It feels absolutely amazing to be praised, complimented, and attended to by the person who loves you. But if the attention at times feels overwhelming and out of the place, without any rational basis you must know that something is not quite right. These people will often lose no chance to flatter you. These behaviors on their part will definitely make you feel wanted but check if they sometimes make you feel uncomfortable or not.
2. Displays excessive affection on the public platform:
They will make frequent contact with you, as much as they can. They will text you dozens if not hundreds a day. It is as if you are the center of their world. They even plaster your Facebook pages with poems, songs, and other posts meant to display their intense affection for you.
3. Favoritizes you as their soul mate:
Even though it is just a way for them to gain your confidence but you never suspect their intention. You believe that they are truly your soulmate as they create an illusion in their mind that they are your perfect partner. Nothing can be as ideal as this person and you feel lucky to have won their hearts.
4. Devalues you through comparisons with others:
Psychopaths usually alternatively shift from an idealization phase to a devaluation phase within the blink of an eye. They will once see the best in you and in the next circumstance, they will find faults in you and constantly keep comparing you with their friends, exes, and family member. These are enough to throw you off the cliff because your illusion of this person being your ‘dream partner’ is slowly eroding off.
5. Withholds attention to trample your self-esteem:
After the act of love, bombing is over they will withhold their affection and love that they initially showered on you. They seem disinterested, indifferent and aloof from you and in the relationship. This directly hampers your self-esteem because you start finding faults with yourself. You believe it is your inability to love and understand them that is driving them away from you.
6. Lies and excuses galore:
They start to make excuses for everything, starting from them failing to keep up with their words to make unforgivable mistakes. They are never responsible for anything wrong they did. You are always the guilty one for things that they have done.
7. Belittles you, insults you with a condescending attitude:
They will mock at your sensitivity by pointing out how hypersensitive and over-reactive you are about everything when you try to express some action of them which hurt you. They will even lambast you about your mannerisms. For them, your achievements and your potentials will become a laughing stock.
8. Uses social media to evoke jealousy and insecurity while themselves maintaining their innocent guise:
The social media which they once used to raise your self-esteem will now be used to throw you down the depths of insecurity. They will engage in activities that will make you feel like a sidekick. They will tag their ex-lovers in random posts to and engage in an inside conversation where you feel boycotted and left out.
9. You are slowly turning into a detective:
You have never been so insecure in your life. Now you start to stalk your partner everywhere, starting from social media to in reality. You feel like you are turning crazy in the mind by worrying about what your partner might be doing at your back. You are about to forget what mental peace was like.
10. Constantly makes you question your value in their life:
Alongside losing your sleep over their true intentions, you will also question your position in their life. Manipulative people will often treat you like an option, paying no heed to your needs or desires. You are always the last one on their priority list. They surround themselves with potential partners and subtly hint at how unattractive you are as compared to them.
11. You are the only one who is able to see through their farce:
You will be surprised to know that you are the only one who can see through their techniques to establish control over you. Other mutual friends of you both are failing to understand your reason for being ‘overconcerned’ and ‘hurt’. This is not surprising as it’s one of the manipulative techniques known as triangulation, used by the psychopaths to corner you.
12. Never empathizes with you:
Everything they know is themselves. They are so self-absorbed that they find it difficult to put themselves in your shoes and understand what you are going through. They will minimize your pain by saying things like “Don’t be such a cry-baby.” “You are over-reacting.” etc.
13. Points out your mistakes while ignoring their own:
If you ever find faults with them, don’t forget that you also have your share of mistakes. If you forget, they will readily remind you of the same by turning the entire conversation towards you. They are masters at shifting the blame to you when they were supposed to be the one in need to be penalized.
14. Gaslights you:
In case you encounter them with their manipulative techniques, they will deny and ignore your evidence to prove your point. They will even get angry if you try to logically reason our their delusions.
15. They constantly make you feel like your relationship is a tightrope walk:
Every relationship has occasional conflicts but they get eventually resolved with the joint efforts of the partner. When you are in a relationship with a manipulator, you will be threatened with negative consequences whenever their mistakes are the topic of conversation. For you, the relationship seems to be like a walk on the egg-shell. Every time you are fighting with your partner, it seems the end of the relationship.
A healthy relationship will never have these red flags. People who are not genuinely interested in an intimate relationship with you but merely use you as a supply for their sadistic needs is not actually in love with their partners. They are in love with what their partner can provide them with. Developing intuition and awareness around these manipulative signs takes time but once you do so, you are to remember that everyone out there is after emotionally and psychologically traumatizing you. Some of them are authentically in love with you which you eventually can feel. True affection never feels forced. They seem to flow organically and perfectly fits you.
