Are you trying to manipulate?

I used to spend a lot of time trying to come up with the perfect thing I could say to a person to get them to change their mind and act the way I wanted them to act. It never worked. Attempts at manipulation often don’t. Or if it does work short term, it creates ill will and long-term resentment.

Hallmarks of manipulation are if you use guilt, shaming, ask people to do something “for you” or complaining. It’s based on the premise that you know better than they do what is good.

It’s been a long time since I’ve done it, but I will always remember spending time on my walk to work (when I worked in NY city) thinking about my husband’s career. Not my career, not what I could do that day to further my own career, but instead focusing on his career. I was trying to convince him to make a change, trying to manipulate him into doing what I wanted. But he didn’t want it. And that created a lot of ill will. Plus, I wasn’t prepared for my day!  I had wasted all that thinking time.  

What I needed to do was to accept the other person as they were, that they get to choose what they want, and I don’t get a say. That’s because we need to respect the other person’s free will, just like we want them to respect ours.  If they ask, then I can weigh in, but not until then.

I knew I had done something right when my then college aged son asked my opinion on something. He didn’t do as I recommended, but I knew that because I hadn’t tried to manipulate him, he felt free to ask and my opinion and make his own choice. That preserved the relationship.