Power tip for relationships: People lead by example – everyone always does

Have you ever wondered why people treat you so weird sometimes? You’ve taken offense a million times for no reason, simply because you didn’t understand this: People always treat you the way they expect YOU to treat THEM; they model to you in order to invite in you what psychology calls mirroring behavior. If they bully you, they expect you to stand up for yourself and bully them back. They want to teach you how to treat them so that you can relate to them in a certain way, right? If a guy is running from you and your offer of love, he wants you to take the passive role, the one he’s now having so that he can chase you like a real man. If a girl is chasing you for a relationship, that is what she wants you to do for her. We always treat other people the way we want to be treated, as incredible as it sounds because we all think that the way we want to be treated is how others want to be treated – but it’s not always so.

My mother is always criticizing me, as is yours, if you’re a girl, I’m sure. If you’re a guy, it’s your dad. What they expect from you is the same treatment: “Tell me how to be the right kind of parent. Tell me how to treat you right, the way I am telling you how to be the right kind of a child.” Granted, this is the behavior of a submissive, insecure parent often targeted to strong-willed, individualistic children. It is like a statement: “I don’t know what to do with you, tell me, show me!” If someone is trying to tangle you into a sexual liaison, they want you to do to them what they are doing to you. Men who are trying to make you into their slaves, want you to make them your slave. Women who are toting on you hand and foot, want you to pamper them like there was no tomorrow.

Sometimes we pick up on this and we create “rapport” according to psychology, by mirroring behavior the other is displaying. I am saying, however, that the other party may back off completely in this interaction if you assume the role they are modeling for you. If someone doesn’t email you for months, what they want is for you to stop emailing them – or they read your inactivity as a request to stop emailing you. If someone is bombarding you with email, obviously they want you to do the same. Some people are very sensitive to begin mirroring behavior while to some it takes a little longer to pick up. Now the question is; do you want to behave in the manner requested of you or not? If you choose not to, disaccord will continue. If you choose to do it, your relationship will be moving towards greater understanding; but first you have to understand what the person is actually asking of you.

Psychology got the phenomena mirroring behavior all reversed – as per usual

Psychology encourages you to start mirroring the other person’s behavior as a slightly deceptive, manipulative tactic to create rapport with the other person. This is not the way to think about it, as this is truly a subconscious form of communicating: “Here, like this, this is what I expect you to do for me, as I do to/for you.” The Bible mentions it: “Do onto others as you’d do to yourself.” That advice is probably given from the perspective of not understanding that not all people want to be treated the same way (kindness, compassion, pity) but that different people want different things (to be given a challenge being the most common alternative to the biblical treatment that to a person who wants a challenge kindness, compassion and pity are feelings of contempt, not love). People show people how they want to be treated. Often, this want also shows the other person’s expectations of people, they show you what they EXPECT to see happen, and when people get what they expect, they feel safe in the knowledge that the world works the way they assume it will. If you treat a person better than what they expect to be treated, you won’t make them feel safe but suspicious; since you treat them better than what they expect, they believe you have an angle, a hidden motive, a motive they need to get to the bottom of. (That is why the coarse of manner are always suspicious of the well behaved – pardon my choice of words. This, partly, explains school bullying, the bully wants to get to the bottom of what the well behaved kid is planning and up to by trying to break their “front”.)

When soulmate relationships are in question, the modelled behavior can be quite unusual because your relationship is unusual. Some pointers you might find helpful:

1. Your True Emotion Mirror¹ starts laying out rules of behavior for you: They want you to tell them what your conditions are and what you want out of them. Remember that a True Emotion Mirror always feels like they are striking gold, and they are getting far better than what they expected to, especially in a culture where true love is said not to exist and being a romantic is quite unfashionable. If you do not give them clear guidelines on what you are expecting (if they are giving you some, you know you’re not making any sense to them) you have to follow up with a set of rules and guidelines of your own.
2. Your True Emotion Mirror attacks you and accuses you of something obscure: They want to engage you into a fight, of course, in order to get right through the barrier (the front) and into an intimate relationship; fight me, don’t be polite to me, I am different to your casual encounters. Politeness, by the way, has no place in an intimate relationship and it has to be abolished in some way; and there is more than one way to attempt to do this.
3. True Emotion Mirrors who work on an instinct are always trying to narrow down the cap between you two the fastest way possible. Respect thinkers, who seem to be passive about the relationship expect you to approach gently, with a philosophical bent; through discussion and heart-to-heart. Their way of seeing things is that you two will find a mutual groove by talking your way into it, by getting to know one another silently and without pressure. The respect thinkers don’t want to scare you off, and are, in return, easily scared to retreat, but that is not to be mistaken for incapacity to intimacy, it’s just that they, themselves want to move into it without tricks and manipulation.

When your relationship finds its balance, the modelling / mirroring behavior quiets down or becomes less frequent. It is a training method that we have as animals who do not know how to communicate by language, because once we were incapable of expressing ourselves in language and our unspoken instincts remain. (I can pretty much guess this is how you will be able to train your animals, too; you take their cues on how to treat them, how to communicate with them: A dominant dog wants you to show them who is the boss. A soft -tempered dog expects you to be gentle and loving towards them, too, and really it would make no sense to rough up a docile dog anyway, right?)

When training behavior stops and testing begins

Your True Emotion Mirror leaves you; he or she expects you to realize something about the relationship isn’t working, and they would expect you to leave them sooner or later, and they simply take their leave because the relationship is not working. This is the MOST COMMON reason why True Emotion Mirrors leave the other, it is nothing more than a realization that SOMETHING is not working… If you want them back, you will have to figure out what it was that you didn’t understand about the situation, and checking their training behavior will certainly give you clues. Did you fail their test or maybe never even understood the lesson?

However, sometimes True Emotion Mirrors leave only to see if you would go after them. This is where modelling behaviour turns into testing you. The testing behaviour is like an examination; Are we there yet, are we inseparable or not? Did you fully get my message and are you ready to live by it?

Some people test you by trying to get under your skin to see if you can tolerate them at their worst and if they can trust you to stay there when they get obnoxious. They poke fun at you, they may even treat you horribly only to ask you this question: “Are you loyal to me without question?” Clearly, you can only answer that question from the heart, are you? Will you tolerate it, will you return it and play with it, or are you not in love enough with this person to be put into this position? Someone may test your trust by putting you into situations that seem or are dangerous so that they know that you trust them to have your back. These behaviours are somewhat abusive, but if you feel strongly that you love being in this position with this person, nobody should be judging, even if did risk your life, if you ask me.

Some test  your tolerance, perhaps to ask you to give them boundaries. Cheating on you maybe one of these tests; a person might want to know which one of their partners will make a claim on their fidelity. If it feels unnatural or even repulsive to continue a relationship with a cheater, don’t do it, but if it tingles a little as a positive, exciting opportunity, go for it. Jealousy games also aim for this. To some people this approach simply won’t have any effect, some feel they must be physically contained from not making a scene. (Make a scene.)

The most difficult people to please and be responsive to are the respect thinking difference thinkers (ie individualists or idealists), who want you to be whoever you are without offering the slightest attempt to change you for their liking, and who also do not take it as their right to change who you are or express their disinterest or dislike towards you based on their personal feelings, because who you are is, in their view, nobody’s business but yours, and the more they love you, the more certainly they will refuse to train your behaviour, they will only ever expect you to treat them with the same level of respect to their personality and their traits, because to them, each individual is sacred. Therefore, there is no way of becoming the kind they want because if they see any pleasing behaviour (adapting behaviour) in you, they will instantly lose their respect for you. They are people with whom the only possible form of reconciliation is an open, heart-to-heart conversation; telling them exactly how you feel while holding back nothing. They are the only type to which writing a love letter will make a favourable impression, given that it comes from the right person; their True Emotion Mirror. They are the what you see is what you get people, and their natural respect falls for the same type – but isn’t limited to it once they understand where people are coming from.

To a Respect thinker, it is important to understand that other types find respect to be the understanding that you will be able to hold up your fists in a fight, and that you will be able to defend your own personality against their demands on you. Unfortunately, usually at the time when a Respect thinker has been provoked to the point of a fight, they are already far gone over the barrier of utter disgust and disrespect towards their opponent. To them, to be provoked to this state of being is a sign that there is nothing left of this relationship to be salvaged, and they would be quite happy to see you burn in Hell for all they care. At this point, you are dead to them, and the only problem to them is the problematics on how to make the bullying type aware that the respect thinker wants nothing from the bully because once the bully gets them provoked into a fight, they think “hey, finally a reaction, something to move forward with; we are getting closer to each other!” (To a Respect thinker a soul connection is instant, it either is or it isn’t. If it isn’t there, the Respect thinker will take a step back and wait until it is – they won’t try and force the matter – too hard or at least not blindly. A Respect thinker needs to know why they are poking if they are poking, random shooting won’t do. If you manage to provoke their attention towards you by unfriendly or aggressive behavior towards them, it means nothing to them but a monkey banging cymbals together as far as true connection goes. With this behaviour you can only ruin a good thing with them, never create it out of nowhere unless you’re really lucky.)

Finding the happy medium of mirroring foreign behavior (and making it a natural alternative when needed)

The most socially capable individuals are quite apt at picking up the cues to different ways of bonding. They can adjust their attitude according to the person, and can simply find a flow in their relationship not everyone can master. Simply being aware of what I just told you will help you along tremendously, but I must say, from personal experience, that it may be difficult to find respect toward an opposite way thinker if things have gotten to the point where respect has been lost due to opposite ways of thinking.

It will help you to be aware of this especially in your romantic relationships because you can adjust your own way of thinking to your counterpart. You will be able to react in a new way before you get to the point of no return by taking it as a battle of wits. Someone who is quite willing and curious about social experimenting should find it quite an exciting way to see where a relationship can be taken when they truly aim to understand what the other person is saying through their modelling behavior. To me, personally, the idea of deliberate mirroring behavior is quite an irksome form of deception, and I suspect I am not the only one who feels this way, but when I look at it from the perspective of “I am the one being trained here” I find the idea exciting, even – depending on who is doing the training, of course. Then, I am sexually submissive so a dominant personality might find it completely opposite, they might feel that they will have to be the trainer, and that is OK, submissives like that. I must point out that WE DO NOT react the same way to all people, so the way you react to, for instance, to the modelling of someone you are sexually interested in maybe completely different to how you would react to someone who you are only interested in as a friend or a colleague. The point being, though, that you might want to try different perspectives on it; are you the model or the learner, and in which of your relationships and to what level is that true for you.

1. True Emotion Mirror is another term used for the same connection with a different explanation to what created the bond. ↩

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