I as soon as had a (very transient) romance with a man who I think is a sociopath. He suspects he’s a sociopath too, so it’s not simply me. In a e-book he wrote, he even has an entire chapter about sociopaths and was very brazenly inquisitive about whether or not he, too, was one among them. Having simply learn the chilling Confessions Of A Sociopath, a few self-aware sociopath who just isn’t a legal behind bars, however a regulation faculty professor who performs with hearts and will get off on “ruining individuals,” I now really feel much more sure that he’s sociopathic.
But it surely’s not sociopathy I need to discuss right here. It’s the behaviors we discover ourselves participating in if we wind up emotionally hooked up to somebody extremely narcissistic, manipulative, or sociopathic, specifically, fawning behaviors.
Trying again, I’m wondering what sort of spell I had fallen below once I first met the man who I’ll name Wilder.
I used to be afraid of him the primary time I met him. I informed my greatest buddy, who was with me once we met, that I felt like a darkish cloud walked within the room earlier than Wilder did, form of just like the Peanuts character Pigpen. That ought to have prompted me to show the opposite manner, to belief my intestine instincts and hold my distance. However I didn’t.
The primary time I had intercourse with Wilder, he informed me that, regardless that he was fairly promiscuous, we didn’t need to put on condoms- as a result of you may solely catch a sexually transmitted illness for those who had sexual disgrace.
Now, I’m an OB/GYN, an precise physician (he’s not). So that you’d suppose I might snort in his face and demand condoms. However I truly paused and second-guessed myself. What if he was proper? And in that case, then demanding condoms would imply I’m admitting that I’ve sexual disgrace, which I undoubtedly do, due to my fundamentalist Christian upbringing. However he appeared so sexually shameless that I wished to impress him with my coolness. And it wouldn’t be cool to confess my sexual hangups once we had been about to have intercourse, proper?
I’m ashamed to confess I wound up fawning him and we had unprotected intercourse. Happily, I didn’t get an STD from him, however I’m sure it’s not for lack of sexual disgrace on my half.
Wilder informed me he was married and polyamorous, which was edgy for me. I didn’t know anybody brazenly poly. I’d all the time thought opening your marriage was one thing sad {couples} do previous to breaking apart, like a gateway drug to divorce. So I requested if I might meet his spouse earlier than he and I connected, simply to verify she was okay with it, so we might talk about any boundaries she may need- like condoms.
I requested if we might arrange a digital meetup together with his spouse, however he spun some story to clarify why that wouldn’t be potential. And as soon as extra, I fawned and believed his lie. When he confessed to his spouse about his liaison with me, it turned out she was out of her thoughts outraged over the entire ordeal, however she wished to satisfy me.
I met his spouse quickly thereafter, and I assumed that she knew about all the opposite ladies, since I did. After I casually talked about the girl in Germany and the dozen others from elsewhere on the planet, it turned out that she had no concept he’d been having affairs. I felt sick that I’d been the one to inform her. I had trusted him, not realizing him effectively sufficient to know that mendacity was a day by day a part of his existence, one thing I hadn’t discovered, as a result of he’d been so frank and shameless about what he’d informed me.
Wilder’s spouse and I tiptoed round one another, attempting to bond however trauma-bonding as an alternative. We each fawned Wilder- and one another, I suppose. I felt petrified of her, and I think she noticed me as a menace to her marriage, though I turned out to not be. So far as I do know, they’re nonetheless collectively.
On the time, I requested for recommendation from my clever elder mentor Rachel. Was I being foolhardy? Ought to I break it off?
Rachel mentioned, “I don’t care when you’ve got intercourse with Charles Manson, so long as you already know precisely the second to get out.”
That second grew to become apparent to me, and I obtained out earlier than an excessive amount of hurt was finished to me, Wilder, or his spouse. However that state of affairs did change into fodder for lots of remedy, as I attempted to unpack what had occurred to me, how I’d change into susceptible, and why I’d fawned somebody who was clearly emotionally harmful to me and others.
After that relationship ended, I felt nauseated by how small I had change into in such a short while. I had ignored my intestine. I had silenced my no. I had betrayed my physique. And I did all of it within the title of being good. Good woman. Good lover. Good religious lady who doesn’t carry sexual disgrace or maintain to her worth of monogamy and constancy.
Solely I wasn’t a very good woman. I participated in a relationship that deeply harm one other lady who I got here to care about, whose husband didn’t care about her emotions one bit- or mine.
I used to be, in different phrases, fawning.
What Is Fawning?
I’m within the remaining edits of the e-book I’m co-writing with Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Rediger- RELATIONSICK. We simply obtained our publication date of October 6, 2026. The e-book riffs off Thoughts Over Drugs’s Six Steps To Therapeutic Your self with the Six Steps From Fawning To Freedom.
What are we speaking about once we use the time period “fawning?” In Advanced PTSD, psychologist and trauma therapist Pete Walker coined the time period “fawn response” to explain a fourth survival intuition — alongside battle, flight, and freeze. When battle or flight isn’t potential (particularly for kids who can’t escape their caregivers), the nervous system defaults to appeasement. We be taught to remain protected by pleasing, placating, rescuing, or disappearing into another person’s wants.
In her stunning new e-book Fawning: The Price of Appeasing Others and The best way to Cease, Ingrid Clayton, PhD, brings this idea right down to the extent of lived expertise. She writes not as a indifferent clinician however as a survivor of narcissistic abuse who spent years attempting to earn love by being who others wished her to be. Ingrid names fawning as a trauma response disguised as empathy — a “nervous system technique for survival” that masquerades as kindness, spirituality, or caretaking. However beneath it’s concern:
“If I make you cheerful, possibly you gained’t harm me. If I meet your wants completely, possibly you gained’t go away.”
Studying Fawning was like watching my very own behaviors below a microscope. I might see how I’d used heat and adaptability not as real love, however as armor. My “open-mindedness” round Wilder’s polyamory wasn’t real acceptance- it was my fawn response attempting to earn security by being cool, advanced, and non-threatening.
The Fawn Response’s Logic
The fawn response develops early. If love is conditional — if affection comes solely once we’re straightforward, accommodating, or quiet — then our brains hyperlink love with compliance. As adults, this may seem like:
- Saying sure once we imply no.
- Minimizing pink flags as a result of confrontation feels unsafe.
- Mistaking chaos for chemistry.
- Complicated depth with intimacy.
- Believing our empathy can heal somebody’s darkness.
We change into specialists in studying the emotional climate of a room, shape-shifting to stop battle. Our nervous programs register concord as security, even when that concord is achieved by erasing ourselves. In Fawning, Ingrid writes that restoration begins once we cease mistaking security for peacekeeping. The objective isn’t to remain calm in any respect prices; it’s to really feel protected sufficient to inform the reality.
Fawning in a Lab Coat
After I look again at that story with Wilder, what breaks my coronary heart most isn’t that I fell for his manipulative pseudo-spiritual nonsense about sexual disgrace. It’s that, within the wake of my divorce and within the throes of unrequited love for a homosexual man who was encouraging me to get my sexual wants met with Wilder, part of me was so determined to be beloved that I overrode the knowledge of my very own physique — a physique educated in science, medication, and instinct.
Trying again, I can pinpoint the second my fawning took over. The a part of me that wished to be chosen whispered, “In case you ask for condoms, he’ll suppose you’re uptight and gained’t discover you attractive.” And so I betrayed myself within the very second I longed to be beloved.
That’s the devastating paradox of the fawn response: the half that desires connection most fiercely finally ends up dropping reference to self- and self-protection.
Fawning as Trauma Bonding
Ingrid describes how fawning usually goes hand in hand with trauma bonding — the addictive cycle of idealization, devaluation, and intermittent reinforcement that retains us hooked on the one who hurts us. Wilder’s mixture of allure and hazard was intoxicating. He alternated between intense intimacy and chilly detachment. Every time he withdrew, my nervous system registered panic. My fawning tendencies scrambled to restore the connection. What did I do flawed? How can I repair it? All alongside I used to be unaware of how I used to be reenacting the survival dance of my childhood below the affect of a mom whose approval of me was very conditional on me being her model of the proper daughter- excellent Christian, excellent good woman, excellent scholar, excellent trying, excellent narcissistic extension of herself- till I failed her, in fact.
I’ll always remember my sister in regulation operating out of my mom’s eating room after having tea with my mom. She was fuming. “If I’ve to take heed to that lady complaining another time about what an utter disappointment all three of her youngsters are, I’m going to lose my shit.”
I by no means informed my mom about my affair with Wilder. She would have begged me to repent to Jesus Christ, for concern I might burn in hell if I didn’t.
When love and approval are that precarious, that inconsistent, we cling tougher. We confuse adrenaline for attachment. That’s how fawning retains the trauma bond alive.
The Religious Bypass of Fawning
Fawning usually hides behind spirituality. In Ingrid’s phrases, “We mistake self-abandonment for enlightenment.” Many trauma survivors — particularly these drawn to therapeutic work — flip fawning right into a advantage. We name it compassion, give up, forgiveness, or radical acceptance. We quote Rumi in regards to the wound being the place the sunshine enters us, however typically the wound simply retains bleeding as a result of we gained’t bandage it.
I’ve finished this myself. I’ve mistaken my tolerance for mistreatment as proof of my religious evolution. However genuine spirituality doesn’t demand self-betrayal. Love doesn’t require us to make ourselves small.
Even exterior romantic relationships, fawning is sneaky. You may acknowledge it for those who:
- Over-apologize for issues that aren’t your fault.
- Really feel accountable for different individuals’s feelings.
- Rush to appease rigidity as an alternative of letting discomfort train you one thing.
- Volunteer for emotional labor nobody requested you to do.
- Confuse boundaries with rejection.
Fawning isn’t restricted to victims of abuse — it’s woven into our cultural conditioning, particularly for girls and people socialized to prioritize concord over honesty.
Unfawning
Ingrid’s e-book doesn’t simply describe the issue; it reveals a path to therapeutic. She invitations readers to satisfy their fawning elements with compassion quite than contempt. As a result of the reality is, fawning as soon as saved us.
When confrontation wasn’t protected, fawning saved us linked. When love was conditional, fawning helped us survive. So restoration isn’t about killing the fawn response. Generally fawning remains to be essential to hold us alive, to maintain us protected. After I was held up at gunpoint by two masked gunmen at Pikes Peak Nationwide Park, fawning may need been what saved me alive. For many individuals with numerous marginalizations, fawning the cops whenever you’re a younger Black man or fawning ICE for those who’re an immigrant or fawning a giant man who’s attempting to harm you for those who’re a girl simply may shield you.
The IFS-informed shift in how we method our fawning elements is to thank them as protector elements, to understand how these elements helped us survive. Then, from Self, we will gently encourage our fawning elements to calm down, to comprehend we’re protected now.
For me, unlearning fawning has appeared like:
- Changing into intimate with my fawning elements, in order that they don’t hijack my system and put me in peril of the subsequent Wilder.
- Attending to know the wounded baby beneath the fawning elements.
- Working towards somatic consciousness — noticing the micro-moments my physique tenses earlier than I say yes- and slowing it down so I can pause as an alternative of speeding to compliance, with a purpose to be appreciated.
- Letting silence grasp in conversations as an alternative of speeding to fill it.
- Naming my preferences out loud, even when my voice shakes and I’m afraid to upset or disappoint somebody.
- Surrounding myself with individuals who have a good time my boundaries quite than punish me for them or attempt to override them.
- Calling myself out every time I’m tempted to spiritually bypass as an alternative of stand my floor.
I obtained into the most effective remedy of my life proper after my mom died, just some years after I ended my affair with Wilder. A mix of IFS, Somatic Experiencing, Superior Integrative Remedy, and extra just lately, Terry Actual’s Relational Life Remedy (RLT) has principally damaged me of this reflexive behavioral behavior. But it surely’s taken a decade- and it hasn’t been straightforward, painless, or cheap.
Therapeutic occurs in protected relationships, not simply with therapists, however with pals and communities who mannequin protected sufficient reciprocity. When a recovering fawner meets somebody able to safe love, it could actually really feel boring at first. Our nervous programs miss the highs and lows of hazard. Security feels international, virtually suspicious. However as Ingrid writes, “The nervous system can be taught that calm just isn’t the identical as hazard.”
Actual love doesn’t require hyper-vigilance. It doesn’t demand we show our price. It lets us relaxation. That’s what I need for myself now — and for everybody who has mistaken fawning for love: the liberty to relaxation in relationships that don’t require efficiency.
Unlearn Your Fawn In LOVE SCHOOL
After I first started educating about trauma and attachment, I seen how many individuals, even these deeply dedicated to the religious path, had been nonetheless complicated fawning for intimacy. They had been doing “the work,” studying the books, meditating, therapeutic, but nonetheless discovering themselves drawn to individuals who wanted saving.
That’s why I created LOVE SCHOOL — my ongoing relational restoration program for individuals who need to be taught what safe love truly appears to be like, sounds, feels, and acts like. LOVE SCHOOL isn’t about discovering “the one.” It’s about turning into somebody who now not fawns, fixes, or forfeits their reality to be beloved. We discover how trauma imprints on attraction, how the nervous system responds to relational hazard, and the best way to domesticate safe attachment, inside your self and with others, utilizing IFS as a basis, however not as zealots, additionally integrating many different trauma therapeutic strategies.
In case you acknowledge your self in my story — for those who’ve ever silenced your instinct to remain linked, or discovered your self hooked on somebody’s approval — we’ll be focusing our subsequent few LOVE SCHOOL classes particularly on fawning and the best way to heal from it. In case you’re uninterested in strolling on eggshells, uninterested in calling self-abandonment compassion, uninterested in complicated peacekeeping for peace, we invite you to hitch us for LOVE SCHOOL.
Be a part of LOVE SCHOOL right here.
Possibly your “Wilder” wasn’t a sociopath. Possibly it was a boss, a father or mother, a buddy, or a religious trainer. Possibly you’ve been the one others fawned, and also you’re waking as much as the discomfort of realizing that dynamic.
Wherever you might be within the cycle, the drugs is identical: reality, tenderness, psychoeducation, boundaries, self-respect, intimacy along with your elements, compassion for your self, fierce safety of your personal rights, feelings, and security, and time for therapeutic.
The subsequent time you’re feeling your self speeding to make somebody snug on the expense of your personal security, wants, or reality, pause. Breathe. Discover what your physique is saying. That’s not defiance; it’s self-love. It’s not riot; it’s the YOU-Flip your elements want earlier than you may really feel protected in your personal pores and skin.
Study extra in LOVE SCHOOL about the best way to break away from fawning
