The Secret Power of Assholery
The shockingly viable alternative to a life of people-pleasing
Hello - I’m Annie. And I’m a chronic (and possibly terminal) people-pleaser. I mean, aren’t we all to some extent? Unless you’re a dick. And long term readers will know I have one rule in life; don’t be a dick. People-pleasing might be flawed, but assholery is unconscionable. Or so I thought. Until a flight, a job offer and
made me realise I might have this all wrong.Allow me to explain.
The Flight
Three weeks ago I went on a holiday I couldn’t afford. It’s a long story - starting last February when I decided to book an extortionately expensive flight to Bali so I could spend a month there working freelance and ‘Eat Pray Loving’ the shit out of life. I was high on lofty woo-woo ideals that I would act in the way I wanted my life to be, and therefore manifest it. Hurrah! I then lost all my income streams and suddenly Bali was not doable. Neither was paying my mortgage. Or my electricity bill.
Fast forward to this year and things are slowly improving - but my embarrassingly expensive plane ticket had an expiry date of a year. I either had to use it to go somewhere, or lose it completely. Two of my best friends were heading to Mexico for our annual ‘get the fuck out of the UK, why do we live here?’ winter-sun trip - so I decided to go along, try and keep costs down and enjoy myself. I changed my flight - and the exorbitant amount I’d spent bought me a fancy ticket to Mexico. I determined to make the most of this glitzy flight and not feel guilty about it.
On the return flight home - an overnight 11 hour journey when my fancy-ass ticket really came into its own - I was approached by a flight attendant and asked if I’d switch seats.
“We have a bit of a situation” she said, pulling a faux-concerned face. She went on to explain that a woman with extreme anxiety was travelling with her doctor to enable her to be fully ‘medicated’ for the flight. The challenge was they had not planned their trip sufficiently to book seats next to each other. As it stood, the patient and doctor were on opposite sides of the aisle - and the stewardess wanted to put them together.
Would I consider giving up my window seat?
Suddenly I was hit with a barrage of feelings. My people-pleaser instantly kicked into gear and wanted to help. Of course I should give up my window seat - it was the right thing to do. I’d already given up my booked seat on the way out so a husband and wife could sit together; I am that person. Damnit, I want people to know I’m that person.
But the truth is I didn’t want to move. And my inner asshole was making that clear to me. This was a flight I had paid a HUGE amount of money for and will likely never see the like of again. It was an overnight flight and I’d selected my seat so I could shut myself away and get actually get some sleep without being disturbed by trolleys or people fumbling their way to the loos. I was also coming down with a cold and starting to feel like shit.
It then struck me that nobody else had been asked to move. The stewardess hadn’t had approached anyone but me. She had not spoken to the person next to the patient (a man) or the person next to the doctor (a terrifying looking woman wearing head-to-toe designer gear). She was obviously coming for me as an easy target. A kindly, smiling single woman.
Panic set in. I was trapped between the angel and the devil on my shoulders, paralysed. Just then my friend, who was sitting behind me, spoke up. “Can’t you ask her?” she said, pointing to the terrifying looking woman in the seat next to the doctor. The stewardess sloped off. But not before a passive aggressive “So… you’re saying you won’t move?” to me. I smiled blankly and nodded, while my people-pleaser quietly vomited with shame.
“Thank you” I said to my friend “I thought I was going to have to move - and I really didn’t want to”.
“I know”, she smiled “that’s why I thought I’d intervene. They hadn’t asked anyone else - it wasn’t ok to just ask you”.
My darling friend, by the way, is not an asshole. Neither is she a people pleaser. She has boundaries and is awesome as fuck.
Despite the situation resolving itself and everyone moving on, I still spent the whole of the flight wracked with guilt and not making eye contact with the stewardess for fear she thought I was evil incarnated. Hell, I’m still thinking about it now.
Of course everything was fine in the end - the anxious woman in question was knocked out for the whole flight and had no idea where she was - and her doctor was a metre away from her keeping an eye. All was well.
But I wasn’t. I judged myself for not putting my needs and desires in second place to other people’s. Was I… an asshole?
The Job Offer
The holiday itself, while lovely, was not entirely relaxed due to the number of job interviews via Zoom I suddenly had to juggle. The job market, having been as stagnant as a corpse for most of 2023, seemed to cough, throw up a little bit and start sitting up halfway through January. Out of nowhere, recruiters started contacting me with roles and - given I was on a holiday I couldn’t afford - I said yes to all of them. As a result I spent much of my holiday praying to the Mayan Gods of wifi to keep me connected while I sat in a smart looking top and bikini bottoms on Zoom interviews in various different hotel rooms.
At the end of my holiday, two job offers came in. A Mexican Miracle! The first one was interesting work with decent people and I was excited to accept. But when I told them my start date would need to be 10 days after they wanted me due to my upcoming wisdom tooth surgery, they started getting difficult - pushing me to work around this (something I really didn’t want to do).
I pushed back, suggesting 10 days was neither here nor there in the vast scheme of things. They got tricky, implying the job offer would be revoked if I didn’t comply. Once again I was torn between the angel and devil. Surely the right thing to do was to capitulate to their wishes as I needed the job? But it irked me. I didn’t like being pushed around and it didn’t exactly say good things about their working culture.
Fortunately I had another job offer on the table - and one that paid better. So I pushed back, told them I wasn’t budging on dates and accepted the other job. Of course they rolled over immediately and offered a phone call to ‘reassure me’ about their culture. But it was too late.
Had I not had another offer though, I would not have had this confidence. I would have pretzeled myself to make them happy. Because I’m nice. And being nice is a good thing.
But standing my ground in this way taught me something. It actually felt pretty good to stand up for my own needs. And - as an added bonus - I wasn’t weighed down by resentment. Interesting.
People-pleasing - a poor life choice?
It started dawning on me that always going along with everything isn’t necessarily a good thing - in that it doesn’t actually making me happy. Sure, it was making other people happy but at what cost to me?
It’s recently come to my attention that spending the first half of my life doing everything other people told me was important did not make me fulfilled. Yet here I was still doing it. I was continuing to tell myself that my happiness is just not as important as other people’s.
But surely this is a lofty thing to do? If everyone just pleased themselves all the time surely the world would be a disaster?! There would be no harmony. No community. No teamwork. Nothing would ever get done and the world would be full of wall-to-wall dickheads. We’d all be living in a selfish cocaine-fuelled version of The Purge 24/7.
Or would we?
A thought occurred that people-pleasing is not always a kind thing to do. I recently watched Monty Python’s Almost The Truth on Netflix. The documentary revealed there were two clear factions in the comedy group, and at one point Eric Idle spoke of Michael Palin’s (the ‘nice one’) attempts to keep everyone happy. But in fact it made nobody happy - least of all Michael Palin - and meant he never gave a clear view and arguments took even longer to resolve. “That’s the problem with niceness” Idle added with a shrug.
Thinking about my own life, I let my friends organise things because I’m terrified of suggesting something they don’t want to do. I never invite people to my house because I’m terrified it’s too big an ask to make them travel that far. I struggle to explain to my boyfriend when I’m upset in case it’s not a “good enough reason” to be upset. Seeing this written down makes me realise just how insane it sounds. None of this makes me a particularly good friend or partner.
So I started Googling people-pleasing. Which was very illuminating.
According to Psychology Today, being nice is often an anxiety-driven response to avoiding conflict. And can lead to depression, anxiety, addiction, anger and extreme negative self-talk. Excellent. It can also lead to ‘periodic burnout’ - because you’re running so fast and making everything your fault all the time that you often fall over. Oh and the real kicker? ‘Later life regret’. Well fuck that. But how to unpick 42 years of behaving this way? And do it well?
Enter
.In a wonderful exchange here on Substack a week or so ago,
and Julia discussed the embarrassing fact they love the way I write.“She’s so blunt” said Kristi.
“Without being an asshole. That’s a skill.” added Julia.
I thanked Julia, and explained that was my one objective in life. And she gave the most wonderful response:
Truth, Annie? A certain amount of assholery is inevitable. That said, the point is to laugh WITH it, learn WITH and FROM it, and turn it into good articles. For the mastery isn’t to never be an asshole. It’s to appreciate the fact that we all do it, it’s part of our humanity, and real mastery isn’t shutting it down utterly (it does have a role, after all, called humility) but rather, negotiating terms.
Suddenly everything fell into place. A certain amount of assholery is inevitable - because we are human. “The mastery isn’t to never be an asshole” it’s to work with it. To use it and question it. To make fun of it and sometimes act on it. To embrace it as a part of you that’s just as valid and worthy of life as any of your ‘good’ attributes.
Because ultimately who’s to say what’s good or bad? A lot of harm in the world is produced by our obsession with dividing feelings and thoughts into the black and white ridiculousness of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Feeling happy is good - feeling down is not. So we must solve the latter but not the former. Gratitude is good, jealousy is bad - so we must never feel the latter and only feel the former. It creates shame and judgement about things that are just… human.
In reality all thoughts and feelings have a place. Jealousy can inform us about things we want. And feeling down is not only a natural state sometimes, but can signal we may need to do things differently.
Added to which, avoiding assholery can be incredibly damaging. Not stating your needs and always capitulating erodes your confidence over time - and this can lead to losing your entire sense of self. I should know - I lost it for years after a controlling marriage.
An Ode To Assholery
So perhaps it’s time to re-frame assholery as something positive. A wise teacher and protector that’s as valid as our kindness - and is not mutually exclusive.
Because to live is to be all things. To feel all feelings. Of course we want to look after ourselves - and saying so isn’t a bad thing.
People-pleasing is never without cost. For every person you please against your own wishes, a small token of resentment is quietly added to your outlook purse. It’s tiny - it doesn’t weigh you down much. But over days, months and years, the weight of these tokens becomes enormous. It will either break you or you’ll throw it at someone who doesn’t deserve it. It’s better service to the world to not collect resentment tokens in the first place.
My quest these days is to be the me-ist version of me I can be. And how can I do that if I’m never completely honest about what a twat I am sometimes?
Of course, it’s not always possible to push back on everything we don’t like - particularly when it comes to money matters when we’re down on our luck. Sometimes we can’t afford to take a stance. Pushing back is a massive gamble and the privilege of people who have other options.
But that doesn’t have to inform your whole life. Finding ways to flex your “no” muscle and honestly state your needs in other areas might just stop you from losing yourself entirely.
So I’m setting off on a quest to let my assholery out and free. It’s going to be uncomfortable. It’s going to make me feel sick. I once did a year of saying yes - and now I’m going to try a week of saying no. Just to get the practice in. I’ll report back.
And “assholery is inevitable” might just be my next tattoo.
Today’s post was inspired by the words and support of fabulous
and both of whom I encourage you to read. In fact just do it - don’t be an asshole…Happy Sunday team! This is another one I hovered over publishing. Because of course there’s a difference between saying no, and ‘being an asshole’. But as a hopeless people pleaser the two have become conflated in my (admittedly warped) view. It’s also embarrassing to admit my total lack of ability to stand up to myself in my 40s. Curious to hear how this one lands… does anyone relate? Are you a people pleaser? Does it make you feel good? Or are you perhaps a reformed people pleaser? And if so how the hell did you manage it??
Give up your seat. That’s a hard no for me, and I’m afraid I would have been as asshole-ish as needed to keep that from going down. Whether it was my seat in question, or a stranger nearby. This whole trend of cajoling someone to give up a seat because of their poor planning, when we can all easily book ahead and pick seats and figure shit out ahead of time, and now it’s somehow YOUR problem? NO
Annie, first of all, I'm honored to have inspired ANYone to write, never mind something so worthwhile. Trust me, lots of people need to read this.
Second, high fives on your quest toward NO. It's uncomfortable and will be an ongoing challenge. But you've got this! You don't have to be a complete asshole, just enough to feel better about your choices.
PS: I wouldn't have given up my seat either. An 11-hour flight? Nope. I would have stood in the aisle telling my ENTIRE story just to save the window seat if it became necessary. Mexico was already a mere consolation compared to the trip you were supposed to be on. You deserved what you paid for.