Antagonism is one way that people express themselves, though it is not healthy. The reasons a person might do this are varied.
Some people are just jerks who enjoy pushing your buttons. They’re antagonists who derive some form of enjoyment from making other people miserable. For others, they might try to get a rise out of you to fulfill some other need.
Understanding the reasons why a person might antagonize you can help you better identify the behavior so you can avoid falling into their trap.
So, why do they do it? Let’s look at some reasons.
1. They are looking for your attention.
Pushing your buttons to make you angry is a way for them to get your attention. If you’re angry at them, then you’re not paying attention to whatever else you may have going on—other friends, family, or your relationship. Is it a totally negative behavior? Yes. But attention-seekers don’t typically care how they get the attention, they just want the attention. Any attention is good attention.
2. They enjoy creating drama for entertainment.
Yes, some people stir the pot to create drama to enjoy. A bored jerk is someone who may intentionally push your buttons because they know what will get a rise out of you. Your anger is entertainment because they know there won’t be serious repercussions, like boundary enforcement or social repercussions with the group. If there were, they wouldn’t do it.
3. They create drama to validate themselves.
The validation someone seeks by making you angry allows them to feel good about their bad choices and actions. By getting a rise out of you, they may be trying to comfort themselves into thinking that their negative actions are justified or reasonable. After all, how dare you get angry just because they said or did something to you? Anger is totally unfair! Unjustified! You’re the bad person because you got angry! Not because they did anything wrong!
4. They derive pleasure from creating suffering.
There are a lot of sick people out there, and some of those people enjoy causing suffering for their own pleasure and fulfillment. These sadists typically don’t care about anything other than what benefits them or makes them feel good. You are just a toy to a sadist, nothing more. The only real way to deal with these people is to cut them off, otherwise they just look for another way to slither back in to do the same thing again.
5. They view your anger as an unhealthy way to connect.
Passion is a strong emotion that implies a deep connection. After all, we don’t feel passionate about things that we don’t have an opinion on. That is the opposite of passion. However, there are some people out there, likely abused or traumatized people, who can’t connect with others in a healthy way. The strong feelings of love and care make them uncomfortable, they don’t know how to handle the feelings, or they don’t know how to cultivate positive feelings. However, anger is still a passionate emotion, and anger can be interpreted to mean that you care a great deal about who or what is invoking the anger.
6. They are trying to exert power and control over you.
A person who can instigate anger in you is able to exert power and control over you. They know they can dig into you and get a reaction, which lets them pull your strings. They may do that for pleasure, or they may do it to better manipulate you into doing what they want. This kind of thing can be used in creative ways. For example, they may spark anger in you at someone else to ruin your relationship.
7. They like to experiment on other people to see their reactions.
What would you do in a given situation? Would you get sad, defensive, or angry? Well, there’s only one way to find out! And that is by pushing your buttons just to see your reaction. It may be a way for the person to test to see how you’d react under pressure or uncomfortable circumstances for some other manipulation that they have planned for you.
8. They may instigate an argument for their own stress relief.
A malicious person may provoke you to deal with their own stress and frustration. How does that work? Well, if they can get you angry enough at them to start an argument, they can then argue back and escalate the situation to a fight. For many people, fighting blows off steam and relieves stress. But they can’t just outright attack you without you or other people seeing them as an instigator and jerk who starts fights. Instead, they want to cause you to start the fight so they can claim that they were just defending themselves.
9. They instigate conflict to distract you from real issues.
Some people use anger to deflect for their own peace of mind and well-being. They may also use it to avoid responsibility for far more serious actions. For example, let’s say that they did something that really and truly bothers you, something that hurts more than incites anger. Well, they may not want to take responsibility for that, so if they can start an argument with you, they can distract you from your hurt feelings. They may also then be able to use that shift in attention as a way to avoid responsibility altogether. “We can’t talk about what I did, let’s talk about how you’re yelling at me for no reason!”
10. They are pulling you down to their level.
Misery loves company. Crabs in a bucket mentality. Miserable people love to drag other people down to their level. If you’re succeeding, and they can drag you down to their level, they can be smug about their own lack of success or effort. They can comfort themselves that everything is garbage because now you feel like garbage too. Like many of the things in this list, they are an unhealthy person manipulating you to be as bad or worse than them so they can feel okay with themselves.
