Not Nice People

Manipulation is a funny, funny thing. I never used to think about it until... I'd catch myself doing it. Excuse me?!?! That's what mean girls do. That's what wicked witches and ugly stepsisters and jealous rejected lovers do. Not nice people.

It's weird to think about because it's never talked about. It's a deceptive thing and a lying thing, and that seems to be one of the biggest taboos in Christian sin confession. Prayer group time, what will everyone share? "I'm sleeping with my boyfriend... I'm struggling with pride... I've been really gossiping lately... I've been looking for revenge in a relationship" - everything comes up but never deceit or lying. Is it because we're ashamed, or because we lie to ourselves just as well as everyone else? If it's the first, it's understandable - "please pray for me, I've been using my emotions to manipulate my boyfriend into treating me in certain ways, and I've been casually deceiving him in order to use him to make me feel good." Yeah. That goes over well. But I'm more convinced that it's the latter - that we don't even know that our emotions are halfway manufactured in order to get an emotional payback.

There's a certain level that that's normal and okay. You're so dead tired, and you just want a hug, and you feel like you're going to burst into tears - and you see a good friend and you let yourself burst into tears because you want to be comforted, and if you don't show that you're hurting, you can't be helped. But there's a difference between showing what you're feeling and getting the natural benefits of that in a close relationship, and manufacturing or extenuating emotions in order to get benefits that your actual state of mind doesn't warrant. You've had a long day, and you want someone to sit and listen to you talk, but instead of saying "I've had a long day - I need to talk" you create imaginary problems and emotional difficulties and drama until you almost or entirely believe it yourself, and then present your friend with those traumas because that will get you the emotional support from a friend - support that you don't technically "deserve."

I only noticed the kinds of ways that I try and get my way "illegally" recently... but how long has it been going on? Do women just do this naturally? Cry a little, twist the truth a little, avert the eyes a little, use emotions to get what argument won't give us? Do we honestly think that all the ways that we use emotions are truly just our emotions, and do we really not see that we are buying love or time or praise or whatever else we're looking for with cheap tricks?

The problem is that once you see that you're doing a little dance for a cookie, you decide to stop dancing... but then you miss the cookie. Cookieless and forlorn, you wonder what was so wrong with shedding a tear here and there....

Sigh. I want a cookie.