ELI5: What’s passive – aggressive behavior?

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ELI5: What’s passive – aggressive behavior?

Comments

  1. Razorwyre Avatar

    Passive aggressive behavior is when someone acts mad or upset but doesn’t say it out loud. Instead, they do little things to show they’re not happy, like giving you a quiet “hmph,” ignoring you, or doing something slowly on purpose. It’s like when you’re upset with your friend but instead of saying “I’m mad,” you hide their toy and pretend you didn’t. It’s not the best way to share feelings because it can make things confusing.

  2. Uncle_DirtNap Avatar

    It’s when you attack someone without active language to try to avoid responsibility for the attack. Let’s say I asked you how your day was. I could answer aggressively, saying “It sucked! I had a bad day, but you never support me, and that made it worse!” Or, I could say “meh, it was fine. It could have been so much better if anyone had been around to support me, but I know you’re busy…”

    Now, in the first response, I call you out for something you didn’t do. We might fight about it, we might figure out who’s right or wrong, or it might be a problem between us — but it’s out in the open. It’s “directly” aggressive. In the second, it’s clear that I wanted you to support me, but I never directly said that. Now, if you try to contest this, I can deflect and say I never said anything about you not supporting me.

  3. ceecee_50 Avatar

    People who fear confrontation the most, tend to be the most passive aggressive assholes out there. Giving the silent treatment, acting angry and then saying everything is fine, testing people, giving back handed rude compliments, sabotaging, relationships ..and they loved to brag about how passive aggressive they are.

  4. allineedisthischair Avatar

    if you don’t know I’m not going to tell you. You should already know.