Being used...

[locus_ofcontrol]

Someone told me today that they are using me. Not in any sense where they are using me with an intent to cause me harm or hurt me, but in fact they are hoping that I benefit from our interactions as well. It's more that they are using aspects of who I am, and how I relate with them to learn something and to help them heal

Comments

[hippybngstockng]

Would it sound funny if I say I've got a three tier reaction to being used? It's dependent on what kind of relationship we are having, and what kind of thing I am being used for.

In emotional/sexual relationships I don't think I could allow myself to be used if I knew it was going on, but there's at least a couple of situations I can think of (mostly sexual) where it'd probably be ok, at least as a one-shot or temporary fling. Otherwise I have too many attachment and abandonment issues to even consider putting myself in this position. I wouldn't be able to keep feeling like it was a good thing. Just not wired for it I guess. Either that or I'm especially embittered against it because of watching my mom get used by her boyfriends (even trying desperately to point it out to her at least once) and how it would wreck her every time. I do remember always having this angry understanding with myself that I would NOT be used by any man, ever.

But in friendship and family situations it really depends on who's doing the using... If it's a good enough friend or relative who just really needs the help and I am clearly the most obvious person to give it to them, then I am usually cool with letting the being used parts of it go. Sometimes we all need help, and I feel it's good for my karma to be open to such things. The further it gets pushed outside of that envelope though, the more I might be inclined to always have a nagging in the back of my mind about it. I'm highly sensitive to other people's emotions, and reading insincerity in someone in any form aimed at me makes me exceedingly uncomfortable. I think I'm incapable of letting someone who really doesn't care about me use me, unless it was a life and death situation. I'm not an evil monster, and someone would have to be one for me to not want to help in that kind of situation.