Relationships require upkeep. This means that goodwill needs to be banked with some frequency or the relationship will fade away.
Most everyone has found themselves in the situation where they are putting in more effort than the other person. This tendency finds its origins in childhood, where we had to manage a parent who was unstable, moody, or generally incapable of finding fulfillment in their lives. Children will rush in to fill the gap, however they can, in order to keep a parent going. The management on the child’s part can be as simple as starting a conflict. It doesn’t have to be complicated and technical.
When you care about someone more than they care about you, you would do well to ask yourself, “Why am I in an uneven relationship?” The answer is usually something along the lines of, “Loneliness, boredom, isolation, frustration.” When you pursue someone who is unattainable, what does that remind you of?
Your sensitivity and empathy can be used against you. “Narcissists” are people who are black holes for attention and emotional resources. They need others to patch them up. Remember, narcissists choose to live this way. A lot of people will seek out narcissists and pour lots of emotional resources into them only to find out that the narcissist doesn’t change. So long as the narcissist gets their supply, they have no incentive to. Narcissists can bottom out, if they withdraw from others, and sometimes they change out of that, but they don’t change from feedback from others. They can even say that they value feedback and make a show of considering it and applying it, but in their core they remain the same. They will make a big show of taking on low hanging fruit. What a racket!
There is an alternative to the narcissist. This is the “true seeker”. The true seeker will generate consistent feedback for themselves in order to better learn how to spread virtue and love to others. These people are extremely rare and when you find one, you will find that they are humbly doing their good work in the world without much concern for what kind of attention it generates. You will find these people in humanistic jobs, agriculture, alternative medicine, infrastructural/industrial work, and sometimes the arts. You will not find these people in sales, marketing, politics, computer work, government, or journalism.
True seekers are true of heart. They march to the beat of their own drummer. They are building or have built a strong True Self. They prefer to do their thinking for themselves yet are not stubborn in the face of a good argument. But they won’t necessarily automatically latch onto a good argument. If that’s your tendency, you have to wonder who programmed that into you.
True seekers often, when they’re earlier in their development, will try to help out narcissists. Narcissists are everywhere and they are loud in the environment. So a true seeker will even go to a narcissist as a student, hoping to gain the philosophy of life that will give them the consolation and understanding they need. But true seekers do what they do and they find inconsistencies and eventually move on. Narcissists don’t move on. In fact, they’re learning to clump up to make a greater noise and pull more people into dysfunction. Narcissists are not automatically evil. They’re trying to learn, too, and often they are driven to clump up out of the desperate loneliness of their childhoods. Yet, they’re users and often, abusers. Narcissists will even teach you about abusers. But they won’t teach you about users. What a nasty trick!
True seekers will need to learn to maintain their ties, as well. They will need to learn to pop in and say hello. The world cannot be left to people with consumptive, demonic principles at work in their personalities. And the world isn’t like it was, where you could just retreat to some wooded cabin off the California Coast somewhere and continue your true seeking there.
When you know someone who has something awful in them that they’re just not willing to shake, you have to let go. People like that eventually just resent you for trying. They know you care about them more than they care about themselves. They’ll eventually just ice you out. Don’t spend your efforts on them. Ask yourself why you’ve attempted to drag someone across the finish line who doesn’t want it.
When you’re a true seeker, you will face attacks on your reputation simply for asking the wrong questions. Your words will be treated as etched-in-stone pronouncements from on high, instead of best working theories. Narcissists will flit into your orbit and attempt to drain you of your gifts. You will question your purpose. This is okay. Just never lose sight of the good. Never give up hope! Never believe the cynics who will go on flowery soliloquies about how reality is such and such way and through the backdoor they’ll slip in a limitation on you.
Narcissists hide secrets they aged out of facing. Don’t live like they do. Face your secrets, especially when you’re young. This will make you pure of heart. Then you will find true love. Do not believe the cynics. Believe your dreams! Pour those emotional resources into yourself. Believe in yourself and take that chance. Get away from users.
