People Pleasing



“People-pleasing is when we suppress and repress our own needs, desires, expectations, feelings and opinions to put others ahead of ourselves so that we can gain attention, affection, validation, approval and love,”

said Lue, the author of the forthcoming book, “The Joy of Saying No.” “Or we do it to avoid conflict, criticism, additional stress, disappointments, loss, rejection and … abandonment.”

Source: Allyson Chiu,
The Washington Post.

The Disease to Please



Being a people-pleaser is a double-edged sword—there’s guilt if you say no, resentment if you say yes. But according to Sasha Heinz, PhD, a developmental psychologist and life coach, there’s another price to people-pleasing: It’s a form of manipulation.




This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be nice and helpful and friendly. The difference, explains Heinz, is that people-pleasers depend on the acceptance and validation of others—it’s what she calls the disease to please.



When we habitually try to satisfy other people’s needs above our own, Heinz says, it’s most likely an anxiety-management system: “We’re managing our own anxiety that people won’t like us by trying to control their opinions of us.”



When we can recognize that this behavior stems from a sense of worth based on another person’s approval, Heinz believes we can make small changes to self-correct it—first by mastering a graceful yet effective “no, thanks.”

I used to be this way until life taught me a hard lesson.

Na who niceness never deal with dey dull. These days, I be obiakpo. Buhari has happened to the country so I have tightened my face as well. If you offend me now and I see you as my enemy, I'll destroy you long before your apology is heard. I still manage to do few favors here and there except to vaginarians, I don't even return their greetings to start with talk more of being nice to them.

A Q&A with Sasha Heinz, PhD


Q
What is the disease to please, and how does it manifest in your clients?

A
The disease to please is an insidious habit that will turn you into a lying human bag of resentment. But before getting into what it is, let’s cover what it’s not: It’s not the quality of being a thoughtful, empathetic person who cares about other people’s needs and emotional well-being. That’s compassion and kindness—and those are positive traits to possess.



The disease part comes in when you prioritize the needs of others at your own expense. It’s when you say yes to things, but inside you’re saying no.



Someone with the disease to please—a people-pleaser—will smile and say, “Oh, yes, sure, I’d be happy to pick you up from the airport on Friday.” But the day they have to do it, they wake up thinking,


Why’d I say yes to this? I knew I didn’t really want to do this.
Now my whole day is cut short because I have to sit in rush hour traffic.
This friend is so entitled and could easily have taken an Uber.
Why did she even put me in this position? She’d better be grateful.



The people-pleaser will assume that some sort of debt has been created, which the friend will later have to reciprocate. Spoiler alert: The friend will not be grateful and probably won’t reciprocate in exactly the way you want.



Q
Where does the disease to please come from?

A
It’s easy to indulge in the idea that people-pleasers are extra caring, civically minded, generous do-gooders. Someone might think, I say yes because I’m nice or I’m flexible or I’m easy or because I care about people’s feelings and have a big heart.


But there’s only one true reason we contort ourselves to other people’s expectations: We want their praise, acceptance, and love. It feels good. The opposite, their displeasure, feels terrible.


It feels like a death. When we put it that way and see people-pleasing for what it is—a form of manipulation—it doesn’t seem so lovely anymore. It’s not pleasing them, and it’s not pleasing you.




Q
Why does this seem to affect women more than men?

A
You’ve probably noticed that men seem to have an easier time saying no, being blunt, and communicating more directly—without apology.
It may be linked to biology, specifically our ancient, hardwired reactions to stress. Thanks
to our subcortical brain, men and women deal with stress differently.



We all have an instinctual fight-or-flight response to perceived danger. It’s how we’ve survived as a species. Under threat, you either fight or flee. This response is universal to both men and women.



Women, however, have an extra trick up their sleeve—another, more sophisticated response to stress.

Thanks to the pioneering research of Shelly Taylor, PhD, and her team at UCLA, we know that women are more likely to seek out friends and support when under stress.

This is a behavior she calls “tend and befriend.” Fighting or fleeing, it turns out, might have had less adaptive benefit for women, who were responsible for taking care of young, vulnerable children.



In fact, millions of years later, nurturing is still a more valued quality in women than in men.
According to a 2017 Pew Research Center study, empathy, nurturing, and kindness ranked as the second most valued trait in women—but it was number seven for men.



So tend and befriend is no longer just a biological trait. It’s an enduring societal pressure: If you want to be liked (or safe from anxieties, real or imagined), you’d better be nice.

Q
What about letting go of others’ opinions of you?

A
In theory, letting go of other people’s opinions of you is easy. But when you’re face-to-face with a friend who asks you to help her raise money for her new nonprofit or your mother raises her eyebrows and cocks her head in that ever so subtle way she does, theory becomes real—and hard.



The most important thing to remember is that you can never control other people’s thoughts and feelings about you. You think you can, but it is always their thoughts about your behavior that make them feel an emotion.



They can choose to think thoughts that make them feel hurt or thoughts that make them feel completely neutral or, let’s dream a little, thoughts that increase their respect for you.


But think about it: Do you really want other people trying to control your opinions and feelings about them? Not really!




The only thing you can control is how you show up in the world. What values do you want to guide your behavior: honesty, love, integrity, authenticity, courage, excellence, respect, industry, self-acceptance, trust, curiosity, or adventure? A values-driven life requires saying no to that which is not in alignment with your priorities.



Other people are allowed to have an opinion, obviously, but if your relationship with yourself is rock-solid, it will be far easier to weather the storm.



Q
What advice would you give someone who’s trying to overcome this behavior?

A
Breaking the habit of people-pleasing can be challenging. Here are some tips I recommend for new initiates into the “no, thanks” club:


Stall—but only for twenty-four hours. For one month, make a rule of waiting twenty-four hours before you say yes or no to anything.

Use this time buffer not to ruminate but to ask yourself—
the you right now who is thinking about doing
it in the future and the you in the future who is actually having to do it—whether it’s in alignment with your values.

If the future you is willing to give up that time and energy, then go for it.



Remember you always have a choice. Strike “should” from your vocabulary and replace it with “could.” Instead of “I should volunteer at my son’s school,” correct yourself and say, “I could volunteer at my son’s school.”


Now you get to ask yourself the real questions: Is volunteering at his school the best use of my time and talents? Is saying yes motivated by my values or by a fear of not keeping up with the übermoms?




Change your mind-set. All lasting behavioral change is an expression of a change in mind-set. If you believe that people-pleasing is a way of being nice and making people happy, you will slip back into impulsively saying yes.


But if you acknowledge that people-pleasing is a form of dishonesty used to manipulate how other people feel—particularly how they feel about you—it will become easier to do things differently.


And when you do say, “Yes, I’d be happy to!” and really mean it, you will like yourself and other people so much more.



Writer: Sasha Heinz, PhD, MAPP, a developmental psychologist and life coach, is an expert in positive psychology, lasting behavioral change, and the science of getting unstuck.


In her private coaching practice, she teaches clients the tools to change their lives for good. Heinz received her BA from Harvard, her PhD in development psychology from Columbia, and her master’s in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also served as a faculty member.

SOURCE

In her 2001 Groundbraking book titled
"The Disease To Please", Psychologist
Harriet Braiker wrote extensively on the problem of people pleasing, its negative effects on people's
Lives and several solutions to curb people pleasing Habits:

These are some of the Stories culled from the
Book.
Note: The names of the people in this book have been altered, to protect their Identity.



The Hidden Cost of Catering to Others

At 35, Miranda can’t understand why she still is single. She seems to have no trouble attracting men or getting men to ask her out on dates. In fact, most of the men she dates are quite enthusiastic about her … at least for a while.




But none of Miranda’s relationships have lasted. Sooner or later, every man with whom she’s involved has broken off the relationship.
What really perplexes and upsets Miranda is that having a successful relationship with a man is the most important desire in her life.



She just can’t understand what she is doing
wrong because, especially when it comes to men, Miranda is a committed people-pleaser.




The irony is that by always putting the men first, and failing to attend to her own needs, Miranda creates the very outcome she is trying hardest to avoid. Still, despite years of recurrent break-ups, Miranda lacks any insight into how self-defeating her compulsive people-pleasing and nearly mindless catering to her men have become.




“I have to put men first and do everything I can to please them,” she maintains adamantly. “Otherwise, they won’t love me.”




So, as soon as Miranda finds herself attracted and interested in a new man, she puts herself in a subservient, submissive position. She lavishes men with attention, adoration, and praise. Miranda believes that to be worthy of a man’s love, she must prove that she will always put his needs first.




To this end, Miranda will agree to do anything, go anywhere, and comply with any request or desire to make her partner happy. She will see any movie or watch any television show that her partner prefers; she will eat any kind of food, at any restaurant that her partner selects. If he prefers, she will cook for him or skip eating altogether if he isn’t hungry.





When Miranda’s man of the moment works out at the gym, she becomes an exercise devotee. If he is idle, she joins the couch potato ranks. Miranda dresses to please her partner and will willingly change her hairstyle, makeup, or other facets of her appearance to comply with her boyfriend’s taste.




Miranda’s opinions always take a secondary seat to her man’s positions. In fact, she “finds” herself in agreement with nearly everything her partner believes, making sure to tell him how intelligent and fascinating he is.





At first, almost all the men that Miranda dates are flattered and pleased by her apparent adoration. She has the ability to make each man feel special as she tells him how intelligent, talented, fascinating, and attractive she finds him to be. But, as time goes on, her partners’ initial enthusiasm and interest begin to wane.





The hard reality is that with Miranda, as Gertrude Stein once said about Oakland, California, “there’s no there there.” Men discover, after a relatively short time, that Miranda’s toadying flattery and submissive conformity transform her into a crashing bore.




Without an opinion or idea of her own, Miranda offers no true intellectual compatibility, merely a
mirror image of her partner’s thoughts. Since her interests and activities change each time she changes partners, Miranda has never really developed an enduring passion, nurtured a talent, or even identified a need of her own other than to be some man’s “other half.”




But instead of being a complementary and independent half, Miranda merely becomes a replica or carbon copy of her partner, only in female form. Consequently, she offers little to enlarge a man’s experience or to broaden his horizon of knowledge.




Miranda’s people-pleasing ultimately becomes as burdensome to her partners as dead weight. She believes that by putting a man first, she is willing to give him anything and everything he could desire.




But the truth is that she cannot offer the one thing a healthy man wants and needs the most: the ability to truly share herself because she knows and values who she is.

It is imperative that you recognize how dangerous and self-sabotaging your people-pleasing tendencies with men can become so that you can change the unhealthy dynamic of your relationships.



Otherwise, the Disease to Please will serve as a veritable mating call to men who have a perverse need and desire to control nearly every aspect of your behavior. Worse yet, you will allow them to do so.



Nothing is out of bounds to a controlling man with a people-pleaser whom he can mold at will—from your appearance to your opinions, your performance in bed to your performance at work, your relationships with friends to your bonds with family.



And, in no time, your ego and self-esteem will deteriorate from modeling clay into silly putty.
When he is done playing with you or you are done being played with (whichever comes first), you will have some serious reparative work to do on a self that you may hardly still recognize as your own.



Unless you repair the damage by curing the Disease to Please that produced it, you will limp away from the relationship with the brand of “damaged goods” on your ego. Then, issuing the familiar mating call, you will continue to present yourself as the people-pleasing victim to the next controlling man that recognizes your vulnerability to his power.




The controlling man will always keep you off-center and feeling anxious. Since he needs to change you to demonstrate his control, you can never feel comfortable or secure with the thought that he cares about the person that you truly are—or used to be before he started chipping away at your identity.

Highly informative.

Raychee:
I used to be this way until life taught me a hard lesson.

same with me.
It hurt so bad

Chipping Away at Your Identity


When they met, Gail was an ambitious, beautiful but still aspiring model/actress.
At 50, Bruce was 25 years Gail’s senior and a famous film director. Gail not only fell “in love” with Bruce, she was entirely in awe of his power and talent as well.



Bruce was accustomed to being in control of all his relationships, and Gail was happy to oblige his every request. In many ways, they seemed the perfect match. Gail used to joke with her friends that Bruce made her “a changed woman.”




Bruce, who loved to create women in the image he desired, had never felt truly satisfied with any of his myriad partners. Gail had the Disease to Please with a specialization in men. Their “perfect” match was destined to turn toxic.




Soon after they met, as a one-month anniversary present, Bruce took Gail to an exclusive hair salon and told the hairdresser how to cut and style her hair. The color was changed from blonde to auburn at Bruce’s direction.



While she was at the salon, Bruce “suggested” a make-over and insisted that her lipstick match the bright red polish he had selected for her fingers and toenails. But he warned Gail never to let her polish chip because he “hated that in a woman.”



Bruce also generously insisted on buying Gail a new wardrobe. He loved to take her shopping so that he could select her clothes and shoes.
“As long as he pays for them, why shouldn’t he choose my clothes and shoes?” Gail would ask. “After all, the person I most want to please by how I look is Bruce.”




Bruce was somewhat reticent about marriage as he was still in the process of divorcing his third wife when he and Gail started dating. But Bruce insisted that he still believed in “love and romance” and thought that, with Gail, he might “get it right the fourth time.”



It was with an eye toward a possible marriage, he explained, that his suggestions for “polishing” Gail’s appearance were made.
“I admit that I’m not very tolerant of ‘flaws’ in women,” Bruce told Gail early in their relationship.



Speaking of his previous wives, he told Gail, “What really hurt me was the way they all gave up trying to make me happy after we got married. Obviously, I got turned off sexually and the marriages had to end.”
Gail promised Bruce that she would never stop trying to make him happy.



Bruce made sure that he and Gail worked out in his home gym with a private trainer for two hours every day. He tried to monitor everything that Gail ate or drank.



He wouldn’t permit her to drink any alcohol because it would make her look older and constantly reminded her that eating fat would make the “cellulite” on her thighs (which was nearly undetectable) get worse.




During the first several months or so of their relationship, Gail was actually flattered by Bruce’s constant efforts to “improve” her appearance. But, after the first year, Gail admitted that she began to feel somewhat oppressed by Bruce’s control.



When Bruce went out of town without her to shoot a movie on location, she became acutely anxious fearing he would become attracted to another woman.




Gail relapsed into symptoms of an eating disorder she thought she had conquered in her late teens. When she felt particularly anxious, she would secretly binge on chocolate. Then, in her panic over gaining weight and fear of Bruce’s disapproval and rejection, she would try to undo the damage by bulimic purging.




Alternatively, she would overeat and then counter the calories with compulsive, excessive exercise sometimes spending four hours or more working out.




On their two-year anniversary, Bruce’s “suggestions” grew more extreme. But, he held out the carrot of marriage and Gail munched on cue.




Bruce thought Gail’s breasts were lovely but “a bit too small for that wedding gown.” So, he took her to a plastic surgeon and selected the size implants that he believed would look best. But, Bruce’s creation didn’t stop there.




Six months later, Bruce brought Gail back to the plastic surgeon to have her now substantial breasts “augmented” yet another half-size.



Bruce also told her to get cheek implants to improve her facial bone structure and thought it would be a good idea for Gail to have her lipstick, eyebrows, and eyeliner permanently colored (with a type of cosmetic staining process) so that she would “look beautiful in bed first thing in the morning.”
Despite considerable misgivings, Gail complied.




Ironically, the more Bruce changed her, the less confident Gail became in her appearance. In her attempts to make Bruce happy, Gail lost control of her own identity.



Her extreme dependence, cultivated by his excessive need for control, left her vulnerable to a paralyzing fear of abandonment that, ultimately, became a painful reality.




“The punch line of this sick joke,” Gail concludes, “is that he left me anyway, no matter how much of myself I was willing to sacrifice just to make him happy. The saddest thing is that when I look in the mirror, I see Bruce’s image of me instead of seeing myself. And, because I wasn’t ‘good enough’ to keep him, I feel fatally flawed no matter how pretty other people think I am.”



Gail’s story, while extreme in proportion, illustrates a widespread and highly destructive pattern in certain relationships between men and people-pleasing women.




It is no coincidence that women with the Disease to Please find themselves in relationships with controlling men who first wrest away their identities (albeit with the women’s full cooperation and compliance) only to later criticize and eventually even discard them as uninteresting, overly dependent, and not sufficiently challenging.



As Gail unhappily learned, the rejection and abandonment that her people-pleasing compliance was designed to prevent can become a cruel and painful reality.




By changing yourself into his fantasy of who you should be, you actually make yourself less—rather than more—desirable to him. This is because his fantasy is merely an extension of himself.
To paraphrase the inimitable Groucho Marx, the man doesn’t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member.

men are animals. Very ill-trained sick narcissist entities.

Raychee:
I used to be this way until life taught me a hard lesson.

family or bf?

bmdmix15:
family or bf?

Everyone infact

Raychee:


Everyone infact

tell me bout it

Even the so called ice-cream seller doesn’t make everybody happy again why on earth will you expect someone take make you happy

Raychee:
I used to be this way until life taught me a hard lesson.

me too

bmdmix15:
tell me bout it

It's a long story. The bottomline is that i have learned my lessons and i am now smarter and learned not to give any hoot about what anybody thinks or says about me.

This is FALSE. People don't please others because they want some validation. Unless you are not a born giver, people please others because it gives them joy. For someone like me, if I have something and I don't share with someone, I can be happy. The feeling of seeing others smile is indescribable.

The only problem is that we are surrounded by habitual users and self-centred manipulators who will take advantage of us and still turn around to call us compound fools. Once you experience this a couple of times, you just advise yourself to reduce the way you help people.

Raychee:
I used to be this way until life taught me a hard lesson.

Lol... Yeah,. Many people are rascals....once they see your weakness, the next thing is to scheme how to start cheating you without remorse. Until you have had enough! They are like devils.

Whose Orgasm Is It Anyway?




Dina is sitting in my waiting room trembling and crying. When she comes in, she sits mute for several minutes. As she begins to talk, her tears choke off her words. It takes close to 30 minutes before Dina can even begin to tell me why she has come for therapy. What unfolds is a chilling story.




Dina says that her boyfriend, Paul, has kicked her out of his house where they have lived together for the past five years. He has told her that he cannot and will not marry her and that he has found someone else.




Five years ago, Dina, who is now 33, was introduced to Paul, a 38-year-old self-made multimillionaire. Dina describes him as “the most exciting man I had ever met.” The moment she met Paul, Dina says she was hit by the proverbial thunderbolt.




They went out on their first date and Dina simply never went home. She moved into Paul’s very elegant home. After one week, they promised each other they would be together for the rest of their lives.



But, right from the outset, Paul told Dina that his biggest problem with women was that he got bored very easily, especially sexually.




“That scared me a bit because I never wanted to lose this man. But, I knew how to make a man happy in bed, and I was determined that Paul wouldn’t ever get bored with me.”





“I realize now how he was setting me up,” she continued. “After we would make love, he would say, ‘Promise me that I’ll never be bored sexually.’ And, of course, I would make the promise.
Little did I realize what he meant,” Dina says.




“The first six months with Paul were like a fantasy come true. I didn’t fall in love with him because of his money. I would have loved him anyway, but the money just made it possible for us to go anywhere and do anything we wanted. I stopped working and he totally supported me. Of course, that gave him even more control.”





“But, after about six months, he started to get restless. He told me that he was getting bored with our sex life and that he needed some variety. I thought he wanted to see other women, at first, and I was devastated. But, from my perspective now, that would have been better than what happened,” Dina remarks.





“One night he told me that he wanted another woman in bed with us. I thought he was kidding until a woman actually walked into the bedroom naked and crawled into our bed. I freaked. That’s not for me.”




“But, Paul took me aside and told me that if I didn’t go along with it, he’d get bored with me and end the relationship. That scared me to death, so I did what he wanted. But, I was very depressed afterwards.”




Shortly after that, Paul took her to a private “sex club” and insisted that she have sex with other men so that he could watch. On other occasions, Paul would pay for call girls and male prostitutes to come to the house.





“I kept hoping that I would be enough—just me.
It got so stressful that I developed serious sexual dysfunction problems. I couldn’t have orgasms anymore at all, and sex became painful because of my anxiety.




Of course, I wouldn’t let Paul know because I was sure he would dump me on the spot. I was terrified that I would get AIDS and die.
I felt like I would deserve it, too. I felt so ashamed and dirty,” Dina says.





“The worst part is that I knew he was sick and that he was making me hate myself. I thought about killing myself a lot. And, I knew in my heart that Paul couldn’t really love me or anyone. But, I felt so confused—so damaged and guilty.





I couldn’t imagine leaving Paul because who in the world would want me after I had done these things? So, it became a total trap. I felt like I had no options.”





“I started drinking heavily and using drugs so that I wouldn’t have to think about what I was doing or what I had done,” Dina admits. “He turned me into a LovePeddler.” Dina sobs.





“I kept telling myself that this was just some phase he was going through and that if I loved him enough and made him happy, he would change and listen to what I wanted.”





“Then, I became physically ill. I couldn’t get out of bed for a month. I think that was the only way I could stop doing this sick sexual stuff. When I started to recover, Paul wanted to do some totally kinky make-your-own-Indecency film to put on the Web! Can you imagine? My father and brothers use the Internet!”





“That really woke me up. I finally got up the nerve to say ‘no’ and suggested that we stop all this sexual experimentation. I told him I wanted to get married and start a family. Paul laughed in my face.”




“I’ll never forget the demeaning way he spoke to me.
‘Marry you?’ Paul asked. ‘You can’t be serious.
How could I marry someone who does the things you do sexually? Do you think I would have you as the mother of my children?’ He was unbearably cruel,” Dina weeps.




“Then he told me I was boring him. And he basically kicked me out.”

After brief, intensive crisis therapy, Dina
contacted her family in the Midwest. They were loving, supportive, and embraced Dina in her crisis.




Dina knew that she needed to put a lot of geographical distance between herself and Paul as a first step toward getting better.




And she knew she needed a lot of professional help. Most of all, Dina knew that she had to stop her Disease to Please men.



Paul’s pathological control took a staggering psychological toll on Dina. She was treated for depression and panic disorder. The experience with Paul was almost like a shock therapy cure for Dina’s Disease to Please.




She finally understood how sacrificing herself to please a man—particularly someone as toxic as Paul—nearly destroyed her.




Three years after I treated her, I received a gratifying letter from Dina. She had married her high school sweetheart and was the mother of a baby girl.
She wrote that the first word she intended to teach her daughter was an emphatic “no!”




As with the case of Gail, Dina’s story is a dramatic illustration of a common and widespread problem among women with the Disease to Please.





•In the arena of sexual behavior, when people-pleasing women get involved with controlling men, dangerous physical and psychological boundary violations can occur




Every woman needs to know where her personal boundaries are when it comes to sexual behavior, and she must consistently enforce them.



When a controlling man gets into bed with a people-pleasing woman, he calls the shots. This means that the implicit—and often even explicit—expectation is that the people-pleaser will have sex when he wants to, in the position, style, and manner that he imposes, as frequently as he wants to or can, and with the sexual or birth control protection that he permits.





This arrangement is so unhealthy for the people-pleasing woman that even the “credit” for her orgasms is assumed or co-opted by the controlling and often self-deluded man.





If the woman does not have an apparent orgasm, the controlling man interprets it as a personal failure on his part and as a negative reflection on his capability, talent, and prowess as a lover.




If she does achieve orgasm, he takes the bows, lauding himself for his stellar sexual performance.



For this reason, the controlling man typically is far more concerned about the impact of the woman’s failure to reach orgasm on his self-esteem than he is about her sexual pleasure and satisfaction.





And, because the woman has the Disease to Please, she too sublimates the issue of her orgasmic pleasure to the needs of his delicate ego.





This bias in the couple’s perception of sexual performance and satisfaction often disrupts the people-pleaser’s sexual enjoyment, decreases her sexual desire, and disrupts her sexual functioning.






The significance he attributes to her orgasms—or lack of orgasms—as literal biofeedback of his sexual adequacy can create anxiety, pressure, and self-consciousness in the woman. These emotional states, in turn, further hamper her ability to reach orgasm.





Over time, a vicious sexual dysfunction cycle is established. The people-pleaser’s mounting pressure to validate her controlling partner’s competence continually interferes with her ability to reach orgasmic release.






To reduce his anxiety about being a good lover and to stroke his ego, the people-pleaser will forgo her real attainment of pleasure by choosing instead to simply fake her orgasms. Then because she will not assert her own needs, ask for help from her partner, or admit to “the big lie” about her orgasms, people-pleasers often develop nearly intractable sexual dysfunction problems.






Beyond the psychological traps people-pleasers lay for themselves with controlling men, learning to say “no” in the sexual arena can be a life and death matter.










While most women will not confront the kinds of sexual challenges that Paul posed to Dina, people-pleasing women regularly must deal with men that do not want to use a condom to have sex because it “doesn’t feel good.” Or, they will encounter various pressures to comply with sexual positions or acts that they do not wish to perform or with which they are uncomfortable.






When HIV exploded in the American gay population, fear combined with profound grief and bereavement cast a spotlight on the need to change high-risk sexual behavior.





The gay community rallied behind an intensive and focused educational effort that involved, among other things, teaching people how to say “no,” to insist on using condoms, and to stand fast to their own personally defined sexual boundaries.






That effort compellingly showed that by learning to stop people-pleasing in the sexual arena, lives were saved.





In our contemporary culture where date rape, sexual harassment in the workplace, domestic violence, sexually transmitted diseases, and other personal and sexual boundary violations are commonplace, people-pleasing equates with high-risk behavior.






When it comes to sexual behavior and relationships with men, the Disease to Please can literally be a deadly serious issue.