#flattery

We are all Paul Myers.

I know it a small thing compared to everything else, but he's been ruining an historic building and is now planning to destroy the East wing because he has no taste and an inflated ego.

I don't know, it just feels both symbolic of his destruction of the country as a whole and is deeply distressing as someone who cares about history.

Again, minor compared to what ICE agents are doing or his foreign policy or his public health policy, all of which are actively killing people, but it still bothers me.

Trump Weird News - Presidential Pardon Emporium

Source details and larger version.

If you are a woman who keeps up with her looks and fitness, they will compliment you on that consistently, only to try to throw in digs at how you “look bigger” in some photos, or how you look like you’ve been eating good. They’ll tell you that you “look tired” when you’re feeling and looking just fine to start to sow seeds of insecurity and have you micromanaging and being hyper vigilant about your looks around them.

If you are a woman who is deemed free-spirited or easy going they will mention other women who tried to proposition them (only to reassure you that no, they didn’t accept). They’ll bring up female friends who may or may not be interested in them, or say how so many people think they are handsome in an attempt to bring out insecurity or jealousy in you, to try to get you to cling to them and become co-dependent while triangulating you with imaginary people and scenarios.

If you are a woman who is comfortable in solitude, they will initially try to smother you with affection and compliments and then withhold or withdraw them, to get you to cling to them or to ask, beg, or relay how much you miss them. They will withhold compliments, will not give you affection, or will purposefully leave you or walk ahead of you in public so that you will metaphorically (and literally) have to chase and keep up with them.

It’s important as a woman to know that it’s not a bad thing for you to think “I’m too good for this/them/this situation/him.” That is your intuition telling you something is off. Everyone does not deserve a chance to experience your time or presence, and that does not make you arrogant. It doesn’t matter how many times a man asks you out, wants your time. If something in you says “no” don’t let anyone wear your down or convince you otherwise. That’s not being rude or mean. It makes you wise, and strategic. Men know this.

Men who know that you are indeed too good for them in some way, shape, or form will try to manipulate you in various ways so you will feel like you need them, because deep down they know they don’t deserve the spot they falsely secured to begin with. So they try to pick and dig at your self-esteem, your pride, your looks, so you will feel that you don’t deserve them or that you need them —not the other way around.

And yes, if you are well put together, good looking, well-spoken, and intelligent, the harder they will go to get you in the beginning, and the worse the manipulation will be afterwards, because some men feel that the only way to obtain a woman of that caliber is to break her emotionally or mentally, so she can become a shell of herself and be “built up” again by his external validation.