How do you deal with passive aggressive people? Give in? Avoid them? Confront them?
Here's my situation (and I'm trying to keep it as brief as possible, and not mention multiple incidents):
We've known this couple "Mary" and "John" for 30 years. John, my husband and I worked together and we've stayed friendly over the years, maybe seeing each other socially once a year or so.
Mary is a huge control freak. Plans must be her idea, and the event has to unfold the way she wants it. Not just with us, with her family too. But she's pretty sneaky about it, and often pulls the martyr/victim card in order to get her way. I've put up with this over the years so that my husband can hang out with John. Its not very often, so I suck it up.
In September, Mary asked me if I'd be interested in a discounted coupon to a local comedy club. I said sure, let me know when, but have not heard from her since then.
This coming weekend is a jazz concert at a local place. I know they like jazz, so yesterday I asked if they'd like to go and said I'd be buying tickets today. This evening I receive an email from Mary, never mentioning the invite, and asking if I want to go to the comedy club on Saturday, because "this is the last weekend my coupon is valid". I responded with, sorry I already bought the tickets to the concert. So she says, how about next weekend? Hmmm, I guess this really wasn't the last valid weekend, she just pulled that to get me to agree to what she wanted to do.
I think I surprised her by not playing along this time.
Do you have people like this in your life and how do you deal with them?