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Today we got a new TV, and it reminded me of some­thing I just can’t get out of my head. It’s some­thing unpleas­ant, and it keeps rat­tling around in my head.

(I’ve begun posts on this topic before, but I kept get­ting too far into details no one would read–not that I expect any­one to read even this shorter, nar­rower post.)

Around the begin­ning of this year I asked my friend of 11 years, my brother by dif­fer­ent par­ents, Chris, to move in with my fam­ily in Oregon. Like me before him, Chris tired of liv­ing in the Daytona Beach area of Florida (no, really, it’s a nice place to visit, but…). He liked Oregon. I was here. He had got­ten to know my fiancé Strawberry Blonde a bit over the last few years, and they liked one another. We had a spare bed­room. It seemed a no-brainer: Chris can move in with us. Even if the arrange­ment didn’t end up being per­ma­nent, it would at least give him the chance to save up some money before wor­ry­ing about apart­ments and util­i­ties of his own.

With all of his pos­ses­sions packed in his Jeep, Chris arrived in April ’07. Almost imme­di­ately things began to go bad, though it would take me a few months to under­stand why.

I’ve come to real­ize that Chris deals with acute narissicism–the actual psy­cho­log­i­cal mal­ady, not the typ­i­cal lay­man use of describ­ing some­one overly con­cerned with his appear­ance. Rather, the wiring in the man’s brain has him con­vinced that he’s supe­rior to other human beings (nearly every­one), and he has a near inabil­ity to rec­og­nize that oth­ers’ feel­ings are as impor­tant as his own. In the sim­plest terms: Chris doesn’t see the vast major­ity of other peo­ple as com­plete, emo­tional beings. Instead, they are infe­rior to him in one way or another, and, fol­low­ing the law of sur­vival of the fittest, he believes him­self per­fectly jus­ti­fied in manip­u­lat­ing oth­ers to serve his inter­ests. That’s Chris’s life–constant manip­u­la­tion of others.

At 6’5″ and just shy of 300 lbs, he manip­u­lates most peo­ple by intim­i­dat­ing them. If you fail to instantly demon­strate a high value to his inter­ests upon meet­ing him, he will be brusque, gruff, intim­i­dat­ing. The goal, of course, is to keep you away. If he doesn’t per­ceive that you can do some­thing for him, he has no use for you.

If you do prof­fer some­thing else he wants, he’ll use other tac­tics to manip­u­late you into giv­ing it to him. Usually that begins with Chris being funny, charm­ing, and just fun to be around. When it suits him, he’s quite adept at mak­ing peo­ple feel good about them­selves. People grav­i­tate toward some­one who makes them feel good about them­selves, who will bol­ster their egoes and cre­ate fun times. It’s very easy to become accus­tomed, and then addicted to, some­one like that. When he asks for a favor, one gives it. When he asks for a big favor, one may not want to do it–it may even rep­re­sent a hard­ship for one to per­form the favor–but the fear of Chris with­hold­ing the fun and ego stroking tends to make one acqui­esce to help him. A lit­tle sub­tle nudg­ing from Chris him­self usu­ally ensures cooperation–either by pos­i­tive rein­force­ment of how much he can do for you, or a gen­tle threat of with­hold­ing what he can do for you.

This is how Chris lives his life–manipulating people.

The TV reminded me of his attempts to manip­u­late my daughters.

Shortly after Chris moved in he decided he wanted for him­self my family–my fiancé, Strawberry Blonde, and my 12– and 10-year-old step-daughters, Mojo and Sassy (not their real names). He also came to believe that he would be a bet­ter boyfriend and father than I. Although I’m sure he arrived at these beliefs grad­u­ally and only after mov­ing into our house, it hap­pened quickly, over the course of only a cou­ple of weeks.

One day he took Mojo out shop­ping to bond with her. He spent over $100 on her, buy­ing the 12-year-old any­thing she wanted, includ­ing a pair of $80 Heely shoes (sneak­ers with a roller­skate wheel in the heel). Strawberry Blonde and I were happy that Mojo had the shoes (she loves them, wears them con­stantly), we felt the expense was too much–particularly from a guy who said he was broke. He wouldn’t take reim­burse­ment, so we let it stand. It nagged at us, though, that he seemed to be try­ing to buy the kids.

A few days after that, he promised to buy my daugh­ters a new tele­vi­sion for the fam­ily room, whose TV set was old and was begin­ning to suf­fer. On two occas­sions I went to buy a new TV for the kids, but Chris begged me not to. It was his promise to keep, he explained. So, months went by as the tele­vi­sion got worse. Summertime with­out a TV while half my daugh­ters’ friends were off vis­it­ing rel­a­tives? Shudder. Still, I held off because Chris was adamant that he’d buy them a TV set. (I bought them a new com­puter and rebuilt another instead.)

From April through July Chris worked very, very hard to get me out of my house, to take over my fam­ily for him­self. He very nearly suc­ceeded. Strawberry Blonde and I were at each other’s throats. I was lit­er­ally on my way out the door for good–with Strawberry Blonde stand­ing ready to push should I doddle–when I finally real­ized what had been happening.

We weren’t suck­ers, Strawberry Blonde and me. We did noth­ing wrong. We sim­ply wel­comed a new mem­ber into our fam­ily, afford­ing him the trust he had earned in 11 years as my dear friend. Chris took advan­tage of that trust and turned it against us. It makes me sad that it was so easy for him, but I feel no shame for it; I will not be ashamed of show­ing trust, friend­ship, and kind­ness to another human being.

What Chris did was sim­ple: He offered him­self to both Strawberry Blonde and me as impar­tial ear to bend. We dis­cussed our indi­vid­ual prob­lems with him–a frus­tra­tion with the kids, work prob­lems, what­ever. Gradually the advice he gave deep­ened, as did the level of prob­lems we dis­cussed with him. Before we real­ized it, Chris had Strawberry Blonde and me bring­ing prob­lems we had with each other to him instead of dis­cussing them amongst our­selves. In fact, Strawberry Blonde and I barely spoke to one another for sev­eral weeks; instead, she bitched about me to him, I about her to him. Chris acted as inter­me­di­ary, osten­si­bly try­ing to help us over­come our rela­tion­ship problems–problems we later real­ized he exac­er­bated and, in some cases, cre­ated all by him­self. The whole time, he revised and recreated–if Strawberry Blonde said “night” he told me she said “day”; if I said “black,” he told her “white.”

He was good. He knew all the but­tons to push, all the ways in which Strawberry Blonde and I were vul­ner­a­ble. After 11 years as my clos­est friend, he had me all fig­ured out. Once he got started it didn’t take long to fig­ure out what would work on Strawberry Blonde and what wouldn’t.

He had Strawberry Blonde con­vinced that:

• I was hav­ing online cyber sex affairs.
• I was cast­ing about for a suit­able can­di­date to join me in a real world affair.
• I was firmly plan­ning to leave, that I was only wait­ing until a par­tic­u­lar client paid its siz­able bill.
• I thought Strawberry Blonde was crazy.
• I was a bad, angry father to Mojo and Sassy.
• I was poten­tially scy­z­o­phrenic and mildly insanse.
• I was, and had always been, ready to sac­ri­fice Strawberry Blonde and the kids for my career.

He had me con­vinced that:

• I was a lousy father to my step-daughters.
• I couldn’t give Strawberry Blonde what she needed.
• I may not even be capa­ble of hav­ing a com­mit­ted, long term relationship.
• I was a fail­ure in my career.
• I was crack­ing up and going insane.
• Strawberry Blonde was no longer in love with me.
• Strawberry Blonde had strong feel­ings for him–and had prob­a­bly already con­sum­mated those feelings.

He tried (but failed) to also con­vince me that Strawberry Blonde and the girls were a hin­drance to my career, and that my career was more impor­tant than they.

Chris was so con­fi­dent that he would soon manuever him­self into dis­plac­ing me that he had been telling his co-workers for weeks about his kids, his girl­friend, his house.

On a Sunday evening in late-July Chris won. I was mov­ing out the next day, and I told him as much. He told me at the same time that it was bet­ter for all concerned.

I went out for a walk to clear my head–largely to decide whether I could sleep in the house one more night or if I had to leave that night. While I was out, Chris ramped Strawberry Blonde up for that final push. Playing on frus­tra­tions he’d been fan­ning for months, he whipped her into an anger more intense than I’d ever seen her. She broke things. I’ve never seen her break things in anger. The move was meant to cement my deci­sion by rein­forc­ing my belief that Strawberry Blonde was men­tally unbal­anced; it also served to get Strawberry Blonde so angry with me that she would be glad to see me go.

Unfortunately for Chris’s care­fully orches­trated plan, by the time he made that last move, it was already too late. I had already woken up and talked some sense into myself–at the prover­bial last second.

The 2-hour-long walk had done me good. It enabled me to calm down and begin ask­ing myself ques­tions, which, if you know any­thing about trans­ac­tional analy­sis, is the key to objec­tive think­ing. I exam­ined my sit­u­a­tion objec­tively, replay­ing con­ver­sa­tions with Strawberry Blonde and study­ing them dis­pas­sion­ately. Numerous dis­crepen­cies stood out–I had said “black,” but she was utterly con­vinced I’d said “white.” Of course, I hadn’t been say­ing any­thing directly to her for weeks. Thus, if this became that, it had to have hap­pened in trans­la­tion from the intermediary–Chris. And so I turned my objec­tive ear back to con­ver­sa­tions with Chris, match­ing and com­par­ing them to con­tra­dic­tions from or with Strawberry Blonde. It all made such sim­ple sense: Chris had set him­self up as our inter­me­di­ary with one another, and he edited or changed whole­sale what each of us said to him when he pre­sented it to the other. At the same time, he was man­u­fac­tur­ing situations–like my sup­posed cyber affairs–but say­ing he would han­dle it, that nei­ther Strawberry Blonde nor I should bring up these sit­u­a­tions with the other.

As ludi­cris as it sounds that two peo­ple who slept in the same bed (rarely by that point) would be talk­ing only through a third party, you must under­stand that it wasn’t an overnight change to that from direct dis­course. It was some­thing we’d allowed to hap­pen over the course of sev­eral months, grad­u­ally and sub­tly, com­pletely below our respec­tive radars. We were trust­ing peo­ple manip­u­lated by a ruth­less man with his eyes fixed on a spe­cific goal.

I came back in from that walk enlight­ened, relieved, and con­fi­dent. I knew Strawberry Blonde’s intel­li­gence; I knew she would rec­og­nize and sieze upon the truth even faster than I did. All I had to do was con­vince her to look for it. And that’s exactly what happeneed.

It took a lit­tle doing to get her alone. Chris didn’t try very hard to impede me because he thought he’d already won; he didn’t rec­og­nize the shift in my demeanor. More, it was Strawberry Blonde her­self. While I was out, Chris had con­tin­ued work­ing on her, push­ing her deeper and deeper into rage–and, thus, far­ther and far­ther from objec­tive thought. When I tried to speak to her alone in our bed­room she snarled at me; I ignored it.

Softly, gen­tly I began to lead her back to the point of cog­ni­tive thought–the adult mode of trans­ac­tional analy­sis. No mat­ter what she spat at me, no mat­ter how much it hurt, I spoke softly and hon­estly, talk­ing from my love for her, not from the pain her words inspired. I recited back to her sev­eral of her accu­sa­tions, and then asked to con­sider whether any of those fit the man she’d loved for four years.

Many of the things Chris used to vil­lify me in Strawberry Blonde’s mind were whole­sale fab­ri­ca­tions, but most were exag­ger­a­tions that had grains of truth. When Strawberry Blonde was ready, I answered every one of those issues–real, false, and partly true. We talked the entire night, and through the next sev­eral days, rebuild­ing our rela­tion­ship and com­par­ing notes as to what Chris said to each of us, when she said “night” but told me “day.”

That was two months ago. Strawberry Blonde and I doing great.

There was no need to con­front Chris with the mat­ter; he knew he’d lost his con­trol on us. He still lives in the room we rented him–but not for much longer. We had both wanted to kick him out with­out notice, but shortly after that Sunday he hurt him­self at work and was home­bound for three weeks. We couldn’t be cruel. The day he went back to work, how­ever, we gave him 30 days notice. He has 2 weeks left. Strawberry Blonde and I are count­ing the hours.

Getting the kids’ new TV today reminded me of the one he had promised them, the one that never mate­ri­al­ized despite his siz­able income and insis­tance that he would get them the tele­vi­sion. At the time, he had been manip­u­lat­ing them–trying to buy them, try­ing to prove that he could be a bet­ter father to them than I.

Chris barely speaks to my daugh­ters now. Ever since that day in late July when his plan to take over as man of the house was foiled he’s renegged on all his promises, stopped hav­ing any­thing to do with any mem­ber of my fam­ily. It was all or noth­ing thing for him. I had asked him to join my fam­ily, but he wanted to take it over; if he couldn’t have one, he didn’t want the other.

The tele­vi­sion also made me think of Sassy and Mojo, at the shop­ping spree on which he took Mojo. Following that Chris had promised to take 10-year-old Sassy on her own shop­ping trip–complete with a pair of Heelys. That was 5 months ago. Her birth­day is next week. She’ll be get­ting Heelys from her mother and me.