No todos los hijos de puta vienen con advertencia

There's a silent plague wandering around out there that stupid people insist on calling "shyness" or "a calm personality." I call it predator silence. It's that stretch of time, as short as a sigh and as fake as a three-thousand-peso bill, when the latest random person who showed up in your life still hasn't opened their mouth wide enough for the monster inside to crawl out.

There they are. Sitting right in front of you, smiling like saints on an altar, nodding along with every stupid thing you say and looking at you as if you were the eighth wonder of the world. And there you are, naturally gullible and desperately hungry to believe in miracles, directing a whole Hollywood movie in your head: "They're just so reserved," "Now this is a real man," "She's a grounded woman, not like all those hysterical women I know."

No. Get off that cloud. They weren't mature, they weren't different, and they sure as hell weren't decent. They simply hadn't started talking yet.

Silence isn't a virtue; silence is the waiting room of the madhouse. It's the laboratory where they're manufacturing the lie they're eventually going to shove down your throat. People enter your life dressed like harmless sheep, smelling of expensive perfume, acting spiritual, healed and so damn humble it makes you want to puke. They study you. They take your measure. They figure out where you're weak, what you need, what makes you angry and what makes you cry. And once you've swallowed the whole performance, once they know you're caught in the net, they rip off the costume and show you the claws underneath.

The Silent Guy from the First Three Dates and His Story About the "Crazy Exes"

I knew of one miserable bastard who was the king of this strategy, although this works both ways. On the first date, the guy was a tomb. A monument to discretion. She talked, vented, told him practically everything except the exact date she planned on dying, while he sat there staring at her, drinking beer and nodding like one of those bobbleheads people put in taxis. Anyone would have thought he was having a divine revelation just by listening to her.

The truth? Silence worked beautifully for him. While she handed over her complete biography, he risked absolutely nothing of his own. He listened, measured and stored information. I have no idea what was going through his head. I do know what he did later with everything she told him. And that's enough for me.

By the third date, once he decided his prey had been sufficiently hypnotized by all that silence, he finally opened his mouth. Not to have a conversation. To spit out the first dose of poison: the misunderstood victim speech. "Life has been so hard on me… every one of my exes was completely insane and wanted to destroy me," he said with watery eyes.

You have to be seriously fucked in the head to hear someone say every one of their exes was crazy and think: "Oh, poor thing. It'll be different with me because I'll heal him with my love."

Wake the hell up. If a man tells you every woman from his past was a psycho, or a woman swears every man she ever dated was a monster, they're not telling you their life story. They're reading you the script they'll use about you three months from now when they're done using you. They are the common denominator in that entire graveyard of relationships, but inside their own sick little heads, they're the only saints still walking the Earth.

The Female Version: The Gentle Dove Looking for a Savior

And men aren't immune to falling straight into this trap either. They get the "gentle dove" version. A woman who, during the first few dates, wouldn't break a plate. Quiet. Mystical. Soft-spoken. She looks as if she needs someone to rescue her from the cruel world. She acts uninterested in material things. She tells you money doesn't matter to her. All she wants is "peace and mental connection." The guy, convinced he's the alpha-male savior of the century, sticks out his chest and hands over the keys to his life, his wallet and his trust.

Give it three months. The second the gentle dove feels safe in the nest, her voice shoots up three octaves. The woman who didn't care about material things now throws a fit if you don't take her to the trendy restaurant. And the one who was "all peace" turns out to be possessive and jealous enough to inspect your bank statement. That early silence wasn't calm. It was reconnaissance. They were figuring out exactly how much they could get out of you.

The Job Interview: Corporate Tinder

And this circus isn't exclusive to relationships and beds; the exact same shit happens in the street, with business partners, friends and offices. A job interview is one of the most elegant lies in the world, a nest of vipers where everybody pretends to be flexible, modern and deeply concerned about your mental health.

"We're a family here," says the HR person with a plastic smile stretched from ear to ear. "We respect people's time. Weekends are sacred. We believe in horizontal leadership."

Bullshit. Wait until ten at night on a holiday Sunday when the message from your boss lands on WhatsApp saying "an emergency came up" and you need to fix it right now. The same person who swore they respected your time during the interview now treats you like a servant because they know you need the paycheck.

They lie with an ease that is almost impressive. They sell you a fairy tale so you'll sign the contract. And once you're inside and dependent on them, out comes the whip. They arrived as sheep and ended up acting like plantation bosses.

I'm not telling you to walk through life permanently defensive, distrusting everyone who comes near you. What I'm telling you is to stop confusing silence with decency. Silence is neutral. Sometimes it's simply the calculated strategy of someone smart enough to know that if they show you their claws on day one, you'll tell them to fuck off immediately.

There's a much faster way to figure them out than waiting for the costume to fall apart on its own.

Tell Them No and Watch the Halo Fall Off

Watching how someone treats a waiter is useful, sure. But that's just the warm-up. The real show begins when you tell them no and find out how they react when you decide your peace matters more than their convenience.

We live in a world full of professional users who get accustomed to your generosity, your time and your space. They settle into your life, climb onto your shoulders, and then expect you to carry their trauma, their emotional debts and their whims. And there we are, carrying around that stupid guilt they taught us since childhood, sacrificing ourselves so other people don't feel "uncomfortable."

Want to see the devil's real face? Tell them NO.

• Tell that abusive client who messages you at midnight that you're not working at that hour, and if they don't like it, they can find someone else.

• Tell that so-called friend you're done lending money and solving their life for the thousandth time.

• Tell that random person who showed up in your life that you're not putting up with their disrespect and you're not begging for attention.

That's exactly where all the cheap mysticism and fake spirituality disappears. The precise second you stop being useful, you stop being "such a good person" and suddenly you become "selfish," "the bad one," "arrogant." They create drama, freeze you out, or call you crazy because you dared to think about yourself before thinking about them.

"The person who gets pissed off when you set a boundary was benefiting from the fact that you didn't have one."

Let them be uncomfortable. Let them twist in their own anger now that they can't manipulate you anymore. Let them think whatever the hell they want, let them talk shit about you on every street corner, let them say you changed. Of course you changed. You stopped being a fool and started being free.

Peace has a very high price, and you pay for it with other people's dissatisfaction. The person who truly cares about you respects your distance. The person who wants to use you gets pissed off when you close the door. That's the math of life.

Let it hurt them, let it make them uncomfortable, let them bite their tongues. Your peace is not negotiable just to protect some parasite's ego.

The Hyenas at My Table: Espionage with Coffee

The same garbage happens with so-called friendships. That new "friend" who enters your life and spends the first few weeks showering you with praise, applauding everything you do and saying: "Wow, I really admire you so much. You're such an inspiration!"

That gentle little sheep simply hasn't had the opportunity to bite you yet because it still doesn't know where your weak spots are.

Give it time. Envy doesn't need an invitation card; it only needs a reason. And without meaning to, you'll give them one the day things start going a little better for you, the day you buy something they can't afford, or the day you shine under your own light without asking anyone's permission. That's when the gentle dove pulls off the sheepskin and shows you the teeth underneath.