i didn’t say no right away, and that’s the part i keep circling back to.
not because i wanted to say yes, but because i felt ridiculous for hesitating. dramatic. like i was making something out of nothing. it was framed so lightly — just a small favor — that pushing back felt heavier than agreeing.
i remember the exact moment. we were sitting across from each other, drinks half-finished, talking about something unrelated. nothing tense in the air. he mentioned the favor the same way you’d mention asking someone to hold your jacket. casual. almost apologetic. like he already assumed the answer would be yes.
and i smiled. nodded. said something like, “yeah, let me think about it.”
even as my stomach tightened.
i didn’t have a clear reason to be uncomfortable. nothing about the request was outrageous. it wasn’t expensive. it wasn’t risky on paper. if i tried to explain my hesitation out loud, it came out sounding flimsy, like vibes and feelings instead of facts. and i’ve been trained my whole life not to trust those.
so instead, i questioned myself.
why am i overthinking this? why can’t i just be easygoing? why does everything have to be a boundary?
that word — easygoing — had followed me for years. people liked it about me. praised it. i wore it like a badge of honor. easygoing meant flexible, understanding, low-maintenance. it meant i didn’t make things awkward. it meant i didn’t ruin the mood.
but sitting there, nodding along, i felt something shift. not dramatically. just a quiet internal click, like a door closing softly somewhere in my chest.
after that, favors started stacking.
not all at once. not aggressively. just one at a time, each framed as small, reasonable, temporary. each one slightly harder to say no to than the last. each one wrapped in reassurance. i wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t simple. you’re the only one i trust with this. it’s really not a big deal.
and every time i hesitated, i felt that same internal pushback. the voice telling me i was being difficult. that i was reading too much into it. that if i wanted to be close to someone, this was part of it.
i noticed how help stopped feeling optional.
it wasn’t demanded, but it was expected. assumed. baked into the dynamic. if i paused or questioned something, the response wasn’t anger — it was disappointment. confusion. a subtle shift in tone that made me feel like i’d failed some invisible test.
and that’s what messed with me the most.
because i wasn’t being forced. i was being nudged. guided into a version of myself that said yes automatically, because saying no felt like a rejection of the relationship itself.
i started editing my reactions. softening my responses. explaining myself more than i needed to. i’d preface boundaries with apologies, like i needed permission to have them. sorry, i just need a bit more clarity. sorry, i’m probably overthinking this. sorry, this might sound silly but…
i hated how quickly those apologies became muscle memory.
there was one moment that finally broke through the fog. again, nothing dramatic. just a comment. he laughed and said, “you’re usually so easygoing about this stuff.”
usually.
it wasn’t meant to hurt. i don’t even think he realized what he was saying. but it landed like a mirror being held up to my face. because suddenly i saw myself not as flexible, but as slowly folding. not as kind, but as quietly abandoning my own limits to keep things smooth.
i went home that night and replayed everything. every favor. every hesitation. every time i’d overridden that small internal voice because it was easier than dealing with the discomfort of asserting myself.
i realized i couldn’t pinpoint when my boundaries had shifted, because they hadn’t moved all at once. they’d been eroded. softened by politeness. worn down by the fear of being seen as difficult.
and i felt angry at myself. not at him — at me. for confusing being agreeable with being safe. for thinking that maintaining harmony was more important than maintaining myself.
the hardest part was admitting that nothing bad had happened. no shouting. no threats. no obvious manipulation. just a slow recalibration of what was expected of me, and how much of myself i was willing to give up to meet it.
i didn’t have a big confrontation. i didn’t suddenly become a boundary-setting icon. i just started saying no to smaller things. awkwardly. imperfectly. without long explanations.
and it felt awful at first.
the discomfort i’d been avoiding showed up immediately. tension. confusion. distance. and that told me everything i needed to know, even if i wasn’t ready to name it yet.
i still catch myself defaulting to that old version of easygoing sometimes. still feel that flicker of guilt when i pause instead of agreeing. but now i recognize it for what it is — not generosity, not kindness, but fear dressed up as flexibility.
i don’t think favors are bad. i don’t think helping someone automatically erases boundaries. but i do think the phrase “it’s just a small favor” carries more weight than we admit. it asks you to prove something without ever saying what’s being measured.
and once you start proving it, it’s hard to stop.
i’m still learning how to tell the difference between being kind and being quiet. between being understanding and being absent from my own decisions.
i don’t always get it right.
but i know now that the moment i start feeling dramatic for protecting my comfort is usually the moment i need to pay the closest attention.
i just wish i’d trusted that feeling sooner.
