If someone is the victim in every single story they tell, eventually you’ll get cast as the villain in one.

A pattern in someone’s stories is a pattern in how they read events, not a run of bad luck. If every account has them wronged and blameless, the framework leaves no space for their own part in anything, and it will eventually be applied to you. That is less malice than a fixed way of reading the world.

Listen for whether someone can describe a conflict where they were partly at fault. Notice how they talk about the last person who is no longer around. Stay decent to them, keep the stakes low, and do not hand over anything you would mind hearing repeated in a new version.