Confessions of a Recovering People-Pleaser: It Ruins Your Relationships
Hi. I’m Jessica, and I’m a recovering people-pleaser.
During my last snow day, I spent the evening snuggled up on the couch watching a classic 90’s rom-com, Runaway Bride. A recurring bit in the movie (for those of you who don’t spend as much time in those alternate universes as I do) is Richard Gere’s character asking the Runaway Bride, Julia Roberts’s four ex-fiances how she likes her eggs. Every guy gives a different answer, but all four add “just like me.” At the turning point of the film, our intriguing and and cynical leading man confronts the Pretty Woman about it, claiming she doesn’t really know who she is or what she wants. In the end, she makes herself a dozen plates of eggs to figure out which is her actual favorite (spoiler alert: it’s eggs benedict).
While this example may seem silly, and there could be a lot of reasons for why she orders her eggs the same as her current boo, it really resonated for me as a recovering people-pleaser.
I’m no stranger to the lies we tell ourselves as we try to please the romantic partner in our life.
“I don’t want to be an inconvenience, so I’ll just have what they are having.”
“It doesn’t matter that much to me, so I’ll just let them pick our [dinner, drinks, movie, paint color].”
“If I really ask for what I want or need I’ll be seen as difficult, and I don’t want to rock the boat.”
Do any of these sound familiar? Yeah, me too.
The tricky part is that it starts small with seemingly unimportant things like how you like your eggs or how to spend a Saturday afternoon. We might not genuinely not have a preference, or maybe we just don’t want to be a bother. Either way, we rationalize with: “It doesn’t matter that much to me, so I’ll just let them pick our [dinner, drinks, movie, paint color].”
But after a while never having an opinion — or having one and not wanting to voice it — will become the norm and going against the norm to ask for what you want will feel harder to do. The relationship will become one-sided with only our partner’s favorite breakfast being made, only their interests being explored, and only their world being lived in.
If we’re able to keep up this act, this sacrificing of our needs to fulfill theirs, the relationship will likely progress and get more serious (because our partner is thinking “wow we’re so in-sync!”). The decisions will get bigger and more important, like how to celebrate holidays and whether or not to have kids. These are decisions that require open and honest conversations between two complete people voicing their unique thoughts and personal experiences. By then, the idea of voicing our opinion is so foreign and out of practice, that it feels impossible. Maybe the weight of these decisions will help us snap out of it… or maybe we tell ourselves: “If I really ask for what I want or need I’ll be seen as difficult and I don’t want to rock the boat.”
For those of us who continue to “protect” our relationship by remaining un-opinionated to avoid rocking the boat at all costs, there’s still one more way, the ultimate way, the relationship can be ruined: resentment. That bitter feeling that will eventually set in when you’ve spent years minimizing your needs, muting yourself, and preventing any possibility of honest dialogue.
In the end, this attempt to please our romantic partners deprives them of the opportunity to see all of who we are, the world we live in, and the chance to merge the two. Six years later we might find ourselves in a relationship that was built on us not being who we fully are. And I can tell you from experience, it’s not a good place to be, and a difficult hole to dig yourself out of.
Let’s stop ruining a possible relationship by doing everything we can to please our partners and losing ourselves in the process. It’s ok to want to order pizza instead of sushi. It’s ok to want to go hiking because you’re tired of watching TV. It’s ok if you hate egg yolks and prefer your eggs scrambled and dry. A strong, healthy relationship has room for both people to be who they are, with all of their wants and needs and eggs. And if it feels like it takes a decent amount of people-pleasing to keep your partner, I wonder if it’s a partner worth keeping.
