I thiiiink we’ve covered most of the basic concepts we’re going to need in order to take the Asshole Mitigation Plan into a larger context, except one: setting boundaries. It’s a big topic and my brain can’t hold the whole thing all at once, so I’m going to try breaking it down into smaller chunks.
Please note, I suck at setting boundaries.
There’s something wrong with me; admittedly, it’s a pretty common problem, so common it may not even seem like a problem.
I’m a helper.
I know that sounds like a good thing. But wait for it.
I was raised in a family unit where my parents didn’t provide unconditional support. Their support depended on catering to one parent’s narcissism. My family unit revolved around managing that narcissism, except where it also revolved around managing two different grandparents (on opposite sides of the family) who were as bad if not worse, in different ways.
Everyone in my family, both immediate and extended, was trained to follow a hierarchy. Even the assholes. Everyone lower on the hierarchy was supposed to make sacrifices to keep the ranking assholes from self-destructing and taking everyone else with them.
We were co-dependent, that is, my immediate and extended family units depended on keeping an unjust peace.
In order to keep the peace in an asshole family unit, something specific has to happen: people have to perform roles that center the asshole as the (perhaps long-suffering) hero of the story.
At least one person must become the embodiment of all the traits the asshole doesn’t like in themselves. They are the “villain” to the asshole’s self-perceived “hero” or “main character” role.
Also, at least one person must become the embodiment of all the traits the asshole wants to claim for themselves. This person usually becomes the “sidekick” or “helpless/hapless partner” that the asshole both leans on for support and derides as being somewhat infantile and stupid, someone who can’t live without the asshole’s support. (That is, the asshole finds ways to reverse the roles of who is helping and who is being helped.)
Sometimes it’s the same person, sometimes not. Sometimes which role you’re supposed to be playing shifts in a moment or two.
Over the long term, being forced to play a role isn’t a good idea, for several reasons.
One, it warps and drains people. I saw a number of people in abusive relationships lose their personalities. I swore it would never happen to me and that I would never let myself be abused; ironically, realizing how much of my personality had been destroyed was part of how I recognized that I had been abused in the first place.
Two, it means that assholes only ever have to see themselves as the hero of the story. This is like placating a spoiled child. It is placating a spoiled child. One who will never have the chance to grow up.
Three, people who are playing roles, even when that role is as the hero of the story, are never really known.
Assholes are the first victims of their abuse, always.—This doesn’t mean you should pity them or give them a free pass for all the shit they do. But do know that assholes live in a hell of their own devising, like a character in a Twilight Zone episode.
Assholes can’t tolerate being known or loved as they really are, because it means being vulnerable and exposing their flaws. In a sense, assholes hate and resent the people who love them, and that emotion comes out whenever anyone gives a hint that they see the real person under the fiction.
As a result, everyone around them has to walk on eggshells, showing neither real criticism of the asshole nor any sign of real understanding of who they really are.
It’s crazy-making stuff.
People like me who grew up in an asshole family system and who got sucked into an asshole relationship as an adult may never have known what it feels like to be known. We may not know what’s missing from our relationships or our own senses of self.
What we know is how to be self-reliant, quiet, cooperative, and useful in order to survive our early family systems. We have been forced to become silent helpers and we may think “helping” is our entire fucking personality now.
I am talented and strong and independent and I just want to help.
People who don’t come from abusive systems can find this kind of helpfulness offputting. Normal people want to know you as a person, not have you handle all their problems for them. They don’t want solutions from you; they want connection.
But for those of us who are helpers, we have been trained to see helpfulness as the only positive personality trait we possess; we consider our real personality traits to be flaws.
We don’t know how to be ourselves. We know how to play roles that make an asshole feel like the hero of the story.
So when someone tries to get to know our personality traits and not our levels of helpfulness, it can feel like being attacked or criticized: exposing our true, authentic selves feels like we’ve failed to be helpful and therefore are simply awful people. Malfunctioning robots, really.
—It’s not true, mind you. But it’s how we feel.
On the other hand, being around assholes feels like finally being understood, because they accept “help” that no normal person would tolerate. We feel useful when we take over other people’s responsibilities and give unwanted gifts and deliver the most unasked-for advice imaginable, and more.
There are ways to heal from this, but as far as I can tell, they’re all labor-intensive and feel terrible, like you’re daily becoming your own worst self until finally you just decide a certain level of moral rot is acceptable.—The person I used to be would be shocked at how selfish I am now, and how unwilling I am to throw myself under a bus so I can “help.” And there are some days when I am that person again, and I hate who I’ve become.
Mostly I’m okay learning how to be a person. But it’s a process.
You can find the Asshole Mitigation Plan series outline here.
