This year has offered me a masterclass in manipulation. Not the overt kind that storms through the door, easy to recognize and reject. No, this was subtler. Trickier. Wearing a different outfit each time, but always with the same intent: to bend my perception or behavior into a shape someone else found more convenient.
Most recently, manipulation showed up in the form of deflection—and the person wearing it was my real estate agent.
It started with a simple question. A fair one. A question that deserved a clear answer: what happens if we miss our inspection contingency deadline?
Instead, I got a performance.
She danced around the question, replacing it with a list of all the ways she had “gone above and beyond.” She painted herself as the martyr and me as ungrateful. The message was unspoken but loud: “How dare you question me after all I’ve done?”
It was an attempt to hijack the conversation. A misdirection. Designed to make me wonder whether I should’ve even asked the question in the first place.
At first, it worked.
I found myself responding to her points, trying to be polite, following the detours she laid out like breadcrumbs. All the while, the original question—the one that actually mattered—was left dangling, untouched.
I was getting lost in the weeds—responding to tangents, soothing her discomfort, trying to find common ground that didn’t exist.
And my body knew.
I felt anxious every time I got on the phone with her. Tense, ungrounded, like I was being gaslit but couldn’t quite name it. Until I could.
I realized it wasn’t a communication breakdown. It was a manipulation pattern. A dance of deception that relied on me following a script: be polite, don’t interrupt, stay agreeable.
So I tore up the script.
I stopped responding to her deflections and started interrupting them. When she veered off course, I said, “That’s not the conversation I’m trying to have. I’m asking for a specific answer to a specific question.”
When she listed her “sacrifices”, I replied, “I didn’t ask you to go above and beyond. It’s your responsibility not to offer things you don’t feel comfortable offering.”
When we disagreed, I no longer tried to convince her I was right. I simply said, “We don’t see this the same way, and that’s okay. But we still need to move forward.”
Something shifted.
She got flustered. Defensive. Tried new tactics. But none of them landed, because I wasn’t playing the game anymore.
Manipulation loses its power when you stop being a dance partner.
So if you find yourself in circular conversations, if your nervous system flares up without a clear reason, if someone keeps steering the conversation away from what matters—pause.
Take a breath.
You don’t have to keep dancing.
You can name the pattern. You can change the steps. You can choose how you will engage, and—just as importantly—how you won’t.
Because boundaries aren’t just about protecting your time or energy.
They’re about protecting your truth.
