You’re just about to
meet someone for the first time when the person making the introduction tells
you something about them that makes you feel uneasy; your gut tells you you’ve just
been given a warning.
These seemingly casual remarks – which are often delivered with a hint of awe or perhaps a little bit of affectionate eye-rolling – are red flags for me. Here's a few, along with what, in my experience, they turn out to mean:
She’s a character She’s probably loud, self-serving and attention-seeking.
He calls a spade a spade. He’s superior and insensitive.
She doesn’t suffer fools. She’s intolerant and judgemental.
He's a no-nonsense person. He lacks empathy and compassion.
She tells it how it is. She’s rude and narrow minded.
He’s a black-and-white person. He’s shallow and arrogant.
She’s a private person. She puts on a front and lives by a false narrative.
And the good old trusty:
Oh, well, that’s just So-and-so. They will not be challenged and they lack introspection.
If you read each column separately, the left side could be seen as a list of positive, down-to-earth and honest personality traits. The right side, however, is a near-perfect description of a narcissist.
But it seems that a lot of folk would rather disguise someone’s toxic behaviour as a virtue than name it for what it really is.
But why? Why do we allow them to do this? Why do we enable them and facilitate their entitlement to say and do whatever they want?
Why do we let narcissists be narcissists?
Why do we tolerate the intolerant?
Is it just easier – the ‘anything for a quiet life’ thing? To allow someone to hurt us rather than challenge them and risk creating a scene?
Or is it our human urge to seek the good in someone – there must be a ‘good’ reason for what they said or did, they couldn’t have really meant it like that?
Should we put up or should we call out?
The Will-Smith-at-the-Oscars debacle is a great example of how challenging someone can go horribly wrong. Is this why we hold back and bite our tongue – for fear of ending up the bad guy? And does the other person know this? Is this how they get away with it?
Perhaps the most crucial item in an emotional manipulator’s toolkit is plausible deniability: the ability to deny any involvement in illegal or unethical activities, because there is no clear evidence to prove involvement (politicaldictionary.com). So when you find someone to be any of the things in the right-hand column – where is your empathy and compassion? –they can come back at you – calm down, I’m just a no-nonsense type, you’re way too oversensitive! And it’s our fear of having the tables flipped on us like this that stops us from standing up to toxic people. Essentially, you’re caught between a choice of putting up, shutting up and feeling hurt or angry or calling out and defending and being made to look like the crazy one. It’s not called emotional manipulation for nothing.
It’s very difficult to know what to do, especially in the moment, and although I don’t think Will Smith did the right thing, I do understand why he did it - he saw the hurt that Chris Rock's joke caused to his wife, and the red mist came down. In this particular case, I suspect there was more to it, related to the dynamics of their relationship, which may have influenced his violent reaction.
Perhaps the only way to deal with rudeness and hurtful or unfair words is to put our faith in those around us who witnessed it, to trust that even if they don’t actually come out and say, even if they diplomatically hide their real opinions behind left-column words, deep down, they know the right from the wrong, the good from the bad. They might even have some supportive words saved up for later, when it's safer to talk. Ask yourself who would they trust to be vulnerable with, you or the person who just insulted you? And so, even though nothing is said, and the abuser goes unchallenged, and at the time, onlookers turn the bad behaviour into some kind of quality, deep down, everyone knows. If Smith hadn’t hit Rock, everyone would still have recognised the insensitive joke, and Smith could have used his acceptance speech to his advantage by slipping in a carefully worded comment that would have placed him much more favourably in the court of public opinion and preserved his dignity.
This is the dilemma we all face when we meet a ‘character’, and too many times, our amygdala strikes before we know what's going on. And this is why, when I hear a left-column description, given half a chance, I turn on my heel and run for the hills.
