Use With Contempt Or Respect
by Michael Feeley
Some people use you. They study you first. They learn what you want to hear, what you’re missing, what makes you lean in. This isn’t relationship. It’s reconnaissance.
They are patient. They have practiced for years — fooling, faking, extracting. When they get what they came for, they leave. When they can’t get it, they dismiss and leave anyway. Either way, you were never the point. You were the means.
Money makes the mask easier to wear. Some people don’t fall in love with a person. They fall in love with a balance sheet — the house, the cars, the title, the portfolio — and drape the pretense of sincere care on top of it. They want to be taken care of, not to care. The wealth is the qualification. The person is almost incidental, a delivery system for security. That is not love. That is due diligence dressed up as devotion.
This is the difference between using people and working with them. One is built on contempt — a selfish belief that you don’t matter beyond your usefulness, financial or otherwise. The other is built on respect — a belief that what we build together is worth more than what I alone can take, or take from you.
Contempt is efficient. It assesses, extracts, moves on. Respect is slower. It asks what a person needs and deserves, not just what they hold.
Watch how people climb — careers, marriages, whole lives — some on relationships used and discarded, others built with people who are still there at the top. Lasting. Meaningful. Valued.
Thanks – Michael (he, him)
Please share my Daily.
This also matters – Respect and Contempt have Consequences.
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