Addendum to "The Gift of Fear" post

The takeaway is indeed that the social expectation that women be nice, accommodating, and receptive to interaction, is a precarious one. But I was slow to deal with those situations, and I'm not much influenced by social expectations. I maintain that, had I been under those influences, I would have gotten out worse. Even absent the social expectation, there was an interpersonal expectation: you don't need social pressures to not want to hurt someone's feelings. And manipulative people expertly exploit your very human inclinations to not confront them.
I've written about this exhaustively with regard to gifts: there's not only a social expectation to accept gifts graciously, but an interpersonal one. Nobody wants to throw a gift back in someone's face. I never thought I'd throw a gift back in someone's face, but when I did, it was the right thing to do.



With BE, it was even harder, because we'd been friends. As I was starting to understand the intensity of his feelings for me, I started to unfriend him in real life. Doing so went against every instinct of mine as a human, even when he never would have known the difference. For example, my friends and I share food all the time. Any number of friends and I (for example, those at work, so people I see every day) will make more of a big dish, and then bring in the extra to share. [An aside: it was a statement to what extent F., my ex-BF, and I, inhabited different planets that he was perplexed by this food-sharing thing.] Anyway, one day--on a day that I was going to see BE for 'business' and just around the cusp of my realization that this BE thing was becoming a problem--I'd made a bunch of salsa with an overflow of farm-share tomatoes, and I thought I'd bring him some. And then I thought better of it. But it was hard. It was even harder when, for example, he was going through a hard time for personal reasons and I made a conscious decision to keep my distance rather than lend the support that I normally would to a friend in need.

***
In both cases, these men were huge cry-babies when their tactics didn't work. Rejection is tough for everyone, but it's a part of life. As Kate Monster sings, "if someone doesn't love you back, it isn't such a crime." And yet, both of these dudes felt entitled to my attention and affection, and lashed out when it wasn't forthcoming. In RM's case, as I've said, he just wasn't used to anyone saying no to him in any way. In BE's case, he'd seen too many movies wherein persistence pays off.

What BE wanted was obvious; what RM wanted, less so. Clearly not a romantic relationship, and probably sex, but definitely some kind of interpersonal relationship rather than the merely business relationship I insisted on. Perhaps I'm naive--though I've often said and written that men will f* anything and, within certain parameters, try to f* everything--but sex was not at the top of either agenda, even though neither dude would have minded it. The dudes who only want sex are easier to get rid of; they'll just move on to the next person. Both of these men had some kind of feelings for me.

And both of them thought everything I did was about them. If I left a note for myself around the house, RM thought it was a hint to him. If I tweeted something random, BE thought it was directed at him.

So the bottom line is that manipulative people are very, very good; social expectations (on women especially) enable them, but aren't strictly necessary. People like RM and BE tug at heartstrings, not just social expectations. I fought back against both of them--again, not as swiftly and directly as I would have had I known then what I know now--in part because I was unconcerned about social expectations, but it was the interpersonal manipulation that tempered the swiftness of my reaction. All that said, both men were likely emboldened by their tactics having worked in the past--those tactics are even harder to fight when you want to be the nice girl. The RM situation shattered any socialization within me to be the nice girl, and the BE situation only strenghtened my resolve in that respect. I wish this resolve on every woman, everywhere, without their having to learn the hard way.