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Don't get sucked into destructive games
As a follow up to my story on the games people play, I thought I'd explore a couple of incidents that have happened to me lately and how I tried to resolve them. My aim is to avoid getting sucked into the destructive games that many people insist on playing.
Of course, this isn't always easy. Partly this is because the instigators of such games are usually practiced experts at initiating and continuing them, but also because of my own human nature. We humans are fascinated by games, and when we're dropped into one, it can be very difficult to resist the temptation to play and play hard.
The first example concerns the house my wife and I now live in. It's a lovely place, and I'm very happy there. But when we first moved in, it soon became apparent we had a big problem. One of the walls is only a few metres from the house next door, which has a flat on the bottom floor. Our bedroom window is quite near the windows of that flat.
Soon after moving in, we began to hear a lot of noise coming from the flat. It was pretty clear the lady who lived there had a serious alcohol problem. She would play music loudly and sing along until very late at night. She also liked to start loud arguments with her more placid partner. We could often hear the poor guy trying to calm her down as she accused him of the most terrible things possible.
For a couple of weeks, we put up with the noise. After all, it wasn't every night and we decided to wait and see if it was just a few temporary parties while they were on holiday or if we had a more serious problem. A couple of times I asked them to keep it down, and the guy managed to convince his drunken partner to do so.
Then one night, she got even more drunk than usual and things started to get really noisy. At 2 am, I opened my bedroom window and called out for them to please be quiet, in a polite but assertive manner. Immediately, the woman opened her window and began abusing me. She used every swear word she could think of and told me I'd made a big mistake moving in next door to her because she loved deliberately upsetting people.
Having shot her filthy mouth off at me, she quietened down with a look of exquisite anticipation on her face. She'd issued as big a challenge as she possibly could, and was now obviously hoping I'd abuse her back. It was immediately clear to me that this woman loved to start fights with people. Much as she deliberately picked arguments with her partner, now she was hoping to suck her neighbour into the game as well.
I decided not to give her the satisfaction and instead called the police. They arrived and she quietened down for fifteen minutes or so before starting up the noise and yelling abuse at our window once more. I didn't even bother to respond, and simply called the police again. The same thing happened once more, and I called the police a third time before she finally quietened down. In Sydney, three warnings by the police about noise down leads to an fine.
The next day, I went to speak to her landlord about the problem. He said he'd had a number of complaints and was going to ask her to vacate the premises. One month later she was gone.
This woman's game was to annoy and abuse as many people as she possibly could, hoping to draw them into a long drawn-out fight. She loved telling people what she thought of them and getting upset when they responded with their own string of abuse. I saw this straight away and neatly side-stepped her game by ensuring she would be restricted from playing it anywhere near us.
The second game I've been lured into lately concerns a woman who's become a fairly close friend of ours over the past couple of years. She's involved with another friend of ours, and so we've been seeing quite a lot of her. She's always very pleasant and fun to be around.
Soon after we started spending time with her a couple of years back, she complained privately to my wife about something I'd said in her presence. What I’d said wasn’t meant to be rude, but she’d obviously taken it as a personal affront.
Fair enough, I thought. Like everyone, I sometimes say things that I later look back upon and realise were mistakes. My intention wasn't to offend her, and I'd just have to be more careful.
We went on as before, and I thought things were going quite well. About a year later, a friend told me we'd again upset her by apparently rubbing in the fact that we had more money than she does. My wife and I aren't the sort of people to do this, and don't really like to flaunt our good fortune. We drive a pretty good car and live in a nice house, but we certainly wouldn't do anything intentional to make someone feel bad about the fact that we're better off than them.
Once again, I thought we'd have to be more careful about how we behaved. Clearly we weren't as sensitive to others feelings as we should be. It seemed strange that no-one else had ever mentioned to me that we did this sort of thing, but maybe they were just being polite.
My wife managed to patch things up and we were soon all having fun again. I did start to notice that this woman seemed to talk a lot about the terrible things people had done to her. She appeared to be on the receiving end of a lot of pretty nasty behaviour
People were often rude to her, did mean things, and pushed her around – or so she told everyone. The stories all sounded awful and as if she'd been the victim of some terrible injustice, but I was beginning to think it all smelled a bit fishy. How could one person be subjected to so many snubs? Particularly considering I knew some of the people she was talking about, and the behaviour she described seemed somewhat out of character.
Now we're in her bad books again because my wife made some arrangement that this woman was apparently not happy with. I've heard that she now doesn't intend to make any special effort to associate with us, but will of course be civil if we're around. The whole thing seems petty to me, but it sounds as if she’s quite upset.
I don't like hurting people's feelings, but this is getting ridiculous. In any kind of relationship, there's always going to be things that people say or do that aren't exactly the way you'd like them to be. Of course, some behaviour is completely unacceptable, but if you take offence at every little thing that doesn't meet your liking, you'll spend your whole life being insulted.
I've come to believe this woman is addicted to being offended. Perhaps it creates some sort of drama and excitement that's otherwise missing in her life.
Whatever the reason, it's clearly a game she wants to engage people in. She's wonderfully charming to their faces, but searches desperately for something to get upset about the whole time she's engaged with them.
As soon as the desired injustice is found, she subtly communicates to them that she'd hurt, then sits back and waits for the apology and begging for forgiveness.
Well, not any more.
Much as we like this woman, I'm refusing to engage any more in this kind of childish play. If she wants to continue her relationship with us, she can just deal with whatever we've done to upset her. If she doesn't want to continue our relationship, well it's not the type of one I want to be involved in anyway.
These are just a couple of examples of the types of games I've been offered a role in recently. I'm sure you can think up some from your own life. I think the main thing to realise if you're invited to play a part in such sport is that you're almost certainly dealing with an expert who's spent a lifetime honing their skills. Often, the early come-ons can be quite subtle, and some time may pass before you realise you're engaged in a cleverly constructed game.
The best way to react is simply to extract yourself from play as soon as possible. Resist the temptation to continue, even if it means pointing out that you think it's a game and you're not willing to do so. If the person in question gets offended, which is highly likely, so be it.
Ideally, avoid such players altogether. They can only damage you with their stupid tricks.
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