Almost immediately, I found I couldn’t find the motivation to pursue the activities I knew I would enjoy: attend classes, get to the gym, complete some home improvements.
I did manage one thing: I joined a hiking club and hike most Wednesday and Saturday mornings. I now see that it’s the external expectation: knowing that people are waiting for me to meet them enables me to get my gear ready the night before and be out the door at 7 a.m.
But as I repeatedly failed to implement any other personal goal, I was becoming increasingly disappointed in myself. What a relief to learn the Four Tendencies. I may be able to figure out a way to do these things after all.
An Obliger told me, “We Obligers take care of others before ourselves.” And it was all I could do to stop myself from shouting, “No, no!” I managed to stay calm and say, “I don’t think it’s the case that Obligers take care of others first, and then just run out of time and energy before they turn to themselves. Fact is, they meet outer expectations but not inner expectations. It’s a very big difference.”
Once Obligers grasp the true pattern of their Tendency, they can figure out ways to harness its strengths and offset its weaknesses. One Obliger told me, “Now that I know I’m an Obliger, instead of going against my grain, I’m letting the grain be my guide.”
How Obligers Shift the Line Between Outer and Inner Expectations
Obligers respond to outer expectations and struggle to meet inner expectations, but different Obligers draw the line between outer and inner in different ways, and that line can also shift depending on circumstances—say, with family.
For instance, for many Obligers, spouses or family count as part of themselves, so their spouses’ expectations become “inner” expectations and are therefore ignored. A Questioner wrote in frustration: “My husband is willing to treat me just as poorly as he treats himself. I’m not kidding. I want him to be better to himself and to me.”
My sister, Elizabeth, told me, “I’ve learned that if we need to do something like send someone a check, I’m better off forwarding the email with the request to Adam rather than emailing him myself. He’s more likely to do it if the request comes from the outside.”
Sometimes context decides whether a family member seems to be “inner” or “outer.” An Obliger friend is an attentive father who usually views his responsibility to his children as an outer expectation and readily lives up to it. However, he’s in the client-service business, and when business obligations conflict with family obligations, the client prevails, as the more “outer.”
The shifting nature of inner vs. outer can cause trouble in a marriage. One reader wrote:
I’m an Obliger, and the conflicts in our marriage happen when we’re around other people. Then I change from obliging my husband’s wishes to obliging the other people we’re with. This confuses my husband; he’s used to me obliging his whims. Also, I treat my husband as I treat myself, which means his needs/demands take a backseat to whatever the other couple needs/wants. Ah, the fights we’ve had without ever getting at the nut of the problem.
Also, if an Obliger considers family expectations to be “inner” expectations, a family member won’t make an effective source of outer accountability.
One Obliger, a highly successful businessman, told me, “For years, my wife kept saying, ‘Take time for yourself, go to the gym, you do everything for the company, you owe it to yourself to go to the doctor, yada, yada, yada.’ I never listened. Who has time for that? Then the chairman of my board said, ‘Ed, we’ve got a lot of big things coming up this year, and you look like you’re going to have a heart attack any minute. Too much depends on you. Lose weight, get some exercise, get some rest, go to the doctor.’ So I did.”
How to Understand and Protect Against Obliger-Rebellion
Obligers often feel exploited—and they are. Because, after all, when it comes time to ask for someone’s help, whom do we ask? An Upholder, a Questioner, a Rebel—or an Obliger? Obligers, of course, because they’re the most likely to lend a hand. In her essay “The Rage Cage,” writer Caroline Knapp tells a very Obliger-y story:
A friend asked me to walk her dog, a favor that sounds benign enough but actually infuriated me. Her reasons for asking annoyed me: her partner had the flu, which meant that she’d had to walk the dog twice the day before; she was also busy writing a paper for school, so taking the dog out twice for a second day felt unduly burdensome. I stood there while she told me this, and I thought: Wait a minute; I walk my dog twice a day every day, and I’m always on deadline; and this request feels both ludicrous and insulting to me. But instead of telling her to suck it up and walk her own dog, I sucked it up: picked the animal up at 6:30 a.m., dutifully trotted her around Fresh Pond, delivered her back to her owners, and walked around for the rest of the week feeling put-upon, taken advantage of, and—well, angry.
If that neighbor had asked an Upholder, a Questioner, or a Rebel who didn’t want to walk the dog, the answer would have been no. As an Upholder, I would’ve thought, “Sorry, I’ve got my own responsibilities to meet.” A Questioner would’ve asked the question, “Why should I walk your dog, when I’m even busier than you are?” A Rebel would’ve thought, “I don’t want to do that, so I won’t.” Here’s the thing: The neighbor knew to ask an Obliger because Obligers are the good neighbors who help you out of a jam by walking your dog, even when they have their own dogs and their own work and their own deadlines.
Not only do the other Tendencies ignore expectations that an Obliger feels obliged to meet, they’re often unsympathetic to the Obligers. While Obligers may view their action as admirable—“I put other people’s needs before my own”—the other Tendencies may not see it this way. Upholders, Questioners, and Rebels say things like “If playing the guitar every day is important to you, stop talking about it and just do it.” “Well, if you don’t want to do the assignment, why did you agree to do it?” “You say that we have to attend every client dinner, but I disagree, so I won’t go.”
Because of such attitudes, Obligers often feel both resentful and unappreciated. An Obliger might consider an Upholder, Questioner, or Rebel to be self-centered and selfish—and Upholders and Questioners are self-centered and self-ish, in the sense that the aims of the “self,” which are inner expectations, are at the core of what they do. Rebels also seem self-centered, but for different reasons.
Another reason that Obligers are susceptible to feeling burned out and exploited? They often have trouble delegating certain tasks. For some reason, a particular assignment must be done by that Obliger himself or herself; it can’t be outsourced. They think, “No one else will do this, so now it’s been left to me” or “No one can do this as well as I can.”
After I mentioned this aspect of Obligerness at a talk, a guy came up to me afterward. “My wife is an Obliger, and you described this thing that drives me crazy,” he said. “She insists that we invite her extended family over for Thanksgiving, and then she complains about all the work—the cooking, the cleanup. I say, ‘Let’s hire a caterer and cleaning help,’ but she refuses. But then she wants me to help! I don’t want to cook or clean. I tell her, ‘If you don’t want to do the work, don’t invite so many people. Or pay someone else to do the work. But if you invite them and choose to do it yourself, stop complaining! And don’t drag me into it.’ ”
I offered a suggestion. “You could say, ‘If you’re busy doing all this work, you don’t have time to catch up with your family and make them feel welcome. We only see them a few times a year. Let’s hire some people to help out, so you can give your attention to your relatives.’ Or you could say, ‘You wear yourself out cooking, and then you’re distracted and tired and understandably, you get crabby. Let’s make holiday time nicer for everyone, and hire a caterer. I’ll be disappointed if you don’t follow up on my suggestion.’ ”
An Obliger friend told me about his wife’s way of getting around his Obligerness. “My wife understands me perfectly. I felt like I shou
ld mow our lawn myself, though I hated doing it, often have to work on the weekends, and was always putting off the job, which made her mad. But I also refused to call a lawn service. Then one day my wife came home and said, ‘I told the neighbor’s son that he could mow the lawn. He needs money for college.’ Now I don’t want to disappoint the kid.”
This Obliger issue comes up often in an office environment. Obligers often find it hard to say no and may have trouble delegating—which can lead to bottlenecks and burnout. Obligers should watch out for this pattern and find ways to delegate or manage those responsibilities.
Because they’re susceptible to feeling neglected or exploited, Obligers sometimes show a striking, harmful pattern. If they feel overwhelmed by relentless external pressure, Obligers may reach a point of Obliger-rebellion, where they simply refuse to meet some expectation—often dramatically and without warning. In Obliger-rebellion, an Obliger who has been meeting expectations suddenly decides, “No more!” and refuses.
Obliger-rebellion may be a one-time action or it can become a consistent pattern of behavior; it can take the form of minor, almost hidden refusals—or dramatic, life-changing explosions.
Tennis superstar Andre Agassi’s outstanding memoir, Open, reveals him to be a textbook Obliger who displays Obliger-rebellion. He’s able to meet others’ expectations (his father’s demand that he excels at tennis; his girlfriend Brooke Shields’s desire to get married) but struggles to meet his expectations for himself. He shows his Obliger-rebellion in small, symbolic ways, such as defying tennis tradition by wearing denim shorts and sporting a mullet, actions that he describes as “thrashing against the lack of choice in my life.” Agassi demonstrates the tremendous energy and accomplishment that Obligers can bring to bear, and also the resentment that can arise from Obligers’ feeling that they’re working toward others’ expectations.
Speaking of famous Obliger athletes, Tiger Woods is also an Obliger who experienced spectacular Obliger-rebellion. He repeatedly told members of his circle that he wanted to leave golf to become a Navy SEAL; they prevailed on him to fulfill their expectations of him as a golf star; he rebelled.
Many circumstances can eventually trigger Obliger-rebellion. Expectations that:
• are unrealistically ambitious—“You can break the sales record this year!”
• are unfair, because others aren’t doing their share—“While you’re at it, could you proofread my report, too?”
• are accompanied by shaming—“It’s pathetic to see how messy you keep your room.”
• are nagging or disapproving—“Are you finally going to the gym today?”
• involve tasks that are distasteful or ungratifying—“You need to start making cold calls.”
• deprive the Obliger of getting credit for a personal success—“You’re losing weight on this program because I’m telling you what to do.”
• are imposed by people who are hard to please or who don’t matter to the Obliger—“If this is the best work you can manage to do, I guess we’ll have to send it to the client.”
• trigger feelings of being taken for granted or exploited—“You’ll stay late again tonight, won’t you?”
• are demands that don’t reflect an Obliger’s true aims for himself or herself—“With your aptitude for science, you’d be a great doctor. You have to go to medical school.”
• become the final straw—“We’re downsizing, so now you need to handle ten additional clients.”
• unleash feelings of guilt or embarrassment—“You must announce your blood sugar levels to the entire group.”
Obligers are often puzzled by their episodes of Obliger-rebellion. They don’t understand their behavior, they can’t control it, they feel like they’re acting out of character. One Obliger described Obliger-rebellion as “The Big ‘No’ That Kinda Wrecks My Life for a While.”
Another Obliger said:
I’m an ambitious Ph.D. candidate about a year from finishing my doctorate in molecular biology, and for the first time in my life, I’ve turned in projects that were completed halfheartedly or late. I feel like an alien has invaded my body. I’ve begun to ask: Why am I acting this way? What’s changed? Or the scariest and most honest yet, why am I getting my doctorate? Realizing that I’m an Obliger has helped me see that I’ve been working for my Ph.D. mostly to fulfill the external expectations of my wife, family, friends, and academic advisers—not my own true goals.
As this comment illustrates, Obliger-rebellion can erupt not just when Obligers feel exploited but also when they realize that they’re meeting expectations established by others, which aren’t truly fulfilling.
One contributor to Obliger-rebellion? Too often, Obligers don’t protest against a troublesome situation—such as unfair division of labor, exploitation, or lack of credit. And why not? Because they think they shouldn’t have to protest; they imagine that others must realize the oppressiveness of the burdens being imposed—and will, or should, lift those burdens without any word from them. That is, the Obliger expects others to know to stop imposing their expectations, without prompting, to provide relief for the Obliger. But very often that doesn’t happen, and then the Obliger becomes furious that others have imposed those heavy expectations even when the Obliger hasn’t objected to those expectations.
And why don’t other people ease up? As noted, the other Tendencies don’t experience the same heavy weight of outer expectations that Obligers do, so they’re not aware of the painful burden they’re imposing; also, the other Tendencies have their own ways of resisting outer expectations, so they expect Obligers to resist as well: “If you didn’t want to do it, why did you agree to do it?” “If you can’t meet your own deadline, why did you agree to take on that extra work?”
In Obliger-rebellion, instead of giving others the opportunity to fix a situation, Obligers persist without protest, until they suddenly rebel. Obliger-rebellion can cause people to walk out on jobs—and also on marriages and friendships—without warning. One Obliger recalled:
My rebellions have been quiet, deadly, and permanent. Two friendships, one job, and one marriage have gone the way of Obliger-rebellion. I experience it as a flip of a switch. After months of meeting what I thought were unreasonable and unappreciated expectations in a job, one Monday I called an alternative employer, and that afternoon I resigned. I didn’t want to have a discussion, even when I was asked, “What can we do to get you to stay?”
“You’re dead to me now”—that’s exactly what it’s like, even with a marriage of eighteen years. After many years of propping up that relationship, I woke one morning knowing, with absolute clarity, that I was done, and there’s no way back.
While I don’t regret any of these rebellions, I’m grateful to have a conceptual framework, because I can see the benefits of recognizing warning signs. And I can acknowledge that my willingness to oblige, to take up the slack, comes with this risk.
Of course, a person of any Tendency might decide to end a relationship. But with Obliger-rebellion, it’s abrupt—the Obliger keeps meeting expectations that seem unreasonable until the “snap.” One Obliger described Obliger-rebellion: “I’m a bomb exploding, and I have no control of the devastation.” Other Obligers use words like “simmer,” “fester,” “eat away,” “boil over,” “erupt,” and “volcano” to describe the feelings accompanying Obliger-rebellion.
While Obliger-rebellion can be very dramatic, it can also take the form of symbolic acts or small gestures. One Obliger wrote, “A coworker always comments if I’m a few minutes late. It makes me so mad that I’ll sometimes sit in my car for a minute instead of rushing in. I feel terrible about being late, but it just ticks me off that he says that to me so often. The more he says it, the less I’m on time.”
Odd side note: Being deliberately late is a popular form of Obliger-rebellion. In fact, on the Better app, someone sent me the link to this Superluxe T-shirt, very appropriate for Obligers in Obliger-rebellion:
While some Obligers manage to channel their Obliger-rebellion into acts that, although rebellious, won’t cause much damage, some Obliger-rebellion causes self-sabotage. One Obliger explained, “I do something that will hurt me instead of those who are asking, demanding, or even just advising, me to do something. For example, I’ve gone into presentations or interviews unprepared. It’s like I’m obliging while rebelling—I don’t hurt anyone but myself.”
Sometimes Obliger-rebellion encompasses an entire field of expectations—often in the context of health. One Obliger wrote:
When it comes to work, church and other volunteer organizations, social interactions, childrearing, I tend to do what’s expected of me. But the faintest whiff of expectation, obligation, or constraint when it comes to weight loss or exercise sends me screaming in the other direction. I can’t tell you how much money I’ve squandered on gym and weight-loss club memberships—and ended up never going to the gym or quitting the program, most often gaining weight in the process.
Perhaps health is such a frequent target of Obliger-rebellion because it’s an area where other people press and nag and admonish, so that expectations feel externally imposed, yet the health consequences fall wholly on the Obligers.
As I studied the results of the representative sample, I was intrigued to see that Obligers were just as likely as Rebels to agree with the statement “My doctor has told me why it’s important that I make a certain change in my life, but I haven’t done it.” It’s easy to see why Rebels might reject “doctor’s orders,” but it’s more surprising to see that answer from Obligers. I think it’s due to two factors: one, Obligers don’t always have the accountability needed to accomplish that change; two, Obligers may be showing Obliger-rebellion against a health expectation.
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