Don't Let Their Sulking Ruin Your Life

The Big Ugly Octopus

Suppose you’ve begun trying some of the ideas offered in this series and find that your partner does stop verbally abusing you but instead shifts to a different type of anti-social behaviour.

A common one is sulking, which will be dished out sometimes as punishment for standing up for yourself.

The Big Ugly Octopus

I always imagine a person sulking as a kind of giant invisible octopus that is very heavy and dark and slowly fills the house with invisible thick, yucky ooze. The tentacles of this octopus want to grab you, slowly pull you in, and hold you firmly by their side, forcing you to watch them ignore you.

Maybe that sounds weird and dramatic, but that’s precisely how I see it. It is unfair on octopuses, however, as they run away from people and are pretty clean (and amazing), whereas a sulking person is certainly not amazing at all!

Remember me saying that emotions are contagious? Sulking is a form of passive aggression, and this repressed anger can pollute the environment even more t…