An evil sea creature. Why?

A story of many manipulations.

We’re in the throws of attention seeking (narcissistic supply seeking). It’s been rough. We’re also in the throws of a divorce. Then the dreaded question comes. It’s a nuclear question:

do you love me?

The dreaded question persists, she demands an answer.

Now, let’s pause for a moment here to establish a few things.

1. I do not love her, I’m leaning more towards hating her.
2. I absolutely do not want to tell her I do not love her. It will cause an explosion. I know because I’ve been here many times now.
3. I don’t want to lie and just say “yes, I love you” because she’ll think the divorce is off and all is well again. It will cause a volcanic “you lied” reaction down the line.
4. I want this question to go away.
5. I need this question to go away.

Ok, let’s pause for another moment.

1. We’re divorcing. She knows this.
2. Asking this is immature.
3. Asking this is a breach of boundary.
4. It shows entitlement.
5. It shows arrogance.
6. Persisting with the question shows a lack of empathy.

One more thing before we proceed.

She is denying the divorce. She is refusing it. She has said she will not be receiving any letters. This demonstrates:

1. She sees me as an extension of herself.
2. She does not see my individuality.
3. My decision is not relevant. Her denial is her reality and by extension (she believes) it is my reality also.

Ok, so that was control but not the control I want to focus on here. Let’s proceed.

I do everything in my power to avoid the question. I pretend to be busy, I pretend I didn’t hear. I leave the room to attend to something. I direct the question back at her by saying something daft like “Do you love you?” But of course that’s not good enough, she persists, she wants me to say the words. Her persistence is relentless. This is nuts.

Word Salad / circular conversation / avoidance

The avoidance tactics I employed are an example of word salad / circular conversation. I am deliberately avoiding the question by running around in circles and trying to deflect. You may do this at times too? If so, you now understand what circular conversation / word salad is.

These are my learned responses to the stimuli that I receive regularly. She persists further. She tests my patience, my empathic trait of patience is being tested by her narcissistic traits of lack of empathy, entitlement, and grandiosity with resultant poor boundary recognition. We are head to head, empathic trait vs. narcissistic trait.

My personality traits are driving my behavior. If I had different personality traits, I could tell her to f**k off. If I had different personality traits again I could run away, or I could lie, or I could try to explain the situation to her, or any other response.

My patience eventually wears out, I try a foolproof manipulation that I know.

1. My empathic trait of patience is now diminished.
2. My empathic trait of empathy is now reduced.
3. Am I narcissistic in this moment? Maybe, maybe not?, what I’m about to do is not driven by entitlement or haughtiness. I do want something from her though, I want her to go away so can we say that I’m being “Interpersonally exploitative”. Meh!. But my motivation is different.

I give her a half-assed answer that I know will make this nuclear question go away.

I say with as much sarcasm as I can muster,

Yes, I love evil sea creatures.

Okay so that one is pretty bad. And to the neutrals, yep I know it sounds like I’m the narcissist. For those of you who understand what just happened there. You will then appreciate that the insult is:

1. A learned behavior.
2. It’s not calculated.
3. It’s reactive abuse.
4. It’s the result of how weighted the pillars of my personality are in that moment.
5. (There isn’t a pattern of this.)

It works a charm. We now have a new question.

Are you calling me Evil?

Oh thank God. It worked. This question is not nuclear in terms of explosive magnitude. I can handle this one.

Shifting focus

The name of the manipulation tactic I used there is “Shifting focus”.

Did I spend years studying this in books? Did I spend years sitting in darkness scheming and conjuring up new and clever ways to manipulate? Did I take a course in manipulation?

No. Of course not.

Why did I manipulate?

• I did it because I had to.
• It came naturally to me.

But the most important point. I did it because my bar chart of personality traits was abnormal. Good traits were down and bad traits were up. This caused me to act in the moment to manipulate, to control, to bring my personality bar chart back to normal.

Control

• I took control of the situation.

• I deceived my wife.

• I manipulated her in that moment to get what I wanted.

• As a result, I controlled her in that moment to serve my needs.

• She tried to control me by asking that question.

• She wanted something from me and she maneuvered quite aggressively to get it.

• She tried to control me by denying my reality with her denial of the divorce proceedings.

• What did she want? Validation of her stance on the matter. Compliance. Normality. Stability. Control.