Emotional Blackmail
It is certainly not fair, ha-ha…what is there in this ₦2000 that you cannot spare. After all, I need it and you are my sister. You promised to be there for me and you cannot give me this little amount and if you do not give me now, who will? I have always sung your praises to my friends and here I am grovelling for your help! ‘What is wrong with you? Haven’t I been giving you money? I told you that I am only left with ₦2000 which I really need to purchase the form I told you about. Why are you doing this now? You talk as if I am uncaring. Oh, God! Not again.’
Don’t be surprised. This is an abnormal norm that is termed normal in our present day. It exists in homes among parents, children, siblings, husbands and wives, in market places as well as in places of work. Emotional blackmail is when the people in your life use fear, obligation and guilt to manipulate you. It is a powerful form of manipulation in which the person directly or indirectly threatens to punish you if you do not comply with how they want you to behave. Some examples of things emotional blackmailers say are: “if you really love me, I want you to chase that filthy mother of yours out of this house.”, “…how could you be so selfish?” after all I have done for you” An emotional blackmailer will use your vulnerabilities and deepest secrets against you. However, this can be seen in the positive and negative light. According to some enquiries I made, some students use it to threaten some lecturers who had made a go sexually at them and do not want their secret scandals to be exposed to their wives at home. Take for instance;
Mr Femi: Sayo, how sweet you look today!
Sayo: Hey! Will you hold it? Can you imagine this filthy good-for-nothing lecturer! with me and promising to give me an A in this course he ended up giving me an F?
Mr Femi: Don’t be so silly. How dare you walk into my office to tell me trash? You must really be out of your senses.
Sayo: Hey! Now you think you can have a say at me, right? Oh! How will it sound if I write a petition against you to the school authorities that you raped me in your office and also threatened to fail me if I dared to mention it to anyone? And this piece of valid information gets to the ears of your adorable wife?
Let us look at this: Sister B, please when coming tomorrow, endeavour to buy me a packet of Corn flakes I don’t have money! Aren’t you a graduate?
Emotional blackmail is a tool used by people to extort one another while others use it to get back what is rightfully theirs and some do it for the fun of it. As Jean Baudrillard puts it; if you don’t give me what I want, you will be responsible for my breakdown.
No matter how much a blackmailer cares about a victim, they use their intimate knowledge to win compliance. Knowing that the victim wants love, approval or confirmation of identity, blackmailers may threaten to withhold them. Take for instance, in ‘My Heart Beats for Lola’- a soap opera, Debra gives her phone to the kidnapped Solidad in other to speak to her daughter. “It doesn’t matter what they do to me; do not listen to Debra or anyone else”
Debra then speaks to Lola, “did you get that? I have your mother once again… if you make an attempt to marry Andre, your mother will say hello to her ancestors.” As the power of emotional blackmail indicates, self-identity is inevitably affected by the blackmail. Are you a blackmailer? Watch out for anyone who might want to nail you to the wall with your secret scandal. You could be the next victim.
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