Have you ever been in a relationship with a master manipulator?
I’ve done it, and let me tell you, it can be a wild rollercoaster ride.
One minute, you are their favorite person in the world; Next, you’re trash. They will tell you the things you want to hear and be the person you want them to be, but none of that will actually be true.
They will try to trick you and control you.
I’m going to share with you seven subtle ways a manipulator manipulates your emotions through the story of a disastrous relationship I was in a long time ago. I was subject to all these manipulations, and as you may not, I didn’t realize it for a long time.
Related : 10 red flags you’re in a relationship with a toxic person
I hope by sharing this story; You can avoid the pain and anguish you went through.
1) They engage in love bombing.
When I first met Cindy, it was like being struck by lightning and surviving – it seemed rare and lucky.
I couldn’t believe that this amazing, sexy, talented woman was interested in me.
But she made me believe it by bombarding me like crazy.
Every day, there was another new incredible surprise.
She would send me gifts, do little favors, and even show up at my apartment unannounced with a bottle of champagne and a wicked smile.
She found out my favorite snack (I kept my identity secret to protect my waistline) and she would make it and feed it to me.
But most of all, she was telling me all the time how important I was to her, how much she cared about me, and surprisingly early in the relationship, how much she loved me.
There was nothing subtle about it.
But what was accurate was that it was all done through a plan. It wasn’t real, as I later discovered, but it was a way to lure me in and trap me.
And boy, hello, did it work!
2) They isolate you.
Things with Cindy were intense and electric at first.
I knew it would end, but at first I couldn’t get enough of her. We spent all our time together to the point where my friends started texting me asking if I had died or moved to Kazakhstan.
So, after a while, I started to feel like I was neglecting a lot of other relationships, and I wanted to get back to meeting the other important people in my life.
Well, Cindy wasn’t very interested in hearing that.
“what did I do wrong?” She asked me. “You know how much I care about you.”
This made me feel like I should think twice. I still started going out to see friends, but I was also really selective about it. I was always thinking about her and whether she was free or not. If it was, I’d stay there.
Strangely enough, I didn’t really think about her going out and seeing her friends or meeting co-workers. It didn’t bother me, but I didn’t realize how much of a double standard that was.
I was already being manipulated, and I didn’t know it.
She wasn’t isolating me, but making me want to isolate myself from her.
3) They will play the victim.
The only thing that fooled me about Cindy for a long time was the number of friends she had.
At least, how much she said she had.
She was constantly talking about this person and that person, and because she was working at a talent agency, she would also tell stories about celebrities, especially juicy gossip.
But her stories were always full of incredible drama, and she seemed to have as many enemies as she had friends. It got to the point where I couldn’t follow the stories of who said what and who did what to whom.
Related : If you recognize these 9 behaviors, your partner is hiding something from you
When I couldn’t keep up or get the facts straight, she would get upset with me. It made her feel like I didn’t care about her life.
I thought she had an excitable personality, and it was a love-it-or-hate-her kind of thing. But from her perspective, people were out to get her or were jealous of her all the time.
It seemed like a lot of work, and I started asking her why she didn’t move to another industry to get out of this mess. When I did this, I acted as if I was telling her to give up and give in, and it really upset her.
4) They will lie.
It is a given that the master manipulator will lie to you.
I mean, everyone lies, so it shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s just the lengths they will go to in making things up that can be truly shocking.
With Cindy, it eventually became clear that her words didn’t match her actions, or reality.
There were a lot of inconsistencies in what you asked me to ignore. It didn’t help that I was a detail-oriented person and, at the time, had an amazing memory.
I don’t know about now!
Even though I would sometimes get lost in the web of stories about friends and office drama, I still retained so much of that information that I could tell when it was contradicting itself.
She told me that she went out with two guys last week and what drama happened after that. But later, she was telling a story about the same day but with different people and events.
If you ask her for clarification, she will get really upset.
“Didn’t you say you went out with Peter and Tracy on Wednesday?”
“Are you saying I’m a liar?!”
This is how these talks will go. I would be accused of not trusting her, but I had more and more reasons not to.
5) They will drain your emotions.
So, it’s hard to say, I made some really bad choices in the relationship.
One of them was moving in together.
At the time, we spent every waking minute together, so it made sense. After all, why not save money on rent? But I moved into her place, which meant she had a lot more power than me.
When we would fight, she would threaten to kick me out or tell me if I wasn’t happy, I should leave, but I had nowhere to go, and she knew it!
It was just one of the many ways she gained power and control over me.
7) They will highlight you.
After a while, I started to feel like it was all adding up to something unhealthy.
But when I tried to talk to Cindy about it, she tried to make me feel confused and unsure of myself.
She was always saying things like, “I never said that” and “That never happened,” to the point where I actually started to doubt my own version of reality.
But fortunately for me, I had a good friend who somehow stuck by my side through it all. He explained to me what gaslighting was.
I’ve never heard of it.
This was exactly what she was doing to me. It was a little bit here and there, but it was enough to always put me behind and doubt myself.
But for every denial I made, my friend was able to say, “No, this really happened. She told me weeks ago, and I was very upset about it.”
