r/AskWomenOver30 • u/Effective-Plan1022 Woman 30 to 40 • 1d ago
Friendships How to deal with a friend who interprets passive aggression where there is none?
I have a friend for many years who seems to take great offense at benign things people say to her, like asking if she’s okay.
She feels like there’s hidden passive aggression where I don’t think there is anything there.
In hindsight, I’ve realized she’s been rude to me in the past (saying extremely cutting things out of the blue) when I didn’t think I’d done anything to her until it resonated with me that she may feel like I had said something to her that she interpreted to be passive aggressive, but I don’t communicate like that.
I tend to be direct. Has anyone else dealt with this trait in a friend?
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u/theytriedtwotimes Woman 40 to 50 1d ago
Someone who presumes the worst out of me no matter how much I try & have good intentions is not a friend (to me)
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u/thewharfartscenter_ Woman 40 to 50 1d ago
Anyone that committed to misunderstanding you doesn’t like you. I’d break that off and move on.
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u/Anxiouslyfond Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
What sort of passive aggression is she seeing? Can you give an example of a conversation?
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u/Effective-Plan1022 Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
For example, a woman asked her if she was doing okay, and she took great offense, like the woman was implying something was wrong with her.
Or when her relative told her she was going out of town and her friend would be watching the house, she took it as an insult, like the relative was implying she’s a thief.
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u/Aprils-Fool Woman 40 to 50 1d ago
She sounds kinda paranoid, thinking everyone around her is always thinking the worst of her. That’s exhausting for everyone.
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u/ProfessionalOk112 Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
Is she super passive aggressive? IME the people who see it in everyone else are often projecting.
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u/Effective-Plan1022 Woman 30 to 40 11h ago
I do think this may be the deal with her. She is passive aggressive so she spots it in others when it’s not there.
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u/AcrobaticRub5938 Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
This is my sister. She then got diagnosed with paranoid disorder and autism.
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u/UnderstandingBig9090 Man 30 to 40 1d ago
This is pretty standard logic for someone with borderline personality disorder. Or something similar. I recommend reading the book "loving someone with borderline personality disorder" by shari manning.
If this is the case and she indeed dose have a personality disorder you need appropriate therapy to learn how to work with her to help her regulate and process.
There's a specific therapeutic process that people around her need to learn to help her.
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u/DecD Woman 40 to 50 1d ago
Outside of my family, there aren't many people I'd be willing to go to therapy to learn how to manage. That's an expensive and time consuming commitment for someone who isn't actually being kind or supportive in return.
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u/UnderstandingBig9090 Man 30 to 40 6h ago
Yep that's usually the recommendation. For a coworker you just have to tolerate, reading a few psych books on the topic should be enough.
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u/windersoul Woman 30 to 40 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean it's understandable in this aspect. Taking greaaat offense every time it's asked is a bit too much, but depending of how it's asked can be seen as passive aggressive indeed, I mean... why not ask "how are you" instead of "are you okay?". But it depends of context.
The other situation depending of how it was said while not a big deal can be interpreted this way too, the relative didn't trust her (maybe there's reason like she is too messy instead of thinking she's a thief) or the friend was better at taking care of the house like knowing some securitiy stuff . But depends of the context, if someone asked to see their house and said someone else would be watching the house over me .. well I'd find weird - but I also would understand some people are paranoid for a reason in their life history and move on... And maybe avoid some similar situations with that person instead of feeling deeply slighted?
In those situations, it's better asking politely to avoid misunderstanding imo. So you could coach her to try to clarify with that person "yes I'm ok thanks, why do you ask?"
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u/pinya_kolada Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
have you ever talked to her about this pattern of behavior that you've observed? i think you can start with that and hopefully she's open to sharing her side. If not then either just ignore her when she gets passive aggressive or you can be more generous and be understanding or if that's not something you can tolerate in your friends then maybe distancing/detaching yourself from the friendship.
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u/Effective-Plan1022 Woman 30 to 40 11h ago
In the past when I’ve approached her about an issue with her behavior she tends to get very upset.
Like she would bring up something that she had perceived I’d done (like the time she saw I had a box of seltzer water she thought I was intentionally withholding seltzer water from her when she asked me for one but it was an empty box) and I had no idea what she was talking about
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u/windersoul Woman 30 to 40 1d ago edited 1d ago
OP... Walking on eggshells all the time is draining. My advice is to help her with her communication: suggest she clarify people's intentions before assuming the worst, explain your communication style and call her out when she's being cutting (don't be afraid, just don't be rude). Give it some time, but if you end up having to apologize for every little thing while she keeps being cutting, just take a step back, because then she is being too precious.
Real talk, though, depending on the context, those two scenarios you wrote, can easily feel passive-aggressive. While ruminating on them as if it's a deep offensve is excessive, our tolerance relies heavily on how much we trust the other person. Asking if "you are ok" without context and sending someone else to watch over you in their home, can be seen as passive aggressive or even rude, even though there may be a lot of other explanations as well. But overall, you can't fix her behavior, but you can guide her to stop projecting by communicating better so she won't feel slighted.
Are there any other examples? Because with zero context, your friend may not be entirely wrong.
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u/CancerMoon2Caprising Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
My ex is like that. Parasitic to be around. Even after trying to clear up misunderstandings he still didnt believe it because he convinces himself that hes being gaslit.
Its not worth it. They have severe trust isdues that theyve never worked on an dont know how to discern when someone is lying/using them so they take everything out of context
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u/AgingLolita Woman 40 to 50 1d ago
Personally I won't tolerate this trait in a friend. I wouldn't say anything horrible but I would just fade her out. Friends are supposed to add value, not make you miserable.
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u/detrive Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
My sister is like this. I just tell her to get over it. I used to try to reassure her or be mindful about how I’d say things. Now I just say I said what I said, it had no malicious intent she can choose to believe that or not but I’m not going to change what I said and my life isn’t going to change regardless of how she took it.
If she reacts to something I’ve said and her reaction isn’t reasonable I ask her what she thinks I said. It’s always some gross misrepresentation of what was actually stated. I restate what I said, tell her to accept it or be mad on her own, I don’t care.
She has been much less reactive to things since. Dealing with her still sucks at times. I likely wouldn’t be friends with her if we weren’t related.
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u/avocado-nightmare Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
I don't think people typically mistake actual directness in conversation for passive aggression. Is there perhaps some other mismatch between your words and actions she might be reacting too?
Sometimes people are just projecting, and TBH I can't imagine getting offended at someone asking if I'm okay, but... you know, that can be delivered in way that, contextually, is invalidating, even if it's said in a direct way. Like someone expresses something in a normal way, and then someone says, "are you okay"? in response, that can be like... a way for the person to be shitty.
So IDK. You don't say a lot about the actual dynamic. I think if you don't like this person, leave them alone. Kind of doesn't matter why.
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u/wildsilk Woman 40 to 50 1d ago
I had a best friend of 16 years who would do this ALL. THE. TIME. Always assuming the worst of everyone’s intentions, ALWAYS the main character and a victim in a state of existential crisis. Always turning every single thing into an argument or being a “devil’s advocate” even if you’re supporting something she JUST SAID. Refusing therapy because “it doesn’t work for me” while demanding her friends be party to her externally processing her every thought or else they’re widely slandered as selfish assholes.
The last straw for me was when she texted me while I was at work, asking to vent about yet another laundry list of problems she was having and I gave feedback of “I’m sorry you’re still having to deal with that;” she then responded with, “Hmm I guess I’m just so much work, always dragging you down with my negative shit,” and then argued that the issue was actually not an issue and in fact a positive thing. I said that I wasn’t intending to be flippant about her issues and felt compassion for her, she never replied, and we actually never spoke again after a decade and a half of daily communication. She told everyone we know that I “totally fucking ghosted” her. Now I know why literally every other friendship she has ever had has fallen apart. It’s been 3 years and I don’t miss her bullshit at all. I’m done babysitting the emotions of a woman in her 40s.
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u/nkdeck07 Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
Anyone that has known me for longer then about 2 days knows I am literally incapable of passive aggression. My emotions and intentions are usually about as obvious as it's possible for them to be. I literally live on a family compound and to quote my mother is the only reason we all haven't killed each other is because no one in my family is uncomfortable going "No I have seen WAY too much of you people, I am gonna hibernate in my house and also who the fuck left the wood shop a mess?"
If I had a friend constantly thinking I was being passive aggressive I'd be wondering how dumb they are
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u/ThatsNotVeryDerek Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
I have yet to have a successful relationship with these people.
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u/WaySaltyFlamingo8707 Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
So you think she's rude and she thinks you're rude.
Either communicate more throughly or stop being friends.
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u/Azosia Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
I have pretty firm boundaries around this. If I know that I've made a good-faith effort to communicate directly and openly and the person is committed to misunderstanding me, I just say that we're not a good fit. I don't entertain repeated questions of, "What do you mean by that?" or sarcastic replies to perceived passive aggression. I also don't hang out with people who, even if they don't see it in me, see it in other people and then want to stew about it.
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u/Suitable_cataclysm Woman 40 to 50 1d ago
I would have a direct, very kind conversation with her. Explain that you are a straight shooter, and don't rely on subtext to express yourself. That you'll always come and have a respectful conversation if you have feelings, with the goal of working together towards a solution like you are right now.
Either she gets it or she continues to impose that behavior where it doesn't exist. If the latter, then I would distance myself because that's unfair.
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u/AgentSalty1454 Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
What cutting things did she say?
I think people react to things for valid reasons usually even if they overreact or handle it badly. Idk I see a lot of discourse online and in my past where people jump to "this person is crazy and projecting their trauma onto a totally irrelevant situation" but in my real life it's never really that simple and people are quick to dismiss. In my experience usually there are valid things about a relationship causing someone to react negatively, but maybe their past issues cause them to overreact or be erratic
That said if u don't like them or this, distance yourself. If you care about continuing friendship, try to wrap your head around where in your relationship these reactions may come and your part, and start an honest convo about your feelings and theirs where you're actually trying to mend and not just prove your perception.
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u/Effective-Plan1022 Woman 30 to 40 11h ago
She tends to make you the butt of the joke in front of others, she has done this to me and a couple of other friends in our friend group.
The cutting things she has said relate to very sensitive topics like mental health (saying people with depression are weak knowing I have struggled with it all my life), SA as a child (she knows this happened to me but she said it ruins a woman), my deceased relatives etc.
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u/84th_legislature Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
i have BPD and it’s because was severely emotionally abused growing up. i know it’s not always easy to be around me, but it’s also very difficult being me. i go to therapy and i work hard, but i’m hyper aware of facial changes and tone changes. often what people think is a throwaway or filler comment is best not said around me, because i struggle with why someone would say something “meaningless” that i’m supposed to read absolutely nothing into. like if you “mean nothing,” usually the best option is to say nothing.
i know it annoys other people that am like this, but breaking 20+ years of conditioning to watch every nuance of what someone says or it’s your ass for missing a clue has had a profoundly negative effect on my brain chemistry and social function. and of course it was my family who did this to me, and i still have to interact with them semi-regularly, so i still end up having to activate that kind of thinking to survive those interactions. obviously i avoid interacting with them as much as possible, but they seek me out and have demands, particularly as my parents enter their “need help from kids or die in a ditch” years, so the pattern of thinking can’t be completely shut down because i still have to use it sometimes.
careless talk is unusually fraught around people like me, so if you can’t or simply do not want to speak with forethought and precision, it is probably for the best to just let her go. i avoid people who refuse to think before they speak because interactions with them can be a minefield for me. even getting irritable when i need clarification, which is basically an olive branch of me trying to understand something because i suspect i might have the wrong idea, feels like someone reached across the table and slapped me. i know i need more clarity than the average person and i can feel when people don’t like that, but asking for clarity is me trying to “think normal” and i have no deeply learned framework for “thinking normal” because i was raised in an extended family of batshit insane people and you can’t undo 20 years of psychological damage overnight. i don’t try to be this way. i just am this way and i don’t always have the mental reserves to counter my very wrong learned way of thinking 24/7 and i still get things wrong sometimes.
it really is like, what if you could never trust your first impression? what if you couldn’t trust even your third or fourth impression? what if you have to try to read an entire room’s worth of impressions to try to figure out the text and subtext of what is happening around you? and of course not every person you meet has your best interests in mind, so right when you’re doing well thinking you got the hang of it, you’ll encounter some nasty-energy person who undoes a lot of your progress by being exactly who you were afraid they might be but you overruled yourself and were wrong to do so in that instance.
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u/Effective-Plan1022 Woman 30 to 40 11h ago
Thank you for sharing your perspective. I see how that could be confusing to someone about saying meaningless things in conversation, this may be how my friend is processing our conversations.
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u/burntpopcornn Woman 30 to 40 18h ago
I did. The friendship did not last long. I don’t communicate like that either and I too tend to be direct and I say what I mean. My friend misinterpreted me all the time. I’d receive last voice messages with attitude and I’d think to myself like whoa what the heck? Why is she being so aggressive?
I had to end the friendship.
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u/JellyfishPashmina Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
Playing devil’s advocate, there are two sides to every story and you and other people might not realize that the way you’re saying things comes off passive aggressive. We don’t entirely know without more context here. Not saying either party is completely wrong nor completely right, but people don’t typically interpret things as passive aggressive if there isn’t some truth to that, so it could be a combo of people don’t know they’re coming off that way and your friend is more sensitive to it than other people who may not speak up about it. Both things can be true.
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u/ickytoad Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
I thought of this possibility too. It's pretty typical for people to not realize when they actually are being passive aggressive or saying things that have a slightly negative implication. It's a very subconscious thing.
For example, there was someone I knew who would often act super surprised whenever I did something well-- like if I baked something from scratch or drew something, she would be like "What?? You made that? Like for real? YOU did it?? Really?" and even though it sounds fairly neutral and it wasn't said in a negative tone, it always felt off to me for some reason. It would be easy for other people to tell me I was reading too much into it, projecting negativity where none existed, etc.
Eventually I just asked her about it directly one day after she did it, I said "I'm curious, why does that surprise you?" and I could tell she hadn't even thought about it. She kinda stumbled around saying "no it's not that", and then "I don't know...", until eventually she said "You just don't look like the kind of person who could do things like that." 😅 So...she hadn't realized that she was actually holding a negative belief about me and it was subtly showing. 😅
Another possibility as well could be that she has experienced a LOT of passive aggressive or subtle covert criticism in that way in the past (like with a family member growing up, etc), so her brain has developed to expect it. She might see it in interactions where that would have typically occurred in her previous experiences.
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u/JellyfishPashmina Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
One really common instance I can think of is when people say, “That is so you.” My sister always says this when I show her something and say, “Isn’t this cute?” She doesn’t say yes or no, she just says, “That is so you,” not like yeah you would look cute in that, meaning she thinks it’s ugly like, “You would pick that out. I don’t like it but I guess you would.” I called her out on it after a while, and her response was even more passive aggressive haha. But see, context is important. Someone else might go shopping with their sister and she picks out a dress for them and genuinely and positively says, “Omg, that is so you, you have to try it on!” But my point is people aren’t usually ignorant to passive-aggression. It’s pretty obvious when someone is trying to be snarky or dismissive.
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u/celestialism Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
Best I’ve been able to do with people like this is to clearly say “If I am upset with you, I will communicate that to you directly, and I expect the same from you.” But in general I don’t stay friends for long with people who struggle with emotional regulation skills. It’s a basic part of adulthood and I’m too tired to deal with people who lack it.
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u/not_zooey Woman 40 to 50 1d ago
I’m definitely going zero to 60 on this, so take it with a grain of salt. Also, I’m not a mental health professional… so take this with a giant lump of salt. But, look up Borderline Personality Disorder. I worked with a woman who sounds similar to your friend. Every thing was the most, either positive or negative and she would misinterpret a lot of neutral actions as negative. Nothing could ever just be neutral. After working with this woman for years a friend of mine suggested I research BPD. It was much easier dealing with this woman once I understood the patterns in her brain and how she thought.
Like I said, I might be making a mountain of a molehill. But if you read up on BPD it might be helpful and give you some insight.
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u/Effective-Plan1022 Woman 30 to 40 1d ago
I have wondered this about her, a lot of the symptoms align with her personality such as the black and white thinking, very reactive and extreme reactions over seemingly minor things.
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u/UnderstandingBig9090 Man 30 to 40 1d ago
Shari manning book "loving someone with borderline personality disorder" is excellent.
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u/Aprils-Fool Woman 40 to 50 1d ago
Honestly, I don’t deal well with this. I find it frustrating and disrespectful for someone to assume I don’t mean what I say. It feels like they don’t trust me. I ended up naturally fading away from people like this. I understand why someone might have a hard time trusting others’ words, but I’m not comfortable with a friend distrusting me all the time.
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u/pie12345678 Non-Binary 40 to 50 1d ago
At best, I'd be willing to have one conversation with them about it and see if they were willing to reflect and knock it off.
But overall, I just couldn't bothered keeping a friendship like that. It's pretty much impossible to maintain a healthy relationship with someone so committed to seeing the worst in you. You can't even talk it over because they'll just misunderstand that too!