There are people — surely not you — after whom every interaction leaves you feeling like someone drank your energy through a straw.
And you start noticing it happens at every single meeting.
And once you notice — you start keeping your distance.
Online you meet him (or her) everywhere. He pleads for attention. He begs you to notice how wonderful or attractive he is. She requests, every five minutes, validation for her suffering or an empathic hug.
And the thing is — it works for them, the emotional blackmailers. At least in the short term.
Because people are, on the whole, kind creatures. Cry loudly enough and long enough that you crave compassion, and someone will supply it. Post every five minutes about how wonderful you are, and someone will toss you a like, a token compliment.
But that is precisely the tragedy of the emotional blackmailer: he will never know whether the praise he receives is authentic and heartfelt — or whether people are just waving him off, throwing him a bone, because they're worn out by the constant begging.
And if you're in a relationship with one — good luck to you. A genuine emotional blackmailer walks a dangerous line near narcissism. The two resemble each other in one sweeping way: both ignore the other person's needs and their existence as an independent being.
The emotional blackmailer doesn't see you. He uses you. Your job is to supply a steady, uninterrupted stream of admiration.
Depressing bonus: the social-media era is perfect breeding ground. The unfathomable ease with which any private moment can be displayed — with an immediate demand for the world's attention — hasn't done any of our minds much good. But it blew the emotional blackmailers completely out of proportion.
And more than it is irritating, it is sad, deeply sad: the emotional blackmailer lives in a permanent hunger that cannot be fed. Every compliment squeezed from the environment only leads to the next battle for the next like. No peace. Only a growing dependence.
As always, to decode the phenomenon you have to walk backward. Far backward. Because at bottom, emotional blackmailers want what we all wanted as small children: to be noticed and accompanied.
When a child does it, he isn't an emotional blackmailer. He's normal. He is broadcasting, loud and clear, the care instructions for his own mind: "Mom, Dad, dear world — for me to stand on my own feet someday, you must give me real, significant attention in the first years, notice the things I do, and if you throw in encouragement and love, all the better."
Somewhere along the line, the blackmailer's supply line failed. Maybe he received too much spotlight for every little thing and got addicted to applause (by the way — a child who plays alone for ten minutes is not automatically "a prince"). Maybe he received too little attention and developed the unfillable hunger. Either way, the question "why did this happen to him?" isn't the important one. It happened. And now it's landing on your head.
Two questions are now pecking at you. One useless, one not.
1. "How do I know when it's emotional blackmail and when it's a legitimate request for attention?" — a fairly useless question. You won't know. You'll have to decide. Your tolerance threshold is yours to calibrate. That's what there is.
2. "What do we do with them?" — now that's a much better question. No recipe, but three principles:
a. Under no circumstances analyze them psychologically to their face. Serving your partner armchair diagnoses — "you're like this because your mother raised you as a princess" — is a wonderful way to wound her and build a wall.
b. Say it directly; don't act it out. Don't invent excuses to dodge them. Say it straight, clean, without insult: "I've been listening for a long time and I need a break." "I can't take in much more right now — is it okay if we stop?" Don't expect applause at first. They'll make a face. By the seventeenth time, it passes.
c. Best of all — talk about yourself! Sharing existed long before the blue app. You know the term "modeling"? Here it is: show the blackmailer that you exist too. Tell them what's happening with you. Maybe, with luck, you'll help them attempt the real repair — easing their inner hunger by feeding someone else's.
Especially someone they love.