Remember when you were younger, and a relative would give you a one hundred dollar bill, and you savored it? You carefully thought of what to spend it on and kept it hidden in the most precious space of your wallet. Heck, you might even still do this. I know I’m still hesitant when it comes to breaking large bills. However, if I have two of these bills, I don’t really care how I spend the first one, because I have a back up now. I have two. Even if the first one is “my first $100 ever” or even if it has the cool new design on it, whereas the second one does not, it doesn’t really matter. I have two now, so the first one doesn’t mean as much. This outlook is a lot like being someone’s "back up plan."
As someone’s back up, you stay hidden in their wallet while they go out and try to get other one hundred dollar bills. You wait and hope that maybe they will appreciate what they already have, but they usually don’t. Maybe they will find 20 dollar bills and 50 dollar bills, but they don’t quite find another one hundred dollar bill. Finally, one day, maybe they do find another one hundred dollar bill. Once this happens, the original one hundred dollar bill gets spent and forgotten, and the cycle restarts.
Strangely, this phenomenon sounds a lot like an unappreciative significant other. They keep you around with minimal effort, but keep you just involved enough so you stay in the toxic cycle. However, once they find a new person to keep them occupied and who matches up to you in their mind (not just another 50 or 20, but a rivaling one hundred), then you get dropped like a hat, as if this limbo wasn't already like being dropped.
It sucks, but this analogy is the rule of being an option. If it sounds familiar to you, then, unfortunately, it probably is.
Whoever is keeping you around just enough so that they can fall back on you if they don’t find their next one hundred dollar bill is probably just using you. This may not be on purpose, or it may be deliberate; that is a case by case basis. If this is you, though, and you see it playing out in your own life, stop it!
Just like in the real world, if you leave your money out irresponsibly and don’t take care of it, it gets stolen. If someone puts you on the back burner and treats you like an option, it’s time to look at other opportunities for yourself so you can ultimately get “stolen.”
Being stuck in someone’s wallet is an injustice. If they aren’t going to make the commitment to put you in savings and keep you around, but they’re too greedy to spend you on something (let you go), then you should respond in the way any money responds when it is used improperly and pull a vanishing act.
