Releasing Your Need to Please

Releasing Your Need To Please: Escaping Romantic Relationships with Narcissistic Women
by James Butler
Published by Wood Dragon Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$21.99 ISBN 9781990863301

I wanted to review Releasing Your Need To Please: Escaping Romantic Relationships with Narcissistic Women because of the premise. It’s unusual, in my experience, to read about female narcissism, but Saskatoon counsellor and author James Butler writes that there’s a “growing phenomenon of women who perpetuate narcissistic abuse.” The men they’re in relationship with are the “pleasers,” and Butler says the only way for a pleaser to live a happy, healthy life is to leave the narcissistic relationship. “If … you are looking for help to escape your toxic relationship, this book is definitely for you,” the disclaimer states. The self-help book’s purpose is “to offer information about how to get out of unfixable, unsustainable, dangerous relationships.” Pleasers must break the “never-ending cycle” of “manipulation and accommodation,” once and for all, and Butler advises them to “lawyer up before [they] plan to escape.”

It can be a “disease to please.” Narcissists and pleasers attract one another because of a deep need for love and acceptance that, Butler maintains, they didn’t get enough of as children. He speaks frequently of the “trauma bond”—“The connection created by the repetitive cycle of neediness and pleasing between a narcissist and a pleaser.” Pleasers continually repress their own thoughts, wants and needs to accommodate their partners’. Again, he points to child-parent relationships: “Since his emotional needs were rarely met, [the pleaser] did not learn that his feelings, wants, and needs mattered. In order to emotionally survive he had to please …” A “desperate need for external validation” from one’s partner demonstrates an insecure attachment style.

Butler refrains from using the word “victim,” as he believes everyone has a choice to leave or stay. Choice equals power. It’s integral to “[get] honest with yourself,” however difficult that is, and to learn “the skills of disengagement and detachment.” Trusting one’s self is key.

Doesn’t everyone know a narcissist and a pleaser? Narcissists feel “empty, lonely, powerless and needful,” Butler writes. Like pleasers, they have serious self-esteem issues. In relationship, they can be “irresponsible, controlling, volatile, manipulative, and unstable.” Pleasers are “adept at rationalizing the abusive relationship …. in order to repress deep trauma and fears of confronting the perceived pain of separation.” They “normalize” their mate’s control over them, blame themselves, and often believe that if they remain agreeable, she will change.

I feel it’s fair to say that many people believe that even a toxic relationship—rife with “confusion, anxiety, self-doubt, defeat, worthlessness, mental anguish, panic attacks, and loss of identity”—is better than being alone, so they continue to repress themselves rather than doing the hard work (including the “legitimate suffering of grief”) necessary to “escape the hell that has become their comfort zone.” Fear of abandonment is huge, and it ruins lives.

I appreciated the occasional anecdotes in this thought-provoking text, and learned that “turning the mirror around” is an important step in regaining one’s power. Why? Because “Creating happiness and love is an inside job.” Sage advice from an inspiring, experienced professional.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM