What is the number to assign to the level of wrong that belongs to manipulating someone into a place where I am happier with them?

Then there is the quandary: What would be manipulation? She is strong enough that she wouldn’t do what she didn’t want to. That’s one of the reasons I fell in love with her.

It comes down to morality and justification of actions, independent and stark.

What is, then, the number value of telling
someone that you’re manipulating them
into a position where you are more comfortable with them
and at the end having them thank you for it?

And can you say that manipulation isn’t simply
making Option A more desirable – in appearance
than Option B and letting them choose?
There are no choices – is not then manipulation
a helpful hand in justification?

There are choices. There can be only choice, otherwise there is no responsibility. The choice to enact my will to alter another’s perception of a situation or of myself for my own pleasure seems to reek of salesmanship, a skill which I usually find contemptible.

Not knowing the pre-existing perception is the problem, and because of this, how am I to judge whether I am selling her something she doesn’t need, or creating the doorway she craves to walk through?

Well, my dear man. Do you believe in insight?
Yes, I thought so. And usually after a few mannerisms
and watching the eyes shift at specific moments
you have an internal knowledge of another persons
reaction. “Manipulation” or “Helpful Justification”
as I like to call it, requires an attentiveness –
are you sure that you’re “Selling” something?
Or is she LOOKING for you to create
that doorway? Is it possible that you’re not
manipulating her… that she is progressing naturally
the way she wants to and that it’s all happy
coincidence?

You, of all people, would use the phrase “happy coincidence” in relation to me and a woman? You have, however, captured the essence of my quandary and your words and mine have met the stalemate that exists in my noggin. I am to make a decision between risking performing manipulation and taking the safe out that is inaction.

So, then, it comes down to the morality of the specific actions that you would suggest. So. Suggest away.

My 1st suggestion is a standard one: if you spend much more time analyzing how you relate to each other then you’re not relating with each other which is far more important. You’ve neglected to mention the possibility that perhaps you’re both moving parallel to each other – that there is NO manipulation – and that there is an undertone of sheer joy in both of you. Perhaps the fact that you relish the shape of her speech, the sounds of her movement and the sight of her emotion is shared. Would this be okay with you? If you had nothing to prove to her and that maybe, just maybe *GASP* she means exactly what she says?

Then I am doomed. The last thing she said, in relation to this, was right after Thanksgiving, when we became “just friends.” As is evident, I am not satisfied (being that it is very difficult when one is romantically in love with a friend) and have the desire to enact change.

I don’t desire to prove anything to her. Forgive me for whining, but I desire her closeness.

She adores me, of that I have no doubt. Whatever metaphor is used, I desire a shortening of the distance between us. And yes, I placed this distance where it is to fit the definition of friends. For my own sanity.

To remove it changes, in my mind, how she and I relate to each other.