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By February 20, 2011

Getting Played is All Played Out

When are we going to stop ignoring the signs of The Playa Syndrome? If we aren’t sure of the symptoms, at least one of our friends are, so we really can’t cry foul when we continue to get played. I suspect that some of us get played because we are simply in denial—or we may feel like we can’t do any better, so we’ll just hold on until we’re dumped. If we are to attain the love that we seek, WE HAVE GOT TO STOP BEING PLAYED!

Getting Played is ALL PLAYED OUT!
©2000, 2011 by Priscilla Branch

Recently several of my girlfriends were played and are suffering greatly for it.

The alleged playas were giving my friends classic lines, like “I need some space, because I’m not sure I’m over my ex-girlfriend yet,” and the playas weren’t calling as much as they were in the beginning, because they had to “settle some issues.”

Even though my friends were forewarned, these women defended their men, long after the men were gone. My girlfriends thought they were immune to the Playa Syndrome because they had put too much into the relationship for them to get played. My friends would rattle off their men’s wondrous feats during the early phases of their courtship and would then denounce me and my suspicions.

If you want to make an enemy real fast, tell or suggest to one of your girlfriends that she is getting played (and should therefore leave her man). Even if you make a clear case for her to leave him, you as a friend will always be wrong. You have to be wrong, so she can continue believing that she’s not being played. She’ll say “But you don’t understand him and what he’s going through right now!” Yeah, right. As if I haven’t heard those same lines myself.

Deep down, we all know what’s going on, especially if we’ve witnessed the same thing happening to a friend—or if we’ve been through a similar scenario already. The real victim is the friend who has to watch a loved one get played. You’ll be the one helping your friend pick up the pieces long after the playa is gone from the scene.
You’ll be one standing by waiting for her to realize that he really isn’t going to change for her or anybody.

The real kicker is when your friend refuses to give up on a relationship until that playa comes back to say that “IT’S OVER.” Until then, you’ll be looking like Eeyore when you proclaim that actions speak louder than words, and that the playa’s actions are all she needs to know that “IT’S OVER.”

But I must ask myself this: Why in the hell won’t my friends stop making the same mistakes over and over and over? Can’t they see that they need to learn from those mistakes so they can learn from new ones?!? Sure love is blind, but nobody said to be STUPID about it!

Love doesn’t mean that we’re helpless and not in control. We are in control of EVERY aspect of our relationships, because we are capable of deciding when to hold on and when to let go. Too often, we give up control and are LET GO, long after we saw the signs to leave. In cases like these, the playa isn’t the enemy: the played person is. Instead of being proactive in relationships, we get walked on, and then have the nerve to become bitter about it.

And the bitterness that we carry into the next relationship is one good reason to stop the Playa Syndrome in its tracks early on. When we choose to get played, we encourage that playa to keep playing and we have even more pain for which the next lover will be punished.

As my godmother used to tell me when I refused to leave a playa: “You’ll leave when you get tired.” I have since learned from that mistake and am quickly learning from new mistakes. I hope that we will all quickly learn to avoid playas—or at least will stop blaming playas for our unhappiness. Once we do that, we can worry about getting to the love for which we’ve always asked.

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