In a wonderful book “50 Psychology Classics”, the author, Tom Butler Bowdon, writes on psychologist Susan Forward and emotional blackmail. There are parallels to “Corporate Greenmail” – an abhorrent practice used by people who are completely insecure.
“If you have ever done something you did not want to, but felt you had to in order to preserve a relationship. It is not until you read Susan Forward's bestselling Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You that you realize how pervasive emotional blackmail may be.
The actual playing out of blackmail, while worrying on its own, is only indicative of deeper issues in both the blackmailer and the blackmailed. Why does one person feel that threat or intimidation is the only way to get what they want? Why do their victims allow themselves to be victimized?
What is emotional blackmail?
Most of us have had someone in our lives-be it a spouse, child, or workmate-whom we placate because we don't want to cause trouble in the relationship. Or we may be in constant open conflict with them because we resent the pressure to do something we know is not right for us.
An emotional blackmailer can be summed up by the one basic threat of “If you do not do what I want you to, you will suffer.” Because they know us well, they use their knowledge of our vulnerabilities to gain our compliance. In a normal relationship there is a give-and-take balance in which we get what we want some of the time, the other person getting what they want at other times. However, the emotional blackmailer does not really care if we are happy as long as they get what they want.
Blackmailers create a “FOG” of “Fear, Obligation, and Guilt,” which makes it sometimes difficult to see how we are actually being treated. When fear and guilt are present, it often seems as if we are the problem, not the one who is trying to blackmail us. If a spouse or workmate or friend or relative does some of the following, Forward warns, we are a potential target of blackmail:
Threaten to make things difficult if we don't go along with them, including ending the relationship.
Ø Imply that their misery is the result of our noncompliance.
Ø Make big promises if we agree to do something, which don't ever materialize.
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Ø Ignore or discount our thoughts and feelings on something.
Ø Tell us we are bad in some way if we don't give in to them.
Ø Use money or affection as rewards to be given or withdrawn depending on whether we give them what they want.
Often, the more we resist the blackmailer's demands, the more FOG they pump into the relationship. We become confused and resentful about what is happening, but we don't seem to have the ability to act decisively. After all, is it us being unreasonable?
Forward identifies six steps of emotional blackmail:
Ø The blackmailer makes a demand.
Ø The target resists.
Ø The blackmailer exerts pressure, e.g., “I only want what's best for us,” “Don't you love me?”
Ø As the target continues to resist, the blackmailer makes threats, e.g., “If you can't commit to this, maybe we should start seeing other people.”
Ø Compliance-not wanting to jeopardize the relationship, the target agrees to the demand.
Ø Repetition-the blackmailer has seen that the pattern works, so the groundwork is laid for future manipulation.
The most important step is the last, for now the blackmailer knows that whatever they have done to get our compliance, it worked. They have discovered a pattern for manipulation, and we are the victim.
Inside the mind of the blackmailer
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Why is it so important to blackmailers that they get their way, even to the extent of punishing us if we don't acquiesce? Forward observes that they are usually frustrated individuals who feel they have to take drastic action in order to get things they consider vital to them. Partners are amazed how hard their other half can suddenly become; the normal compromises of an intimate relationship are replaced by dogmatic decisions. People who cling, or are angry, or who continually test us are like this because this is the method they have adopted to protect themselves from possible loss. Though we are made to feel as if we are doing something wrong, it is more likely to be their past problems coming back to haunt the present relationship.
By punishing us blackmailers feel they are maintaining order or teaching us a lesson, and an inflexible stance makes them feel better about themselves. Yet invariably, the punishment they mete out has unintended consequences, and does not achieve their objective. Instead of being pulled into line, the target resents the whole situation and draws away.
Much blackmail comes in the form of neediness or possessiveness. If we have to go away on business or decide to take a weekend course, the partner left at home makes us feel horribly guilty. They let us know how lonely and depressed they are when we are not there. Naturally we empathize with them, but as Forward suggests, in time our compassion only increases the manipulative behavior. To stay sane and healthy ourselves, we have to draw limits and recognize that what we want to do is quite normal, and that their demands are unreasonable, even if they apparently come from a loving place.
There are many different styles of emotional blackmail. Some people issue aggressive threats; others quietly let us know what will result if they don't get their way; others give us the “silent treatment” until we find out what they want and, in desperation to reestablish normal relations, give it to them.
The closer the relationship, Forward writes, the more vulnerable we are to blackmailers. Not many of us would find it easy to stand our ground when being threatened with being cut off financially, with being divorced, or in the face of extreme anger or even physical abuse. On a more subtle level, who would find it easy to refuse a request when it is framed by the pleading question, “Don't you love me?” A daughter in the fragile stage of trying to wean herself off drugs knows she can get a loan from her mother to buy a house, because the threat is there: “If you don't, I will go back to how I was.”
If nothing else, Forward asks us to remember that emotional blackmail “sounds like it's all about you, and feels like it's all about you, but for the most part, it's not about you at all. Instead, it flows from and tries to stabilize
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some fairly insecure places inside the blackmailer.”
The effect of emotional blackmail
There is a difference between the familiar conflicts and arguments found in most relationships, and a pattern of manipulation. While the former allows us to get into skirmishes and then go back to the basically firm emotional ground of the relationship, the latter involves the attempted or real diminishment of the other person's self-one person grows their power at the expense of another. Forward notes that even very strong disagreements don't have to involve insults or aspersions being cast on a person's character; healthy conflict never involves trying to “beat the other person up emotionally.”
Blackmailers always try to make out that their motives are superior to ours, and that there is something wrong with us, for example that we're selfish or uncaring. They are skilled spin doctors, turning around their unreasonable demands so that they are “obviously” good for everyone. Whoever has a different opinion is mad or bad.
Such twisting of reality corrodes relationships, sucking out all the fun, good will, and intimacy. What may be left is a shell, the trust and caring gone. The number of topics we can talk about lessens as the rift grows, and we develop a life of avoidance and walking on eggshells. “What used to be a graceful dance of caring and closeness,” Forward poetically puts it, “becomes a masked ball in which the people involved are hiding more and more of their true selves.”
Every time we capitulate, we stop trusting our “inner compass” that normally tells us what to do to maintain our integrity. The more we become what the blackmailer wants us to be, the more we lose sight of who we are.
Why we are vulnerable
Many people who came to Forward for help from blackmailers mentioned a feeling she calls the “black hole.” The thought of their partner leaving them was so horrible that they reverted to a very reactive mindset-they would do anything to keep them. “We may function at a high level in the rest of our lives,” Forward notes, “only to turn to jelly at any rejection or perceived rejection from a partner.”
This fear of abandonment is the mother of most other fears, and all blackmailers need to do to achieve their
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aims is to start this rolling in us. But our integrity and peace of mind depend on confronting fears, and this is what Forward addresses in the second part of Emotional Blackmail. She provides tools and techniques for identifying our own emotional vulnerabilities, so that we will never be held hostage by another person again. We learn how to stand our ground, confront the real issues, set limits, and be able to tell the blackmailer that what they are doing is not acceptable.
Final comments
This is only a bare-bones treatment of Emotional Blackmail. The first part, “Understanding the blackmail transaction,” is worth the price of the book alone, but it is in the second that even greater value is to be found. Here Forward goes beyond telling us what blackmail consists of and outlines how to combat and defeat it.
One drawback of the book is that there is no list of sources or bibliography. It would have been interesting to know Forward's influences, or whether her insights are all based on her therapy practice. Her ideas on the emotional makeup and history of the blackmailer echo the work of Karen Horney, who wrote about the neurotic tendencies we develop in childhood in order to feel more secure, but erroneously take into adulthood as well.
Forward's books-she also wrote the marvelously titled Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them- have helped millions, and Emotional Blackmail is a perfect example of how a good self-help book can make a significant contribution to psychology. You finish reading it with a greater appreciation of the complexity of behavior and emotions that can be found within one person. Many of the people quoted in the book say that their partner can be both “the most wonderful, caring person in the world” and a cold-hearted blackmailer thinking only of themselves. The fact is, human nature can accommodate both. But we should never accept blackmail in our relationships because, even if they survive its stranglehold, the life is slowly squeezed out of them. Don't let this happen to yours.”
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