Many of us struggle to maintain
our sense of personal power
within the context of relationships.
Naturally, because of this,
we develop all kinds of strategies
for trying to gain power in relationships
and this leads to all kinds of power struggles within relationships.
But today, I'm gonna talk to you
about just one of these strategies
for gaining power within relationships.
It's called the "Oopsie, I'm sorry" pattern.
Disclaimer (pause to read):
The “Oopsie, I’m Sorry” Power Play
So that you can understand this pattern
I'm gonna start by walking you through an example;
Chase's parents divorced when he was really really young
and it was a nasty divorce.
What his mother did in that divorce
was decide to hit his father where it hurt
by fighting for total custody over the children.
She won.
And overnight, chase found himself
living with and only at the mercy
of a very high-powered mother
who was incredibly narcissistic,
who was a corporate businesswoman
and who had no interest in raising children.
Chase learned that his needs and wants
did not matter.
The only way to stay safe in his childhood
was to comply to whatever his mother wanted.
He became highly enmeshed, as a result.
Chase learned that anytime he brought up his needs and wants
he would be shut down
because his mother would not accommodate them.
As a result, his only way of getting power in his life
and in his relationship with her
was to simply do exactly what he wanted
and either apologize profusely later,
or act like it was a mistake.
He did this so often,
that Chase's mother began to see him as a bit of a screw-up.
She was disappointed in him all the time.
But even though it hurt,
Chase kept up this strategy,
because when his mother saw him as a screw-up
she failed to see
that he was simply doing things without her consent.
She also started to expect less of him,
so he was out from under the pressure of her expectations.
After all, chase cared much more about finding a way
to do whatever it is that he wanted or needed to do,
than he cared about his mother's approval.
After all,
she was gone on business trips all the time, anyway.
Today however,
Chase has kept up this rebellious strategy
for gaining power within relationships
and it's not serving him very well.
It's making it so that
no one in his life can take him seriously.
No one in his life can rely upon him to caretake their best interests
as opposed to just acting in his own.
When he apologizes for doing things,
he gaslights everyone into thinking
he didn't mean to and that it was just a mistake.
He also asked for forgiveness,
only to do whatever he apologized for, again the next day
So, people are wondering if he is stupid
despite the fact that Chase
often demonstrates very clear intelligence.
Deep down the people around Chase
feel manipulated by him
because they are being manipulated by him.
And at the end of the day Chase is the one that's gonna lose
as a result of the strategy,
because not only is he gonna sabotage
his own personal success,
he's gonna sabotage every relationship in his life.
Have you ever heard the words
"ask for forgiveness, instead of for permission"?
This passive aggressive power play
is immortalized in those words.
This power play is when
someone does exactly what they wanna do
regardless of the negative impact on others,
and plays it off, once they're confronted on it,
by apologizing, or making the other party think
it was an unintended mistake,
an oopsie.
They expect specifically that by apologizing
or by acting like it was a mistake,
suddenly the conflict will immediately go away,
and they will have gotten away with it.
People who use this passive aggressive power play
to the extreme,
often don't really care that much
whether other people see them as stupid.
Or if they do,
they're in a bit of a lose-lose
and it's an obvious choice for them.
They would rather people see them as stupid,
than to never ever get their way,
or to be abandoned.
Some people who employ this strategy in relationships
go to the extreme
so as to actually craft an image of stupidity, that's false,
to the people around them.
It's a guarantee that you've seen this strategy
play out in the movies.
Any of you who have watched action movies
had to have seen this tactic employed at least once.
Where that person who has some aim
something they want or need
is gonna go about getting it,
by acting like the idiot.
And the people around them
look at them and go:
"It's just an idiot, I guess we have to let that behavior slide"
and so they get away with whatever they're doing.
Whether it's spying,
or... You name it.
The thing that's important to recognize
is that in these movies where you've got that character
who is employing this strategy,
employing that strategy puts them in the power position
in that moment.
The bad guys just don't know it.
When you play dumb,
people see you as an annoyance,
instead of as the threat you are.
People who are employing this strategy
are looking to get away with getting what they want and need
for their own personal best interests,
but in a way that leads to absolutely no consequences.
Many of the consequences that they think await them
if they're straightforward about what they want to need
in their own personal best interest in a given scenario.
Now, let's look at why this strategy works, shall we?
And why people who employ this strategy
often get away with it for so long.
The reason is because
society at large, I mean, it doesn't really matter
which culture you're brought up in,
society at large right now, within humanity
has this idea
that your only good and only right
if you forgive people who make mistakes.
That you're only good and right
if you make allowances and accommodations
for other people who are less smart.
And you're only good and right
if you forgive those who apologize.
Also, society only sees you as good and right
if you lower your expectations
relative to somebody who has demonstrated
that they're not particularly competent,
bless their hearts.
This means, not only can the person employing this strategy
the "oopsie I'm sorry" strategy
get away with doing whatever they want and need
and what's in their own personal best interest
regardless of the negative impact on others,
you're the bad guy and the asshole
if you have a problem with them
and don't let them get away with it.
So that you can understand this problem
I'm gonna give you another example;
Brittany likes to shop
a lot!
She feels that it should be a husband's duty
to provide for his wife and to provide well.
She hates that her husband Jason
controls how much money she can spend
on their household credit card.
They've gotten in so many fights
about the fact that consistently
when Jason reviews the household expenses
at the end of the month,
he finds all kinds of unnecessary expenses
for things that Britney has purchased.
Every month, Brittany feels Shame
and says that she's sorry that she did it
and apologizes profusely and says it was a mistake
and promises to stop buying stuff compulsively
and running up their debt.
But, every month she does the exact same thing.
Britney is proving to be unworkable.
Jason doesn't know if she's stupid,
or has some uncontrollable shopping addiction, or what.
Really, Brittany wants to shop
and expects Jason to enable her to do that,
But she doesn't want to get into a direct conflict about it.
She feels she will lose that fight,
and not be able to shop,
so she just continues to shop
and continues to get away with it
by continuing to apologize
or say it was a mistake later.
The "oopsie, I'm sorry" power play
is a very deceptive and gaslighting pattern.
And people who employ this strategy
will often get away with it, at first.
But, if anyone in their life
identifies this as a pattern,
they're in for big trouble.
If you're one of these people
who employs this "oopsie, I'm sorry" tactic
as a way of getting what you want and need,
you're in big trouble because
people will see you as incompetent
and as an idiot.
When people see you as incompetent and as stupid,
they lose respect for you.
Also,
people will never be able to trust you with their best interests
because you will have again and again demonstrated
that regardless of whether or not
they directly express what their best interests are,
you will act to the opposite of them.
Or,
they'll be able to feel beneath the surface of this deception,
and feel that what you're really just trying to do
is to get your own way regardless of the impact to anybody else
no matter what happens to that other person,
which makes you a little weasel.
The "oopsy, I'm sorry" pattern
is a pattern of self-sabotage.
But hold the phone,
there is no such thing as self-sabotage.
What's really happening
is that these parts of you that are employing this strategy
think that it's in your own best interest to do so.
But that's because they don't see the genuine consequences
of you using this strategy
especially in the long term.
So, even though these aspects are doing it for you,
ultimately, they don't see the detriment to you.
Which is why we call it a sabotaging behavior.
If you demonstrate yourself to be the kind of person
who does whatever you want
no matter the consequences to others,
there's no possible way
that people will want to be around you, long term.
You're going to lose your relationships.
If you demonstrate yourself
to be somebody who can't keep your word,
no one's going to trust you.
If you demonstrate yourself to be incompetent,
stupid or passively belligerent,
no one will feel they can rely on you
so you can expect to be fired from jobs,
never taken seriously, left out of things,
put into positions of inferiority
and considered a liability, instead of an asset, by others.
If you are somebody who is employing this strategy
it's important to see the price of getting away with
employing this passive aggressive strategy
for getting what you want and need
and within your own personal best interests.
It's critical to see how important it is
to go directly for your best interests.
To go for what you want and need
in a direct, upfront, straightforward and honest way.
So as to put it on the table,
so as to finding a meeting of minds with other people
before you decide to take whatever action.
Many people who exhibit
this particular power play in relationships
this strategy for gaining power in relationships
are people who exhibit
a codependent style of relationship.
This means, they struggled with a great deal of enmeshment
in their childhoods.
In their lives, they learned
that there is no point
to being direct and honest and upfront
about a person's wants and needs
because there's no room for them.
In other words, a lot of these people
who employ this strategy
already are coming into relationships with this expectation
that there is no room for a meeting of minds,
even if there is.
Instead, they think it's an automatic zero-sum game.
If they bring up their wants and needs
they think they'll either lose the relationship,
or the answer will be no.
So it will mean that they will either be abandoned,
or not get what they want and need.
They think that talking it out
or standing for what they want and need
leads to them losing and the other winning.
Whereas if they simply act on it
and pretend it's a mistake or apologize later,
they will get what they want and need
i.e be in power,
but they will also get to keep their relationship at the moment
and the other person will lose.
To understand more about this, watch my video titled:
Why People Are Stuck in The Cycle of Either Complying or Rebelling
Because this strategy originates from interpersonal trauma,
which most people experienced in their childhood
and that original trauma needs to be resolved in some way.
I have a process that I've created specifically for this
and it's important for people who are exhibiting this pattern to do.
It is called The Completion Process
You can find out how to do this process
by buying the book that is quite literally titled
The Completion Process.
Alternatively you can go to
completionprocess.com
and select a practitioner to lead you through it.
If you struggle with this pattern,
it's important to know
that a relationship is only a good relationship,
if the other person in the relationship
actually wants your best interests,
actually wants you to get what you want and need.
But that doesn't mean
that the second they're aware of what you want and need
that they're going to just love you
and be great
by abandoning their own wants and needs and best interests.
That's self-sacrifice.
That's just you falling back into the patterns you learned
in your dysfunctional childhood relationships.
What it means to be in a good relationship
is that both of you need to master the concept and practice of communication
and each really caring for
the other person's wants and needs,
so as to find the highest and best win-win scenario
in any situation.
A big part of finding win-win situations in any relationship,
is the opposite of this pattern.
It's the opposite of being deceptive
It's the opposite of manipulation.
It's about being very very very honest with yourself
and with the other person in the relationship.
What being honest in this way does for you
is that it highlights those points in any relationship
or in any situation
of compatibility and incompatibility.
Now, with the reality of what is genuinely compatible
and what's genuinely incompatible,
you can try to find an arrangement
in the situation
or an arrangement in the relationship
that is a win-win for you both.
And doing so makes you an ally
to each other's best interests,
instead of an enemy to each other's best interests.
That's true power.
Have a good week.
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I wanna thank you personally
for the bravery that you have to step into awareness.
I'll see you in the next video.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com