Sorry, but I’ve given up apologising

On giving up people-pleasing and learning how to be disliked

When I arrived at the Halls of Residence one week after my 19th birthday, I landed in a block of ten rooms on two floors, with a shared toilet and bathroom on each floor, plus a small kitchen with a Baby Belling cooker and a furred-up hot water machine to make tea and coffee. There were two Sues on my floor who already knew one another, one of whom was to remain a friend for some years to come. The other did not. I shall call her Spiky Sue, on account of her hairdo.

Every Sue or Susan I have known has been lovely. I’ve come to instantly like anyone with that name, based on past experience, except Spiky Sue. I was a little scared of her, and she and I didn’t warm to one another, which would have been fine had we not lived in such close proximity. And had she not played the prank of trying to unlock the bathroom door from the outside while I was having a long soak, all the time banging on the door, calling my name, and laughing. She didn’t want access to the bath; she wanted to make fun of me and humiliate me by opening the door while I was naked. She didn’t succeed, but I was too scared to come out of the bathroom until I was sure that she had given up and gone back into her room.

Spiky Sue was not enjoying college. She had a boyfriend back home in Birmingham, and she went home every weekend to see him, which at least gave me some respite. He sent her cassettes instead of letters. She didn’t have any means of playing them, but I did. In spite of her behaviour, when she asked to borrow my radio cassette player, I lent it to her. She held onto it for days until I eventually knocked on her door and asked for it back. She seemed put out, but she did return it.

Eventually, before the end of the first term, Spiky Sue abandoned her degree, returning home to live with her boyfriend. The last I heard she was working in a heel bar, repairing shoes and cutting keys.

I don’t remember if I said sorry when I asked for my radio cassette player to be returned. In all likelihood, I did. I was a people-pleaser, a smoother-over, someone who didn’t like conflict. Brought up in a chaotic home with an alcoholic father and a mother who had mood swings, I was often placed in scary situations. I learned how to manage people either by staying silent and pretending I wasn’t there, or diffusing situations by saying sorry, saying or doing something nice for people who frankly were not behaving well towards me or others.

Giving up people-pleasing is hard. Changing any habit of a lifetime is difficult, and there are costs involved. Being seen as someone who will go along with others to keep the peace, someone who will apologise when it is others who should be saying sorry, leads to those who are not the Lovely Sues of this world taking advantage. In the family I grew up in, it led to scapegoating, to actions and decisions being taken that affected me happening without my knowledge or agreement. To having little control when I lived at home, and as an adult, when I was thrown back into my family of birth.

People who have known me most of my life have seen me as malleable, and have mistreated me. I have said sorry for things I haven’t done just to avoid conflict, because I wanted people to like me. It has led to a lack of respect for me. It has led to people placing feelings onto my shoulders that they did not want to feel themselves. Scapegoating does not only mean placing blame on another person, it also means placing emotional burdens on them.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, as it is now three years since my big brother John died. Next month, it will be three years since I last saw my three surviving siblings, at our brother’s funeral. John’s death changed the dynamics in the sibling group and opened my eyes to the way I have been treated all my life. Dealing with our brother’s funeral arrangements, his intestate estate, with selling the house that we were brought up in, brought old behaviour back to the fore. Decisions being made, actions taken without my knowledge or agreement. Eventually, I distanced myself, engaged a solicitor to act on my behalf, and am now estranged from all my siblings.

I’m not sure that the pain of estrangement will ever fully go away, but the cost of remaining in that circle was too great. Unlike Spiky Sue, who was only in my life for a few weeks, the connections to the family I have lost go deeper. I have questioned why I have been treated the way I was, and many of the answers have come through learning more about intergenerational trauma.

I occasionally hear about my siblings and my nephew, who blocked me and cut me off along with his mother. I know that when my siblings get together it isn’t really a happy experience, it’s trauma bonding. I was part of that trauma bonding for too long. I laughed and joked about things from our childhood that weren’t funny at all. The laughter was a coping mechanism. We don’t have to pretend any of it was funny anymore.

A few things I’ve read recently have leaned towards this theme and have helped my thinking. In an article in Psychologies magazine, ‘Moving from guilt to grace’ by Kellie Gillespie-Wright, a therapist called Cathy Andrews is quoted:

“When you repeatedly back down to avoid tension, it reinforces the idea that your needs matter less. Eventually people stop asking what you want because they’ve learned you just go along with their preferences.”

This happened after my brother died. My siblings assumed that whatever they chose to do was fine because I wasn’t worth consulting. There were things that happened when our mother died, too, that I’ve dwelled on for eight years. I wasn’t told that Mum was dying, though I did know that she was frail. The rest of the family were told that she had been taken into hospital, the day before I was called, and many of them went to say goodbye to her. I was told when Mum was dead, and that my siblings had decided not to let me know, ‘Because we knew you wouldn’t want to come’. I wasn’t given the choice, plus all the others were prepared for mum’s death. I was not.

I now understand that my previous behaviour led my siblings to believe that it was okay to keep me in the dark. I had given them to believe that whatever they did I would go along with it. Although some of my siblings’ actions had hurt me deeply, I hadn’t always let them know, and in fact had apologised to smooth things over. It doesn’t excuse their behaviour, but it does explain it.

I came across a book, The Courage to Be Disliked, by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, which I think will help. The cover says, ‘a single book can change your life’. Quite a claim. When I bought it, the assistant asked if I would like a receipt. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If it doesn’t change my life, I shall be asking for a refund.’ I know that a single book won’t resolve all my angst, but I hope that it will help.

Estrangement is not easy, but it is getting easier. There are trip hazards along the way, triggers that throw me back by several years, send me back to the scared child that had to manage people and situations that felt dangerous. Sometimes I think if I apologised to my siblings then everything would be back as it was, even though ‘as it was’ was horrible most of the time. It was not healthy for me or for my siblings to play the role in the family that I did. I believe that it’s not healthy for the three of them to get either. As my younger brother’s ex once said to me, ‘You shouldn’t all get together. There’s too much pain.’

Unfortunately, some family members are not blessed (or cursed) with the same gift for self-examination and introspection that I have. It suits them to continue to scapegoat the sister who has now gone into the wilderness. In truth, I don’t miss the drama in that family. Nothing was ever straightforward. Deaths, illnesses, fallings-out, always amplified beyond how they might have been dealt with. It seemed that few in the extended family died quietly with their family around them. My uncle was murdered in 2022; a cousin’s son died in a tragic accident not long before. Both of these were shocking, but even less shocking news was often reported dramatically.

I cannot make people like me. Having self-respect and meeting my own needs rather than accommodating others’ needs has led to me being disliked. What matters is if I like myself, if I love myself, and that I have friends, family and chosen family that do love and respect me.

I have been ill throughout January, and have tried to keep my Substack posts light, in an effort to bring some light into my own life. I share this heavier subject because the writing and sharing of it helps. I hope that others will identify with it and be helped, too.

When this post goes out, I shall be in Manchester belatedly celebrating my husband’s 70th birthday and seeing my chosen sister who is travelling across from Leeds. I hope to come home lighter and refreshed and in better health.

My latest book Learning to be Irish is available from my website and the usual online suppliers. I shall be reading some of the poetry from the book at The Poetry Hub, Faversham Literary Festival, 21 February at 5.00 p.m, alongside Rosie Johnston.