Why People Pleasing Is Ruining Your Relationships (And How To Stop)

On the surface, people pleasing sounds like a good thing, right? Who doesn’t want the people around them to be happy? However, people pleasing actually refers to a very specific phenomenon that makes it impossible to be truly intimate with others and destroys the possibility of having the kind of closeness that the people pleasers crave in the first place.

So, what is people pleasing and how do you stop?

People pleasing is a pattern of behavior where a person puts the perceived or stated needs of another person above their own, often at their own expense, in order to feel safe and loved. The roots of people pleasing come from childhood experiences where you learned that your emotions are not important and that you must prioritize the needs of other people for your own survival and safety. As a child, people pleasing was likely necessary to keep you safe but unfortunately it doesn’t work the same way once you’re an adult. 

Here’s why.

Authentic intimate relationships are built on the idea that both people have needs and that both people do their best to treat each other well with those needs in mind. However, if one partner is people pleasing, they are by necessity hiding their own needs (often even from themselves) and focusing on the needs of the other person. This means the other person doesn’t really have a chance to understand their partner at all, which means there’s no way they could even begin to meet their needs. The people pleaser often becomes resentful that their partner expects so much of them when ironically, they are the ones setting those expectations and depriving their partner of the opportunity to see what they need and support them in return.

See how this ruins intimacy?  What kept you safe before is actually what keeps you at a distance now.

The best way to stop people pleasing is to recognize where it comes from and learn how to identify your own needs, authentically and kindly communicate them to others, and give them the same emotional weight that other people’s needs have occupied all this time. That last step is often the hardest as people who grew up people pleasing may not even know they deserve to have their own needs but they absolutely do.

Obviously, this is not an overnight process, but working with a therapist who is familiar with attachment theory and trauma can help you to unpack where these behaviors came from, honor how they served you, and discover new ways to foster the kind of loving, intimate relationships that you’ve always wanted. If you feel that talking to a therapist would help you overcome people pleasing so you can have stronger relationships, feel free to get in touch with us for a free consultation.