As soon as a child can understand the emotions of another and how they are impacted by that child’s actions, they begin to understand manipulation. While it may not be clearly defined as such, from the earliest ages we learn how to manipulate those who care about us in order to get what we want. I can’t quite recall the moment I learned to use my actions against the emotions of others, but I do recall when my mother shut that down. I suppose her thought process was something along the lines of I will not let my love and emotional attachment to you to be used as a weapon against me. Thanks Mom, I learned early on that didn’t work and unconsciously learned that level of manipulation didn’t work in my relationships with women. Daddy was another story.
My father was riddled with the level of guilt that many divorced Dad’s experience. Although I couldn’t identify it then, I was keenly aware that he wanted to live in the house with us, was very sorry that he didn’t, cherished all the moments he spent with us and wanted those moments to be 99.9% happy. This can be described by some as one of the pitfalls of a daughter having a daddy who not only loves them more than anything but endlessly indulges them. The expectation is built (and rightfully so) that every man who loves you will mirror this behavior.
Whenever someone demonstrates so clearly that their happiness is directly correlated to your happiness, a breeding ground for manipulation is formed. I don’t know if it was the Daddy/Daughter dynamic or just the way Leslie chose to deal with Maliek. But from as early as I can remember, I would nonverbally express my unhappiness in order to get what I wanted from him. If I was unhappy about what we were going to do, I would do something to indicate that I wasn’t having a good time. And that would usually be too much for Daddy, since he wanted us to be happy 99.9% of the time we spent with him. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a brat (although it totally sounds like it). But looking back, I was getting an early lesson in how to manipulate a man (w/o saying a word) who loved me very much in order to get what I wanted. Fast forward to adult life, this tactic doesn’t seem to work so well.
In the dynamic of father/child, my father may not have been aware that I was attempting to manipulate him (nor was I aware of the sinister action). But when my father first slipped into the low place of depression after the death of my grandmother (his mom) and my mother, within 8 months, I was unable to understand why he was no longer that father who lived and breathed my happiness. I tried a variety of ways to “manipulate” him into coming out of his depression. I even went as far as to withdraw my love (by not speaking to him) in order to get him to come out of it. He was supposed to live for my happiness and now he couldn’t get out of bed, not even for me. It was a blow to my heart and a rattling of my senses. For years I played this game with him and it never worked. But that didn’t stop me from attempting the same vicious tactics in my relationships with men.
For so long I was used to withholding my love from a man in order to make him a) understand I was unhappy and b) force him to do whatever would make me happy. This manifested itself in extreme passive aggression in relationships and a lack of communication so severe, I expected men to read my thoughts. And when they couldn’t read my thoughts, they had better been taking in my actions because that was how I expressed myself, all nonverbal. In the most serious situations, this worked. It worked for two very key reasons – 1) I was picking men who were emotionally similar to my dad and 2) I was young.
Unlike the parent/child dynamic, adult men are (usually) aware when they are being manipulated. Although this warfare may work in the beginning, most men tire of it, quickly. It makes the already difficult process of getting to know each other and getting through issues that much more difficult and makes a woman appear extremely difficult to deal with. Even the men I picked who resembled Leslie in that they loved me so much, like him, they also found a limit to my antics and were no longer swayed in my direction. Daddy eventually came around but of course he did, he was my Daddy. But right before he died we had a conversation about his life and him doing what he wanted to do in order to get better. And he said for the first time “You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do.” I was startled by his declaration. How was that possible? I had spent my entire 27 years up to that point believing that by virtue of his love for me, I held some super power that would control him and his actions. As much as it hurt me that I couldn’t make him do what he didn’t want to do when it came to his health and unfortunately, my fear that it would lead to his death came true – he taught me a lesson that was long overdue. I couldn’t, no matter how much I wanted to, use the love from another against them in order to get my way. It was a lesson that would have served me better in dealing with him and his issues. It was a lesson that came too late for some of my relationships yet right on time for the lifelong relationship I will eventually find myself in. The love from another is so sacred, so valuable yet so fragile. Manipulation, no matter how well intentioned, cheapens the brand. Thankfully, 30 year old me learned this lesson. And everyman who loves me from here on out will have my Daddy to thank for it.
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