Tricking you into being nasty

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Has anyone noticed that occasionally people will try to trick you into saying nasty things to them? They will say something outrageous or very nasty to you, and they hope that you will reply in a very nasty manner.

Why do they do this? Because they have reasons of their own (unrelated to you) for why they do not want to continue their relationship or friendship with you, but the trouble is, they feel guilty about breaking it off because you have not done anything to deserve it.

In order to assuage their guilt, they want you to be nasty to them. Obviously it is guilt-free and MUCH easier to break off a relationship or friendship if the person is being nasty. So it is all about making themselves feel better about their decision to end it. Logically, it does not make any sense because they provoked the nastiness themselves, but they twist it in their mind and manage to end up seeing it the way they wanted to. They forget that they provoked the nastiness, and see it as you being a nasty person who they were justified in terminating.

The first time this happened to me, a number of years ago, I totally fell for it. Out of the blue, I started being subjected to totally unfair nasty comments. Silly naive gullible me, I responded in kind. i.e. I responded to the nastiness with nastiness, which was EXACTLY what the person WANTED me to do! Thus giving them a reason (in their mind) to terminate the relationship.

However I learned to recognize this behavior. Since that first time, it has happened twice more with other people. These second and third times I was determined not to be duped. So I simply replied to the nasty messages with politeness. I was firm in my response, but careful to be polite. It is really difficult to reply with politeness when someone is being nasty to you and treating you totally unfairly. I felt a huge temptation to reply with nastiness, but I just kept reminding myself: If I did that, I would only be doing exactly what the other person wanted. I would be falling into the trap like a gullible fool again.

So I stuck to my politeness, and after a while the person realized that provoking me into saying nasty things simply was not going to happen, and stopped trying. The person still ended the friendship, but did not succeed in using me to escape feelings of guilt. Regardless of whether I replied with nastiness or politeness, I was not going to have the friendship anymore (the person was determined to end it), but I did have the self-satisfaction of knowing that this time I was smart and was not tricked into assuaging the persons guilt.

When it happened with the third person, again recognizing the trick I stuck to my politeness, and the person stopped being nasty after a while. Again that relationship still ended, but it ended on friendly enough terms.

So next time someone says something totally unfair and nasty to you, before you reply, pause for a moment and analyze the situation: Is the person trying to trick me into being nasty? If so, steadfastly replying with politeness with thwart their horrible little plan.

Last edited by emp on 16 Apr 2006, 1:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I get exactally the same thing with many freinds and recently my foster mum. Although i noticed it a while ago i somtime feel guilty that i have to end the freindship / do not want to end the freindship because i am so desperate for somebody / anybody. In recent time (at my last school) i had the group i hung around with activly telling me they hated me and wanted me to go away but i just took it on the chin ad kept with them. Then i made freinds with people who were closer to my age and all of a sudden thing made alot more sense.

To this day i do not understand my peer group, i have more of an understanding of my peer group -1 (i am a year behind) but all my best freind resign in peer group -2. the year below me.

I hope this make sense.

jammie

I've had in the past so called friends of mine to do nasty things but I always regreted afterwords.

All very well and good.
Until you realize that 'politeness' and 'nastiness' - well nastiness = you ****/physicial violence
politeness = none of you ****/physical violence.
Other people seem to have a wider view of this than me - the, for me, dreaded word 'attuide'.
That is my humble opinion, anyone else have anything to say on this matter?

What is that supposed to mean? It looks like a maths formula gone wrong.

I have to watch what I say about my dad. Anything I say might be used against me if he ain't in a good mood....

I had something even worse. Manipulated into being nasty to OTHER people. I was a total as*hole. I want to apologize to so many of these people, and I don't even remember their names.

What is that supposed to mean? It looks like a maths formula gone wrong.

That other people pick up on things like 'tone' or 'atuide'.

To add to what I've said above I also have that happened to me a whole lot. Either they would pressure me to lose control of my temper since back in school and even today I still have a hot temper. Back in school they just knew what buttons to press to make me lose my cool. Those people are quite wrong when they make me lose it.

I tried to be friends with a guy like that once. We shared the same interests and he lived nearby. He was so angry all the time I couldn't get near him though. I'm glad you got through it.

I've had this happen to me twice. I've had many more friends who were better to me, who understand and accept my nature and care about me. But I soon recognized that the two that engaged in this sort of behavior were neither the best of friends nor were they very mature.

What I do have to add is that in both instances, whether I recognized what they were doing or not, it simply wasn't in my nature to retalliate. I didn't want to hurt anyone, and I would have felt much better if they would have come to me strait up and told me they wanted to end it.

Unfortunately, unlike your examples, when I didn't respond in kind it seemed to infuriate both of those people in question. The first one later (about a year or so) reappeared to apologize. The other one is my aforementioned stalker. We don't talk anymore, but she still looms in the distance occasionally driving by where I live. Once, one of my friends saw her standing outside his apartment while I was there. It used to frighten me terribly, but I had to put it out of my mind otherwise it would paralyze me too much to live my life.

I try not to think of her harshly. To be honest, a large portion of me actually feels sorry for her, because I know that she was broken long before she ever crossed paths with me.