The Manual We Have for Others

What is a Manual?

A manual is an instruction guide we have for someone in our lives about how we would like them to behave so we can feel good and be happy. We generally don’t tell the other person what’s in our manual, and we usually don’t even realize we have it or see the pain it causes us. We feel that the other person should just “know” what to do and how to treat us. While it may seem justified to have expectations of other people, it can be very damaging when your emotional happiness is directly tied to their behaving a certain way.

For example, Rebecca hates her ex-husband and blames him for everything she’s currently struggling with. She often says, “If it hadn’t been for him, I would be successful and wealthy” or “He’s the reason I have no money and no happiness.” Rebecca has been divorced for twenty years, and she’s still giving this man power in her emotional life. She’s letting her story about him—who he was and who he should have been—cause her to be miserable. She has been dedicated to hating him and feeling that hate each and every day for more than twenty years!

Rebecca’s coach was able to hold the space for her in order to hash this out. She needed to vent all the hate and then have her coach show her that her ex-husband wasn’t feeling her hatred. Her coach showed her that instead of punishing him with her hate, she was punishing herself. She was the one feeling, experiencing, and living it. He was happily remarried and paying no attention to her misery. Her coach asked her how it felt to think about him this way, and she would say, “Terrible!” Then the coach would ask why she was consistently choosing to feel terrible. It took her a while to truly understand this was her choice. She started to realize that hating him had no upside. She started to let the story go and eventually focused on the areas of her life that truly needed attention.

Many people have manuals that stem from the belief that they would be happier if someone in their lives would change. This is a huge cause of suffering because they’re handing over the power of how they feel to someone else. One of the most powerful things to understand is that this isn’t true. Ever.

Other people’s behavior has no impact on us emotionally until we think about it, interpret it, and choose to make it mean something. No matter what people do, how they act, or what they say, we don’t have to give others the power to determine how we feel.

This concept will be mind-altering and might also be jarring. For people used to living their whole lives giving their power away, it will probably be difficult to realize they have been doing this voluntarily and unnecessarily.

Some common manual instructions could be:

She should call me back when I call her.
She should remember my birthday.
She should invite me when she has a party.
She should write me a thank you note.
She should be kind and understand when I am frustrated.
She should support me.
She should listen to me for as long as I listened to her.
She should ask me to be a bridesmaid, godmother, etc.
He should tell me he loves me.
He should buy me something special on my birthday.
He should know what I like.
He should be emotionally available.
He should want to go to the movies I like.
He should make more money.
He should spend less time at work.
He should spend more time with the kids.
He shouldn’t watch so much football.
He should take out the garbage without having to be asked.

These examples are simple and brief, but the truth is that most manuals are pages upon pages thick. They are complicated, intricate, and detailed. Rather than sharing these expectations with the person they’re about, people with manuals generally feel the other person should just inherently know. They are then eager to interpret this as a sign that they are really loved by this person.

The Problem with Manuals

Adults have the ability and freedom to behave however they choose. This includes you. There is nothing you ever have to do, and there is nothing anyone else has to do for you. One common practice in modern couples therapy is for two people to sit down, discuss what has happened, and then share with each other what their needs are so the other person can work to meet them. The problem with this is that it creates a manual set up for disaster. The truth is, each of us is responsible for meeting our own needs.

When you’re in a relationship where you feel responsible for filling someone else’s needs and they feel responsible for filling yours, there is constant manipulation and effort to control one another so that in the end, nobody wins. The truth is, you cannot control another person, and there is nothing they could possibly do that would make you as happy as you want to be. All of the power to feel happy lies within you.

Although your partner may do things that give you positive thoughts and feelings at times, they won’t be able to do such things all of the time or may not want to.

If your emotional life is tied to your partner’s behavior, you’ve given away all of your power and have set yourself up for disaster. Furthermore, being in a relationship with someone who is “needy” is exhausting and not fun. Instead, if both partners are responsible for their own happiness, they can meet in the middle and have fun together. This is how the best relationships function.

When people subscribe to manuals, they put their emotions in the hands of other people. If the people in their lives don’t follow the Manual (and they usually don’t), they are then guaranteed to feel negative emotions. They then, unknowingly, blame the other person for their feelings. They have given control of their emotional life to someone else, cementing their own powerlessness.

How to Let Go of a Manual

The best first steps are to realize that these manuals are based on other people and to recognize the benefits of taking responsibility for our own rules by creating personal operating manuals for ourselves. The truth is that most of us cannot even control or manage ourselves, and yet we want to control and manage other people, which is somewhat ridiculous. Controlling our own behavior is challenging enough, but trying to control other people is inevitably frustrating for both parties and usually ineffective.

Once someone can acknowledge that they have manuals for the people in their lives, they can start to explore what it is that they want people to do differently and why. The answer is always that they think that if the other person changes their behavior, they will feel better. However, we know that another person’s behavior doesn’t control our feelings, ever. It’s only our thinking that affects how we feel. When someone does follow your manual, you may choose thoughts such as “This person likes me and cares about me,” and that is what might cause you to feel good. When someone doesn’t follow your manual and you interpret it negatively, you’ll feel bad.

When we don’t take responsibility for how we feel, we give that power away to someone else based on their behavior. We think we want someone to behave differently so we can feel better, but in the end, that’s not even possible because other people’s actions cannot dictate our feelings.

These new thoughts can help you take a deep breath and stop trying to control other people.

Take responsibility for how you feel, regardless of other people’s behavior. This is an empowering way to live and creates better results in your life. This does not mean that you stay in relationships that are harmful or not serving you well. You need to do what’s necessary to protect yourself. Although boundaries are appropriate, trying to control and manipulate other people never works. Instead, it will make you feel and even act like a crazy person.

You get to decide what you’re going to do with your time, how you’re going to respond, and when you want to make changes in your life. You’ll want to make sure you’re thinking about those changes and what you want based on what you have control over.

Final Thoughts and Examples

Perhaps you want your friends to call you once a week and on your birthday.

Perhaps this is your friendship manual. In most cases, you probably don’t share this manual with your friends—it’s just an expectation you have and think is understood. When your friends don’t honor this, you might feel frustrated and let them know they hurt your feelings by not calling you. This sets you up for more frustration and drama. The alternative is that you have friends, but you allow them to be who they are. If they want to call you, they call you, and if they don’t call you back, you don’t construe it to mean anything negative. You can just love people, enjoy who they are, and not have any manuals for them, which can be a very freeing way to live. Again, it’s perfectly reasonable to make requests of friends that they call you back, but always remember that whether they decide to honor this request has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with them. You can choose just to love and enjoy them as they are.

If a friend doesn’t show up when you expected them to, let them know you were bummed they weren’t there and next time, you’d really like them to give you more notice. But don’t continue to blame them for how they behaved. It might mean that you won’t expect them to show up on time in the future, but you can work around that and don’t have to hold them to the fire.

Being on time might be very important to you, but that doesn’t mean it’s important to someone else. It also doesn’t mean they don’t respect you or your time. It might just be they have a hard time managing their schedule. You could try having an honest conversation, such as, “Hey, we are all going to meet up at 4:30 pm. Since you’re usually late, I’m going to expect you there around 5 pm, but if you’re not there at 5 pm, we’re going to leave.” You can also say, “I just wanted to let you know because I love you and hope you’ll join us, but if you’re not there by 5 pm, we’re going to leave.” This still allows them to do whatever they choose to do, and you can take action based on what you want to do. There doesn’t have to be hurt feelings and subsequent drama.

Most people have a manual for their significant others. We have a lot of ideas about how we would like them to behave and who we would like them to be. This comes from our idea that if they were more like we wanted them to be, we would somehow be happier as a result. It’s important to remember that your happiness comes from you and it doesn’t matter who your spouse is or what they do when it comes to your emotional happiness. Spouses who are compatible with us are going to make it easier for us to have positive thoughts around them, but it doesn’t mean that they have to change in order for that to be true.

Start with Yourself

When we release all the rules and expectations we have, listen to the other person, and hear what’s going on for them, our relationships can change for the better. We can start understanding them from a different perspective that isn’t clouded by our own thinking and expectations.

Think about someone in your life and three things you want that person to do because it would make you feel so good. Maybe you wish that your husband was more romantic and you think that it would be so awesome if he wrote you love notes, brought home flowers, or planned romantic surprise vacations. Perhaps you wish your friends would call more often or be more available to you. Or maybe it’s your relationship with your mother or your father where you’d like to see a change. Perhaps you wish they would offer more help or show more interest in your children or even that they were around less and gave you more space. Once you have someone in mind, write down things you ideally would want this person to do. Next, consider what you think you would feel if this person did these things voluntarily and happily.

Remember, all of your feelings come from your thinking. What would you be thinking if this person behaved in line with the way you want them to behave? Really think about it until you can identify the main thought. Can you think those good things about this person without them having to do what’s on your list? If the answer is yes, you scored. You don’t have to go around changing other people to feel better. You can feel better on your own accord. You can decide, “I’m not going to make my life about the way I believe I’m entitled to be treated. The only thing I’m entitled to is taking care of my own emotional life and my own brain to make sure that I’m thinking thoughts that serve me.”

If you really want something done, you must make sure it’s done yourself. At times, you may need to ask yourself why you’re not willing to do it. Also consider if you really want someone else to do something they don’t want to do? The next example further illustrates this point.

Melissa was frustrated because she didn’t want dog poo in her backyard, and she didn’t want to clean it up. Neither did her husband. She felt it was unfair for her to have to do it, but her husband didn’t care that it was there. She took this to mean that he didn’t care about her, didn’t want to contribute, and wasn’t an equal partner. She made it all mean something so much more that now, instead of just having dog poo in the backyard, she is also frustrated and aggravated with her husband, which only compounds the problem.

Often when she asks him over and over again to do it, he still won’t. In instances when he does, she’s still frustrated because he didn’t do it automatically. She can continue to make the request of her husband, but if he doesn’t do it, she’ll need to let go of this manual by not making interpretations that aren’t founded in reality. Otherwise, this will continue to affect her relationship with him. Now the dog poo is not only all over the yard, but it’s all over their marriage too. Melissa would benefit from really thinking about the things she wants to have done and how she wants other people to behave.

It is truly possible to let go of all your rules, all your regulations, and all your attempts to control people in your life. Consider letting these things go and making requests if you want to, but only with no strings attached. Genuinely notice what people do when you don’t try to control them. If you focused on trying to control only yourself and your responses to how other people behave, what do you imagine your life would be like?

In our personal relationships, it’s much easier to let go of our manuals because then we start letting people just be who they are. When we don’t try to control others, they feel safe to be their true selves, and this is what authentic, intimate relationships are made of. We can be much calmer when we don’t make others’ end actions mean something negative and we can also really hear them out. We can get their perspective on things, hear their side of the story, and understand why they do or don’t do what we’ve requested. This is so much more effective than pounding our fist on the Manual.

If you throw away your manual, you may end up doing things you don’t want to do, but your relationships will improve dramatically. The truth is, you, just like other people in your life, don’t have to follow your manual. You don’t have to do anything you truly don’t want to do either. Take some time to consider this idea. Are you willing to give up your manuals? Are you willing to let go of your expectations and focus all that time and energy on creating the best life you can? You’ll find that your life is enhanced by being around people who genuinely do things they want to do, rather than doing things because you’re emotionally manipulating them. If you’re willing to give it a try, you’ll find that this changes everything.