There is a cycle through which manipulators will use your forgiving and understanding nature to take advantage of you. I'd like to present a funny story, some life lessons, and then apply them to dating.

The Dead Grandmother/Exam Phenomena

Research - Link

The basic problem can be stated very simply: A student’s grandmother is far more likely to die suddenly just before the student takes an exam, than at any other time of year.

Anecdote - Link

I actually had a student lie about their dad dying at the beginning of the semester last year. I believed them, of course. We had to have several 1-on-1 meetings during the semester to get them caught up on assignments. At one of these meetings, just past the midway point, he seemed to have forgotten he told me his dad died and started complaining about his dad giving him a lot of hell at home. I didn't say anything. I wonder if I should have.

Here is how I think things actually play out.

Good Faith (Lawful Good)

Around the time of college, some grandparents of students will die naturally. As such, a normal good faith student will experience some chaos in their day-to-day life which will result in some drop in fulfilling their needs to a professor/class/university. In an orderly society, there is a high amount of trust. People easily forgive one another. As such, the professor/class/university accommodates for the chaos the student has experienced and either gives more help to the student or expects less from the student.

Opportunistic Thief (True Neutral)

The good faith student tells their friend about their experience. The good faith student describes the forgiving nature of the professor and is thankful for the help. Their friend realizes that they could use additional help as well. They have an exam coming up and their grandparent also died this year. Their death did affect their academics so it's only fair if they also receive some benefit from the random chaos that has occurred in their lives, even if it did occur in the past. As such, the opportunistic student seeks accommodation for the 'chaos' in their life, but only near the time of finals.

Bad Faith (Chaotic Evil)

The opportunistic student tells their friend about their experience. The opportunistic student describes how, with the additional help they were able to get a much higher score that they expected. This student notices that people aren't always acting in 'good faith'. This student finds it unfair that someone who isn't acting in good faith is able to exploit the system.

Additionally, this student doesn't have grandparents at all. This student decides that they should just lie to get equivalent treatment. They feel a little guilty, but realize that actually they aren't as priveleged as the students that have had grandparents their whole life. They are the victim here.

The good faith student was priveleged to have grandparents and got preferential treatment after they lost their privelege? Society should be working to help solve inequality, not help people that don't need help at all. It's only right that they also get the same treatment if not better treatment to even the playing field. This student realizes that college is much easier if before every final exam of each class they tell their teacher that a grandparent has passed away.

They tell their friends what they are doing and none of the students speak out against it. The opportunistic student still wants preferential treatment and the good student feels priveleged and guilty.

Goof Faith Professor (Lawful Good)

The professor realizes that lots of grandparents are dying near finals all of a sudden. The professor starts to lose trust in the students and wants to be able to accommodate good faith students without accommodating bad faith students. After all, as Aristotle would say, "To give away money is an easy matter and in any man's power. But to decide to whom to give it, and how large, and when, and for what purpose and how, is neither in every man's power nor an easy matter."

The professor realizes that his charity is being exploited because there is too much chaos. To reduce the chaos, professor asks for an obituary from students requesting accommodation. In response, the Professor is heavily criticized as being insensitive and weird.

Opportunistic Professor (True Neutral)

Another professor sees the criticism the professor received for trying to bring accountability and clarity to the situation. As such, they decide it's not really worth the effort. Instead, they add a policy that you can drop your lowest exam score in a class.

This continues until grades/education/tests stop mattering and the only thing that matters is how victimized you are and how much you are owed from society. Columbia Law students demand passing grades after (Palestine) protests.

This is how chaos grows in society. Good people will be called weird and insensitive for attempting to denoise society.

How to identify if you are being manipulated

  • Is this person advocating for more clarity or less, with regard to needs?
  • Is this person devaluing personal history while valuing historical normative traditions?
    • (True Neutral) Is this person trying to take advantage of cultural norms of a culture they aren't a part of?
    • (Chaotic Evil) Is this person actively advocating for normalizing ignoring the past? ( You can't know someone history. )

Advice for living in a low trust noisy shameless society.

  • Clarify needs and maintain a transactional relationship
    • Write down your day-to-day, week-to-week needs
    • Ask for your partners needs and write them down
  • Be Forgiving only if Chaos is also reduced
  • You can't rebuild trust, but you can trust the process
    • The reason we ended up in this dating mess is because our forgiving natures allowed bad actors to exploit people within society. It's only if we actively seek to reduce chaos, that we can forgive and forget.
    • Community will reform, because people benefit from one another, but trust won't return and that's okay.
    • Trust the process, not the person

TLDR;

Only forgive people, if they have returned to meeting your needs and you have increased clarity/decreased chaos overall