The Eight Exploitations of Empathy

You are an empathic individual. This is why we chose you. This is why we want people like you because you have certain traits which appeal considerably to us. You have traits which are ripe to be exploited by us and only someone like you can provide such an opportunity to our kind. You have certain traits which we need to exploit for our own purposes; these are eight of them

1. Trust

You cannot operate without trust. You trust us with your heart from the very outset. You readily give it to us and allow us to place our hands around it. You trust us to keep it safe and protect, unaware that our nefarious hands covet the provision of your heart. Your trust is absolute and unconditional and this enables us to exploit it repeatedly by doing as we please,acting behind your back and breaching your trust over and over again. Your reaction when you learn of our breach of this sacred trait is enormous and fuel-filled and the driver behind our need to take and shatter your trust. The concept of trust is so inviting that even though we will fracture it, we will endeavour to repair it and win it back just so we can breach it again.

2. Honesty

Your openness and honesty results in your signing your own fate by furnishing us with so much information about yourself. From your hopes and desires through to your weaknesses and vulnerabilities. You are content to detail it all to us as you live by a code of honesty, always wanting to tell the truth and for the truth to be provided to you. We know you operate by this trait and we will feign to be an honest person at the outset, free with our expressions of how we truly feel about you. How more honest can we be than to tell you that you are the person we have waited our whole lives for? Yet, honesty is for you and never for us because we operate in the shadows of dishonesty. Your honesty may be a strength in your eyes but to us it is a weakness as you have opened yourself up before us, exposing yourself to us, showing your neck to us as our forked tongue slides across our sharpest teeth.

3. Decency

You must always do the right thing. To do anything else is anathema to you and we know that this attribute of yours leaves you susceptible to our many machinations. You are polite and well-mannered. This means that you will accord with our initial overtures and listen attentively to whatever we say. You accept graciously our gifts, not realising that they are bribes to ensure you become chained to us. You always answer our calls, reply to our messages and open your door when we appear, not matter how often or how unannounced. This requirement to be civil and decent allows us to frequent you to such a degree that our charm is in and around you so often that you have no chance other than to succumb to it. You will not turn away, you will not slam the door in our faces but instead give us the toehold and time of day to weave our malign magic over you and seduce you.

4. Equality

You expect to be treated as you treat others and when the devaluation eventually commences and you find that such concepts as consideration, reciprocity and equality of treatment are missing, your alarmed and emotional response is the engine for the fuel we need. You operate by the maxim of do unto others as you would have them do unto you and thus you treat us with love, affection and kindness. Its absence by return causes you considerable consternation and upset, which enables us to draw the fuel from you in significant amounts.

5. Fidelity

To be faithful and receive fidelity in return is of significant importance to you. Your own dedication to the ideal of faithfulness means that we have little concern that you will have your head turned by others, no matter how badly we treat you. You will not transgress this ideal, even though you may suspect or even know of our own flagrant disregard for the concept of fidelity, you will remain true to it. It pains you, it hurts you but as a person of principle you will abide by it. You do not do this through any notion of pride or to seek some kind of accolade, but you do it because it is part of you. A constituent part of your moral fibre and full in the knowledge of this sterling attribute of yours, we shall do as we please with little concern that you will treat us in the same way.

6. Tenacity

You do not give up. You exhibit an indefatigable spirit which invades every element of who you are. You will not give up on the idea of you and me. You will do whatever it takes to please me, to win back my golden grace which you once delighted in. You will hang in there determined to ensure we get back on track. You will not walk away because to do so would be to admit failure and this is not something that you can countenance. No matter how bad the abuse, no matter how terrible your treatment, you will cling on as a consequence of this trait. We are well aware of this and welcome such a tenacious approach, for it provides with a guarantee of your attention and support.

7. Healing

You desire to heal and to fix is perhaps one of your most notable traits. The desire to nourish the good in people and bring it to the fore. You believe that everybody is capable of becoming better, including yourself which is why you are so selfless and giving. You strive to find the ways of making a situation better for somebody, you want to make the sad person become happy, the worried person calm and to ease the concerns of all you come across. Most of all you want to fix us because you believe we can be fixed. We will not disavow you of such a notion, not at all, it serves our purposes to keep you thinking that you can make a difference.

8. Loving

Your love is immense. Unconditional, vast and seemingly unending. Like the largest reservoir, your love is that which we must ensnare and once achieved we drink from it with an unending thirst. You are devoted to the idea of love and we will exploit this repeatedly. We exert control over you by suggesting to you that you must not love us if you will not do that what we want. We test your love for us by placing immense demands upon you knowing that you will always rise to the challenge. Your love for us is such that it is sweeter than that which might be obtain from others but it also remains intact for far, far longer. It endures the torrid devaluation and the heartless abandonment so that we know we can count on being able to come back once again and take hold of your love yet again for our own unsavoury and malicious purposes.