My fiance [27f] is a “people pleaser”. It’s causing problems and I’m [30m] thinking about calling off the wedding

A 30-year-old man is questioning whether to proceed with his engagement due to his fiancée’s people-pleasing tendencies. While she’s kind and well-intentioned, her aversion to confrontation has led to significant missteps in finances, boundaries, and decision-making. As he prepares to navigate a family loss and home repairs, doubts about their future grow. Can this couple overcome these challenges, or is it time to call off the wedding? Read the full story below.

‘ My fiance [27f] is a “people pleaser”. It’s causing problems and I’m [30m] thinking about calling off the wedding’

I’ve been with my fiance for 3 years, 8 months engaged. We’ve had our ups and downs, but for the most part things have been pretty great, until she moved in 6 months ago. We’ve been combining our lifestyles and finances, basically easing into merging our lives together.

The problem is she’s a “people pleaser”, in her own words. She’s been in therapy for 6 years, and I guess I never knew how bad it was until moving in with her, a lot of which she’s hidden from me. I don’t want this to get too long, so here’s some of the highlights in no particular order:

• She recently was promoted into accounts payable at her company and realized she is the lowest paid person on payroll. She didn’t negotiate a good starting wage, and has never asked for a raise, or had one, despite multiple promotions.
  
• She inherited a car a few months ago and sold it. She had offers online from $18k-$25k, but sold it to the first person who showed up for $10k.
  
• She caught someone stealing her bike at college. The woman stealing the bike managed to convince my fiance that it was actually her bike and my fiance just let her take it, despite the fact that she caught the woman cutting her bike lock.
  
• Last spring was my 30th birthday and she ordered a giant chocolate cake for the party. The cake normally comes with nuts, but given my allergy for nuts she ordered it without them. Well when she went to pick it up and it had nuts on it, she just paid for it and brought it home. I couldn’t even be in the same room as the cake.

Which brings us to tomorrow. My father recently passed away and I need to fly to the other end of the country to get things sorted out with family, attend the funeral, etc.. Meanwhile, we recently had a pipe burst in our home, and the contractors will be out tomorrow to fix it. My flight’s at 6am and my fiance will have to handle it, including all the negotiations because we don’t know the extent of the damages.

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and I just don’t trust my fiance to handle it. And if I can’t trust or rely on her to do something like this, how can we really be life partners? I mean I trust that she is always looking out for me, and has my best interest at heart, but I can’t trust her to get things done.

We’ve talked about it a few times before, but it’s been unproductive. She’s convinced she’s just being nice and doesn’t like confrontation, then brings up examples of extremely confrontational people. I think she puts her aversion to conflict above her/our long term goals, and she needs to find a happy medium. She doesn’t understand how negatively this is impacting her life.

But at the same time, we’ve had some amazing years together and she really is a great person. We’re compatible in almost every other way. So is this over like I think it is? Is there any way I can get through to her? Should I tell her I’m thinking about leaving?
tl;dr: Fiance is a self-described “people pleaser”, it’s caused her to make a lot of terrible mistakes and I’m thinking about leaving her.

Here’s the input from the Reddit crowd:

macimom −  Honey you call it people pleasing but I am telling you as gently as possible that its gotten to the degree that its interfering with your ability to function normally and its impacting our relationship bc I can’t rely on you to take the necessary action to protect us in the event of a conflict. We need to go to counseling to resolve this before we proceed with marriage.”

_sharkattack −  What kind of discussion did you have about the cake? She would rather risk poisoning you than stand up for herself; you can’t possibly marry someone that spineless/stupid/careless. I would insist on counseling together (with you helping to choose the therapist) before continuing with any wedding plans. In couples counseling, I would also bring up your concern that she has not made progress in 6 years of individual therapy. Depending on how counseling together goes, you can decide if you see a future together.

Fitzwilliger −  I would postpone the wedding if it is scheduled and have a come-to-Jesus talk with her. Make it clear that her passivity is a dealbreaker for you and that you need her to communicate the extent of it to her therapist and come up with an /actionable plan/ for addressing it- a plan that might involve working with a different therapist, as after six years, she’s made no progress with this one on this topic. Then be prepared to leave if she doesn’t. Because her willingness to be walked all over results in you getting walked on, too, and that’s no way to live.

msb132 −  If she’s been in therapy six years and hasn’t had considerable progress, she probably never will. In your situation I would d**p her.

ShelfLifeInc −  I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and I just don’t trust my fiance to handle it. **And if I can’t trust or rely on her to do something like this, how can we really be life partners?** I mean I trust that she is always looking out for me, and has my best interest at heart, but I can’t trust her to get things done.

Yeah…this is exactly why I left my last relationship. My situation was by no means as serious as yours (you couldn’t even be in the same room as *your* birthday cake because your fiance was too nice/gutless to say “You made a mistake, this is not the cake I ordered”? That’s not being a people-pleaser, that’s being terrified of people), but it was enough for me to leave.

My partner loved me with every atom of his mind, body and soul, and I loved him back. He told me that had I been disabled in a horrendous accident and/or been reduced into a vegetative state, he would have stood by me and cared for me. It’s a very nice thing to say and I’m sure he believed he meant it, but the sentiment lacked subsistence when I couldn’t even rely on him to take out the rubbish, even if I reminded him when I left the house and then sent him reminders on text and facebook messenger.

We almost missed out on tickets to an incredibly exclusive event that I had been desperate to go to because he didn’t check his inbox for a few weeks. I once asked him to pick up an item whilst he was at the shops; he didn’t because he didn’t think we needed it, then called me an hour later to pick said item up on my way home from work because he realised we do need it after all. I would ask him to do a task whilst I was out at work (ie, wash dishes, pay a bill, make a phonecall), and would come home to find it undone because he “ran out of time”, even though he worked half the hours I did and was home every morning.

I felt like I was the only adult in the relationship. I was forever picking up the pieces of his problems and comforting him over life’s little bumps, but I couldn’t rely on him to shoulder my burdens, even when it was something as simple as taking responsibility for household tasks. Eventually, I had to leave. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, because I loved him dearly and I still do. But after so many years together, I loved him more like a clumsy child in my care than a partner I could rely on and build a life with.

I think the only way you might be able to get through to your partner is if you tell her how seriously this problem is affecting you. But as another redditor said, if she’s been in therapy for 6 years, it’s highly unlikely she’ll make any progress in the next few months, if she makes any progress at all. It was certainly what happened in my case.

I begged my partner to seek therapy for his depression and/or anxiety, and told him it was a serious enough problem to be affecting our relationship. He got as far as asking his GP for a referral…and that was it. Life went on as usual. I don’t think it was from a lack of caring. I think he just honestly didn’t comprehend how much his issues impacted my life and the relationship as a whole.

You know leaving this relationship will hurt your fiance, possibly even devastate her, but you also know it to be the right thing to do. You deserve a life and relationship where you don’t have to carry the weight of two people. Where you don’t have to come home and listen to the new story of what went wrong today because she was too scared to speak up. Where you can ask your partner to do something and know they will do it. I recently moved in with a new partner and I cannot tell you what a relief it is to no longer feel like I’m steering a ship alone. You deserve to feel that relief and peace.. Yes, you should leave.

ChiefBlowchunka −  This question may be out of line, and I apologize immensely if it offends in any way, but how the hell does she end up handling attention from other men who might be interested in her? Have situations like that ever come up? Do you have to step in and tell them she’s taken? This is extreme fear of confrontation, no doubt about it. If someone can persuade her that her bike being stolen isn’t her own bike, I hesitate to think about how she would react in more dire life-or-death situations.

[Reddit User] −  this might be an off-the-wall suggestion, but maybe a martial arts or self-defense class? learning to assert and protect herself might help.

[Reddit User] −  you’re right to see this as an issue. do you plan to have kids? as a mom, that’s what came to mind first, because you absolutely cannot be a people pleaser as a parent. i’m kind of a softie like your fiancé, but i buck up and assert myself for and with my kids. there’s no way you can keep your kids safe if you’re most worried about not upsetting people.

it sounds like she needs therapy, frankly. it is not normal to let someone talk you into watching them steal your bike. none of what you described is normal, really. i wouldn’t jump right to leaving her, but i would have a serious talk with her about making changes because you doubt her ability to fully be a partner if this behavior continues. Edit: wow, just saw that she’s been in therapy already for 6 years. i don’t know, man.

so_just_here −  She’s convinced she’s just being nice and doesn’t like confrontation, then brings up examples of extremely confrontational people. Tamely bringing home something that could have killed you is NOT being nice. Unless she acknowledges the severity of the problem and works on it,then indeed I wouldnt marry her in your place. You can NEVER be sure that she would be strong enough to have your back. Please communicate clearly to her – its time to be blunt and open. Unless you want to go nuclear in the first place and break up. I wouldnt call it wrong to do so

lizzi6692 −  I would definitely at least postpone the wedding. I hate when people use being a “people pleaser” as an excuse because if that was true they wouldn’t disregard their partner’s feelings when they express that there is a problem. If telling her that the wedding is on hold doesn’t cause her to make any changes then you have to decide if this is something you want to put up with in the long term.

Also, stop hiding the negative effects from her. Tell her “I’m already stressed with making the trip for my father’s funeral and the fact that I can’t trust you to handle the contractors is not helping”. I have some anxiety issues and my husband handles a lot of stuff like that, but he only does that because he knows that while I prefer not to do that sort of thing if there was a situation where I had to I would have no problem doing it and he wouldn’t need to worry about it not being done properly.