me_irl

You are very lucky.

TV and Books like to do it because it appeals to people who have been hurt, and there are people who do believe it. Can make it easier to move on from bad relationships too, by pretending that the good times were entirely fake and the bad times were the "real".

Like I still don't know why trying to get away with stealing from people was more important to my ex than maintaining a relationship with me, or why her idea of "loyalty" required me to back her against literally the world (mutual friends, some of my own family). I could have overlooked a lot. But stealing from people she called her friends, who had been there for her, one of them a poverty level single mother? No. Stealing from my family who I had a strained relationship with as it was, then lying to me about it? No. It's easier to believe that she was only interested in me for how much money she thought I would make than to think that her feelings were genuine but also that fucked up when it came to property.

It's also especially tough when someone claims to want to work things out but vacillates between whether they treat you like they believe you're really a good (or at least normal) person or really a secret bastard entirely based on their own mood and interpretation of the last few minutes. Months of no issues be damned, you were slightly snarky in a stressful situation, in response to their own short temper, which clearly shows those are your true thoughts and level of (dis)respect for them.

The only context under which I've witnessed it used directly with my own eyes and ears in person and not recorded were scenarios when a manipulative person was trying to coerce obedience in another. The manipulative, abusive individual accuses their victim / target of having "true colors" of a malign variety in order to attempt to motivate them to change their behavior as a defensive reflex to show the manipulator is wrong about them.

It's gaslighting, projection, and DARVO all the way down...