HAPPINESS VAMPIRES

It is true that in this World, and at any given moment, you can find yourself in the company of all kinds of people.We play the lottery of personalities and characters every time we meet new types of people: choosing our numbers not so cleverly perhaps, and opening ourselves up to failure or potential social success.

As a happy person and someone who has found their personal happiness through fighting to achieve it, sometimes I simply don´t see the inherent unhappiness in others.I first see the positive in new friends and let my intuition guide me.I choose my friendships in this manner, as do the majority of us.If we see some kind of chemistry between ourselves and our new acquaintance, and a little complicity thrown into the mix, this is enough for us to choose this person as a friend.

It´s true that in the moment in which we want to make a new friend, we show our best side. In social situations one has to adapt to social norms, and people show their most open and attractive facets in order to appeal to strangers.W,e as the chosen target of this attention, react in the same manner: entering into this unspoken but visually centered social game of attraction.However, what is really fascinating is the darker and the more obscure side that people choose not to openly display at the beginning of a friendship.

Here in this text, we are speaking about the phenomenon of the Happiness Vampires; people who you choose as friends or confidantes and who over time betray you emotionally. The guilty culprit for such injust and particularly unpleasant behaviour?The inherent unhappiness of the aforementioned person.

In this case, the Happiness Vampires have pitched up in the soup of Barcelona. They are the quiet, unassuming one who are secretly resenting you.
Here in the city ( and I have suficient experience of this to be able to comment!!) there seems to be a large percentage of profoundly dissatisfied people.Focusing on the ones that I have got to know personally, I can say that this has ocurred to them for various reasons; Their work choices have failed to make them happy profesionally and as such they need to make a specific change to their work life.However, for the moment they are not emotionally ready to take such a large step.
Their lovelife is incomplete and empty. They lack fundamental affection and love from a partner.In place of achieving this (by first learning to love themselves more of course) they choose to fill their lifes with sporadic physical encounters, which only serve to make them feel even more dissatisfied and lonely.A pattern of behaviour that many of us do indeed fall into at some stage of our single lives, but if we have insight we stop this behaviour in response to our emotions telling us to wise up.
Happiness Vampires don´t see it that way. This inert incapability to change their lives for the better, stems from their extreme lack of self confidence.Is there a more dangerous mix in an unhappy person: a lack of self confidence and a deep resentment and jealousy towards those of us who are indeed happy?

This year I choose particularly badly when it came to female friends, or maybe they choose me?These complicated friendships have left me both tired and weary.
One female friend who is foreign and has been here in Barcelona for over four years, is a particularly negative and complex woman. 
I know that her odd and rather aggressive attitude towards me stems from her deep lack of self confidence and belief in herself. She found herself attracted to me as a person but then repelled by my happiness: quite literally. So she tried to shatter my happiness to a certain extent with her harsh criticisms and words, and in the short term she succeeded in doing so.I realize that it is not my problem as such, but this profound pyschological issue of hers was inevitably transferred onto me.
When a person like this enters your life, their issues, grievances and negative energy, at some point will be transformed into your ´´received´´ issues.They metaphorically post it to you like a letter...Bit by bit they transfer their anger, fury and deep unhappiness onto you, and the most concerning part of this off loading of energies, is that at the beginning you are not aware it is happening.Your trust in the person betrays you in a way, and your eyes are temporarily closed. This continues to happen until you are left totally exhausted by trying to support, understand and accept this person´s odd attitude.It´s like an emotional deception.You see the positive in this person and roll with that.In exchange, you may naively expect them to also see the good in you and want to be a part of that.Of course we all have our faults and our less flattering traits!However, in a friendship, one needs to accept everything on offer.

Sadly, the Happiness Vampires see the World through grey eyes and via a particularly melancholic viewpoint.At the end they do indeed suck some of your lifeblood and positive energy, and this leaves you saddened and hurt.There doesn´t exist any remedy for this situation, as these Vampires are problematic and don´t share, and never will share, your lust for life.

The process of choosing, maintaining and loosing certain friendships, is part and parcel of the complexities of human relationships.However, the responsibility for regaining the power and eliminating these types of situations by choosing friends more carefully , lies in each of us.
In conclusion, one needs to be aware from the outset that not everyone is going to take to you as you would like them to.We have to look for the signals at the beginning of the ´´friendship election  process´´.There are certain people who hold us back and oppress us emotionally, and we need to discern if that is the case early on.We are always within our right to seperate ourselves from somebody toxic.


Barcelona for me is bursting with interesting and dynamic people, worthwhile opportunities and life enhancing experiences.However, and on the otherhand, I am only too aware that a great deal of unhappiness also exists here.Many people of all ages and from different social classes suffer from economic and circumstancial problems.
The Happiness Vampires, even though it saddens me to think of their continued self maintained unhappiness, in a way choose to perpetuate their lack of joy. They could change if they choose to.They however stay trapped in their frustrated worlds without knowing how to change perhaps.In the process, the innocents who enter and exit their lives are affected negatively. 
Their emotional state is like a drug, and they can´t stop indulging in it.They leave us weary and sad, and this in my book is called: deep selfishness.