Manipulative Behaviour

When someone, with an ulterior motive, tricks you into believing something, usually to serve their own purpose.

(http://www.preaching.org/manipulation/)

I think this one trait that I can live without. This also is one of those behaviors that I think people are born with. One would really have to train too much to take advantage of others, especially if one has a conscience.

I have met manipulative people in my life - and oh my God! I so wish I had not! They drained me emotionally, mentally and physically. I felt sick for years after meeting such people. I still have such people in my life. They are very hard to work with and talk to.  And they make me physically sick. I get stressed out just protecting myself from their manipulative claws.

Nothing that comes out of the mouths of these people is reliable or trustworthy. It is so tiring to try and figure out what is real and what is fake that after a while I just give up - nothing is real. Which means, what is the point of talking to such people? I don't know when they are speaking the truth and when they are trying to manipulate me into doing something that will benefit them.

What are the traits I have found of manipulative people:

• They are very charming and have a wonderful personality - I always think - Wow! this person is amazing!! What a personality!
• They can lie so smoothly that I cannot tell the difference between their truth and fib.
• They make me feel guilty if I don't agree with them or do as they want me to.
• They will bring moral and the "right thing to do" issue if I disagree with them (of course their own motives are not being questioned here!!)
• They will never do anything for me - they are too busy with their own agenda.

My advice to anyone in such relationship is to try to recognize it sooner than later. Although it is hard, but some things start become obvious quite soon. The problem is that most of us, myself included, think:

• people cannot be like this, 
• they would not do this to me, 
• I am different - this person cares about me (not realizing that such care is self-serving)
• I am smart enough to handle this kind of person - when the time comes I will back off, protect myself. But reality is - I got in too deep before I could get out.

So really - the closer one gets the harder one falls. It hits you one day and you realize- "Oh my God! I meant nothing to this person. All that sweet talk and behavior was just a sham!" And when I think back and analyze what happened, there was always something that such manipulative people wanted from me. They just played with my emotions and got what they wanted, without giving a second thought to how I would feel. They can easily walk away from such relationships as they did not have much invested to begin with - they always knew what they wanted and it was not me or my happiness.

I have seen my own family and friends get manipulated by another. It was so sad to see how one of them was speaking the tone and behaving exactly how the manipulator would. It was so obvious. And there was nothing I could do, just watch how one was the puppet and the other the puppet master - pulling the strings. Of course the puppet master holds the strings as long as they can. They have strength in numbers, they get a second voice to support their own distorted one. The poor puppet does not realize what is happening.

It is hard to break free of such manipulative people - but I have! There is a lot of grief involved. I had to be ready to give up that relationship for good. This takes a lot of strength, self confidence and independence.  There was definitely a sense of loss of a relationship for me; something that could have been pure and beautiful was now no more. Who knows if the manipulator misses the relationship? They are very focused on their targets that its possible they don't.

Despite my breaking free of the manipulators, they still try to hurt me with guilt or make me lose my cool by saying emotional things. And each and every time it takes a great strength for me to stand up for myself, and say to myself, "NO MORE! I will not not get manipulated by this person again."

Feelings and Emotions

I don't care.
I don't have those feelings.
I don't give a damn.
It does not bother me.

When someone says those statements it means either they are denying their emotions or they really don't give a damn, in which case they are selfish.

When people deny their emotions they are lying to others and to themselves. To deny means you are not acknowledging something.  That means you are avoiding something....What?? What are you avoiding? And why?

• Are you afraid of acknowledging the truth? 
• Do you think people will think less of you? 
• Or are you avoiding the responsibility that comes with that acknowledgment? 

People think just because they are saying "I don't care", it makes them not really care or it absolves them of responsibility for their behavior. But the truth is: because you are saying, it means you thought about it, and you then decided you did not care. It was a conscious decision.

The more you ignore your feelings the more you will not be able to handle situations. The sooner you acknowledge your true feelings about a person or situation, the sooner you will have a clearer understanding of how to deal with the person or situation.  Avoidance just postpones the inevitable and then invariably someone gets hurt.

In the deepest of your heart you always know the truth.  To acknowledge it, is the hard part. You try to hide your feelings so much that you develop this dual personality - an outer one for the world where you lie and manipulate; and an inner where you know exactly what you are doing. And if you keep up this dual personality you will not know where you exist anymore - the two will merge. You build this fake world around yourself in which everything is fine - because you don't care - right?

But the reality is - you do care. And inside it will eat you and bother you and the negative emotions - the guilt will manifest themselves in form of stress, pain and other physical ailments. Worst of all the happiness you think you have will not feel real - because you know somewhere along your life you have cheated someone or yourself of the truth.  Sure - we will all live our lives - life always goes on, but the quality of life is not there; the real happiness is not there. You are living just for living sake. And you justify your life by saying - "but this is how the world works - we sacrifice, we tolerate and we compromise."

There is something about compromise and sacrifice that makes it sound very noble - when the reality is in some cases you are doing injustice to all. It is much better to speak the truth so that life does not seem like a compromise anymore. You should want to make that sacrifice or compromise willingly and happily.  And then it will not seem like a compromise or sacrifice.  Your life will be how you want to live, where you want to be, with whomever you want to be with; you will be at peace and you will be happy. Just acknowledge it.....make it real!

And if you really "don't care", then you really are selfish. You use people to your advantage and then toss them out of your life.  Eventually that will also haunt you - when? Who knows? Maybe when you are more mature or when you have time to think about what you have done in life. And if you don't think about it and and it does not haunt you then you are in a completely different category of people (I don't want to name it).

It takes a lot more energy to build a fake world and deceive people.  It is a lot easier to be yourself. Sure we cannot be the same for everyone and you cannot tell everyone everything - but that is not what this blog is about. It is about being truthful to yourself and being truthful to your friends and loved ones who care about you.

One last point - sometimes when we don't care - it means we have given up. We are tired and just don't want to deal with the person or situation anymore. Which in itself is sad, because that giving up causes loss of relationships or no improvement of a bad situation.

I know sometimes I have built a fake world trying to convince everyone and myself that this is what is best for me - but deep down I knew the reality was something else. I have had to make some hard decisions in order to be truthful to myself, and I have no regrets about my decisions.  I think my life is a lot better than what it would have been if I had not been true to myself.

Selfishness

We have met our share of selfish people. I don't have any wise words to say about these people or how to deal with them. I just want to write that I have met selfish, deceiving and lying people.

I was blessed during my college years (BSc, MSc and PhD) to have really nice friends who helped me enjoy my college years and have a good social life. I never felt like I missed out on anything. Some of my friends were so nice and so helpful that they made me want to emulate them. We would do anything for each other.  Those were really the good 8 years of my life....

Ever since my working years, I have encountered selfish people in each of the work environment.  Why? Maybe its the competitiveness nature of the environment or just a personality clash, but it was always very painful for me.  These people have been so incredibly selfish that they have managed to ruin some of the best years of my life. I could have achieved a lot more, accomplished so much more if only I had a colleague who would have just kept their poisonous tentacles away from me.

Luckily during these times I have had very good friends....for most part. There have been only one or two who have sucked the life out of me. And of course friends end up hurting us more than our colleagues. There is a lot more intimacy between friends than colleagues.

Relatives can also be selfish - and they are related to you, so it is hard to get away from them. Sometimes you cannot do enough for some of them, they keep expecting more and more.

I think selfish people have no empathy or sympathy. They exist in an emotional void where the only emotion they know is their own; the only problems they see are their own. They are the center of their world and they cannot imagine why others cannot see that fact.

I find selfish people emotionally draining. I have the habit of thinking and rethinking of situations that have occurred in my life, so I can assess what I could have done differently or in some cases I just cannot get some things out of my mind. And the more I think about the selfish people, the more I realize there is not much I could have done, because it was not me - it was them.  The only thing I could have done was stay away from them, which sometimes was not a possibility or it was too late.

In some cases I feel that I was aiming to please my friends/relatives; in some cases I was a little gullible and trusted too quickly. I always want to see the best in people and I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. But people take advantage of this nature. They manipulate and abuse the relationship.

I don't think there is any getting away from such people as it always takes time to figure them out and by that time - the deeds done!

Selfish People

I have not been able to write much lately. I have been preoccupied with some thoughts that are really bothering me.  I hope these thoughts are temporary and will go away with time, but right now I feel emotionally raw.  I have been lied to,  I have been used and taken for a fool.  It is a really hard feeling to deal with. I've lost my faith and my trust.

It will take some time to get over all these feelings, but until I do, I have to live with them daily....

I think this is the first time I have had to deal with such feelings. Most times I am quite a good judge of character and withdraw a lot before somebody cheats me; or I am aware of the person's nature so I know what I was getting into. But really for most part I have met good and honest people.  But this was the first time I was conned into believing that I meant something in a way that was completely not true.

So who gave me these feelings? Who treated me this way? Of course, I cannot tell who dealt me this life lesson. But this person turned out to be very selfish - I was always there for them; always listened to their problems; gave them what they asked for (and more!) without questioning them - I trusted that they were speaking the truth.  Somewhere in my heart I still believe they were. Then why would they not trust me enough to tell me the whole truth?

They always claimed to be my friend, yet they would hide things from me; not give me answers; judge me for expecting simple things from them.  It was not a few months relationship - it has been a few years. At one point people have to decide what they want in a relationship - I guess they did....their accusations, their hiding of the truth and misleading me showed me how less my feelings meant to them. If one only keeps taking from me and not give me anything in return - not even the things that are free: love, respect, care and honesty; then what is this friendship?

They always did everything for themselves and their family; they protected themselves and their family.  They never thought about my emotions and my feelings and how their behaviour was affecting me.  And now....there is nothing.

I don't even know what to think anymore; there have been too many emotions. But the sad thing is that in order to protect their situation, this friend has never considered mine.  They know I live alone, and that I am emotional and that I am getting attached to them, but they never gave a damn. It was always about them and their family only. How can one think so selfishly? And now they want to talk as if nothing in the past (good or bad) ever happened....how can that be? How can anyone be so casual about relationships?

I can only hope that I will never meet such kind of people any more. I hope I have learned whatever lesson God was trying to teach me. Everyone says that you always see in others what you are yourself - but I am not selfish; I don't play with peoples emotions and I certainly don't betray my friend's or anyone's trust.  What I am, is what people get...I have only one face.

I also wonder what kind of life such people had - how much have they been betrayed and lied to in their life? Do they have anyone in their life who they can trust or love? Why do they think this is way to live life? Or did they just behave like this with me?

Right now I am not able to talk to these people - I just don't know what to say to them. They will start talking as if nothing has happened, and I don't know if I can believe anything they say anymore. I feel like some part of my heart has been crushed. They are going on about their lives as if it was just another person who came in their life and went; as if there is something wrong with me and they are absolutely right in their thinking. But that is not what friendship is - you have to look from the other person's perspective.  On the other hand they could be feeling bad also, but how will I know unless they tell me...and how will know they are speaking the truth?

I just wish there was some balm I could use to repair parts of my heart and feelings and trust.