Dropping Manipulative Games — Set Yourself Free Series

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Drop­ping Manip­u­la­tive Games — We manip­u­late because we want oth­ers to fix life for us. Learn­ing to drop manip­u­la­tion is the first step toward self-responsibility

For more on this top­ic, read:

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A client once said, 

“My boyfriend insists on manip­u­lat­ing me — he demands that I do things his way. What can I do to change him, and if I can’t, do I dump him? And what if he dumps me first?”

One of the very first lessons we need to learn is this: None of us have any power to make someone else do something (We’re not talking about pulling out a gun and forcing them–we’re talking about manipulative speech.)

What we typ­i­cal­ly describe as “manip­u­la­tion by anoth­er” is always about our belief that we can be manip­u­lat­ed, fol­lowed by our choice to give up our per­son­al strength.

This is an issue that affects each of us at some level. It’s an old issue, and it affects all of us because all parenting is nothing more than blatant manipulation, designed to “humanize” or civilize kids.

That’s the prelude. Now, let’s dig in.

Let’s start with a definition of manipulation.

Let’s whiz through these definitions.

1. Def­i­n­i­tion #1: We use “manip­u­late” in a pos­i­tive sense when we’re talk­ing about acti­vat­ing and con­trol­ling, for exam­ple, machinery.
2. #2a. We also use the word to describe the tech­niques, say, of a chi­ro­prac­tor or Bodyworker.
3. #2b, #3: We use the term neg­a­tive­ly when describ­ing “unfair or insid­i­ous means.”

And just to put it out there, “artful means” happens in, say, therapy (or this article!) and the Zen term for this is “Upaya.” (skillful means.) 

This is “good” manipulation, Like parenting is “good.” It’s designed to provide a safe environment in which one can make choices.

Negative manipulation, on the other hand, is always about getting someone else to do what you refuse to fix in yourself.

Let’s zip back to kids, and then leap forward to us.

Let’s also get a cou­ple of things straight. 

When kids are born, they are, for all intents and pur­pos­es, autis­tic. Left to their own devices, they die. Peri­od. Even though they have pre­dis­po­si­tions, genet­ic or oth­er­wise, to a cer­tain way of being, chil­dren are inca­pable of self-social­iza­tion (we call this “going feral.”) 

Put a cou­ple of 1 or 2 year olds in the same room and walk away, and soon­er or lat­er some­one is going to be pound­ing the oth­er over the head.

Social­iza­tion is learned behav­iour, and par­ents set this in motion. It becomes the sole respon­si­bil­i­ty of the child at, say 16. This does not change the fact that social­iza­tion hap­pens with­in a “manip­u­la­tive” (hope­ful­ly skill­ful or art­ful, but often not) framework.

“Adults” provide the boundaries, the direction and the rules.

There is no one human way of being, beyond the obvi­ous bio­log­i­cal behav­iours of eat­ing, drink­ing, elim­i­nat­ing, breath­ing, screw­ing, etc. That’s what makes trav­el­ling around the world so much fun, so much of a challenge. 

Peo­ple are as they are because that’s how they were brought up. That’s how they were mold­ed, or manip­u­lat­ed into being. With­out manip­u­la­tion, soci­ety — civ­i­liza­tion — would screech to a halt.

We can’t change how we were brought up. We do, however, have myriad choices about what to do when the “official manipulation” ends.

In the West, ever since the accursed advent of the New Age Move­ment, we’ve been on a slip­pery slope. Since the 60s there’s been reluc­tance to actu­al­ly par­ent a child. 

We hear all this, “They have to fig­ure it out for them­selves” stuff. Oer, “I don’t want to sti­fle their genius!” Gag me with a spoon.

It’s almost as if par­ents refuse to par­ent because they don’t want to insist on cer­tain behav­iour­al stan­dards. Yet, when you think about it, basic behav­iour­al stan­dards, repeat­ed con­sis­tent­ly, are the foun­da­tions upon which the future is built.

And noth­ing is more impor­tant than instill­ing the foun­da­tion of “self-respon­si­bil­i­ty.” We manip­u­late them out of fer­al-ness, and into civil­i­ty, and then (I fer­vent­ly wish) teach them to stand on their own two feet, learn about them­selves, and become self-responsible.

This as opposed to the new norm, which appears to be par­ent­ing (guid­ing, direct­ing — what­ev­er) until the “kids” are 60 or so…

I’m actually plugging the value of parental manipulation. But I’m using definition 2a, “to manage or utilize skillfully.”

Here’s a sto­ry from some years ago: A friend was dis­cussing a moment with her 8‑year-old son. For­ev­er, she’d focussed on teach­ing him bound­aries, choice and lim­its, age appro­pri­ate­ly. He was in 2nd grade and, for the first time, had homework.

The “lim­it” is, home­work has to be done by bath-time, which is a fixed, non-vari­able time. The choice is, does he do it when he gets home, right after sup­per, or at the end of his day? He’s been exper­i­ment­ing with sev­er­al options.

So, one day, he decides to go for “evening.” Out he goes to play. Mom calls him in at home­work time. This would be her job: he’s 8, and mom is pro­vid­ing the struc­ture for his expe­ri­ence. (If she had­n’t he’d have stayed out, play­ing. We all know that. 

The stated goal is, “homework done by bath time.” That stated goal is the structure.

In he comes, upset, as his friends have just begun a game. Dur­ing the next sev­er­al min­utes, mom remind­ed son of his choice. Son had his feel­ings. He cried, and with mom’s help, expressed his anger. 

He vent­ed that it was all mom’s fault because she called him in. Mom encour­aged him to get it out his system. 

There’s more to the sto­ry, but the nifty end­ing is this: amid tears, son says, “I real­ly made a bad choice!” (This is the begin­ning of self-responsibility.)

This is teaching (i.e.positive manipulation) at its best. Her 8‑year-old owned his choice, his behaviour and his actions. Repeated again and again, he will eventually get to self-responsible.

OK. So, struc­ture and goals and bound­aries are nec­es­sary for par­ent­ing. Where manip­u­la­tion gets its bad name is when it’s used adult to adult, in an inter­per­son­al relationship.

Let’s look at the question that provoked today’s article.

“My boyfriend insists on manipulating me — he demands that I do things his way.”

Peo­ple manip­u­late because it works.

If I have a need or a want, and I dis­cov­er that whin­ing, grip­ing, berat­ing, beg­ging or insist­ing caus­es my part­ner to cave in and give me what I want, why would­n’t I do it? How­ev­er, and it’s a big how­ev­er, this only works if my part­ner choos­es to give in to the manipulation.

Short of phys­i­cal vio­lence, (which is nev­er, ever, appro­pri­ate) there is no way any­one can make me do any­thing. Fur­ther, there is no way any­one can make me feel any­thing.

We’ve been here end­less­ly, and we’re here again. No one makes me angry. I make me angry. I choose anger. 

Hey, the 8‑year-old in the sto­ry, above, got this one. Wake up and get it!

So, the way to stop being manipulated is to stop caving in.

Oh, sure. Here come the, “If he real­ly loved me he’d stop doing that because I asked him to” swill. Phooey. 

On some oth­er plan­et maybe what you want would mat­ter more than what your part­ner wants, (to him,) but not on this plan­et. On this plan­et, you get to be respon­si­ble for your­self, while engag­ing with your part­ner as if he is sole­ly respon­si­ble for himself.

The “if he loved me, he’d…” statement is also a blatant attempt at manipulation. 

He wants you to change your behav­iour from “x” to “y”. You want him to change from manip­u­lat­ing to not manip­u­lat­ing. What’s the difference?

Let’s all repeat this in chorus: “No one can manipulate me into doing anything. If I give in, I made a choice.”

I once had a client who was hav­ing prob­lems with her part­ner. She said, “I made a list of all the things he does that dri­ve me crazy. I said, “If you love me (gag, gack) you won’t do any of these things ever again.”

She was actu­al­ly pleased with herself!!!

I said, “Good! Clever! You made it ever so much sim­pler for him. Now he knows a whole pile of ways to push your buttons.”

She: “Oh! He would­n’t do that!”

Me: “Has he in the past?”

She: “Yes”…Oh!”… my… god!”

Now, hope­ful­ly you know what I said next, and I hope you don’t think I said, “Well, maybe some day he’ll stop tor­tur­ing you.” 

What I said was, “You got­ta get over your­self. Dis­con­nect the but­tons. Stop tor­tur­ing your­self. If you wait for him to change so you can be hap­py, this is going to take forever.”

Second part of the question:

“What can I do to change him, and if I can’t, do I dump him? And what if he dumps me first?”

Answer: you can’t change anoth­er per­son. Only they can change them­selves. Your choice is to absolute­ly and com­plete­ly stop react­ing to the manip­u­la­tion. Peri­od. It’s your life. Who’s respon­si­ble for it? YOU!

Now, if after stop­ping your reac­tion, and let­ting your part­ner know that this is your new way of being and choos­ing, your part­ner con­tin­ues to attempt to manip­u­late, your choice is to either:

• accept the fact that s(he) refus­es to let go of that behav­iour, and choose to stay, or
• leave.

In other words,

• the first step is to stop act­ing like and see­ing myself as a help­less vic­tim of anoth­er’s manipulation.
• The sec­ond step is to make bet­ter choic­es by not giv­ing in, ever, to manipulation.
• The third step is to observe what hap­pens in the rela­tion­ship when I stop biting. 
  • In the vast major­i­ty of cas­es, the manip­u­lat­ing stops, and dia­log starts. And we reach an understanding. 
  • In some cas­es, not bit­ing makes no dif­fer­ence, and the rela­tion­ship becomes attempts at manip­u­la­tion with no response. Some peo­ple choose to stay in this dynam­ic. Most leave.

Take a look at what kinds of manip­u­la­tion games you play. Are you the vic­tim, the per­pe­tra­tor, or both?

Cut it out. Grow up and let go. And just for the hell of it, give self-respon­si­bil­i­ty a go.

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