Living Life for YOU: Is Your People Pleasing Damaging Your Relationships? + FREE Bust Your People-Pleasing Beliefs Worksheet
When you’re a people pleaser, you pour a lot of your time and energy into doing things for other people, saying “yes” to their requests, and going along with what they want and say.
That’s why you might think that even though people pleasing can make you feel unhappy or burned out, it must be good for your relationships. After all, who wouldn’t want a partner who always agrees with them, a friend who never says “no,” or an employee who’s always baking them treats?
It’s true that people pleasing might reduce conflict in the relationship on the surface. And it might seem to make the other person really happy and satisfied with the relationship.
But the reality is that people pleasing doesn’t help relationships or set them up for success. Instead, it hurts them.
Why?
That’s exactly what I’m going to break down in this post.
Keep reading below to discover why your people pleasing is damaging your relationships.
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People Pleasing Limits Your Satisfaction in Relationships
One way that people pleasing harms your relationships is by limiting your satisfaction in these relationships.
People pleasing limits your relationship satisfaction by preventing your relationships from being reciprocal and meeting your needs.
You see, when you give and give and give in a relationship, it makes it very hard for the other person to reciprocate equally (even if they want to).
Just think about it: If you’re always agreeing with your friend, the only way that they could reciprocate is by always agreeing with you. But unless your friend is a people pleaser too, they will probably disagree with you at least some of the time.
Similarly, if you’re constantly showering your partner with romantic gestures—think daily love notes, special dinners, and a constant stream of gifts—it’s going to be very hard for them to match this level of giving.
As a result, over time, you can end up in a pattern where you’re always or mostly the “giver” in the relationship and the other person is the “receiver.” This makes your relationships one-sided, unbalanced, and lacking in reciprocity, which usually isn’t very satisfying in the long run.
Your people pleasing also limits your satisfaction in relationships by making it much more difficult for your needs to be met in these relationships. This is because when you’re a people pleaser, your relationships become centered around the other person’s needs (rather than around both their needs and your own).
Specifically, when you people please, you end up expending all of your energy on meeting the other person’s needs and staying quiet about your own. When you don’t communicate your needs, it becomes very tough for the other person in the relationship to meet them. You might think that your partner or best friend “should just know” what you need. But remember, no matter how long someone has known you for, they can’t read your mind.
When you don’t clearly communicate what your needs, desires, and opinions are in a relationship, you withhold critical information from the other person. In particular, you deny them the information they need to help meet your needs and love or respect you equitably. As a result, you set your partner, loved one, or colleague up to sustain a relationship with you based on incorrect, incomplete, or missing information. That’s not fair to you or to them.
When you continuously pour your time and energy into one-sided relationships that don’t meet your needs, it’s only a matter of time before you feel dissatisfied in them. When your needs aren’t being met and you’re always the one doing the giving, you end up feeling invisible and as though you don’t really matter to the other person. And as I get into in more detail below, when you feel dissatisfied in a relationship, it harms the relationship in other ways too.
People Pleasing Limits Your Love for Others
Your people pleasing also limits your love for others because your love and care are fueled by the wrong motives. When you’re always doing things for other people, agreeing with them, and saying “yes” to their requests, it might seem like you’re acting in a loving and giving way. But what you’re really doing is trying to show people that you’re a loving and giving person so that you can gain approval and love.
So although people pleasing can seem really selfless—because you’re focused on trying to fulfill other people’s needs—it’s actually selfish. Now, when I use the term “selfish” here, I don’t mean to say that you’re a greedy, self-obsessed person if you’re a people pleaser. Instead, what I mean is that your actions are centered around doing what you think you need to do to gain love and be happy, not around making other people feel loved and happy.
When you people please, YOU are the one who wants to seem kind and generous to other people. YOU are the one who wants to be liked. And it’s YOU who isn’t okay with the possibility that other people might react negatively if you speak up, disagree with them, or say “no.”
But the other person in the relationship probably doesn’t know this. They think that you’re acting completely out of genuine love and care for them. So even if you do truly love and care about the other person to some extent, when you people please, your relationships aren’t based entirely on loving intentions.
The other way that people pleasing limits your love for others is by making you resentful. In my post on 7 signs that you’re a people pleaser, I mentioned that people pleasing can trigger feelings of resentment toward others because when you’re spending all of your time fulfilling other people’s needs, you don’t have much time to focus on what matters to you.
As you can imagine, when you’re feeling resentful toward your partner, friend, or colleague, it’s hard to be as kind and loving toward them as you could be. For example, if your partner didn’t acknowledge how hard you worked to cook dinner for them last night and you’re upset about it, it’s going to be tough to be truly loving and caring toward them when they tell you about a challenge they’re dealing with at work.
People Pleasing Limits Intimacy in Relationships
Most people don’t just want close relationships with the people they care about; they want intimate relationships. Contrary to what romance novels and rom coms tell us, intimacy isn’t about having a great sex life or being able to finish someone else’s sentences. It’s about truly being seen by someone and truly seeing them in return. In other words, when you’re in an intimate relationship with someone, you know who they really are at their core and they know who you truly are.
People pleasing limits intimacy in your relationships because it makes it tough for the other person to really get to know you. Why? Because when you people please, you’re constantly suppressing your authentic self. You don’t share your needs, opinions, preferences, or desires because you don’t want to rock the boat or upset the other person. You might even be so focused on everyone else’s needs that you don’t actually know what your needs are. And whether you’re doing it intentionally or not, you end up withholding your authentic self.
If you don’t know what your needs are or don’t communicate them to the people you’re in relationships with, it’s going to be pretty tough for other people to really know you. In other words, it’s going to be hard for them to truly see you in the way that they would need to in order to have an intimate bond with you. And if your partner or best friend doesn’t know what you need to feel happy, what lights you up, and what your biggest goals are, how intimate of a relationship can you really have with them?
People Pleasing Limits Time for Healthy Relationships
People pleasing doesn’t just hurt the relationships that you’re in. It also harms the relationships that you’re not in.
What do I mean by this?
When you pour all of your time and energy into relationships that aren’t equal or reciprocal, you don’t have much time left for healthy relationships that allow you to live your truth and be your authentic self. This is especially true if many of the people in your life either intentionally use your people pleasing to manipulate you or maintain a connection with you out of convenience because they know you’ll always say “yes” to them.
In the short term, maintaining relationships in which you’re always the one giving might seem to earn you the love and approval you’ve been craving. But as I’ve explained above, a one-sided relationship that’s focused mostly or entirely on the other person can be only so fulfilling and satisfying for you in the end. And if you’re using all of your time and energy to maintain relationships that are built on your people pleasing, you won’t have time to seek out and build relationships with people who empower you to be your true self.
That’s why although people pleasing is a tricky habit to kick to the curb, it ends up opening rather than closing doors when you do it. Yes, it’s true that you might lose relationships with people who expected you to always say “yes” and go along with what they wanted. But by freeing up space in your life and in your heart, you make room for healthier, more authentic, and more intimate connections. You have the time and energy to form bonds with people who like you for who you truly are, not what you do for them.
People Pleasing Isn’t the Glue That Holds Relationships Together
If you’re a people pleaser, you probably do it to maintain relationships and secure love and approval. On the surface, your people pleasing might seem like a successful tactic because it keeps your partner around, encourages your friends to pay attention to you, and earns you praise from your boss at work.
But the reality is that people pleasing actually harms your relationships because it prevents you from forming genuine, authentic connections characterized by an equal exchange of love or respect.
So if you’re hoping to build stronger, more intimate relationships in your life—ones that bring joy and fulfillment to your life—tackling your people pleasing is an important place to start.
People pleasing is rooted in beliefs that the key to being happy is to meet other people’s needs and expectations. To help you break through these beliefs and gain confidence in your own internal compass, I’ve created a FREE worksheet for you called Busting Your People-Pleasing Beliefs.
It’ll help you critically analyze and transform your people-pleasing beliefs so that you can put yourself first and build healthier, more satisfying relationships.
And if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and master classes.
See you again soon!
Vera
P.S. Curious about how else your people pleasing might be negatively affecting your life? Check out the video I made on the hidden dangers of people pleasing.
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