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Overcoming Passive Aggression

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  • #68034
    Holly
    Participant

    Hi all,

    I’ve just joined these forums as I’ve been doing some research around a couple of topics and loved the articles I came across on Tiny Buddha. Wasn’t really sure whether to post this in relationships or emotional mastery but I chose here as I think really the issue is more with myself…

    Basically, there is an issue that has cropped up a couple of times in my relationship – it’s to do with my boyfriend’s Instagram account. To cut a long story short, I feel like he acts like a single man on there. His pictures are all of him, his daughter, his achievements etc… I don’t feature. He also comments on other women’s pictures in a way that I feel is inappropriate for someone in a relationship. I have tried to be understanding… perhaps it was a habit he’d got into before I arrived on the scene, perhaps he needs one area of outlet where he can be the man he was before we got together… etc. I should also say that apart from this one issue, he is a fantastic partner. We do lots together, I’m always his plus-one to events, he is thoughtful (e.g. bringing me a cup of tea in bed in the morning, cooking when I’ve had a long day at work), we hold hands walking down the street, we talk about our plans and dreams… we are also ‘in a relationship’ on FB and there are lots of pictures of us together on there. This makes me wonder if I am being really irrational worrying about Instagram so much? And it seems pathetic to feel this way over a social media account…

    My issue is that when I think about it, I go moody, resentful, jealous… I don’t handle myself very well at all. When I first saw his Instagram profile he knew something was up because I went very quiet and monosyllabic (what I now recognise as being passive aggressive). After a while, I did tell him what the issue was, he apologised, said he could see it was out of order, and I thought we’d resolved it. However, nothing changed. This issue is making me feel so angry and jealous that I can almost feeling it eating away at me. I know that isn’t healthy. I also know that our relationship is doomed if I can’t communicate with him about things that are important to me, and if I can’t trust him on things like this.

    I suppose I just wondered if anyone had gone through anything similar.. and to get an outside perspective on whether people think I’m being irrational about this? Given that everything else is so great, should I just let him have this ‘single domain’ and chill out about it? It just bothers me that perhaps it reflects a deep-down desire that he would rather be single, and free to flirt with other women – odd given his behaviour in every other aspect of our relationship. I don’t get why if he was proud to be my partner, he wouldn’t want to be posting pictures of us together at every opportunity. It makes me sad, and makes me doubt a little whether what we have is really genuine. And then the bigger issues within this – it’s highlighted that I have issues with communicating negative emotions to him. How can I develop into someone who has the confidence to bring these topics up? I guess I’m ultimately scared that conflict will lead to rejection.. have any of you dealt with passive aggression/resentment in a relationship – what do you think are good tools/strategies for developing through something like this?

    Thanks!

    #68035
    Inky
    Participant

    Well, you’re passive aggressive because if you were aggressive about it there’s a chance he could leave you. There’s also “Not wanting to ask, but wanting nonetheless”. You want the Instagram photos to be from HIM, not because he felt he had to put them up there!

    A few things:

    1. Who is his “audience” on Instagram? Does he have a huge following pre-You, is he popular, is he expected to have certain pics? What is the purpose and “theme” of the account? What goes through his mind before he thinks a pic is Instagram worthy?

    2. If you are alive and well in his FaceBook universe, I wouldn’t worry too much. To me that one’s more Real, it’s like The White Pages LOL.

    3. It could be a single guy vestige. OK, there was/is this site called Odd Todd. It was all about a single unemployed guy in NYC and the cartoon was a direct reflection of its creator. Huge following. HUGE. Well, life goes on and the guy gets a girlfriend IRL. He slowly, gradually, gently gave her a little bit of an appearance (“I have a GF and she exists”). You can bet some of his following got angry/sad/disappointed. It’s like when Cathy, the cartoon character, got married on the strip.

    4. If he doesn’t have a following, he should get over it. I knew a band *cough* who would refer to their GF’s as “lovers”, “consorts”, “concubines” to their “fans” (all 50 of them) to project an image of the women who weren’t just going away LOL. This was PRE-internet, everyone is married and the band is disbanded now. LOLOL

    Good Luck!

    #68037
    Chris
    Participant

    Holly,

    When I read this, I got the impression that you are blaming yourself in part for the way you feel. I hope I am wrong. You should not feel bad about having negative emotions. You should trust your feelings. When we suffer because of another person’s actions, one of the hardest things to do is ask that person for help. It takes a certain courage to do this. But this is how I would proceed. I would tell him that you still suffer and ask for his help in understanding. Do this from a place of love and compassion for both him and for yourself. You deserve to feel completely included in his life and loved. My best to you both 🙂

    #68039
    Holly
    Participant

    Thank you both for your replies 🙂

    Inky, to answer your questions…
    1) His following seems to be mostly attractive women… I don’t think he has a purpose or ‘theme’ per se, its just random moments from his life. No idea what makes an photo ‘Instagram-worthy’ but a lot are of things that make him look good.
    2) Maybe… 🙂
    3) Yes I understand that, hence trying to be understanding… but shouldn’t there be a point where that doesn’t matter to him/gets boring? I mean, he’s NOT a single guy any more. If he keeps up an area where he is, surely that will be detrimental to the relationship? Plus, it’s not like he’ll lose a great cartoon career by coming clean about me 😉
    4) I do feel like he should ‘get over it’ but I guess that’s what I’m having difficulty in expressing… 🙂

    Chris – your post made me well up a little. You’re right. All my life I have had to fight being too much of a people pleaser. I have struggled in overcoming the feeling that I always need to be nice and happy (one friend once angrily yelled at me I wasn’t ‘bloody Pollyanna’ which hurt me to my core but demonstrates the persona I had!) – though I do much better with embracing my negative side these days, it is still sometimes uncomfortable for me, and I think particularly in the romantic relationship (my first serious relationship), it is hard to accept that someone could want to stay with me if I dare to display negative emotions like anger, sadness, jealousy. I think your advice is good and I have been working up to having a conversation with him – I just want to get the timing right. Really appreciate your insights 🙂

    #68040
    Inky
    Participant

    I feel so elderly ~ I don’t know how Instagram “works”, it’s something my kids use.

    On FB I see girls “marking their territory” on their BF’s Wall. Posting, Liking, Commenting, Tagging, Sharing. For a guy, they are clueless, but all the women know that that is the GF making her presence known.

    Can you be all, “Hey, this pic looks great of us, post it on Instagram!” or post something on his Instagram, etc. Can you Like, Share, Comment, Tag? Sorry, I don’t know the site!!

    What would happen, or what does happen, if you get all excited over a great pic of you? Does he hem, haw, and delay putting one up of you?

    You can appeal to his ego: “This pic of us will give your Fan Girls something to talk about!” you say with a wink!

    Make a game of it. “Here’s another one to make The Hens jealous!” Always refer to the attractive Instagram women as “Hens”. Do it in fun, in a tone that lets him know that YOU know that you are his Number One.

    🙂

    #68045
    Holly
    Participant

    I’m sure you are far from being classed as elderly! 🙂

    Nice pics go on FB… on Instagram the only ones that make it are the ones without me on them. There are many pics from events we have been at together, where lovely pictures of the two of us have been taken.. but they are never shared. I have asked outright for him to share some (e.g. a nice one of us at a friends wedding the other week…) despite agreeing, he never posted it – but he did share one of him with the groom and two of his best mates.

    It’s escalated now as he is now ignoring my request to ‘follow’ his profile and has made it private. So now I can’t see what he’s posting and have been completely excluded. Meanwhile, in the last couple of weeks he has posted comments like “perfect woman!” and “wow” and emoticons with heart-eyes on pictures of complete strangers. You wouldn’t think he was in his mid thirties would you?? As I said before, apart from this one issue he really is a lovely and thoughtful guy so I hate to realise how awful this looks.

    Typing all this out has made me realise however that this behaviour is really not displaying a level of respect and care for me that I expect. I may not have tackled it perfectly with my fear of conflict etc but I definitely think I have a right to be pissed off about this. It may be *only* a social media account, but it’s what it represents and says about how he is treating me. I think I’m feeling fired up enough to bring it up whatever now. He needs to know that I’m not a push-over. Being great everywhere else in our relationship is not an excuse to act like a thoughtless idiot on this occasion!

    #68046
    Inky
    Participant

    I am all for sub-worlds and parallel lives. But enough is enough. Is it possible ~ just possible ~ that he’s hiding you because one of the women assumes he is single and he’s stringing her along ~ if only for fun? It’s weird that you are blanked like that. Well, I’m sure the other woman/women are blanked on FaceBook too. Look in his Friend Request list. I bet some of them are still in FB limbo.

    Hey, my step brother was like that. He gets very, very uncomfortable when Sub-Worlds Collide. The family for a decade literally didn’t know where he lived in Newport. And he had three girl friends. Like cats, they knew of each other, but he made sure they each didn’t get into the other’s “territory”. Of course, he wisely is not on social media!!

    Also ~ maybe your boyfriend had his daughter too young. Maybe he missed a good chunk of bachelor days.

    Tell him, “Honey, this is an episode of When Sub-Worlds Collide. Add me back on Instagram AND put in a photo of me. Who do you like more? An internet fan girl or a real live woman of flesh and blood who’s right here.”

    Forget passive-aggressive or aggressive. Time to Be Assertive.

    • This reply was modified 10 years, 1 month ago by Inky.
    #68051
    Chris
    Participant

    Holly,

    I agree with Inky. Something is definitely not right. Stand up and assert yourself. Your feelings are valid and you aren’t being treated with respect. If he truly values the relationship and your feelings, he will do whats necessary, if not….

    #68055
    Holly
    Participant

    Thanks a lot for your replies. So I just got home (where he’d prepared dinner), and said that we need to talk about the Instagram stuff, and he said “but I deleted it – it’s not on my phone any more”. Turns out, he made his profile ‘private’ so that people couldn’t find it online, and then he deleted the app. He said that although he had some fun with it, it wasn’t worth keeping if it would be a point of contention in our relationship. I think he genuinely sees why I was bothered – I told him that it made me feel disrespected and upset/angry. We both got a bit awkward, I cried, we both apologised. Hopefully that’s it now.

    I think this was a genuine case of thoughtlessness rather than anything more sinister going on behind my back. Thanks a lot for being a sounding board when I needed it. It did give me the courage to bring the topic up this evening!

    #68058
    Diana
    Participant

    I actually had a similar thing happen to me, but it was on fabebook. I dated a guy for a year, we were both in a monogamous relationship, but he refused to respond to my facebook friend request, keeping me hidden from his page the entire time. His list of friends were family members but also very attractive women/models/dancers he barely knew from his work as a musician. I would bring it up about how this made me feel, and if he loved me and I was that important to him, why wasn’t I on there, but he would tell me FB didn’t matter and I how much he hated social media and what kind of trouble it caused. He was very private and didn’t like his personal life on there. Long story short, he was cheating on me and being inappropriate. I know this because we have talked about what happened back then as we are friends now, 2 years later.He knew he was wrong and said he just liked the attention he got from other women which led to him cheating. Hope that’s not the case for you. Good luck

    #68062
    Chris
    Participant

    Yea!!! Glad you spoke your mind and heart, and super glad for you both that you’ve cleared up a misunderstanding. I hope your relationship is better as a result. 🙂

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