Wearing a Mask: The Conflict-Averse Person and Pretending
When you avoid your own heart, your own feelings—your authentic truth—you simply cannot stand up for yourself and you please and appease others instead—to your own detriment.
The Masks We Wear to Stay Alive
Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who can’t be honest about how they feel? Have you watched as they side with you no matter how unreasonable you are being? Have you witnessed as they tell you what you want to hear simply to keep the peace and to shut you up? This is the plight of the conflict-averse pleaser. This is the turmoil the person who fears rejection and abandonment goes through, day in and day out with partners, friends, family, co-workers, bosses, and maybe even strangers.
This is mask-wearing at its finest and I am not making light of this. It is a serious trauma response that makes a person feel safe, loved, and like they belong even if it is making them abandon, betray, and lose themselves. Even if it is slowly killing them. This nervous system reaction allows a person to feel calmer simply because they have the ability to ”make” others feel good or at least to contribute to their happiness instead of their pain. Most pleasers were taught that the only way to “make” Mommy or Daddy or teacher or friend happy was to set aside who they are, what they want, and how they truly feel. Sometimes they witnessed Mommy crying, Daddy angry, or teacher haphazardly giving out F’s just for fun while wearing the “Joker’s” infamous grin. The conflict-averse child instinctively and immediately felt deeply moved and compelled to start hugging Mommy or cracking jokes, hurriedly folding laundry or practicing the piano so Daddy wouldn’t lash out violently, or offering to clean the white boards and stop talking in class to make those drive-by F’s stop and that scary grin leave teacher’s face. Becoming an actual joker (or the butt of the joke), the class clown, or the person that serves, solves the emotional problems for others, and who is the most approachable person in the group is often a conflict-averse pleaser.
The compulsion to feel safe in unsafe and emotionally charged environments in order to stop the madness of the volatility of the emotional landscape is something the nervous system needed and still needs even as adults and the pleaser knows how to find some level of homeostasis or balance within their systems. This is a survival instinct and it serves them well—until it doesn’t.
The Problem With Avoiding Conflict
A person who learned young how to take care of the “emotional” people around them is the perfect target for people who need to be taken care of emotionally. It’s like peanut butter and jelly, or bananas, or chocolate. It’s like this: “I have a need (usually many) and you are going to meet all of them.” The conflict-averse pleaser thinks: “Yes, I am. I was born to serve. I have no opinions or thoughts or needs of my own. I was born to cater to you.” Well, actually none of this is going on consciously at all. But this is how the nervous system and subconscious mind work.
The conflict-averse person will be feeling like they are lonely and want to be with someone and here comes someone who “feels” comfortable to their nervous system. It feels “like home” which is why we can get so confused thinking this person is our soulmate. If it feels like home, it might not be a true soulmate. Sometimes, it feels like the toxic home you came from where Mommy needed you to pick up the pieces of her sad life and put her back together again or Daddy needed a punching bag every other night. The new love interest seems so much like Mommy. Hmmm…? Right. We often will “marry” our mothers or fathers because our nervous systems are used to how we were treated by Mom or Dad—even if it was abusive or traumatic. It still feels like home and until we heal from the trauma, our bodies and minds will seek out the comfort of what we know as “safe.” It felt safe to you as a child to be in that home because that was the only home you knew.
However, there are some problems with gravitating toward “home” in this way and not speaking up for yourself or being truthful and authentic—avoiding conflict at all cost. Now, for many, the partner the conflict-averse person is with could be a personality that demands diva-like adherence to everything he or she desires. There are those types of people out there. As the conflict-averse person, you might have been attracted to this type of personality because Mom or Dad was this way and you are just used to serving this clientele. It feels like home to you and it’s what you want because it’s just “easy” even if it’s not good for you. You don’t really have to think about it. You just do what you are told and live your life to be an indentured servant simply because you don’t want to be alone and you don’t really want to pull up the rug where all of the issues are collecting dust. You don’t want to deep-dive into your past. “The past is gone,” you think. You just want to be a “yes” person, avoid all conflict, and skip any kind of change work you need to do and then just kind of lay down one day and die. It’s just “life” after all, right?
And this is certainly your choice. Everyone has free will to do as they please with their lives.
The other scenario is that the conflict-averse person felt a deep sense of loneliness and wanted to be in love and be happy. He found a lovely partner who was very kind and giving. Perhaps they both have insecure attachment styles. Or not. Just a thought. At any rate, the conflict-averse person wants to please his new love. Based on his deep desire to not be rejected, neglected, or abandoned and his nervous system’s tendency to fawn and serve, he creates the perfect atmosphere to ensure that his needs will always be met. He will meet HER needs so that he never has to worry about being left again or disappointing anyone. And he can sleep well at night knowing that he has created peace in his relationship by serving her.
So, he starts off at the top by trying to win her love by caring, loving, serving, pleasing, and showing interest in his new love. He makes her feel like she is the absolute apple of his eye. He adores and cherishes her and is willing to listen to her endlessly. He has compassion for her past issues and current struggles. He validates her complaints and laughs at her humor. He is filling all of her voids (and she his to be fair) and more and she has no choice but to believe that this guy is doing all of this because he WANTS to be doing it. Why would a grown man be acting this way if he didn’t choose to do so? She realizes that no one does anything they don’t want to be doing. Or at least she thinks so anyway.
Although she might for a minute think that this is a little over-the-top or strange that he seems so into her, he makes it really clear that he WANTS to be making all of her dreams a reality. And who is she to know better? She doesn’t even really know him yet and maybe this is just who he is at his heart. For all she knows, maybe he’s an “Acts of Service” type of gent. Heck, maybe she really IS that awesome. So, she gives him the respect of being an adult who can speak his mind truthfully and she actually expects that kind of transparency and honesty from him anyway. After all, they are adults in an adult relationship; not teenagers who are too afraid to speak up out of fear of rejection or of being abandoned. Well, unfortunately for her, she has met this man who is afraid of this exact thing and his “kindness” is a mask he wears in order to keep love. And this might sound malicious (and it can turn that way for sure), but it’s really not. It’s actually really very sad if you think about what had to create this tendency in this man.
This man was traumatized.
As time goes on, it becomes evident that this conflict-averse man was “yesing” this woman from the start and he created a little monster. Or at least he likes to complain about her in that way to anyone and everyone he meets. Although, as you read above, he made it very, very clear, and in no uncertain terms, to his partner from Day 1 that he was born to serve her desires and fulfill all of her wishes, he now feels burdened by her. He doesn’t want to be living and breathing for her anymore. He wants to be loved and given to as well. And she seems more and more demanding and has higher and higher levels of expectations now that she has been spoiled and coddled in this way by him. She should get her act together, no doubt, but if he is constantly wearing this mask and trying to make sure she always has on a happy face, feels adored and beautiful, taken care of, seen, and cherished every day of her life, then how is she supposed to know that he tells everyone he knows that she is a crazy and demanding bitch who he wants to toss out the window? She has absolutely no idea that his life is being sucked out of him because he is too afraid to tell her. If he does, he will run the risk of her getting angry, or, worse yet, she might leave him. And then he would be all alone, which is why he started the facade in the first place. She has never known who he truly is unless there were times when he blew his stack and yelled or told her “No more!” in a fit of rage. But even this really isn’t who he is. This is just him pushed to his limit.
So, the partner is being described by the conflict-averse person as something akin to Satan’s sister and she actually has not been let in on who she is really in a relationship with—even if it is decades later. It seems rather unfair that this kind of situation exists at all because the reason he is acting this way is because he has not looked into WHY he can’t speak up for himself. That is where the juice is at. There is a root in this to way back when. There is an emotional attachment to pleasing while wearing this mask in order to not “get in trouble” with people that started back when this dude was maybe like three or less years old. This didn’t even start when he saw Mommy crying when he was maybe eight and hugged her to make her feel better. When he was eight and hugged Mommy, he was able to recognize that he might have an impact or some control over how to make Mommy smile again. This is where that codependent bond was formed. “You are upset and I make you smile and we can both feel better” started then. However, the emotional instability in the home was there from when he was born or even when he was still in the womb. Mommy and Daddy were still Mommy and Daddy even before this little guy came along, so the atmosphere was already there and this little one knew on some level what his job would be—to please them. He was likely born into this job and this was what he knew best—even if he did not know this consciously.
“You are upset and I make you smile and we can both feel better.”
This person learned to abandon himself from very early on and to chase love outside of himself in the form of “Mommy” or “Daddy.” “One day, someone will love me so long as I earn their love and make them happy,” might be his unconscious motto. Wearing a mask and living from the parts of himself that kept him “doing good” for people has been his life’s purpose and goal and it has more or less worked. However, it is a flawed system that is bound to fail. No one has the energy or strength to hold up another person or people for eternity or even for an entire lifetime. Heck, I couldn’t hold up a person or their emotional baggage for any amount of time—and I should not be doing that. Even in my line of work, I am here to help you shed that stuff, not for you to hold onto it anymore and certainly not for ME to hold onto it. We all have our own luggage to set down. I am here to help you do that; to show you the way. What good is it for us both to be hanging onto your old patterns, beliefs, and emotions? Even more, what good is it for you to simply give it to me to hang onto when I have my own stuff to try and sort through? You doing your own sorting of your own stuff will help you reap the biggest benefit because then you get to take total ownership of all of you—your past, your trauma, your mistakes, your feelings, and your freedom.
Holding up someone else is also enabling and it takes a tremendous toll on the body, mind, and spirit—for BOTH parties, not just the conflict-averse. The partner knows full well that her conflict-averse partner doesn’t tell her how he really feels. She knows that he is hiding and being inauthentic. She knows him, loves him, and can feel this. But she can’t make him spill the beans and be his true, authentic self or tell her that he really hates that she takes and takes and takes all day long and never gives back or that he is just plumb tired. She can try and help him if she is so inclined, but she can’t make the horse drink the water. So, what eventually happens is that this actually ends up killing off love and making the person the conflict-averse person wanted so badly to be with and love turn away from them. It may or may not have anything to do with the person feeling like she isn’t being spoiled enough. She might be someone with endless needs and a “never good enough” attitude toward this man. In that case, this could be the reason she leaves. But, for many, it’s simply because the conflict-averse person was unable to be honest. He did not share his truth, his feelings, and his authentic self with her out of a deep fear that he was not worthy of her love and would be rejected. He believed that she would leave him if he showed her his flaws and true colors. If he expressed his undying love for her, or cried, was angry, or laughed a little too hard at times, he feared that his vulnerability would scare her away. After all, it scared others away in the past. And if he wasn’t always appeasing and jovial, he ran the risk of “making” or at least contributing to her unhappiness.
Trauma Recovery and Self-Love Mean Everything In Relationships
This is a man who does not love himself. This is not his fault nor is it a dig on him. It is the simple fact that he was never allowed to love himself, to truly know himself, and to honor his feelings, his mistakes, and his passions. He was born to take care of others and in doing so, he never knew who he really was or lost sight of it somewhere along the way. Because he does not love himself, he assumes that his partner cannot possibly love him either, unless he is pleasing her constantly. The truth is that she probably very much does love him, warts and all, but since he is too afraid of rejection and abandonment, he ends up making her feel rejected and abandoned instead. And when a person feels that their partner does not love her and is rejecting her, she leaves the relationship because she loves herself more, and if her partner cannot love himself and, by extension, cannot love her or be truthful with her, she must love herself enough to protect herself from the hurt he is inflicting on himself and them both daily. His partner loved herself enough to see that she was not being loved. She felt rejected and unloved by him. She walked out the door. In the end, she abandoned him anyway. The irony in this, huh?
This is why trauma recovery is so very important. Our relationships are failing because of our deep wounds caused by shame and limiting beliefs that tell us we are “unlovable” and will be rejected if we don’t “get it right” for people. Self-love is the answer here because it means that I can show up in my wholeness and fullness. I can be okay with myself because I have seen my shadows, secrets, demons, and skeletons and I have loved myself anyway. As long as I love myself, anyone can choose to love me too—or not. Either way, I am okay with myself as my main partner. I am the cake and you are the icing. It is lovely to have icing, but it’s not necessary. If you love me as I am and I love me as I am and I love you as you are and you love you as you are then we are golden.
As adults, it makes sense to enter into any relationship with the attitude of, “Take me or leave me. I’m not for everyone and there’s the door if you don’t want this” and actually mean it. You mean it by loving yourself in spite of how another feels about you. The struggle is real, of course, because there are often certain reasons: fears, doubts, limiting beliefs, and objections to this line of thinking that come up in our minds and stand in the way of us being truly authentic and having inner peace. True freedom to be yourself and to speak up for who you are, to stand tall in your truth of who you are, and never apologize for how you feel is yours for the taking…so long as you are willing to do your work. Let me help you do this work. It is the only work that actually matters because love is all there is and you, my friend, ARE love and you very much are lovable—no matter what.
