If You Don't Want To Do It, Don't Say "Yes" and Then "Gunny Sack" It

Some people treat relationships like a game, and the whole point is to win so they can later say, "Gotcha." I ran into this when our first child was born. My husband's aunt offered to travel with me and the baby to see a specialist in St. Louis. Only afterward did she tell me she'd been doing it to be nice and hadn't actually wanted to go at all. Situations like that are part of why I lean toward being fiercely independent. The favor goes into a gunny sack, and someday the sack gets dragged out and emptied over your head.

There's a nastier version of this, and it comes from people with narcissistic or sociopathic patterns, or from borderline personality dynamics. They are skilled manipulators. By the time they're finished, you are holding the blame and they have come out looking spotless, one step ahead of you. Lying, for them, is practically a hobby. They enjoy measuring how far they can pull you in before they drop you off at the curb.

The part that stings most is how they can turn your own circle against you. They get cast as the genuine victim while you become the villain. Early on they make you care about them, make you defend them, and all the while they are as fake as a three-dollar bill. Think of how poison ivy spreads, except this spreads further and the itch never really stops. A practiced liar can speak "the truth" so convincingly that you're the one left stranded, and if they're talented enough, your friends quietly become their friends.

They'll reach for whatever tool works. A staged religious conversion is a favorite, something to earn your trust and get you labeled a faithful friend by the very people you're about to lose. "The devil made me do it" would be the closer-to-accurate explanation, though they'd never say it out loud. Part of what makes a manipulator this effective is simple: there's no conscience nagging at them the way yours nags at you.

I knew of a relative who schemed to put her stepfather in a nursing home so the inheritance would fall to her. Fate had other plans; she died before he did. There are days life feels like a pit full of snakes, and you spend your energy watching where you step so you don't get bitten.

These con artists rarely end up wearing the blame. They collect what they came for and disappear with it. What makes it so hard is that sometimes you're the only one who ever saw through the act. Good luck.

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