12 Manipulation Tactics in Relationships (With Text Examples)

Most manipulation doesn't announce itself. It doesn't look like what you see in movies — a villain with obvious motives.

It looks like texts. Long, circular arguments that leave you exhausted. Conversations that started with you raising a concern and ended with you apologizing. Patterns that only become visible when you see the whole landscape at once.

This is a complete reference to the 12 manipulation tactics most commonly found in text conversations.

1. Gaslighting

What it is: Making you doubt your own memory, perception, or reality.

What it looks like: "That never happened. I don't know where you're getting this from." / "You always twist things. Your memory is terrible."

Why it's hard to identify: The tactic targets the mechanism you'd normally use to identify it — your own perception.

2. Love Bombing

What it is: Overwhelming affection and attention early in a relationship, followed by withdrawal once attachment is established.

What it looks like: "I've never met anyone like you in my entire life." / (Months later) "You're being needy. You knew what this relationship was."

Why it's hard to identify: Intense early affection feels wonderful. The manipulation is in the function.

3. Stonewalling

What it is: Completely shutting down communication and refusing to engage, particularly during conflict.

What it looks like: One-word answers or silence for hours after you raise a concern. / "I'm not doing this right now."

Why it's hard to identify: Can look like someone who "needs space." The difference: healthy space-taking is communicated. Stonewalling as punishment leaves you anxious and compliant.

4. DARVO

What it is: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. When you raise a concern, they deny it, attack your character, and end up positioning themselves as the victim.

What it looks like: You: "I was hurt when you said that." Them: "I can't believe you're attacking me right now. I'm the one who's actually hurt here."

Why it's hard to identify: The reversal happens fast, before you've had time to process. You end up managing their feelings about your concern.

5. Triangulation

What it is: Introducing a third person — typically an ex, a friend, or a coworker — to create jealousy, insecurity, or competition.

What it looks like: "My ex never had a problem with this." / "I was talking to [name] about what you did and they agree with me."

Why it's hard to identify: Can look like innocent comparison or venting to friends.

6. Blame Shifting

What it is: Redirecting responsibility for all problems onto you, regardless of what actually happened.

What it looks like: "I only acted that way because of how you treated me first." / "This is your fault. If you hadn't done X, none of this would have happened."

Why it's hard to identify: Healthy relationships do involve taking responsibility for how you contribute to problems. The difference is that blame shifting is consistent and total.

7. Intermittent Reinforcement

What it is: Unpredictable hot/cold cycles — warmth and affection alternating with withdrawal or criticism — that create emotional dependency.

What it looks like: Several days of warmth, then sudden coldness and criticism, then warmth returning after you try to fix it.

Why it's hard to identify: The warm periods feel more intense after the cold ones. The brain responds to unpredictable rewards with the same compulsion as gambling.

8. Reality Distortion

What it is: Systematically reframing events, history, or your experience of the relationship.

What it looks like: "You didn't feel that way. You're only saying that now." / "We were happy until you decided to be unhappy."

Why it's hard to identify: More subtle than simple gaslighting — it's about the overall narrative of the relationship, not specific incidents.

9. Isolation Attempts

What it is: Subtly or overtly cutting you off from friends, family, and support systems.

What it looks like: "I don't understand why you need to go out with your friends so much." / "I thought I was enough for you."

Why it's hard to identify: Often framed as love or concern about specific people. The goal is dependency — isolating you from people who might give you an outside perspective.

10. Minimization

What it is: Consistently dismissing your feelings, concerns, and experiences as excessive or unimportant.

What it looks like: "You're so sensitive." / "You're overreacting. Most people wouldn't even care about this."

Why it's hard to identify: Repeated enough, you start to believe it. You preemptively downgrade your own emotional responses.

11. Future Faking

What it is: Making promises about the future with no intention of following through — using the future as a management tool in the present.

What it looks like: "I'm going to change. This time will be different." / "Once [life circumstance] is resolved, everything will be better."

Why it's hard to identify: It's hope-based. Future faking gives you something to hold onto — which keeps you in the relationship through the present. The tell: the future it promises never arrives.

12. Breadcrumbing

What it is: Giving just enough attention, affection, or effort to maintain hope and keep you available — without genuine commitment or investment.

What it looks like: A warm message after days of silence. Plans made and canceled, with just enough rescheduling to keep you waiting. "I miss you" sent at 2 AM after a week of nothing.

Why it's hard to identify: Each individual breadcrumb is a genuine positive signal. The manipulation is in the pattern.

When These Tactics Appear Together

These 12 patterns rarely appear in isolation. A single conversation might contain gaslighting, DARVO, and blame shifting simultaneously. A relationship might combine intermittent reinforcement with love bombing and future faking.

The cumulative effect of multiple patterns is disorientation — you're managing so many things at once that you can never step back far enough to see the whole picture. This is often why people in these relationships say they felt "crazy" — not because they are, but because the environment was designed to make coherent thinking difficult.