John Kenny explains why people react badly when you start saying no, covering pressure tactics like anger and guilt. He uses a football analogy to show how persistent requests wear you down, and argues that consistently refusing forces the other person to respect your actual wants. If they won't, you may need to end the relationship.
Chapters
When you want to do what you want to do, if you're used to having relationships with people that you're used to pleasing or you're used to fitting into what they want, you're going to find that they are going to— likely to react in a negative way. So they're going to, again, they're going to try and get you back into their window of comfort. They're going to try and get you to do what you've always done, and you're going to come up to some kind of resistance from that. So they could, well, they'll use the tactics that they usually use, and you'll probably recognize it in certain people. They could get angry, they could try and manipulate, they could try and make you feel guilty. They'll do things that will try and get you to be the person that they need you to be. And it's important that you stay within yourself and that you draw a boundary somewhere as far as those relationships are concerned. So an analogy I like to use with my clients is if I say to you, let's play football, let's play football, let's play football, let's play football, let's play football, let's play football, let's play football, let's play football, let's play football, let's play football, eventually if you say yes to playing football, the next time I know exactly what I need to do in order to get you to do what I want. And I'm going to keep saying to you, let's play football, let's play football, let's play football, until you give. Now, if you keep saying no or don't say anything to playing football, then what I'm hoping that you'll do is just basically then ask me what I want to play. So if you don't want to play football, then what do you want to play? And then we can have a balanced idea. Okay, we'll play football next time, but this time we need to do what I want to do. The other alternative to that, if people aren't going to then say, okay, if you don't want to play football, what do you want to play? They'll either say, I'm going to go and play football by myself, or they'll go and find someone else to play football with. But that's okay because they're not going to be able to be there for you. They're not going to be able to have a balanced relationship with you and fulfill your needs and your wants. So if you need to let them go, you just need to let them go. If they're going to go off with someone else, you just need to let them go off with someone else. And that might be sad for a while, it might be difficult for a while, but it's not then to internalize that. Don't self-reflect and say, what am I doing wrong? Don't feel like you need to fit in in order to hold on to those types of relationships, because you don't. Because you're never going to be happy if you keep trying to, and you're always going to end up with those type of people that can never give you what you need.
