It has taken forever for me to detach myself from H's pleasing stuff. It is very easy for both parties to get tangled up in this dynamic. In some ways, our M was a timebomb waiting to explode--due to this setup--that H skillfully defused by pouring his whole life into religion. He suddenly stopped pleasing me and it snapped me out of this dynamic fast. Don't get me wrong--he's still a people pleaser--everything in the articles sounds just like him, but I've learned not to take advantage of this and I think he's learned to detach a little. In his case, the people pleasing stuff was a subtle way of trying to maintain control of his surroundings. It's not only the feisty females who jockey for control. His manner was just more subtle, more quiet. It also came across, in a weird and unexpected way, as self centered. Sometimes he's so wrapped up in himself and his own guilt that he can't see the here and now.
These days, I am hyper sensitive to taking advantage of his desire to please. In our early days, you couldn't have convinced me that I didn't deserve it ( ). Just last night, I had many twinges of "he's doing too much" and I had to fight the urge to go the OTHER way and start taking care of him, because he won't do it. I try to stay out of it, differentiate, but it's hard sometimes.
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