people pleasing to the extreme

[Glides]

something that came up in therapy involved me talking about how i fall over myself to try and nurture and help people when they need it, and be just unbelievably passive, because i think that care and support is all i have to offer people. i can't make people laugh all that much, i'm not funny or charming or adjective, i'm all the negative self-talk, it's an aberration when someone wants me, and then i burn myself out and they get bored by me. over and over, because i never take the initiative and i'm never aggressive or whatever. because i don't think i have anything else or offer or that i'm capable of offering anything else. of course, i have also been the emotional leech before, but this pattern keeps emerging. i am so internally convinced of my own inherent worthlessness that i just support and be the receptacle for acres of venting, because i have nothing else to give that'll make people want to be around me. because i am so useless, because i am so negative self-talk and the like. i'm not saying it's literally true even if i believe it with all of my heart, i'm just saying it's a pattern and i don't know how to figure out what else i give people.

which in turn goes into all the suicidal ideation and jerkbrain thinking that my death would be the ultimate gift so i'm not burdening anyone anymore with what a wreck i am, what have you. it's all just patterns and i'm still not out of them and i am still single and other adjectives reflecting social status. still unfulfilled, still sexually unviable, still negative self-talk. you get it. and now that i'm all burnt out and i can't rush myself ragged to do favors anymore, everyone is vanishing. i am alone in a tomb of my own making, what have you.

i dunno, i hate patterns, i hate my isolation. i hate all sorts of things. i'm just sad and lonely and shit and wishing i had the things i don't have, wishing i was the adjectives i want to be that no amount of work will get me to. the amount of work i've done has only led to the bare minimum level of competency in a human life. i don't know what more progress i can make. i just need some sort of guidance and possibly a kick in the ass.

[Enail]

One thing that might be useful to you is the fact that kind, reasonable, considerate people want their relationships to be reciprocal. They don't want people they like to just try to please them and give without ever taking, they don't want a minion; they want to be supported by their loved ones and to support them.  Because it's not kind to take advantage of someone; being offered the ability to take advantage is honestly more of an insult than a benefit to a decent person. So if you speak up about what you want and need and can handle in ways appropriate to the level and type of relationship, that will be giving kind people something that they value (and as a side benefit, it also tends to put off selfish users, whereas treating yourself as lesser in interactions will be more likely to put off kind people and attract users).  So maybe you could try channeling some of that people-pleasing into doing your share of the work of creating an equal relationship, even though some of what that work involves is being willing to have boundaries and to let the other person give to you as much as you give to them?

Also, what things do you think other people have to offer that's so amazing? 'Charming' is a good quality for building low-level relationships, but it's more an advantage to the person who is charming than a benefit for the people they have relationships with - it makes them enjoyable as a cocktail party guest and makes it easier for them to show good points quickly, but it's not really something that's relevant to a long-term friendship or relationship imo. If a long-time friend is charming, that makes zero difference to what the relationship gives me. "Funny" is more about compatibility of sense of humour than an objective quality. No one's that special in any kind of objective way.

[Glides]

One thing that might be useful to you is the fact that kind, reasonable, considerate people want their relationships to be reciprocal. They don't want people they like to just try to please them and give without ever taking, they don't want a minion; they want to be supported by their loved ones and to support them.  Because it's not kind to take advantage of someone; being offered the ability to take advantage is honestly more of an insult than a benefit to a decent person. So if you speak up about what you want and need and can handle in ways appropriate to the level and type of relationship, that will be giving kind people something that they value (and as a side benefit, it also tends to put off selfish users, whereas treating yourself as lesser in interactions will be more likely to put off kind people and attract users).  So maybe you could try channeling some of that people-pleasing into doing your share of the work of creating an equal relationship, even though some of what that work involves is being willing to have boundaries and to let the other person give to you as much as you give to them?

Okay i know this is such a me thing to say but...how the fuck do I even do that? even when i'm clearly expressing interest and having it reciprocated, it eventually just fizzles out anyway. the other problem is the only option is to give. i'm having to recognize how i exclusively seem to attract people with a lot of emotional demands who give barely anything beyond the bare minimum back in return. no consideration for my needs beyond the bare minimum. no nothing. the alternative is perpetual solitude. i attract people who are even bigger emotional leeches than i am. i don't even have the opportunity to attract these kind people who actually give back, they don't even seem to exist. i'm only able to find this in platonic relationships (sort of) with people i have no interest in romantically in the first place. i'd love to do the work, but i don't even have those opportunities at this point.

i mean, i do speak up about what i want, to some extent. i try to hold strict boundaries about covid even if people initially promise it won't bother them and then break that promise really easily. i can fixate on a million traits i do or don't have: i'm not mysterious enough, not aggressive enough, not taking the initiative enough. acting more like a wet noodle than a person, always being passive. i do agree that i give people the option to take advantage, but (and i know they know this) i don't have the luxury of options. even when i was dating multiple people, it just meant one was extremely jealous of the other and expected me to be a part of their personal harem and have nothing to myself. that's why i'm not with them anymore.

what i would love to be, for once, is the one that is somebody else's first choice, not just the "eh, you'll do" candidate. i want someone to be excited to see me. maybe that's deeply selfish, but i've never gotten to experience it before. i've never been the person someone else is excitedly telling their friends about, i'm the "eh, well they're okay" candidate. i'm the one my partner's friends all shrug at. it's improvement, but it comes from my innate passivity as a person. i don't know how to not be a cipher when i'm nervous and wanting someone's approval. it's just sort of one of those things i still struggle with. i'm not even the boring person someone settles with later in life because i'm not interested at all in marriage. so then i get canceled out. i'm sure in your enail way you'll tear this logic to pieces, but you know i'll spend hours obsessing over this no matter what. this does not matter in the long run. i know, i know the actual lesson is to learn to love being alone or whatever. that's the actual lesson of this life if i'm meant to reincarnate or whatever. learn to love solitude.

[Enail]

You sound like you're on the right track, speaking up about what you want, boundaries. To some extent, this is just a bad time for working this kind of thing out; this whole pandemic thing has been hell on the boundaries/loneliness front given how shitty people are being. But also, it generally seems like it takes time for speaking up and having boundaries to start... working? I've heard from quite a few people that when you start having higher standards and boundaries, there's a not insubstantial period where you've mastered it enough to stop putting up with the people who like to take advantage, but not enough to start drawing a different type of people yet. It sounds like you could be in that kind of transition period, and that if you keep working at it, at some point you'll start finding more decent human beings. It sounds like magic, but it's something I've seen a lot of people go through, so I think it's a real thing.

I don't know that you have to love being alone, maybe more to be okay enough with it that you're willing to be alone rather than put up with bad treatment? That doesn't mean that you can't ever find kind people if that's not something you can accept, but I think it's easier to find more of them if you are prepared to walk away from people who treat you badly. And same with being more upfront about who you are; I'd say you're a very distinctive person, but if you're not showing much of that with people, it makes it harder for them to see that distinctiveness and therefore to react with that level of enthusiasm you want.

Also, don't forget you're underplaying how people react to you - you've mentioned plenty of situations where people seem to feel strongly about you, to be excited about you. Most relationships don't work out, regardless about how enthusiastic they are at first, and it doesn't say much about your ability to be someone's first choice.

And all of it - making connections, finding people who are enthusiastic about you, finding people who are kind - takes a lot of trying, a lot of luck, a lot of meeting people who aren't right for you or interested in you.  There's a lot that just isn't about you, and trying to interpret it all as personal failings is just not helping you. Things can be hard without it meaning you're not good enough or not doing enough, try to give yourself a little grace here.

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