When you’re going through a low phase in your life, you sometimes meet people who are extremely nice to you. These people, who are complete strangers to begin with, will go out of their way to cheer you up, offer their shoulders for you to cry on, lend a sympathetic year. They care about every little detail, they want to know more about you and how you got yourself in the dark place. They will curse the people responsible for causing you pain. They will buy you gifts and treat you to meals. You feel overwhelmed and wonder what you did to deserve their love. You feel indebted and want to repay every little nice thing and even go beyond that. You think your friends and family who have known you all your life just don’t get you. But these people do.

Guess what?

These are the most toxic people you will ever come across. They’re just there to prey on your vulnerabilities and mine your miseries to make themselves feel better about their own lives. They will gossip about you behind your back and also make snarky comments to your face in front of others. They will also never respect you and look at you like some rescue animal that they deigned to adopt. Soon, you will find yourself wondering what went wrong because they’ve moved on to their next victim. And beware, sometimes these predators hunt in pairs. Toxic couples who can’t sort out their own issues tend to prey on singles for their own twisted pleasure. 

If you’re going through something difficult, seek professional help if you can. And only confide in people who’ve known you for a long time. We think the people within our close circle will judge us so we talk to complete strangers. Don’t do that, unless it’s a professional. If someone you barely know is overly nice to you, that’s a huge red flag. No one is that nice without an agenda and also without actually knowing you well. 

I’ve learned this lesson the hard way. This is why I don’t warm up to strangers anymore. Especially people who get overly friendly immediately and start sharing extremely personal details and expect me to reciprocate. You can call me rude, cold and callous… I don’t mind because you don’t even know me. So your opinion of me is just based on what you think I should be giving you but am not. 

Back to my main point—Watch your back and take good care of yourself.