Have people forgotten how to say NO

52 replies

Hayley1256 · 07/04/2025 23:10

I've read a lot of threads recently where people are asking AIBU for things that just require a simple No!

Recent ones include a neighbour telling the OP she was having some parties and that the OP can't use her own garden - OP seemed to go along with this!

Another one about a 'friend' who stays at OP's house and doesn't lift a finger, pay towards anything and expects childcare!

There are many more, but AIBU to think people have become too afraid of upsetting people that they just go along with batshit crazy/ rude behaviour and requests? Not all confrontation is bad!

OP posts:

Ener · 08/04/2025 09:06

I think a lot of them are on the wind up tbh

Shirtless · 08/04/2025 09:18

Serendipetty · 08/04/2025 08:48

It was definitely installed into me. If I didn't 'please' I was chastised, ignored, walking on eggshells , shouted at, at best and hit at worst. For a long time it literally wouldn't ever occur to me that I could say no to someone's request.

Sometimes OPs just want a conversation and others' opinions and to make people laught too, which I think is fine, it is a forum for discussions after all.

But overall it often isn't a case of forgetting how to say no but not realising how to or even that it is an option.
CFs audacity can make you surprised too. Like 'surely they know that's unreasonable?! No, maybe it's me? '
If you don't have a lot of self confidence or self worth that is.

Show quote history

But many of us were brought up like this. I and my sisters certainly were. It simply becomes clear in adulthood that it’s an unhelpful, counter-productive script. If you’re doing it to be liked and make friends, it just doesn’t work. No one respects a people-pleaser. They get overlooked and taken for granted, like the endless successions of posters on Mn posting about ‘CFs’ and seething with resentment, but unwilling to deal with the uncomfortable feelings that would result if they started saying no to things that don’t suit them. They are actively choosing to feel suppressed resentment for years rather than deal with ‘guilt’.

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