"In a healthy relationship, your partner hears you out if you’re upset, .... not to debate whether you should have been upset in the first place ...None of my concerns were ever addressed. They were simply deflected onto me. I had stopped taking issue with his actions because I wasn’t allowed to."
This is taken from a site below telling ways to tell if your spouse might be manipulative. It is an interesting and eye opening article:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AbuseInterrupted/comments/418x3w/7_ways_to_tell...
I have been called names by spouse and then called too sensitive when I would have feelings about it. THEN told I should be more loving. I would be told how to NOT behave...."Do you think you are better than me? What's got you so pissed of THIIS time? Why do you ALWAYS think something is WRONG, Be like me...be happy! Stop caring what other people think...be like me...I do what I want! You are not the boss of me! Can't you take a joke? I was just kidding, don't be so negtive. You are just cold like your mother." so that whatever I was bringing up to talk about was turned around and put on to me as the problem because I had a problem. There never was an intimate conversation with a solution or compromise. I was put down because I had a problem.....end of discussion.
This has not been healthy.
What problem?
Submitted by jennalemone on
"What's the problem now? I don't have a problem with it. YOU must be the problem!" Changing the subject means never having to say "I'm sorry."
Thank you for sharing this
Submitted by PoisonIvy on
Thank you for sharing this article. It's especially apt for my best friend, whose husband is an expert at going off onto abstract philosophical tangents.
You Talk'in To Me?
Submitted by kellyj on
"You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?"
Jenna.....this is the classic scene in the movie Taxi driver with Robert De Nero standing in front of the mirror with a gun in his hand and doing this routine. A bit of trivia.....De Nero made that up on the spot and it was not in the script originally. (genius)
This overriding you and not letting you say anything IS manipulation on the part of the other person. Why is the big question? In respect to the article (good one...and good call on your part for including it)....it is a form of control as well. Controlling the conversation to get what you want out of it? I think so.
In respect to my wife (she's horrible at doing this)....it really is like someone having a conversation with themselves and using you to do it. In that respect...as was the case with Travis Bikel ( De Nero's charactor)...he was a man isolated from the world who felt powerless. His reenactment of this powerlessness was personified by his own portrayal of how he fest inside and now feeling the power he had once he had someone at gun point and they were then powerless in trying to defend themselves any more.
I recently started really listening to my wife when she would get on a roll and would not allow me to speak or interject anything. Not to what she was saying....but why she was saying it. The only way to do this is to shut up yourself and just let them go with it. Pretty soon....it all starts making sense.
Later.....I confronted her about what had happened and brought her to see what she did by me then (later) saying everything I wanted to say in response to her when she was not in this state she gets herself into. At that point....reflecting back....she could see what she did after the fact but only the next day....never in the moment.
When she admitted seeing this, I told her that she was being dishonest with her communication with me and told her there was no reason to do this.
Her answer (not a new one but the same one it always is)......."well.....you could say No." I'm not in the habit of automatically saying No to everything so that does not account for her reasoning. What accounts for it is the same as Travis Bikel.....she feels no personal power in getting what she wants and feels the worse thing that can happen is for someone to refuse her. Not unlike De Nero's character....she feels the need to intimidate you to manipulate the conversation away from any compromise and diminish your chances of ever saying.... "No.....you aren't going to get what you want right now."
Waiting, impatience and not getting what she wants seem to all have a common theme......fear of not getting your needs met and using manipulation and coercion instead of negotiation and compromise to get it. What she wants is not ever the issue....how she goes about it IS!
I didn't respond to an earlier post of your mentioning this in dealing with your husband and again....what you said had such a familiar ring to it. Not in terms of my wife now...but in terms of what a salesperson does.
Good Salesmanship...is the art of getting the customer in touch with and connecting them to what they want. Suggesting or creating a need where there isn't one isn't trying to talk them into something they don't need but just allowing them to have more ideas more options to choose from and pointing out as many contingencies as you can for them. If you first gain a customers trust through a rapport with them....they will now trust that you have their best interest in mind as long as they don't feel controlled into making a decision that they don't want to do. A successful salesman is a good facilitator by acting as the means to get the customer what they want with as many options as possible and then allowing them to decide. If done well....they will be back since they will see you as the person who will do this for them.
I was paraphrasing my professor in business school there and he is absolutely right.....BUT......that isn't my experience with many sales people I have interacted with. In fact....depending on the environment and the type of goods their selling.....I have witnessed some of the most (profitable) sales people to do almost the extreme opposite of this. Hared closing, manipulation, coercive double talking gets sales made many times at the customers expense and the reality of it is in the numbers.
If you don't care that you ever see that person again in the future.....all bets are off. Getting the sale, commission and number of sales doing it this way ( for today) is just a big game of Cat and Mouse and who comes out on top. The winner is....who does this best and who finally caves in.
I will always remember one of the worst sales lines that was a common practice amongst many of the sales people I worked around in the Jewelry business. Since I wasn't a sales person and actually made the jewelry....I had to be involved occasionally in facilitating the sale. A well know phenomenon that happens when a couple come in to buy a wedding ring is.....the woman knows exactly what she wants....and the man knows exactly how much he wants to spend and as rule....these two things can be quite a bit different.
When push comes to shove and the decision needs to be made (I've seen this countless times)...the woman will be looking at her fiance' (with longing in her eyes to have the ring she wants) but the one she wants is way more than the guy originally was willing to spend. As she sits there with the ring on her finger insistently put there by the sales person who is working this angel.....the man is sitting there sweating bullets and is stuck between a rock and hard place now and just staring blankly at the ring and not saying anything.
The normal and predicted response by men if this situation....is to say they need more time to think about. That's the cue.......
This is when the sales person leans forward and grabs both customers by the hands and puts them together and says " Isn't she worth it? "
You think this isn't planned or known to work almost every time? Don't kid yourself. An aggressive and successful salesperson knows every trick in the book like this because it works more often than not while looking like your best friend who is only there to help you make a decision. Not so much.
J