Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves—and How to Find Our Way Back

by Ingrid Clayton

And she kept repeating this mantra softly: “I did nothing wrong.” The second all this awareness dropped into her body, it shattered the hope she’d been carrying for years, that change was coming. Shattered her determination to stick around for that day. And she felt immediate grief. Walking out, she knew it was over, and she was devastated. It was like all the young parts of her, with gaping wounds, who’d been waiting for help from someone else for decades, were all just told, NOBODY IS COMING. There was no rescue mission. Now sobbing uncontrollably in her car, she was hysterical when she called her sister. “I need to come over right now.” Previous iterations of Francis would have reached out to make peace. Would have sent Colin a text: “I’m really sorry I didn’t want to go downtown. I should have said, ‘Can we just go for an hour and then I can get some work done?’ ” If she offered a solution that seemed normal, maybe the whole thing was. But she had no intention of playing nice this time. There is no sugarcoating what happened next. Crying harder than she ever had, rocking back and forth, shaking, sick to her stomach, she later explained how she felt. I felt like I was never going to be okay, ever again. Part of me wished I could die. I was not safe in my body or in the world. The LOVE OF MY LIFE let me leave with no acknowledgment, no apology, no awareness of his behavior, completely villainizing me. The lack of empathy or understanding after five YEARS of doing everyth...