What I know about people-pleasing
from a recently concluded lifetime of fawning
People-pleasing comes from a perceived lack of agency. Or at least, it did for me. And that perception was gifted to me from an upbringing that did not involve a lot of agency or self-determination.
This was my subconscious pattern: I do not have discernment; other people are more capable of making decisions than I am. I’ve been told my entire life that I don’t make good choices, so it must be true. I’ve been told my experiences and emotions were factually incorrect my entire life, so it must be true. Therefore, even though I have my own opinions and desires and boundaries, I assume other people know better than I do about myself, so I will not assert myself when I’m challenged. I’m terrified of the conflict that comes with disagreeing with a friend, so I’m going to agree with everything they say even if it’s something I viscerally disagree with. I will spend years in friendships of obligation with people who think I like them a lot more than I actually do. I will find a way to release the pressure of masking intensely through every single social interaction, and it will involve copious amounts of isolation and numbing.
The most extreme example I have of this is when my partner and I moved in with someone I had been in a friendship of obligation with for a handful of years. I did actually like this person; loved them, even. But I had swallowed so many of my own opinions in the presence of their boisterous and outspoken personality. It was 2020, we all needed some stability in our housing situations, and we trusted each other, so we became roommates. It seemed logical at the time. And it was, until a power dynamic began to unfold and I was faced with the very harsh consequences of my years of fawning and masking with this person. What I know about people-pleasing is that it can absolutely blow up in your face and lead to more conflict than you were attempting to avoid in the first place. When interpersonal tensions in our household became too much for this person to handle, they, being the only one who was actually on the lease, did the thing they swore they would never do to me: kicked us out with less than a month’s notice and forced me back into a place of housing instability.
Now, here’s the point: I don’t believe this person is a villain, but they crossed my boundaries on a regular basis and frequently projected their fraught relationship with their mother onto me, so I was absolutely in a position where I needed to face the conflicts that were happening outside of me, and I didn’t, so they became conflicts that happened purely inside of me. You know what we call that?
Resentment.
I think of resentment like a cancer to relationships: it will rot them from the inside out, and the longer it goes unchecked, the harder it is to recover from. Living with resentment is a physical burden as well as an emotional one. Resentment occurs when conflicts aren’t given the space, time, or effort to complete their life cycle. What I know about people-pleasing is that it will lead you to a lifetime of resentment, an eternity of clenched jaws, and a purgatory of hollow relationships.
It’s been over a year since I last spoke to my old roommate. After we moved out, it was been radio silence and it probably will remain that way forever. And you know why? Because, after literally 13 months of rumination and inner searching and personal accountability, I’ve realized this: I’m allowed to be mad at them. I’m allowed to feel like what they did was not okay. I’m allowed to never want to speak to them again because they did something that was fucked up to me. What I know about people-pleasing is that it can lead you to gaslight yourself about what you’re even allowed to feel. I always thought that I wasn’t allowed to feel anger towards this person because they had given me a place to live, because they were also traumatized, because they were disabled, because they were my friend. I always convinced myself that I wasn’t allowed to bring up boundary violations because I also hadn’t been the perfect roommate. More than anything, I avoided conflict and defaulted to fawning my entire life because I did not trust myself. I believed that I inherently lacked discernment, because that’s what I had been told. I automatically folded to the wills and beliefs of whoever was standing closest to me, because I didn’t trust myself to discover and stand behind my own beliefs—they likely wouldn’t be correct or intelligent, anyway. Other people know better than I do, so why bother speaking up?
I’m not fixed. Today, conflict still terrifies me. But it terrifies me less. Today, I trust myself and my discernment and I am not threatened by the thought of someone not liking me because I disagree with them or enforce my boundaries with them. Today, what I know about people-pleasing is that any perceived short-term benefits that come from it are actually detrimental in the long run. People-pleasing is the sugary breakfast cereal of relationships: you can start your day with it, and it’ll probably feel good for a little while, but it’s not a very solid or nurturing foundation, and over time, it’ll rot your teeth.