Assertiveness/Aggression

I was eating my breakfast this morning when I realised that a neighbour was spray-painting his car and the fumes were floating into my house. I went straight down and asked him if he had a permit, how long he was going to do it for, told him it was coming into my house and that the council didn't allow spray-painting in residential areas. He said it was just a one-off job and would be done soon, so I conceded to let him finish, before I called the council to make a complaint.

It seems I need more practice in asserting myself, because this same problem occurred to us about 6 months ago, back on the Gold Coast. However, instead of doing what I did this morning and confronting the guy straight away, I felt intimidated by him and didn't say anything until it got so bad, that I felt the only thing I could do was call the council and complain. That turned out to be the worst thing ever, because when he put two and two together and realised that it was me who had complained, he started being a real asshole, doing stuff like dumping piles of cigarette butts on our front door step and threatening to be a 'real bad neighbour'.

So maybe I have learnt some skills, now, seeing that I went down straight away and let the guy know that he was adversely affecting our health and well-being.

Learning to assert myself, when I have been raised as a 'good girl' is a tough lesson to learn, because to assert oneself means speaking out against the current situation, or the accepted mode of behaviour or the pervading standard and that's just not what well-behaved children do.

I have had to learn this over and over, it feels. Brian often says I come across to certain people as pushy and agressive. This may be true, but I think it's because I haven't learnt to be assertive in a quietly confident way. I have had to teach it to myself out of necessity, when I felt that my personal well-being or that of my children was at risk or that my values were being compromised.

Here's another example: It seems that to learn the lesson of being assertive, we have attracted landlords-from-hell into our lives, including the one we are currently living under.

In the past, we never complained or asked for things to be improved or fixed, unless it got really bad. We allowed ourselves to put up with all kinds of crappy situations, like ceilings completely covered with mould in a place with no ventilation. We put up with it and put up with it until the end, when the owner made unfair financial demands, which believe me, comes hand in hand with people who have disregard for other's well-being and we finally got the uurge to stand up for oursleves and go to court to show how unfair the situation was. We have been to court twice now and had very successful outcomes both times. In a way, the court experiences were liberating, because we felt that we really did have a voice against the aggressive landlords. It's not really rewarding, however, when the voice has to come through some other voice of authority.

The really rewarding kind of assertiveness is when the voice of authority comes through one's own mouth.

Now I can hear that the neighbour has stopped his spray-painting and I'm feeling confident that he won't do it anymore, because he realises that he's interfering with our well-being and that I won't take it quietly.