Definitely a sensitive subject. I thought about this recently when I watched a video making the point that you can’t be “in trouble” with other adults. Looking through the comments, I was sad that the person had framed things a little clumsily, or really just didn’t cover all bases, because I think this conclusion is true and incredibly important, but it’s also complex.

Most people turning down this conclusion were in or had been in abusive adult relationships. Some referenced work. Or the law.

I think the key component to all of those completely true exceptions is the exact reason why peer relationships shouldn’t have this dynamic – it’s power.

As children, every adult can assert power over us. As workers, our bosses can. In abusive relationships, the person abusing us has leveraged power. When cops arrest or do violence to people, they are certainly asserting power. There is an institution of society backing up most of those. It is logical, both calculatingly and emotionally, to fear “getting in trouble” with people in positions of real power over us.

However, a necessary characteristic of healthy peer relationships – friends, partners, roommates, etc., is that we cannot be in trouble in the same way that we were in trouble with parents or can be in trouble with bosses or cops.

My personal healing journey, and journey to being a responsible friend and partner in the way I would like to be, has required learning this lesson. When I was approaching people with a sense that I could be in trouble with them, I was assuming they had tangible power to leverage over me. I was not able to ask myself that question – what can this person do to me, what power can they leverage? It was just a feeling hovering in my body.

Answering that question can be complex – friends can always leave, roommates can make housing difficult, lovers can break our hearts. The question that’s hard to tease apart is – are we afraid of rejection, of a consequence, of severe disruption, or maybe of something intangible?

If it is intangible, is it a sense that someone could “punish” us?

Then, the question becomes “how could they punish us?”

Then, “is that actually a punishment?”

Power doesn’t have a simple answer. Is perceived power also tangible? What happens when someone’s power in society (race, class, gender) creates an overconfidence that is hard for the relationship to overcome – is that interpersonal power? I honestly don’t know – I have felt it to be true both ways, with the same people.

I do know, however, that sometimes my fear of punishment wasn’t tied to anything in particular or anything that would happen. I would worry roommates could punish me, but there wasn’t any real threat that they would end our home arrangement or that they would abuse me. So what was the “punishment” I feared? It wasn’t even always rejection – it was just a reaction to my PTSD; that in the past, people I lived with abused me when I wasn’t acting how they wanted me to act, or just because they liked to.

It becomes hard to not project that onto everyone. It becomes hard to not expect people you consciously trust to cause you damage – because at some point, you may have started connecting the punishment with your behavior, rather than with the person who punished you. If the punishment “came from my behavior,” it doesn’t matter if the person I don’t want to “be in trouble with” isn’t violent, because I think it’s coming from me. If the punisher was an abuser, and I know that was 100% their fault, then a safe person is a safe situation.

That’s why I say it’s part of healing. I have been on both sides of “react to a kind person like an abuser” and it feels terrible for everyone. No kind person wants people in their life to be afraid of displeasing them. It’s heartbreaking.

If we’re afraid of people, it’s also hard not to just do whatever everyone around us wants us to do. This is the “people pleaser” behavior that is often referenced. The only people who want others to act that way are the kind who actually will try to punish peers. That default behavior can lead to setting unrealistic expectations with people, burning out and becoming numb, and honestly breaking trust with the people in our lives who want to trust we are willing to say no when we need to.

I don’t think I fear punishment anymore outside of the bosses, cops, and landlords parts of life, and it has made me aware of both the ways I handed people too much power, and how much I hate when people try and hand me that kind of power.

I have at least one friend I always reacted to like they had some inherent power – at some point I started asserting my needs gently and firmly. It didn’t even cause any conflict – it just made it easier for us to make decisions about how to proceed. For example, if I say “I will need to walk back now, I am getting tired. If you would like to keep going, I will see you later,” it has gone so much more smoothly and easily for both of us than me trying to hint and ask permission. Honestly, there has been less conflict in my life now that I say what I need and commit to it.

Sometimes people say that when you stop people pleasing, people who are using you cull themselves from your life. I think that’s true. I also don’t love the assertion people should “get selfish” instead, except that I’m sure that “get selfish” for most people is actually just considering themselves enough at all. If the real goal is selfishness, though, I don’t think that’s a good end goal. I do think “I matter, and no one has power over me unless they actually have it” is really freeing.

So, I think we can be in trouble with adults – but we should never be “in trouble” with the people we’re freely choosing in our lives. The power is either imagined or it shouldn’t be there. If people actually find a way to punish us, that is on them, and we can’t stop that with our behavior. If the person doesn’t have power, just the ability to make us sad with loss, I think everyone involved deserves the honesty of everyone expressing their real needs and wants so those decisions can be made or negotiated freely.

Let me know what you think! It was so hard to wrap my mind around this for years, and I wish someone had just said those words to me before. “You can’t be in trouble with other adults.”

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