“Where do you want to eat?”
“Oh, I don’t care. Wherever you want.”
Except...
you do care.
You actually really want tacos.
But they suggested Italian. And Italian is fine… I guess. I mean, you like Italian. And it’s not like they suggested somewhere terrible… but you had your heart set on tacos. And you were the one who said you didn’t care after all — so obviously now you’re eating Italian (while feeling slightly annoyed that nobody wanted tacos).
I know. Rude.
But they didn’t know you wanted tacos because you didn’t tell them you wanted tacos.
You never even mentioned tacos.
Ok. I’m done with my taco story now, you’re welcome. But how often do we do some version of this in our relationships and barely even notice it?
Think about it...
What movie do you want to watch? Whatever you want.
Do you care what we do this weekend? Nope, I’m good with anything.
Would you rather do this now or later? Either is fine.
And sometimes either really is fine. This isn't an intervention for women who genuinely don't care where they eat dinner lol.
But sometimes we do have a preference. We do care. We just don't particularly want to make anyone else deal with it.
Because now they have to respond to it.
And what if they don't want tacos? What if what you want is inconvenient? What if everyone else wants something different and now you've made this whole thing more complicated when you honestly would've been fine with Italian?
See? This is why we can't have nice things!
So we make life easier.
“I don't care.”
Except I've started wondering if constantly being easy to accommodate can make us surprisingly difficult to know. On a deeper level, I mean.
Because preferences are really little pieces of ourselves we're giving another person.
I like this.
I don't like that.
I'd rather stay home tonight.
Actually, I really want to go.
Can we sit outside?
I know everyone else loves this, but I don't.
And I get it, none of those statements is exceptionally profound. We're not revealing our deepest childhood wounds over chips and salsa. I hear you.
But we are letting someone know us. The real us.
And I think that's what makes this different from other conversations we've had about boundaries.
A preference isn't a demand.
Saying what you want doesn't mean everyone has to do it, right? You can want tacos and still end up eating Italian without it being a whole big thing. You can prefer one plan and agree to another. You can tell someone what you need and discover they can't give it. You can have an opinion without needing it to become the group decision.
But first?
You have to actually have the opinion.
Which gets interesting when you've spent most of your life being the easy one. You know, the flexible one. The one who genuinely can make most things work.
Maybe you're naturally good at considering what other people want. Maybe you've spent years in a season of life where somebody else's needs had to come first a lot of the time.
That's real.
But I also think there are times when accommodation becomes so automatic that we stop checking whether we're accommodating anything at all.
Someone asks what we want and instead of actually thinking about the answer, we're already scanning everybody else.
What would be easiest? What would they prefer? What makes the most sense?
And somewhere in that process, our own answer becomes strangely irrelevant.
Until eventually we're frustrated.
Nobody ever picks what I want.
Nobody thinks about what I like.
How does nobody know this about me by now?
And underneath the frustration, sometimes there's something that hurts a little more:
Does anybody actually care what I want?
Oof.
That's a different feeling, isn't it?
Because now we're not really talking about tacos anymore.
And sometimes that hurt is completely legitimate. There are relationships where you've been clear about what matters to you and the other person consistently doesn't pay attention. You've told them what you need, what you enjoy, what hurts, what would make you feel cared for — and they still don't seem interested in knowing.
That's hard. And I'm not going to turn that around and tell you that you just need to communicate better.
But there are other times...
We need to ask ourselves, Did we tell them?
I mean, NO! No I didn't tell them, and I don't need anyone pointing it out. I'm very aware of what I have and haven't done — I just want to be mad about it! Bah!
But sometimes we're hurt that someone hasn't considered something we never actually gave them the chance to know.
Well... that's not entirely fair either, is it?
Of course not. And I think this matters beyond tacos because the same habit can quietly work its way into much bigger things too.
When you become the person who doesn't mind, the one who makes anything work, the one who is happy as long as everyone else is happy… it’s quite lovely.
Until you realize people have known you for years and genuinely don't know what you would choose.
Not because they don't care about you.
They just haven't had much opportunity to find out.
Someone knows how you take your coffee because they've watched you order it a hundred times. They know which side of the bed you sleep on, what makes you laugh, what kind of birthday you actually enjoy, whether you want advice when you're upset or just need someone to listen.
That's one of the really beautiful things about being known by someone for a long time. Eventually they don't have to ask about everything.
But they had to find those things out somehow.
At some point, you let them know.
And I think that's the part we can forget when we've gotten really good at being easy. If I keep saying everything is fine, anything works and I genuinely don't care, eventually the people around me are probably going to believe me.
Well, shoot.
Again, that doesn't mean it's our fault every time somebody fails to consider us. Sometimes people know exactly what matters to us and don't consider it anyway.
That's a different conversation.
But I don't want to feel hurt that someone doesn't know what matters to me when I've spent years telling them everything works for me.
Being known requires giving another person something to know.
And apparently sometimes that starts with something as ridiculously ordinary as admitting you wanted tacos.
Please don't make dinner exhausting in the name of personal growth. 😂
But I do think there is something worth noticing the next time somebody asks what you want and “I don't care” comes flying out before you've even considered the question.
Do you really not care?
Or have you gotten so good at working around everybody else's preferences that having one of your own feels unnecessarily inconvenient?
Because you're allowed to have one.
With your kids. Your family. Your friends. Your coworkers. You're allowed to like things and dislike things and want things simply because... you do.
And I almost feel silly saying this, but you're allowed to be happy too.
If you love Pad Thai, speak up. There may be someone sitting across from you who would genuinely love the chance to say, Perfect. Let's get Pad Thai.
You don't have to demand your preference or defend it, and you certainly don't have to get it every time.
But the people who love you should at least have the opportunity to know what it is.
And perhaps more importantly, so should you.
Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Ep 65: Are You Shrinking Yourself to Keep the Peace?