What are some ways you can defend yourself from being taken advantage of? I feel like everyone gets tried, but often enough you will be sized up on your appearance , for people to see if they can try you. What are some ways you communicate to people in the beginning that this won’t be possible? – Share experiences and stories of how people took advantage of you . Ex: maybe guys started hitting the gym and gained more respect, or girls maybe you lost weight and started acting mean etc.)
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Learn to say ‘no’.
This is the situation I’m currently in. I’m 23m there’s this woman at my work 32f and I really really like her. She doesn’t have a car at the moment so I’ve offered to give her rides even though it’s going out of my way and switching my schedule all up. We are at completely different points in our lives she has a kid and is moving houses just all around busy as can be, and me I have no obligation outside of work, riddled with anxiety and feel like I’m never going to succeed or be happy. So on some level I understand why it could never work but I verbally expressed how I felt the other day and she said some of the feeling was mutual but it could never happen because of the age difference. Then she said “you’re 14 years older than my son” and what really hurt was “I couldn’t even bring you to the family functions, they would clown me because of your age” I already struggle with confidence and insecurity issues so that was degrading but now I’ve realized that the whole time I’m just getting used for a free ride, which wasn’t a big deal until being told that I’d be embarrassing to be with. Moral of the story is I’m terrible at saying NO and have been and most likely will continue to get taken advantage of.
I don’t think you need to stop being nice to stop letting people taking advantage of you. Just a disclaimer.
I am considered as nice and helpful by most who knows me. But I can and do say “No” which gets the job done.
If someone then gets mad and tries to gaslight me or manipulate me, I straight call them out on what they are doing, effectively presenting to them what they are doing then asking how is this going to help anybody.
They either get even more pissed off or back off, it surprisingly works. In any case they do not try to use me then and there. They may try later but rinse and repeat.
In short: learn to say “no”.
This is an ongoing struggle as I typically choose friends who have something I admire, I noticed I choose alfas. But it seems when I set a boundary, time after time, the person gets mad and I lose the friendship. I assume this is my fault for allowing them to take charge all along and giving them the power but I am really trying to hold boundaries for what I stand for and it inevitably ends the friendship.
I just need to keep nice people around.