My control freak supervisor, power, pecking, and rape

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This is a bit long, I appreciate anyone who reads this. But I gotta get it off my chest. This is kinda how I figure the world out. It's everything from dysfunctional to eye opening....I'd love to not think about everything in detail, but if you put a psychological radio in front of me, I'm gonna take it apart, and put it back together, because I must understand it lol So:

This guy at work who pulls power trips on me has been frustrating, I worry about it, uncomfortable, and worst of all, I'm just learning how to deal with this....

This guy is a jerk, he's always busting my chops, compares me to other workers, puts me down, spends too much time focusing on me and my productivity, can't offer solutions, and is generally upset with me...UNTIL.....I kiss his ass.....turrrrible.

My analysis: Like an insecure dog at a dog park, every time a new dog comes in, he comes over, sniffs your ass, and tries to hump you. His upbringing has caused this, somewhere, he feels small an insignificant, unsure of his own power. Any new dog comes in, he imeadiately feels small, and feels the need to compensate....

I come into the "dog park" and unfortunately, I dont respond well to people trying to hump me. It's actually part of my own dysfunction. I have to learn to turn on my belly and submit when it's appropriate, so I can play the game to win. So he and I clash.....

PECKING ORDER -- he and I fall into a pecking order. He becomes my older brother and my mom, who both pecked at me, took out their own powerlessness on me. I become his younger brother, or anyone else he deemed as "un teachable, underneath him, not as good, imperfect, etc" and uses me to relieve his anxiety over not feeling powerful.

On a PRIMAL level, TWO ways to look at this: ONE: Because of my up bringing, my perception is this: He's trying to psychologically f*ck me, and I'm trying to say no. He persists, night after night, trying to get me to submit, trying to date rape me in a sense.....he uses psychological tactics to try and get me to bend over......I resist, this continues to upset him. He's a very small man, and I have a NEW RESPECT AND UNDERSTANDING on what it's like to be a woman, and have guys trying to bang you all the time, force you, guilt you....it's awful, and uncomfortable, and plain horrible.

THE OTHER PRIMAL WAY TO LOOK AT IT: This is the psychologically healthy way to see it. He is a little dog trying to hump my leg. I shouldn't judge him because he's insecure. Someone made him that way. For my own health, I have to redirect him, give him a pet, and send him off, and keep doing what I gotta do. HE IS DYSFUNCTIONAL.....and I am too if I visualize the situation as I described above. If I allow myself to be the codependant.

So....now that I got all that out, it's time for more coffee...... it all comes down to being able to understand and control our animal nature...

Or you're simply both stubborn and unmovable and all you do is push each other waiting for the other to fall over which won't happen easily. If he is your manager I think you should "let him pass" so to speak but still assert yourself so that he can't walk all over you. Do as he says, but within reason.

It sounds like you just stepped on each other's toes and now the rest of your relationship is going to be hard. To him, you're one of those people that he is annoyed by and when ANYONE is annoyed by someone everything that someone does is annoying. If you're doing your job within reason and he's still on your ass you can always go up the chain of command and talk to whomever manages him.

I'm seriously insane...... lol

I'm a woman and had a female supervisor who was very very similar. She was like this with all the women she supervised but never with the men. I successfully dealt with the situation like this: do your work and give him the opportunity to look like a good supervisor who has supervised an employee into doing good work. In private, stand your ground at the right moments...don't pick fights but have clear boundaries which you will not permit to be crossed. My supervisor tried to tell me during an annual review that I wasn't working 8 hour days. That was the first time I put my foot down on her because if she was going to make that accusation she was saying I was falsifying time cards. She didn't say outright that I was falsifying anything, but that was the implication if I let her make her accusation. I was very forceful in saying that what she was saying was not true and that I did my work and that she had never had any complaints about that. I think I scared her, honestly. Ironically, I was salaried so no matter how many hours I worked I got paid the same. I was the only woman on her team NOT to complain about her to her boss. When the time came that her boss was asked to select someone from her team for a different project, he picked me, and I sincerely believe it was because I had never complained to him. I got moved to another team, out from under her thumb, and it really chapped her hide.

He's certainly being a douche, but I wouldn't compare it to rape.

What I would do in your situation is ignore him. By that I don't mean ignore him internally, because you probably can't because he makes you mad. Ignore him externally and act like you are ignoring him internally. Give him the shortest answers that you can and with the least amount possible of concern in your voice. If he is your boss, you do have to be somewhat submissive as in do what he tells you to do, but you don't have to have a submissive attitude.

He will get worse at first because people like that hate to be disregarded, but over time he will eventually give up. He's on a power trip. Giving in feeds it.

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I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
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My wife and I are opposites. She has a fiery personality which (we have no proof) seems to be Italian in her. I'm a calm, logical, hard-to-provoke person. We've just learned that I let her vent, she calms down and apoligizes. Her sister (full blooded) is crazy and needs medicated is more explosive because she hasn't learned to be calmer herself. They fight like cats and dogs and the sister's kids just leave because they know the sister will be mad for a couple days then get over it. My wife takes ten minutes, I let her just keep talking and shut up, and then she calms down and is fine and goes back to Farmville or whatever. If me and my wife fight, I can tell when she is boiling mad or calmly mad (her exterior). If she is boiling, I shut up until she can calm down because half the time she forgets she needs a tad more patience with me.

Why I told you all this is because it gives an analogy of some things you can do. Don't let the boss walk over you (I've had to learn to stand up to my wife) but if he is huffy about nothing, let him vent, leave and calm down. Treat him with a firm respect.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the responses, I like the Italian wife analogy:) It's interesting to learn to deal with people like this, and to understand how people like me can avoid bad situations, make things worse, etc. But yeah, he, and his boss, who is the same, they get pissed, then they get over it, and at the end of the day, they don't really do anything to enforce their standards....

In terms of rape, I'm not saying what my supervisor does is a form of rape, but maybe rape is an extreme form of power grabbing, domination. It's all about patterns and templates and seeing similarities in things.

Perhaps the boss just want to be assured he's in control of his local herd.

Other than that, just do your job and be just like a terminator in any conversation.

why would you even use the term "rape"? already i can tell that you're overreacting....

why would you even use the term "rape"? already i can tell that you're overreacting....

I'm kind of confused. Do you mean this guy is trying to rape you, as in rape rape? Or is he just being mean/annoying to you? (In which case it's kind of insensitive to describe his behavior as rape). Either way, reporting him to someone higher up might be a good idea-make a note of the mean things he says to you so you have something solid to point to. As a supervisor, he definitely should not be calling you names.