My cat pretends he’s starving to death. Every day. Even though I just fed you, Mojo
Cats are assholes haha.
They told me that if I went to college and got a job, I’d be able to afford groceries.
Speaking of college/jobs, they told me that going to them would help me make more friends.
They DO help a little, but you still have to do your part and not be an insufferable asshole.
May or may not be your situation. I don’t know.
But I do know plenty of people that need to learn that.
I’m unsure about the asshole part, but the biggest issue with me and friends is I’m not good at interacting. My mind draws an indecisive blank at open questions, even ones as simple as “how are you”. People don’t like feeling like they’re talking to a wall, so no friendships form. I am not neurotypical, this is hardwired into me and cannot be trained (unless you don’t mind me blurting out completely irrelevant topic matter as a form of conversation, which makes a conversation like a bundle of bricks without an adhesive makes a fort). The only reason I fare good when communicating long distance is because it’s not a live conversation and you can meditate on how you want to respond as you do. What I need is someone I can be silent with, and that’s just not something that exists, or so people would make me think.
The problem arises when people say “[random thing] will help you make friends” as if it’s about finding people. I’m surrounded by people everyday, and I’m not an introvert. That was never an issue. But it almost comes off as they’re using it as a gimmick, as it’s something people say of everything, whether college, jobs, the military, volunteer work, literally anything that one could argue they want to lure people into doing.
My response was mostly a joke, but now that you mention it, I relate with you more than you might expect.
Years in retail and sales helped me develop my “work face” which includes a list of go-to responses for the random bullshit people say every day.
I might understand developing this when it comes to a stressful job, but how could that be applied to general conversation, which has a broader track range?
i met a bunch of folks going to school that I’d never have met if I didnt go (different social circles). still chat with a lot of them 25+ years later.
It’s not that there aren’t unique people to meet there, I know there are, but if the problem is not introversion but rather interactive mental skill, throwing new people at the problem won’t fix it. Every time someone says they haven’t been able to make friends, people of the previous generation almost seem fixated on suggesting it’s all that person’s fault.
And took out a pyramid scheme loan right?
One of my former supervisors told me I was not meeting expectations, but he was willing to work through it with me. We made a PDP(Personal Development Plan) on which I worked hard for a couple months, getting good feedback all the time. When the plan was done we had a final meeting to conclude it and see where I stood. He spent almost an hour telling me how happy he was with my progress and how I exceeded the goals we had set, only to then pull the carpet from under me, telling me how he was in talks with another manager and that he was kicking me off the team. It’s been over a year now and I still haven’t recovered from that.
That’s like psychopathic.
Yeah, a Buddy of mine still works under him and is now in a series of talks with HR about this supervisors assessment of his performance. Getting told how your work was “greatly exceeding” expectations but then only getting an “exceeds” in your appraisal, so you won’t get a raise and gaslighting my buddy when being asked about it. They then apologized and offered him 5% more, which he found insulting. He’s now doing the minimum and started updating on his CV
Ex went off birth control without telling me. Only found out because I insisted on going to the doctor when we had a pregnancy scare.
Omigod, why? That’s a horrific thing to do.
Get a vasectomy, freeze your sperm. Take agency over your reproductive life, because it’s rightfully out of your hands if something happens.
I’ll chip in. I had dropped out of college due to realizing the program wasn’t for me and had to move back in with my mom.
I had a bad habit of forgetting to lock the door, so to retaliate, she took all of my most expensive electronics and stashed them away, but claimed they were stolen (technically they were by her). This included my laptop with a full year of college work, which was mostly art that I cared a lot about.
I found out a year later from my dad that the whole family knew, but she demanded they keep it a secret. When I confronted her, she told me she had thrown it all in the garbage because at the time, I questioned if it was her that did it. Some totally backwards logic there.
First ex would threaten to kill herself everyday if I didn’t bend over backwards for her.
Also shit that my parents did but they were young and dumb trying to raise a kid and our relationship is actually very solid now
That’s probably BPD, your ex.
no??? don’t make assumptions on someone’s mental health just based off of random tidbits of information online. my ex had a lot of problems that iirc she was diagnosed with, but that wasn’t one of them. it’s incredibly harmful and damaging to make wild assumptions like that, both for the people in question and people actually affected by the illnesses you’re talking about. my ex was crazy but we were also teenagers and we both had a lot of trauma in our youths. I’ve also dated people with diagnosed BPD and it was nowhere even near the same level of craziness as my first ex. don’t just go saying someone is bipolar off random shit, that’s harmful to the person in question and the people who genuinely have BPD.
It’s a toss up between
- R telling me she was on birth control, I guess thinking it’d keep me around if we had a kid, then when our kid was age 4 she said she had cancer and disappeared for several months. Turns out she never had cancer and just said that so I wouldn’t think poorly of her for abandoning her child to run off with a guy in another state. …Her child that she was barely present for anyway.
- D getting me to empty my 401k to buy a house as an investment property for “our” retirement, only for her to keep it in the divorce. I could have pushed for it to be sold and gotten at least some of my money back, but she would have put up such a fight that I’d have spent in attorney’s fees as much as I would have won from the sale, so it wasn’t worth the fight to me, and she knew that.
What’d I learn from these? Not a whole lot, it turned out: my next relationship wasn’t much better. But at least I figured out to end that one before it got TOO too deep.
My last ex was becoming increasingly verbal and even physically abusive. I broke up with her months ago when she laid her first hands (and a broom) on me. Since then, she tried to contact me throughout all the social media and even email while still running the smear campaign mill. I blocked her everywhere, tried to contact me through a friend (who saw through her bullshit and started spying for me instead - only for any hurtful stuff that may come my way) and even tried to unsuccessfully hack my fb, Yahoo and (even if she didn’t know it, maybe from the “Forgot Password” prompt) my Outlook accounts. Even yesterday she sent me a degrading and triggering message from an old account of her that I forgot it existed. I’m going to the psychologist tomorrow to seek more healing support
Super manipulative.
My exfather deliberately cooked food I didn’t like to prove I actually like it and just do it for attention. He’s a trained chef. It started when I was three and only stopped when I moved out and stopped eating his meals.
And that’s how you became Chef Boyardee?
My birth mother’s constant gaslighting. I’m 4 years free of her shit and no longer working to the bone just to stay away from home.
I’m not going to detail everything but it boiled down to unclear directions, didn’t happen the way she wanted yet exactly as she directed, gaslit me into thinking I didn’t follow her directions.
Got old like milk as soon as I started writing down and recording what she initially said.
Feel you on the crazy mother thing.
I’ve had an extremely physically abusive ex sign up for things under my name, leaving me to fight to have to cancel it. Even had to get a case number with this person.
I’ve had a teacher who tried to fail me for no other reason than they didn’t like my opinion on a project despite I was the only student who finished that project while everyone bailed for no other reason than it was summer.
I’ve had ex friends who would emotionally abuse me for no reason other than they were emotionally fucked up people like: Take off in the middle of the party pretend to be upset.didn’t tell us where she went. Try to call them. They wouldn’t return the call for 4 days leaving everyone worried about them. They were completely fine. They played the ‘im just an introvert’ bullshit. I know it’s bullshit cuz I am introvert and that’s not what introvert does nor is it an excuse. This asshole went on to do more shit like invite people she knew I had issues with expecting us to fight so she could be entertained fucking around with people. Luckily the other person caught on what was going on so we just played nice. We both felt used. She pulled the ‘I’m not picking sides’ which is picking sides. She did this to both of us I’m sure. The last straw was her involvement when I had been seeing a guy which ended badly. he was kind of an asshole and I was fresh out of a long term anyways and figured it was too soon anyways. So we just never called each other again and moved on. He started seeing one of her friends. But then would show up in my neighborhood and it felt like he was following me. Would show up to parties my own friends were having and my own department parties and ask about me, wondering when I’d arrive(we worked at same company but entirely different depts). When I told her I felt uneasy about him and felt a bit stalked she dismissed me. Told me he was not into me. I never spoke again to her after that. She was a wreck herself anyways. Kept hitting on one of my other friends who was feeling a bit creeped out by her. And dated a guy who was cheating on his girlfriend with her. Then he saw yet another woman…whom she got jealous of but…anyways… glad I just moved away from that shitshow.
I had one ex friend who cried in computer class who was being bullied whom I thought I’d help out. They took the side of the bully and they both turned on me.
I could go on but there isn’t really a point to it. I learned some important stuff from this. Like boundaries. To watch and wait before jumping in to help. To observe other people for longer before trusting. To observe other people and their intent better.
But what was really important for me was to seek out the better people to surround myself with. They are out there. dwelling on this kind of bullshit serves nothing more than to overlook, distract from counting the good people in my life. Con artists are everywhere so don’t give them too much of your time and don’t let them live in your head free of rent. And don’t take up a reservation for resentment. Then all the good people get missed. Focus on the good ones. Don’t take them for granted.it’s real easy to turn into an asshole and not realize it when you start taking that for granted. So remember the good. Make it an intention.
Mine is; forcing me to have sex with him twice when I had Norovirus and had JUST stopped the vomiting and diarrhea like 12 hours tops beforehand. His words “Well let me just use you” (to get off being the implication). Then he got Norovirus and made me take him to the ER and acted like an infant.
Don’t ever tie your finances to someone who will wreck them and trap yourself forever is all I can say. Not worth it just to not be alone.
Ex used me for my money. She would expect me to pay for a lot of stuff and while there were times where we’d split the bill, it wasn’t that often.
Our 3 year on/off relationship wasn’t intimate at all. At first it was because she was trying to shield her parents and patients (she worked as a nurse) from COVID, but even after lockdowns were over and society began to heal things didn’t really change.
When I say on/off, I was ghosted out of the blue once and was randomly blocked by her on all socials. She never even got back in touch until over a year later and I foolishly bought her explanation about being seriously depressed and suicidal.
The last straw that made me break things off for good was when she begged and begged me to come on vacation with her and other colleagues, only to then turn incredibly toxic after I financially committed. It left me a choice of either salvaging a holiday to Santorini into a solo trip or being about £1k out of pocket from non refundable flight and accommodation fees. I chose the former…
Ok that’s insane.
I’m just thankful I didn’t pay for her travel and room.
Perhaps ironically to the title of this question, the most manipulative thing ever done to me might be to lower the bar of what counts as “manipulative”, enough they can accuse me of doing it, and then talk about it as a part of their hate for me for years on end. When I hear the word, I think of a myriad of different parts and pieces that make up the modus operandi of what many might call a manipulative person. I might be unconventional if it helps somehow, but I’d never betray what could be called courtesy. This is in contrast to many people who dislike me and would point to me and say doing so much as going by a different nickname (my full birth name has many variants) depending on the setting I’m in falls under the wholly “manipulative” umbrella, and these are the same people who are known to go so far as reverse an account of what happened when needed, saying that I in turn am not to be trusted with the privilege of making a case for myself in the way courts are designed because they say privately to those who they want to cut off from me that it’s me who would do that or would rig the game through aggression or psychology, which becomes more frustrating when I am the side with better proof, proof which, even if undeniable and even if situated right before their eyes, they will deny the existence or validation of, either because of everything I mentioned or because of such a large humanly innate hatred towards some real or perceived aspect about me that they will consider me inherently and irreversibly uncredible. Which in turn forces me to be more unconventional as the conventions have been rigged, which in turn feeds into the perception more that I fall under the “manipulative” umbrella, ad infinitum, with them often saying I am the grand exception to “you all are valid” or “everyone has value” as a result of all of this.
This has been going on for a decade, since before I was even an adult, sometimes in school/society/communicating with others. With me as well with the few people I consider permanently close to me, sometimes by contagion or sometimes because they think they are coordinated or synonymous with me. I have self-reflected a lot as a result, and ironically, in response to this self-reflection, those who criticize me (or those who don’t as of then-yet) criticize me more saying I’ve become cold and calculating because the self-reflection has given what I do more of a mind and less of an intuition. When I seek console, I predominantly either get those in similar issues who nevertheless, or I get those who to my face offer “tough love” words but then are spoken to by the adversaries, right before, almost comically (in a tragic way) on a routine basis, devote undying loyalty to them based on their implied promises, as if they hadn’t just told me it was nobody’s business and used this as a basis to simply shoo my worries, with me saying to those who say it builds character that, if immorality builds morality, it is any wonder you value morality in the first place. They say trying to be the game changer opens people up, and to be the change I wish to be in the world, but I have tried being the better woman whenever someone is blind to the idea that they might be called to help others such as me in a similar situation to them, and they never open up, with the few individuals who have been by my side falling victim to divide and conquer, with many of them having psychological dilemmas in life that makes them all incompatible with each other. And conversely, when I dismiss them and other forms of the downtrodden, who are accustomed more to tend for themselves, I am accused of being hypocritical, for if I am in a situation similar to theirs, why should I be justified in not being there for them or for saying their own parallel issues are not supported by me? Even apologetically accepting the aura of being looked down upon is perceived as grounds to be criticized, often with it being said “she doesn’t even deny it, so she MUST be guilty”, let alone asking what makes for good acceptance of responsibility. And so, while awaiting help to arrive that might never come, because common sense has revealed itself to be a greater disease than anything considered neurodivergent, I go it alone, all while being mocked for this, them saying that me going it alone means there must be a reason I have no companions.
TLDR: The most manipulative thing done to me is to cast me into how I imagine public relations in Hell is like, or a living version of it.
It’s horrible when someone calls you by the wrong name. My MIL has done it on purpose for 26 years. That’s gas lighting to me.
There’s definitely more to it than that, but yeah, it gets irritating.
