Self-Love Eliminates the Need to Manipulate Others

Harriet Craig: “Please understand, Mr. Fenwick, Walter’s a fine man… but sometimes he just seems to lose all sense of responsibility.” Mr. Fenwick: “But I’ve always thought of him as being most reliable.” Harriet Craig: “So long as he’s in his present job, yes. And so long as I’m nearby to look after him.”

Joan Crawford and Raymond Greenleaf, Harriet Craig (1950)

Poor Harriet Craig! Her husband, Walter, has been offered a promotion. Normally that would be good news, but there’s a catch: The promotion will require Walter to work in Japan for three months—without Harriet. She’ll have to stay home and she will be unable to be the center of Walter’s universe. On hearing the “good” news, Harriet immediately feels threatened and her codependent thinking kicks into high gear. Just looking at her face, you can see every manipulative wheel within her brain spinning.

She quickly hits panic mode: How will she be able to keep an eye on Walter 24/7 when he’s thousands of miles away? She won’t. So then, how will she know what he’s up to each and every second of the day? She won’t. How will she know if he meets a woman in Japan who interests him more than she does? She won’t. Or what if he ends up having such a good time by himself that he decides he doesn’t need her to be the center of his life anymore? Horror upon horror flashes before Harriet’s eyes as she sees her grip on Walter fading fast.

Harriet can’t fathom giving up her power over Walter and so her calculating, codependent mind comes up with a nearly fool-proof plan for keeping Walter out of Japan. Every detail is intricately worked out to a tee. The heart of the plan is this: Harriet will go to Walter’s place of work and ask to speak to his boss, Mr. Fenwick, about some of Walter’s indiscretions which Harriet has prefabricated. She doesn’t make an appointment, of course, since she wants there to be no evidence of her visit.

Harriet sends the housekeeper off with a large shopping list to ensure that the housekeeper has no idea that she (Harriet) ever left the house. Then she calls Walter to see if he’d like to go to lunch. Walter tells her he can’t leave the lab because he’s overwhelmed with work. This is good news to Harriet because the lab and the corporate offices (where his boss is located) are in two different buildings. As long as Walter can’t leave the lab, he can’t run into Harriet.

Luckily for Harriet, Walter’s boss, Mr. Fenwick, is in his office when she arrives unannounced and he’s willing to see her. Harriet feigns concern for Walter being sent overseas because he isn’t capable of taking care of himself—alone. She’s careful to point out to Mr. Fenwick that Walter is one of his very best workers only because Walter is under Harriet’s watchful eyes. And she assures Fenwick that, on his own, Walter would have problems boozing it up and being reckless with company money.

Mr. Fenwick agrees that Walter is one of his best workers and laments that he didn’t know that Walter had alcohol problems and was incapable of taking care of himself. He thanks Harriet for her concern and promises her that he won’t tell Walter about her visit. Later, Fenwick calls Walter in and tells him his new assignment and promotion are off. Walter returns home that night filled with disappointment and Harriet pretends that she’s shocked and disappointed, too.

This type of deceitful, manipulative codependent behavior is reprehensible. It destroys lives and relationships. And it’s all rooted in the extremely sick need of an active codependent to ensure his/her own personal happiness by controlling another person.

When codependency is this out of control, the codependent person seems to have no concept of right or wrong. Everything he/she says or does is out of desperation. It’s an intense desperation to keep the person taken hostage (in this case, Walter) tied up and completely under the codependent’s control. And it’s fueled by the intense fear that if the codependent loses his/her hostage, life will end.

Harriet Craig mistakenly believed Walter Craig was 100 percent responsible for her happiness. She believed that she could only be happy if Walter’s life revolved around her, and if Walter agreed to jump through every “make me happy” hoop Harriet placed in his path.

It’s obvious from her behavior, however, that Harriet never loved Walter. We don’t betray people we love. In betraying Walter, Harriet also betrayed herself. She proved that she had little concern for Walter or his well-being.

It’s also obvious that Harriet’s betrayal of Walter is rooted in her inability to love herself. It’s impossible for an active codependent to love anyone simply because he or she has no ability to love him or her self.

Self-love is an essential requirement for developing the ability to love others. This is one of the reasons why recovery programs are so important. Through programs like A.A., Al-Anon and CODA, we learn that the essential missing ingredient in our lives is self-love.

Self-love gives us a new lease on life. It helps us to realize that we are “good enough” just the way we are and that we don’t have to please anyone to gain their approval or to earn their love. It also helps us to realize that we don’t need anyone’s approval to be happy. And it teaches us that we don’t have to manipulate anyone into pleasing us to make us happy. Self-love gives us the power to find love and happiness within ourselves. It then enables us to share that happiness and our love with others.