cannot change other people, but you can change yourself. If you change how you act around or to other people then it will essentially force a change in the dynamic of the relationship. It’s about empowering yourself to take ownership of things in your life.
Another thing that I find helps is taking a different view on what a relationship is. Mostly, it seems like people look at it as a single two-way entity. Instead, I look at it more as two separate parts, where it’s how either person relates to the others and it’s the sum of those that make it up. The thing is, we can change how we relate to others, both in how we receive certain things from them and what we give to them. Again, those are the parts we can change. And I can in a sense affect the nature of the relationship not just by changing what I give, which is essentially the above concept, but also in how I receive things that people do. Sometimes people have annoying idiosyncracies, I may or may not be able to get them to change those things if I bring it up, but I can often figure out what about it bothers me and it simply won’t bother me.
For instance, to take an example from upthread about the yelling and the retreating. I can change that dynamic by not retreating and it may result in less enabling and less yelling, but it’s still only part of the problem. At the same time, if I understand why they’re yelling, for instance because they don’t feel heard, then I can make an effort not to perceive yelling as a sign of aggression but as a sign that I need to focus harder on understanding them, then the yelling will also bother me less and I’ll be less inclined to want to retreat and more inclined to want to contribute to the interaction constructively. And none of this directly puts any onus on the other person to change for my sake. Of course, hopefully both people in the relationship are putting in the effort to make it work, so they’ll want to make effort on their own to, for instance, realize that yelling isn’t the best way to communicate frustration about not being heard and that it results in shutting down and not to take shutting down as a sign that they’re not being heard but, again, I can’t change anyone but myself.
I am not sure if this observation is an example of what you mean. A woman friend in my neighborhood, had complained to me about wolf whistles and shouts she was getting from men at a nearby construction site. I agreed with her that it was terrible, and felt angry that she had to put up with it.
Until one day I noticed her walking at close distance to the construction workers (when there were other options for pedestrian traffic), and she was receiving the yells and whistles as described, however, on closer examination, I realized that she was smiling, giving eye contact, and seeming to enjoy all the attention.
I also like the phrase, “Drama in moderation.” I can definitely see how someone who is highly extroverted would find a lack of drama to be boring. The problem is, I’m highly introverted and avoidant. Drama directed at or around me makes me physically ill and exacerbates my mental illness, so I really prefer to play keep away. Even just *hearing about *someone else’s drama raises my heart rate and makes me uncomfortable enough to excuse myself from the conversation, which is why I LARP as a neutral country.