Emotional Blackmail
Names of certain individuals have been changed to hide their identity.
One of the frustrating aspects of life is that some pretty important lessons are only going to be properly understood when it's probably too late to use that wisdom effectively. We as human beings are inherently too ignorant of the consequences of our own actions and those of others to properly protect ourselves from them. I suspect many of you reading this will not like what I have to say here in this post because it calls into question some of your own actions in the past (or because you genuinely think I'm an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about), so don't say I didn't warn you.
The reason why I write this is that I recently recalled a conversation I had with a friend, Tommy, many years ago and was a bit surprised that I have a completely different opinion about some of the things he said.
A Random Conversation in College
5 years ago seems like an eternity to me. So many things in my life has changed since then, which has made me realise just how stupid and immature I used to be (which to be fair is not particularly unique for someone in their early 20s). Tommy and I were pretty close friends. He was a really nice guy for the most part and everyone got along with him just fine. To cut to the chase, we used to talk about relationships quite a bit and he had a unique opinion on how to approach them.
Tommy's idea of how to start a relationship was as follows -
1) Find someone you're attracted to.
2) Befriend that person and become super close.
3) Reveal that you're interested in a relationship before you get friendzoned.
4) If she rejects (which is quite likely), cut off all contact with her and emotionally blackmail her into agreeing to be in a relationship with you.
Tommy had way more experience with these things than me, since he had been in about 7 relationships by that point and I had a grand total of zero back then (I'd much prefer going back to zero now though, but that's a story for another day). He seemed to me to be someone with some authority on a subject that I didn't really understand.
Why this Mindset Hurts Everyone
Looking back now, I analyze things quite differently. You see, Tommy wasn't some playboy who slept around for fun. He was someone who was looking for true love and was naturally a conservative kind of guy. So him being in quite a few relationships didn't mean he was great at them. On the contrary, he was either looking for love in the wrong places or was very bad at maintaining relationships - neither of which is conducive to a happy relationship.
I'll try to break this down one by one.
1) We all know that dopamine rush when we see someone we're instantly attracted to and yes, it may seem like a magical experience when you're 19 and stupid but taking huge life decisions based only on this is setting yourself up for disappointment.
It is inevitable that all our appearances will change (I know this well since I basically reinvent myself on a near yearly basis). A few years down the line, this will likely be the least important thing that maintains a relationship longterm. Tolerating another human being (plus the in-laws who always come as part of the package) whether male or female is not an easy task. That dopamine rush from years ago will count for little when the shit hits the fan (as it will eventually). You need to find something more meaningful to maintain a relationship.
The funny thing about how the mind works is that you see a pretty face and you start attributing qualities to that face even before you get to know the person. This will lead to all kinds of problems later on when reality and fantasy come to a head.
This is not to say it's wrong to be attracted to someone. But deciding that someone is the "love of your life" without actually getting to really know that person is a major red flag. Variations of this mistake involve making these decisions based on similarly superficial things like caste.
2) OK, this seems like a fairly reasonable thing to do. What will likely happen if you followed step 1 is that you'll probably find that the "love of your life" doesn't have the personality you imagined in your fantasy world. Cue surprised pikachu face.
Now for most people, this would be the moment to cut your losses and move on (and hopefully learning an important life lesson or two). But unfortunately some decide to get themselves so knee deep in cowdung during this step that they get hurt way more than they need to.
If Tommy saw a girl he really really liked (but didn't actually know), he'd come up with these extremely convoluted schemes where he would tactically infiltrate (no pun intended) the girl's friend circle so they would definitely support him when he proposed. This masterplan (which I'm sure made perfect sense in his head) would be accomplished over many months, possibly years.
I'd feel really bad for friend(s) in this scenario because they probably think they're making a friend whereas this guy really just wants to use them to get close to someone else. And of course, Tommy is doing himself a lot of harm by going through all this unnecessary effort for a girl that he may not actually get along with.
Relationships are definitely a lot of work to maintain and keep stable. Where Tommy goes wrong is that he thinks simply getting into a relationship means the job's all done and everyone lives happily ever after like the ending of a crappy romance movie. Also, creating a false version of yourself just to get into a relationship is highly unlikely to result in happiness for either party.
3) Friendzone gets a bad rap. Firstly, I'm not really sure there is a mystical perfect moment to tell someone you like them beyond which all hope is lost. But I'm fairly certain you can fall for someone too early without really knowing them only to regret that much later on.
A lot of relationships that don't have happy endings had a lot of red flags early on that neither party could appropriately identify at the right time. It's perfectly okay to develop feelings for someone but it is also just as okay for the other person to recognise that things are probably not going to work out and respond accordingly.
A girl not wanting to completely cut someone out of their lives despite not being interested in a relationship is in some ways an act of compassion, not cruelty. But toxic masculinity rarely sees it that way.
Emotional Blackmail
4) Now this is where the story takes a turn for the dark side. If you read part 4 above and wasn't somehow put off by that, you may be part of the problem. When a girl says no, it really should be taken as a signal to move on. There is nothing wrong with getting rejected and learning to deal with that is a part of growing up. Using passive-aggression to emotionally blackmail someone into agreeing to a relationship is both childish and disgusting.
But it does work obviously - at least in the short-term. Tommy did have many exes but that's the point, they're all exes. You can guilt-trip someone into a relationship but you can't create a happy, stable, loving bond out of something like that. Imagine you are a girl in this situation. You can try to learn to love the other person but the relationship will always be imbalanced because one person would be way more attached than the other.
And the scary thing that no one wants to admit is that, if someone like Tommy succeeds in his first attempt at emotional blackmail, he is likely to escalate things when the inevitable problems arise later on. How? Well Tommy would admit to me one day that he would sometimes threaten suicide (when he had no intention of actually doing it) in order to control some of his exes. He admitted this was a dick move but he couldn't help it apparently.
Because clearly nothing says happily ever after quite like a relationship maintained by the threat of suicide. Really.
Not only is Tommy is making a mockery of people who are actually struggling with suicide ideation, it creates unimaginable levels of psychological stress for the girl. What he really values isn't actually love, it's power and control. This is a vicious cycle and the next step would likely be physical abuse.
What's worse is that Tommy likes to preach about how the ideal girl would never agree to a relationship before marriage.
Yes, this fucking asshole not only blackmails his way into relationships, he also morally shames girls for it. Because such is the level of self-entitlement that toxic masculinity breeds.
Will these people realise their mistakes?
Well, I don't really know. I've done my share of stupid things in life too and so I'm probably not the one to start passing judgement on anybody. But the reason this culture exists in the first place is because no one wants to speak up against blatantly shitty behavior unless it directly affects them somehow. We'd all like to avoid the cowdung of these issues as much as possible and this apathy creates an environment for these behaviors to develop.
You see, despite what you've read above, I'll repeat it again. Tommy was a pretty nice guy who got along with almost everyone. He was not some sort of cartoon villain. And that's the real scary thing about this. If someone like Tommy can resort to this, imagine what the shithead alcoholic,wife-beating misogynists out there are really capable of.
Are all of these types of behaviors necessarily exclusive to guys? Probably not. But the way our society works, men are much more likely to escalate to toxic behavior than women.
Oh and if you're wondering what happened to Tommy, he did finally realise that his approach to relationships wasn't working out. But this wasn't in the manner you would expect. He figured that the reason he hadn't found true love yet was because he wasn't blackmailing hard enough. So he has retired from relationships and is now looking to find love via the ultimate blackmail - marriage.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
One of the frustrating aspects of life is that some pretty important lessons are only going to be properly understood when it's probably too late to use that wisdom effectively. We as human beings are inherently too ignorant of the consequences of our own actions and those of others to properly protect ourselves from them. I suspect many of you reading this will not like what I have to say here in this post because it calls into question some of your own actions in the past (or because you genuinely think I'm an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about), so don't say I didn't warn you.
The reason why I write this is that I recently recalled a conversation I had with a friend, Tommy, many years ago and was a bit surprised that I have a completely different opinion about some of the things he said.
A Random Conversation in College
5 years ago seems like an eternity to me. So many things in my life has changed since then, which has made me realise just how stupid and immature I used to be (which to be fair is not particularly unique for someone in their early 20s). Tommy and I were pretty close friends. He was a really nice guy for the most part and everyone got along with him just fine. To cut to the chase, we used to talk about relationships quite a bit and he had a unique opinion on how to approach them.
Tommy's idea of how to start a relationship was as follows -
1) Find someone you're attracted to.
2) Befriend that person and become super close.
3) Reveal that you're interested in a relationship before you get friendzoned.
4) If she rejects (which is quite likely), cut off all contact with her and emotionally blackmail her into agreeing to be in a relationship with you.
Tommy had way more experience with these things than me, since he had been in about 7 relationships by that point and I had a grand total of zero back then (I'd much prefer going back to zero now though, but that's a story for another day). He seemed to me to be someone with some authority on a subject that I didn't really understand.
Why this Mindset Hurts Everyone
Looking back now, I analyze things quite differently. You see, Tommy wasn't some playboy who slept around for fun. He was someone who was looking for true love and was naturally a conservative kind of guy. So him being in quite a few relationships didn't mean he was great at them. On the contrary, he was either looking for love in the wrong places or was very bad at maintaining relationships - neither of which is conducive to a happy relationship.
I'll try to break this down one by one.
1) We all know that dopamine rush when we see someone we're instantly attracted to and yes, it may seem like a magical experience when you're 19 and stupid but taking huge life decisions based only on this is setting yourself up for disappointment.
It is inevitable that all our appearances will change (I know this well since I basically reinvent myself on a near yearly basis). A few years down the line, this will likely be the least important thing that maintains a relationship longterm. Tolerating another human being (plus the in-laws who always come as part of the package) whether male or female is not an easy task. That dopamine rush from years ago will count for little when the shit hits the fan (as it will eventually). You need to find something more meaningful to maintain a relationship.
The funny thing about how the mind works is that you see a pretty face and you start attributing qualities to that face even before you get to know the person. This will lead to all kinds of problems later on when reality and fantasy come to a head.
This is not to say it's wrong to be attracted to someone. But deciding that someone is the "love of your life" without actually getting to really know that person is a major red flag. Variations of this mistake involve making these decisions based on similarly superficial things like caste.
2) OK, this seems like a fairly reasonable thing to do. What will likely happen if you followed step 1 is that you'll probably find that the "love of your life" doesn't have the personality you imagined in your fantasy world. Cue surprised pikachu face.
If Tommy saw a girl he really really liked (but didn't actually know), he'd come up with these extremely convoluted schemes where he would tactically infiltrate (no pun intended) the girl's friend circle so they would definitely support him when he proposed. This masterplan (which I'm sure made perfect sense in his head) would be accomplished over many months, possibly years.
I'd feel really bad for friend(s) in this scenario because they probably think they're making a friend whereas this guy really just wants to use them to get close to someone else. And of course, Tommy is doing himself a lot of harm by going through all this unnecessary effort for a girl that he may not actually get along with.
Relationships are definitely a lot of work to maintain and keep stable. Where Tommy goes wrong is that he thinks simply getting into a relationship means the job's all done and everyone lives happily ever after like the ending of a crappy romance movie. Also, creating a false version of yourself just to get into a relationship is highly unlikely to result in happiness for either party.
3) Friendzone gets a bad rap. Firstly, I'm not really sure there is a mystical perfect moment to tell someone you like them beyond which all hope is lost. But I'm fairly certain you can fall for someone too early without really knowing them only to regret that much later on.
A lot of relationships that don't have happy endings had a lot of red flags early on that neither party could appropriately identify at the right time. It's perfectly okay to develop feelings for someone but it is also just as okay for the other person to recognise that things are probably not going to work out and respond accordingly.
A girl not wanting to completely cut someone out of their lives despite not being interested in a relationship is in some ways an act of compassion, not cruelty. But toxic masculinity rarely sees it that way.
Emotional Blackmail
4) Now this is where the story takes a turn for the dark side. If you read part 4 above and wasn't somehow put off by that, you may be part of the problem. When a girl says no, it really should be taken as a signal to move on. There is nothing wrong with getting rejected and learning to deal with that is a part of growing up. Using passive-aggression to emotionally blackmail someone into agreeing to a relationship is both childish and disgusting.
But it does work obviously - at least in the short-term. Tommy did have many exes but that's the point, they're all exes. You can guilt-trip someone into a relationship but you can't create a happy, stable, loving bond out of something like that. Imagine you are a girl in this situation. You can try to learn to love the other person but the relationship will always be imbalanced because one person would be way more attached than the other.
And the scary thing that no one wants to admit is that, if someone like Tommy succeeds in his first attempt at emotional blackmail, he is likely to escalate things when the inevitable problems arise later on. How? Well Tommy would admit to me one day that he would sometimes threaten suicide (when he had no intention of actually doing it) in order to control some of his exes. He admitted this was a dick move but he couldn't help it apparently.
Because clearly nothing says happily ever after quite like a relationship maintained by the threat of suicide. Really.
What's worse is that Tommy likes to preach about how the ideal girl would never agree to a relationship before marriage.
Yes, this fucking asshole not only blackmails his way into relationships, he also morally shames girls for it. Because such is the level of self-entitlement that toxic masculinity breeds.
Will these people realise their mistakes?
Well, I don't really know. I've done my share of stupid things in life too and so I'm probably not the one to start passing judgement on anybody. But the reason this culture exists in the first place is because no one wants to speak up against blatantly shitty behavior unless it directly affects them somehow. We'd all like to avoid the cowdung of these issues as much as possible and this apathy creates an environment for these behaviors to develop.
You see, despite what you've read above, I'll repeat it again. Tommy was a pretty nice guy who got along with almost everyone. He was not some sort of cartoon villain. And that's the real scary thing about this. If someone like Tommy can resort to this, imagine what the shithead alcoholic,wife-beating misogynists out there are really capable of.
Are all of these types of behaviors necessarily exclusive to guys? Probably not. But the way our society works, men are much more likely to escalate to toxic behavior than women.
Oh and if you're wondering what happened to Tommy, he did finally realise that his approach to relationships wasn't working out. But this wasn't in the manner you would expect. He figured that the reason he hadn't found true love yet was because he wasn't blackmailing hard enough. So he has retired from relationships and is now looking to find love via the ultimate blackmail - marriage.
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