The master depends on his slave.Masters are slaves to their slaves, like farmers are slaves to their animals.
Without a slave, he will be no master.
He has to keep the slaves motivated.
He has to manage the slaves.
He has to protect his slaves from other masters.
He has to protect himself from other master wannabes.
There are masters and slaves in relationships. If Tom hates Jack's company but keeps communicating with him, he is a masochistic slave. Tom is going to project his healthy pain onto Jack, by passive-aggressively annoying him. So this makes Jack's experience equally unpleasant now. Jack feels either annoyed, guilty, ashamed, or simply paranoid, because Tom is being too friendly, too submissive, or too ambiguous. It never feels like Tom is expressing his honest thoughts. These triggered painful feelings in Jack really provoke him to want to figure out Tom and manage him, being the master that he is. There is this S&M bond between them, but Jack is not only the sadist, but also a masochist, too. Jack needs to fix Tom because he depends on him, in a fucked up way - he likes to be in control. So he personalizes Tom's issues and becomes even less free than his slave. And Tom needs Jack because he has a victim mentality - he must be the morally superior, altruistic victim.
You know who Jack is. That's me. I'm a sadomasochist. My dad was a master, my mom is a slave. I can be Tom, too. Especially around people who I can't relate to. I don't know what that means. I didn't know my father too well, maybe that's why I associate strangers with him? Who knows... but I don't want to be either.
What makes people play such roles? My guess is that it all comes down to personal responsibility. Slaves are too afraid to take personal responsibility, and masters feel responsible for their slaves' behavior. The slave wants to avoid personal responsibility because he fears making a bad choice, because he fears punishment. He would do anything to stay away from being held accountable - submit to master's commands, get in a character (often impersonating his master), engage in a dissociative behavior (take drugs, play videogames, pray to God), engage in a passive-aggressive behavior (look below). The master, on the other hand, wants to avoid his slave's failure, because that would feel like crashing his favorite car in a reckless accident - it would show what a bad driver he is, and it would prevent him from being in control again. Basically, the master takes his slaves' problems personally, for fear of losing them. He personalizes other people's issues, because that's how he was taught to solve problems in the family. His parents would emotionally manipulate him into doing things for them in order to make them feel better. He couldn't have done otherwise, or else he'd lose them.
And losing parents is equal to death in the eyes of a child.
Here is a list of common signs of Passive Aggressive Behavior: Ambiguity or speaking cryptically (They engender a feeling of insecurity in others), Avoiding responsibility by claiming forgetfulness, Avoiding conflict or confrontation, Blaming others (unable to accept blame), Chronic lateness and forgetfulness, Complaining, Compulsiveness (including excessive cleanliness, tidiness and attention to detail), Does not express hostility or anger openly (e.g. expresses it instead by leaving notes), Fear of authority, Fear of competition, Fear of dependency, Fear of intimacy (infidelity as a means to act out anger), Fosters chaos, Intentional inefficiency, Irrational Fears/ Paranoia, Losing things, Lack of Trust, Making excuses (This sort of individual will usually not agree with the particular reason you provide for their mistake but will create their own reason), Manipulative (Similar to being in need of control but more sinister as an offensive mechanism to achieve a self-serving goal. Therefore, the passive aggressive person is often very greedy), Need for Control, Lying, Obstructionism, Prideful, Procrastination, Resentment, Resists suggestions from others, Sarcasm, Stubbornness, Sullenness, Unable to communicate well, Victim Mentality (Example: Being willing to accept someone's apology as a pretense to being right), Willful withholding of understanding.
What's the solution? Respect a person enough to let him deal with his own problems, unless he genuinely asks for advice. I know it's very hard to resist the temptation to be in control, and if you can't, try to stay away from that person. Let me know if there's anything I've missed.
Note: I have expanded on that subject in this post: More on Masters & Slaves
