Monopoly anyone?
I do love a good game night. Though, for some reason I prefer games that take a decent amount of time to play.
Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly, Risk, those are right up my alley.
However, those games we play out of insecurity?
Yeah....not so much.
I just can't hack it. Especially since ninety percent of them could be avoided if we'd only be honest about how we are feeling and communicate that to the person we are directing it towards...boyfriend/girlfriend/bestfriend...
Instead of playing a game or throwing a fit or causing drama, just tell someone how you're feeling and why. Hopefully they'll be adult enough to help you deal rather than make things worse.
Not that I've never played those games...because it's so much easier to describe the proper way to handle them having made all the wrong decisions myself.
That's what we call the wisdom of experience.
I've been in relationships full of games and manipulation, on both sides, but I'm at a point in my life where I have neither the patience nor the desire to put up with the drama. Running all of this through my head...it dawned on me that the other reason I don't do games anymore is that, having plenty of past experience, I pull out the big guns at the first opportunity. You see, I'm a vendictive asshole when it comes to drama/insecurity bs, and winning these games to me means that one of two things happens:
Either I cause so much hurt and insecurity that you will never ever play them again for fear of my reaction and how it will make you feel in the end, or I'm such an angry douchebag you decide to evict me from your life.
Either way...you will never play games with me again...in which case I view either scenario a win for team Sub.
Man...reading through that again...I really AM a dick.
Here's the thing though, someone recently played a bullshit game with me and my initial reaction was largely automatic and unconscious. Even 12 hours after the fact I had to take a deep breath and think about what I was doing to refrain from being a total ass.
Notice I said "total ass" because I was still an ass...but just a fraction of one.
Fraction of ass.
heh
So, knowing that my reaction was dickish, and probably hurtful, though certainly not uncalled for or overly mean (you'll have to take my word for it)...I have to ask at what point we stop doing this.
When does our brain interject and ask us to be adults rather than petulant spoiled children lashing out at anyone who doesn't automatically make us the center of their world?
I can tell you that I became an adult when I started making decisions based on what was right and good (in my moral and ethical view) rather than based on what was easiest or caused me the least trouble. I pride myself on that now...sometimes probably too much...but still.
We are so driven by ego that it's difficult to view anything outside of that light unless a person is making a conscious decision to do so. As a result every decision we make is driven by the desire to be the best, the most noticed, most popular...whatever.
So when do we begin to put that aside...at least to some degree, in an effort to be good to our common man? When does someone elses happiness and desires actually begin to trump our own?
Maybe it's just an entirely different kind of ego that gets off on knowing I'm not the most important person on the planet.
Maybe that's the next evolution for man...
Or...possibly...I'm just full of shit and passing the time before I leave for the night.
Either way I'm still a douchebag half the time.
-still a douchebag
2 comments:
As we grow up, we learn how to do relationships from the example of those around us. Relationship behavior becomes instinctive. As we grow older and wiser, we may decide we don't like certain things about our relationship behavior. However, because it is instinct, it all happens automatically, and we keep having to face it retrospectively.
So the first step is to (consciously) see it happening as it is happening. Once we learn to do that, we can wrestle control away from our auto-pilot before it does the damage, and we can act on more considered choices instead. Unfortunately, learning to catch ourselves in the act takes practice -- and repeated failures. Bumpy roads will continue in the relationship department, but if we really make an effort and keep at it, particularly if those we are in a relationship are supportive of our effort, then we can reprogram our instinctive behavior.
I'd be interested in reading more about the specific situation. You're not a dick and you never have been. I don't think you have it in you.
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