The Salesman Relationship Lesson

It's 4 in the morning and I've been awake for over an hour.  My standby for getting back to sleep is to put on an audiobook that I've already listened to.  This morning it didn't work because I put on a book about how to be a great salesperson and I heard something that, even though I've heard it before, really got me thinking. I realized that lessons about being a good salesperson are equally good at teaching how to pick up on when you're being sold to and that got me thinking about how I could've avoided the pain caused by the men I've loved, if I'd listened to our conversations.

You see, this author was talking about controlling the conversation and manipulating the other person's response to get the desired outcome.

What I've figured out is that the men with whom the relationship ended because they were only in it for what they could get from me had one of two conversations.  Either they overwhelmingly talked about themselves with very little learning about me or they did almost nothing but ask questions about me with little to no offering or answering anything about themselves.

What this book inadvertently taught me was that the first type of talker just wants an adoring fan to take care of them and the second type of talker doesn't plan on sticking around once he's gotten what he wants.

Real relationships, romantic or not, are with people who communicate in an equal back and forth.