The Player
You know what they say, "Don't hate the player; hate the game." Who are "they" anyway, and why do "they" always have so much to say!?!?! All jokes aside...this was my type for a looooooooooooooooong time.
A player looks good, smells good, is highly charismatic, intelligent, charming, a smooth talker, a ladies' man, flirtatious, hypersexual, hard to bag, self-absorbed, and the most appealing part to me unconsciously - they are super emotionally unavailable. Oooh, that'd be my type!
These kinds of boys fueled my healing fantasy (I'll be writing about what that is soon if you're unfamiliar) and stroked my type A, uber-masculine competitive side like none other back in the day. Lather on heavy love-bombing, runner/chaser energy, hot and cold behavior, betrayal, disloyalty, and inconsistency, the trauma bond was securely in place, with both of us officially starting the timer on our self-destruction bombs. Ahhh...chaos. That's also another post :)
It's taken me most of my life to realize my part in this cycle and how it started in the first place. And it's taken even longer to work myself out of this pattern because it served me well for so long.
I began closing myself off at an early age, with the walls getting higher and higher and deeper and deeper with each additional negative experience where I was deeply hurt. I grew to distrust almost everyone because I couldn't even trust most of my family to either not inflict pain in some way or provide protection from it happening. Emotional immaturity, illiteracy, and unavailability were a generational 'gift' and were the modus operandi of everyone in my family. Survival mode all the way.
As I became an adult and began collecting one toxic relationship after another, this pattern became more ingrained into my DNA. I had my fill of choosing "the player" after one extra-deceitful man who, to this day, I have no idea what was the truth about this person. Perhaps just his name? I mean...this man took out a large loan before coming to the US and spent it on high-end clothing and a luxury car to create a whole new false identity of a high-value man, but in reality, he was far from that.
I could go on and on about my romantic experiences, but the most valuable lesson I learned through all of them is that I was playing myself the whole time. It was much easier and more comfortable for me to continue the pattern of choosing partners fundamentally incapable of providing me love than opening myself up through vulnerability and getting what I truly desired and deserved. The problem is they were all doomed to fail from the start because I chose partners from my wounding, reinforcing my unconscious belief that I was unworthy of receiving love. The only way out of this pattern is through doing the work.
So perhaps, the "game" is the one we play on ourselves through our ego that keeps us stuck from evolving and growing out of our wounding and unhealthy patterns. The "players" are just innocent humans having an experience, desiring the same things, and trying their best. And perhaps, "they" is our higher selves or God trying to guide us on this soul reclamation journey and trying to drop some wisdom bombs along the way to keep us from hurting ourselves.
Once you do the work to understand what game you're playing and your part in it, you can remove yourself from it. Until then...play on Playa!
