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September 10 - October 22, 2022
skillful manipulators. They swathe us in a comforting intimacy when they get what they want, but they frequently wind up threatening us in order to get their way, or burying us under a load of guilt and self-reproach when they don’t.
Just because there’s emotional blackmail in a close relationship doesn’t mean it’s doomed. It simply means that we need to honestly acknowledge and correct the behavior that’s causing us pain, putting these relationships back on a more solid foundation.
Emotional blackmail is a powerful form of manipulation in which people close to us threaten, either directly or indirectly, to punish us if we don’t do what they want.
At the heart of any kind of blackmail is one basic threat, which can be expressed in many different ways: If you don’t behave the way I want you to, you will suffer.
Knowing that we want love or approval, our blackmailers threaten to withhold it or take it away altogether, or make us feel we must earn it.
FOG is a shorthand way of referring to Fear, Obligation and Guilt, the tools of the blackmailer’s trade.
Some let us know precisely what the consequences will be if we displease them, others emphasize how much we are making them suffer.
No matter how confident they look on the outside, blackmailers are operating out of high degrees of anxiety.
Emotional blackmail becomes their defense against feeling hurt and afraid.
Remember: Blackmail takes two—this
Manipulation becomes emotional blackmail when it is used repeatedly to coerce us into complying with the blackmailer’s demands, at the expense of our own wishes and well-being.
We all have a basic right not to live with poison in our relationships, whether it’s dishonesty or addictions or any form of abuse.
If someone confronts us fairly about something we’ve done, the words and feelings may be strong, but if there are no threats and no pressure, there is no blackmail.
When you see that other people are trying to get their way regardless of the cost to you, you’re looking at the bottom-line behavior of the emotional blackmailer.
But despite normal disagreements and manipulation, there’s a rhythm of give and take, a sense of balance and fairness.
You can’t write a check for a thousand or a million or 10 million dollars and buy closeness, no matter what blackmailers might insist.
Just the hint of anger in another person’s voice frequently sparks fears of rejection, disapproval or abandonment and, in the extreme, visions of violence or harm.
But love and willingness can quickly fall out of the equation when replaced by obligation and an enforced sense of duty.
Where you find one element of the FOG, the others are almost certainly close by.
giving in once or twice doesn’t end the blackmail, it only intensifies the demands.
Even if the guilt we feel is appropriate, an emotional blackmailer will not let us forget what we’ve done or allow our guilt to serve its function of helping to correct our behavior and serving as a teacher for the future.
Even if our bearings are good, the FOG that emotional blackmailers create adds a new dimension that disorients us in the midst of even the most familiar situations and relationships.
Emotional blackmailers often behave as though each disagreement is the make-or-break factor in the relationship.
When safety and intimacy are gone from a relationship, we get used to acting. We pretend that we’re happy when we’re not and say that everything is fine when it isn’t.
If we allow other people’s approval or disapproval to define us, we set ourselves up to believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with us whenever we incur displeasure.
Confident, secure people don’t need to push others around to get what they want or to prove how strong they are.
It’s a hard lesson to learn, but the truth is that you can’t save somebody from drowning if you can barely keep your own head above water.
