The old fashioned saying is that there has to be give and take in a relationship.  And I guess we are primed to give, manipulated into continuing and then it's only when you need to take you discover it's a one way street, and has been all along.

I remember as a premie doing service out in the paddocks of Amaroo, like many of us I had this idea that we would function well as a group if we all did what we wanted.  and it worked in small groups. 

Ha ha, it seems laughable now tho I still believe it, ha ha ha.  I do, I really do.  If everyone were like me it would work!

But the penny has dropped.  We are not one in the spirit, let alone one in the Lord.  It's not just skin deep, people are very different.    

I can't stand the women who want to tell you what to do all the time.  Really the idea of functioning as a group if you let people just do as they will and don't try and tell them what to do is not just a religious one - we all tend to like that, it feels respectful of our being - it's the same at the bridge club as it was in the cult, those of us who don't want to be told what to do band together happily and then there are those who want to be the ones to tell you what to do - not that they want to be told what to do either - they do their hen-pecking thing. 

I just think it's so interesting - manipulators, hen peckers, all of it, it's not like we don't all do all of it but the results are so polar opposite dependent on the nature of the person - are they nice or nasty.  I know there are a 100 shades of nice and a 100 shades of nasty but I think I still believe in a split.  

nice people go to heaven nasty people go to hell.  so yes no matter how horrible they are to you you feel compassion but that doesn't mean you have to be sympathetic.  They'll only use it against you.