When Being Too Available is Hurting You
“There comes a time when you have to stop crossing oceans for people who wouldn’t jump puddles for you.” -Unknown
Have you experienced being too available to people who cannot meet you halfway? How did it make you feel? Maybe you tried and tried to be good enough, to be interesting enough, to be whatever they wanted, but they never really “saw” you. They never seemed to care. They ignored or ghosted you. You felt disrespected and unworthy in their presence. They seemed very happy to let you love and support them, but they would never reciprocate. It seems kind of sad, really, but many of us who were neglected as children, and felt very lonely, try to get the love we never had from our grown-up relationships. And it leaves us feeling used, taken for granted, and miserably unloved and unvalued.
Being available to people feels really good. It is nice to help people and to be a giving human when people need help and support. Would you agree? Serving others is a wonderful part of life and should be done regularly, as long as it is done in a balanced way. Often, as children, we get a lot of praise and approval for being available, giving people pleasers. This makes us want to do it more and more. We seem to be doing it “right” when we try to help people feel happy and, in return, we hope that they will love and cherish us. It’s not like we do it to manipulate people in a direct way or anything, we just think that give and take is normal and expected. It just makes sense that I scratch your back and you scratch mine. Many people will appreciate it and even reciprocate it when they can. Unfortunately, many will not. It never dawns on some people to reciprocate. But, as pleasers, we never seem to care about that. We just want to save, save, save and to rescue, rescue, rescue!
You’d think that any decent person would reciprocate or at least communicate that they are not interested, don’t need your help, or find a way to be honest about why they are not as available to you, but people often will treat us the way we allow them to and if we aren’t emotionally distancing or communicating what we need, we will get steamrolled over and over again. This is actually human nature. If you don’t set a limit or say “no,” people will assume that you are fine doing it. You are, after all, an adult and can use your words, right? This is true. You can do this, even if it is hard and might cause some conflict.
So, let’s say you do ask for what you need or want and the person can’t or won’t give it to you, acts like you have victimized them for asking at all, or makes excuses for why they can’t. The only real recourse, then, is to change things—change the relationship or simply go insane trying to make it work all by yourself. You might not be asking for very much, but if someone won’t even do the bare minimum that a friendship, a romantic partnership, or a family relationship requires to be healthy, happy, and to flow well, and you are expecting them to, you are setting yourself up for pain.
Our expectations are what get us hurt.
The definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result. In order to change the way things are, we have to change the way things are. In other words, WE have to change. This might mean setting some healthy boundaries or becoming less available to those who are not available to us or who have been disrespectful to us even only once. Often, when we are in the pattern of being mistreated repeatedly, it has been happening for many years. It is like being on a hamster wheel that never ends. But, things can always change in the blink of an eye. You can get off the hamster wheel any time you’d like. Once we have learned how to effectively cut off abuse and disrespect, we can see it coming sooner the next time and cut it off even faster.
When we have expectations that someone will do something for us and they can’t or won’t, we get hurt. And this is not because it is the other person’s fault. If they have shown us who they really are and we expect more, we are in denial and we will get hurt again and again. It’s really not personal when someone we care about can’t care for us in the same way. It is very painful, yes, but it is what it is. Not everyone can, will, or even wants to meet us where we are. This is actually okay because if they can’t be on our same page, then it will be a constant fight anyway. And that is not peaceful or very fun.
Believe it or not, not everyone has the same level of emotional intelligence or spiritual consciousness to understand basic human decency and respect. This is a very hard pill to swallow because most of us believe that, since we are all walking on this planet together and that we all see the news, have Facebook, Tik Tok, and Instagram reminding us of how to function in a normal way and not be a narcissist, and we live in the same society, that we are dealing with the same level of maturity in another as we have. It is eye-opening, shocking, and very disheartening if not devastating to see it when certain people we love simply cannot get us, cannot communicate with us, cannot even seem to hear or understand what we need, and cannot give to us in the way we give to them. These loved ones can be considered toxic and unhealthy for our well-being. The stress alone is a killer in these kinds of relationships.
So, what is left after we move away from toxic or unhealthy people who cannot be kind, communicative, and reciprocate basic respect? It then becomes about loving ourselves first. It is about loving ourselves more than those who cannot love us the way we need and deserve to be loved. We need to move away and step back from people who will always hurt and trigger our deepest wounds, doubts, fears, and insecurities about ourselves. If you think about it, this is likely what happens when we stick around for more of the same pain, right? It can make us feel very flawed, desperate and needy, clingy, unsure, unsafe, unlovable, and unworthy when we continually fight with someone for their time, attention, and love when they have made it clear through their actions or words that they won’t do it. And we don’t need or deserve this because it’s not true about us. We are loving people. We have proven this already. If someone can’t appreciate or see it, it is about them, not us.
When we are available to ourselves and give ourselves the attention and love we want from those who cannot give it to us, we fill our own cups. This can be daunting and seem not very fun at first, but it is the best thing to do because when we can truly love being alone with ourselves, we are free. When we love who we are totally and completely, we will never settle for anything less. We will never go back down to meet someone who is not willing to rise up to meet us.
Guess what? YOU complete you. This is not someone else’s job.
Know your standards. Know your values. Know your worth.
