What is "manipulative?"

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Coming back to this:

You are correct that people can be mistaken for being manipulative when they're not, but is it really something that is a black and white/all or nothing where trying to protect one's self is bad because one might be wrong?

I've been accused of being manipulative twice in the past year. Once elsewhere, when my manipulative behavior was, in fact, "acting autistic." That is, the fact that I behaved in a manner that could be seen as autistic was characterized as manipulative. The second time was on this forum, less than a day after I had posted that I had been misdiagnosed with BPD. Said member also claimed I had said things that I had not said, and had accused me of particular actions that made no sense.

In the first case, part of the situation was that one person was trying very hard to manipulate my perceptions. He had made it extremely clear that he thought anything I said about my own history was wrong, and constantly tried to reframe my history in a manner that would be acceptable to him. When I refused to accept his reframing, he started misusing his education (he's studying to be a therapist) to convince people who interacted with both of us that I was being manipulative. In context, he is militantly opposed to anyone self-diagnosing, and I disagreed strongly and didn't abandon my self-diagnosis of ADHD to satisfy his sense of superiority. This same person later suggested that adults being diagnosed with AS were simply schizoid personality types (not the disorder) who weren't really on the autistic spectrum at all, expressed contempt for autistic people in general, and repeatedly tried to boil autism down to "autistic people don't realize that people are people." He also bullied and trolled a woman with BPD until she overreacted and was banned for her behavior, even while he got a free pass because all he did was poke at her until she reacted.

So: It's a risk. However, I've been around people who are genuinely manipulative. I've been around emotionally labile people who have bipolar disorder and ADHD. To me, there's a distinct difference, even if others do not see it. I don't see my niece as manipulative, even though she's extremely emotionally reactive and quick to assume others are out to get her or angry at her, or that they did something she thinks is worthy of going on the attack, or that she tries to get other people to do everything for her.

But being wrong is a risk. What can I say? I can't just say, "Well, you shouldn't act to protect yourself from emotionally abusive behavior because you might be wrong and they didn't mean it." Often, this behavior goes one or more steps beyond your examples.

i didn't realise until recently how manipulative people are in general, mostly in small ways. a smile, a glance, a friendly greeting, the tight grip of a confident handshake, a small gift... a lot of things can be quietly manipulative when they are intended to elicit a response from another person.

my former husband used to think that i would cry in order to manipulate him (he thought all women do that). so i would try not to cry in front of him if my sadness or frustration had anything to do with him. i didn't ever like the idea of manipulating people so i would try to suppress anything that seemed vaguely manipulative. i would not wear a low-cut shirt for example because i didn't like the feeling i was manipulating men into finding me attractive.

very recently, i am coming to believe that all humans are frequently manipulating each other in small, benign, social ways. i think it helps us to communicate our needs and keeps society running smoothly. in some ways aspies appear to be less capable of some kinds of manipulation as it does not seem to come naturally; many aspies would rather bluntly state their needs instead of buttering someone up to get their needs met. this tendency can be refreshing sometimes but can also put people off.

if a person is visiting someone else's house and says, "i want a soda", it has a different effect from, "if it isn't too much bother, could i ask if you have anything to drink? i'm very thirsty." the careful and polite phrasing is a sort of social manipulation that asks for something without causing offense to the other party. these things seem to come more naturally to NTs, although our parents strive to teach all of us equally. sometimes it seems like aspies have to consciously remind themselves of the social rules in a given situation, which takes significant effort, is forgotten easily, and often comes across as robotic or learned-by-rote.

when it comes to the written word, i have become acutely aware how people manipulate each other on WP. you can see it in posts full of double-meaning, where a member will be quietly trying to insult someone else without breaking the rules. in troll attacks, insiders or outsiders are trying to use words to rile people up. or sometimes a member will consistently create positive or negative replies to the same person's posts to be noticed by them or to undermine them. one-liner posts are sometimes meant to elicit a laugh or make people ask questions. also there are sometimes people that are striving to gain ground with an idea or argument, so they try to post in such a way that draws support.

I may have miss read the first question.


I don't think it always matters if someone was manipulative or not because of other things.

An example be some women tend to stay in abusive relationships because their men keep manipulting them. They may keep saying they will change and everything be good and the woman keeps falling for it so they keep going back to them. I do see these women as morons because they keep making the same mistake over and over and don't ever put their foot down and decide their guy has used up all his chances so how does she know he won't go back to his old ways. The woman doesn't even have to give them the three strike rule either. If the guy starts beating her or verbally abusing her, she can leave and he had already used his first strike. Or if she had gone back to him twice and then decided he had three strikes and he is out so she is never going back to him despite the sweet talk he do to her and how he would always promise to change and then him acting all nice and sweet and she fell for it twice. Even if the guy had a bad temer and had issues so it made him be abusive so it's possible he wasn't trying to be manipultive beecause he really thinks he can do it but he keeps failing every time, it doesn't matter if he was maybe manipultive or not, it only matters how he treated her. So the woman left him for that. So this be en example here about how you shouldn't stay with someone because you might be wrong about them. The risk wouldn't matter you took assuming they manipulated you every time for you to come back because that part be moot. Just like it's moot for me about if my ex's were manipulative or not.

Verdandi, I think you're perseverating on these past slights.

Can you not use my simple system of assigning everyone scores for FUN and CONTROLLING, and then playing with people while they're being more fun and avoiding them while they're being more controlling? It's a general solution to manipulation. Does it only work if you don't get emotionally involved, i.e. if you're one of the cognitive rather than effective empathy people?

Thanks for the links! I never understood what was manipulation! I can clearly see that many people have used manipulative behaviours on me now.

I never understood before why some people had such a weird and different perception and that they always made me doubt my own perceptions and thoughts.
It never occurred to me that instead of responding they were saying something like "you are too sensitive" instead of responding.
Some people also loves to blame me on things that I said that they interpreted in some way. I would always expect them to understand when I would tell them what I really meant. But many persons prefer to stick to their interpretation of what I said and makes me feel bad because they say in a very rude way :"Think before you speak!" when actually even if I took 2h to think about saying this, I would still have said it in the same way!

It would be nice to spread the message that other people don't decide what's real, or make the rules.

I have been pondering this topic trying to sort out my thoughts about it.

I guess I would define manipulation as leading another person into a particular action, or reaction. It's not good or bad to be manipulative, it's just something people do. What makes it harmful is when information is withheld and people are manipulated into doing things they would not choose to do if they wouldn't willingly choose to do if they had that information.

But as far as getting reactions out of people...this is seen as manipulative, but I know I for one am pretty clueless about the way other people react to things. People often react in a way I don't expect, and sometimes they will accuse me of doing it on purpose to get them to react that way. But I really did not know how they would react.

I think people tend to assume they are being manipulated when they have reactions that feel unexpected, or out of their control. But it does not mean the other person is actively, intentionally trying to elicit that reaction.