The Older I Get, the Harder I Find It to Lie to ‘Please Others'
And this week's hard pass and happy yes.
Hard Pass to surfing social media on Mother’s Day
Something we can find ourselves doing when we recognise our needs and our, for instance, discomfort about something or that it’s straight-up made us feel bad is deciding we should be better than how we’re feeling or behaving.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day in the UK and Ireland, and, as has been the way since the early years of social media, I skipped surfing through a sea of posts. I also do the same on the worldwide Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. I used to experience a vague sinking sensation, and I’d be oh-so aware of Little Nat feeling very ‘other’. A different version of me could be like, Natalie, get a grip. It’s just social media. You should be above feeling this way. Don’t be hater. Yeah, no thanks. It seems rather unnecessary to immerse myself in a surge of snapshots of other people’s experiences of being mothered that are the antithesis of my own.
It’s very easy to shame ourselves for our needs, especially when we’re used to being over-responsible and pushing through and when how a need manifests differs from the ‘expected’. But they’re just needs, and we don’t have to make shameful stories about them or shove them to the side so that we can fit a more idealised version of ourselves. Social media isn’t more important than what we need to do to support our emotional, mental, physical and spiritual well-being.
Happy Yes to the vulnerability of introducing myself to people at an event.
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the launch of my friend
’s new book, Women Who Work Too Much (fab read!). Typically, when I go to social events with lots of women with whom I share varying degrees of familiarity, it triggers my socially awkward ways. A part of me wants to hide in the bathroom, lurk by the food table, or just hang with the people I already know… which is what I used to do until my husband, who I used to call from the bathroom or food table, gently called me out. Since then, while I still experience anxiety, I’ve got much better at navigating it and the social dynamics at events.A particular stressor that’s remained is the vulnerability of approaching people I’ve not met in person before but maybe connected with online or whom I’ve met briefly before. What if they look at me like I’m something they stepped in? I’d die of mortification! At the same time, it didn’t feel good or authentic to put it on others to make the effort. Rather than shrink and pretend I hadn’t seen them (ahem!), I surprised myself by going up to those very people. And, no, the sky didn’t fall, there was no weirdness, and it felt good to stretch myself.
This Week’s Essay
Whenever I think about absurd lies I’ve told to make myself likeable and lovable, I immediately think of when I spent a couple of years from 2003 claiming my favourite film was the critically acclaimed Brazilian crime film City of God. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it (wouldn’t even be in my top 50 though!), and at least I watched it. It’s not like when everyone at my convent school in Dublin was obsessed with Twin Peaks and I attempted a couple of episodes and was like ‘What the frick is going on?’ but still claimed I loved it. Anyway, I digress.
My then love interest looked down on people who didn’t watch subtitled films, and I thought saying I loved the same film would help build a case for why he should choose me and give me a relationship. I know, I know. To highlight just how stark the lie is, you should know that my joint favourite films are Ghost and Coming To America.
Let’s see. I’ve also pretended bad, jackhammer, and selfish sex was good when it so very clearly wasn’t. I’ve claimed to love drinks that made me feel queasy and gave me bubble guts (beer), turned me nutty (Jack Daniels and coke), and made me throw up on my shoes in a club (shots). One shady ex bought me a pair of those clear-heeled pole dancing shoes for Christmas ’99 and insisted I wore them to the pub despite my very obvious humiliation, and rather than admit I disliked them (and him), I made a tit of myself and then never wore them again.
Not being myself was my stock in trade throughout my entire relationship history before I met my now husband.
Like Taylor Swift in ‘Blank Space’, my thing was to “Find out what you want, be that girl for a month” (or even a couple of years).
I pretended to be Good Girl, the girl with no needs who isn’t bothered by much and always wants to please. When I read Gillian Swift’s Gone Girl ten years ago, I remember falling off my deckchair on the beach in shock at recognising myself in Amy Dunne, the dual protagonist and antagonist, playing ‘cool girl’. This is essentially someone who’s pretending to be the patriarchal idea of the perfect woman by embodying all of the desirable traits and habits that the current man she’s in a relationship with wants. I even did an episode about the dark side of people pleasing, which is also the deleted chapter from The Joy of Saying No.
When you’re consistently being something you’re not and, yes, busting up your boundaries because you’re putting up with behaviour and situations that are incompatible with your well-being, you wake up to the realisation that the rejection you fear from others is nothing compared to the alienation and rejection you experience through loss of self.
I didn’t see pretending to be something I’m not and telling people what they want to hear as, you know, lying. And even when I recognised I was being less than honest, it was always easy to reason that it was with good intentions and that they weren’t ‘bad’ lies, even though I, well, hated myself.
I reasoned that lying via people pleasing was just something I had to do to exist, be safe and well-thought-of. I’d learned that the people-pleasing version of myself that I presented to the world and used to effort my way through life was how I’d get people to like, love, and choose me. If that meant watering down my needs, expectations, desires, feelings, opinions - my values, boundaries and basically myself - so be it.