Thoughts on Manipulative Friends

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Shallon Lester's Channel

One of the vloggers I follow in YouTube is Shallon Lester, a former magazine editor, who now gives relationship advise online. I have seen several of her videos, and though I don't agree with all of her advises, I always enjoy her videos and her style.

Something she does in her channel is to psychoanalyze drama among celebrities and their private life. What she does isn't going for the gossip - though she does benefit from it - but also to teach people lessons about themselves and the people around them by using behaviors widely known through the media to pinpoint what people can also encounter in their lives.

The last video I saw touched on the current drama between beauty vloggers Tati Westbrook and James Charles, in order to talk about manipulative friends.

The topic of manipulative friends hits me close because I have had to deal with those. I mean, if you read my blog you probably know about those cases, right? Yes, it's not pretty but it happens and we need to be prepared to del with it.

I have a friend who is married and he's not very happy with his spouse. We talked recently - he has taken time to open up to me about his marital issues - and he said that though he wasn't happy, he was chosing to do the "right thing" rather than what he really wanted and what made him happy. I didn't say much - with words - but me being as transparent as a glass of beer, probably let him know what I thought: "you are being profoundly stupid". Now, judging and finding solutions from the outside is very easy, but it's not as simple when you are IN the situation. That's why it happens that you can be very good at giving relationship advises to others, but you still get yourself in all sorts of relationship jammies. Why is that? Because when we are IN a situation, we usually don't have the panoramic view people not involved in it have. When we are in the situation we find it hard to untangle, to be objective, to see the good and the bad, and we are subject to emotional pressure.

Now, the thing here is that we are also vulnerable to these same things with our friends, with the additional threat of us being less prepare and less suspectful since we think friendships are much safer than romantic relationships. Just think about that. In a romantic relationship you prepare yourself to suspect your partner of cheating, of being with you for your money, your connections, your looks, your status, or because you are just a device for them to fulfill a life goal: it's not you, but the ring you can put on their finger, or the ring they can put on your finger.

With friendships, we often tend to believe they are honest, serious, and when they are not, they tend to be scarce enough to be filed as "acquintances", so you don't worry. We also think that the "bad friends" are easy to spot, because they will pressure you for money, or ask you to bail them, be their guarantors for loand they then want to leave on to you and so on. We are not prepared for the manipulative friends that seek to leech on you in other ways.

Shallon Lester mentions as manipulative friends the people that are very self-centered and who talk only about their endless problems, and it's always the same issue. Here I want to make a distintion. There are friends who have a specific type of problem that is either eternal or cyclic, like issues with their job or issues with an illness or a family health problem. Yes, there are limits for that as well, BUT we can also understand when a person always talks about their problems in these topics.

What makes the difference - for me - is when the recurring issue is something the person can't really escape, and is bound to keep struggling with. An issue with a job can't always be fixed with resigning or looking for a change in positions, specially not when the market is in turmoil. People are also bound to their jobs because of the income and obligations they carry, like loans, mortgage, supporting their family, and so on. Health issues also take much of the attention and energy of the people. Being there to let them vent is important for them.

However, a friend who is going through these struggles will also ask you about your life, your issues and pay active attention to them.

By no means, a stressful job or a health/family issue entitles someone to monopolize the conversation.

Curiously, as a Childfree person, I have noticed this with some friends and acquintances who are parents: all topics are always child related, and if you try to go to a non-child related one either they veer from it, or just stare at you while you say your piece, and then go back to a child-topic. Now, 1) this is also a way of manipulation, by diminishing your topics and your issues, compared to theirs, and 2) beware because this is not a "parent thing", but a thing manipulative people do. I'd given you the example with the "child topic", because we all have had that new-parent friend who gets lost in parenthood, even though later they get out of it, but we know the experience.

So, when you are with someone and you feel like something is just not ok, you feel a bit bad or shamed, take a second to compare the situation with that "new parent" hype. If it fits, you are talking to a manipulative person, and they are casting their net on you.

Manipulative people monopolize the time, the conversation and/or the situation. It's always THEIR problems, THEIR issues, THEIR concerns, even when they are not presenting them as theirs. For instance, the friend that every so often comes to you crying about how much they are suffering by witnessing the suffering of someone else. Be it a family member, a close friend, a dear colleague... they pick someone who is close to them, or are portrayed as close to them, and then paint a gloomy, terrible situation (whether it is real or not), that makes the person a helpless victim, and they (the manipulative friend) is forced to witness it, wants so desperately to help BUT can't do anything. This last part is crucial because it ensures pity ON them, while looking at the same time so selfless and saint. There might be even a tear or two for dramatic effect and blocking logical thinking and trigger emotional response from the audience.

I used to have a friend who did this often, who used another friend to gain pity for herself. Curiously, when you talked to the martyred friend, they seemed to be absolutely ok. The cover of the manipulator? Oh, Martyr doesn't want others to know/notice. Does it ring a bell? You have no idea, how I wish it doesn't.

In other cases, the manipulator does use a real situation, a real problem of someone else - the Designated Martyr - in order to give their manipulation tools legitimacy. Here, the key one has to pay attention to is whether the issue can actually be fixed by the manipulator, and what is the manipulator doing to fix it. The issues manipulators pick are often the kind that can be milked for a long time. The longer they can exploit the topic, the longer they can command attention, earn pity/admiration and even get away with whatever they want.

Finally, here is the last element manipulators use to get their "reward": they often seek to push your boundaries. They get a boost, a victory when they can exert power over you by making you endure dissing, humiliations and other forms of disrespect. This is a way to state to you that they are more important than you: it sets a hierarchy among you, where they push themselves to a position - rather subtly - where they wistle and you jump. Part of the perk of these moves is that they are subtle enough to be easy to turn against you if you realize what's happening and complain.

What do I mean? For instance, the friend that's always late. Yes, we all are late from time to time, but there are people who seem to be chronically late and late by a lot. For me, the reasonable window to be late is five to ten minutes. I mean, consider traffic, finding a parking space, public transportation being late... A regular friend being late usually calls you to let you know they are going to be late. A manipulator won't tell you because part of their power trip is to keep you expecting, insecure. Manipulators also tend to make you wait for really long periods of time, often stretching into hours. It's usually a progressive thing, as they need to "train" their friends to just keep waiting. To "reward" the waiting friend, sometimes they shower them with excuses and copious amounts of apologies.

A rule of thumb here: someone who consistently makes the same offense or disrespectful action, and always apologizes for it, is placating you, not really apologizing. True apology is often followed by real efforts to correct the undesired behavior.

Now, being late and using tardiness to manipulate others is quite a textbook case, and easy to spot, but there are other, more conceited ways to bend other people's dignity and will to you, as a goal of manipulation. In this type of manipulation - into which chronic tardiness also falls - is about forcing others to accomodate to the manipulator. Instances can be the case of the person that always changes everybody's plans at the last minute, always dictate the whole program or part of it. A typical case would be that of the vegan friend with whom you always have to meet and go eat at vegan places. There are many excuses for this, such as "there are so little options for me in other restaurants" and "the menu says it's vegan, but they actually use animal byproducts in the dressing of the salad".

Again, I use a vegan individual in the example because this might be easier to spot, so it can be used as a template to discover similar behaviors, but think of the friend who always picks where do you go because "they can go to X place because there are so many memories there with their ex", or because "they have read the reviews", or "it's closer to their place, and they have so little time, since they have to take care of children/job/project/you-name-it".

This can also be the case of the friend who always picks the movie you are going to see, picks the seats, or picks where are you going for vacation and where are you staying. It's also the friend that orders for you at the restaurant quite often, usually disguising it as "you have to try this", or the friend that gives you tasks, or in any other way takes away your power of decision.

These forms of manipulation are particularly tricky, because if you react against them, the manipulator will always act surprised or offended, and turn the blame on you. They have a situation that's very difficult and you are not being understanding. They have so much work and they are trying so hard and you don't want to cooperate. They are trying to accomodate and make it good for everybody and you are being insensitive/spoiled/selfish.

Other forms to take power from you and manipulate you, is through making you suffer public humiliation or guilty tripping you. For instance, they can be prone to burst into tears at any thing, scream, throw temper tantrum... Things that are designed to make you feel bad, so that you will always do whatever there is in your power to keep these scenes from happening. If it happened once, rest assured it will happen again. Manipulators dose these incidents to keep the threat alive.

Ms. Lester gives a lot of good advise about how to deal with them, so I encourage you to look up her channel and check out some of her videos. If you ask me, I always go for the cut throat solution. Yes, I've been roped into these games, I have had hope my friends would enmend their ways and I have tried to minimize their antics. Experience has thought me that accomodating to manipulators and trying to softly undercut their antics only empower them more, because their realize you want them in your life, so they will keep playing on that and finding new ways to exploit you.

As I've grown older, my response to manipulators has been swifter, which as result has led me to lose those friendships. Then again, if I was being used as a toy for their instincts, was there really a friendship?

So here are my Cut Throat Advises:

1. You may allow the behavior once or twice, until you notice the pattern and can establish there is really a manipulative intent behind. Then, cut it.
2. There needs to be a facing of the facts with the manipulator. Ms. Lester recommends you frame your issues, when you confront your manipulator in "I feel" sentences. Here I tend to use two ways: the indirect one, where I answer behavior with behavior, and simply don't comply with the expectation of the manipulator, and the direct one, where I purposefully refuse to use softening phrases like "I feel", "I think" - which can be later used against you are a part of an argument of "everything is always about you and how YOU feel and what YOU think"- and rather state things in "you" sentences. Say things like "Don't talk to me like that", instead of "I don't like the way you sometimes talk to me", and don't fall for the trick of "What did I say?", or "When and what exactly did I do/say?". This is a favored trick of manipulators because memory is tricky, and they usually deal with subtext and tone, leaving their words purposefully open to interpretation. If they do that, don't answer, and if you are pressed reply something in the line of "don't add insult to injury", "I know you are smarter than that". The trick here turn their game: they want to make the problem about you, so you have to call them on it and place the problem on them.
3. If their game is tardiness, leave after 10 minutes and don't call them to let them know. If you call, you are opening a chance for them to keep you waiting. If they didn't call to tell you they'll be late, you have no obligation to call them to tell them that you are leaving.
4. If their game is changing plans at the last minute, you have to options: you stick to the original plan (and make previous arrangements to make sure you can go without the manipulator), or cancel them. If you cancel, don't go even if they set the original plan again. Show them there are consequences.
5. If their game is to take decisions away from you,  when the place is selected or the task given, tell them no. And stick to it.

Never be afraid of cutting a relationship with a manipulator person. Remember that you are in an illusion of a relationship, one where only you are. The relationship is a box, and you manipulator wants only to play.