I once had a (very brief) romance with a guy who I suspect is a sociopath. He suspects he’s a sociopath too, so it’s not just me. In a book he wrote, he even has a whole chapter about sociopaths and was very openly curious about whether he, too, was one of them. Having just read the chilling Confessions Of A Sociopath, about a self-aware sociopath who is not a criminal behind bars, but a law school professor who plays with hearts and gets off on “ruining people,” I now feel even more certain that he’s sociopathic.
But it’s not sociopathy I want to talk about here. It’s the behaviors we find ourselves engaging in if we wind up emotionally attached to someone highly narcissistic, manipulative, or sociopathic, namely, fawning behaviors.
Looking back, I wonder what kind of spell I had fallen under when I first met the guy who I’ll call Wilder.
I was frightened of him the first time I met him. I told my best friend, who was with me when we met, that I felt like a dark cloud walked in the room before Wilder did, kind of like the Peanuts character Pigpen. That should have caused me to turn the other way, to trust my gut instincts and keep my distance. But I didn’t.
The first time I had sex with Wilder, he told me that, even though he was quite promiscuous, we didn’t have to wear condoms- because you can only catch a sexually transmitted disease if you had sexual shame.
Now, I’m an OB/GYN, an actual doctor (he’s not). So you’d think I would laugh in his face and demand condoms. But I actually paused and second-guessed myself. What if he was right? And if so, then demanding condoms would mean I’m admitting that I have sexual shame, which I definitely do, because of my fundamentalist Christian upbringing. But he seemed so sexually shameless that I wanted to impress him with my coolness. And it wouldn’t be cool to admit my sexual hangups when we were about to have sex, right?
I’m ashamed to admit I wound up fawning him and we had unprotected sex. Fortunately, I did not get an STD from him, but I’m certain it’s not for lack of sexual shame on my part.
Wilder told me he was married and polyamorous, which was edgy for me. I didn’t know anyone openly poly. I’d always thought opening your marriage was something unhappy couples do prior to breaking up, like a gateway drug to divorce. So I asked if I could meet his wife before he and I hooked up, just to make sure she was okay with it, so we could discuss any boundaries she might need- like condoms.
I asked if we could set up a virtual meetup with his wife, but he spun some story to explain why that wouldn’t be possible. And once more, I fawned and believed his lie. When he confessed to his wife about his liaison with me, it turned out she was out of her mind outraged over the whole ordeal, but she wanted to meet me.
I met his wife soon thereafter, and I assumed that she knew about all the other women, since I did. When I casually mentioned the woman in Germany and the dozen others from elsewhere in the world, it turned out that she had no idea he’d been having affairs. I felt sick that I’d been the one to tell her. I had trusted him, not knowing him well enough to know that lying was a daily part of his existence, something I hadn’t figured out, because he’d been so frank and shameless about what he’d told me.
Wilder’s wife and I tiptoed around each other, trying to bond but trauma-bonding instead. We both fawned Wilder- and each other, I suppose. I felt scared of her, and I suspect she saw me as a threat to her marriage, although I turned out not to be. As far as I know, they are still together.
At the time, I asked for advice from my wise elder mentor Rachel. Was I being foolhardy? Should I break it off?
Rachel said, “I don’t care if you have sex with Charles Manson, as long as you know exactly the moment to get out.”
That moment became obvious to me, and I got out before too much harm was done to me, Wilder, or his wife. But that situation did become fodder for a lot of therapy, as I tried to unpack what had happened to me, how I’d become vulnerable, and why I’d fawned someone who was clearly emotionally dangerous to me and others.
After that relationship ended, I felt nauseated by how small I had become in such a short time. I had ignored my gut. I had silenced my no. I had betrayed my body. And I did it all in the name of being good. Good girl. Good lover. Good spiritual woman who doesn’t carry sexual shame or hold to her value of monogamy and fidelity.
Only I wasn’t a good girl. I participated in a relationship that deeply hurt another woman who I came to care about, whose husband didn’t care about her feelings one bit- or mine.
I was, in other words, fawning.
What Is Fawning?
I’m in the final edits of the book I’m co-writing with Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Rediger- RELATIONSICK. We just got our publication date of October 6, 2026. The book riffs off Mind Over Medicine’s Six Steps To Healing Yourself with the Six Steps From Fawning To Freedom.
What are we talking about when we use the term “fawning?” In Complex PTSD, psychologist and trauma therapist Pete Walker coined the term “fawn response” to describe a fourth survival instinct — alongside fight, flight, and freeze. When fight or flight isn’t possible (especially for children who can’t escape their caregivers), the nervous system defaults to appeasement. We learn to stay safe by pleasing, placating, rescuing, or disappearing into someone else’s needs.
In her beautiful new book Fawning: The Cost of Appeasing Others and How to Stop, Ingrid Clayton, PhD, brings this concept down to the level of lived experience. She writes not as a detached clinician but as a survivor of narcissistic abuse who spent years trying to earn love by being who others wanted her to be. Ingrid names fawning as a trauma response disguised as empathy — a “nervous system strategy for survival” that masquerades as kindness, spirituality, or caretaking. But underneath it is fear:
“If I make you happy, maybe you won’t hurt me. If I meet your needs perfectly, maybe you won’t leave.”
Reading Fawning was like watching my own behaviors under a microscope. I could see how I’d used warmth and flexibility not as true love, but as armor. My “open-mindedness” around Wilder’s polyamory wasn’t genuine acceptance- it was my fawn response trying to earn safety by being cool, evolved, and non-threatening.
The Fawn Response’s Logic
The fawn response develops early. If love is conditional — if affection comes only when we’re easy, accommodating, or quiet — then our brains link love with compliance. As adults, this can look like:
- Saying yes when we mean no.
- Minimizing red flags because confrontation feels unsafe.
- Mistaking chaos for chemistry.
- Confusing intensity with intimacy.
- Believing our empathy can heal someone’s darkness.
We become experts in reading the emotional weather of a room, shape-shifting to prevent conflict. Our nervous systems register harmony as safety, even when that harmony is achieved by erasing ourselves. In Fawning, Ingrid writes that recovery begins when we stop mistaking safety for peacekeeping. The goal isn’t to stay calm at all costs; it’s to feel safe enough to tell the truth.
Fawning in a Lab Coat
When I look back at that story with Wilder, what breaks my heart most isn’t that I fell for his manipulative pseudo-spiritual nonsense about sexual shame. It’s that, in the wake of my divorce and in the throes of unrequited love for a gay man who was encouraging me to get my sexual needs met with Wilder, a part of me was so desperate to be loved that I overrode the wisdom of my own body — a body trained in science, medicine, and intuition.
Looking back, I can pinpoint the moment my fawning took over. The part of me that wanted to be chosen whispered, “If you ask for condoms, he’ll think you’re uptight and won’t find you sexy.” And so I betrayed myself in the very moment I longed to be loved.
That’s the devastating paradox of the fawn response: the part that wants connection most fiercely ends up losing connection with self- and self-protection.
Fawning as Trauma Bonding
Ingrid describes how fawning often goes hand in hand with trauma bonding — the addictive cycle of idealization, devaluation, and intermittent reinforcement that keeps us hooked on the person who hurts us. Wilder’s mix of charm and danger was intoxicating. He alternated between intense intimacy and cold detachment. Each time he withdrew, my nervous system registered panic. My fawning tendencies scrambled to repair the connection. What did I do wrong? How can I fix it? All along I was unaware of how I was reenacting the survival dance of my childhood under the influence of a mother whose approval of me was very conditional on me being her version of the perfect daughter- perfect Christian, perfect good girl, perfect student, perfect looking, perfect narcissistic extension of herself- until I failed her, of course.
I’ll never forget my sister in law running out of my mother’s dining room after having tea with my mother. She was fuming. “If I have to listen to that woman complaining one more time about what an utter disappointment all three of her children are, I’m going to lose my shit.”
I never told my mother about my affair with Wilder. She would have begged me to repent to Jesus Christ, for fear I would burn in hell if I didn’t.
When love and approval are that precarious, that inconsistent, we cling harder. We confuse adrenaline for attachment. That’s how fawning keeps the trauma bond alive.
The Spiritual Bypass of Fawning
Fawning often hides behind spirituality. In Ingrid’s words, “We mistake self-abandonment for enlightenment.” Many trauma survivors — especially those drawn to healing work — turn fawning into a virtue. We call it compassion, surrender, forgiveness, or radical acceptance. We quote Rumi about the wound being where the light enters us, but sometimes the wound just keeps bleeding because we won’t bandage it.
I’ve done this myself. I’ve mistaken my tolerance for mistreatment as proof of my spiritual evolution. But authentic spirituality doesn’t demand self-betrayal. Love doesn’t require us to make ourselves small.
Even outside romantic relationships, fawning is sneaky. You might recognize it if you:
- Over-apologize for things that aren’t your fault.
- Feel responsible for other people’s emotions.
- Rush to soothe tension instead of letting discomfort teach you something.
- Volunteer for emotional labor no one asked you to do.
- Confuse boundaries with rejection.
Fawning isn’t limited to victims of abuse — it’s woven into our cultural conditioning, especially for women and those socialized to prioritize harmony over honesty.
Unfawning
Ingrid’s book doesn’t just describe the problem; it shows a path to healing. She invites readers to meet their fawning parts with compassion rather than contempt. Because the truth is, fawning once saved us.
When confrontation wasn’t safe, fawning kept us connected. When love was conditional, fawning helped us survive. So recovery isn’t about killing the fawn response. Sometimes fawning is still necessary to keep us alive, to keep us safe. When I was held up at gunpoint by two masked gunmen at Pikes Peak National Park, fawning might have been what kept me alive. For many people with various marginalizations, fawning the cops when you’re a young Black man or fawning ICE if you’re an immigrant or fawning a big man who’s trying to hurt you if you’re a woman just might protect you.
The IFS-informed shift in how we approach our fawning parts is to thank them as protector parts, to appreciate how those parts helped us survive. Then, from Self, we can gently encourage our fawning parts to relax, to realize we’re safe now.
For me, unlearning fawning has looked like:
- Becoming intimate with my fawning parts, so they don’t hijack my system and put me in danger of the next Wilder.
- Getting to know the wounded child beneath the fawning parts.
- Practicing somatic awareness — noticing the micro-moments my body tenses before I say yes- and slowing it down so I can pause instead of rushing to compliance, in order to be liked.
- Letting silence hang in conversations instead of rushing to fill it.
- Naming my preferences out loud, even when my voice shakes and I’m afraid to upset or disappoint someone.
- Surrounding myself with people who celebrate my boundaries rather than punish me for them or try to override them.
- Calling myself out whenever I’m tempted to spiritually bypass instead of stand my ground.
I got into the best therapy of my life right after my mother died, just a few years after I ended my affair with Wilder. A combination of IFS, Somatic Experiencing, Advanced Integrative Therapy, and more recently, Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy (RLT) has mostly broken me of this reflexive behavioral habit. But it’s taken a decade- and it hasn’t been easy, painless, or inexpensive.
Healing happens in safe relationships, not just with therapists, but with friends and communities who model safe enough reciprocity. When a recovering fawner meets someone capable of secure love, it can feel boring at first. Our nervous systems miss the highs and lows of danger. Safety feels foreign, almost suspicious. But as Ingrid writes, “The nervous system can learn that calm is not the same as danger.”
Real love doesn’t require hyper-vigilance. It doesn’t demand we prove our worth. It lets us rest. That’s what I want for myself now — and for everyone who has mistaken fawning for love: the freedom to rest in relationships that don’t require performance.
Unlearn Your Fawn In LOVE SCHOOL
When I first began teaching about trauma and attachment, I noticed how many people, even those deeply committed to the spiritual path, were still confusing fawning for intimacy. They were doing “the work,” reading the books, meditating, healing, yet still finding themselves drawn to people who needed saving.
That’s why I created LOVE SCHOOL — my ongoing relational recovery program for people who want to learn what secure love actually looks, sounds, feels, and acts like. LOVE SCHOOL isn’t about finding “the one.” It’s about becoming someone who no longer fawns, fixes, or forfeits their truth to be loved. We explore how trauma imprints on attraction, how the nervous system responds to relational danger, and how to cultivate secure attachment, within yourself and with others, using IFS as a foundation, but not as zealots, also integrating many other trauma healing methods.
If you recognize yourself in my story — if you’ve ever silenced your intuition to stay connected, or found yourself addicted to someone’s approval — we’ll be focusing our next few LOVE SCHOOL sessions specifically on fawning and how to heal from it. If you’re tired of walking on eggshells, tired of calling self-abandonment compassion, tired of confusing peacekeeping for peace, we invite you to join us for LOVE SCHOOL.
Join LOVE SCHOOL here.
Maybe your “Wilder” wasn’t a sociopath. Maybe it was a boss, a parent, a friend, or a spiritual teacher. Maybe you’ve been the one others fawned, and you’re waking up to the discomfort of realizing that dynamic.
Wherever you are in the cycle, the medicine is the same: truth, tenderness, psychoeducation, boundaries, self-respect, intimacy with your parts, compassion for yourself, fierce protection of your own rights, emotions, and safety, and time for healing.
The next time you feel yourself rushing to make someone comfortable at the expense of your own safety, needs, or truth, pause. Breathe. Notice what your body is saying. That’s not defiance; it’s self-love. It’s not rebellion; it’s the YOU-Turn your parts need before you can feel safe in your own skin.
Learn more in LOVE SCHOOL about how to break free from fawning
