It’s one thing to interact authentically. It’s another to feel that you have to prove your genuineness. (We have just started a new podcast series discussing “Faking Authenticity.”)
This awkward feeling often rears its head when someone makes an unprovoked accusation about your “true” intentions or hints at possibly “mixed” motives. “Are you trying to undermine my authority?” “Look who’s going home early.” “You’re not doing anything, are you?”
In response we rush to do something that will prove that the accusation has no merit.
I suggest that this unsolicited extra effort on our part is the act of a cheap prostitute.
A public confession of sorts that your value is open to negotiation and requires continual substantiation. “If I just show a little more flesh, they’ll choose me.”
Accusations about the inner workings of your heart and mind are forms of baiting the “prostitute” in you. The part of you that might believe that the accusations could have merit and need to be disproved. The result is your own voluntary offering of “flesh.” Like the prostitute, no one is forcing you to do anything. You actually take it upon yourself to give away what is yours. You give away your power on the cheap by legitimating their original suggestion with your unsolicited “proof.”
Are you sabotaging your own efforts by giving yourself away for cheap? Are you kept off balance by the felt need to make “flesh” offerings to those who don’t deserve them? When you work extra hard, do you end up feeling more valuable or less?
If you’ve been feeling cheap, we need to talk. There are alternatives to the desperate tactics of the cheap prostitute.