8 ways to spot: Secret animosity

  1. When someone never meets to look you in the eye.

There are multiple reasons as to why someone may struggle to meet your eyes. Nerves, anxieties, the list goes on, but as one smart person said, the eyes are a window to the soul. I notice that when someone constantly refuses to meet your gaze on top of not addressing you properly in a group setting, it is a subtle but strong sign of animosity. Especially if they purposefully single you out by ignoring you. An example is saying goodbye to everyone else in the group but you when it's time to part ways.

2. Jumping at an opportunity to belittle you

A good way to test this with someone is to accidentally make a mistake.

Pronounce something wrong, forget the rules of a card game. If someone responds by being smarmy, condescending and belittling. It’s their way of trying to embarrass you; they are practically bursting with joy that they were given the ‘opportunity’ to make themselves feel bigger than you because they cannot do it authentically.

3. Attention seeking

   
   

If you are getting attention, they start complaining or start partaking in immature tactics to bring the limelight away from you. One of my favourites is when they minimise your achievements in front of others. Or the quiet, pained smile and look behind their eyes, where you realise they are not truly happy for you.

And we cannot forget the dreaded words, with the bitter smirk

"Good for you"

4. Contrarian

When someone is purposefully going out of their way to disagree with you. When they are venting about a situation, you empathise with them and say

“Oh, I am sorry you went through that”

“Man, that's what they did that to you”

And then they immediately backtrack and say OH ITS NOT THAT BAD.

It’s exhausting. I know it’s a defensive mechanism, but it becomes rather annoying, and it starts to become apparent that that person is set on disagreeing with you.

You can never say the right thing because they don’t want you to be right. They want to hear your voice but don’t want to outwardly value your opinion. Another point that comes under the umbrella of this is taking everything you say as an insult, being overly defensive. Attempting to make you be guilt-tripped, leaving you stumbling over your words.

This video perfectly represents the point.

5. Little to no acknowledgement

They acknowledge and publicly compliment other people in the group or setting, who they believe are on the same level as them and therefore don’t see as competition or feel inferior towards. However, with you, they ignore your achievements or only congratulate you in private. I have had an experience where I shared a snippet of my book in my Snapchat story (several years ago). Someone told me (in person) that they loved the snippet I shared and then, in a smug tone, said, “I wasn’t going to tell you, because I just wasn’t going to" (referring to messaging me about my work). The look on their face was just as smug. This happened in a group setting, and the room went quiet, and everyone froze. Unfortunately, this is a perfect yet biting example. I think it is pretty low to go out of your way to withhold complimenting someone, not out of fear or nerves, but out of bitterness.

It can be awkward to compliment someone, but actively hiding that positivity away from someone due to your own jealousy is quite sad. As human beings (especially those in the creative industry), we often don't know the positive impact our presence or our work has on others. In a world that is in an empathy deficit, giving credit where credit is due is the least we can do.

6. Stealing your experiences and labelling them as their own.

This one is a little harder to explain and describe. But I think about the Victoria Justice meme where Victoria says, “I think we can ALL SING”. I don’t have strong feelings about that meme. I just thought it was a good example to bring into this discussion. I will share this experience I had: I was catcalled, the man was quite close to us, and then after I ignored him, one of the people in the group then said: “WOW THAT'S NEVER HAPPENED TO ME BEFORE”. I thought that was weird because: why are we taking cat-calling as a compliment?

Two, it didn’t happen to you.

7. Bringing up embarrassing moments

Or times where you were vulnerable, for no good reason. The sentence will start with “Remember when you…” The best way to handle this is to just own it: “yeah, that did happen, it was sort of a while ago”, “oh yeah, I remember when I did that, that was so silly/funny” of me. Or simply just silence them and not give them the reaction they want.

8. Jokes that aren't jokes

Games turn into competition, nothing is said in Jest anymore, and compliments are laced with hidden malice. This is usually a clear sign of the beginning of the end, where tension starts to bubble and boil. And not in the fun, romantic way.

Those are the top 8 signs that are common and also hidden when it comes to spotting secret animosity. Make sure you subscribe to get notified instantly on the next post!