Puppet Mastery, Manipulation, and Control

“It works as long as you’re the smartest, but then the curtain comes back. Nobody likes being manipulated.”

People hate that word, “manipulation.” As a rule, they don’t hate the concept unless they’re on the receiving end of it, and even then sometimes they appear to prefer it to dealing with…well, reality.

Most of the time on this blog, we define words in our own way, but in this case we think “manipulate” is already clearly defined:

manipulate: to manage or utilize skillfully; to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one’s own advantage; to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one’s purpose.

That definition explains why manipulation is a problem – people do not have the power to control. We do not have the right to “change (someone) so as to serve our own purposes.” We can’t control other people, we can’t control situations, and we can’t control the world around us. At best, we can choose to engage with people, situations, and the world, but attempts to control only do damage.

Why People Manipulate

People generally manipulate because they’re afraid, and they think that manipulation is the way to guard against their fears becoming reality. It’s a learned behavior – pulling other people’s levers has worked in the past, so they keep doing it. If it ain’t broke… Usually manipulation is to protect against the fear of being alone, or of being vulnerable, or of being rejected. Manipulation can also come from wanting other people to be happy and believing that those people cannot or will not make themselves happy. Whatever the motivation, controlling others is bad, and it always does damage.

We’ve found that sometimes we do this. 

It did a lot of relationship damage in the past, and we both resolved not to manipulate anymore – no matter what other people wanted us to do. It’s a challenge to stick to it, and we keep finding new ways in which a previous pattern is manipulative, but…ultimately, we have to let people make their choices, as hard as that might be to live with. And it is hard – it’s very difficult to watch the people you love do damage to themselves. It’s also very scary to feel like you’re giving someone the choice to not be in a relationship with you, maybe for the first time.

Am I manipulating? Is this manipulative? What do I do with these emotion things you guys?

If you create or modify your words, deeds, or emotions in order to create or modify the words, deeds, or emotions of someone else, that is manipulation. Basically, if you say stuff or show a particular emotion just or partially to try to convince someone to do something – it’s manipulative.

If, however, you ask someone to do something, clearly explain your wants and needs while giving the other person all pertinent information, and you’re willing to accept any answer they might give, good job, you aren’t manipulating!

In trying to figure this out, we’ve run across other people being manipulative and been fascinated by it. We call these people Puppet Masters – usually they’re people who are smarter (“people” or “street” smart, not necessarily “book” smart) and who understand people better than average. Puppet Masters are aware that they’re being manipulative and they’re making a choice to behave that way, although they very rarely would use that word.

Often the Puppet Masters manipulate very much like ninjas – they don’t want people to know they’re being manipulated, after all. A classic example is the “get your boss to think your idea is his idea” scheme. If he realizes that you’re trying to manipulate him, the ruse by definition doesn’t work.

One of the most interesting things is when a Puppet Master tries to manipulate one of us, and we see what they’re doing and are clear (with words, or just body language) that their manipulation isn’t going to work, because…busting a puppet master is kind of entertaining. I got no strings, to hold me down… 

Depending on what a Puppet Master is trying to control (and why), how good at manipulation they are, how sneaky they’re trying to be, and how deeply rooted manipulation is in their soul, their reactions range from, “oh, hey, you’re good at this too, smirk, you got me” to “ohh f$%#, must destroy you now.” That last reaction isn’t a ton of fun to deal with, FYI…

We have a saying – “puppet mastery works as long as you’re the smartest one in the room.” So… as soon as someone with as much or more observational power and relational intelligence shows up, everything changes. And when everything changes, people are faced with this uncomfortable realization: if the people I’m manipulating figure out what I’m doing, that’s sure going to suck. When someone realizes that they’ve been manipulated, all of the manipulator’s power to control goes away, along with a massive portion of the trust that exists in that relationship. People are hurt, and they feel betrayed, and they begin to see the damage that manipulation has done to them.

God

It sometimes feels like God manipulates too. He pushes people, and pulls them, and he listens to their choices, but only to a point. In the end, how much choice we have is always up for furious debate. Often, he works in ways that hurt but are to our benefit. Over and over in our lives, he’s pushed and managed and done stuff that we saw happen that we didn’t think we wanted…

…and over and over again, it’s worked out in ways we never saw coming with more joy than we could really process.

God doesn’t actually manipulate. He’s just…in control.

It’s all a little bit like a chess game – people are the pieces on the board. We try to control other pieces by sheer force of will. Like…by staring at the other pieces really hard and maybe having some feels in their direction. It’s futile, and we look really ridiculous for trying. God, on the other hand, made the board, he made the pieces, and he wrote the rules of the game. And he can change any of those, whenever he needs to.

He is also always the smartest one in the room – any room. He knows and can see far beyond our itty bitty vision – which means that when he controls us, he actually has enough knowledge to know what’s in our best interests or what needs to happen to fulfill The Plan.

For the Record…

We both tend to think but if you’d just let me control it, it would be better. It would be safer. That’s a lie, though. We can’t control. Since manipulation is an attempt to control, we really shouldn’t be doing that either.

We’re still not quite sure we’re happy about all of this.

God sees and knows everything, and is actually in control – he also knows our true best interests and he has the determination to do what he knows is best. So…the best plan we’ve found so far is to stop trying to manipulate other people, relax into relationships rather than trying to wrangle them all the time, let go in general, and…stop getting in God’s way.