Hi guys,
I recently have come to the realization that one of my cousins enjoys seeing me feel dis-empowered and weak. It took me a while to come to this realization, because starting 3-4 years ago I was in a very vulnerable state, dealing with health issues coupled with unemployment and severe financial instability. However, over the past 2 years or so I've got myself a job and have slowly pulled myself out of debt and have started to get my life back together. People are starting to treat me with respect in my personal and professional life, and momentum in the right direction seems to be picking up.
However, I realize that one of my cousins seems to continue to want to treat me and see me as that dis-empowered person I was 3-4 years ago. Its almost as if he gets off on seeing me weak and dis-empowered. At first, I realized that I would feel terrible about myself after interacting with my cousin, and I thought the problem was me. However, I now realize that he was constantly throwing shade on my ideas of how to improve my life when I would share them with him. He would also get on soap boxes and dictate to me how I should live my life, while very rarely weighing in considerations on my own opinions of how to run my own life.
I've recently come to the conclusion that my cousin is a weaselly little bastard, and is not deserving in the slightest of my respect. I shouldn't seek out his council because he won't do much other than inject seeds of doubt. And when he tries to throw shade on my ideas, I will just shut his ass down and chew him out, disregarding any concern for the continuity of our relationship if he is unwilling to concede that he was acting like an asshole. The thing is, I'm pretty sure that by shining the light on him, like the coward that he is, he will concede and stop acting like an asshole, but he will be waiting for the next opportunity to assert himself.
Has anyone encountered a weaselly little shit like this in your life? I'm almost perplexed that someone that is so close to me would act in such a fucked up way. Do you guys have any tips on dealing with characters like this? Can you guys make any sense as to why a person would act like this? I suspect its because he feels that his own social status is boosted by suppressing the social status of another person. Its probably been effective for him, because in doing so my family sees him as higher social status than me, whereas before the illness they saw me as higher social status. He probably also get a personal ego boost when asserting his own superiority over me. It seems really fragile, weak, and borderline incomprehensible to me, but I believe this is the nature of my cousin's personality.
BTW, this person is pretty close to my family, almost like a brother would be, so it would be difficult to completely avoid him, but possible to significantly limit interactions with him.
I recently have come to the realization that one of my cousins enjoys seeing me feel dis-empowered and weak. It took me a while to come to this realization, because starting 3-4 years ago I was in a very vulnerable state, dealing with health issues coupled with unemployment and severe financial instability. However, over the past 2 years or so I've got myself a job and have slowly pulled myself out of debt and have started to get my life back together. People are starting to treat me with respect in my personal and professional life, and momentum in the right direction seems to be picking up.
However, I realize that one of my cousins seems to continue to want to treat me and see me as that dis-empowered person I was 3-4 years ago. Its almost as if he gets off on seeing me weak and dis-empowered. At first, I realized that I would feel terrible about myself after interacting with my cousin, and I thought the problem was me. However, I now realize that he was constantly throwing shade on my ideas of how to improve my life when I would share them with him. He would also get on soap boxes and dictate to me how I should live my life, while very rarely weighing in considerations on my own opinions of how to run my own life.
I've recently come to the conclusion that my cousin is a weaselly little bastard, and is not deserving in the slightest of my respect. I shouldn't seek out his council because he won't do much other than inject seeds of doubt. And when he tries to throw shade on my ideas, I will just shut his ass down and chew him out, disregarding any concern for the continuity of our relationship if he is unwilling to concede that he was acting like an asshole. The thing is, I'm pretty sure that by shining the light on him, like the coward that he is, he will concede and stop acting like an asshole, but he will be waiting for the next opportunity to assert himself.
Has anyone encountered a weaselly little shit like this in your life? I'm almost perplexed that someone that is so close to me would act in such a fucked up way. Do you guys have any tips on dealing with characters like this? Can you guys make any sense as to why a person would act like this? I suspect its because he feels that his own social status is boosted by suppressing the social status of another person. Its probably been effective for him, because in doing so my family sees him as higher social status than me, whereas before the illness they saw me as higher social status. He probably also get a personal ego boost when asserting his own superiority over me. It seems really fragile, weak, and borderline incomprehensible to me, but I believe this is the nature of my cousin's personality.
BTW, this person is pretty close to my family, almost like a brother would be, so it would be difficult to completely avoid him, but possible to significantly limit interactions with him.