Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication
&gt;Felix, you always leave your dirty socks on the floor! It’s disgusting! Clean this up before you do anything else.<p>&gt;Felix, when I see two balls of soiled socks under the coffee table, I feel irritated because I want more order in the rooms that we share in common - would you be willing to put your socks in the washing machine?<p>These two sentences convey the same information. The speaker finds the sock to be out of order, which is a disgust reaction in some, irritation in others. It also communicates that this event has happened more than once, though it is only implied in the second text. The only explicit difference is the demand to do it immediately.<p>I can understand why people perceive it to be manipulative, it implies a feelings cost to the speaker if the socks are not picked up that is described to be Felix&#x27;s responsibility. The first speaker makes no comment about Felix&#x27;s responsibility over his feelings, but instead simply states that the fact that socks are out makes him feel disgusted with no further feelings based implications.<p>The first speaker makes a clear and overbearing command (assuming this is some social interaction and not a job) to drop everything that Felix is doing and clean up. That is easy to identify and rebel against, it implies no feelings cost, no cost to the speaker, just a disagreement over actionable orders. The second speaker implies a feelings cost that she is has handed responsibility over to Felix. That can feel manipulative if you&#x27;re not used to negotiating over the impact actions have on feelings. Negotiating over feelings ends up being the same as negotiating over spoken orders. A competent person must be able to deal with both speakers.<p>Describing words as violence fundamentally undermines the &quot;old&quot; (aka what I grew up with) liberal western order that was do whatever you want as long as it brings no harm. If you escalate &quot;direct orders&quot; to the level of &quot;harm&quot; you&#x27;re requiring authority to govern speech to protect from harm rather than a liberal &#x27;stick-and-stones&#x27; attitude we used to enjoy. An endless disappointment, to say the least.