Dear Seaturtle:

“Both of my parents were CCP’s, not sure who was worse but probably pretty equal. Then I upgraded to living with only F, saw my mom’s errors, removed her from the pedestal. Then I had only one CCP, compared to two. Then I upgraded to N, a CCP, but lesser of one than F. So I am swimming in the right direction. Hopefully all this ’emotional predation’ is making me stronger and not wearing me down..,  what do you think?… This theory evolved as I wrote it, interesting what I came up with though and I am curious what you think”-

– My crown chakra loves it when you ask what I think (crown chakra vibrating emoji). Well, (1) I think that as an adult, you are way less affected/ harmed by (most) emotional predators than you are as a child growing up with an emotional predator. If you had a child with N, your child may feel upgraded as an adult with her own romantic partner, (2) You are swimming in the right direction, removing people from pedestals right and left (“kicking a** in the morning and taking names in the evening”, from one of my favorite all-times songs), and getting stronger!

“You quoted: Emotional predators. com… As I was first reading this, ‘they…make emotional displays to influence…charm, disarm… others,’ I thought of myself. I feel I behaved this way with F at times. When he would come to me with an issue he believed I had, it was often those moments that I conveniently decided to share something that would make him sympathize with me.. For example… See when I first read your response… I thought maybe I had been like that before, emotional displays to disarm… and I wasn’t ‘claim[ing] to be the victim…of the person [I was] in fact victimizing'”-

– your example was that you told F about M’s infidelities for the purpose of manipulating him, moving his attention away from the fact that you lied to him about your location. You then paused on that theory (“actually pause on my theory here”) and expressed that you told him about M’s infidelities because you felt closer to him following him forgiving you in that instance, and felt that you “owed him emotional honesty”-

– first, every human manipulates and lots of manipulations are NECESSARY for the well-being of the individual and society. An effective, good parent is one who successfully manipulates their child to behave in socially desirable ways by giving them a purposefully manipulative “treat” like saying “thank you” to the child, smiling at them with approval when they behave in a socially desirable way, and on the other hand, expressing disapproval (not in a severe way because a child is very sensitive to a parent’s disapproval) when the child behaves in a socially undesirable way. Necessary if you want to promote the well-being of the child and the people he/ she interacts with.

When as an adult you treat a person you don’t know politely, part of the reasoning, an instinctive reasoning perhaps, is to promote a positive exchange with the person and avoid a negative exchange. That’s manipulative but necessary because we are social animals.

So, “they…make emotional displays to influence” (from emotional predators. com) is something every person has to do for the benefit of all: it’s what good parenting and being polite is about.

If whenever you felt anger at people, you’d be honest about your anger by expressing it just as you feel it, you’d be in jail sooner than later. To be honest while not abandoning our crown chakras,.. we have to THINK before we express or act: what would be the consequence of this or that behavior, and then choose a behavior that will give us what we validly need in the situation while being fair to the other person.. manipulative, but necessary.

Back to your example: you were caught in a lie by F=> your anxiety went up.. he forgave you=> your anxiety went down, you felt close to him, and grateful you wanted to.. no longer hide what you knew, to be on his side.

But let’s say that your motivation was to redirect his attention away from your lie: could you accept that you, Seaturtle, were not a perfect specimen back then.. and never will be one? Accept this while continuing to become (a process) a better and better human being?

Personally, I do not consider a child (of minor age or adult age) a bad person for lying to and otherwise manipulating one’s own abusive/ mistreating parent, one who never corrected or apologized for his/ her significant mistreatment. Not any more than I’d consider a person being robbed a bad person for lying to/ manipulating the robber into not going through with the crime.

“My confusion on emotional sincerity is literally making me question my own emotions, I do not want to be like my parents. The example my mom set for me was that when my dad was upset with her (for money or cheating) she would always cry, I think to disarm him. I wonder if this… has something to with why I would have involuntary tears come to my face quite often when trying to have a confrontational talk with my dad. Less now, it has actually been years since I have had a real confrontation with him so I am not sure if this is still a bodily instinct”-

– Having witnessed M’s manipulative tears aimed at disarming F while not changing her own wrong behaviors, you didn’t and you don’t want to be like her, so you question your own tears.. M took away from you the privilege of simply crying.

“It is just hard for me to accept that everything was N’s fault, that seems like a slippery slope, I must have done some bad too right? You know when you read information that is so one sided, and you wonder, well I wonder the other side of the story… I wonder this, the more one sided I present the relationship, as in he did the most wrong, then what is the other side of the story as to make it more reliable information.. the self doubt here..”-

-the other side of the story is that you tried to make N someone who he is not, so to get what you validly need in a relationship, all along thinking that it’d benefit him as well if he was.. someone who he is not. Your error is in doing this for too long, and so, in totality, you have hurt yourself and you didn’t help him, maybe you made him feel worse about himself than he felt before you being in his life.

If this is what happened, you have to forgive yourself because you weren’t aware back then.  Back then (including when you posted here), you were overly impressed with his external looks (“He is a beautiful tall man…gorgeous“), with him being a hard worker (“he works works works..“) and with your (low vibrational and material) family’s opinions about him (“My family absolutely loves him… They say he (is) very financially savvy and aware of..  the business world“). You saw N through their eyes, not through your 3rd eye. So, you tried to make it work.

Forgive yourself. The only valid use of guilty feelings is to correct one’s behavior. So, in the future, see a man through your 3rd eye and if he is not what you need, let him go.

“Wow when I read this, it has N written all over it. This drove my crazy, I would ask the most direct and simple a question could be and he would act like I was speaking another language, it was infuriating actually.”- not what you need, to say the least. Let’s say he wasn’t able to answer your simple questions. In that case, you have 3 options: (1) to stay with him and ask no questions (hatchling/ Seaturtle in a cage), (2) stay with him and keep asking questions, and getting infuriated, (3) having mercy on the two of you, wishing him well and existing the relationship.

The 3rd option is the empathetic and crown chakra’s fueled answer, both heart and crown chakras vibrating in unison.

“He made me feel that if I did those things he would be more available, emotionally. He said specific things like this, I can’t remember exact words but just little comments that he would respect me more, have more to give me emotionally, if I brought home a lot of money”-

– he was dishonestly manipulative, and I doubt that he would have ben able (if you brought in a lot of money) to be more emotionally available to you. This right here is one of his wrongdoings in the relationship with you, something he did wrong to you. (It occurred to me a long time ago, by the way, that maybe part of his attraction to you was that your father is financially well off, maybe rich…?)

“We do! I welcome constructive criticism, I want to see myself!.. I want to see this correctly”- Seaturtle’s vibrating 3rd eye emoji .

I wrote to you: “N is not interested in being seen as he is, this is why he deceives”, and you responded:  “Wow. you are so right he was not interested in being seen, and I wanted to see him so badly, I thought If I tried hard enough I could…. wow“- what a waste of your life (on top of the waste of his life), it would have been to support his deceit.

“This is so tricky because he would say mental strength advice, and it felt useful to me, so I would then believe he is a good partner because he is providing me with things that are making me better. But then his mental strength being rooted in interpersonal dishonesty appeared in other ways, I didn’t see him as lacking mental strength, he lacked honesty which is like a liar giving you nutrition facts… the nutrition facts might be true, so in a nutritional conversation they appear very smart and honest, then they lie in other areas of life so it is harder to make the connection to their dishonesty, because they were honest sometimes.“-

– very well said. Unlike portrayals of people in many cartoons and certain movies, people are not one way or another all the time.

“It is certainly concerning (the substances he used and probably still uses). I gain empathy for it when I think about how his dad is an avid cannabis enthusiast/smoker, like literally always has a joint in his pocket hiding it from his wife, who pretends she doesn’t see it“- imagine you being in her position if you were married to N.. supporting his deceit, history on repeat,

“he worked 10pm-5pm the next day! He worked 20 hour shifts back to back, he slept in his truck… I sort of rescued him, I showed him how ridiculous it was , he told me, after he quit that I am the one that got him out. He was in a loop and I showed genuine concern and showed him”- you helped to work fewer hours, for one. Good thing.

“Are you saying to not wish him well? I think you are saying to wish him well but I just thought to ask haha.“- I am saying to wish him well, as in to send him a positive though and sentiment because it’d make you feel better about yourself and help you move on (I am really bad with sarcasm, so I don’t use it).

This is a long post, but well. It took me a long time to post this because of technical issues with my computer, it keeps doing strange things…

anita