What is "manipulative?"

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I assume everyone has ulterior motives until I have good reason to believe otherwise.

How do you maintain this assumption while also functioning in a social situation?

I think that people realise I am atypical and talk cryptically in an effort not to upset me. If I believe something is unfair I can get annoyed, but I prefer to understand and be offended, rather than be in blissful ignorance.

Something about the phrase, or the way it was used seemed unusual, or perhaps it is just my not knowing the term, and I am being hyper-vigilant. Sorry, I am not explaining very well. I was wondering if 'primary mover' held a negative undertone that I do not understand, or is generally negative?

I don't think it is generally negative. What I meant by it is "the central person motivating the actions described." I think it can be a positive as well as negative thing. For example, I could say that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a primary mover in civil rights activism, and this is positive.

I have had people talk cryptically around me, and I dislike it immensely.

I talk to them while maintaining a healthy level of skepticism, without letting them catch on if possible.

I find I often forget about things like this when I'm talking to people, or I get caught up in managing my external (usually verbal) reactions that I am not devoting much effort (okay, usually any effort) to divining what other people may be thinking while I converse with them.

I used to be like that, but now I find I externally go on autopilot so I can better concentrate on considering the person's motives.

Huh, I can do autopilot (I mentioned it in the "covering for things you don't know" thread I started) but that doesn't leave me with more ability to do that. Not sure how to get from here to there.

Practice I guess.

Worrying about what's in other people's heads is their game - you don't have to play it. If you don't get emotionally involved with people then it's easy to play with anyone and not get manipulated because you don't care about the content of what they're saying, you just try to enjoy the flow of it. There seemed to be an even split between autistics with affective vs cognitive empathy, probably depending on childhood abuse, and the strategies would be very different for each group.

Could you elaborate on that?

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt185020.html

The childhood abuse bit is just something he made up though.

But then someone can end up accusing someone of being manipulative when they are not because they are matching the behavior. Look at autism for example. My dad is also very forgetful so he often says he is going to do something and then he doesn't do it, is he manipulating? But if I asked him if he did it, he remembers and does it right now before he forgets again.


If those articles are taken literal, then we are all manipulative and so are people with ADHD and people with other conditions that would cause the behavior.

How so? Do you have specific examples?

I just used my dad as an example. He often forgets to do things when he said he was going to do them. I read that is emotional manipulation because they do that too. My dad does this because he is often forgetful. But if people read the article, they can say my dad is that because he fits that one thing of emotional manipulation. I get forgetful too so a reminder helps. This used to piss my office clerk off and he couldn't be arsed to remind me. I wonder if he thought I was being manipulative? If he did, I don't care because it's in the past. But I try not to forget.

You were accused of manipulation on this forum by that one member. Other people have accused you of manipulation too right? I can't remember if you have said here or not that other people have accused you of that in the past.

I have been accused of playing dumb on this forum and being in denial. I read that part in one of the articles you linked. it said they will deny their behavior and play dumb by pretending they don't know what they did wrong.

I wonder if my last ex was a emotional manipulator but then I am afraid that I'd be misreading his intentions. I always doubted myself thinking I had a bad memory thinking I forgot I agreed to something and he said I said I'd do it with him. But it could have been him being emotionally manipulative and he played me. Plus he'd make me feel guilty too and I wonder if that was his intent or was he just being too honest with his feelings? Plus he was very negative and had low self esteem so he seemed to be negative about me too and made me feel bad and I was convinced I was worse off than I really was. I wonder if that was his intent or if he truly thought that? My dad thinks he put me down to make himself feel better. My husband thinks he was burning bridges. But because I had being misunderstood, I am afraid to assume he was manipulating me because what if I was wrong? What if I was misreading him just because the article said he was.

I also once asked these another forum about emotional manipulation:

These be my specific examples here in the questions I asked. This is how people can be mistaken for manipulating. People can assume someone is playing dumb. But are they still manipulations even if these are done unintentionally? So that's why I think the articles can be inaccurate because of what they can do to us and other people with disabilities. People can read them to learn to spot a manipulator and assume we are manipulating them.

It's like someone writes an article on laziness. It says someone doesn't do housework and they leave it all to you to do. Some people read it and are going to question is like what if someone has cancer so they are too weak to clean. Of course they would end up leaving it to their partner to clean it. Are they still lazy? That is what I am doing with the articles about manipulation.

Oh yeah someone once accused me of manipulating her just for asking too many questions. All I was doing was trying to have a social chat and get to know her more and she said I was manipulating her. Then I remember reading on here not too long ago that sometimes people will ask you tons of questions to get information out of you to get you to talk about something. I would say that lady was just paranoid. Maybe she had read too many of those articles. So another example here. And hey wouldn't it be an aspie thing if I did the chit chat wrong? So she should have assumed it may not be my intent what I am doing because I have AS myself so of course it may be coming off wrong. But it's a possibility I didn't do anything wrong and I did it right or I did do it wrong and she was wrong too about me. Yeah she knew I had AS too but I don't think she knows s**t about it because of the things she has said about autism on here and on the other forum and the accusations she has done on other members. Another example here of how someone can act manipulative because they were matching the behavior.

Thanks, all valid points. You're right, of course.