Emotional Terrorism

The concept of emotional terrorism is one of the more recent examples of an idea where I thought I came up with something original only to find out it has already been thought of. There’s even a darn book out about it.

In the previous post, I talked about emotional decision-making being problematic. In this post, I figured it would be fun to talk about emotional terrorism a bit as well. Emotional terrorism is a lot like normal terrorism. Normal terrorism is “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” Emotional terrorism is more like “the underhanded use of emotions in the pursuit of aims.”

So, what exactly does this even look like? I’d wager that you’ve probably encountered it out in the wild. I certainly have. Imagine this… A father is at the store with his two-year-old son. The child sees a bag of Skittles. The child asks the father for the Skittles. The father says no. Skittles are mostly sugar, corn syrup, and hydrogenated palm kernel oil. They are not the sort of thing you want a two-year-old to eat. The child doesn’t like this answer. He then proceeds to have a total meltdown. He collapses and rolls around on the floor screaming. In response, the father either has to deal with the scene or he needs to cave to the child’s demands. This is a textbook example of emotional terrorism. “You give me what I want or I’m going to have an emotional outburst,” that is emotional terrorism.

The primary offenders when it comes to emotional terrorism are children and women who act like children. Unfortunately, men aren’t as big on emotional terrorism. They’re more direct. Although I couldn’t exactly find a good statistical source, it does seem like the majority of normal terrorists are male.

It’s interesting, but the old adage “Happy wife, happy life,” is basically a thinly veiled statement that women engage in emotional terrorism frequently. It implies that if your wife isn’t happy, she’ll make your life unhappy. This is kind of funny because it’s exactly the same tactic a two-year-old employs when initiating a temper tantrum. “If you don’t give me what I want, I am going to make you miserable.”

That’s one of the interesting things about girls. Some seem to think this kind of thing is acceptable behavior. It’s not. Acting like a two-year-old is not acceptable behavior. On one occasion when I got dumped, the girl doing the dumping started crying about it. I had to struggle not to laugh at her. It was like, “Why are you crying? You’re the one who wanted this?” She wasn’t in control of her emotions; they were in control of her. Thinking back to it now, I suspect what actually happened was that she was hurt when she saw my indifference.

Unfortunately, indifference is the proper response. There was another case when I was the one doing the dumping. A girl tried to engage in emotional terrorism. It was one of her favorite tactics and the primary contributing factor to her being yeeted from my life. During that episode, she accused me of not caring about her feelings. In response, I asked her why her feelings were more important than mine. I then went on to say that we both have feelings and therefore they should cancel each other out and be discounted in favor of fact and reason. She didn’t much like that but fortunately, I didn’t much care.

Her go-to tactic was to make her demands and then get worked up and be poopy pants’ed if she didn’t get her way. This is exactly happy wife, happy life thinking. If I didn’t do what she wanted, she was going to make sure that I knew she was mad.

It’s pretty common to see this in marriages. Typically, the wife will withhold sex in a lot of cases if she’s not getting what she wants. And honestly, I don’t really blame them. Sex is the single greatest tool in the feminine arsenal. I personally think that the actual greatest tools for a woman are her wit and her character, but history has proven that it is in fact sex. Expecting a woman to be in an argument with her husband and still provide sex like normal is equivalent to expecting a soldier to discard his flamethrower on the battlefield in favor of using his knife. Not many women are noble enough to willingly give up their most powerful weapon.

This too is rather ironic. It’s one of those silly things that God decided to build into life. When I think back to my list of relationships that have made it past phases one and two, I can’t help but laugh at the fights that I’ve gotten into and how my SOs have handled them. I can recall one particular incident that was about a dog.

The aggrieved party was very pro-dog. I was dog-neutral at best. Realistically, I’m actually pro-dog in general but I’m deeply opposed to keeping a dog cooped up in an apartment. At the time of this particular spat, apartments were all that the future had in store for at least the next decade. This thing turned into a massive fight. It culminated with my SO cutting me off from everything. At the climax, she barely even wanted to talk to me anymore much less be in the same room as me. The whole thing was a major clown show.

However, looking back, had she been really smart, she could have easily outplayed me. All she would have had to do was not pout and simply say, “Well Chandler, I disagree with you, but I love you and I trust your judgment,” and then give me a hug. Had she done that, we probably would have had a dog before the end of the week. Girls really don’t operate like that though. Or at least, I haven’t encountered any who do. If they did, they’d walk on streets paved with gold because no guy in their right mind would take a woman like that for granted. Someone who can be pissed off at you beyond all measure yet still continues to love and support you regardless.

At any rate, have you ever asked yourself why we don’t negotiate with terrorists? I have and the answer is actually pretty simple. If you negotiate with terrorists, you get more terrorists. In other words, if you give in to a two-year-old’s temper tantrum, the two-year-old now knows that temper tantrums are an effective tactic. What kind of self-respecting two-year-old would pass up an opportunity to throw a temper tantrum, knowing full well that it would work? The same applies to terrorists and emotional terrorists.

Only by refusing to interact with these tactics can we disincentivize them. We must make the cost of terrorism higher than the benefit that can be achieved by engaging in it. This is why instead of negotiating with terrorists, we typically send them some packages using ultra-express air mail. For a two-year-old, who you can’t typically air-strike, this takes the form of associating misbehavior with punishment. My personal favorite is the patient game where you essentially deprive the little offender of getting whatever the degenerate happens to desire for a set period of time that’s longer than the child’s attention span. This raises the cost of throwing a temper tantrum substantially.

As far as intimate relationships are concerned, the best way to deal with emotional terrorism is a graded response. Some emotional terrorists are too far gone to be trifled with. In those cases, it’s best to cast them out of your life and be on your merry way. Others are maybe salvageable. In those cases, what I’ve found to work best is what I’m calling the listen-and-leave approach. When the emotional terrorist starts, listen to their grievances. Stay calm, stick to your guns, and trust the facts. When the emotional terrorist starts to get worked up or upset, disengage. State, “I’ve listened to your feelings, but I’m not interested in having an emotional conversation about this. We can discuss it more when everyone is levelheaded.”

If the person you’re working with isn’t too far gone, they’ll go simmer down for a bit. The issue can then be readdressed later until the next steam-letting session comes about. If the person you’re working with is a lost cause, they’ll probably get more emotional as a consequence of you daring to suggest they’re already emotional. In this case, you’re interacting with a person who has the emotional maturity and self-control of a two-year-old. Address the situation accordingly.

At the end of the day, it’s in your best interest to free yourself of any emotional terrorists in your life. You don’t need to have someone who’s terrorizing you with their emotions. If that’s what you’re after, go work in a daycare. At least there you can tell the terrorist from the normal people by their diapers and you'll get paid for putting up with them.