by Ian Tuhovsky
Nobody ever gives up on people the second or third time they are hurt. Some people keep repeating their actions in an endless loop of the same mistakes while caught in a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Even though it’s oftentimes challenging to give people a second chance, it pays to be forgiving if only for your mental and physical health. But remain alert and cautiously optimistic until you know for sure if the person should be avoided.
There are two times in our lives when we give up on people: the first time we are hurt, and the hundredth.
Sometimes people repeat their mistakes for different types of people. The first time a boyfriend hurts them, and the hundredth time a boyfriend hurts them. The first time a friend hurts them and the hundredth time. The first time a coworker hurts them and the hundredth time. But the same principle remains. We either give up at the first hurdle, or when we are so beaten down all our illusions are shattered.
This is not the best way, for two reasons and I learned that the hard way. Firstly, because the first time is too soon to learn, and the hundredth time is too late to heal. And secondly because giving up on people is not an option.
Only one experience isn’t conducive to learning and self-growth. If we took the first Bad Guy we ever met and used them to define what Bad Guys are like, we would have some pretty random criteria. “People who wear shorts and like cartoons are jerks.” Okay, that was a silly example, but it holds true for other things as well. Some of us may have experienced a lying Bad Guy. Others may have experienced a brutally honest Bad Guy. Both can still be Bad Guys, through and through. We just can't work out what makes someone bad from that first experience. The only option is to try again.
The hundredth time is too late to heal because we have been betrayed too many times. Once you have experienced a few Bad Guys you need to start thinking about what makes them tick. As mentioned, this sort of person is an opportunist. A Bad Guy always looks for an opening, and if you just lost a Bad Guy then the next one that moseys along will assume you're hiring. And they're not “Bad Guys” for nothing. This sort of person will abuse you mentally, physically, financially, emotionally, socially, etc. If you wait too long to connect the dots, they will have taken everything you have.
That being said, we shouldn’t give up on people because of one bad apple, or one type of personality. People are wonderful. You are a person and you are nothing like the Bad Guys you've known. There are probably have many people you know and love, or admire. And they're not Bad Guys. Later, we will see some exact statistics. For now, rest assured. Bad Guys are the minority!
Is that to say we should never evict bad people from our lives? Of course not! Some people will do us some serious harm and we need them gone.
It is imperative to remember that it's worth keeping people around if:
they make each other happy,
they add value to each other’s lives, or
there is still more to learn from them.
Almost every person you encounter will meet some or all of the above criteria! And when a person stops adding value to your life, a healthy relationship moves apart organically, without you needing to block their number.
So, a few people are worth avoiding entirely, but most people we meet will play some part in our lives, and most relationships end in a natural and healthy way.
After completely understanding the criteria above, we hit another issue: There are more types of person than just “avoid” and “friend”.
We all know this, of course. But it gets increasingly difficult to draw the boundaries, especially with the development of social media, social movements, and “friendly” marketing. Everyone claims to be our friend. Then we find it hard to determine who our real friends are.
When you think about your friends, do you think about social media friends? People you know from high-school? People you see at least once a week? People who would help you out in a pinch? People you can trust with your secrets?
Any of them can be friends. But none of those characteristics make them your friend. Not being a friend doesn't mean they are an enemy. They are just somewhere between acquaintance and a friend. Which is a fine place to be.
The problem is that we are losing our concept of social circles. In the past we used to think of “inner circles” and “outer circles”. Our “inner circle” would be people who:
we know closely,
we trust intimately,
we enjoy spending time with, whether it's daily or once a year,
we help each other mutually,
we are equivalent, if not equals,
would be there for us if we needed something badly,
would stand by our side through hard times, and
would not mind telling us to our face when we are wrong.
People can be lovely, fun, worthwhile people without meeting all these requirements. However, they would not be friends. They would be people in our outer circle.
We, as a society, are reaching a point where we consider our acquaintances, our employers, and our idols to be our friends, when they obviously cannot be. A lot of this pressure to consider everyone your friend comes from the manipulators of society. They want us to consider them our friends because they want our time, energy, and money. That is why people beg for approval on social media via likes, shares and other post engagement. That is why brands call their customers “friends” or “family”. That is why some people expect us to treat them, no matter how well we know them, with respect and admiration.
We need to adjust our perspective. Because right now most of us are giving them what they want. Even I do sometimes. People-pleasing is not a habit you break, but an influence. You need to always look out for it.
Why? Because your time, energy, and money are limited.
You only have so much time on this planet.
You only have so much energy to spare.
Your money, a representation of the time and energy you put into your work, is also limited.
Not everyone can be your friend, because there are only so many people you can be a meaningful and genuine friend to.
What does this mean in practical terms? It means we must stop worrying about the number of our friends and start worrying about the quality of our relationships. Which is easier said than done.
Quantity of friends refers both to our number of friends, and to who is our friend. We don't want or need everyone to be our friend. It just isn't possible. Some people will think you are okay. Some people will think poorly of you for no reason. Some people cannot be a friend to you, because they cannot know you, treat you as an equal, or give you their time. There’s nothing wrong with that, so don’t take it personally. It's just normal, human behavior.
When we focus too much on the quantity of friends we have, on how many friends we have and who is and isn't our friend, we take our present friends for granted. Which means we neglect them. We can't not. We assume that we need to put our limited time and energy into getting more people to like us, and specific people to like us. And that will never work. Because most of the time these people whose attention we want will not be our friends. Even when they do become our friends, we will stop giving them our time and energy, because we will be chasing a new friend.
Instead, we need to focus on the quality of our relationships. The quality of a relationship is not based on how important the other person is to society. Or on how much time we spend together. It is based on how enjoyable we find each other’s company. The highest quality friends will be the ones with whom we can share treasured, intimate moments without hiding our true self. These are the people we need in our inner circle. These are the people who must get our time and energy.
Lesson 3: Culling the herd.
When we first try and determine who our friends are, it is easy to get defensive. Let’s face the facts, it’s hard for us to drop from 300+ “friends” to only 1-12 friends. For that reason, it is necessary to have a little perspective.
Robin Dunbar,
a professor at Oxford, has studied human relationships extensively. You may know him from the “Dunbar numbers”. His conclusion reflects that we can only have a stable relationship with 150 people at most.
Through his research he defined that we can only be truly intimate with 5 people. These people define our lives and our identities. We spend the most time with them and cherish them the most.
The next closest layer, which we could consider a family of sorts, rises to 15 people. These extra 10 include people close to us, but who probably do not know all our secrets and who we would not necessarily seek out in a crisis.
Then we have the next 50 people. The extra 35 include people we like and go out of our way to spend time with, but are not intimate with, emotionally, mentally, or physically.
Finally, we have the biggest group, of 150 people. The final 100 provide a positive influence in our lives, but maybe are people we have very little to do with most of the time.
Everyone else? They are not good people or bad people. They are just acquaintances. We do not have enough time and energy to have a meaningful impact on each other’s lives. Were we or them to vanish from the face of the earth, either could be replaced effortlessly. [8]
We need to understand this. Not because everyone outside the 150 is completely superfluous. They are necessary, important, valuable human beings. However, they are not our friends, and we should not give them first priority of our very limited time and energy.
Lesson 4: Protecting the inner circle.
How does this information tie into reading people? It is relevant because if we do not have a true understanding of who our friends are, anyone can infiltrate our inner circle. And this is dangerous, not just to us, but to everyone inside the circle. When a Bad Guy gets in, our friends and families are at as much risk as we are.
Our inner circle exists in some form, even if we do not see it or feed it. There are always people who consider us their nearest and dearest. People who trust us implicitly. People who truly love and respect us. When we add someone new to our friendships, our inner circle trusts this person also.
If that person is a good, normal person (which most of the time they will be), then there is no problem. But if that person has bad intentions, then we have just given them free rein to hurt not only us, but everyone we love and respect!
If we become cagey and shut other people out for good, we will not let any Bad Guys into our inner circle. This also restricts everyone else. Those countless perfectly good, normal people who could add immense value to our lives, and us to theirs.
The solution? To identify and define our inner and outer circles. When we know the identity of everyone within our inner and outer circles, we can stop people from advancing too quickly from our outer circle inwards, and protect the most important people in our lives.
Exercise:
For this exercise, make an effort to picture your inner circle. Bear in mind you are not picking the people you would like to have in your inner circle. All of us have a celebrity or two who we would include if we could!
I need you instead to look at who actually meets the criteria for a true friend. Who in your life is truly there for you, and you for them? Don't feel ashamed if there are only four or five people, or even one person, who is a true friend. This is normal. Despite the slant of the media, that is the number of close friends you can realistically be a friend to.
CHAPTER FOUR: HOW THE BAD GUYS GET IN
Everything we’ve discussed will only help you deal with the Bad Guys who are already in your social circles. Hopefully, they haven’t wormed their way into your inner circle already. They won’t if you keep a close eye on the quality of your inner circle and who is in it. But they are still in one of your social circles. So... how did they get that far, anyway?
A good part of the mystery can be explained away with the work we completed in Chapter Three. We just aren't guarding our social circles, so our outer circles are pretty much a revolving door of almost everyone we know at any given point. This makes it very easy for someone completely unknown to us to become an acquaintance, then a friend, then a close friend, in a matter of weeks.
But that’s not the whole story. Because however open and friendly your social circles are, and however unguarded you are about letting people in, it takes two to tango. The Bad Guy had to want to get into your social circle, too. Which is a bit more complicated to explain. And which actually takes us back to our moral matter from Chapter Two: There Are No Saints Or Villains.
Quite simply, a social circle is a desirable place to be. Humans are social animals. We cannot do everything we need to in order to survive all on our own. So, we have evolved to enjoy the company of other people. These two components are at the core of all our social interactions. We either relate with people useful to us, or people we like. Our relationship with a bank teller, or a cashier is important to us on a survival level, but not on an emotional one. Our relationship with our faith or our sports team is important to us on an emotional level, but not a survival one. Both of these relationships are completely outside our circles. The most important relationships, such as those we have with family members, friends, and partners, are important both for survival and emotional well-being.
To be physically safe and emotionally fulfilled are the only reasons a person seeks a relationship with another human being. Unfortunately, they’re also the reasons why a Bad Guy wants a relationship.
Bad Guys are humans, too, with the same instinct to survive and the same need for human contact. A Bad Guy doesn't always join your social circle with the express purpose of hurting you. A Bad Guy joins your social circle because they want something from you. There are several key differences between how a friend behaves and how a Bad Guy behaves within your social circle.
First of all, a bad guy does not classify people's closeness based on that combination of usefulness and emotional well-being which we discussed. Many people confuse this blasé attitude as Bad Guys lacking emotional needs.
Secondly, a Bad Guy hurts you. It is vitally important to remember the distinction.
Finally, a Bad Guy, for these reasons, places no true value on belonging to your social circle. To a Bad Guy, the degree of closeness they share with a person does not matter. It is only the number of social circles they belong to which is important to them.
There’s really little difference between your reasons for relating to someone, and a Bad Guy's reasons. You might say that a Bad Guy will use you for sex, or money, or free labor. But so will a wife, a friend, and a relative. In all these scenarios, you are willingly giving. You might say that a Bad Guy sets out to hurt you, but they do not. Your pain is just incidental. They would do this whether it hurt you or whether it did not.
The three main social differences between Bad Guys and the rest of us are as follows. First, the bad guy does not value you intrinsically. Second, the Bad Guy harms you. Last, the Bad Guy collects social circles. Beyond that, any one of us or our friends could possess individual Bad Guy traits, which does not make us a Bad Guy any more than having a symptom of autism makes us autistic.
I suppose you are now thinking to yourself, “Well, this theory is all well and good, but how does it play out in the real world?” I'm glad you asked! We can actually see examples of the Bad Guys breaking into social circles every day, and sometimes, if we look closely, we can capture a glimpse of their true motivations, as well as of the three social differences between them and us.
For the remainder of this chapter we will explore some concepts related to how Bad Guys break into our social circles, illustrated with examples from my own life. These strategies are not all used by all Bad Guys, or exclusively by Bad Guys. They are not unique to any type of Bad Guy, either. And not all Bad Guys are even aware of their own bad behavior since it comes naturally to them. And all Bad Guys will use one or more of the following strategies to weasel their way in to social circles.
Recruiting and Applying.
When I still work
ed for a small marketing firm, I had a coworker who seemed obsessed with me. Literally everything I did, she would want to be involved. Every time I said something she would speak up. Every time I needed something she would rush to help. Every time she needed something she would ask me. At first, I figured, “Hey, this lady really, really likes me.”
Then she started recruiting. She had wormed her way into the outermost reaches of my social circles. Rather than settle there, or try and push ahead, she wanted to drag me out and into her social circles. She would do this by continually placing demands on me. By trying to pick away at my work relationships, spreading rumors, etc. By generally making me feel unstable and trying to make me feel like I needed her.
When someone is recruiting, they are trying to persuade you to join them. They want you to lean on them heavily, to rely on them. So, they start out with a very mutual relationship, but then they slowly coerce you to do more and more. As time goes by you will find you're doing everything for them. They have used that time to separate you from your friends and/or coworkers, so you find it difficult to push the recruiter away. They are the only person left to help you, even if you work for 5 hours to get 5 minutes of their time.