The perils of being a people pleaser

You rarely get what you want, least of all respect

It’s no fun being walked all over. Photo by Malvestida on Unsplash.

My badass friend Kia jokes that I’m a people pleaser, and she’s right. To be honest, I wish I were different: I wish I could be more like Kia, who is always polite but firm. You see, I’m so scared of losing friends, burning bridges and pissing people off that I often fail to stand my ground. There are a few reasons for this - but like most psychological issues, it stems back to childhood.

Tiptoeing around a violent dad

I never knew when a storm was brewing. Photo by Neenu Vimalkumar on Unsplash.

When I was a kid, the slightest thing I did could send my dad into a violent rage: losing a plimsoll, borrowing scissors without asking, spilling a drink, saying the wrong thing. Then he would go mental, drag me to the nearest surface, pull down my trousers and knickers and start hitting and hitting me while telling me how revolting I was and how I made him sick. You don’t have to think very hard to work out why I ended up in three abusive relationships.

So, with my dad, I learned to make myself small; to suppress my own anger and rage in order to make his less likely. My initial people-pleasing came out of self-preservation - it was a survival instinct.

I took my anger out on my sister instead, which is partly why we don’t speak these days.

Another thing my dad’s rages did was give me a serious fear of confrontation. The last thing I wanted was that kind of scary volatility in my life.

Internalising severe school bullying

It was absolutely relentless. Photo by Chuttersnap on Unsplash.

Because I came from such a dysfunctional family, I wasn’t properly socialised - so by the time I went to school, I hadn’t learned how to act around people. I was desperate for friends, desperate to be liked, but was a weird kid who would do and say shocking things to try and entertain the other kids. It always backfired, and I was bullied relentlessly as a result.

I met up with one of my school bullies in around 2015, and she apologised to me. She told me that she and a few other bullies had attended the wedding of the most popular girl in our year - and this girl, on the dance floor, had said, ‘Isn’t it terrible what we used to do to Ariane?’

That was a kind of odd vindication: the fact that on what was meant to be the most beautiful and special day of her life, she was still thinking about how she and the rest of her mates made my schooldays hell. Not that I want anyone to feel guilty over stuff they did as a teenager, least of all at their wedding, but it was a sign that yes, it was fucking awful. The overdue apologies might not have made up for such a shitty time in my life, but at least I wasn’t being gaslit.

Enjoy your big day, don’t dwell on school. Photo by Marius Muresan on Unsplash.

I only stood up for myself twice in my entire 12 years of schooldays - the last time at the start of sixth form, when a bully spat in my lunch and I threw a Coke can in her face. Ironically, given that none of my bullies had ever been punished for tormenting me relentlessly, this incident led to my being asked to leave school.

But yeah: what I took from being bullied was that nobody at school liked me in the slightest, so I had to learn to be more likeable. If I toned myself down and was incredibly easygoing and diplomatic, surely no one could hate me?

This turned out not to be true: bitchy girls always find reasons to hate. Six years ago, a writer friend became very bitter when I got married and got a literary agent and book deal; she figured that should have been her, and her jealousy soured our friendship. People-pleasing didn’t help: I could be as nice as I liked, but unless I deliberately sabotaged my life, she was set on sabotaging our friendship.

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Working in an insecure industry

No one likes a difficult contributor. Photo by Mikayla Mallek on Unsplash.

Being a successful journo and author is reliant on you forging successful relationships with editors. Writers are ten-a-penny - the world and its uncle wants to write and thinks it can, so we’re wholly expendable, and no editor likes a difficult writer. I often get edited text sent back to me for my approval, and unless there’s actually something inaccurate or libellous, I approve it, even if the sentiment isn’t exactly what I’d intended. I’m working in a dying industry and need to make money while I can.