Tag: men

in this series: #1 (#1.5) | #2 | #3 (#3.5) | #4 | #5 (#5.5) | #6 | #7 (#7.5)

love is not a game — and we will strike down anyone who acts as if it is

babygirl affirmations (author: me)

Supplement to guide #5, as promised. Today, we delve into the psychology of players — those pesky distractions in your Love Quest that steer you away from your path, promising great rewards only to leave you stranded with nothing.

Or so I’d say, if only things were that simple.

My observations tell me that people are tempted to reduce players to one-dimensional creatures — selfishly motivated barbarians with limited capacity for self-reflection and sophisticated emotion.

I argue that this is not true. Selfish, yes, but everything else, no. In this piece, we will strip them, layer by layer (haha), to establish my argument.

You might be thinking: OK, sis, pretty prose and all, but why extend grace to these clowns when they are out only to hurt you and waste your time?

The primary reason is that understanding them helps you to grow.

When you dissect and decipher a player’s psyche, you will see what they really are: a timid child desperate to be loved not knowing how to go about it, who inadvertently hurts others in the process.

They’re just like you, and they’re just like me.

When you come to terms with this image of them, you will sympathise with — and maybe even forgive — them for why and how they hurt you. After all, would you blame a child for causing you pain, if you knew they didn’t know better?

And only then can you let go for real — to become the person you were destined to be without them.

The secondary reason is that you can put them in their place when you understand them. I think of it as my contribution to the world. 😛

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The Ivory Guards, or Two (Exceptionally Intimate) Case Studies

Prior to meeting my future husband, two men in particular were formative to my personal growth. I think of them as the guardians of the gates to Paradise, forged in ivory, iridescent and brittle. Together, they helped me discover the maxims of players (supposedly) that I will cover.

I deconstruct their psyches using their behavioural patterns I observed during our entanglements. So, yes, this is an exercise in psychological analysis. Even if psychologists can’t read your mind, I sure can try.

I am oversharing insofar as I believe there are lessons for my readers to take away, but you make of it what you will. Also, it’s a form of closure for me. I doubt I’ll ever write about them again following this post because I’ve taken everything I could from them. It’s time for me to move on, too.

A forewarning because the possibility of them reading this is never zero (I adore you, my orbiters): you will not like what’s coming. You may disagree with my interpretations, and that’s okay — either way, you ultimately have no say because you relinquished your privilege the moment you disrespected me as a fellow human being. Typically, I would offer my loverboys the possibility of taking it down if they were uncomfortable, but no such option will be offered this time.

Why? Because you shouldn’t be here.

What you can take away from the following, though, is that this is an attempt to implode whatever relationship we had or might still have. I don’t write without anticipating the consequences.

I wish you the best, nonetheless.

Ivory Guard A

• Context/identifier: We had a prior friendship. He reached out to me to restart, and I reciprocated. We both acknowledged that we were not in good emotional places then.
• Bond: We had an intense connection, so I believed then, which he later admitted. I understood and could read him.
• Green flags:
  • He respected my boundaries (for the most part), which is why I gave him so many chances. Yes, the bar was low.
• Orange flags:
  • He would never directly admit his feelings for me. I started noticing it in the small things like him refusing to acknowledge I was hot or skirting the topic when I teased if he was obsessed with me, even though all signs were flashing in that direction. I did not like that, because why do I have to slave away like a dog for your approval when I could get it elsewhere easily? But I persisted, trusting that he would eventually trust me enough to overcome his insecurities.
  • He carelessly made promises he did not keep. Don’t make promises if you cannot follow through.
• How he messed up: He ghosted me out of nowhere a month into our budding relationship, which involved a substantial amount of flirting (i.e., me saying whatever I wanted) and whatever tension.
  • By the way, people do not accidentally mess up stuff like this. Severing a relationship is always deliberate; hence, no justification will ever be enough.
• My response: I was first confused, then upset and hurt. I double-texted him twice, gave up, and took a month to move on.
• Whiplash era (when the power dynamics inverted):
  • He kept watching my stories even as he maintained his refusal to reply me. I was further aggravated when I noticed — accurately — that he would like the stories that he believed were referring to him. That was top-of-the-line manipulative behaviour, and it disgusted me.
  • It didn’t have the effect he intended, though, because our king did not realise that babygirl here had options and already had someone else (of course). LOL. So all his behaviour only resulted in my amusement to no end.
  • I engaged in retaliatory offense by kindly informing him (through public means since I knew he was watching) that I was not, in fact, talking about him.
  • He proceeded to
    • Call me in the middle of the night, possibly drunk (I did not notice because I was wilding out with my friends), before deleting the evidence the next morning
    • Text me to apologise, which I accepted
    • Ask me to go back to him, to which I said no
    • Ask me to go back to him again, to which I said no again
• Psychological breakdown:
  • I found closure once I figured his behaviour stemmed from him being a coward (at that time, OK; he’s grown since). He did not know what he wanted and needed time to figure it out. I wouldn’t have minded, really, but what disappointed me the most was that he did not respect me enough to inform me that he needed that time and space alone.
  • In essence I was treated as an option he thought he could return to whenever he wanted. He thought I would wait for him. But my universe doesn’t revolve around you, you know. I doubt he realised this initially, but the moment he distanced himself, he could never again return to me. Above all, that was the dealbreaker, along with him thinking he could toy with my feelings with his orbiting behaviour. I told you I would win if you dared play games with me, and you still did.
  • My readers might think I’m delusional, so let me note that all of my observations above were validated when he apologised and asked me to return to him. Our only difference in interpretation was that I thought we were never together.
• Cumulative emotional impact: I never cried over him.
• I dedicate Santorini to him.

Ivory Guard B

• Context/identifier: We met at a party. I forgot about him following the party, but he caught my attention when he initiated contact later. We agreed to meet before he ghosted me for a good month. (What’s with players and months?) But he pulled the sympathy card and said he could explain himself, so I listened, maybe because I wanted to see the good in him, or because I was naïve. Turns out he had recently broken up with his longtime girlfriend, whom he loved deeply (I could tell) but had a volatile relationship with. They had a dead bedroom, which is notable for two reasons: 1) it is a death knell in a romantic relationship, and 2) see psychological breakdown below.
• Bond: In retrospect, we had nothing real. Most of what I felt towards him was rooted in my projections of what he could be, perhaps because he looked like an angel. But a pretty face is just that (since we’re already at this level of disclosure, I might as well say the men I met on Hinge subsequently put him and me to shame). I’ll never know what’s inside his shell; maybe I wouldn’t have liked it, and I suspect now that I probably wouldn’t.
• Green flags: none (!)
• Orange flags:
  • From the very beginning, he only seemed interested in my body. But see psychological breakdown below.
  • He also carelessly made promises he did not keep. By then, I was wise enough to know that the moment he broke our promise — we even did the pinky seal! — I was nothing to him.
• How he messed up: He insinuated that we could be something more. Then I slept with him, and then he proceeded to withdraw rapidly in the days that followed.
  • I had not realised this yet, but looking back, I would still have slept with him even if he had been honest that he had no clue what he wanted. I knew from the moment I saw him again. Indeed, he was the one who taught me to compartmentalise sex and love. I realised that if I didn’t do so, I was setting myself up for a world of pain.
  • And in case you guys think I am a damn homewrecker: I have principles, OK. I ascertained that they were separated before I slept with him, and I would not have done so otherwise. Their relationship is doomed either way: even if he returns to her in the future, they will not be happy together.
• My response: I did not pursue the relationship and let the conversation peter out, as he intended. If he didn’t want me enough, I would respect his decision. Later, in my Hinge era, I would decisively inform men that they didn’t like me enough and end our liaison, but I didn’t do so with him. It doesn’t matter because the outcome would’ve been the same.
  • Interestingly, my predominant emotion was disappointment more than sadness, unlike with Guard A. It was more like, oh, he’s just like the others. Haha, oh well.
• Whiplash era (when the power dynamics inverted):
  • He continued watching my stories even when it was clear we were nothing (ugh, why do they all do this), which annoyed me. What do you want from me? It was affecting me, so I blocked him. I realised I had moved on when I was zoning out one fine afternoon and couldn’t recall his name.
  • So I unblocked him since he didn’t matter anymore. And guess who came back that night? Let me note here that he is an aggressive orbiter. When you block and unblock someone, they automatically unfollow you. He was not following me anymore, which meant he was actively searching for my profile and watching my stories. If that’s not preoccupation, what is?
  • At some point, more than anything, I felt sorry for him. I don’t know why he was still hanging around. (Maybe I was too hot to let go?) But I wasn’t going to help him by blocking him. I did write to my orbiters to him as a final grace — it was written for my orbiters in general, but he leads the pack. You can be the alpha male in this case if you like being one so much, baby.
    • I believe he read it because he stopped watching my stories after that. I might be overthinking, but the timing was too coincidental.
• Psychological breakdown:
  • Though not necessarily with me, I suspect he was looking for love (surprise!!!). To be brutally specific, I think he was seeking love via sex because he did not know how else he could receive love. It was all he had known. He was aware, consciously or not, that his ex-girlfriend did not love him as much as he loved her, and it was staring him in the face every time she denied him sex. Despite knowing this, he could not move on from her. So his compensatory strategy to reaffirm himself as someone worthy of love was to find a replacement — oh look, that’s me!
  • I also suspect he has not reached out because I have established in no uncertain terms that I do not want him in my life, not after he betrayed my trust like that. That, or he’s not as optimistic as Guard A. We will never know for sure. But his feelings towards me are irrelevant — the only thing that matters, and has ever mattered, is that he did not act on his feelings at the time.
• Cumulative emotional impact: I never cried over him.
• I dedicate Evergreen to him — the parts that hurt. The lovely parts, I dedicate to my husband.

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Players, Deconstructed

I defined players as the following in guide #5:

Players. Typically men. Players are not interested in seeking love with you — they only want sex.

What distinguishes this category of daters is their strategy: they masquerade as the genuinely seeking type, but this is only a ploy to get you in bed.

In other words, they prey on the (female) weakness in conflating love and sex to obtain the latter.

I realise that the definition applies only to Guard B (because I did not sleep with Guard A), and hence it is insufficient. I expand on the definition below, which provides a fuller picture and allows for the inclusion of women — namely, insecure people who date recklessly but fail to commit fully.

Notice how the definition is worded. It assumes that players do not seek love with you. It does NOT mean they do not want love. Put another way, even players desire to be loved. Whether they deserve it from you is an entirely separate matter. The point — and this perspective frames my entire argument — is that almost all of their behaviours can be explained by the fact that they are seeking love.

No player operates outside of the rules. Rather, they have mastered the rules and are exploiting them to their advantage at the expense of others. That is why when we speak of players’ behaviours, it is oftentimes layered with contempt, because we all recognise that they actively hurt others. And don’t think for a moment that they’re unaware of how they’re perceived — anyone with sufficient self-awareness, which is essential to play the game well, knows what other people think of them. Nonetheless, they persist in their maladaptive behaviour because they see no other way forward. This is, in turn, because they have demons they are unwilling to confront.

Players are fundamentally insecure. They want love, but instead of being honest with themselves and others, they inadvertently hurt everyone involved because they cannot bring themselves to do so. Whether the insurmountable barrier is their ego or emotional immaturity, they believe that the risk of honesty outweighs its benefits. Hence, they lie to get what they want, or they engage in escape behaviours when push comes to shove.

Nobody, not even players, can entirely separate sex and love. I have described players as professionals at discriminating between the two, but even they are not invincible. When you sleep with someone, no matter what, you are giving a part of yourself to them forever. This fate is inescapable as long as you are a being with the capacity for an emotional bond. The only exception to this would be if you’re hollow inside — I mean, you can’t give anything when you have nothing. But everyone has something, even if they refuse to admit it. I did, and so did Guard B. That is why he lingered longer than he should have.

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For the twentieth time, I could be wrong. But as I have demonstrated repeatedly, I try to see the good in everyone, even men who have hurt me. Love is a boundless resource; it can be given over and over, and it will eventually be returned to you.

When you genuinely love someone, you can ironically break them with it.

Maybe break is the wrong word; rather, if you are willing, you can help them grow with you.

The karmic fate that awaits a player is that because they are paying attention to the wrong things, they are bound to realise, only belatedly, that they let the thing they were looking for all along — unconditional love — slip by unnoticed.

Love is what they need — but won’t ever have — until they come to terms with themselves.

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in this series: #1 (#1.5) | #2 | #3 (#3.5) | #4 | #5 (#5.5) | #6 | #7 (#7.5)