Fawning

I've sat with enough people in enough rooms to know that fawning doesn't look like fear. It looks like enthusiasm. It sounds like "yes, please, more." And underneath, the body is saying something completely different — something that sounds a lot like "please don't leave, please don't get angry, please let me be safe." That's not consent. That's survival. And I want to be really clear: your body isn't betraying you when it does this. It learned a strategy that worked once, maybe for a long time. It kept you safe. But the strategy has an expiration date, and it expires the moment you want something real instead of something safe.

Here's what I see in my practice: someone says yes, their mouth says yes, their body goes through the motions — and somewhere inside, a quiet part of them goes numb. Or they giggle when nothing's funny. Or they get busy performing pleasure so well that nobody notices they're not actually feeling it. That's not broken. That's a nervous system that learned to appease instead of advocate. And the tragedy is, it works. Partners often can't tell the difference. That's why I teach partners: your job isn't just to hear "yes." Your job is to make enough room that a real "no" or "maybe" or "not like that" can exist without punishment. Because if "no" isn't safe, "yes" doesn't mean anything.

What helps? Slowing down. Way down. Learning to feel your "maybe" in your body — that tightening in the chest, that lift in the shoulders, that breath that gets shallow. Naming it out loud: "I think I'm fawning right now." Asking for a pause. Celebrating the boundary you set yesterday, even if you couldn't set it in the moment. Trusting the parts of you that flinch — they're not the enemy. They're the ones who kept you alive. Now we get to teach them something new: that you're allowed to stay, and you're allowed to say what's true, and you don't owe anyone your body to keep the peace.