DREWspective

Following from my rather emotional weblog entry last time, I thought about the amount of Facebook contacts I’ve gotten rid of in one fell swoop.

People are (metaphorically) like trees, with their relationships with other people like branches. Having a lot of branches isn’t for everybody, yet that’s what society teaches us to strive for. Some people concentrate on having a stronger foundation, and having only a few, strong branches.

What happened last week was like pruning dead or infected branches from the trunk—people who weren’t real friends to begin with, and were really part of someone else’s already overcrowded and blooming tree.

As with real plants, there are times when you have to remove connections to further yourself, or to free yourself from bad situations. Some of your branches could be doing nothing but producing bad fruit, or producing nothing at all. Some branches just weigh you down, or get in your way.

The person who I decided to cut myself away from was a great friend, let’s not get things out of perspective. She was someone who did things for me that every other girl was far too scared and girl-like to do, and every other peer was far too chickenshit to provide. I will always be grateful for that.
But she was also someone who was part of what I call the “everybody army”: someone who became, spoke for and sided with “everybody” else.

As much as this person was close to my heart, this was someone who would kick me and gloat when I’m down. I know this, because they did.

This is the time of year when such decisions should be made anyway, and the sooner one makes these decisions the better. 2008 is going to be a fresh start.

I asked this question on deviantArt a long time ago, after one of many speed dating events gone wrong. I’d been called a “nice guy” or “great guy” after asking for feedback from the girls.

(If you get any kind of feedback from a girl, be very grateful.)

Anyway, I received the usual spiel about nice guys from many other members of deviantArt. But I’ll never forget, as long as I live, one member’s response—it went something like this:

“it means they’re worried you’ll find out how shallow and boring they really are.”

I don’t know about you, but that shit is ballin’! Seriously, it’s one of the deepest statements I’ve ever heard, let alone this year. Big up whoever said it, although there’s no way of finding out.

Once again I mustered up the courage to talk to a girl, on the way home from work. We got talking after some initial confusion, and I became lost in her eyes… well, I was secretly trying to get her number. (Unfortunately I’m still at Level -1 of the dating game.)

Briefly talking to start with, she had a positive spin on the "nice guy" phenomenon. Apparently the term can be used in different contexts, and the meaning can be interpreted through their body language. There’s an area I’m unfamiliar with, and most people could do well to learn about it. In this times of false advertisements, lists of adjectives and textbook one-liners, body language is probably the most reliable means of communication.

When a girl calls someone (you) a "nice guy", look at what she’s doing. If she’s moving away - and that happens a fair bit - then apparently she likes you on a friendship level and nothing more.
If she’s moving closer, apparently it means "you’re a nice guy… a very very nice guy…" and smiles will follow for hours.

The most unusual thing I’ve heard yet is that apparently guys call girls "nice girls" too. Now I’ve heard everything.

It’s amazing what comes up when talking to yourself - or as I think of it, talking to God - while walking home late at night. It was one of those times when I found myself "meditating" on something, trying to find meaning from it.

The thing in this case was the line "it’s not them, it’s you". A line I have personal issues with, because most people abuse it a lot these days.

Taken at face value, it’s one of many that takes all the problems you’re facing in life and throws them right back at you. It suggests that everybody and everything else is perfect and right, that only you have issues and faults.

Again this is criticism, and isn’t helpful to anyone. Not only is the person leveling abuse at you, because they aren’t clarifying what it is you should do to fix the problem, but many times they don’t even know what the exact problem is. This "rant" (which won’t be dignified with a title) by a bunch of [expletive deleted]s is a good example.

However there is some good news. It took me a while to realise, but there is an underlying, far more positive message between the lines.

What was that message again? :S

Well, you might come to a different conclusion. The message I got was this: if you let what other people affect you negatively, then it’s something to work on.

Since starting to listen to motivational speakers earlier this year, I’ve made a decision to live a faultess, blameless life. In simple terms, fault-finding and blaming people or external circumstances is no good.
You may feel that someone was wrong for doing or saying something you didn’t like. It doesn’t matter - it was their choice to do what they did, so leave them to live with the consequences. Guy Finley said it beautifully in a Synergy show (I can’t accurately remember the whole speech): "they have their reward already."

You could be like me sometimes and (using an all too familiar example) get really moody whenever you’re called a "nice guy" by the next girl who rejects you. You could also dismiss them as a slut. A better solution would be to acknowledge incompatibility, or to accept that the other person made whatever decision they made.
Whatever you think about other people in this world, we all make choices (consciously or unconsciously) as to how to respond to them. When we brood on what someone else did, we’re giving away control of our lives to that same person.

So, my point here is this: when someone says "it’s not them, it’s you", it’s not necessarily what you did that is the problem, but how you respond to a certain situation.

Besides, anyone who says these kinds of things obviously wasn’t there to witness the events unfold.

Self-help is big business these days. Every man and his dog seems to have a product that claims to cure your problems, all for a ridiculously high bargain price.
One thing has taken my notice recently: quite a few of these ‘gurus’, and some web sites, love to take the tough love approach. What’s tough love? Summed up briefly, it means talking down to the customer and showing little to no sympathy.

These are the people who got on a microphone, or a word processor, and went around saying:

"It’s not them; it’s you."

I kid you not; this was part of the intro to a so-called self-help tape I once downloaded, which thankfully I’ve forgotten.

Let’s take an example most people can relate to. On a couple of occasions I started to read Double Your Dating by David DeAngelo - you know, to help with the ‘curse’. In his ebooks and newsletter David visibly uses the tough love approach when helping some of the people out, but generally it’s all in good fun.

What has always gotten me stuck was in the first part, where he writes in no uncertain terms:

"If you’re one of those people that likes being negative, arguing with everything, finding why things can never work for you, and why everyone is wrong, then do me and you a favor and delete this book from your hard drive, and email me to ask for a refund. You’ve made a choice to be negative with yourself, and I’m not even interested in helping you see a better way."

How is someone who has problems seeing things in a positive light supposed to react to that?

As someone who has been accused of being negative (and admittedly, when 10 to 20 things go tits up in a row, it kinda pisses me off) and doesn’t enjoy being negative at all, I felt a strong urge to give David two words. But I really did feel really bad. So what did I do? I stopped reading, worrying I would never be able to ‘double my dating’ (which is useless if your dating is zero) unless I escaped the trap of negative thinking. And I’ve been trying to escape the trap of negative thinking for over ten years.

The point I’m trying to make here is that tough love should never be used as an all-purpose tool. It does work for some people, but there’s a good chance it will devastate others and put them in a far worse position than before.
Alicia Fortenberry and Bob Murray, a psychotherapy team, said that criticism is never a good thing because it’s a form of abuse; when someone criticises you they’re controlling you. Tough love is nothing but criticism: it’s used to highlight what is wrong, but gives no information on how to fix the problem.

Unfortunately there’s no real way to avoid it, but you can choose not to accept tough love treatment - if it’s counterproductive - by leaving. Don’t feel you have to accept abuse just because it’s from someone in a ‘better’ position than you.
The ultimate worst situation to receive it is from a supposed counsellor/psychologist. I hate to scare people, but it has happened.

I wanted to keep this post away from solely talking about relationships and dating, but it’s not easy.