In this edition of our series highlighting the manipulation tactics of abusers, we’ll be covering 8 word and logic games that toxic people use in conversations to derail and confuse you.
Most of us want to assume the best in people. But these kinds of behaviours are often hidden signs of abuse (or can suggest that this person become abusive in the future).
These patterns and behaviors can often be spotted within the first hours of meeting someone – if you know what you’re looking for! That’s why it’s so important to arm yourself with knowledge and always trust your gut.
Throughout this series, we’ll talk about a variety of tactics used by manipulators and otherwise toxic people that are often overlooked or dismissed, but should be taken seriously as signs of abuse.
By leaving you off-balance with these tactics, toxic people avoid taking accountability for their harmful actions or manipulate you to get what they want. They twist your words against you, change the topic, avoid the topic, trick you into something or blame you for something that isn’t your fault.
They leave your head spinning and leave you wondering what just happened.
Somehow the issues you raise never actually get resolved, or even truly addressed.
At its essence, abuse is a series of manipulative tactics people use (i) to get things they want, (ii) in an unhealthy way, (iii) that hurts others. It’s often to get your attention or love, money, praise, caring, fame, status, power…or dominance and control over you.
Ok. Let’s get into it:
Quick Tip:
Are you not sure whether your partner’s behaviour is abusive or toxic? Here’s a quick test:
Do you often find that when you get mad about something, somehow your partner is madder than you back?
Do all (or most) conversations end with your partner making you feel that everything is all your fault?
Does this behaviour violate one or more reasonable boundaries that you have communicated to this person?
Is this behaviour something that 95% of people would not do in this situation? Does it seem extreme or unreasonable?
If the answer is yes to any of these, it’s likely that the behaviour is toxic or abusive.
Language and False Logic Tactics
1. Ad Hominem Attacks
We’ve all seen this one. An ad hominem attack is when someone responds back to whatever you’ve said by attacking you instead of actually arguing about the issue.
Politicians do this all the time – one will be talking about the housing crisis, and their opponent will start calling them incompetent or unethical. Even if they’re right, it doesn’t mean that whatever they are saying about the housing crisis is wrong… but it makes the speaker seem less credible. And that’s why they do it.
In a toxic relationship, this usually looks something like one person sharing an opinion about , say, how to invest for retirement – and the other one responding back “You’re so stupid. You don’t know anything about investing.” – or – “Girls are so bad with money. This is why I should be in charge of our finances.”
Not only do they make you feel bad, but they make you think less of yourself – maybe I really am bad at this… after all, you think, my partner loves me. Why would s/he say something mean unless it were true? Or to help me grow?
To make things worse, they will often do this in public, in front of others – to humiliate you and make you feel small. My ex used to talk about my grungy gym underwear or my sexual performance to my (male) lawyer buddies. Major Cringe.
We internalize these insults from our partner because we believe they come from a place of love. But no partner should ever attack you or seek to make you feel bad.
And “Brutal Honesty” is no excuse for hurting someone. There’s always a kind way to share feedback and opinions.
2. Foot in the Door
This is a tactic often used in sales, where a sales person will make a smaller ask than their eventual goal, just to get you to taste the goods, so you’ll want more.
Think about the last time someone offered you a freebie to entice you (or trap you) into a membership. They promise not to charge your credit card, but you have to give it to them, and if you don’t cancel at the end of the free trial, you’ll be charged the monthly fee. And by the way, no one will ever pick up a phone or answer an email when you try to cancel. And you’ll be locked in for at least a year.
With an abuser, they will ask for something small or seemingly innocent… “Can’t I just come in so we can talk?” or “Can we just talk on the phone for 5 minutes?”, or “Couldn’t I just give you a little good night kiss?” or the classic, “How about a nightcap?”
But these can come in many forms – borrowing money, asking for favours, assigning you a responsibility (would you mind cleaning up my place a bit before you go – after all “we” made such a mess last night), violating a boundary (for example by asking for more time to reciprocate something with the intention of never reciprocating).
Importantly, while the first ask is so small and reasonable that you would feel mean or unreasonable saying no, the point of the tactic is to test your boundaries – how far can they go before you say no.
(If they just ask for a tiny bit more each time, maybe they’ll get away with it.) It’s so important to know your boundaries and how to enforce them.
Slowly, the asks get bigger and bigger. And if they were unreasonable to begin with - no you shouldn’t be cleaning up your date’s apartment because he paid for dinner - they only grow bigger and more unreasonable over time.
But it’s like the frog in the boiling water. The water got hot so slowly that you didn’t realize you were boiling until … You love taking care of your partner, and working hard for their love… until one day you wake up and realize your cup is totally empty.
And you feel angry and resentful – but you have no idea how it ever got this far.
3. “At Least”
This one is a personal favourite. (Yes, that is sarcasm.) The goal of this tactic is to make you feel or seem unreasonable for refusing their ask so that they can get their way.
For example, I would ask my ex to do dishes while I put the kids to bed, and he would say, “Can’t I at least go to the washroom first?”, where he would promptly disappear for an hour watching YouTube videos (and goodness knows what else).
When I came down from putting the kids down, he was still in there…
When he eventually came out, he would be too tired, tell me he’d do them tomorrow and then go to bed. He never ended up doing them. (Even if I waited. Yes, I tried that. And Euwww, gross.)
Similarly, any time I asserted a boundary – such as “You need to leave now”, he would come up with some “Can’t I at least eat something first / take a shower / say hi to the kids” - when he wasn’t supposed to even be in my home.
Or if I tried to do a project myself because he hadn’t fixed that thing when I’d been asking for a year, he’d come in and demand that I “at least” let him lecture me on how to do it properly. After all, he was doing me a favour, right?
The goal was to make me feel bad for asking him to contribute or to respect a reasonable boundary, or just to get away with doing whatever he felt like doing – if we’re being honest.
This is another form of limit testing. Won’t you give in to this tiny, reasonable request?
Eventually, the “at leasts” get bigger and bigger, and before you know it, you’re “at least” buying them a house with your life savings. One they will be sure to take from you when you eventually leave them. Or “at least” having just one kid…
You get the idea. Boundaries please.
4. Give (Unreasonable) Reasons Why (aka Rationalizing)
Giving a reason for what you want is a normal, healthy and reasonable thing to do. It’s called justifying. It’s a normal form of persuasion.
When it becomes toxic is when someone tries to either justify something they shouldn’t be justifying or when they give unfair, hurtful, or unreasonable justifications.
Confused yet?
The manipulative element is not in the act of asking for something, but usually in what is being asked for, or how unreasonable, mean, invalidating the reasons are.
Abusers will often argue about why they should be allowed to violate a reasonable boundary. Of course, I should be able to sleep with other women… I’m a man.
Or they will do something hurtful and then justify it with (usually ridiculous) reasons:
Of course I cheated on you - She’s hotter than you. And you’ve gotten fat.
Or - Of course I cheated on you - You turn me down (sometimes).
Or worse – Of course I cheated on you - You won’t do that thing I want to you to do, so I found someone who would.
Ouch.
The reasons usually look like laying the blame squarely on you for their obviously bad actions. That’s when it becomes abusive.
An example might be, “I wouldn’t even need to borrow money from you if you hadn’t been so reckless with my money.” (When in fact you had spent joint funds on groceries, rent or paying the bills.)
A personal favourite of mine was an ex who thought it was ok for him to cheat – but of course it wouldn’t be reasonable for me to do the same. Because guys and girls are different. Girls (Women) should want to settle down, and he was a guy, so he needed to sleep with anything that moved. Why was I so obsessed with fairness, anyways?
Abusers feel that since their goals and needs are paramount, anything they do is justified. They are so good at convincing themselves why what they want is more important than your needs that they are happy to argue it to you!
Another example – A client of mine was a mom and senior manager at a multinational company. Her husband was a technician. She was clear the breadwinner in the marriage. She explained how her ex felt justified in arguing that he should be able to go dirt biking every Sunday and bailing on all the chores because “all the other wives” stayed home on weekends with the kids and let their husbands go off with the boys. Nevermind that this was an obvious lie…
The very act of explaining that HE needed a day off each week because he was the man (especially when he was not the provider, and when he refused to return the favour or prioritize family time) was an unreasonable and hurtful ask.
Trying to justify it hurts even more. On top of the initial hurt, it makes a partner feel unworthy, unseen, unloved, undesired, unimportant… No healthy relationship should leave you feeling that way.
(If you have spotted this in your partner and are thinking about leaving, paying attention to these reasons will give you key information on how to protect yourself when you leave… reach out to me to find out how.)
5. Why Not (Unreasonable excuses)
This tactic is the reverse of the last one.
Debating and giving reasonable objections can be a perfectly reasonable way to stand up for yourself, it become abusive when the person you are dealing with raises unreasonable objections to perfectly reasonable requests over and over again for a malicious purpose.
They do this to avoiding being accountable, having to fulfill a promise or obligation or otherwise doing something you reasonably expect of them.
An example might be:
· not wanting to take out the trash because there’s a chance there might be skunks outside (in January at the north pole)
· being “too busy” anytime you ask for something (my ex was too busy to do his taxes for 9 years)
· not wanting to have kids because of a fear they might be disabled or deformed (when there’s no reasonable reason for them to be, and even though they also tell you they think they want kids)
· not wanting to go to your parents’ place for Christmas because – what if someone comes to rob the house while you’re gone?!
Effectively, they just give bad reasons and think this should be the end of the conversation. It leaves you feeling invalidated, unimportant and uncared for.
It also often leaves you holding the bag – for the kids, the bills, the chores, everything.
Your needs go unmet. You deserve to have your needs met. Everyone does.
6. Doublethink
This tactic is easy to spot, but it works because of something called cognitive dissonance.
This happens when a toxic person or abuser knows something but pretends not to know, knows the truth (and knows that you know the truth) but tells a lie instead, or expresses two opinions or thoughts at the same time that are completely contradictory.
This works because of simple logic. Something cannot both be and not be at the same time. So when someone tells you that “The Sky is Blue” and “The Sky is not Blue” at the same time (and in the same place), your brain does a short circuit.
Our brains can’t hold both of those facts at the same time, so it chooses the one it believes and dumps the other.
But what if you didn’t know which one to believe?
Abusers take advantage of this. They say both, and then convince you of which one you should keep and which you should toss – usually by repetition. Saying something a bunch of times actually does make it more true, it turns out.
(Imagine someone had been telling you the Sky was not blue since you were a kid. I bet you would question yourself even if you saw it with your own eyes. After all, is Blue the right label for that colour? This happens to us when we are abused as kids because we grow up with a skewed version of our self worth, our ‘loveability’ and what is normal. If you believe you’re “too much”, you’ll believe anyone who tells you you are. And you’ll reject people who tell you there’s nothing wrong with you and you’re amazing.)
A good example of this is Donald Trump. In his first campaign, there was a scandal where he had been recorded talking about how rich famous guys can do anything they want with women. He talked about having grabbed some woman by the (private parts). We all heard it. Over and over again. But he simply denied it. Repeatedly. And then he made up some other (hardly) plausible explanation for what he had been trying to say in the video that was supposed to be better. And repeated that. Loudly. Over and over again.
People who wanted to believe that a man in a position of authority could be trusted, and that someone so successful must be a trustworthy person, (or who just liked him), believed what he told them to believe. Others believed the evidence.
But everyone was left scratching their heads until they picked a camp.
In a relationship, an abuser repeats what they want you to believe over and over again – for years. And they make you feel small and stupid, and incompetent, and like a failure … until you trust their opinion over your own.
Voila. You eventually believe they are right – you are ugly and unlovable. That’s abuse.
Did you think you were hot, smart, competent, skilled… before you met them? Do other people disagree with what your partner says about you?
This is why it’s so important to maintain your social network. If you don’t have all those other voices to check reality against, the truth can get lost. And so can you.
7. Straw Man Arguments
This tactic is another one based on false logic.
A Straw Man Argument is where one person makes an argument. The other person then misconstrues the argument and argues back to the misconstrued argument. An example will help:
Dad: Sorry, son, it’s too late to go play with your friends. It’s time for dinner.
Kid: Why do you hate me so much!?
The kid in this scene is making the assumption that dad is only refusing his request because he hates his son, and not for the reason his dad gave him. So when he argues back, he’s arguing against the assumption that he made, and not the reason his dad actually gave.
In relationships, you know this is happening when you have to say “That’s not what I said.” or “You’re missing my point.” It becomes abusive/toxic when they keep going down their line of argument anyways, and claim they’ve won – instead of stopping and seeking to understand what you were really saying – consistently.
Or worse yet, they now get angry at you for that thing you didn’t really say – and then the conversation spirals into a rant where they are yelling at you about how mean and abusive you are. Ever had that happen? I sure have.
It can be innocent – they want to understand but just don’t. But abusers don’t really want to listen. And they don’t really want to solve the problem through mutual understanding. They just want another reason to make you feel bad.
When your partner is unwilling to listen, or shows no interest in your real message – and it becomes a regular pattern of behaviour, then it is invalidating and dismissive – and hence toxic. When they start spiralling out of control at you because of something you never actually said (and they never apologize later), now its abuse.
A good example that happens with narcissists often is when you accuse them of cheating or lying.
You: “I know you’re cheating on me. I found these conversations with X on your phone. You’re being unfaithful again!”
Them: “You’re always so paranoid. I’m not a bad person. I have lots to offer in this relationship. You don’t appreciate me enough. How dare you read my messages! You’re a horrible person!”
(This also happens when they take your words out of context, oversimplify your argument, or exaggerate your argument to make it seem ridiculous.)
8. Gaslighting
You’ve probably heard of gaslighting before. It’s gotten a lot of attention lately.
Gaslighting is when someone tries to convince you of something they know is untrue on purpose – to trick you or confuse you or make you look / feel crazy. They do it repeatedly. Because of cognitive dissonance, your mind get stuck in a loop. It’s that short circuit thing we explained above.
It is true? Or isn’t it? Why is this person I trust telling me something I feel so sure is not true – and why do they seem so convinced of it? It makes you doubt your own beliefs. And they take that opportunity to convince you of the facts they want you to believe.
After a while, they start commenting about how bad your memory is, or how bad your hearing is, or how forgetful you are, or how you never told them that. Because you are now so used to doubting yourself, you start trusting their version of the facts more and more often - and doubting your own perception of reality.
Like most of these tactics, It starts small and slowly grows bigger over time.
It destabilizes you entirely. You don’t know what is true or what is real anymore. You start to go a little crazy. You have no confidence in your own beliefs or memories. Now they can convince you of anything.
How does it work?
The Loonie:
When I was married, I was responsible for doing groceries.
I kept a loonie (a one dollar coin for you Americans) in the ash tray of the car to unlock a shopping cart from the cart corral at the grocery store. My ex would take the car on weekends (because I drove the nicer car) and would use (take? steal?) my loonie.
This happened every week. The loonie would be missing Monday morning.
I tried explaining why I needed the loonie. I tried appealing to his empathy, telling him how hard it was when he took it because I’d have to lug both children in the store to get change just to have to come back out to get the cart. I tried asking nicely. I tried holding him accountable. I tried getting angry.
I was met with denial. Then being told I was crazy and there was no loonie in the car when he took it. Then that he didn’t know what I was talking about. Then that I was overreacting – it wasn’t a big deal. Then that I was getting so angry over nothing and was therefore being abusive. This happened over months. He eventually called my doctor to express his “concern” over my mental health because I was imagining things and taking it out on him. (Huh?!)
It seems so small, but he kept doubling down – to the point of using my anger over this (thing that I imagined) to argue that I was an unfit, unstable mother in our custody battle. Yes, really. And as things got worse, the examples got bigger.
The Thermostat:
In another example, a client of mine would tell me that she and her ex would fight over what temperature to keep the house at. After arguing for weeks, they finally agreed on a compromise, or so she thought. Only she kept waking up freezing at night, thinking, there was no way the house could possibly be at the temperature they had agreed on.
One night, she got out of bed in the wee hours and checked the thermostat – only to find that it was set at his preferred temperature - not the one they compromised on. He had set the program so it would be at the agreed temperature when she was likely to check, and his favourite temperature at other times.
When she confronted him – he denied it. Repeatedly. Accused her of being crazy and delusional. Went so far as to randomize the program so that sometimes the temperature would go down overnight but sometimes not. And would constantly swear that he was only doing exactly what they had agreed on.
Even when she was sure she was right, she still doubted herself. His constant denial left her unsure of herself, but still angry at what she thought she knew. She became increasingly frustrated at his refusal to acknowledge or validate his behaviour that she felt so sure of.
Abuse like this leaves you confused, uncertain of yourself, hurt, angry, invalidated, dismissed, and feeling like your partner either doesn’t care about you, or you’re going crazy – and you don’t know which.
Final Words
It’s important to understand that you don’t have to be a “victim” to be abused. You are not weak because a toxic person has targeted you, or because you try to help people who are out to use you.
Emotional and psychological abuse feel like death by a thousand cuts. Little hurt after little hurt. Invalidation after dismissal. Accusation after denial. While you keep trying to fix, heal, repair, align and connect with your partner, they are hurting you in big and small ways, over and over again. And then the throw you a sweet little bone – just enough to stop you from leaving.
Most abusers have a favourite set of tactics that they consistently resort to, sometimes even in the same order. If you pay attention, it becomes predictable. The key to spotting whether these behaviours are healthy or flags lies in knowing your boundaries, what healthy relationships look like, and having some key knowledge to identify toxic behaviours when they happen.
The purpose of this series is to teach you how to spot some of these common tactics. These are BIG red flags (particularly when they show up with other tactics in this series). The more of them you see, the more likely this person is toxic. And they don’t get LESS serious because you’ve been with someone for a long time…if you’ve noticed someone in your life uses some or many of these often, it’s time to check in with your gut:
· How does this relationship make me feel?
· How does it fulfill MY needs?
· Am I getting as much as I’m giving?
If the answer is that you feel like you’re giving much more than you’re getting, your needs are ignored or you feel bad all (or most of the time), you may need to make a change.
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Ilana Cohen is a lifelong serial entrepreneur, CEO, decorated athlete, attorney, and mother of two.
For more than 15 years, Ilana has been empowering her clients from a place of experience and first-hand wisdom, as she herself has triumphed over a lengthy divorce battle with an abusive partner - an experience she references for insight, but has never let define her.
Ilana’s newest venture, PrepärHub, is the culmination of a decades-long journey into divorce coaching – with A.I. powered tools - that puts you back in control of your divorce, your self-esteem, and your life.
Click here to connect with Ilana directly.
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