I Want You

[rob123]

I hate to say we can manipulate others by our actions, but that is definitely the truth.

I wanted to clarify this statement as I see how it could be misconstrued. In every R that we have in life, there is an ebb and flow that is driven by our interactions with the other person. You could go to any place in town on any given night and just watch interactions between others, yet you have no idea what that interaction means to those people who are interacting.

One person may feel the interaction is loving while the other may feel the interaction is burdensome. One person may feel the interaction is friendly while the other person may feel the interaction is hostile. There are countless examples of this that could be used over and over again.

My point is that we do not actually manipulate the other person. We just act in a manner to achieve the desired outcome in our interactions with other people. For instance, if you walk up to a complete stranger on the sidewalk tomorrow morning, look him into the eyes, say hello and extend your hand, what would the typical response be? He most likely would say hello and extend his hand to shake yours. Did you manipulate him to do that? I would say you simply interacted with that person in a way to get a desired response.

Take the same example above, but this time you walk up to that stranger, say get out of my way, *****, and push him in the chest. What would the typical response be? He most likely would either start running or may push you back or punch you. If you get punched, would you say you manipulated that person? We can argue about definitions and intent all day long, but I would say that we manipulate situations all the time. If we want our significant other to have sex with us, we might pat them on the rear. We may kiss their neck. Are we manipulating them? Some could argue yes, some could argue no.

I propose that in reality, it really does not matter. In every interaction we ever have with other humans, we do things to get the outcome that we desire. That is where we begin to break down. We do thing to get outcomes WE desire. That other person is doing things to get outcomes THEY desire. The key, in my opinion, is to find a way to achieve shared outcomes in any R. That is what this is all about, in my humble opinion. Realizing that our interactions with people in Rs drive how the R functions.

We have our own map for how Rs should function. The question remains, how do we adjust our map (talking about changing ourselves) to make our map more compatible with other's maps.