The Geoff and Yasmeen storyline on
Coronation Street continues.
In an episode I recently watched, Yasmeen (Shelly King) tones down her subservient behavior and began speaking up for herself. She confronts Geoff (Ian Bartholomew) about his lying and his cruelty.
His son Tim (Joe Duttine) had rescued Yasmeen from the scary, locked, claustrophobic magician's box. Tim expresses concern, and Geoff blatantly lies to him. He says Yasmeen had put herself in the box to practice the magic stuff. He hadn't purposely locked it. Something went wrong with the latch.
This all is far from the truth. In reality, Geoff had bullied Yasmeen into going into the box. He refused to let her out when she begged. Then he left her in the box and went to the pub.
Prior to the episode I watched yesterday, the dynamic between Geoff and Yasmeen had Geoff belittling, blaming, and shaming Yasmeen, while Yasmeen acted very apologetic. But now, it seems, Yasmeen is realizing the fault in their relationship does not lie with her.
So, Geoff changes his tactic.
Well, I went to re-watch the scene, because I want to make sure I remembered things correctly.
It's a brilliant scene.
But anyway, I'm thinking I'll go through the dialogue step by step and examine Geoff's various escalating tactics.
He starts by bringing up the song "Everything I Do I Do For You". He tells Yasmeen he'd like to play the song for her, because it's true. He does everything for her.
Really?!
I think it's the most self-centered, egotistical people who make that sort of claim. It's like the celebrity who works long hours, is rarely present, buys extravagant stuff for themselves, wins prestigious awards that they proudly display; then tells their kids,
It's all been for you.
Yasmeen has suddenly become less accepting of his bullshit. She tells him this doesn't feel like love and if her mother were alive, she'd tell Yasmeen to run.
Geoff leaves behind the Super Husband angle and jumps to the victim angle. AND he changes the narrative about the box. It's no longer an accident. It was a trick. Why did he do this trick? It's in his nature. He's a magician. In other words, I can't help myself. It's your duty to accept me the way I am.
And once again, he brings up the failed magic trick—the one he blames Yasmeen for.
She says,
But I didn't do that on purpose. What you did WAS, and it was so calculated.
It's such a relief to see her fighting back. BUT...she still has a lot of fighting left to do.
The next step in Geoff's manipulative defense tactics is crying.
He cries. Then he brings up the abuse from he endured from his former wife. Now I'm not sure if this abuse really happened or not. It might have. Or it might be completely invented. Or it could be that Geoff was the abusive one in that relationship as well.
Anyway, Geoff's main goal here is to turn Yasmeen's anger into pity.
Tears can work wonders with that.
But he also adds on verbal self-flagellation.
Oh and along with this is a seemingly sincere apology. He says the right words. He says,
I'm sorry I scared you so much, and a little later,
please, forgive me.
I'm very glad the Corrie writers had him give an apology. I've too often seen claims that toxic and/or narcissistic people never say the word sorry. I think they're actually very often capable of saying those words. But their apologies are much more manipulative and self-serving than they are compassionate and redemptive. I wrote about this in my
part one and
part two posts about apologies. Speaking of self-serving, that's what I'm doing here. I really love those posts that I wrote and hardly anyone has read them. So...
Anyway.....
Really, there are a lot of posts I wish more people would read.
Back to Yasmeen and Geoff.
Yasmeen watches Geoff crying.
I've been in that place before. I sit there thinking, should I continue being angry? Do I have the right to be angry? Am I being unfair? Should I drop the anger and comfort this wounded person? If I choose anger over compassion, am I a cold-hearted person?
It's a horrible feeling.
Okay...had to skip through some scenes of other storylines....
Now I'm seeing that Geoff actually apologizes again.
Yasmeen tells Geoff that she's scared of him.
His response?
He tells her he'd never hit her. He says cowards only hit women.
Yes, and the decent, brave men just ridicule, manipulate, and criticize their partners...and play terrifying tricks on them.
Geoff goes on to talk about his ex-wife. He tries to push the narrative that he's the real victim. He says,
She scared me. Physically. That's real abuse.
Fuck him.
So basically, Geoff's message is I'm sorry BUT....What you endured wasn't that bad. It wasn't malicious. I'm the real victim here. And I know what real abuse looks like.
The lines at the end of the episode are brilliant.
Yasmeen tries to steer the conversation back to reducing Geoff's abusive behavior.
She starts to say,
I love you too, my darling. But at the end of the day—
Geoff interrupts and asks her to hold him.
She does what he asks her to do. She embraces him and pats him on the back as if he's a young child. She says,
I got you. I got you.
And he says.
And I've got you. Haven't I?
In a healthy relationship, this could simply mean we have each other's back. But I think the underlying message, when Geoff says it, is that he has her trapped. She's his prisoner.
There's hope, though. Because Yasmeen doesn't say.
Yes, you do. Or
, Of course you do.
Instead she says,
It certainly would appear so.
Did Geoff's tactics work on Yasmeen?
I think to some degree they did.
I think she's better aware now that something is not right in their relationship, and that the blame doesn't lie with her.
I think she's frustrated that the conversation became more about him and his woes and very little about her own woes.
But I think he did manage to tug at her heart strings. I don't think she'll be ready to pack up and leave just yet. She'll probably have a mixture of anger and pity towards him.
Unfortunately, if she does realize the cruelty in the relationship greatly outweighs the love, fun, and happiness, she won't find it easy to escape. In the past, Geoff used his manipulation skills to take control of Yasmeen's finances, and he also manipulated himself into buying part of the family business.
So he definitely HAS her.
Another thing I want to say about Geoff's psychological manipulation, in this scene, is that the initial act didn't have to terrifying for his apology to be toxic.
Let's take something more benign.
Let's say.....
Friday is Julia's birthday. She and her husband Mike talk on Wednesday about going out for a nice birthday dinner.
Friday comes along. Julie gets a text from Mike at 6:00, saying he needs to talk to some coworkers, so he'll be a little late.
Julie doesn't complain. She doesn't want to interfere with her husband's job.
She waits for him to get home.
And waits, and waits, and waits.
He comes home at 9:00. He casually tells her they got to talking and decided to go out for some drinks.
She bottles up her anger but does remind him that they had planned to go out.
He says,
Sorry. I didn't know we had to go out on your exact birthday. Could we go out for Saturday instead? How about we go for lunch AND dinner?
Julie decides to agree with this. She doesn't want to turn her birthday weekend into a drama.
Saturday comes along and Mike tells Julie his cousin called. She needs help moving into her new apartment.
Julie reminds him about the birthday lunch.
Mike reminds Julie that his aunt has cancer, and things are really hard for his cousin.
She doesn't fight this, because she doesn't want to be the person who doesn't seem to have sympathy for families dealing with cancer.
Julia doesn't hear from Mike for hours.
He returns home close to dinner and says he has a birthday treat for Julie. He and his cousin and some of her friends went to a street fair near her neighborhood. While they were there, they picked something up for Julia.
Mike presents Julia the treat. It's a double chocolate chip muffin. Julie has told Mike multiple times, in the past, that she likes chocolate baked goods, and she likes baked goods with chocolate chips. BUT she doesn't like chocolate over chocolate. It's one of the quirky things about her.
This is Julia's breaking point. With her voice-raised, she tells him she doesn't like chocolate chips. She also complains about his going out on her birthday night and breaking the lunch plus dinner plans.
Mike tells Julia he's sorry. He would never ever purposely hurt her. He loves her more than anything in the world and nothing is more important to him than her.
She says,
You say that but it's not how you act. Actions speak louder than words.
Mike starts tearing up. He says,
I guess my parents were right about me. I'm careless and stupid. They would punish me by taking away my birthday. Every year. No gifts. No special dinner. No cake. Now THAT is a true bad birthday. He starts sobbing. Julie comforts him. Instead of having a Julia's-birthday weekend, they have a poor-dear-Mike weekend.
Being birthday-neglectful is much less evil than locking someone in a claustrophobic box. But the manipulation is still hard to deal with. It's still toxic.
The message Julia gets is that she shouldn't speak up. She should keep her grievances to herself. She should let things slide. In a relationship like this, confrontation doesn't bring resolution or compromise. It just brings more drama to the table. It just makes things worse.
What would our world be like if we
knew for sure there
was life after death, and
we could easily talk to our
dearly-departed on the Internet?
The Dead are Online a novel by Dina Roberts
