Are You The Manipulator in Your Relationship?

It might be time to admit your insecurities.

When manipulation is your primary relationship tool, your focus tends to be: How can I get this person to do, feel or be, as I wish them to, so I can feel safe? You may manipulate your significant other because you struggle with dealing with uncertainty or having differing points of view.

You may have several strategies to manipulate your partner into doing what you want. Perhaps you make your tone colder or warmer depending on how they’re responding to you. Sarcasm and being dismissive of their needs also works. Deliberately withholding affection and shutting down emotionally, are powerful too.

The desire to manipulate in this way may seem harsh on paper, but actually, it comes from a place of deep insecurity. When we feel secure and deserving of love, then manipulating another to try to get that love no longer makes sense. When we doubt that we’re worthy of being loved, it’s then that we turn to manipulation to get the outcome we desire.

If there’s a threat that you might pull away or shut down because you don’t like how things are going, then you’re literally training your partner. The message you’re sending is: I will leave you or reject you if you don’t do as I want.

If your partner asks something of you that you don’t feel able to give, you simply pull away emotionally. You’d rather not have an honest and open dialogue about why you feel unable to give. It probably feels so much easier to just pull away. If inconsistencies in your actions are pointed out, it’s much easier to just shut down emotionally. That way you get to punish your partner rather than deal with those inconsistencies.

At the root of those reactions is a fear of not being lovable. It’s also a fear of being rejected. If you control the rejection then you don’t feel so vulnerable. If you pull away first, then in your fear mind you are the one that holds the power. Yet if you truly believed you held the power you could be more magnanimous in your responses.

Compromising when you had disagreements wouldn’t feel so hard. Looking at the parts of your persona that still needed healing wouldn’t feel so threatening. It…

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