When you are in a relationship, you go through a lot of things. Some of them are closer to love while some of them are closer to hate. You can only be emotionally blackmailed by someone if you are attached to them and they ask you to do something which you oppose at first but out of guilt say yes to it.
The dynamics of any relationship is transactional in nature, and it is not only for couples but for all people who share some sort of relationship or another in which either their fears are being exploited, or they are the ones who are exploiting the fears of the other person. All of us have secrets and skeletons in the closet that only our closed ones know and we don’t want others to know these things. People will always be quick to feel guilty when in their head they are convinced that what that their past actions have been one of sin or social misconduct which other people can despise or punish them for.
#1. Check If You Are Being Controlled
Sometimes we think that we are not being controlled and are acting out of our own will which is not the case. A cunning and controlling person with whom we share any kind of relationship can make us believe that what we are doing is what we want and not something they have tricked us into doing. All emotional blackmail starts with establishing control over you and more often than not, it is termed as love because they need to tell you they value you. If your partner or parent is too possessive and tells you to do this and do that and not to some things that he/she himself does, you need to spot and call out their hypocrisy. People, who are needy, want to make their partner submissive so that they always have someone and do not feel the pain of loneliness again. If you keep taking orders and your commands are always ignored understand that you are being controlled and this is a setup for emotional blackmail. A person who always has mature relationships with people will obey a few things they have to see and get obedience himself when they demand it.
#2. Tell Them That Hurting Themselves Will Only Make Everything Woeful
Break-ups are hard and so is moving out of the house if your partner constantly tells you that he/ she will hurt himself/herself badly if you leave them then you will stay in the relationship out of kindness to them but not because you are happy. Happiness has a way of disappearing and emerging that nobody till now has pinned down. But what we do know for sure is the feeling which is coursing through us, be it happiness or sadness. Use sentences which start with me so that your partner or the person, who want to spend less time with, understand that you need a certain breathing room to think and change ways which are disturbing you. Bring them to a level of consciousness where they don’t take everything personally and see that the shortcomings you are talking about are in fact there and it is something that one can only individually resolve. So, blackmailing you for staying with them won’t fetch them vendetta or victory.
#3. Demonstrate That They Are Taking You For Granted
In a lot of relationships, there is also one who feels like he/she is, doing more than the other is and this may be true or false, but one can never know until they talk about it because as humans we are victims to our sense of exaggeration. Talk about something that you sacrificed for them and when you really wanted to do something that coincided with one of their events they did not do the same. This honest talk will make them promise that they won’t be as selfish and you can give them one more chance, telling them that you will use the power of the pen to call them out again if they do something like this.
#4. Show Them That Love Doesn’t Include Blackmail
It may seem common knowledge, but we do forget at a rapid rate as things are always going left right and center when we are alive. You need to instill the knowledge that whenever they demand something from you, they must be prepared for yes or no and not threaten you or start whining about hurting themselves when they get a response they did not expect. One who is prepared for both the reactions is never irrational and is not always on the cusp of emotional blackmail for he/she knows that all love is not lost when the person they care about gives them a response which is not what they expected.
#5. Practice Patience
Sometimes even when you told them what the situation is and how you and the person who is emotionally blackmailing, you are just elements which have experienced this situation that is clearly a result of external forces and not your own actions. This is a great way of eliminating blame from the equation as most people take to emotionally blackmailing others when they feel responsible for wrongdoing and cannot deny self-blame until and unless they hurt themselves or get words of forgiveness or pardon from you that gives them the strength to believe it wasn’t their fault. Blame takes a lot of time to go. So, if the person who is blackmailing you doesn’t see the light soon, wait and be content with the knowledge that you have already killed the person who attended to their irrational cries of help and is just waiting for them to notice that you are not obliged to do what they want all the time. This will force them to develop a new understanding of the relationship and tell them that there is no emotional blackmail in a relationship of equals and if they don’t correct it you will leave them.
#6. Rationalize Their Demands
It is more often than not that the demands one makes to another have to be discussed and simplified so that both of you can foresee the consequences of the demand being met and the demand being unmet. See if they use 'if and only' statements a lot and take help from something that happened in their past that they are unable to remove from their personality, using it as an excuse to continue demanding things from you which are not feasible and practical. When anyone tells you that you were better before kids or that you never minded them interrupting you while speaking before, this tells you that you are over-reacting and asking you to make this behavior of theirs acceptable. Tell them that you have your own identity and as a partner you need both love and respect because you give both love and respect. Love when you sacrifice things and respect when you demand things so they must too sacrifice and demand so that threats don’t emerge as the tolerance is high for both the partners. Rationalizing demands is all about comparing the consequences of the demand being met and unmet with the help of a pros and cons list.
Tell us how you stopped emotional blackmail. Drop your comments in the section below. We would love to hear from you!
24 Opinions
5 Opinions
