People Are Strange

I am listening to Montel right now. I appreciate his gossip show over the rest because the majority of the people he features are good, steady, middle class people who got screwed & are either on a crusade to help others avoid their mistakes or are in such desperate need for help, that they are willing to be a negative example. It is not Jerry Springer - esque, notr is it an Oprah sob fest complete with bits on how you too can look like Nicole Kidman for the low cost of only $1,000! Whoo-Hooo!

Any way, he has people on who really got screwed by the opposite sex. I should not be watching this show because I am already cynical about interpersonal relationships. But anyway, these are people who fell for the ultimate scammers. These are people who married multiple times without bothering to divorce anyone. Scum who floated from house to house, living off all of these people, telling huge lies to explain all the little details away.

I do not get that sort of mentality. How can you willing go from 1 person to another, sleeping with all of them, being what each of them wants/needs to the point that they do not question the extended absences, and generally making it work? I can get the extended absences because they are a fact of life if 1 or both are military, police, firemen, whatever. And I understand the high divorce rates because it is hard to cope with watching someone you love go off in their uniform that you bitch about washing & ironing, knowing that there is a fairly strong chance the next time you see them, they could have a bullet hole, glass shards, bone(s) broken, whatever. But what if that is not the reason given? What if it is all a lie? And you find out about it? I know I would be pissed and make some rather drastic changes, the least of which would changing the locks & making sure all utilities & credit cards are in my name ONLY. Moving would be next & so would be a visit to the lawyers & cops, but that is just me.

But the relational aspects throw me completely. I have a hard enough time being everything my family wants me to be, let alone my deliberately small circle of friends. Fortunately, all of us have lives that mean I can disappear from theirs & not be missed or worried about. The internet (& this blog) have helped a lot there, but it is still true. We do talk, we do visit, but it is hard enough to be calm, patient, & understanding where anyone is concerned. So how do these shit heads pull it off for so many different people?

I am awed in a rather repulsed kind of way. I want to know how they can be so charming and emotionally "there" that there are people willing to give to them & buy the lines they sell.

I do not mean to imply that I am innocent of any of these same things, no one is. But then again, I do not have 15 husbands in a 3 state area, all of them paying for a house, my credit cards, and legal fees, each of them willing to stay with me to the day I die either. I have not lied to 10 others, each of them believing I was a member of the military when in reality I was a convicted deserter & had a bounty on my head. Little different things like that, you know?