If He Makes You His Puppet, It’s Not Love

Under phrases like “if you don’t feel jealous, there is no true love”, “if you really love me you don’t need to go out or be with anyone else”, or “love means guessing what the other wants and needs” we endure unfair and humiliating situations in favor of maintaining a romantic love, most of the time fictional.

Love, like almost everything in life, is learned. And sometimes we learn it the wrong way. The idea of ​​romantic and illusory love that spreads today does a disservice to personal relationships. The values ​​found in healthy relationships are totally contradictory to the values ​​of passionate love based on all or nothing.

Love is one of the most powerful feelings that exist, and each one gives it its own characteristics and ideas that in many cases are not entirely true. The vast majority of relationship problems tend to come from romantic demands on love and a partner that are far removed from reality. These distorted ideas of passionate love can compromise even complementary partners.

Handling characteristics

The manipulation  occurs when a person  exercises control over the behavior of another person. To do this, they use persuasion techniques seeking to nullify or condition the judgment capacities of others. Mental manipulation could be a particular form of selfishness.

Manipulators often use their partners without remorse, with a narcissistic goal of power or to achieve their goals. They may rely on lies or seduction, even coercion by threat or force to destabilize the victim. Manipulative people engineer situations so that the behavior of others is directed to their own benefit. If the manipulator is good, the manipulated person will not realize that he is falling for his game.

People who are more prone to manipulating their partners tend to have low self-esteem, feelings of guilt and inferiority. There are other factors that can influence manipulation, such as external situations: loss of family, breakup, divorce or loss of employment.

How to recognize a manipulator?

Recognizing manipulative people will save us a lot of trouble and frustration in our everyday life. If our partner hates receiving a “no” for an answer and when you try to resist persuasion attempts, we observe that they do not respond as they normally do, even losing their roles, it is an indication that we find ourselves with a person who cannot bear not have influence over us.

People who manipulate in the couple love to show their strengths and their prowess. They are rarely shy people. They tend to place the responsibility on  others when the results they obtain are not what they expected. They are  people who are not focused on what they can offer or how they can help, they live centered on themselves and do not seem to know the meaning of the word reciprocity.

They will always talk about themselves and rarely ask disinterestedly how you are or if you need anything. In addition, we will realize that, as we give in, in addition to not appreciating our actions, they will want more and more. Manipulative people are often extremely insecure. Despite this, they will try to appear to be the opposite, using selfish and domineering attitudes to cover up their fears.

The first essential step to solve a manipulation situation is to be aware that we are being manipulated. Realizing that we have been manipulated by the person we love, to the point of becoming their puppet, is something that will cause us great emotional distress.

The solutions that we can find to this problem are several. One of them would be to end the relationship due to the impossibility of the couple’s behavior to change. Another could be to modify the tendency of requests, making the manipulator in the couple learn to ask us for things directly and not indirectly, as they are used to taking us to their land without showing us their letters or their true wishes.

Images courtesy of Catrin Welz-Stein