assertiveness therapy

Charlotte is a lovely 52-year old woman, she has a lot of things going for her, yet her sweet and complaint nature was so horribly manipulated by her now estranged husband and their adult boys that she had to seek therapy.

"When I saw how my boys had grown up to be as abusive towards me as their dad, and had organized the house to suit themselves, I felt like an unpaid housekeeper in a men's domain," says Charlotte. "They never helped me around the house or listened to anything I said. They twisted all my words and made me look a fool."

"I needed to separate, to get away and find myself before I went mad," says Charlotte. "I'm in therapy, learning how to assert myself, and I hope that this new skill will help me find a satisfying job--not involving housework--and a decent new guy."

"Yes," laughs Charlotte. "I want to get married again. Why wouldn't I want to spend my sunset years with a guy who cherishes me?"

One of the first things Charlotte learned in therapy was to be aware of conversational manipulation, which can include something as seemingly innocuous as someone changing the subject. By changing the subject the manipulator prevents her from continuing a line of discussion that is important to her and damaging to the other party.

"If the subject is really important to me," says Charlotte, "then I must refuse to be side-tracked. I must assert myself, and return immediately to the topic I want to discuss. If my husband or the boys persist in changing the subject then I must stop the conversation immediately and advise them that I will put my case in writing and will have no further dealings with them until my issues are addressed."

Another clever conversational screw Charlotte is picking up on is the one where people make you repeat what you say in an attempt to make you look foolish.

"Unless the culprit is really deaf," says Charlotte, "I now recognize this ploy and suggest very sweetly that he or she needs their ears testing. There was a time when I used to fall for this trick time and time again with my husband. Now, I refuse to repeat what I say if I’m reasonably sure that I was heard the first time."

Silence, of course, is an age-old conversational screwing tactic. It is designed to infuriate you, test your limits and see if you will lose your temper. Faced with a stone deaf wall from her husband and boys every time she wanted help around the house, Charlotte often lost her temper. They gained power and she lost it. Given the choice to ignore the silence and chat away merrily - or to decide that these power games are not worth dealing with - Charlotte preferred to walk away and stay away.

A particular conversational screwing problem for Charlotte is her estranged husband’s use of unwarranted emotional outbursts - anger or tears - to unnerve her and distract her from a situation where he was at a disadvantage. Rather than being manipulated into feeling fear or sympathy when he uses anger or tears to unnerve her and distract her from a position of power, Charlotte now sees these ploys for what they are and is learning to ignore them.

"My boys are also particularly good at using anger to manipulate me," sighs Charlotte, "I suppose it’s a trait they learned from their father. I just hope I can teach them to respect women before they get married and start repeating history with their own wives."

Other conversational manipulations Charlotte is learning to deal with are situations where vital information is withheld from her, either allowing her to find out the truth from someone else or deliberately choosing to divulge the truth to her at the worst possible time when she is unable to protect herself. Rather than trusting people, Charlotte now makes a point to ask lots of questions and get things down in writing if necessary.

The main problem Charlotte has with her estranged husband is dealing with his bad language, insults and verbal intimidation. Charlotte has learned that this type of conversational screwing is done by very, very small men who need to build themselves up by putting her down. Nobody can put her down without her permission, and now that Charlotte is seeing things from a different perspective she is learning to laugh at verbal intimidation from him. She is learning to see it as a sort of backhanded compliment.

"If I weren’t the lovely lady that I am," she laughs, "he wouldn’t be attempting to put me down. Right?"

Charlotte is looking for a decent job right now and is doing her best to put her new assertiveness training into practice. Interviews typically place the interviewee in a position of powerlessness, and Charlotte is gaining a lot of confidence from being able to spot a manipulative interviewer from the start. Twice already she has stopped an interview in mid-progress and said that she was no longer interested in the job. She doesn’t want to work for a company that use screwing tactics on prospective employees.

"I put up with too much from my husband to ever want to be put down again," asserts Charlotte, "and now that I’m separated from him I’m becoming a new woman.

"There's a new guy waiting for me - I know it - when I've totally transformed myself into an assertive woman."

abusive relationships

Clara, 46, had enjoyed five years of freedom, living her life independently, before she married at 21. She thought she was in control of her life and knew everything when she entered the relationship - as young adults do at that age - but she was so naive that she now blushes in shame at how she was manipulated.

"Up until then," explains Clara, "I only knew about physical violence and verbal abuse. I didn't know about manipulation, coercion, control, possessiveness, jealousy, blaming and guilt. I didn't even know about romantic love - I had read about falling in love, but I had never experienced it - I just thought that it would happen after marriage."

"I married the new boy on the block," explains Clara. "My mom thought he was a wonderful - a good, clean hard working boy - and she did everything in her power to bring us together. But she didn't know, and neither did I, what he was really like until it was too late."

"I did witness slight signs of violence and bad temper in him before we married, but it didn't worry me too much," explains Clara. "My dad had been a violent man and mom had divorced him and ended up happy, so if the same thing happened to me I thought I could always get away - but falling pregnant made me a prisoner in a way I never imagined possible."

"Knowing young women who ended up being bashed by their husbands in drunken rages, I guess I could have done worse," says Clara. "He didn't drink, and when he raged he thankfully smashed furniture and windows rather than me."

"The abuse just started off small and built up to a crunch time," explains Clara. "I felt like a frog being boiled in hot water without the will or wherewithal to jump out."

"I felt bad when he put me down because I'd gained so much weight during the second pregnancy," says Clara, "but I felt worse when he discarded me as 'dead meat' when I was later diagnosed with cancer. The cancer treatment caused me to lose a lot of weight fast - which was good - but when I lost my hair I was shocked and humiliated when he compared my worth as a woman with our young and beautiful daughter with long, golden hair. Imagine how horrible that was."

"Anyway," says Clara, "I survived all this - and got back on my feet - and I only snapped and decided to end the marriage when he started coming home during the day, when my daughter was at school, demanding sex, violently raging at me in front of our little boy and scaring the wits out of the poor thing."

"That was the crunch for me," says Clara. "I jumped out of that marriage faster than any frog has ever jumped!"

"He re-married very quickly and started another family - but he didn't learn from the first experience," says Clara. "Maybe he thinks I divorced him because he wasn't abusive enough with me and needs to try harder next time around."

"My kids still see their dad and tell me that he's worse than ever," sighs Clara. "His behavior is still violent, abusive, threatening, manipulative and diabolically possessive towards those he considers 'inferior' to him - dependent women and children."

"I think it's the way the man is - his genetic inheritance - and the way he was raised to be," says Clara "For most of his life society sanctioned that sort of male behavior towards women and children - but in today's world it is considered criminal behavior and someone should have the guts to report him to the police or force him into therapy. Like all cowardly abusers, he is 'sweet' in public, does his hitting in private, denies responsibility and sheets blame on everyone else."

"That his new wife remains married to him indicates that she's made a decision that putting up with his abuse - towards her and her children - is far better than being a poor single mother," says Clara, "but what sort of marital ideal is she showing her children?"

"These days, one in three marriages end in divorce and probably one in three divorces is amicable with both parents being able to maintain a friendly relationship," says Clara, "but divorces caused by domestic violence never, ever, result in friendly post-divorce relationships."

"The dynamics between an abuser and his victim never change," says Clara, "and it wouldn't surprise me if most of the two in three marriages that don't end up in divorce are kept intact by abused women who don't have the self-esteem to leave their abuser. I wasn't married in church, but for a woman who was she has the added burden of her 'till death do us part' wedding vow."

"I have lived long enough to know that there are two major classes of people in the world - the abusers and the abused," sighs Clara. "Unfortunately, like most women, I fall into the latter category and that is why I need to be careful of the people I allow into my life. I wasn't very careful in the past because I didn't know any better - back then, all women got abused by men in one way or another - but I do know better now."

"I've got a nice relationship with a guy now," confides Clara, "but I'd never marry again. Why spoil a good thing?"

"Abuse is abuse and no woman in her right mind tolerates it, excuses it or willingly puts herself in a situation where she is liable to get more of it!"

gold-digging husband

Women often marry for money, but Karlina, a plain, dumpy woman of 47, insists that men can be gold-diggers, too. It happened to her!

"Mike married me for my family's money," admits Karlina, "and I let him get away with it because I was stupidly in love with him."

"Every second of every day, all over the world," says Karlina, "some stupid woman is being manipulated into giving up her virginity or signing over her house, her car and her life savings to some guy who claims to love her. And then she wonders why he disappears off the face of the earth, often leaving her with massive debts."

In many respects, Karlina wishes that her husband, Mike, had disappeared off the face of the earth after marrying her!

"It's hard to accept that Mike only married me because I came from a wealthy family," confides Karlina. "I know I'm not beautiful, but I had hoped that he really did love me. It shattered me when he told me the truth shortly after we were married but there wasn't much I could about it because I loved him so much - and I guess I still do."

"The only way a total stranger can get you to hand over your purse is by gun-point," laughs Karlina, "yet if the same guy took some time to get to know you and gain your trust you're likely to hand over a lot more than your purse. Right?"

"In my case, I exposed my parents to a lifetime of bad debts because of the man I married."

"It's no great secret," says Karlina, "that manipulative men tend to have a charming, disarming or commanding manner of speech and behavior. Without such gifts, they are unlikely to be able to dazzle or bluff trusting women into believing their lies."

Karlina believes that the most common bluffers, scammers, conmen or screwers - whatever you want to call them - aren't total strangers. They are our lovers, partners, children, friends, family and business associates.

"And, what they want is not always what we have that they don't have," says Karlina. "It could be simply getting us to do something that they don't want to do themselves."

"Gaining your trust is a common screwing tactic for intimates," says Karlina, "because you have to make some sort of commitment - or actually be in a committed relationship - before the screwing starts in earnest."

"Mine was a shotgun marriage," confides Karlina, "so my parents had to accept Mike, even though they thought he wasn't good enough for me. Getting me pregnant was his surefire way of getting his hands on my money."

Having a 'charming' husband and three even more 'charming' teenaged sons at home is a source of both joy and despair for Karlina.

In many respects Karlina is the proverbial doormat wife and mother, and yet she is perfectly aware of what is going on.

"Mike and the boys don't mistreat me physically," confides Karlina. "They merely manipulate me and my parents into doing things for them that we might not want to do - and much of that involves money."

"Mike conned my parents to invest in some bad ventures that got them into some serious financial troubles over the years," confides Karlina. "Sure, they should have known better, but Mike is such a charming manipulator that it's difficult to say no to him."

Loving to pieces the four charming and manipulative men dominating her life is something Karlina cannot help doing, but to her credit she is doing her best to stop the next generation repeating the scamming.

Karlina is particularly concerned about the young girls that her boys bring home. She can’t, or won’t, do much to change her own situation, but she does her best to warn the girls that her sons are not to be trusted.

Women are so easily manipulated when they feel comfortable and safe with a man, and by telling these girls that they are not safe with her boys Karlina hopes that she’s saving these girls from a fate similar to hers.

"Once a girl feels safe with a boy, and trusts him, he can get away with anything. She will continue trusting and believing him even though he may have let her down many times in the past," sighs Karlina.

"It may be magnanimous to forgive," she says "but it's unwise for any woman - especially a young girl starting out in life - to forget a past scam and continue to trust a man who's manipulated her. I don't want to see any young girl get hurt like I did."

"When a manipulative man has gained a girl’s trust, he can pull the old 'don't you trust me?' guilt trip on her, and get her embroiled in more and more risky situations," says Karlina.

"I suppose I am just too trusting for my own good," admits Karlina, "but what's the alternative? If I went around mistrusting everyone I would be labeled paranoid."

Karlina has also been screwed by the old 'trust me' trick in professional relationships. When her youngest son was two years old she took him to a dentist to get a stain on the little boy’s baby teeth removed.

"I trusted what the dentist told me - that he just wanted a photograph of my baby son for his personal records," says Karlina. "Instead, I found out later by an amazing coincidence that he had used the photograph professionally, without my permission, as an example of parental neglect of dental hygiene in infants."

"I didn't tell Mike because he would have created a scene," confides Karlina, "and the last thing my parents would want is our name in the papers again."

Karlina maintains, though, that the worst type of 'trust me' conman is the one who gains our love. It’s how her husband first screwed her literally as well as figuratively.

He pulled the old 'if you love me, you'd do this for me' guilt trip on her, and got her to give away her virginity at 15.

"He was a womanizer then, and still is," sighs Karlina. "Yet I'm in this marriage for keeps. It's all very well for people to advise me to divorce him, but I'd have a far worse life on my own. I'd have to go back to my parents or live in some dump and work slave hours to pay the rent."

"No thanks, being a married stay at home mom suits me fine, even if I am a doormat."