There are people who say that we have bullies and we have victims. The implication of this attitude is that a bully is someone cruel and a victim is someone to be pitied.

While this attitude is accurate to a degree, there is point where the distinction ends. Yes, when a bully aggresses against someone, they are acting with malice for the intent of victimizing another person [note: sweeping generalization]. And an innocent person who has been victimized can feel wounded.

Certainly the coercion of another person, against their will, is NOT acceptable! And we recognize bully behavior in a wide variety of crimes against humanity (theft, assault, rape, etc…) When we are the “victims” of such abuse, we often feel frustrated by the lack of justice, redress and retribution.

But we are not a “VICTIM” until we succumb to the depression that threatens when the abuses done to us have not been punished, and accept their worldview as our own. When we respond to abusive behavior by giving up and accepting the standard of the abuser, we lose our innocence. And we become passive-bullies… better known as “a victim”.

I would like to posit a different paradigm. I maintain that the “bully” and the “victim” are two faces of the same coin… abuser. I say that an abuser is someone who forces another person to give them what they (the abuser) want, against another person’s will.

So far, so good, right? We think of the schoolyard bullies who took our ball away and who pushed into the dirt, taunting us to do something about it. They were generally people who got their growth early, and for whatever reason, they saw an opportunity to feel like a “big dog” by forcing other people to act against their own will and best interests.

It doesn’t matter what they lived with while growing up. Common sense, the world structure, and God all tell us that this kind of behavior is not what we were created to do. Moving on…

As we grow up, experiencing the good and the bad that life allows, we make choices. We choose to “get over it” when someone is cruel, or we choose to “get even”. [Please note that I DO understand the damage that child abuse does to a growing psyche. But even as children we understand right from wrong and we begin, very young, to make the choices that drive our further emotional development.]

Certainly we have heard of the term passive-aggressive, so we are beginning to recognize the negative traits that can exist in the “quiet” person. Most of us have suffered through the abuse of the person who said “yes” when they never once intended to actually DO what they had agreed to do. The passive/aggressive personality doesn’t fight… they just hold back, refusing to engage and refusing to bring clarity to those natural misunderstandings that happen in relationships. [NOTE: this is NOT to say that all quiet people are passive/aggressive!]

Rather than use the terms “bully” and “victim”, I want to propose these categorizations:
passive-bully and aggressive-bully.

I maintain that a “victim” who refuses to get past the abuse is a passive-bully. They are the people who finagle and wheedle and plead and look at us with those “doe eyes” and manage to get whatever they want, against the wishes of the other person.

The passive-bully feels that life “owes” them something and they are going to get all that they can, whenever they can. They manage to make us feel petty and selfish when we have to say “no” to their “demands”.

The passive-bully is quietly angry and bitter. No matter what we give them, they are never satisfied, they are never filled. And because the paucity of their lives and souls is so often between them and the rage they have against God because He didn’t keep them from being abused, WE can never hope to “fix” it.

Of course the answer is forgiveness… first of God and then forgiveness of everyone else they feel has wronged them in their life. But this solution is hard-won.

I know this to be true because I know how hard it was for me. While I was never a passive-bully, I did live with bitterness for many years, from early childhood until my early 30s. God did do a miracle when He delivered me from that dark, airless prison of burning bitterness.

There is truly very little that we can do to help the passive-bully. What we can do is to set reasonable boundaries in our own lives. When the passive-bully in our family or close friend group tries to push past those boundaries, we must remain steadfast.

We don’t have to be strident about it. We only have to say “no” and not explain. We say “no” and mean it. We say it kindly, but firmly. We cannot be swayed by sighs or cries or expressions of impending doom and how WE are going to be the cause of their ruin.

Now, obviously situations are going to vary from one relationship to another and even with the same person there may be times when it would be prudent to accede from time to time. But whatever decision WE make needs to be a decision made in the light of reason and balance and hopefully because we believe it is what God would have us to do.

IHMO…