Dear Cali Chica:

Using the example you gave, she bit you, you gave her “direct feedback”, in other words you let her know that you were just bitten by her, and her response was to  bite you more (“throwing it back at  me.. reminding me many times I have done exactly the same”), so she is blaming you for biting her, and telling you that she “suffered plenty .. protecting” you, meaning that in the past she protected you from being bitten by others, “and god forbid she slips once in a while” and bites you.

So she “remind you of all the good work she’s done” protecting you, and she lets you  know that “she is only human and is allowed slip ups” aka biting you “once in a while”. Then she “get more angry” and hangs up the phone.

So what she is telling you is that life is tough ( agree), that people bite (I agree),that she protected you in the past from other people’s bites (that’s admirable), and that she is only human and therefore she has to bite you once in a while and you should take it.

Let’s look at the last part: she has to bite you because she is human and you should take it and not complain to her..  because your complaining is making her suffer and she suffered enough, so don’t add to her suffering by complaining about being occasionally bitten by her.

In other words, your fair assertiveness feels to her like aggression and her message is: stop your aggression against me!

The puppy bites, you remove your bitten hand and scream at the puppy: you bit me! And the puppy is petulant, angry: you screamed at me! So what if I bit you, I am only a puppy, all puppies bite, and you are unfair to me!

Well, her solution to the problem is that you don’t assert yourself with her, but take her biting passively, and see her biting as insignificant in the context of her good works  of past (present and future). In other words, her perspective is that she will keep biting you, that she is entitled to bite you occasionally (she earned that right).

anita