Manipulative - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing
The money-nexus reward manipulative behaviours and these can manifest in personal relationships as a societal cancer.
Being manipulative is wearing the team jersey and playing only for yourself. In doing that you cheat yourself of the loving bonds and support a team can provide, of all the good feelings that make living so incredible.
Manipulation can be a "flash bang," the moment they drop a bomb they create the most attractive "smoke and mirrors" they can conjure.
There are some that play games of "relationship chess." It's a game for morons. Relationships are all about loving bonds, trust and being giving. They are about nurture and being protective. The only way you can have any of those things is to get off the board and be real, be vulnerable, be soulful with the one you love. There are times a manipulative person has forced me onto the board, to play it their way, yet I am also not on the board at all. These are my Schrödinger's cat moments. I am there and not. When the "game is over," they find that I was never there, not really, because my soul is to wise for such gambles.
To call a partner "manipulative" is a relationship nuclear bomb. Once someone calls it, trust is gone and trust is foundational to relationships. Everything there once was between them is ashes. Added to that, it's a trap. Any good deeds done by the "manipulator" are because they "want something." Any neutral behaviours become "stand-offish manipulations." Heaven forbid they actually loose their cool and become angry they are then "manipulating and aggressive." Any which way and the relationship is doomed, the accuser is lost in paranoia and the the accused is "guilty" no matter what they do.
The manipulative one is a fool to themselves for they create a mask of deception that fools their conscious brain too. As such, they become driven from their back seat, their survival self calling all the shots, ever wondering why true love feels mythical instead of tangible.