Relationshop > Brown’s Dictionary > Leading Someone On

definition of leading someone on

an original definition by J. E. Brown

part of a series on The Dangers of Dating: bad faith • dating pool • dealbreaker • disloyalty • flaky • honesty • I need more space • kitchen sinking • leading someone on • love • needy • no means no • non-monogamy • verbal abuse

leading someone on

vt.

1. Definition by example:
   1. Jack likes Jill, but Jill likes Jack “as a friend”. In other words, Jack pings one or more of Jill’s dealbreakers, which means a pair bond is not going to happen. Jill makes no effort to inform Jack of this problem because Jill likes the attention, or likes the free meals which Jack provides, or likes to use Jack for transportation, free labor, etc., etc. In short, Jill allows Jack to believe in a possible future, wasting Jack’s time and delaying him from meeting a more suitable partner.
   2. Jill likes Jack, but Jack has a common genetic mutation that causes him to pursue women for quick sexual flings and nothing more. Jack tells Jill he loves her and wants to marry her — but mysteriously breaks up with her after about a month, citing nebulous reasons for the breakup, or denying the breakup completely, while increasing his distance, both physically and emotionally. In short, Jack allows Jill to believe in a possible future, wasting Jill’s time and delaying her from meeting a more suitable partner, and remains with Jill just long enough to get her pregnant, because his genes and hormones told him to.
   3. A Vendor sells items. A Buyer contacts Vendor and says he wants to buy 150 units of an item. Buyer hangs around the store shmoozing (making friendly conversation, in an attempt to get the friends-and-family discount), kicking the tires, and asking lots of questions. At last, buyer buys 100 units of the item and leaves. In short, Buyer caused Vendor to believe in a possible future, where Vendor would be getting three meals a day, but now Vendor will only get two meals a day.
   4. Another Vendor sells items. A Buyer contacts Vendor and says he wants to buy 150 units of an item. Vendor says “I don’t have those, but I can order them for you.” Buyer consents. But when the delivery date comes, the items don’t arrive. Buyer waits a few days. Vendor reassures Buyer and promises a new delivery date. Buyer waits a few more days. Nothing ever appears in the tracking report (if Vendor even provides a tracking number). The Vendor makes more excuses and more promises. Nothing ever arrives. In short, Vendor caused Buyer to believe in a possible future, where Buyer would be getting something he needs, but all the Buyer got was his time wasted when he could have gotten his items from a more reputable Vendor.
2. General definitions:
   1. Expressing interest in and/or agreeing to participate in an activity, agenda, appointment, date, event, meetup, plan, project, or timetable, in a way that leads other people to expend time and/or money on equipment, gear, materials, organization, planning, preparation, research & development, tools, etc., only to bail out or withdraw your participation later. In short, making people angry at you for wasting their time and resources when you should have been honest and up front about your inability or lack of intent to participate or perform as promised. {Source: “Definition of Leading Someone On” by J. E. Brown.}
   2. A dishonest interpersonal strategy using Non-Communication (Nondisclosure):
      1. Saying no to a person or to an activity, in a way that leads the inviter to keep trying. Example: Instead of saying “I’d never be interested,” saying “Not today,” which falsely suggests that the choice of day is the problem but the proposed activity is acceptable.
      2. Attempting to end or prevent a relationship using exhaustion instead of communication: The offender behaves as if thinking “I’m too wimpy to tell my suitor to go away — but maybe my suitor will go away if I wear him out.”
      3. Attempting to end or prevent a relationship using frustration instead of communication.
         Example: Repeatedly agreeing to meetings and dates and appointments, but then breaking them at the last minute, or with no notice at all, e.g. by simply not showing up.
      4. Breaking up with someone in one’s head but neglecting to tell him or her; making him or her figure it out instead of communicating.
      5. Entering into a personal or business relationship, while concealing dealbreakers from the other party.
   3. A deceptive poker-like game in which one party to a deal (or relationship) bluffs about meeting the other party’s requirements.
      Examples:
      
      In love:
      • Manipulating a dating partner by pretending to like him or her more than you really do, to get some or all of the benefits of companionship or dating or marriage without giving full benefits in return.
      • Falsely allowing one’s romantic partner to believe that the relationship will conform to societal norms: for example, failing to mention that you don’t practice nor believe in monogamy or childrearing or indoor plumbing or, in general, normalcy.
      
      In business:
      • Manipulating a vendor by pretending to like his or her product or service more than you do. Manipulating a vendor by pretending you’re a bigger potential client than you are, and/or by pretending you’re going to order more product and/or service than you actually will.
      • All those online reviews that say “Love your product! I’ll be buying more soon.”
   4. Taking advantage of someone who is stuck in wishful thinking and therefore is seeing what he wants to see.
   5. Using deception to keep someone waiting. Constructively refusing to honor a contract (promise), by making a series of false promises about appointment dates, delivery dates, and/or dates when you will pay. For more detail see also stringing someone along.
   6. Misleading someone about timetables and schedules, esp. by using the word “soon” when one means “later” and “later” when one means “There is currently no plan or schedule for keeping this promise.” In short, to mislead someone about one’s level of commitment and/or the attainability of a reward.
   7. Lying and/or misleading about one’s intentions to engage in a personal or business relationship.
      
   8. Manipulating someone by misleading him or her, either by speaking a falsehood, or by failing to speak a truth which he or she needs to know.
   9. Manipulating people (to obtain a one-sided advantage or benefit) by misleading them, by allowing or causing them to believe that you intend to give them something they want, while failing to mention (or concealing) the fact that you’re not going to give it to them.
   10. Exaggerating one’s enthusiasm or receptiveness, due to underdeveloped people skills (e.g. empathy disorders, e.g. failure to notice that letting other people waste time and energy is unethical and irresponsible) or due to poorly trained communication skills.
       • Example: A friend who is invited on a joint vacation, camping trip, etc., praises the idea and says “Let’s do that!”, but then bails out at the last minute, and — this is the harmful part — bails out AFTER causing the other friend to waste time and money by planning and spending on equipment or on preparation. The “friend” will often then add insult to injury by lying: he’ll say “No, I never said I liked the idea”; “No, I never promised to be involved”; “No, I never said ‘Let’s do that’”; “You spent all that money on plane tickets because you wanted to” — instead of admitting “I changed my mind and backed out without telling you, and now I’m trying to duck responsibility.”

       Thus, Leading Someone On often includes paradoxical behavior in which the offender tries to conduct damage control in an ironic way, namely by trying to make himself look better in a way which only backfires by making himself look worse: for example, by (first) deceiving his friend into over-investing in the plan or project, and (second) by falsely saying “I never agreed to that”, thus revealing that not only does the offender (first) mislead people, but then (second) lies about doing it afterward, thus gaining for himself a reputation for ineptitude and dishonesty. Proving once again that two wrongs don’t make a right, especially when the second wrong is a lie about the first; and then it’s just double proof of moral bankruptcy. And that means double the number of good reasons for the victim to terminate the friendship and to demand to be reimbursed by the offender; and if or when that fails, to ask an attorney whether a breach-of-contract lawsuit or reliance lawsuit is possible.

   11. Failing to say no when the answer is no.
   12. Upon finding oneself in an unwanted romantic situation, failing to say “I’m sorry, but I don’t see you that way, and I don’t feel that way about you at all”, or saying it in a timid, weak, cowardly, inexact, self-contradictory, paradoxical, ambiguous, “nice”, or mealy-mouthed way, such as “I like you as a friend”, thus guaranteeing that the message doesn’t get understood.
   13. More generally: In business dealings, or in dealings with friends and with family members with whom one is on good terms, tricking or manipulating someone into willingly giving you a benefit under false pretenses, or while making certain to mislead the other party in the transaction by leaving crucial information about dealbreakers out of the negotiation.
       • Example: The client who hires a vendor to provide a service, while failing to mention that the client doesn’t have the money, or doesn’t have the funding approval from client’s employer, or intends to submit a much smaller order than the order being discussed, or secretly intends to cut the size of the order at the last minute; or the client who withholds any information about the order which causes vendor to waste time and money on preparation and materials. In particular, Leading Someone On refers to situations where Client, having an infantile wish to be liked, withholds any or all information about his order which might make the Vendor feel unhappy or cheated (this is commonly called “withholding the truth” and “concealing a dealbreaker”).

       By the way, these situations, where one person gets tricked into relying on another person’s promise to pay, are called “reliance” situations. If that term is new to you, see any basic book on contract law. Any reliance situation with a seriously large dollar value can get you hauled into court if someone spends money based on your broken glass promise to join in a plan or project. In short: Making promises that you don’t intend to keep can make you hated, and can get you into legal trouble.

       People resent it when the terms of a deal are left unspoken or unwritten or unclarified, left as land mines and traps for them to trip and stumble over.

3. Definitions based on models from biology and psychology:
   1. Parasite Definition: Covertly using another person for non-mutual benefit.
      A kind of parasitic phenomenon found in certain interpersonal and business relationships:
      One person is victimized in the sense of being allowed to hope for a benefit which the other party has no intention of ever providing. The victim is manipulated in the sense of being allowed or caused to believe he will get something he wants, by a party who knows (or plans) otherwise, but is resistant to saying so, for reasons of opportunism and/or exploitation.
      There is no “meeting of the minds” in the Contract Law sense: The exploiter never makes a full disclosure, and the victim never gets a chance to give informed consent.
      The parasite theory of LSO makes use of the parasite metaphor in which one organism profits from another organism, taking advantage of the victim’s inability to understand the dealbreaker, which could be phrased as “Oh, by the way, as a result of our interaction, I will profit but you won’t.” In the animal kingdom, this statement is often represented in the phrasing “You won’t figure this out until it’s too late, but as a result of our interaction, I will benefit (I will survive and/or reproduce) but you won’t.”
   2. Evolutionary Definition: The Parental Investment Model: Based on watching David Buss’s 2017 TEDxVienna video (see Further Reading, at foot of page) (where he talks about “men who exaggerate the depth and sincerity of their feelings to get sex”), I’m beginning to suspect that all LSO is a variation on the basic theme of lying to get sex. Obviously not all LSO literally involves sex — that’s just the block diagram of the scam, often with “sex” crossed out and “money” written in its place. Well, even “money” is not general enough; “benefit” or “advantage” might be. Examples:
      1. Promising a man sex — then reneging at the last minute. Because men are wired by evolution to prioritize “sex seeking” high on their list of needs and goals.
      2. Promising a woman emotional investment just to get sex — then vanishing after sex. Because women are wired by evolution to prioritize “emotional bonding” and “finding a long-term partner and provider for the children” high on their list of needs and goals.
      3. Promising a businessman that his profit margin will be higher, then slashing the size of your order. The vendor’s disappointment will be proportional to your reduction in payment.
      4. Promising a customer or client a product, then delivering late, or not at all, or delivering a low-quality product — and the more hard-earned the customer’s money was, the more angry the customer will be.

         Or, to capture and compress the above points into a single nutshell:

      5. Lying to people about your intention to meet those needs which are most important to them and therefore most likely to make them red-hot angry with you.
         
         Or: more evil than that:
      6. Figuring out which of their needs are most important to them, then tactically promising them that you’ll fulfill those needs (when in fact you lack the funds, methods, means, history, experience, practice, instincts, genetics, or inclination to do so), with the intention of promising up front but reneging later, as a manipulation tactic to get your own needs met at the other party’s expense.
      
      Another finding from the evolutionary biologists accounts for the tendency of males and females to have completely opposite mating strategies: Females try to maximize their number of offspring by finding stable long-term partners to help them raise the kids, while males try to maximize their number of offspring by mating with as many females as possible. Obviously this doesn’t account for all mating behavior — we can all think of examples of men who are devoted super-dads and women who play the field — but the large-scale data show strong evidence of male philandering (for details, see the papers and talks by Robert Trivers and David Buss in the Further Reading section at foot of page).
      

      I believe this phenomenon accounts for one more type of LSO, and that is the tendency of certain men to go cold:

      7. Cutting Back on Investment. A relationship can be thought of as a two-way friends-with-benefits situation. A very common relationship breakdown occurs when one partner takes advantage by unilaterally cutting back on his affection and attentiveness and commitment and participation. Also known as “breadcrumbing” and “the slow fade”, in which a former flame starts trying to figure out how little effort it takes to keep the partner hooked. When confronted, the offending partner will usually try to misrepresent his lost interest by making the lame excuse “But I’m busy.” Translation: “I’m not any busier than I was when I met you — I just have a tendency to over-state my interest at the start, and to cut back later, once I have someone hooked. Because I’m one of those men who are wired for STRs (short-term relationships). I’m genetically pre-programmed to stay interested in my partners for only as long as it takes to get them pregnant.” {Source: “Definition of Leading Someone On” by J. E. Brown.}

Comparative Definitions:

Leading Someone On vs. Stringing Someone Along (SSA): SSA means keeping someone waiting (esp. for an unusual or suspicious length of time) for fulfillment of a promise, as in:

Scenario #1:

Friend Y: Where were you? You said you’d be there. I waited an hour.

Friend X: I’m sorry! It’s not my fault! I got busy! … We’ll do something, hopefully soon. I’ll call you! We’ll go out on Friday!

Friend Y: You said that last week. And the week before. And the week before that. Are you trying to send me a message with this BS?

Scenario #2:

Client: Where’s my shipment? You said you’d deliver it by now.

Vendor: I’m sorry! It didn’t come in on the boat! It’s not my fault! … I’ll have it for you this week. … Hopefully.

Client: You said that last week. And the week before. And the week before that. Did you even put the order in? I think you’re dishonest and you have no intention of delivering.

Scenario #3:

Client: Will you be open for business today? I might bring you some object for adjustment/repair/etc.

Vendor: Yes, we’re open. But you said that last week. And the week before. And the week before that. And each time, you no-showed and you didn’t bring me any business. Your account with us is hereby terminated. This business serves serious customers only.

The difference between LSO and SSA is subtle, and the two problems are often found in the same offender. If you’re on the victim end of this tactic, you need to adopt one hard and fast rule — you need to learn to say these words: “I don’t like people who lead me on and string me along. If you lie to me again, I’ll dump you.” Or if someone is stringing you along in a business deal, the wording is: “If you lie to me one more time about delivery dates, and fail to deliver one more time, I will consider your failure to be breach of contract, and I’ll speak with my legal advisor about my next move.”
When you spell out consequences for someone, be prepared to carry them out — because just as repeated promises are no substitute for performance, repeated threats are no substitute for enforcement. And may I say: When someone strings you along, your best strategy is not to try threatening someone into dealing honestly — your best strategy is to figure out that you shouldn’t be in such a relationship to begin with. Enforcement provides you with an exit strategy. Quite often, the lesson with LSO and SSA is: You’re not going to get what you were promised, no matter how much displeasure you express, no matter how many threats you make … but importantly, you’re going to introduce your opponent to the fact that he’s dishonest, and the consequences that will create for him — and he’ll remember that every time he thinks about how he botched the deal by playing games with your head instead of keeping his word. So always call people on their BS. If the truth wounds a dishonest person’s self-esteem, well then, maybe it should.

Leading Someone On vs. Reneging: Reneging (note the weird spelling: there’s no double g in renege) is a specific kind of LSO in which the offender promises to change, but the promise lasts only as long as necessary to smooth over the tensions. The offender promises to give up drinking or drugs or sleeping around — sounding very sincere at first; but then the backsliding begins: Soon the offender says “I don’t see why I should have to give up drinking or drugs or the other guy or girl I’ve been seeing on the side. So I’m not going to do that.” It’s a broken promise and a slap in your face, and you should treat it like one.

Synonyms:

breadcrumbing; hoodwinking; leading someone down the garden path; toying with someone.

Antonyms:

The attitude that says “You’re important to me, therefore I’m going to think about how my actions affect you, and I’m going to behave responsibly toward you.”

Hiding no unpleasant surprises.
Following through on promises.
Making your behavior match your words.
Knowing what you can’t deliver (easily), and not promising that;
being careful not to promise anything that might be difficult to deliver.

being candid, being considerate, being genuine, being honest, being honorable, being sincere, being truthful; coming clean; empathy; leveling with someone; treating others as equals; trustworthiness.

communicating.

mutual respect.

being unwelcoming toward people who are actually unwelcome. (Someone who has the backbone to reject you outright would certainly never pretend you’re welcome.)

obtaining informed consent.

respecting someone’s dignity and worth.

Antonyms Compared:

• “Candid” refers to someone who isn’t presently hiding much from you (I’m recognizing that being candid is a choice made moment-by-moment). Not a complete opposite for LSO, as the fact that a person is candid once in a while is not proof that he will never let you down.
• “Frank” refers to someone who is presently telling you something you might need to know, even if you don’t want to hear it. A very good opposite for LSO, because unlike most LSO behaviors, frankness considers the needs of the recipient.
• “Truthful” is closer to being a permanent personality trait: It refers to someone who is full of truth and empty of guile.
• “Up front” refers to someone who is (presently — or perhaps always?) honest about dealbreakers up front, and this means all of the above: candid, frank, and truthful.

→ Best Antonym: Given that the above adjectives could all be descriptions of momentary behaviors and not enduring personality traits, I suggest that “trustworthy” is a far better opposite for LSO, because it’s a term for someone who is tried and true, in a long-term way.
Similar words: dependable, ethical, honest, loyal, principled, reliable, reputable.

Related Concepts:

Legal Terms: bad faith; bait and switch; breach of contract, breach of promise; concealment; duty of care; duty to warn, failure to disclose (nondisclosure), failure to inform, failure to warn; false advertising; fraud; informed consent; intentional infliction of emotional distress; meeting of the minds; misrepresentation; negligence; perfidy; reliance.

adolescent beliefs about relationships; bad faith; breakups; broken appointments, broken promises; carrot on a stick; character flaws; excessive compliments; conscience; CYA; concealing dealbreakers; deceit, deception; disappointment; dishonesty; disingenuousness; emotional investment; empathy; ethics; exaggerated positivity; exploitation; fake friendliness; faking one’s personality; (giving someone) false hope; false pretenses; flakiness; flattery; heartbreaker; hint-dropping in place of communication; honesty; hypocrisy; immaturity; I need more space; inconsiderateness; insincerity; integrity; irresponsibility; jerking people around; just friends; liars, lies, lying, lying by omission; lip service; manipulation; mind games; misleading others; mixed messages, mixed signals; morale; passive aggression; phoniness, phony; placating others with compliments and promises; placating instead of pleasing; breaking promises, keeping promises, diminishing promises, unnecessary promises, vanishing promises, the incredible shrinking promise; non-reciprocation; relationship of convenience; selfishness; snow job; standing someone up; stringing someone along; taking advantage; always telling people what they want to hear; trifling with someone; “trying to be nice”; unethical behavior; being untrustworthy; wasting people’s time.

failure to communicate; being cryptic instead of informative; restraint and reserve gone wrong; understatement.

con artist behavior; me-first-and-me-only attitude; opportunism; people users, using people; screw-everyone-else attitude; unilateralism.

using someone only for conversation; using someone only for entertainment; for his or her car, for his or her money; using someone only for sex.

over-promising and under-delivering; over-committing, overextending oneself, spreading oneself too thin.

inability to say no (cowardice); spinelessness; being wishy-washy.

deliberately being unclear; concealing dealbreakers; obtaining consent before disclosing problems; leaving out crucial details; lack of transparency.

charade; façade; pretense; trickery.

limerence; transference; unrequited love; wishful thinking.

Etymology:

In early modern English, “leading someone on” had the innocuous meaning of simply guiding someone.

In Other Languages:

Langenscheidt’s Pocket German Dictionary translates “lead on” as “anführen”, and translates that back to English as “to fool”.

The Oxford German Dictionary translates the passive past tense “anführen” as the colloquial phrases “to be had on by someone” (British) or “to be taken in by someone”, which both again mean “to be fooled by someone”.

The Oxford English Dictionary (of British English) defines “have someone on” as “to try to make someone believe something that is untrue, especially as a joke: that’s just too neat—you’re having me on.”

Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines “take in” as “… 8: deceive, dupe”, and defines the verb “dupe” as “to make a dupe of: deceive … to delude by underhand methods or for one’s own ends”.
… and defines “lead on” as “to entice or induce to proceed in a course esp. when unwise or mistaken”.

Obviously these other dictionaries are insufficient for the reader who wishes to start a business relationship or personal relationship. The purpose of Brown’s Dictionary of Relationship Terms is to ensure that You, dear reader, receive education and instruction to help you recognize typical business scams and interpersonal scams. It is not enough to warn you that people will try to fool you — we intend to teach you the tricks to watch out for.