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Caspian comments on On manipulating others - Less Wrong
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Bit of a random question. Are you saying that in the system the person above me used is 'I am providing her incentives to benefit me in the form of believing I care about her life - and ultimately it leads to most benefit for me (sex) but also benefit for her (faked sympathy? sex? not clear from your account)
If you mean where do I draw the line in manipulation, this doesn't look like 'providing incentives', and given it involves open deception it looks more like trickery. Though frankly if I thought someone was trying to 'provide incentives' for a friend of mine to sleep with them, I'd advise my friend to run a mile. There's no absolute line here, but a good rule of thumb is provided by Terry Pratchett: don't treat people as things.
When I buy stuff from people I don't know I'm mostly treating them as a means to an end. Not completely, because there are ways I'd try to be fair to a human that wouldn't apply to a thing, but to a larger extent than I would want in personal / social relationships.
Another rule of thumb I kind of like is: don't get people into interactions with you that they wouldn't want if they knew what you were doing. I feel like that probably encourages erring too far on the side of caution and altruism. But if you know the other person would prefer you to empathise when not interested rather than be silent, leave or criticise, it's allowed.
ETA: I'm interested in better guidelines, especially from people who get the distaste for manipulation.
Yes: buying stuff from people is pretty much instrumentalising them. That's capitalism! Although there tend to be limits as you note. And the 'would they like this if they knew what I was doing' is obviously a very good rule of thumb.
Occasionally, you'll have to break this. Sometimes somebody is irrationally self-destructive and you basically end up deciding that you have a better sense of what is best for them. But that's an INCREDIBLY radical/bold decision to make and shouldn't be done lightly.