Blog: Ramblings and Rants

Today we got a new TV, and it reminded me of something I just can’t get out of my head. It’s something unpleasant, and it keeps rattling around in my head.

(I’ve begun posts on this topic before, but I kept getting too far into details no one would read—not that I expect anyone to read even this shorter, narrower post.)

Around the beginning of this year I asked my friend of 11 years, my brother by different parents, Chris, to move in with my family in Oregon. Like me before him, Chris tired of living in the Daytona Beach area of Florida (no, really, it’s a nice place to visit, but…). He liked Oregon. I was here. He had gotten to know my fiance Strawberry Blonde a bit over the last few years, and they liked one another. We had a spare bedroom. It seemed a no-brainer: Chris can move in with us. Even if the arrangement didn’t end up being permanent, it would at least give him the chance to save up some money before worrying about apartments and utilities of his own.

With all of his possessions packed in his Jeep, Chris arrived in April ‘07. Almost immediately things began to go bad, though it would take me a few months to understand why.

I’ve come to realize that Chris deals with acute narissicism—the actual psychological malady, not the typical layman use of describing someone overly concerned with his appearance. Rather, the wiring in the man’s brain has him convinced that he’s superior to other human beings (nearly everyone), and he has a near inability to recognize that others’ feelings are as important as his own. In the simplest terms: Chris doesn’t see the vast majority of other people as complete, emotional beings. Instead, they are inferior to him in one way or another, and, following the law of survival of the fittest, he believes himself perfectly justified in manipulating others to serve his interests. That’s Chris’s life—constant manipulation of others.

At 6′5″ and just shy of 300 lbs, he manipulates most people by intimidating them. If you fail to instantly demonstrate a high value to his interests upon meeting him, he will be brusque, gruff, intimidating. The goal, of course, is to keep you away. If he doesn’t perceive that you can do something for him, he has no use for you.

If you do proffer something else he wants, he’ll use other tactics to manipulate you into giving it to him. Usually that begins with Chris being funny, charming, and just fun to be around. When it suits him, he’s quite adept at making people feel good about themselves. People gravitate toward someone who makes them feel good about themselves, who will bolster their egoes and create fun times. It’s very easy to become accustomed, and then addicted to, someone like that. When he asks for a favor, one gives it. When he asks for a big favor, one may not want to do it—it may even represent a hardship for one to perform the favor—but the fear of Chris withholding the fun and ego stroking tends to make one acquiesce to help him. A little subtle nudging from Chris himself usually ensures cooperation—either by positive reinforcement of how much he can do for you, or a gentle threat of withholding what he can do for you.

This is how Chris lives his life—manipulating people.

The TV reminded me of his attempts to manipulate my daughters.

Shortly after Chris moved in he decided he wanted for himself my family—my fiance, Strawberry Blonde, and my 12- and 10-year-old step-daughters, Mojo and Sassy (not their real names). He also came to believe that he would be a better boyfriend and father than I. Although I’m sure he arrived at these beliefs gradually and only after moving into our house, it happened quickly, over the course of only a couple of weeks.

One day he took Mojo out shopping to bond with her. He spent over $100 on her, buying the 12-year-old anything she wanted, including a pair of $80 Heely shoes (sneakers with a rollerskate wheel in the heel). Strawberry Blonde and I were happy that Mojo had the shoes (she loves them, wears them constantly), we felt the expense was too much—particularly from a guy who said he was broke. He wouldn’t take reimbursement, so we let it stand. It nagged at us, though, that he seemed to be trying to buy the kids.

A few days after that, he promised to buy my daughters a new television for the family room, whose TV set was old and was beginning to suffer. On two occassions I went to buy a new TV for the kids, but Chris begged me not to. It was his promise to keep, he explained. So, months went by as the television got worse. Summertime without a TV while half my daughters’ friends were off visiting relatives? Shudder. Still, I held off because Chris was adamant that he’d buy them a TV set. (I bought them a new computer and rebuilt another instead.)

From April through July Chris worked very, very hard to get me out of my house, to take over my family for himself. He very nearly succeeded. Strawberry Blonde and I were at each other’s throats. I was literally on my way out the door for good—with Strawberry Blonde standing ready to push should I doddle—when I finally realized what had been happening.

We weren’t suckers, Strawberry Blonde and me. We did nothing wrong. We simply welcomed a new member into our family, affording him the trust he had earned in 11 years as my dear friend. Chris took advantage of that trust and turned it against us. It makes me sad that it was so easy for him, but I feel no shame for it; I will not be ashamed of showing trust, friendship, and kindness to another human being.

What Chris did was simple: He offered himself to both Strawberry Blonde and me as impartial ear to bend. We discussed our individual problems with him—a frustration with the kids, work problems, whatever. Gradually the advice he gave deepened, as did the level of problems we discussed with him. Before we realized it, Chris had Strawberry Blonde and me bringing problems we had with each other to him instead of discussing them amongst ourselves. In fact, Strawberry Blonde and I barely spoke to one another for several weeks; instead, she bitched about me to him, I about her to him. Chris acted as intermediary, ostensibly trying to help us overcome our relationship problems—problems we later realized he exacerbated and, in some cases, created all by himself. The whole time, he revised and recreated—if Strawberry Blonde said “night” he told me she said “day”; if I said “black,” he told her “white.”

He was good. He knew all the buttons to push, all the ways in which Strawberry Blonde and I were vulnerable. After 11 years as my closest friend, he had me all figured out. Once he got started it didn’t take long to figure out what would work on Strawberry Blonde and what wouldn’t.

He had Strawberry Blonde convinced that:

• I was having online cyber sex affairs.
• I was casting about for a suitable candidate to join me in a real world affair.
• I was firmly planning to leave, that I was only waiting until a particular client paid its sizable bill.
• I thought Strawberry Blonde was crazy.
• I was a bad, angry father to Mojo and Sassy.
• I was potentially scyzophrenic and mildly insanse.
• I was, and had always been, ready to sacrifice Strawberry Blonde and the kids for my career.

He had me convinced that:

• I was a lousy father to my step-daughters.
• I couldn’t give Strawberry Blonde what she needed.
• I may not even be capable of having a committed, long term relationship.
• I was a failure in my career.
• I was cracking up and going insane.
• Strawberry Blonde was no longer in love with me.
• Strawberry Blonde had strong feelings for him—and had probably already consummated those feelings.

He tried (but failed) to also convince me that Strawberry Blonde and the girls were a hindrance to my career, and that my career was more important than they.

Chris was so confident that he would soon manuever himself into displacing me that he had been telling his co-workers for weeks about his kids, his girlfriend, his house.

On a Sunday evening in late-July Chris won. I was moving out the next day, and I told him as much. He told me at the same time that it was better for all concerned.

I went out for a walk to clear my head—largely to decide whether I could sleep in the house one more night or if I had to leave that night. While I was out, Chris ramped Strawberry Blonde up for that final push. Playing on frustrations he’d been fanning for months, he whipped her into an anger more intense than I’d ever seen her. She broke things. I’ve never seen her break things in anger. The move was meant to cement my decision by reinforcing my belief that Strawberry Blonde was mentally unbalanced; it also served to get Strawberry Blonde so angry with me that she would be glad to see me go.

Unfortunately for Chris’s carefully orchestrated plan, by the time he made that last move, it was already too late. I had already woken up and talked some sense into myself—at the proverbial last second.

The 2-hour-long walk had done me good. It enabled me to calm down and begin asking myself questions, which, if you know anything about transactional analysis, is the key to objective thinking. I examined my situation objectively, replaying conversations with Strawberry Blonde and studying them dispassionately. Numerous discrepencies stood out—I had said “black,” but she was utterly convinced I’d said “white.” Of course, I hadn’t been saying anything directly to her for weeks. Thus, if this became that, it had to have happened in translation from the intermediary—Chris. And so I turned my objective ear back to conversations with Chris, matching and comparing them to contradictions from or with Strawberry Blonde. It all made such simple sense: Chris had set himself up as our intermediary with one another, and he edited or changed wholesale what each of us said to him when he presented it to the other. At the same time, he was manufacturing situations—like my supposed cyber affairs—but saying he would handle it, that neither Strawberry Blonde nor I should bring up these situations with the other.

As ludicris as it sounds that two people who slept in the same bed (rarely by that point) would be talking only through a third party, you must understand that it wasn’t an overnight change to that from direct discourse. It was something we’d allowed to happen over the course of several months, gradually and subtly, completely below our respective radars. We were trusting people manipulated by a ruthless man with his eyes fixed on a specific goal.

I came back in from that walk enlightened, relieved, and confident. I knew Strawberry Blonde’s intelligence; I knew she would recognize and sieze upon the truth even faster than I did. All I had to do was convince her to look for it. And that’s exactly what happeneed.

It took a little doing to get her alone. Chris didn’t try very hard to impede me because he thought he’d already won; he didn’t recognize the shift in my demeanor. More, it was Strawberry Blonde herself. While I was out, Chris had continued working on her, pushing her deeper and deeper into rage—and, thus, farther and farther from objective thought. When I tried to speak to her alone in our bedroom she snarled at me; I ignored it.

Softly, gently I began to lead her back to the point of cognitive thought—the adult mode of transactional analysis. No matter what she spat at me, no matter how much it hurt, I spoke softly and honestly, talking from my love for her, not from the pain her words inspired. I recited back to her several of her accusations, and then asked to consider whether any of those fit the man she’d loved for four years.

Many of the things Chris used to villify me in Strawberry Blonde’s mind were wholesale fabrications, but most were exaggerations that had grains of truth. When Strawberry Blonde was ready, I answered every one of those issues—real, false, and partly true. We talked the entire night, and through the next several days, rebuilding our relationship and comparing notes as to what Chris said to each of us, when she said “night” but told me “day.”

That was two months ago. Strawberry Blonde and I doing great.

There was no need to confront Chris with the matter; he knew he’d lost his control on us. He still lives in the room we rented him—but not for much longer. We had both wanted to kick him out without notice, but shortly after that Sunday he hurt himself at work and was homebound for three weeks. We couldn’t be cruel. The day he went back to work, however, we gave him 30 days notice. He has 2 weeks left. Strawberry Blonde and I are counting the hours.

Getting the kids’ new TV today reminded me of the one he had promised them, the one that never materialized despite his sizable income and insistance that he would get them the television. At the time, he had been manipulating them—trying to buy them, trying to prove that he could be a better father to them than I.

Chris barely speaks to my daughters now. Ever since that day in late July when his plan to take over as man of the house was foiled he’s renegged on all his promises, stopped having anything to do with any member of my family. It was all or nothing thing for him. I had asked him to join my family, but he wanted to take it over; if he couldn’t have one, he didn’t want the other.

The television also made me think of Sassy and Mojo, at the shopping spree on which he took Mojo. Following that Chris had promised to take 10-year-old Sassy on her own shopping trip—complete with a pair of Heelys. That was 5 months ago. Her birthday is next week. She’ll be getting Heelys from her mother and me.