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People Pleasers...?

Discussion in 'LGBT Later in Life' started by skiff, Feb 11, 2014.

  1. skiff

    skiff Guest

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    Hi,

    Somebody asked for a thread to be started about closeted gays being people pleasers to the point of forfeiting self identity to garner praise and feel accepted.

    Some here would call it "best boy"... You cannot dislike me, reject me for look at all I do for you. I deserve to be loved.

    I would guess it is over compensation for fear of being rejected because you are gay.

    Some say "shame" is the basis of gay issues. I disagree. Shame is simply the smoke from the fire of rejection or fear of rejection. Shame has no substance without rejection being wielded like a weapon.

    So closeted gays can become uber people pleasers to avoid internal fears of rejection.

    That is my thought anyway... :eusa_doh:

    Tom
     
  2. BlueSky224

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    Skiff,
    You mentioned this before, and it rang true for me.

    I am a shameless over-compensator. Although there is often no need, I bend over backwards to avoid rejection, gain compliments, and seek external reassurance.

    I'm relatively out of the closet, but old habits die hard.

    Like many, I grew up with this horrible secret. Since I was secretly "horrible," I wanted to be absolutely beyond reproach in every other aspect of life. Nobody could fault me because I'd be so friggin' perfect.

    And I'm still a perfectionist; not so much with others, but definitely with myself.

    I see it in my closeted patients too. I watch the same perfectionism and the desperate need for approval. I should mention that these patients aren't out to me; it's just an "elephant in the room." It can be hard to watch them go through the same exhaustion.

    This isn't an entirely intrinsic phenomenon. When I came out to my parents, it didn't go well (they wished death on me.) But after we started speaking again, I found that they just wanted to tell everyone about my test scores or the fancy schools I attended. They were feeding this need to compensate (or over-compensate.)

    Skiff, thanks for bringing this up. It "hit home" for me, and it is cathartic to recognize that other gay guys feel the same pressure.
     
  3. Choirboy

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    Very, very true. I nearly drove myself nuts as a kid already, trying to be everything to everyone, my parents especially (but not exclusively). I used to assume it was fear of rejection from being the oldest, with 2 other siblings following in quick succession, and later another. Whatever the cause, I still have to force myself not to take care of the world.
     
  4. tscott

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    I think from the first time that I thought something was different about me I had to best little boy in the world. Chose my colleges based on what my parents wanted. I thought they'd both plotz when I got to go to the University of London for a year. Chose my grad school based on what I thought my dead father would have wanted. Afterall, I disappointed them by choosing not to become a dentist. Was meant to go on for a Ph.D. The economics of the times determined my not going on. I don't think I there was ever a decision that I didn't acquiece to my parents or my wife. Love me and I'll roll over and wet myself.
     
  5. AudreyB

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    Oh my god, change that to "closeted transpersons" and that's me all over! I even told my boss when I started my new job, "I'll be whatever you need me to be". :lol:
     
  6. SealedVault

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    I think I was the one who asked for this thread. :slight_smile:

    Part of what made my decision to come out to at least my closest friends was an experience this past year with someone online I knew from high school who was married but secretly asexual. She and I bonded over our mutual experiences in the closet with supportive spouses(my wife and I came out to each other after being married for years), and I thought I'd made a really good friend.

    Then things got... confusing. Despite being asexual, she became attracted to me, and I was probably a little attracted to her as well at first. She was just text in a chat window, after all, and words can be so intimate in a purely intellectual relationship. The problems began when I started to feel like I was catering more to her wants and needs than my own--spending all day being available for her online, writing elaborate fantasies for her that were more for her than for me. She began demanding increasingly intense declarations of love, and wanting to meet in person, even though we'd both agreed nothing could ever happen outside of a chat window. By this point, I was very conflicted and uncomfortable with what our online friendship had turned into, but because I'd gone along with it in the beginning, I didn't feel like I had the right to back out. And I was afraid of losing the only person, save my wife, who I could talk to about my sexuality.

    Now, I feel it's important to make this disclaimer. My wife and I have an absolute trust. When she first started exploring her feelings for women, I was entirely supportive, and that set the tone for where we are now. I made sure I told her everything, from the first whispering of my online friendship becoming more intimate to things becoming confusing and ultimately uncomfortable. She tried to tell me all along what I eventually realized--I was incredibly lonely and that was the only reason I was being swept away with this girl's fantasies. If it was a guy, she said, it would have been different, and she was right. I wasn't attracted to anything about the girl except her wanting me, and that faded quickly. But while my wife was completely aware of everything going on, my friend's husband was not.

    A few days before we were supposed to meet in person, she told her husband she was meeting me for lunch, and she told him I was gay to cover her tracks. Of all the things she could have said about me and our correspondence, THAT was the one thing she saw fit to tell him, and for the absolute worst reasons.

    I was willing to be a lot of things for this girl because she was my friend and I trusted that she cared about me as much as I cared about her, to the point where I had questions and doubts again after years of being sure who I was. In a way, what she did, telling her husband I was gay to cover up that she was attracted to--and obsessively in love with someone else--helped me reaffirm what my sexual identity meant to me. It took me most of my adult life to finally resolve who I was, and I'd been playing a part in someone's straight fantasy just to please them, regardless of what I was getting back.

    I know this was really long, and I apologize. Finally breaking off contact with this girl(I hadn't talked to her in months, but recently she tried to patch things up), I found myself here. Thank you for listening.
     
  7. greatwhale

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    When I was in my late teens, I thought being adaptable was the highest virtue.

    Standing for something, and not standing for other things, didn't even enter into the conversation.

    A definite absence of defended boundaries; the result of neglecting the warrior energy that we all need from time to time.
     
  8. skiff

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    We need to establish boundaries the closet eroded.
     
  9. Choirboy

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    Establish the boundaries, or at least become aware that they DO exist. Some of my "people pleasing" has caused me huge problems over the years (cough cough MARRIAGE cough cough). But some of it has led to the most surprisingly rewarding experiences I've ever had, like my involvement in music at my church.

    For me, the whole people-pleasing thing is almost less a boundary that was eroded, as it was one that was created. I've spent my life pleasing people, with one glaring exception--me. It's like doing all your coloring outside the lines instead of inside them. My biggest challenge is understanding that pleasing myself is OK and right (hmmm, that screams for a snarky comment--where's Dragonbait when you need her?). Pleasing people in general isn't necessarily a bad thing if you are taking care of your own needs first. Otherwise you're like malnourished kid serving food on a buffet line.
     
  10. GayDadStr8Marig

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    There ya go stealing my lines again! :slight_smile:

    Anyway, for me the people-pleaser took over my being in fourth grade. By then I knew "something" was going on in me, and had been a happy-go-lucky kid just having fun when I found myself in the line of fire from a teach who despised boys with any kind of spirit besides saying "yea ma'am". Being already worried about getting ostracized for being different, I let her crush my soul to be compliant. Ever since, any major decision (hell, minor decisions like where to go for dinner) has always defaulted to "whatever you want (me) to do".

    Now that I see where it comes from (that :***:ing closet) I can work on getting over it.

    -Rich
     
  11. Choirboy

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    That age again....We moved from the city to the suburbs towards the end of 4th grade, and it was all downhill from there. I really always assumed (even until recently) my problem was that I just never adjusted to new surroundings and new kids. Clearly, something else kicked in at that age that coincided with the move. I was a cheery, chatty kid with friends before we moved. After that I was withdrawn and miserable. I'm guessing the combination of the changes of the age AND the move pretty much threw my emotional life into a blender on "puree".
     
  12. skiff

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    Hi,

    4th grade, age 10... That is when my gay sex life started. Natural as breathing, no angst or shame, just did it, but hid it to avoid rejection.

    Tom
     
  13. StillAround

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    Notice how often 4th/5th grade and age 10 come up in these threads? I posted somewhere that scientists now believe adolescence begins as early as age 9 and can continue until age 25. Hormonal changes begin early, but external manifestations take a while. The hormonal changes trigger brain development that continues into the late teens and early 20's.

    So, yup, a lot of us knew were "different" from that early age. And it did turn us into people pleasers. We knew we were different in some undefinable way, that we didn't "fit in" in some way. But we're always looking for validation, for acceptance, for love. So we compensate by trying to buy those things if they're not given freely. It's not a healthy way to live.

    Pleasing others can be a good thing, but it has to come from a different place. It needs to come from a place of love, because we just want others to be happy, not from a place of self-loathing and shame.

    As GreatWhale said to me in a thread somewhere, "It is an important commandment to be happy." Gotta please ourselves, make some space for ourselves, celebrate ourselves. It's time.
    (&&&)
     
  14. duende84

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    I would like to agree with you Tom. Ever since I can remember I would go out of my way to please everyone around me. Always concerned that everyone is comfortable and secure and what-not. This stemming from self-insecurity. From early-on I quickly realised people like you when you do things for them, bend over backwards so to say.

    In retrospect I regret most of the people-pleasing things I have done because I neglected myself in a huge and unfair way.

    2014 will be the year were I break the mould and get out of this groove. If you dont like me then screw you. :thumbsup: :grin:
     
  15. skiff

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    Hi,

    I am curious...

    In the primary grades if I sat next to any guy in the bleachers and my leg pressed against his it was electric. Did not matter who the guy was. Non sexual touch with guys was electric.

    They did not seem to care.

    Am I the only one? We are talking primary grades 5-8.

    Tom

    ---------- Post added 12th Feb 2014 at 01:07 PM ----------

    Hi,

    Sitting here exhausted with a headache.

    I have spent the day job hunting. Such sublime, modern rejection and so anonymous and obscure submitting resumes online you feel rejected before you click submit.

    I have always hated job hunting. I rode two large corporations to bankruptcy because I hated job hunting so deeply.

    No... Not hate... Feared job hunting. Feared deliberately seeking rejection...

    Still fear it. Still despise it.

    Need one one job to ride to bankruptcy,,, :slight_smile:

    Very little people pleasing in job hunting.

    Sublime, virtual rejection as you hit submit.

    Tom
     
  16. StillAround

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    For me, maybe. I've suppressed so many memories from those years, that I just don't know anymore. But for sure I did feel different starting at 5th grade, so I imagine so...
     
  17. Choirboy

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    When I was in my teens, my cousin and I took the Greyhound all the way from Milwaukee to Oregon to visit relatives. We were squashed next to each other on that bus for almost 3 straight days. All that physical contact with him just about drove me nuts--and he wasn't even the handsome one in that family!!
     
  18. GayDadStr8Marig

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    Absolutely, though for me I didn't even need it to be physical contact to get charged up. Some of guys were so damn cute just seeing them in the hallway, or OMG the locker room, it just made me wish I could just go tell them how much I liked them and spend time getting to know them. But, yeah, there was that special something when a guy would casually touch you and it was like the air had been sucked out of the room and time stopped. Even times when a guy would tap my shoulder to tease me, it was electric having that contact. :icon_redf
     
  19. confused mwm

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    I have always been go-along-to-get-along in groups of people and in my relationships with women, coworkers and friends. I never really saw it as a specifically gay thing -- and it applies across orientation for a multitude of reasons -- but I agree that it is no doubt a hallmark of anyone keeping a secret. You do everything you can to avoid the type of conflict that might lead to suspicion or questioning. This could be a secret addiction to alcohol, drugs, ice cream, smokes, whatever. It can be a heterosexual compulsion to sleep with as many people as possible, it can be as a result of child or domestic abuse, or in many of our cases, our secret same-sex attractions that took seemingly years to even understand, and longer yet to accept.
     
  20. Richie.

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    I enjoy readin people's theories on this...