Why "good people" get fucked
and how to shift this dynamic
The other day, I was talking to a friend who was struggling to wrap his mind around his divorce situation. He didn't want it, but she did.
He sat there talking for long hours, telling me his life story until the culmination of his current moment.
I could hear his words clearly, but it was in between them that I heard his most pressing question: “What am I not seeing?”
I couldn't help but notice that there was one thing he kept repeating over and over again as he told his life story regarding or not the relationship, and this was how he had been such a good person all along.
“Have you ever questioned yourself why you get fucked over and over again despite being such a good a person?” I asked.
He nodded in confirmation, as if it sounded like a question too familiar to him.
Good people
The probability is that if I asked you or anyone else if you think of yourself as being a good person, your answer would be yes.
That means that, whatever your actions or choices have been throughout your life, you consider that you had the best intentions for yourself and others when navigating them.
But this is not the kind of “good person” I'm talking about. I'm talking about some of us who have a strong need to be seen as good. When being perceived as a good person is part of our identity. It’s when over and over again, we keep acting in ways to prove ourselves as being “good” to others.
And these are the people who are most likely to get fucked.
Let me explain you why:
It's likely to be a compensation mechanism for the internal belief that deep down, I don't believe I'm good, or enough.
So, I lean on what the social construct tells me about what good people look like, what they do, and how they behave. This leads me, as a person to shape myself around these expectations as I suppress my own self.
For example, my friend was raised with strong Catholic religious values, which he was very proud of, like forgiveness and compassion. These are all wonderful values for one to cultivate, without a doubt, but when one feels the need to portray them constantly, what they are actually doing is suppressing their own needs and feelings, invalidating their full self in the name of being “good”. He makes himself a martyr, Jesus Christ itself - with the only difference that he doesn't, and he is not.
Note: suppressing here doesn't mean “extinguish”. What's is suppressed in us usually find unhealthy ways to be channeled out.
Not so good as you think
As I mentioned previously here, our personality, pattern behaviors, and sense of identity are coping mechanisms we develop in our early years in order to be accepted and loved by our caregivers according to the input we get from them.
For people who have the need for others to see them as good, it's likely that at an early age they internalized the message that love was conditional. They would only be loved and accepted if they were seen as “good” - whatever that meant for that family or environment.
The tricky thing with “good people” is that their goodness is not without any expectation of getting something back.
They do expect a lot from the people they are “good” to. They expect recognition, love, respect, and to be valued. Things we all want and deserve, of course. But in this context, it's a trade. And when they don't get what they're expecting back, frustration hits like a kid who has had their ice cream with marshmallows stolen.
Now, in their perspective, they're the victim, the other is the bad one, and the world is such an unfair place. They feel like they got fucked.
That's when you know that the “good deed” was never altruistic, but self-centered.
My friend was so proud to say that when he learned that his ex-wife had been involved with someone else, less than 12 hours later, he told her that he forgave her. A forgiveness she never asked for.
I'm not saying that he should or not had done that, my point here is that he neglected an important step in the process: validating his feelings.
He didn't allow himself to feel what the situation provoked in him. He pushed down his anger, his hurt, his frustration, and showed up as the ideal of the kind, compassionate, and forgiving Christian husband.
He was literally communicating to himself that the way he looked in the situation mattered more than what he felt. He ran over himself so that he could say, “Look how good a person I am.” Again, another perfect situation for one to feel they got fucked.
He didn't do it out of his pure heart and altruism. He expected his wife to look at him and say:
“Oh my God, what an amazing, unique man I have! No other man would ever act like that. I must do whatever it takes to fix this. I must stay with him, or I would never find a man as good as him.”
Well, it didn't quite work out according to his expectations. What he couldn't see at that time was that his chances to work on their relationship and regain connection in their marriage would have highly increased if he had shown up as his entire self - all parts of him, all his facets of emotions and expression. But instead, he kept wearing the “good person” hat.
Wanting to be so good and pure is also an unconscious attempt to show superiority, manipulate, and build domination over others. One is literally saying they’re not a human with a full range of emotions, but a saint. This sense of superiority that is created ends up creating a bigger distance between people when the other feels like they're the bad one.
On a side note, I think it's important to say that real connection only happens when two people show up with their entire self - all their vulnerable parts.
If I'm the good one, then you must be the…
Another thing to observe is that people who identify themselves as “good people” often have a dualistic view of the world. They often qualify things as “right” or “wrong,” “good” and “bad,” and view the world in black-and-white terms. This duality creates a rigid mindset where there is little room for nuance or understanding of complex human behaviours and emotions, becoming a way to avoid confronting their own.
When things don't go as expected, the "good person" feels wronged and victimized by the "bad" people in their lives. This sense of victimhood can prevent them from taking responsibility for their own actions and from understanding the perspectives and motivations of others.
When we live in emotional victimization, we don't notice that this can be a strategy to gain attention, love, and care from others. A bit of the same pattern I mentioned when we do good to get it in return. The strategy changes, but the trade expectation is the same.
The "good" person becomes the judge of who is bad, creating superiority and distancing in relationships, instead of harmony and connection.
The belief “If I'm good, I won't get fucked”
Being good as a self-defense mechanism:
Some of us believe that “if I'm a good person, other people won't ever be hostile to me.”
Some of us believe that “If I'm vulnerable enough, other people won't ever be hostile to me.”
We act in this way because we want to avoid the responsibility of putting boundaries in place and consequences for those who are hostile to us.
The danger in carrying these beliefs is that every time the other person is hostile with you, you will understand that you have to be even nicer or better to them, and show even more vulnerability to finally stop them from doing what hurts you.
And in this way, you become a servant of hostile people or a hurt self-destructive person in the hope that this stops the other one.
It won't.
Hermano Castro M.D.
The reason why “good” people get fucked is
“Good people” tend to get fucked because they fuck themselves first expecting the world will give something to them in return for their unsolicited sacrifice. It's not the other that dismiss our needs, desires, and emotions. We do it to ourselves first.
We tend to suppress our own needs and emotions, we experience difficulties in validating our experience when they we think it doesn't make us look good in the eyes of others (what we imagine it to be). This generates resentment towards others when the other doesn't suppress their own needs, desires, and emotions in benefit of us.
Because we suppress our needs and act in the name of what is considered socially acceptable virtues, we have the tendency to see ourselves as superior to others at some level. One might think “I'm a virtuous person, I deserve recognition for my virtue".
Self-awareness is key
As I was talking to my friend, it all seemed to resonate with him, since our conversation shifted from the relationship with his ex-wife to the relationship he had with himself.
Gaining a better understanding of himself helped him realize he might not have been a victim in the way he thought. He saw how his lack of self-awareness had contributed to the outcome.
One of the reasons why I could see these playing dynamics in the speech of my friend is because at times they sounded too familiar to me. Over my life, I also had developed mechanism to suppress certain parts of myself, so I would be seen as good, and accepted and loved.
I'm proud to say today: I'm not a “good person” anymore. I'm just a person. And the more human person I am, acknowledging all my needs, range of feelings, emotions, and desires, I can say that less fucked I get, less victim I become.
It took me, and still takes me a lot of work to undo this notion of what “good” looks like. I've learned that is way less about others and way more about how we relate to ourselves.
I've learned to (and still learning):
to Validate my emotions, needs, and desires.
to listen to my gut
to see myself and recognize myself first.
to find ways to embrace my shadows (the part of us we suppress or that we consider less agreeable)
to allow myself to feel all the feelings, whatever they are - the good and the ugly
to express my truth, no matter how it sound to others.
The more we cultivate these aspects in ourselves, the less fucked we will be because we will be more in in peace with ourselves, and less a victim of life.
So, the reflection I would like to leave today for you is, if you ever feel like you “got fucked” by someone else of life, ask yourself: “How I might have neglected myself first?”. Without any intentions to be hard on yourself, but to gain more awareness about in what ways you can love yourself better.
With love,
Nat
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