17 Struggles Of Being A Perpetual People-Pleaser
1. You end up meeting people across town from where you live because you refuse to admit that the proposed meeting point is monumentally out of your way. Instead, you sit in traffic or on the Metro silently berating yourself for not speaking up, then show up and are like, “Oh the commute? It was no problem! I made great time.”
2. If someone borrows $5 from you and doesn’t pay you back immediately, then you’re never getting that money back because you would never bring it up.
3. You’re always the person who feels the need to be extra kind when a new person joins the rest of your friends for happy hour. You’re just as weary of them as everyone else, you’re just better at stifling the urge to ask, “Who the hell are you?”
4. You have at least one interested guy/girl who still believes they have a chance with you because you don’t have the heart to tell them it’s never going to happen.
5. … Your friends constantly tell you to just let the poor guy off the hook and you want to but, like, that sounds really hard.
6. People always tell you that “you’re too soft” (or malleable, or some other synonym for “pushover”) and you resent it but are too nice to actually say anything about it.
7. You incapable of not responding to a Facebook message, email, text, phone call, or even an Instagram comment. If you hold off, you’ll feel guilty until you reply.
8. You don’t do well around overly blunt people because it’s in your nature to – not sugar coat – but lightly spin all situations for the better.
9. Your encouragement and approval, while touching, is sometimes taken with a grain of salt because people will say you’re just being nice. It’s actually super annoying because YOU HAVE REAL OPINIONS TOO.
10. You were that kid in school who redid your science project three times, got overly excited about extra credit assignments and then gleefully skipped home with you’re A+ report card. Let’s be honest, you were the worst but you raked in those gold stars.
11. While you might cater to everyone’s needs a little too much, every office and every friend group needs a people-pleaser like you. You improve morale.
12. You openly volunteer to do extra work and honestly, you like that about yourself. You discredit everyone who has ever said, “don’t do anything for free” because you believe that pulling more than your own weight is always a good thing.
13. When someone doesn’t like you it’s a straight up CALAMITY. It eats away at you, and you are constantly asking your friend why they don’t like you and what you did wrong.
14. People often mistake your positivity for being disingenuous when in reality, you aren’t opposed to being straight and honest with your friends and family. It’s just that you’d rather lead with the positive and then mention the shortcomings, because you want your friends to know you’re on their side no matter what.
15. You make your friends nervous when you skirt over a subject or don’t give an opinion because it’s a telltale sign that you disapprove but you don’t want to say so.
16. You are the person who apologizes when someone steps on your foot. (Are you Canadian? You probably should be.) You’re always the first to leap up and grab someone’s pen when the drop it. It’s well intentioned, but nearly always ends with you painfully bumping into whoever dropped the pen.
17. You’re not a kiss ass. You’re SUPPORTIVE.