The Language of Manipulation

In a past, volatile relationship that meant a great deal to me we often had problems and conflicts that erupted in histrionic antics from both of us (but mostly from my partner). The first time I found out he was cheating on me and confronted him about it he immediately broke down into hysterics begging me not to leave him and doing kind gestures like buying me flowers and other presents as well as committing to attend an anger management class. As someone with a great deal of patience and inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt who also had low-self esteem I loved the demonstrable displays of affection and was willing to work it out if he was truly that interested in the survival of our relationship (I’m also not very prudish and we had begun our relationship casually so it would have been weird to be too demanding about that). We had also just moved in together, and being in love and also trapped logistically (meaning it would have been a big headache to separate) I took his adulations as evidence of his commitment and stayed in the relationship. Predictably it would not work out in the end, though we were together for another four years, and long after it ended and after having done a bit of inventory therapy as instructed in my books (and this inventory instructional on my YouTube channel), I realized one day that while my ex had demonstrated much emotional displays during these conflicts he had never once actually said the words “I promise to never do it again.”

This kind of language is a significant chokepoint in conflict, human relationships, and even society, in which language and behavior are used manipulatively and purposefully in order to get what we want without actually taking responsibility for our behavior and choices. Although I intuitively recognized the lack of commitment to never repeating that behavior I was happy to gloss over it and believe that everything would be okay because I loved him and wanted our relationship to work out. Not having the kind of life skills which would help me get the kind of partner I wanted as discussed in my last article, How To Be A Man, I also felt helpless and unable to actually shape my life in the way that I wanted. Luckily my life path went in a direction where I was able to finally learn those skills and start rebuilding my life in a way that actually centered my best interests instead of those who took advantage.

Lots of information on the internet from gurus, self-help influencers, and even professional therapists try to address manipulation, control, and abuse in their content and services, but while many of them talk ad nauseam about narcissists and abusers they don’t actually have any actionable solutions, either because none of them understand where it comes from or what purpose it serves. This is why speaking in therapy with a therapist is often unproductive, because just talking about a problem does not necessarily solve it, and the biggest problem with these interpersonal manipulation dynamics is they are not learned but are instead built into our evolutionary, biological survival psychology and the function of the human ego which is not a learned function of the mind but a built-in biological function of the brain which occurs when we lack more effective life skills to meet our needs. If we did not have this function we would not cry as infants when our parents fail to pick us up and feed and change us sufficiently, and would just lay there and die quietly, or we would not get angry when people steal from us and would become impoverished as we sit there and let other, selfish people deprive us of the things we require to survive. These instincts are motivated by the combined function of the endocrine and neurological systems in the expression of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol which produce the feelings we experience during stress events, because feelings are hormones. Being unable to recognize how our evolutionary biological psychology produces these behaviors, professional therapy and influencers alike are at best unable to provide effective solutions and at their worst actually exacerbate dysfunctional interpersonal conflict and discord.

This problem also extends to business and politics. For instance in spite of their constant rhetoric against the debt and deficit not one single Republican President of the United States for the last hundred years has ever reduced the national debt or deficit. Their campaigns were and are frequently dominated by complaining about the debt and deficit but not one has ever explicitly committed to lowering the debt and deficit because, like the language used by my ex, complaining or discussing a problem is not the same as actually doing something about it (Trump promised to enact tariffs, which he said would lower the debt, but did not actually commit to lowering the debt), and we hear politicians espousing the same concerns we have but, unlike us, they are actually in a position when elected to do something about it, and having never committed to do something about those problems, don’t. Democrats similarly discuss ad nauseam things like the minimum wage or civil rights but never actually commit to fixing them. If Democrats were truly interested in the plight of the working class they would commit to solving the problem, but introducing fixed dollar amounts of the minimum wage as discussed in my article Fuck Minimum Wage Laws preserves poverty and inequality because inflation always dilutes minimum wage to preserve it as a political football for later campaigns, and corrupt politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, and Joe Biden are happy to let people starve and struggle in the incorrect belief they will be reliable voters in the future once inflation again dilutes their spending power. Hearing politicians align with our concerns we, like myself in my past relationship, willingly ignore the omitted and absent commitments hoping they will actually do the thing they never even promised to do and then find ourselves continually disappointed. One of the first things Joe Biden did when assuming the presidency was to try and force payment processors to report as little as $600 in yearly income to the IRS which, to poor people, was a complete invalidation of his implied commitment to helping the working class, and collecting taxes on people who earn such little money is entirely antithetical the campaign message he duplicitously implied.

This disparity between language and action which imperils our society, country, relationships, and business is no accident but is a purposeful yet instinctual dynamic which exploits our permissiveness, patience, and charitability so that abusers and manipulators can get what they actually desire, which is not resolution of the underlying problems but to instead satisfy their desires for power, control, and personal enrichment. While we are not responsible for the actions of others we do, like myself in my previous relationship, choose to ignore those warning signs and lack of commitment because of our understandable desire to also get what we want and need from those relationships (even relationships with our elected representatives) which originates also from our lack of more effective life skills that would otherwise empower us to actually get what we need from life and those relationships. Many people engage in “harm-reduction” voting in the restricted political system we have in this country because, with a limited set of options, some candidates will be less harmful than others. But this behavior is a compensatory reaction to our failure to engage in civic duty and construct and design the system to work for us, allowing special interests and insider politicking to instead limit our options, because engaging in politics and civic discourse is inconvenient and intimidating. In the United States and the current system we have, power is not decided in the November general election, but in the primaries and local elections. Having understood this the Democratic Socialists of America have finally been able to change some of those dynamics by starting at the local level and in primary contests to get candidates that actually commit and demonstrate policies that benefit us like healthcare for everyone, closing tax loopholes, keeping our tax dollars in our own country, and taxing the wealthy. Normally these kinds of politicians who would actually enact policy that protects the best interests of American citizens were strategically eliminated from participating in the two-party system because most Americans only engage in civics at the general elections, believing the non-committal language of manipulation coming from leaders installed to those positions of leadership by very few citizens because of how our system divides and dilutes the voting power of each person. Things have gotten so bad now that many of us have finally been forced to wake up to the reality of the situation and actually engage at the fulcrum of politics rather than letting others do it for us.

The other major problem with abuse and manipulation is that we fixate on others as the problem. In my past relationship I thought, understandably, that the problem was my boyfriend and the way he treated me, when in fact I was actively choosing to be part of that relationship. I lacked effective life skills such as the ability to believe in myself or to live alone and trust in life and so instead thought that my only recourse was to remain in the relationship and try to make it work. All relationships whether they are friendships, romantic, business, or political require both parties to be actively invested in its success, and to give and take equally without an imbalance in either take or give, and when such relationships are imbalanced in either direction it is inevitable that it will fail because one party will eventually become disadvantaged to the other. Employees cannot long endure exploitation by executives because life becomes too stressful to perform well at work. Citizens cannot long endure exploitation by politicians and the monied class because life becomes to stressful to sustain society. Boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives cannot long endure exploitation by partners because emotional energy gets drained and we no longer have any left to give, even if you are able to exploit and abuse someone it will eventually cost both parties, and continually giving in a relationship in which the other party takes more than they give is our choice in which we choose to continually giving and enabling the dysfunctional dynamic which also helps sustain it, and although we can become the victim in such dynamic we are still participating and thus also responsible. Showing up for work at a company which engages in heinous activity simply because we require income still makes us party to the system which commits those crimes even if we have not directly done them ourselves. Giving our labor, time, energy, and talents to a system of exploitation, theft, killing, and other criminal activity is by definition participating in that dynamic, and we similarly feel incapable of extracting ourselves from those dynamics due to lack of effective life skills which would otherwise liberate us from that manipulation and exploitation.

Since we cannot actually control the behaviors and choices of other people the only solution to liberate ourselves from the dynamics of manipulation and abuse is to control our own behaviors and choices. Toward the end of my relationship I realized one day that I was actively participating in the dysfunctional dynamic by raising my voice and criticizing my partner. Even though what he had done was worth admonishment I made the choice to try and not engage him during those dynamics. I did not ignore him, because that would also have been manipulation, but instead gave simple, dignifying responses and even outright agreeing with him when he was technically right in his positions rather than being defensive about them, for instance in his constant complaint that I was not making over 6 figures. As a graphic artist this was indeed a silly expectation from him, I don’t know in what world I ever could have become rich as a graphic artist, especially after our industry had been decimated by capitalism over the last several decades (with inflation considered, boomer generation graphic artists were paid at least twice what we are now paid). Because it was a ridiculous demand I often responded defensively, but decided instead to just agree with him, and not even in a snide, contemptuous manner but honestly and earnestly. I remember the look on his face the first time I did this, it was as if I had actually stolen from him an opportunity to fight, and he was confused and disoriented, but since I had extinguished the conflict there was no opportunity for it to go on, and our home was uncharacteristically quiet for about a week.

The problem with this strategy was that I still fundamentally lacked skills to effectively engage with and handle conflict, and it was inevitable that conflict should again arise since neither of us possessed those skills. For instance, being effective in conflict does not mean winning, because winning implies there must also be a loser, and if your partner in any endeavor must lose, especially in a romantic relationship, the conflict will never cease. One of the skills I then learned through the practice of inventory therapy was that I should be interested in both of us winning, not only myself, because other people (least of all our romantic partners) deserve to have their needs met just as much as ourselves, and most conflicts are fueled by the misunderstanding that conflicts should result in a winner and a loser rather than both parties winning. This lesson is applicable in all human relationships, within families, friendships, romances, but also business and politics, because when we seek only for our victory it always comes at the expense of others, then those others fight harder for their rights, privileges, and needs and so the conflict is only enflamed, not extinguished.

When any party in any conflict begins unlearning past, ineffective coping mechanisms which underlie conflict it can quickly extinguish them by depriving the abuser and manipulator of their intended victim, taking the wind out of the sails of those conflicts. Within such intimate relationships as romantic pairing this can also help the other party recognize their own unhelpful coping mechanisms since conflicts always require two parties. Like I mentioned, this is not willful behavior like ignoring the other person or dismissing their needs since that is simply a different strategy of manipulation, nor is it capitulating to their abuse which is also simply manipulation by giving them what they want, but instead the active learning of more effective life skills such as the removal of defensiveness within personal relationships that motivates retaliatory behavior. If for instance a partner scolds us for something we did and we become defensive and start accusing them of things they did they also become defensive and a conflict explodes. But if we acknowledge that we did in fact do the thing the they accuse us and take responsibility for it, even if their accusation is unkind or unjustified, they then have the opportunity to feel remorse for treating us poorly rather than us trying to forcefully extract that remorse and are more likely to recognize their own harmful behavior. If a partner is actually abusive and manipulative we can, rather than fight about it, simply extract ourselves from the relationship and move on with our live and in the future only establish relationships with people who actually have our best interests in mind as much as they do their own. But without learning these skills we maintain our incompetence, as we cannot willfully bend life to suit our designs and must instead learn the skills which are required to navigate it successfully, and as discussed ad nauseam throughout my work this is achieved through the practice of inventory since this structured writing practice assists our unconscious mind to unlearn our previous, unhelpful coping and control mechanisms and then we are free to learn new, more effective skills as we make different choices and adopt new behaviors.

Language matters because the choice of language rather than the language itself tells us everything we need to know. Abusers and manipulators avoid committal language because they have no intention of committing or stopping behavior that is harmful. If we don’t actively recognize that we often willfully acquiesce to their designs and become their victims whether in relationships, business, or politics. We also cannot demand the correct language from others, it must be given freely, and demanding such language is also a manipulation and a coping mechanism in which we desire, understandably, to hold onto people and relationships which are important to us even though they have already shown us who they really are. Unfortunately many relationships do not work out, but the reality is there are many other people out there with whom we can form healthy relationships if we only learn how to be a healthy partner ourselves. The fear of losing people and relationships is simply rooted in our own lack of effective life skills which can be learned so that we are no longer limited by that debility.

Much about our lives, societies, and environment are the product of manipulative language and we can become more empowered also by learning the reality of our situations, such as The Myth of Private Property, The Truth About Stocks and Economy, or The Truth about Lung Cancer.