How does the manipulator act at the very beginning

The manipulator begins to probe and influence the victim from the very beginning of their acquaintance. The start of manipulation is practically imperceptible to us. It's impossible to definitively say whether it's manipulation or if the person is genuinely friendly and helpful, especially if the person is relatively unknown.

To avoid falling into the manipulator's web, you need to: first, recognize their manipulations, and second, distance yourself from them or completely exclude them from your life. But you need to be careful, otherwise you might accidentally distance a good person if you happen to be mistaken.

If you have previously caught someone manipulating and have drawn conclusions about them, it's reasonable to keep your distance from such a person.

How a manipulator operates ​

• Initially, everything seems like normal communication; they're sweet, pleasant, and even helpful, wanting to assist you in some way. But it's all fake - they're pretending to be this way to make you feel comfortable with them and fix pleasant feelings towards them in your subconscious. Once the manipulator achieves this, they will use their positive image, established earlier, for manipulation and keeping the victim - that is, you - under control
• They subtly and slowly probe the victim during communication, observing how they react to barely noticeable requests and simple tricks. For example, they use the "three yeses" technique practiced in sales - if a person has said yes twice, they will say yes the third time, but this time it will be followed by a manipulative request. However, initially, they don't ask for anything serious, only things that the victim can easily do and won't even notice it was manipulation
• The manipulator reinforces any request or testing of a manipulative technique with positive emotions - for example, praise, a compliment, or some cute joke that causes a smile. There are two goals here. The first is to immediately start conditioning the victim's psyche, establishing a reward in the form of positive reinforcement for completing a task that the victim doesn't even suspect. And the second is to mask the manipulative techniques
• They also create a kind of slippery slope for you which makes it easier for you to slide towards them - they're always nearby, on call, ready to "help." And they become prevalent in your life. And since you're sliding down this slope yourself, it seems like it's your choice. And of course, they will use this in the future - when you confront them, they will simply say you did all this yourself, no one forced you
• If it's a woman, she might apply the emotional roller coaster technique. First, she actively shows interest in the man, then unexpectedly disappears and grows cold, then appears again. This is a cruel psychological attachment technique
• Women also often use the attention deficit technique. If she immediately sees that a man is interested in her, she tries to show minimal attention and finds a balance where the man becomes highly invested with the right degree of attention deficit. Her attention and investment in the relationship is always less than the man's. She may pretend they're just friends, that she just agreed to go on a date with him because she had nothing else to do, and so on. This is also a toxic and unpleasant technique
• If it's a pseudo-friend, they really want to appear much more helpful and useful to the victim than the victim themselves. But this will likely be only in words, although they might actually do something truly useful for you. That is, the victim behaves normally, while the manipulator is excessively servile. They will definitely, as if by chance, fix this image with some fleeting phrase that the victim won't particularly notice. In this picture, they will be all so helpful and caring, while the victim is less helpful and supposedly invested less in the relationship than they did. Drawing such a picture is very important for the manipulator; they will use this picture to manipulate the victim in the future, causing guilt and shame and making the victim invest much more than the manipulator ever did. Women in relationships do this too
• An important feature - the manipulator acts slowly in stages, gradually increasing efforts, slowly conditioning the victim. They also slowly stop being sweet and helpful, while leaving the illusion for the victim that they are still sweet. They use a feature of our brain - we think poorly in terms of time, very poorly in fact. Our brain barely notices slow changes. For example, a vivid illustration is an alcoholic who thinks they're not changing, but would be horrified at how they've changed over a year if they put their year-old photo next to a mirror, despite the fact that every day during this year, looking in the mirror, they didn't notice any changes
• Not all manipulators act so softly; some prefer to act harshly - right from the start to bend, make guilty, and subjugate. They either go all-in immediately or somehow sense the victim's weakness and immediately see what to pressure. This technique is more often used by authoritative people, recognized in some society, such as a tyrannical boss in a work collective, authorities in prison or in the army, or just an experienced, hardened female manipulator