The Art Of Living Well: 3 Little Things Self-Respecting People Stop Doing To Please Others
Alan Garzón | Pexels Most people have a sense of what unhealthy relationships feel like. But it can be hard to recognize those signs when they first appear in your own life. Often, there is something in you that says, "There should be more." That dissatisfaction will turn into relationship conflict and power struggles, creating a toxic situation that leads to unhappiness.
A sense of unease or emotional doubt is a sign from your body and higher self that you are not in a loving, healthy relationship. It’s important to trust these warnings from your gut and/or your heart — much more than trusting your head/logic, which can direct us into imbalanced relationships.
Self-respecting people understand that constantly accommodating others comes at a cost, and over time, it chips away at you. These three subtle choices protect self-worth and make life feel much calmer and more aligned.
Here are 3 little things self-respecting people stop doing to please others:
1. Bending yourself to be loved by your partner
Do you notice yourself going out of your way to get your partner's attention, acceptance, and approval? This is a common way people learn to receive love. We learn in childhood to please others to earn these types of "rewards." As a result, you become the “pleaser” to get the love you desire. Holding the core belief, “If I do this for you, you will love me.”
This core belief will lead you to do for others at the expense of yourself. In the long run, your distorted core belief leads to distortions in relationship boundaries, which point to your own insecurities, low self-esteem, and fear of losing the relationship. If this feels familiar, you're not alone. Playing the pleaser role is very common. However, it’s very exhausting — physically and emotionally. Furthermore, it’s a sure way for your partner to have control and power over you in the relationship.
It’s also a sure way for you to lose yourself in the relationship because you soon realize you often can’t do enough for your partner and can’t please him/her. Not only is pleasing someone physically and emotionally draining, but it also builds resentment inside you.
Research on people-pleasing found that if you grew up having to be perfect to get your parents' love, you basically learned to scan every little facial expression or tone of voice to figure out if you were doing enough to make them happy. Fast forward to adulthood, and you're stuck in this exhausting pattern where you genuinely believe you have to earn love by doing more and more for people, when really that's just not how love is supposed to work at all.
To cope, you either keep your emotions in check to prevent conflict or you suddenly lash out verbally and/or physically at your partner or others, causing conflict anyway — especially inner conflict. To compensate, you are the one taking responsibility for (owning) most, if not all, of the relationship problems. This only reinforces your self-created core negative belief about yourself.
Tragically, guilt or shame may then consume you, filling you with regret over what an unloving person you feel you are now. Result? You apologize for the conflict, even though it's not all your doing. This also lets your partner off the hook in looking at themselves and their part in the relationship conflict and drama.
2. Being in a relationship where you don't feel included
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Have you been in, or are you currently in a relationship, yet often find yourself feeling alone? This is often a sign that you don’t feel included in the relationship. Your partner is doing their thing, like working long hours or getting involved in recreational and/or social activities, and they are choosing to do these things without you, maybe even to avoid you.
Love means including, so if you are experiencing more exclusion than inclusion from your partner, they do not really love you. Yes, it’s healthy to have some interests and activities without our partners. However, if this exclusion is more the rule than an exception, this should be a red flag of a toxic relationship.
Research on loneliness in relationships showed that when people felt lonely even though they had a partner, it was because they'd stopped really paying attention to each other emotionally, and that disconnect led to way more fighting and way less trust. It's like you can be sitting on the same couch watching the same show, but you're basically strangers because nobody's actually tuning in to what the other person's feeling.
3. Sacrificing who you are to keep someone around
Being the pleaser with a partner who’s selfish and excluding will likely cause you to lose yourself in the relationship. Consciously or unconsciously, you begin to sacrifice your own freedom and self-worth to keep the relationship intact.
Research found that people-pleasers are constantly shoving their own needs to the side because somewhere along the way, they got convinced that their value as a person depends entirely on how much they can do for everyone else. The really messed-up part is they end up feeling even lonelier than before because they're always putting on this fake version of themselves to get people to like them, so nobody actually knows the real them, and they don't even know who the real them is anymore.
This is almost a form of “selling your soul” or “prostituting” yourself for the sake of being in a relationship. It’s a sign that you care more about being in a so-called relationship with someone outside of yourself than being in a healthy relationship with the person inside of you. A loving relationship should offer you the opportunity and freedom to be yourself, not lose yourself in the relationship. If you notice any of the above signs happening in your relationship, you are likely in a toxic relationship.
However, it’s not about changing your partner. Your partner is loving you the best way they know how. Until they desire to change how they know love, they will love and interact with you the way they do now. Your role is to love yourself enough to seek help and resources so you can learn how to cope with a difficult relationship. Additionally, consider the merits of not being with someone who is causing you more heartache than joy.
David Schroeder, LMSW, CPC from Grand Rapids, MI., is a licensed social worker, certified life coach, and author of Just Be Love: Messages on the Spiritual and Human Journey.
