Monday, January 23, 2012

Learn to Play the Game

I was recommended by a really good friend of mine to learn how to play the game, the chase, how to manipulate someone you're involved with and things of that nature. While it's honest, it may sound distasteful. But this wasn't coming from a manipulat perspective where she wants me to serve a selfish agenda. As with most of my friends, she's much older than me. She's in her sixties and she hated giving me this advice. The idea of being a part of it puts me off, but I see her point.

Knowledge is power. I still don't know how this all works. I'll never know, but what I mean is it's fairly new to me at this time. The truth is we all manipulate. Anyone who says otherwise is either stupid or in denial. Seriously because it's a conscious, subconscious, AND unconscious act. There's no way we can control it. That isn't to say we should channel it and utilize it to our benefit because exploiting others is certainly not on my agenda (unless I want to borrow cute kids on Halloween to score free candy... What? I'm being honest! LOL)

With that said...the best way to protect ourselves from being a victim of manipulation (albeit a futile effort but we gotta try) is to familiarize ourselves with the very thing we want to protect ourselves from. Makes sense, right? I don't think it's possible to know the game without playing the game. Participation's required. Even just hearing about it makes us witnessing participants. The truth is when I withhold from playing the game all I'm doing is withdrawaling from active participation, but I'm still mentally engaged because an uncontrollable reflex thought, an awareness registers and informs me if I do this, I know he'll respond this way but if I do that, he'll act like this. Playing the game is essentially knowing the cause and effects and contributing to its outcome. What's twisted is refusing to "participate" is still an involvement in the game. That's like playing a board game and saying "pass". You skipped your turn, but you're still in it because every action (even an absence of an action) is still contributing to the outcome.

I find it respectable to minimize your participation, but I don't think it's realistic or even possible to disengage fully from it because manipulation is encoded in our DNA. The truth is I don't think it's all bad. I manipulate my friends in that I act in specific ways to cause specific reactions in them such as expressing something more gentle if I find that they'll be more receptive. I had a co-worker who I became very good friends with, and our boss was honestly a con man. I wanted my friend to not fall victim to his deceit and deal with the financial repercussions because he has student loans and other debts he's responsible for. I did directly warn him, but I knew our boss for over five years at that point. I could travel his mind and predict exactly how he'll be deceptive and the consequences it'll have on us. But I knew my friend would completely reject the details despite its accuracy. So instead I slowly provided details to keep him aware and focused on our boss' tendencies and habits. I essentially influenced and managed his reaction.

The truth is I'm intelligent and socially aware enough to take that skill and apply it in morally-compromising circumstances, but I choose not to. I can't separate myself from my misdeeds. So no matter how much I want something, I won't enjoy it if I obtained it deceptively and I want to enjoy my rewards. Feeling so connected to everything, I hate playing the game because I feel what I orchestrated, what I caused artificially and externally, knowing that without my "play", he would've acted very differently.

The more I play, the more I see. I've become desensitized by my frustrations probably as a defense mechanism. I don't have the energy to get upset every single time. I've discovered that people say dishonest things all the time as a way to be safely indirect and discreet, while obtaining the knowledge they desire. It's harmless, but it's unnecessary. What's worse is the more I recognize it, the heavier the dishonesty becomes. A hundred small lies will begin to weigh on me like one big lie because deception has energy. I don't like being exposed to it, but the truth is I am whether I'm aware of it or not. Knowledge is power.

A guy at my local Sprint store was checking me out. I can sense it. I went in there with a friend of mine, and it was evident that he and I were involved. We weren't showing displays of affecion, but you can tell by the way we interacted and talked to each other. The representative was perceptive and intelligent enough to know this. When I returned for a different reason alone, he asked if I just got off the phone with my ex after I talked to my dad... Then he said, "Oh that's right, you said you and your boyfriend broke up right?" Uhhhhhh no. I didn't have a boyfriend to break up with, and I certainly never divulged such details to someone I only met twice. Or at least that's what I'm thinking. I gave him a simple no. To test out my suspicion that it was a strategic tactic, I elaborated that I didn't have a boyfriend to break up with. After all everything has energy. So if he got the answer he wanted out of me, I'd sense it which I did because I was playing the game. He apologized and said it must've been someone else. Yeah right....

People do small shit like that all the fucking time! There are bigger things to be concerned with, but I'm a Pisces. I feel a lot and even small things burden me. So it frustrates me.

My friend said that most guys don't admit what they actually feel, say what they mean, and it's a rare guy who's honest and direct about them. I think that's a human trait. But for all intense and purposes, I'm relating this to guys because that's what's relevant in my situation. So her statement applies and I agree on general terms. I was both blessed and cursed to be exposed to someone honest, and we remain friends. It's gratifying to know that that kind of honesty does exist, but it also makes it frustrating because that's far more likely to be an isolated incident.

When people lie to us and we blindly trust them, we get hurt. We're defenseless against the truth and deceit. That's why it's imperative to develop our intuition because it's meant to protect and guide us. It sucks to question someone's honesty especially when you're intimate, romantic, and sexual with that person. But never disregard those suspicions. Explore them. It could be baseless paranoid or it could be that your intuition is trying t warn you, but take the time to discover where it's coming from. It's so important. With people lying left and right, learning to play the game and recognizing the signs makes sense. The more exposed you are, the better armed you are against it.

Of course it's ideal to find a guy who doesn't do that. But I really think it's not realistic. If we disposed of every guy who demonstrated some form of dishonesty or playing the game, nothing menaingful could develop. Guys like the chase, the drama, the ups and downs. Society creates this perception that it's exclusive to women, but guys like adventure and conquership. It's boring once a guy's obtained you that he needs the excitement of playing the game even after he's in it.

This reminds me of something a friend of mine posted on facebook. We bonded a lot over matters of honesty, life, love, all those types of things. She and I share a very similar perspective. What she posted I agree with so deeply, but it came with a saddening epiphany. Because we feel the way we do and since it's such an unpopular and incompatible perspective, I believe it'll be harder for us to find someone than others. Not that it'd be impossible, but we'll experience more challenges and difficulties. She said it didn't make sense to her to play the game, manipulate, and chase because that means she's running away from the one person she wants to be near. I absolutely agree with her! But again guys like the chase. Since we find it disigenuous and illogical, we're less likely to do it and most guys will probably dislike it. Lucky us... It's inconvenient, but we can either do something we dislike or be genuine.

I'm choosing to not to define a permanent decision. Sometimes I'll resist or refuse to actively participate in playing the game. Other times I'll engage. Right, wrong, immoral, compromising, who knows. That's too subjective to make such a generalized statement because every situation is different.

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