Avoidance

If you're like most normal humans, then you've probably experienced being taken advantage of at some time or other. It's not fun. Not only is it inconvenient in the short term, but also it can be inconvenient in the long term if you allow the person taking advantage of you to continue. It's frustrating too when you finally figure out what's going on. This is how it went for me:

I seemingly nice lady named Matilda Shuttlesworth joined my church fairly recently. Matilda made a big splash the first year by asking the church to announce that she needed help on her property. She was a widow and we're supposed to help orphans and widows. Now, as you know, my church isn't the best. They did, however, decide to help this women.

Thus, as a large group of about thirty people, we went out to her house to help her. She wanted people to basically clean up the wreckage of a house that had been demolished so she could build herself a house there. She knew she would need people with that capability, so she targeted three contractors with the equipment to accomplish this. It took three Saturdays with this devoted group to finish the job. When everyone was done, it was kind of awkward because she thanked people but not in a very heartfelt way. I mean, we worked three whole days just to do this for her.

Being the compassionate person that I am, I tried to look for ways to justify this somewhat cold thanks. I decided she had just moved here. She wasn't settled. She was new. She didn't have a job yet. Thus, it was fine for her to be rude. That may not have been my conscious thought process, but I think that's how I justified it.

Anyway, Matilda diligently came to church and seemed to make a few friends. In the course of socializing, she began to repeat her sob story of how her husband died in a car wreck. At that point, everyone wanted to help her. Her spell was cast. Now all she had to do was move in for the kill.

Being an innocuous person, I was surprised to find myself talking to her, the woman who became an overnight superstar because her husband died in car crash. In the course of the conversation, she mentioned how she was planning on building a shed. And I was thinking, "what an odd conversation." And then she mentioned not having time to do it herself because she had just moved here and was still living in an apartment while her house was being built. By that time, I was able to take the hint and offer to help her even though I was busy at the time.

Once again, she took advantage of one of the contractors at church to head it up. Suffice to say that the shed was big. "Perhaps not paying for labor made it more accessible for her to get", I thought. I though she was visibly impressed with my diligence and I was happy to be done with that job and get back to my life.

She had other plans. After her house was built, I got stuck in another one-sided conversation with her in which she started talking about how dirty her house was and how it needed to be cleaned before she moved in and how it was just her and her five-year old son. I knew what she wanted. So much for that Saturday. Yes, I cleaned her house, and I promised myself this was the last time.                                                                                       
I found out later that this woman had a half-million dollar life insurance policy from  her husband's death in additions to a nice car and a house where she used to live. There are few people at church who are in better condition than her as far as finances go. It also occurred to me that she hadn't done anything that I could tell since she had come to my church. She may have helped with a few things here and there but she hadn't done anything noticeable. She made no contribution. She took so much. I avoided her from then on.

Now, in narrating these events, you probably saw everything coming. I didn't when they were happening, and that's the big point. When you're a victim of one of these manipulators, it's much harder for you to notice. When she talked about me cleaning her house, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. When she announced that she needed help clearing rubble, it seemed like such a great outreach.


Don't get me wrong here. Helping people is good, even if they don't ever do anything for you. What's wrong is asking a church for help when you can afford to pay someone to help and probably not feel it. What's wrong is taking advantage, receiving but not giving. Good relationships consist of mutual benefit. If you don't find that in a relationship, then discontinue that relationship. If you must go to church with this person, avoid them as much as possible. If you must talk to them, don't let them con you into helping again. Don't let them direct the conversation; you do that. If they do manage to bring up helping them, make sure you have some important excuses memorized that don't have a short shelf life.

Most importantly, try to be nice about it. It may help to think of it as a game. You don't want to let them dominate the conversation. You want to have back-up strategies if they do. You also should feel sorry for these people. How can they establish real relationships based on only themselves and their needs? It seems like an unhealthy dynamic that not many people would put up with. Remember that these people are people just like you and me. They have problems, and they need help just like us.