It’s easy to see emotional manipulation as clever — or, more exactly, to see it as requiring some high degree of intelligence.
I don’t think so. It’s obvious when you know enough about it. Manipulative people are all the same, they follow the same set of rules, and once you know one, you know another.
It’s pedestrian to me — but I have a complete understanding. I’ve survived through enough abusers, bullies, and manipulators to see their tricks for what they are. Without that initial knowing, the actions of a manipulator are incomprehensible, because they break the normal rules:the ones that state how people interact with each other; that determine our expectations for individual social responsibilities.
That’s their whole thing. Their rules depend on your rules, and that’s how it’s so easily masked. Nobody wants to see abuse — but it’s so much deeper than that. Most people simply can’t. For the average person, there’s no learned preparation or seed of experience on which to base further insight. They haven’t been through what I’ve been through. They don’t know yet.
And when they do see it, they will probably accept it. That’s one of the most bittersweet things about human nature. Most of us are inherently accepting.
Even more so with repeated exposure: The more we see something, the more likely we are to accept it as just another common occurrence of something we’ve learned to adapt to.
For the abuser, all it takes is a steady drip-feed of borderline rule-breaking but ultimately acceptable behaviour. Start with a spiteful glance: that could be a one-off occurrence; maybe they’re tired from work; perhaps it’s a leftover from an earlier argument. Next, a subtle put-down: well, nobody wants to speak out publicly, but if they do, the response (which is, of course, pre-prepared) is enough to contextualise the action and stifle further concerns. Eventually it becomes established that this person is “just a dick”, and there you have it. Now they can get away with saying almost anything, and even if someone new comes along, who wasn’t there for the inauguration of manipulation, the acceptance by those with longer exposure surely suggests that there’s really no need to worry about it.
That’s not clever. If you’ve ever told a lie and failed, you can probably tell that lie again and succeed. Any idiot can lie.
But once you know what to look for, those lies can be seen for what they are: Ultimately childish, and utterly absurd.
Because when you look at the behaviour of a manipulator in isolation, separate from the normal rules by which the rest of us abide, it becomes clear how juvenile it all is. It’s closer to the emotional stunting of low-functioning autism than to adult intelligence: repeating a set of personal rituals; becoming anxious and lashing out when those rituals aren’t met; holding others entirely accountable for their own feelings.
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There are two ideas that I’m exploring here: One, that manipulating someone takes intelligence. It doesn’t, it’s easy once you know how. And two, that hiding it from other people is any kind of challenge — it isn’t, it’s just lying. The successfulness of these lies says little about their audience; they’re not foolish or easy to trick, they just don’t know yet.
I feel, therefore, that I have a responsibility to talk about this. I want to describe manipulation in such detail that it becomes obvious. All the tricks, all the tactics, I want to talk about them until they’re as passé as a child throwing a pretend tantrum.
And I want to offer my own experience, acting as a surrogate for their own, so that when they hear of it, they won’t be surprised, but understanding.