Why was I a bad friend?
People pleasing your way through life will give you crumbs
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Two years ago a very close friend suddenly broke up with me. It must have been building up inside her for some time but I had no idea until the breaking point that she was so discontent in our friendship. I was blinded by my self-righteousness, how I was doing things for her, how nice and tolerant I was (I kid you not, I thought this way!) and I was angry at her for not wanting to repair our friendship. But the truth is, she was right that I wasn’t the person who you could safely confide in with your hurt feelings. I was so focused on being a ‘good’ person, a ‘good’ friend, to do things that would make me lovable, to act a certain imagined way others would perceive me as good and treat me kindly. I pleased my way through life in the pursuit of connection but I failed miserably every time I wasn’t my authentic self, whenever I failed to communicate what I thought, felt and needed. I lost this precious friend to finally learn the lesson. In my eyes, this is the true cost of people pleasing.
And what’s on the other side? The other day I was talking to someone about my experience of motherhood shifting. It’s still hard for me to admit but I feared being with my children when they were younger because I was anxious all the time that I would fuck them up badly with something I did. I feared that my worst self would unexpectedly creep up at any corner. Sometimes it did but a lot of the times I was kind and nice to them. During my most severe burnout period, I didn’t even want to be with them because on top of being burnt out, I was constantly feeling like a failure as a mom that I could not bring myself to go to the playground with them or connect with them because I was so disconnected. Thankfully, this fearful side of my motherhood creeps in way less and I’m more confident. I just wanted to share this amazing shift with my friend. I wanted her to be happy for me. But what she did instead was she said that it’s okay to not want to be with people all the time, including your children. I instantly felt uneasy, and told her it’s not about that, I’m just happy to connect with them more. She didn’t really get it. Her response sent me the message that I was thinking about this the wrong way. I think she saw an insecurity and she wanted to fix it, even if it wasn’t a problem to fix. I know she meant well but I felt insecure and disempowered with her afterwards. In my eyes, that’s the receiving end of people pleasing. Not feeling great either.
Ever since that encounter, I can’t stop thinking about disempowerment. How others do it to me, how I let it in and how I do it to others. I’m not blaming anyone here, my aim is to notice and, for me personally, to heal from this pattern. But whenever I notice that someone wants to fix something for me and I feel their discomfort after I let them know somehow that’s not useful for me, the whole conversation goes adrift, the connection is lost. I genuinely love when someone thinks about my problem so much that they comes up with something that looks helpful for them in the situation but once that’s aired out and the other person doesn’t want anything back, like validation or badge of honour for their contribution, it feels just loving. Disempowerment comes when you sense that the other person knows better your situation and inevitably there will be some bad vibe going on.
People pleasing actually pleases no one. The person who does it suffers from the glass cage it puts them in, reaching out to others but not being able to connect because of their relentless fixing mindset inhibits that. It stems from being insecure and wanting to find validation from others on how valuable, how useful they are. I don’t like the term people pleasing for this phenomenon though. I don’t think it truly captures the essence of it. ‘Fixers with a saviour mindset but feel resentment when their ideas are not useful’ much better captures the concept but it’s a mouthful.
Suppressing your needs vs genuinely being helpful to others
Another aspect of people pleasing is that the person doing all that not-asked-for pleasing is usually suppressing some need that’s not met in them. Suppressed needs and feelings tend to get out somehow though, mostly in the form of lashing out which is another alienating thing to do. In my case, I simply wanted to connect to others. I wanted their attention, love and consideration but whenever I strained myself to be a different person, a ‘better’ person who I wasn’t, I always got back crumbs. Once, when I had no kids and I had plenty of time, I had a friend who regularly dumped all her worries (mostly about her relationship) in our chat and I jumped on it every time to help out. But once I wanted to meet up and do something IRL, she always had some other thing to do. I feared putting in boundaries because I feared if I did them, the other person would leave me. And I might be right about that one but what I missed is that it’s a good thing if they do. I feared being alone, and while I was stuck in these people pleasing friendships, I was missing out on real connections. Burnout shone a light on that I was doing this the wrong way. I was so depleted that there was no other option than to realise I could only go on if my tank got filled up with love and connection. If someone’s now reluctant to give me that, I’m shifting away from them. I’m also embracing the idea that I’m not too much or I want too much, even though I had ‘friends’ telling me so. My needs are valid, my feelings are valid and I don’t have to accept people’s good intentions as a source of caring attitude because it won’t fill my cup. Good intentions won’t give me what I actually need.
You can please people with genuine lovely actions though and it’s fulfilling. What is the true difference is that people pleasing drains your energy, being genuinely helpful to others while you stay authentic to yourself is energising. Having a heart-to-heart with a friend, or lending a hand when you have the capacity for it will fill your heart with joy.
I’m not sad I learned all of this the hard way. I don’t regret not having proper friendships before or fucking up a relationship or ten. I have relational trauma and it wasn’t my fault that I had no idea how to authentically connect to other people. What those losses taught me was valuable though. I knew something was wrong since I was a kid but the friend whom I lost putting up such a firm and descriptive boundary with me finally showed me what the problem was. Not immediately but eventually with time and lots of healing. And with doing new things, pursuing my dreams, filling my cup and suddenly, lovely people started to gravitate toward me. I have a small base of people genuinely supporting me, my writing, my yoga instructor journey and I’m just so grateful for that. And I also think, you can’t wait to connect to others when you’re fully healed. First of all, there’s no such thing as healed, the work is never done, we’re all flawed however hard we try not to be. And second, you can fix your issues, insecurities through relationships. It’s good to do that with a therapist because they are trained for it but not every relationship issue will come out with a therapist, only certain aspects and you have to go into the wild to heal your relational wounds through connections with all kinds of people. Safe relationships ground you and make you feel safe and unsafe relationships could point you to wounds that you need to tend to. You need both for healing but ideally you will confide in safe people. You cannot heal by yourself. You can only do it with others. Like everything in life. And the best antidote to people pleasing, from a person who has no degree in psychology or any other formal education about this only my experience of it, is just being your true self and doing things you enjoy doing. The rest will sort itself out.
Everything in this post is a deeply personal perspective and is not a universal experience.
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Thank you for sharing this beautiful, thoughtful post. I'm trying to write my own piece about friendship at the moment and it's a messy concept to get my head around. On the one hand, I often feel lonely/hungry for deeper friendships and wounded when people don't seem as interested in that as me. But, I also know I can be a "bad" friend. I want to write something that captures both sides of this complex, hard to define set of relationships that mean so much to me but which I often feel like I'm failing at. Thank you for sharing your experiences too - this was a lovely post to read!