Interested People: 4 Characteristics And How To Detect Them
There is a widespread myth in Western societies related to the idea of meritocracy. It is the belief in the self-made man, someone who is successful in life (basically in economic terms), and who does not owe anything to anyone, since everything that he is has arisen from his effort and of their decisions. It is a myth precisely because no one has what he has only thanks to his efforts.
We are a large part of who we are because, throughout our lives, other people have contributed to our having the opportunity to reach adulthood, whether we are aware of it or not, and many times they help us throughout life or a good part of it.
However, in this collaborative network, there are those who decide to take much more than they give. These are interested people who submit their entire philosophy of social relations to one principle: what do I get from this?
If 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.
Furthermore, although by repeating this type of behavior over and over again it is difficult to maintain the deception, sometimes there are those who achieve such a powerful power of seduction 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 that relationship for a long time, our perception becomes biased, distorted.
For all of the above, it is important to pay attention to the signs that tell us, in a more or less subtle way, when we are facing one of the interested people. willing to waste our time and efforts Below you will find their main characteristics. Keep in mind that they do not have to occur all at once for someone to be considered behaving in an interested manner, and that the fact that one or more actions on this list are carried out does not make that person “labeled.” for life: these are behavioral patterns 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 towards 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.
2. Assume that we are going to help
Saying no to a request for a favor is something that is difficult most of the time. Those who act in an interested manner have an easy time exploiting this fact: it is enough to act assuming that the other is going to sacrifice themselves for them.
In this way, to refuse to do something you have to fight against double the pressure: not only do you have to risk looking like a selfish person, but you also have to break the narrative that the other person creates through their way of speaking, according to which the normal thing is to act as she expects, adjusting to the objectives she proposes
That is, we must reformulate the situation, explaining our perspective of the events, something that the other person has not had to do, since their message was implicit in their way of speaking.
3. They use ways of speaking that suggest a symmetrical relationship
When you ask for a favor honestly, you do it in a way that makes it clear that you are doing just that: asking for a favor. However, something typical of someone who has become accustomed to acting in an interested manner is to try to “camouflage” this fact while, in practice, asking for a favor.
For example, when instead of asking for help you are asking to “collaborate”, as if both parties were getting something equally valuable and beneficial Through an action in which one gives and the other receives what was asked for, one is acting with little honesty. It is true that these are simply linguistic formulas and that by themselves they do not cause significant damage, but they set a precedent, on the one hand, and put the other person in a commitment, so that their freedom to refuse to perform is limited. that favor.
4. They try to pass themselves off as extroverts
The easiest way to recognize when someone is acting self-serving is to look at how they behaved when they had no favors to ask. It is common among friends to ask for favors, but if there is a case in which a request is made to someone less trusted, The honest thing is to get to the point, explain what you want You cannot create a friendship in a few minutes just before going to ask for something, that is a deception. And no, this is not something that is simply attributable to extraversion and the ease of socializing either: those who are extraverted are always extraverted, not only when they are looking for something specific that someone can give them.
