The most severely disordered characters will often make direct threats or even carry them out as a way of keeping others in line. Skilled manipulators, however, are expert at making more subtle, implied or veiled threats to intimidate others into seeing or doing things their way. Sometimes a veiled threat can be no more than a particular “look” or a glance. Sometimes it’s imbedded not so much in what someone says or does, but the manner or tone they employ when they do or say it. The message is always the same. The disturbed character subtly implies that some sort of “holy hell” will break out if he doesn’t get his way or if someone dares to challenge or confronts his dysfunctional behavior.
Folks who are quick to go on the offensive in this very calculated way whenever they face resistance are not likely to take a good look at themselves or the healthiness of their way of doing things. Their combative stance also blocks any chance that they will internalize a more pro-social a standard of self-conduct.
Individuals who are in relationships with persons who use the tactic of covert-intimidation often are at high risk that the relationship will be abusive, exploitive or both. I’ve been posting on some of the more frequent tactics disturbed characters use to manipulate and control others. Observing the frequency with which a person uses these tactics should give you some good insight into the nature of their character and how likely you are to have any kind of healthy relationship with them.
I can now look back and see this was a person who came to a pool party of mine in 2010. She started to contact me and I was kind enough to bring her to one of my social events because she is a middle aged divorced woman like me. But over a year she did things that seemed odd to me, like she getting me to volunteer time out of my home to allow her the opportunity to rendezvous with a strange man. Or when she would be taking classes in my area and I would let her stay overnight, I would end up catering to her. Slowly she wiped away the healthy boundaries of a relationship piece by piece, including emailing my work material with inappropriate content. When I finally broke off the relationship she would contact me telling me how my friends would smile at my face but tell her they wondered how she could ever be friends with me. She would also boast about how she was dating all these men, how she is the president of some organization, or how she is doing this or that, but everything was a lie. I was truly nice to her in the beginning by inviting her into my social group and helping her only to witness her going beyond the boundaries of decency and respect. And when I finally called her out on all this, she got flat out ugly with me!
Editor’s note: This comment was edited for content, grammar, and punctuation to improve clarity.
This last section is so interesting and I bet the details of things have been left out of course. The person was hiding there true identity from him onbviously
Please email me the specifics kevin_meyer_@hotmail.com
Thank you.
From a guy that had been all over the narcicistic blotter in several texts…. I mean…. This is his last text about “not” being a threat….. “and like – you are absolutely and utterly safe from my well known viciousness and ruthlessness, because family – I’m worse than poison, I’m a civics hacker! I’ll roll the system over someone who earns my wrath like a fucking steamroller, and get patted on the back and told what a Great American I am by every judge and cop and elected official I encounter.”
Is there any “tatics” of how to properly resist and confront someone who uses covert intimidation against us? Or in the bigger picture, are there defensive tatics against manipulation?