My boss has got very high EQ, but tends to have fraught, tense relationships with our female coworkers (I described it to my husband as working with a mother and daughter who don’t get along- they say a bunch of things that seem nice and also seem to hurt each other a lot and I don’t know why).
She sometimes says passive aggressive things to me, but it always takes me too long to parse passive aggression in person, so I respond completely earnestly. This seems to confuse her without being rude, and she’s just vexed by me.
Actually, passive aggression in general makes me feel very neurodivergent.
I fully agree. It’s not always intentional, because sometimes I do pick up on it (probably the non native language + work makes it just impossible to get in the moment from her), but I almost always pretend not to, and it generally defuses the situation pretty well.