I was recently asked if relational aggression could be found in marriage.

Yes. Relational aggression can be found in marriage, in politics, in churches, in businesses and higher education. Relational aggression can exist in any social interaction.

Relational aggression is not age or gender. It’s covert abuse and manipulation. When did we ever get the idea that it belonged to little girls? Wherever there are two or more people, the potential for such dynamics exist.

I don’t understand why we look at relational aggression with such microscopic vision, placing certain dynamics of children between glass slides, and peering at them through magnified lenses, when what we study, with such fascination, is unfolding all around us.

When a man manipulates the legal system and the authorities within it, when he uses his children as leverage to punish or coerce his ex-wife into a settlement favoring him, when he makes her look like the unstable one or the one out to get him, when he’s actually the one pulling all the strings, that’s relational aggression.

When a narcissistic parent starts laying the foundation to discredit his children or his spouse to negate the objections he knows they will eventually publicly make in response to his abusive behavior, that’s relational aggression.

Relational aggression is covert abuse, that manipulates other people’s perceptions and emotional responses to the benefit of the abuser and detriment of the target. That’s it. It isn’t just about one girl telling another girl she won’t play with her anymore if the other girl doesn’t do what she wants her to. It isn’t just one girl gossiping about another or being mean.

Relational aggression isn’t owned by middle school girls. Maybe it’s a kind of a “fish can’t see the water they live in” thing, but covert aggression is part of human nature – just like empathy and compassion and integrity.

It’s a choice, on both a personal and societal level. But it’s a choice we can’t change, until we tell ourselves the truth about it.

I have been gone these long months, taking care of a dear, dear friend, Kenny, – my first ex-husband, as a matter of fact, with whom I had become very close to in the last few years of his life. This past June, he passed away at home. He had asked me to move in a few months prior to help take care of him, and as I was already doing that, but driving back and forth from my house to his, I agreed.

Things are still tender for me. Since my sister passed away from cancer five years ago, Kenny was the closest thing to family of origin that I could share “remember when’s”, and now he’s gone. I miss him very much.

But I see there’s still fairly high traffic coming to this blog, even though I haven’t posted anything since February, and so I feel the need to pick up where I had left off with my projects. I have been intermittantly working on my book. It has evolved over time with more and more emphasis on healing, and looking at relational aggression within the larger context of covert abuse – not just the girls being mean to girls thing.

So, I’m planning to make some changes here – need to update the blog software and probably template. Since I’m a bit rusty, it will take me a while, but I wanted to make this post to let you know I’m still around and haven’t given this project up.

Hoping life is being kind, generous and gentle to you all.

Demian Yumei
Keeping the Dream

At home school co-op a few days ago, one of the mothers talked about her friend who knew of a child, going through bullying in first grade. She said this child suffered alienation and was treated meanly by the other kids. The alienation was orchestrated by one child, whose lead the other children in the group followed. All this was done behind the teacher’s back.

What grabbed my attention was that the target, the aggressor and the group of collaborators were boys.

My friend said that the target realized there was another boy in the class who ranked even lower than him, so he started to treat that child in the same manner he had been treated to get the other kids off his back, and perhaps, find safety by joining his former tormentors. It worked, the ringleader’s attention shifted to the new child and the old target was let off the hook.

But he felt guilty for what he did. He knew what the new target was going through. He knew how it felt. So he confessed to his mother what he had done.

I don’t know how it was handled. I asked my friend to find out, but the mother was not willing to discuss it with others.

This is classic relational aggression.

What has occurred to me is how, perhaps, our current stricter anti-bullying policies might, in some way, contribute to the rise of covert bullying among boys.

If boys were traditionally more upfront in their aggression with one another, could the prohibition of any type of overt aggression, which can be construed as bullying, place boys now in the same situation as girls?

Needing to use covert means to express power they no longer can overtly?

Will the efforts to stop physical bullying, give rise to more clandestine bullying among those who formerly would have been the more give-you-a-black-eye kind of bully? Certainly covert bullying is addressed in your more thorough anti-bullying program. But it’s harder to see, and if you’re not looking for it in boys, because it’s “girl bullying”, then what protection can we offer our sons?

And perhaps, more meaningfully, how can we address bullying other than just prohibiting behavior?

Because what a person needs to express will find a way to come out. I don’t think we can have an effective anti-bullying policy, without including emphasis on mindfulness, empathy, compassion and a viable forum or venue for freedom of expression with accountability.

And I don’t think it’s just a matter of how children relate to children, but how adults relate to children and to each other. And I don’t think it’s just about the world of children, but the actual environment we place our children for the majority of the day, which strips them off all power and any sense of self-determination.

Bullying exists outside of these conditions, and in other places. I know. I’ve seen it in home school co-ops, and there’s generally more freedom there. Sometimes too much. But institutionalized voicelessness guarantees covert aggression.

The bottom line is we need to be careful, in our efforts to squelch the more obvious signs of bullying, we don’t have the unintended consequences of just driving it underground through more covert means.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Year of the Ox.

The ox stands for persistence and tenacity. I hope for you this year the strength and perseverance to be true to your ideals and principles, and your own healing path.

Where there is duplicity and manipulation, may there be clarity and empowerment.
Where there is usury and slander, may there be liberation and truth.

Sometimes relational aggression can feel absolutely overbearing and overwhelming, but be persistent in your walk and tenacious in your stand for authenticity and accountability.

You will succeed.

So many of us feel guilty about setting boundaries, as if somehow it’s just not a nice thing to do.

We feel guilty, because most people are basically caring people. When people try to intrude into our space, we can sense on some level their desperation. We know they are feeling pain, and it’s hard for us to ignore.

Some of us (particularly females) are hardwired to be nurturing to others, to take upon ourselves the responsibility to provide comfort to others, to make everything all right.

We need to remind ourselves that nurturing others is not the same as letting them suck the life out of us or use us as a doormat for their needs. We need to remember that there is a difference between defining our boundaries and alienating someone out of relational aggression.

Defining our own space does not make us bullies…no matter how hard someone, trying to bully us into believing it, insists it is.