Manipulation

Another book I just finished reading is Boundaries, by Drs. Henry Cloud & John Townsend.  The tagline is "When to say yes, how to say no to take control of your life."  I think a better tagline for me would be "How to manipulate others by controlling yourself."

Manipulation has a very negative connotation.  And yet we need to be able to influence the behavior and personality choices of others, right?  To be clear, the book speaks against trying to manipulate people for selfish reasons and in unhealthy ways.  For the purposes of this blog, then, let's define manipulation as "motivating people to do what they should do for their own good."

I am the least manipulative of people.  I find myself saying "please" to my dog.  Sheesh.

I grew up in the Northwest, where open-mindedness is king.  We can agree to disagree and celebrate our diversity, but say that someone's behavior is wrong and you've become a bigot.  I didn't realize how much I was influenced by this philosophy until I was an adult.  I accept people as they are and don't try hard to change them, even when I believe they are harming themselves.  I can see now how big of a personality flaw this is for me.

So how can I change another person?  The answer provided in Boundaries is:  you can't change another person, so change yourself.

All my life, I've held to the philosophy of "you can't change another person, so pray that God will."  This concept of changing yourself in order to change someone else is revolutionary for me.  Basically it means saying, "I don't like what you're doing, and here's what I'm going to do about it."  In a close relationship, my action will most likely cause a reaction in the other person - in other words, they will change.  Of course, they may not change the way I want them to, but if needed, I can make another change in myself, which will probably lead to another reactive change in the other person.  Regardless of whether the other person's change is positive or not, I have made a positive move to control my own life.

Examples.  My son was not being still or focused during his homework tonight.  I was getting frustrated.  Since he was not changing his behavior after my verbal requests, I said that I was not going to do his homework with him until he could be still.  (He didn't change, so I did.)  Since he needed to finish his homework in order to do something fun that he had asked to do, after a little break he was able to be still and finish his homework.  (Motivation for a reactive change.  Manipulation accomplished.  Progress for me - yay!)

It's not always that simple, of course.  An ongoing issue in my marriage was that my husband is seemingly incapable of driving the speed limit.  Knowing how I felt about the issue was not motivation enough for him to change.  I was very frustrated that he wouldn't change; he was very frustrated that I kept bringing it up. 

How could I have changed myself?  I could have refused to ride with him.  I could have asked to get out of the car when I felt unsafe.  Either of those choices would have been difficult for me and would have raised a new set of issues.  (Are we really going to pay for gas for two cars to go to the same place?  How am I going to walk home from here in the rain?)  But I'm sure that my husband would have reacted to either of those choices.  I'm not sure how he would have reacted, but perhaps my actions would have been motivation enough for him to change.

An example from the book is a man from a rich family whose father always had strings attached to monetary gifts.  He resented his father's selfish manipulation of his life, so he began to say no to his father's requests.  Of course, the money stopped coming, and the man had to figure out how to live without that income.  But the requests stopped, too.  He achieved the change in his father he was hoping for, but at a cost to himself.

Changing myself in hopes of changing others is going to be costly.  It will create a new set of issues or hardships that need to be worked through.  I wonder about the present situation.  If I had been armed with these insights a year or two ago, I could have said, "I am not going to work my *** off for your business if you cannot stop putting it at risk."  This would have caused all kinds of hardships.  There would have been a financial impact on our business (and therefore our family) at a time when surviving the economic times was foremost on my mind.  There most definitely would have been a relational impact, and we would have had to share an explanation with family, friends, and employees for my "erratic" behavior.  But I can't help thinking that that would have been motivation enough for my husband to change himself.  And it surely would have been a better fallout than what we are facing now.

I wish I had read Boundaries at any point in my 20's.  I really think my life would be substantially different today.  If you haven't read it yet, buy it or check it out from the library soon.  It is definitely worth your time.

"Let a righteous man strike me - it is a kindness; let him rebuke me - it is oil on my head."
Psalm 141:5