People Pleasers in Relationships

It can take a while to realise what’s happened. For a long time, it simply seems that one has miraculously fallen in with a partner entirely well attuned to all of one’s tastes and proclivities. One loves that particular show? Amazingly, so do they. This song is by one’s favourite band: they’ve adored it for years. Pasta with mushrooms; it’s exactly what they crave. 

This can feel profoundly thrilling. For all the lipservice we tend to pay to appreciating differences, it is – secretly – the similarities we long for. 

But a more complicated and human truth is fated eventually to emerge. They told us they were delighted with an item of clothing we bought for them; one day we find they’ve gone out and swapped it for something else. They told us they hated a particular person we were suspicious of; they’ve had lunch with them yesterday. They assured us they had no ambitions in a particular area; their search history suggests otherwise. 

We might – in irritation – be tempted to label our companion ‘a liar’ or ‘deceitful.’ But something more poignant is at play. What we have on our hands is that most benighted of psychological types: the people-pleaser, a harried soul morbidly fearful of expressing their true opinions lest these clash with those of others and prone to initiating a variety of secret agendas in the hope of continuing to be liked.

People-pleasers are hard enough at the office and in ordinary friendships. They are especially tricky in love for their behaviour so carefully tickles the area of our most profound hope: that someone – at last – agrees with us. It isn’t that the people-pleaser is deep down entirely at odds with us; that would be too neat and in a sense simple enough to deal with. It’s just we can’t easily tell where natural alignment ends and manic subservient agreement begins; what should we make of this musical enthusiasm? Do they really think exactly as we do about money? The questions get ever larger and more consequential: is their sexuality really what they say? Do they actually want to get married? 

The tragedy is that the people-pleaser is deep down just horribly afraid. Something in their past has proved to them that they can never be forgiven for speaking their minds. Their childhoods have been a lesson in the importance of shape shifting. Surrounding cruelty means they have had to grow into geniuses at detecting what the other person wants – and at serving it up to them with near-total fidelity. 

We know what we need to do in theory: to give our companion a repeated taste of the acceptability of their true tastes in music, pasta, friendship and existence. The problem is that we tend to get so upset when we stumble on examples of incongruent behaviour that we do precisely the opposite. We lose our tempers at their subterfuges and thereby enforce their very worst fears: that honesty never pays, that they must just lie better next time.

Humour may have to be the answer. As early as we can, we need to give them a toy chameleon as a gift – and send the animals as emojis with a question mark whenever they outline their wishes for the weekend or show deep enthusiasm for our career plans. We have to show that a clashes in views need not be a catastrophe. That when there is genuine love, of the kind there never was at their origins, differences can be survivable, that in a functioning relationship, an argument is invariably better than a lie.