You can tell a great deal about a person by how they respond to disappointment. We’ll all experience situations in which we don’t get our own way, but whereas decent people will express dismay and then carry on, toxic people will be… significantly more unhinged.
Their responses can range from unexpected transformation into someone you don’t even recognize, to revenge for daring to interfere with their plans. Below are seven of the primary ways that toxic people will respond when things don’t go their way.
1. Their “friendly” mask drops.
One of the creepiest things to experience firsthand is when someone transforms from Jekyll to Hyde almost instantly. It’s like they’ve become a completely different person right before your eyes, simply because you said “no” to something that they want. Their sweet or charming facade drops instantly, and they go from asking playfully (or trying to reason you into acquiescence) to anger, vitriol, and insulting behavior.
Suddenly, you’re the most horrible person they’ve ever met, and they hope you perish screaming. Yikes. If you’re dealing with a narcissist in the throes of collapse, they might lash out in many different ways now that their mask has dropped and they can’t maintain their carefully crafted illusion anymore. So be forewarned: if they change dramatically in front of you, get somewhere safe and stay there for a while.
2. They’ll try a different approach.
Whether you have kids of your own or you’ve taken care of them in the past, you’ve likely noticed that if they don’t get what they want from one parent or caregiver, they’ll go to another one to try and get their way. Their mother said “no” to ice cream before dinner? Well, then they’ll ask Dad or Granny instead. If they all say “no” straight out, then different negotiation tactics might be used.
For example, they might mention that the cold ice cream will be more soothing to their raw, allergy-irritated throat than dinner would be, or that science shows that ice cream is just as nutritious as broccoli, albeit in different ways. Toxic people will use similar methods and will try to see which oblique approach will be successful in getting them what they want. They’ll negotiate, coerce, use various guilt-tripping techniques, and might even use threats if they still don’t get their wants met.
3. They seek revenge.
When a toxic person doesn’t get their own way, they’ll often seek to punish the person who prevented them from attaining their wants. Their revenge may take different forms depending on the scenario (and what they have available), but they’re essentially seeking to cause pain or hardship for the crime of not indulging their whims.
Years ago, when I was living and working in a remote mountain location, one of the people I worked with insisted that all of us stay up late with them night after night to drink or party, even though we all had to be up early every morning. We indulged them as often as possible, but when we said “no” and went to bed, this person would punish us by making themselves unavailable to go into town for food supplies. We didn’t have our own vehicle and were therefore dependent upon them for supply runs, so their revenge for us not doing what they wanted was to deny us access to the basic, everyday essentials we needed.
4. They try seduction.
Some people have found that they can use their bodies to great social effect in interpersonal relations. This is nothing new, as we can see from this curiously specific advice from the ancient Greek poet Hesiod.
Seduction isn’t limited to any gender, of course. Anyone can attempt to use their winsome wiles in order to get what they want. If a toxic person can’t get their way through other means, then they’ll try to entice the other person by any means necessary. For example, if physical seduction is off the cards, they may offer something else the person wants, such as money, power, high-status items, and so on — whatever the person in question covets.
5. They play the victim.
This is one of the most common ways that toxic people behave when they don’t get their own way: they try to guilt-trip and manipulate those around them into letting them have what they want by playing up their victimhood and pretending to be as vulnerable and pathetic as possible. Some go so far as to threaten to hurt themselves or pretend that they’re terribly ill in an attempt to force others to do what they want.
I’ve seen this kind of behavior in my friends’ relationships, such as when they ended things with a toxic partner and said partner threatened to harm themselves, or implied that if anything bad happened to them, it would be their now-ex’s fault.
Another approach others might use is to draw upon their past hardships and go on about how horrible and unlovable they must be, in an attempt to coerce the other person into both sticking around and making them feel better.
6. They engage in character assassination.
For some people, the way they’ll get back at someone for not giving in to their demands is to run a smear campaign against them. Depending on the severity of the perceived slight (and how vindictive the toxic person is), this can range from merely spreading gossip about them to going out of their way to ruin that person’s life.
For example, a person might contact someone’s employer anonymously with a “tip” that this person is stealing from the company or having an affair with the employer’s spouse. A student might make a false accusation against a teacher, or someone might spread false rumors around their peer group to ostracize the one they felt had wronged them. Even if all the allegations are proven false, enough damage has been done for them to feel that their perception of “justice” has been served: the one who didn’t give them what they want has been suitably punished for disappointing them.
7. They resort to aggression.
Aggression from a toxic person can take different forms, depending on what they’re like, how large they are physically, and so on. For example, a physically small person might get aggressive with their words, or by breaking things that belong to the one who slighted them, while a more physically powerful person may get physically aggressive.
They might intentionally overstep boundaries that make you uncomfortable so they can laugh at your distress, or “play fight” with you in such a way that you end up getting hurt, and they can brush it off as you being dramatic. Ultimately, their goal is to hurt the person who prevented them from achieving their wants, by whichever means are available to them.
Final thoughts…
Most of us have put up with toxic people far longer than we should have, either due to a sense of obligation or compassion. Those of us who try to see the best in people often overlook their glaring red flags in favor of the shining potential we see shimmering just below the surface, and give in to those whom we know are struggling with personal demons.
While this may seem compassionate and kind, it’s actually detrimental all around: it shows toxic people that their harmful responses work, and leaves us feeling drained and used in turn.
