How to say “No”, an amendment

I was recently thinking about the topic of manipulation and thinking that I might have to write a post on that.  In summary, if someone is manipulative and/or does not know how to respect boundaries, I have found that the most effective thing is not to try to explain, but rather to cut them off. This is because they have already shown that they do not respect what you might have to say, or they might not respect your right to autonomy etc, so trying to explain is simply wasting your own time, as that is an appeal to the respect that they have already shown that they do not have!

And then I was also reflecting on and smiling about my realisation that “No is the most powerful word in the world”. Seriously, these days I wield the word “No” with so much confidence that I cannot believe that it took me so long to learn how to do it. But you know what, it is so much easier to apply a “No” at the point of entry, as it were – when someone is trying to gain access to your life, than to allow them an entry, and then have to be finding ways of saying “No” as they make whatever requests they might make – assuming that we are still talking about  someone who does not know how to respect boundaries.

And then I was reflecting too on a previous article I wrote, about how I learned to say no.  In that article I explained that I split people into “Yes” people and “No” people, where the “Yes” people are my own family, then literally just one or two other people, and “No” people are everyone else – and then I say an automatic “no” to whatever requests I might receive from “No” people.  Seriously, the principles I have explained in that article have changed my life to an unbelievable extent. I used to be such a people pleaser, and I would run myself ragged running from one person’s request to another.   Now that I say an automatic “no” to most people’s requests, guess what, they don’t even ask that much anymore! I have discovered that when you say a few firm “no”s upfront, then people establish that you are not, after all, the kind of person to be taken advantage of, and they take their user ways elsewhere.  Furthermore, I now have so much time to be able to accomplish my own things, work on my own dreams etc.  Wow. So lifechanging.

And yet, there are a few edits that I would like to make to that post.  Firstly, I am going to change “Yes” people to “Maybe” people.  This is quite straightforward, in that even with your closest people for whom you would drop everything, still sometimes there are instances where you just cannot say yes, or you don’t want to. And that is fine! It is precisely because these are reciprocal, loving relationships rather than “userships” that they will not try to guilt you or manipulate you into doing something that you don’t want to, as they know that you would help out if you could. And vice versa in that you know that you can rely on them to help you out when they can.  So then not even these people get an automatic “yes”, but rather a “maybe”.

And then secondly, for the “No” people, what I am actually saying “no” to is the offer or possibility of building a deeper relationship with them.  That is, there are some costly things that I would offer my “Maybe” people that would not be available to just anyone because they (these costly things) are so costly.  These are things that are “costly” in terms of time invested, or money, or effort.  The reason that I would offer these to my “Maybe” people is because I am deliberately working to build a relationship with them where we reciprocate in offering one another these costly things.  It is not that these relationships are transactional in that we have to mechanically offer one another gifts of exactly the same value at some predefined schedule.  But we are both committed to this friendship, and we are both invested in serving one another in these friendships and making sacrifices. So when a “No” person requests a “Maybe” level of sacrifice from me, that is, one that pertains to my “Maybe” level of friendship, I can still give that thing if I want to.  However everything I give a “No” person is a free gift, without any expectation of reciprocation whatsoever.  So I just would not expect anything back.  As they are a “No” person, I am not expecting a relationship that tends towards reciprocity. So if I were to evaluate the request, and realise that this is not something I can give for free, outside of a relationship that tends towards reciprocity, then that would have to be a “No”.

Perhaps another thing to add is that I am happy to have “Maybe” friendships with as many people as possible. The only things that limit the number are the character of the people I interact with, the willingness of the other party to truly work towards reciprocity (versus taking advantage) and then sheer prudence eg when dealing with the opposite sex.

On rereading this post, perhaps better terms for the two levels of friendship are “freebie friendships” versus “reciprocal friendships”.  Perhaps too, if someone at a freebie level of friendship offers me something that is too “expensive” for our level of friendship, then the most prudent thing would be to turn that gift down, so that they don’t think that we are somehow in some kind of reciprocal friendship. Thinking further on it, this has always been what complicated the matter: previously I used to assess people on reciprocity – or rather niceness, measured by reciprocity.  So if someone offered an expensive gift to my younger more naive self, I would automatically, prematurely embrace them as a “reciprocal” friend. It took me a while to realise that sometimes people use expensive gifts to lure you into a pseudo-reciprocal friendship, where slowly but surely you work out that actually, you’re the one making all the efforts and all the sacrifices. That first “expensive” gift was just a cheap way of deceiving you about their true nature, and securing all your one-sided effort.  Now I know that a truer test of friendship is character, so I will wait to evaluate someone’s character before I admit them into reciprocal friendship.  So this means rejecting all their expensive gifts before I am sure that they truly are people with whom I could cultivate reciprocal friendships.

You know, this post is about friendships, yet absolutely everything here is also so relevant to marriage, except that you would only be aiming to have one marriage, so only one person can win that role, where you could simultaneously have a large number of non-romantic reciprocal friendships. So even in a marriage, requests do not result in an automatic “yes” but rather a “maybe”, potential spouses should be evaluated on character and pursuit of character rather than “niceness” or “reciprocity”, and women especially should be wary of expensive gifts from untested suitors.  One further thing is this:  for a non-romantic friendship, if a “freebie” friend requested a non-romantic sacrifice from me that corresponds to  a “reciprocal” level of friendship, then I might just need to find a diplomatic way of saying “No”, and that would be the end of that and the friendship could otherwise continue.  However, if this were mirrored romantically, if anyone were to request from me something that should only exclusively be shared with my husband, then for the sake of respecting my husband and my marriage that would likely need more than a simple “No”, but would likely result in ending that friendship altogether and cutting that person off.  This might well also include people whom I had never previously considered romantically.  So because marriage is so exclusive the rules have to be far tighter. Sex is obviously the big example of this, but other examples include emotional intimacy, spending time alone with me or wanting to do so, sometimes even things as seemingly innocuous as sending me funny private messages in a way that builds closeness…