People interested: 4 characteristics and how to detect them
There is a widespread myth in Western societies related to the idea of meritocracy. It is about the belief in the self-made man, someone who succeeds in life (basically in economic terms), and who owes nothing to anyone, since everything that is has arisen from his effort and of your decisions. It is a myth precisely because nobody has what he has only thanks to his effort.
We are a big part of what we are because, throughout our lives, other people have contributed to us having the opportunity to reach adulthood, whether we are aware of it or not, and many times they help us throughout our lives or good part of it.
However, in this collaborative network, there are those who decide to take much more than they give. It's about interested people , who submit all their philosophy of social relations to a principle: what do I get from this?
- Maybe you're interested: "Emotional Vampires: 7 personalities that steal your emotional well-being"
The 4 characteristics of the people interested
If the interested people are so harmful, it is among other things because it is not always easy to recognize them or intuit their intentions . In this way, when they try to obtain something from others without contributing anything in return, this fact can be camouflaged in different ways that we will see later.
In addition, although by repeating this kind of behavior again and again it is difficult to maintain the deception, sometimes there are those who achieve a power of seduction so powerful that we do not even realize that they are taking advantage of us. Once you have entered a dynamic in which vampirization becomes a habit, it is difficult to detect it. If we have been involved in this relationship for a long time, our perception becomes biased, distorted.
For all the above it is important to attend to the signals that indicate, in a more or less subtle way, when we are before one of the interested persons willing to waste our time and efforts . Below you will find the main characteristics of these. Keep in mind that they do not have to occur all at once so that you can consider that someone behaves in an interested way, and that the fact that one or several actions of this list is carried out does not make that person "tagged" for life: these are patterns of behavior that are learned and, therefore, can be unlearned.
1. Use victimhood
Something that is part of the usual behavior of the people concerned has to do with creating the illusion that everyone behaves unfairly with her. In this way, whoever listens to this story assumes that it is reasonable to make sacrifices so that this situation of injustice is compensated, even in part.
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2. Assume that we are going to help
Saying no to the request of a favor is something that in most cases costs. Whoever acts in an interested way has it easy to exploit this fact: it is enough to act assuming that the other is going to sacrifice for them.
In this way, to refuse to do something you have to fight against twice the pressure: not only do you have to risk being a selfish person, but you also have to break the story that the other person creates through his way of speaking, according to which the normal thing is to act as she expects, adjusting to the objectives that she proposes .
That is, we must reformulate the situation, explaining our perspective of the facts, something that the other person has not had to do, since his message was implicit in his way of speaking.
3. They use ways of speaking that suggest a symmetrical relationship
When a favor is asked honestly, it is done in a way that makes it clear that you are doing just that: ask for a favor. However, something typical of those who have become accustomed to acting in an interested manner is to try to "camouflage" this fact while, in practice, it is asking for a favor.
For example, when instead of asking for help you are asking to "collaborate", as if both parties took something equally valuable and beneficial Through an action in which one gives and the other receives what was requested, one is acting with little honesty. It is true that it is simply linguistic formulas and that by itself does not cause significant damage, but sets a precedent, on the one hand, and puts the other person in a compromise, so that their freedom to refuse to perform is limited. that favor
4. They try to pass themselves off as extraverts
The easiest way to recognize when someone acts in an interested way is to look at how he behaved when he had no favor to ask for. Among friends it is common to ask for favors, but if there is a case in which a request is made to someone of less confidence, the honest thing is to cut to the chase, explain what you want . You can not create a friendship in a few minutes just before going to ask for something, that's a hoax. And no, this is not something that is simply attributable to extraversion and the ability to socialize: who is extraverted is always, not only when looking for something concrete that someone can give him.
