Notes on The Gift of Fear

I'd known about Gavin de Becker's "The Gift of Fear" for a long time--I must have seen him on Oprah back when that episode aired, when I was (probably) in high school. Even then, the concepts were simultaneously eye-opening and intuitive. Over the years, various friends read it and recommended it. I wonder whether, had I read it earlier, I might have cut RM's antics off at the start. But I hadn't, and I didn't. I can say that I knew enough that I pared back RM's antics, which could have been a lot worse, and by the time I'd navigated RM's antics, I was better prepared for BE's. Even so, I didn't recognize the BE signs as early or clearly as I might have had I read the book.

You may be thinking, "neither of these guys were a danger to you," to which I say two things: (1) I don't know; RM might have been a danger to me had I been any less assertive, and (2) de Becker states explicitly that these are indicators of manipulativeness, not necessarily danger--and it's manipulativeness that can push you to ignore the instincts that might help you stay out of danger. Consider also the woman who tried to kidnap me--even she probably wasn't dangerous; she didn't intend to harm me. She merely manipulated me verbally into getting into her car, which allowed her to manipulate me physically into being her captive audience for an hour.



That situation is worth revisiting in detail because it is so textbook with regard to the issue at hand, so here we go: years ago, I took an evening class (a series of classes over several years, actually) in the District, to which I commuted by Metro. I didn't mind walking to the metro, even after the class got out at 10pm. There was a woman in the class who had struck me as odd from the very start--very needy and attention-seeking. Toward the end of the semester one night, as class wrapped up, she offered me a ride, which I politely declined. She then offered me a ride to the metro, which I also politely declined. She persisted. In fact, she reframed the offer in such a way that almost made it rude for me to continue to decline. Among other things, she said that she really didn't mind--which took out of play the key issue of what I wanted. So I thought, 'how bad could it be, the metro's right there' and got in her car. She drove right by the metro, said 'I just got caught up talking, I drove right by it.' Okay, then: Rosslyn. It's also on her way. She drove right past that one, too, and before I knew it we were on the highway, heading west, fast. I was frightened and part of me was prepared to open a car door and jump out, but I calmly instructed her to take the next exit and turn around. Eventually, I directed her to a metro stop close but not closest to me; I didn't want her knowing where I lived.

The next day, I approached the instructors of a day class I was in for work, on dealing with difficult people, and told them what happened. They instantly recognized her behavior as manipulative, and both, simultaneously, said: "the contrasting tool!" The contrasting tool would have reversed this woman's attempt to reframe the offer in a way that would have made it more polite to refuse (politeness isn't everything, but we'll get to that later). I would have used it to say, "it's not that I don't appreciate your offer, but I really do prefer to walk." Gavin de Becker talks in his section on implied threats about the power of forcing the threatener to make them explicit; this is a case of making an assumption explicit, so that it loses power. I've done this a lot with my mother--back when she functioned: I forced her to get out from behind implications, to actually articulate her issues, which, when explictly articulated, sounded ridiculous. Here's a choice excerpt"

“Just as rapport-building has a good reputation, explicitness applied by women in this culture has a terrible reputation. A woman who is clear and precise is viewed as cold, or a bitch, or both. A woman is expected, first and foremost, to respond to every communication from a man. And the response is expected to be one of willingness and attentiveness. It is considered attractive if she is a bit uncertain (the opposite of explicit). Women are expected to be warm and open, and in the context of approaches from male strangers, warmth lengthens the encounter, raises his expectations, increases his investment, and, at best, wastes time. At worst, it serves the man who has sinister intent by providing much of the information he will need to evaluate and then control his prospective victim.”

Anyway: frightening as that situation was, and as much as the potential was there for physical danger, I doubt the woman wanted to hurt me; she just wanted me to be her friend for an hour, and she couldn't achieve that naturally so she achieved it the only way she could. For her, negative attention was better than no attention.

Danger is not the only thing at issue. Gavin de Becker reiterates several times that social constructs--such as those articulated in the excerpt--reinforce the idea that women aren't allowed to choose who is and is not in their lives. You'll recall in the case of RM that my own friends and family were horrified that I was using the gift--i.e., I was standing up to RM. I wasn't even standing up to him enough, but I was a monster because I rightly recognized his behavior as manipulate and inappropriate, and discouraged it. He wanted my attention, so was I to refuse it? What did my needs count for?

And by the time BE rolled around, a friend had the gall to suggest that I hadn't done enough to discourage him. GdeB points out that, in these situations, nothing is discouragement. Any contact--and I had legitimate reasons to keep responding to his attempts at contact--feeds the dynamic. In fact, when I finally did realize it and decided to stop responding, he made it very difficult by sending me a heart-wrenching, personal email that only an ostensibly cold-hearted jerk ignore. And I chose to ignore it. And that's what it finally took to get the message across. Repeatedly saying "there is no we;" "we are not in a relationship and never will be;" and "stop giving me things and trying to do me favors" didn't work.

If that sounds familiar, I'd said a lot of that to RM (the relationship stuff was slightly different, because there was never an explicit push for that kind of relationship, his being married and all, but I did have to tell him that we weren't family and that this was a business relationship. We weren't family just because he decided it was so, even though--another manipulation tactic GdeB describes--putting me in a position of having to say, "we're not family" exploits the social constructs that demand that women be nice. GdeB also gets into the loan-sharking (unsolicited gifts), forced teaming (BE was notorious for "are we going to this party?" and "how are we resolving this issue" in the face of my constantly responding with "there. is. no. we"). Oh, and--this is more unique to the RM case--acting out when the manipulation tactics that have always worked for you, all of the sudden don't. RM didn't know what to do with himself; no one had resisted his strategies before.

Like the kidnapping woman, neither RM or BE would take no for an answer (including no gifts or favors), and continued to act butt-hurt when I openly failed to appreciate the next gift or favor that I had explicitly asked him to not give or do. I've encountered various people who discount 'no,' and it's an instant red flag to me--again, if not for danger, for boundary issues. For more on not taking 'no' for an answer, I've excerpted Dr. Nerdlove here. He also gets into presumed intimacy (here).

If I had to boil this all down to one idea, it's that niceness is a trap, especially for women. Not only is our safety more important than someone else's feelings, it is our right to decide who is in our lives and in what nature. More accurately and gender-neutrally, relationships--any kind--are a consent-based system. The gender issue comes back in because there's no stigma for men who put their foot down; there's no social expectation of niceness, of letting him or her down easy. We all have a right to decide who is and is not in our lives, and we women especially have a right to send clear messages to protect that right.