Explore openly how you feel, together, and state and hold your boundaries when/if you need to – but nothing more.

Manipulations to avoid:

• Always giving someone information (or that old chestnut of leaving information lying around a lot) that only or mostly supports your view – you’re contoling the flow of information to suit your agenda, and carrying out subtle/passive coercion in the process.
• Asking someone to change (or MUCH worse, asking someone to promise to change) – this creates an imbalanced power dynamic that puts them in an impossible position where to stay true to themselves they have to actively let down someone they are connected to, which establishes a (subconscious) control-based precedent in your favour within the relationship.
• Changing your behaviour towards someone either to match how you see/feel their behaviours so they “learn/see what they’re like”, or to put them in small/large orchestrated scenarios where they will “prove what they’re really like” – this is an intentional manipulation that actually becomes more and more criminal the more you do it (especially if you involve others in it, too.)

Explore openly how you feel, together, and state and hold your boundaries when/if you need to – but nothing more.

The response will tell you everything you need to know. And the right kind of distance can always be established if the love isn’t strong enough to allow for difference.