What is meant by "He (or she) has a weak character"?

I think the idea of some people having weak characters has rather gone out of fashion, even to the extent of having a strong character being perhaps a bad thing, in the sense that people are sometimes said to be strong characters, when what is meant is that they say what they think without consideration of how it impacts on others, or do what they like irrespective of others' wishes.

To me, a weak character would be someone who is easily led and influenced into doing things that are wrong and that they know to be wrong, for no other reason than someone else has persuaded them to do it.
As my mother used to say, 'would you go and jump off a cliff just because so-and-so told you to do it?' whenever I used the fact that a friend had told me to do something as an excuse for bad behaviour!

In my last few years of working in the NHS as a nurse manager the catch phrase was 'resilience'. Staff and people being interviewed for jobs were being tested all the time for their resilience - in short their ability to take all the * that was being thrown at them on a daily basis without crumbling.

Teetime I do think there is a tipping point when the * will outweigh the resilience. Let's hope we don't get there .

Grannyknot I imagine "strength of character", as it is a rather judgemental view of a person, must depend on what you are judging it against. The mores of one time or one society will be different from another.

It is not so long ago that we might say someone was a "strong women" if she lived on the pittance a feckless husband gave her, managed physical attacks from him and protected her children from the same but stayed in the marriage. Certainly her local priest, a setter of standards to judge people by, might have praised her for following the church's views on the permanence of marriage and consequently deemed her to have shown strength of character.

Nowadays I would imagine most people would suggest that she would be right to leave. Would it be "strength of character" to do so? Personally I wouldn't want to be so judgemental.

Is it the opposite of being made of the right stuff.

So vampirequeen how is someone made of the "right stuff"? Is it pre-ordained that they have the right DNA or do they choose it before birth. Is a path set so that some only face difficulties they can surmount and others face difficulties they cannot overcome.

Or ... are some people just lucky and then sit in moral judgement on those who are not.

It is exactly what Janeainsworth says in the first post on here.

I've never actually used this expression but I would think a week character is someone who can be swayed to perhaps agree with something someone said against there own judgement.

I have no idea what constitutes the right stuff. It's just as vague as a weak character.

I think it depends on the observer's own viewpoint.
Is it strength of character to stay in a bad marriage, or strength of character to leave a bad marriage.
Is it weak to stay, or weak to go ?

That would make it very judgmental coolgran65 and also assume those "judging" would see themselves as superior. I'm afraid I don't see the right for any of us to judge others like this.

I would say that a weak character was someone who was easily led, will never do the unpopular or stand against the crowd, someone who will take the easy way and not cope when the going gets tough.

Funny, the judgmental thing. My mother was the most non-judgmental person in the world, who always believed in seeing good in everyone. It didn't work for her with my father, who was a serial womaniser and left her with three small children, and who was often described by my gran (who seldom had a bad word to say about anyone) as a "weak character".

We had nothing to do with him growing up, and when I re-established contact with him as a teenager, and got to know him, I realised (it took years), that I didn't like him very much. Now that I'm the age that my gran was when she used to say he was a "weak character", I would probably agree with her.

It also took me forever to learn that not everyone is a wonderful person, and I was for a long time, a poor judge of character. (There's that word again). So I learnt the hard way, when to walk away, and when to run.

Interesting. Do we not all of us, judge people all the time?

I think m,ost people have their weaknesses. And their strengths. We are all a mixture.

We certainly often make assumptions about them, which amounts to the same thing, I suppose...

We all make judgements in the first few seconds of meeting someone- we can't help it, even though we might want to deny that we do it.

Gracesgran I used the example of a bad marriage, it could as easily have been an example of being, for example, being in a job that wasn't liked, or living in an area that wasn't liked.

You are correct in that none of us have a right to judge others but I believe that it's human nature to do so. Perhaps Ana's use of the word 'assumptions' is one I'd prefer to use.

Personally, I don't see that making an assumption is an act of superiority.

coolgran whatever you choose to do is tough, I can vouch for that. I stayed with an abusive and alcoholic husband for years after I should have gone, because he was a very good father and DD loved him, and he, her. I kept on hoping that one day he would change, heaven knows I tried, but he was also a bully and a liar. One day I found him telling DD aged 8 that no, she couldn't climb the tree next to the fence to visit her friend next door, nice little girls don't climb trees ( I had been letting her do it all year, after checking the tree was safe and low enough on both sides) and suddenly thought, I don't want this man bringing up my DD. He is a sexist alcoholic bully, what was I thinking. He always wanted her to wear skirts and be ladylike. It took a year to plan my escape.

After I left, it was incredibly hard, maybe even worse than staying at times, with restraint orders, threats, he tried to mow us both down in the car, tried to get custody, but I stuck it out. DD is now 30 and by the age of 14 was fully aware of all her DF's failings, without me ever having to point them out to her. However I have EVERY sympathy with those who give in and return. Or stay. It took years for the nightmares to stop, and I am quite tough.

But I agree with janeA. People who are easily led. It's always hard to go against the herd.

I know someone who is 80 and from a financially-privileged background. She married a man who was handsome and popular and because of her background he became successful in business - so a charmed life with many children was lived for 50 years.

When he was about 70 he began to develop dementia and lived for about another five years. Unlike many wives/husbands in this position she didn't handle this well and wished him dead - just couldn't handle the change in him and the family dynamics.

As an observer, I put it down to a weakness in her character - she was fine and the life and soul of the party when all was going well but didn't have the depth of character to deal with any difficulties that life threw up.

Of course, how I would have reacted in her position is anyone's guess.

I'm not sure that showed weakness in her. Or if it did, I would be the last one to judge.

jane that sounds appalling (to put it mildly).

Do you think your ex-husband would have been abusive anyway, with or without the alcohol? The point I am making is that I think sometimes people would have been "monsters" anyway even if they didn't drink. Or put another way, not all alcoholics become paragons of virtue just because they sober up.

He was/is such a complex character, I could write a book about him. Highly intelligent and once very well-off, but spent/gambled it all, yet felt that everything was always someone else's fault.

His girlfriend and he have fought their way through the past 20-plus years, but he did one thing that means that she has had the upper hand - he put our money in her bank account so that I couldn't have it. She has taken very good care of it and not allowed him to have control, something that I was never able to do. In many ways it has been their salvation, as they have had loads of breakups and rows. DD says that he has calmed down a lot, I think he has, but he still goes out drinking and has a drinker's red nose. I had the misfortune to spend an hour or so with him on her 30th, the first time I had seen him for years, and he looks dreadful. He was once a good-looking man but now he looks only marginally better than Steptoe with better teeth! I had to fight hard to hide my shock.

Also, he hid his racism and homophobia while he was with me, he knew it was irrational, but now he lets it out, so DD tells me. There's always hate of something bubbling just beneath the surface. His father died when he was 7, he didn't like his stepfather (who is actually really nice), and he has felt angry and powerless ever since.

It is meaningless really.
Yes you could say those who give into temptation over drink or gambling or those who tell lies and and exploit others.

Some of it may be a genetic tendency "addictive personalities?" if it exists.
Those with OCD which verges on mental illness ? neurological.

Many people have learned to be manipulative from watching parents behaviour or who have been spoilt and not given any boundaries as to reasonable behaviour.

My understanding there is certainly a genetic predispostion to alcohol abuse.
As for difficulties being "character building" that depends on the degree of stress applied.
We usually never reallly know what others have been through.