Ask The Expert : Are You Being Manipulated In Your Relationship?
Posted: 13th Jan 2010 Author: Michelle Penny Topics: Ask The Expert
Do you lie and manipulate to get love? This week Emily pontificates about what it means to be a master manipulator. Also, a look inside the life of one lesbian that is simply never wrong. Ever.
Dear Emily,
I have a huge problem. My partner and I have been together for about a year and she is so manipulative. She is 30-years-old and I am hitting 40 this year. It seems like she lies and manipulates to get me to love her or give her attention. I am always catching her in little lies, I feel so betrayed. And when I call her on it she screams and yells at me. She threatens that she can find someone else easily because other women flirt with her. I feel like she is manipulating me for attention. Does that make sense?
Thanks!
Cory
Dear Cory,
Not only does it make sense, it happens all more often than people realize. You happen to be wise enough to notice that you are being manipulated, others never see it and live out their relationships in mass confusion, always wondering what they did wrong.
I had a friend, lets call her bitch—I mean, Sally. Sally was a real treat to be around because all she did was lie and when you didn’t believe her, she would just start yelling at you. Sally had a girlfriend that was so scared that she would lose Sally because Sally literally brain washed her into thinking she was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sally would literally say, “I am a catch. I am perfect, beautiful, smart and funny and any chick out there would be glad to be with me. If you don’t see that, you can leave. I don’t need you.”
The truth was that Sally needed her girlfriend more than anything. She was so afraid of being abandoned that she would try to convince her of how fabulous she was. Sally would go as far as to pretend she was out having a blast, when in actuality she was at home desperate and scared.
Sally was not fun to be around.
Manipulative people are not happy. Their deepest and darkest fear is that they will be left in the cold, alone and sad.
They must manipulate, lie and deceive in order to control. With that control, your whole world becomes an inner struggle to be happy and everyday is a constant juggling act—never being able to drop the ball. It is a full time job with no vacation. They feel if they give up the control, they will have no path to lead them to love. The road will be broken.
Tell her you feel her manipulating you and that it does not feel good. Have an honest conversation about what it is that is really bothering her. Somewhere deep in her past, she was emotionally injured and abandoned. Get her to talk about it. Let her understand that you love her as long as she is being honest about her feelings.
It is so much easier to hear, “I’m feeling insecure and sad, and I wonder where that is coming from” rather than, “All the girls want me and you better notice what you have before it’s gone.” What fun.
Dear Emily,
My girlfriend honestly thinks that she is always right. It drives me seriously crazy! I can’t disagree with her about anything or she freaks out on me. The worst part is that she is completely unaware of how this disturbs the people around her. Our friends and I are afraid to have our own opinions. I really care about her but I am ready to walk out the door if she doesn’t change…and fast!
Thanks in Advance,
Victoria
Dear Victoria,
Would you like me to go to her house, sit her down and tell her she needs to change in order to suit your needs? Trying to change people is a waste of time. I cannot stress this enough—a serious waste of your precious time. So, good luck with that!
However, she has a need that is being disguised as self-righteousness. People that are so afraid of being wrong feel as if they will lose the power and control they think they have over their little world. Hence, if they lose that power they will somehow become unloved. Interestingly enough, those with a need to be right have control issues that are usually so beyond the usual way of thinking.
“If you’re not for me, you’re against me” is their motto and there is no in between, no middle ground—a black and white world. Their biggest fear is not being loved. And they believe that if you are in disagreement with them that means that you secretly hate them. Everything is personal. Everything is about them. All things in the world they can somehow link back to themselves and not in a “we are the world” way, but in a self-serving, self-surviving way that only sees the world in black and white, gray is an unknown area that they have never seen.
How scary would that be to show someone color for the first time when they have been colorblind their whole lives?
People with this level of needing to control and be right almost never have original thought. Because original thought is always brought out of an open mindedness. Black and white viewers live in extreme narrow mindedness. Therefore, they usually live their lives through what others have told them and verbatim, they will somehow copy and paste the thoughts of others into their own minds.
A love-filled life for them cannot come easy. The narrow mindedness is there and a closed heart does not leave much room to let love in even when it is being thrown at you. They will question other people’s love because love is only one color in their eyes and an extreme love is the only one they understand. They usually are not in relationships because they think someone needs to show them love by writing it in the sky with a plane. Remember, no middle, no in between—just extremes.
Fear is running her. Tell her and show her that you love her unconditionally (umm, or not) and that when you disagree with her it only means you and she have not had the same life. Nobody has a twin. We all were raised in different ways, see the world differently and no one view is ever likened to the other. It is impossible.
We all have a right to our opinions, but frankly, forcing your opinions on others so that they will “think” you are right is just another way of saying, “I care so much about what you think of me that my whole sense of self depends on your thoughts about who I am.” I would rather have root canal all day long for a year then give a rat’s ass about what someone thinks of me. Why care what is in someone else’s head? Strange, when you think about it.
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