The Consequences of Being Agreeable in Relationships: Learning how to be Assertive, Learning Assertiveness

A main issue I see as a typical, common female experience for my clients in their 20's and 30's is being agreeable and self-sacrificing in their romantic relationships, finding it hard to be assertive. They come with varying degrees of insight and differing goals, but most want it to be different. They want to bring more of themselves to their relationships and their partners often want the same. Learning to be assertive can seem like an uphill battle.

Assertiveness: Socialization of Girls to be Agreeable and Self-sacrificing

Girls are still socialized to be agreeable and get along with others, not be assertive. They self-sacrifice as well. This is part of the mothering/family instincts that drive many of us women. It becomes instinctual, ingrained and eventually automatic and unconscious to ignore needs and not practice assertiveness.

This makes women seemingly likeable and able to easily navigate relationships, bringing harmony to the world. While times are changing and we are challenging this gender bias, it is still such a predominant role with related expectations.

And, long-term, it can be harmful to our relationships, our own personal self-insight, even our mental health. This is why women end up in my office.

Learning to be Assertive: Developmental/Relational Trauma “Faun” Response as Concurrent

If you also have abuse and trauma in your personal history this is also a concurrent piece, especially if you learned a “faun” trauma response to survive in your family. This would only further solidify that you ignore your own needs to please others and take care of them. If it is learned under emotional duress, it becomes even more hard-wired.

Why Does Agreeableness Not Work? Why is Learning to be Assertive an Issue for a lot of Women?

Because not being assertive can cause harm in many areas of our lives. We learn to ignore and stuff down our needs, or compromise ourselves.

So sometimes, we can’t even tell what we need and want anymore. It affects self-insight and knowledge.

If we don’t know what we need, how do we communicate it to others?

This is especially challenging in our relationships with others, partners and children. We may not even not know we are doing it, until we realize our metal health is not optimal. We are anxious and depressed, irritable. We feel irritable with our guy, that likely has no idea what he did wrong.

It can be so hard to identify our needs, but when we do, we need to communicate them. This has its own challenges as we want to make sure our friends/family love us and stay in our life. We “let things slide”, apologize for having a moment in which we became annoyed and expressed our needs and feelings imperfectly. We don’t bring up issues until we have to do so, anxiety climaxing. Then we have confused loved ones that did not know how little space we were taking in the relationship. This impacts our intimate relationships and ability to be close to others.

How can we practice self-care until we take space, reflect and figure out how we feel and what we need? Then we can decide what self-care and nurturing looks like for us.

Not being assertive, asserting our own needs can also impact our health. We are more likely to meet others needs than our own. We are so busy caring for and nurturing others at the expense ourselves.

Gabor Matte talks and writes extensively on what years in the medical field have taught him about how trauma impacts us. This includes causing autoimmune disorders, more common in women. He has found that women that have learned to be passive and ignore their own needs, great caretakers are the personality that often ends up with Multiple Sclerosis, MS.

It is good for our health to identify needs, communicate them and related boundaries as well as practice self-care.

When Being Agreeable Hurts Our Relationships, Learning to be Assertive

Being agreeable and self-sacrificing hurts our relationships, building resentment. I am not referring to compromise and an innate agreeable personality. I am referring to choosing to ignore when boundaries are crossed and not respected continuously in relationship. I am referring to getting annoyed and irritated in friendships and then say things to yourself like “Oh well, I’ve waited too long and now it would be awkward to bring it up”. “I’m going through a stressful time, I’ll address the issue later” and years pass. Years in which you feel angry, hurt, misunderstood, unseen, even disrespected. I find there is a point of no return in which the resentment and hurt gets too big, dominating the dynamic. This results in important relationships just needing to end. End so we can be happy and healthy simply learning to love ourselves.

Confused Partners

Here is the hard part: Our friends and partner often want us to tell them how we feel and what we need!

I meet many confused male partners in couple counselling that say, “she just needs to tell me and I’ll do what she wants!”. They mean it. The issue is that this wired, innate socialization is deep and and there are likely secondary gains for him.

It can take years for women to get upset and unhealthy enough to try getting more assertive with partners and in other intimate relationships. They are not holding out on you. They are trying to make you happy, and have learned intuitively how to do so, and it works.

But friends and partners can end up feeling betrayed by this agreeableness. They may feel they want to know what is going on, but sometimes we need optimal conditions to try something new. Something new like how to begin to be assertive, communicating boundaries and needs. This optimal situation is often hard to find.

If you are a partner, friend that knows there is a person in your life that struggles with communicating needs and is conflict avoidant, reflect on how you react when they try to talk to you. It likely took a lot of courage and may not have been done perfectly.

Assertiveness: Queer Community

I do find it is usually heterosexual women in their 20’s and 30’s I see with this presenting concern. I see it less in the Queer LGBTQ community. This is a community that is more likely to question social and gender norms and roles. They have more freedom to try new ways to be in relationships, being more flexible within them.

However, there is still often a nurturing piece in these relationships. Conflict avoidance can still lead to it being tough to address hard things.

How to Start Change, Learn to be Assertive, Assertiveness

So how do we start being different in our relationships?

How do we communicate our needs?

How do we be assertive, assert boundaries?

The first step is taking space to reflect and identify needs, emotions and triggers. Female circles are often strong allies in this.

I then recommend big conversations and little moments to follow up, as needed.

This means sitting down with your partner, close friend and outlining concerns. Own your part and facilitate teamwork. How are we going to shift this? I need it to shift so please be my ally in this.

This may need be several conservations as it can be emotional, resulting in hard feelings and triggering. It needs to end in action items. This is the hardest part.

After that, little moments are your follow up.

When your partner does the same thing you told them you need to see change, you refer to the big conversation(s). You do it simply and in 1 sentence. This avoids defensiveness so is more likely to be received.

It is hard to change relationship dynamics sometimes. Our partner sometimes gets secondary gains from our giving in to what they want. We are changing the rules. You may need help.

COUPLE THERAPY

Lisa S.

Join our newsletter community for more tips and tricks to living your best life!