Blackmail is extortion.
Blackmail is a term that derives from the French blackmail and refers to extortion . This concept, in turn, comes from the Latin word extortion and refers to a threat of defamation or harm that is made against someone with the aim of obtaining some benefit from them.
For example: “A businessman reported that, for years, he suffered blackmail from a police commissioner,” “I was the victim of blackmail from a man who threatened to circulate a rumor about my alleged alcoholism,” “The blackmail consisted of taking photographs of the "women with their lovers to demand a sum of money in exchange for not publishing them on social networks."
How blackmail works
Blackmail, therefore, is pressure on a person to force them to act in a certain way. The blackmailed person, to prevent the damage that the blackmailer suggests from coming to fruition, ends up accepting what the blackmailer asks for. Generally, blackmail consists of demanding money in exchange for not doing the damage.
Suppose a person observes how a co-worker steals supplies from an office. Instead of denouncing him or covering him up, he decides to demand money from him to keep his silence . The thief, in this way, is blackmailed by the witness.
Another example of blackmail can occur in a case of infidelity. A woman has relations with a married man and films these encounters. With several records under her belt, the woman blackmails the man and asks him for money in exchange for not showing the videos to his wife. The man, therefore, must debate whether to give in to blackmail to keep his secret or risk the blackmailer carrying out her threat and causing problems with his family.
Emotional blackmail is a form of manipulation.
emotional manipulation
Emotional blackmail is known as a series of tactics that are used with the purpose of manipulating another person through feelings, and it takes place in various types of interpersonal relationships , especially between parents and children and in couples. It is worth mentioning that in the first case it can occur in both directions (from parents to children and vice versa), although minors usually bear the brunt.
With respect to emotional blackmail between parents and children, on the one hand there are situations in which children learn to distort reality to move their parents and manipulate them to their liking; At first glance, a relationship of these characteristics can put the children as the perpetrators, but a relatively in-depth analysis of each story can show exactly the opposite.
Parents who overprotect their children often do so driven by the fear of not making them happy; However, they very often achieve results opposite to their expectations, since the lack of limits does not at all reflect the rules of society with which, sooner or later, children will have to deal. But before that moment of revelation arrives, in which the false security structure will crumble, spoiled children can be true insatiable monsters, experts in emotional blackmail to control everything that happens around them.
On the other hand, there are stories of parents who, for various reasons, do not want to allow their children to let go of them and find their own path, and they achieve this through indirect threats, generally related to exaggerated or self-induced health problems. Many parents do everything possible to convince their children to reject their other relationships, to stay and care for them in their suffering; They slowly feed guilt at the mere thought of leaving the nest.
Blackmail in a couple
Relationships are also an ideal focus for the proliferation of emotional blackmail, since it is a manipulation tactic that is very compatible with jealousy.
Among the most common cases is the reproach of one of the parties towards the other for spending "too much" time with friends.