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The Hidden Cost of “Keeping the Peace”

What if, by trying to avoid rocking the boat, you actually make it sink.

If you’re like most nice guys and people pleasers, you’ve probably been walking on eggshells in your relationship to avoid upsetting your partner and to prevent conflict. You choose your words carefully. You avoid certain topics. You anticipate and prevent problems from happening. You pretend to agree with things. You follow rather than lead. You are generally just trying to keep the peace all the time, and you probably pat yourself on the back for doing it.

But I’ll bet you’ve noticed something that’s pretty frustrating. Not only is this not working, the conflicts are getting worse as time passes. So either the drama keeps happening anyway—it’s just a different type of drama—or other problems are starting to emerge. Even if it looks like the two of you are reasonably conflict-free and things look okay on the surface, things like intimacy, respect, and knowing who you are are starting to deteriorate, or have gotten really bad over time.

You start to feel resentful, highly anxious, feel like you’re kind of being eroded away, and you get a sense of dread that things are never going to get better—that you’re trapped in a sort of prison here and that there’s really no way out.

There’s this kind of paradox, or this trap, where you feel like you’re doing everything right and being a good person, and yet there’s constant tension. It feels like the problem never gets solved.

In today’s episode, we’re going to break down why walking on eggshells not only does not work, it’s actually one of the main causes of conflict and tension in a relationship. We’re going to break down what it means to walk on eggshells, what it looks like, why it happens, how you became a person who does this, why it doesn’t work, why it backfires on you, and a healthier, more respectful, and confident way to deal with these issues that will actually reduce the overall conflict over time.

The best thing is, you can reduce all this conflict without actually causing a lot of chaos. It’s not going to be as bad as you think it’s going to be, but you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. Because let’s face it, even if avoiding conflict is keeping the peace, it’s creating other problems.

If you’re new here and you don’t already know me, my name is Dan Munro. I’ve been coaching nice guys and people pleasers since 2013, and pretty much all of the ones that I’ve coached who have been in romantic relationships have had the issue of walking on eggshells. This is very common.

By the time they come to me, they feel very stuck. They feel resentful. They feel trapped by the situation as if it can’t be fixed, and the relationship is slowly deteriorating even though they’re trying their best.

These guys have noble intentions, or at least they believe they do. They think they’re being mature, calm, helpful, supportive. They feel like they’re being a really good partner. So it makes no sense to them. It feels very unfair that this isn’t working, and they’re exhausted by the whole process.

They’re hyper-vigilant. They have to keep monitoring their partner’s mood all the time. They’re constantly having to edit themselves, change who they are, adjust to the context at all times, and they have to keep avoiding the truth. They are very restricted on how honest they can be because there’s just so much that isn’t allowed to be said due to the emotions it tends to trigger pretty much every time.

The very strategy of trying to keep the peace and not rock the boat is the thing causing the most tension and the most conflict. Though most often these guys can’t see the connection between the two.

So today I’m going to try and teach you what I’ve taught them.

I’m going to start with a true story on this issue to paint a picture of what it looks like in real life. Then we’re going to dive into what walking on eggshells means, why it happens, why it causes more problems than it solves, and then we’re going to look at how to try and handle conflict in a different, more effective, healthier way that not only improves your relationship but makes you respect yourself and feel more confident as a man.

A Real Example: Johnny’s Relationship

Let’s start by talking about a guy we’ll call Johnny, just for anonymity.

Johnny was somebody I worked with a couple of years back, and he had a partner who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, so she was quite reactionary. Whether or not that’s related to the disorder is unknown, but it was very easy to upset her.

She was easily offended. She often took things personally even when they weren’t about her. Her mood swings were fairly wild. There was no mood that was guaranteed to last. They were quite unpredictable. What upset her today might not upset her tomorrow. What she was fine with today might be a disaster tomorrow. There were no kind of rules to follow in her presence that really suited her mood and kept her in a calm, constant state. That’s how he described her.

Now he was also somebody—old Johnny boy, we’ll call him—who really struggled to be around what he called negative emotions. His whole life he struggled to be around people who are angry, sad, confused, disappointed—anything that isn’t happy, calm, or bored. He’s fine with those. Maybe not bored.

There’s a very narrow range that he feels safe in, and anything outside of that range puts a lot of pressure on him. He feels it in his chest. He feels very tense, becomes very vigilant, and feels like whenever somebody’s having those kinds of feelings there’s some problem that needs to be solved and that that’s somehow his fault.

So you can imagine the combination of two such people and what living under the same roof would be like.

Very early on in the relationship, he started trying to anticipate the kind of things that would upset her and prevent them from happening.

There were the preventative moves he was making where he tried to make sure she didn’t even become aware of any potential triggers. This might look like making sure there’s always enough food in the house. It might look like keeping things clean all the time. It might be noticing that some hassle was coming up and solving it before she got home.

It’s the kind of thing of “don’t let her know about anything bad happening.”

It could also mean hiding things. For example, if the weather was going to ruin their picnic, he might change the picnic rather than telling her about the weather. All these little things just to not give her any reason to be upset.

And of course if he missed something and she did get upset about it, he would essentially barrage her with fixing and advice. He would just fall on like an avalanche of so-called support to try and get her back to happiness again.

Almost trying to beat her into submission—metaphorically speaking—to convince her to be happy again, to convince her everything’s fine, to prove that the problem no longer exists or is now solved. He would take away any excuse she might have for being upset.

He would very much down tools with whatever he was doing and just jump on her problems until they were all gone.

He got to a point where he actually started to feel afraid of her. He would feel relief when she went back to her house, and a sense of impending dread when she was coming over.

Being around her actually wasn’t all that fun.

Sometimes he was actually quite mean to her. He’d get upset with her when she wasn’t fixed by his efforts. If she got upset even though he’d done everything right, or if he offered solutions and she wouldn’t take them or they didn’t work for her, he would get mad at her that she’s still upset.

Almost as if it’s personal, like she’s denying him or disrespecting him.

In fact he used the word disrespect quite often. If she was upset with his advice he would say that he was being disrespected.

And this very quickly led to a lot of resentment building up and a lot of avoidance.

Rather than trying to fix her problems he started to stray more into just staying away from her. The emotional distance between them—whether real or emotional—started to grow. Basically if he couldn’t solve her problems he just didn’t want to be around her, and he’d avoid her or block her out.

So he’s blocking her out, complaining about her a lot, very irritable about her moods.

And what does this do to her?

Of course it only increases her anxiety.

She was already stressed out about all the fixing he was trying to do. Now she’s anxious that he’s going to leave her. She’s becoming more reactive. She’s becoming hyper-vigilant to his response to her reaction to his response to her reaction, and so on.

And this gives you a hint as to why walking on eggshells might actually cause more problems than it solves.

His overall approach was making her more reactive, more sensitive, and more emotional.

Then the fact that he’s trying to fix her while she’s so emotional—that dynamic itself became a topic of argument.

So they would start fighting about the fighting that they’re having about the thing.

He would start getting on to her about how she’s too sensitive. She would respond about how he’s too controlling and fixing. And they would actually fight about their attempts to solve the problem.

Again, there’s a hint of another reason why walking on eggshells actually causes more conflict.

The eggshells themselves become a conflict.

He felt like he was in a rock-and-a-hard-place situation where he’s not allowed to upset her or let her get upset, but he also won’t force her to take responsibility for her own problems and the vibe that she brings into the house.

So he feels like there are really no options.

And he started to say the classic nice guy line:

“I can’t win.”

If you’re the kind of person who feels like you’re trying your best with your partner—walking on eggshells being one of those things—and you’re starting to say things like “I just can’t win, nothing works,” then today’s episode is definitely for you.

What Walking on Eggshells Actually Means

Let’s step back a bit and have a look at what walking on eggshells actually means.

It’s a range of behaviors, all of them avoidant of emotional discomfort.

There are the anticipating type behaviors. You get to learn someone and you know what upsets them or puts them into that range of emotion you’re not comfortable with. You start trying to anticipate any of those potential triggers and stop them before they happen.

If someone is particularly upset by bad news, you hide the bad news from them.

If they tend to get offended when something happens, you try to stop that thing from happening.

You start to try and predict what might set them off and cut it off at the source so they never have to experience it.

Overall there’s just an attempt to reduce provocation and reduce triggers.

We use the term walking on eggshells because it describes a person tiptoeing over something very sensitive without trying to break it.

And that’s really what it feels like.

You start to make a little list in your head of all the things they’re provoked by, and whenever those things might come up or you might do those things, you try to reduce them.

For example, if you find they’re provoked by messiness, you start finding that you’re extra clean all the time, and you get very anxious to make sure everything’s put away properly and so on.

That’s all the prevention side of walking on eggshells.

But walking on eggshells is also what happens when the eggshell cracks.

When they do get upset and you weren’t able to prevent it, then we dive into fixing mode, which is kind of the back end of walking on eggshells—gluing the shells back together.

You might solve their problems for them.

You might drop tools even if it’s got nothing to do with you.

Maybe it’s their problem and you can’t solve it anyway, but you still try.

Let’s say somebody was mean to them. You go confront that person. You make a phone call on their behalf. They’re stressed out, so you go do the food shopping even though they promised they would.

You just start taking all the work off their plate.

I’ve been guilty of doing this thousands of times.

Especially if my wife’s having a hard day, my first thought is: what can I take off her plate?

As if that’s what she needs.

This idea of how do I remove as many of their problems as possible, how do I get their to-do list down to zero because that will somehow make them easier to be around emotionally.

And when that doesn’t work, we actually go into a kind of denial.

We try to convince them that they’re not upset or should not be upset.

We might exaggerate all the positive stuff.

We might say things are fine because of certain reasons and try to convince them that really they’re doing quite well and that things are okay.

Or we try to reframe the thing.

They call something a problem and we try to reframe it as a positive.

We try to guilt-trip them into not believing that it’s negative.

Someone’s complaining and we might say, “well at least it’s not this bad like that other person,” trying to give them some frame of reference.

We’ll tell ourselves we’re being philosophical and mature.

What we’re really trying to do is make them submit to the truth that they don’t have a problem and therefore should not be upset, as if we can somehow negotiate with their emotions to turn them off.

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Avoidance and Hyper-Vigilance

And if all of that doesn’t work, we generally prefer an avoidance technique.

There’s a movie called Don’t Breathe, where these people break into a blind man’s house, but he’s also very good at hearing, so they have to hold their breath whenever he’s in the room. We get that kind of sense.

Some guys I’ve spoken to, myself included, actually reduce how loud their breathing is.

I remember with my first partner, the first time I ever slept with another person in the same bed, I tried to move as little and breathe as little as possible so that I couldn’t disturb their sleep. I was quite literally toning everything about myself down to create as little provocation as possible.

There might also be people where you just avoid certain topics of discussion. You avoid addressing things. You deny to yourself that you’re upset with something so you don’t need to bring it up.

There’s lots of avoidance of confrontation, allowing boundaries to be crossed, pretending you agree when you actually disagree—just a kind of avoidance of anything that might stir emotions up.

You might even switch the channel while watching television because the topic in the show is something they’re sensitive about. It’s kind of like: let’s get away from all the bad stuff.

That’s generally what walking on eggshells looks like.

It creates a kind of hovering effect—that’s what I like to think of it as. We’re kind of hovering over everything like a blimp, looking down at everything, hyper-vigilant all the time, trying to identify and prevent potential disasters.

We do a lot of catastrophizing in our head. We take a small thing and we blow it up in our head as to how much of a disaster it will be for our partner or our boss or whoever we’re worried about.

We end up treating very small things as big problems because we’ve made them big problems in our head.

It might just look to the outside world like some minor thing, but to us we’re like, “but this would lead to that, which would lead to her feeling like this, which would lead to her making more mistakes, which would lead to her feeling worse,” and so on.

So we think we have to deal with this right now at super high priority.

The sink being clogged becomes a ten-out-of-ten problem in our mind because we’ve extrapolated it into a full-blown breakdown.

And I have to call it out here: some guys are with partners where this is not delusional. There is plenty of evidence that the person will have a full-blown meltdown over a tiny provocation.

Some guys didn’t walk on eggshells until they got into a relationship with this person.

But for the vast majority, it’s much more in the illusory place.

There are a lot of guys who think disasters are going to happen and they don’t even allow themselves to test it.

They haven’t actually found out.

They just presume.

Other guys have been scared by reactions they had in the past and they use that as a reference.

So we start diving on warning signs.

We’ve got our radar pinging all the time for potential threats, and as soon as we see one we’re freaking all over it, smothering it.

Let’s say your child is a bit tired in the morning and you know that might lead to the two of them fighting later in the evening.

You go, “oh my god, I have to take care of this child before it becomes a problem later in the afternoon.”

You treat the slightest one-out-of-ten issue like a ten-out-of-ten issue because you’re sure it will escalate.

You also start to avoid opportunities.

There might be something that could be a trigger.

A classic one is spending time with your friends.

Most nice guys start to lose themselves socially over time because their partner might be a bit jealous, or gets lonely, or feels that things are unfair, or feels like they don’t have a partner.

Whether that’s real or imagined, the threat is enough.

So the guy starts saying no to things.

He might turn down a great work trip that could make him lots of money, or he might skip a new hobby because it happens during the time when the kids get put to bed and he’s worried she’ll feel bad about having to do that.

You start saying no to things that are good for you because they might possibly trigger something.

And then there’s over-planning.

You’re so sure that everything is a potential trigger that there’s landmines everywhere.

You start doing a kind of reconnaissance before anything happens.

If you’re traveling together you might have checklists and fail-safes and backups in case any tiny thing goes wrong.

Some of you will use money. I’ve been guilty of doing that. My wife says, “Oh I forgot my charger,” and I’m like, “Buy another charger.” Just solve it with money. Just fix it. Anything—just don’t let the problem happen.

You always have contingencies planned as if you’re playing chess against a grandmaster.

The Emotional Toll of Walking on Eggshells

Then there are the emotional effects. What it’s like emotionally to be in the walking on eggshells dynamic. Fear is really what walking on eggshells is.

Whether we admit it to ourselves or not.

We might not have the heart-pounding fight-or-flight type fear, but ultimately any preventative move is fear-based. Any kind of worrying and then trying to prevent the thing you’re worried about—that’s fear.

Worry is fear. Anxiety is fear. Stress is fear. So we’re basically living in fear. And then there’s exhaustion.

Fear and exhaustion are probably the chief things.

It’s hard to stop someone from getting upset because life is quite upsetting. There’s always new things around the corner you couldn’t possibly predict, or old things that used to be fine but are no longer fine.

Trying to keep up with all this—running your life and running theirs for them—is a double workload. Of course you’re going to be tired.

You also get resentment.

On one hand you’re the one managing them, even if they ask for it. Most of the time they haven’t asked for it. And it bothers you that you have to do this. It feels very unfair that they’re putting you in this position. You feel like you’re being unfairly punished.

The more you tell yourself this story, the more you believe it.

Eventually it becomes a story of them essentially being abusive toward you, or at least being unreasonable or chaotic or dysfunctional.

You’re the rock. You’re the great guy doing everything right. And yet there’s constant tension and drama.

It feels like you’ve been dealt a shitty hand.

You also get chronic anxiety. If you’re worrying all the time, worrying becomes your state. You don’t know what the next threat will be. So you have to worry all the time. You become hyper-vigilant.

You might end up with sleep issues. You might have bowel problems. You might gain weight.

All the symptoms that come with being on edge all the time and never getting to rest.

There’s also stress and frustration. It’s like banging your head against the wall. Every time you solve one problem, another pops up. It’s like the story of the Hydra. You cut off one head and two more appear. Every mood you solve for your partner, she has two new moods. Every problem you solve creates two more problems. Or two new ones appear. Or she finds new problems somehow. It starts to feel very frustrating that your approach isn’t working.

You’re putting in all this effort and the return on investment is pitiful. At best you can save her from one mood today. But tomorrow there will be another mood. And the day after that. It’s like trying to empty the ocean with a bucket. A lot of effort for zero results.

And this contributes to the resentment. You start to think she’s holding back. She’s not pulling her weight. You’ve done your side of things and she’s not doing hers. You think she’s making it hard for you.

There’s probably disappointment on both sides.

You’ve given her the opportunity to be calm and happy all the time. She’s not taking that opportunity.

You’re attached to the hope that one day all this drama will go away and your approach will finally work. But instead you’re in a relationship where either the tension happens no matter what you do, or you’ve solved the tension but killed everything else.

Like chemotherapy for the relationship. There’s no love left. No connection. No intimacy. No fun. No friendship.

All of it died alongside the drama.

When the Relationship Starts to Deteriorate

You always yearned for a great relationship, and now it just feels like every time you try, it doesn’t work out. It’s very disappointing. The expectations aren’t being met, which of course leads to a different type of yearning, and that’s yearning to escape.

Quite often you’ll start to have fantasies.

Maybe the fantasy is just about a better relationship, whatever that might be. Maybe it’s fantasy about being alone. Maybe it’s fantasy about being with someone else. Or maybe it’s fantasy about her being different from who she really is.

It’s a kind of yearning for something that doesn’t exist, or yearning for something different.

And that can also lead to dread.

Just an overall sense of being trapped in a prison, being unable to be released, especially if you’ve got children together.

You might think, “oh my god, it’s just going to be this forever.”

It’s just going to get worse, and there’s no way out.

Then you might even yearn for much more dramatic things—running away, committing suicide even. It can get really dark.

All because you’re trying to be a good guy and trying not to upset her.

It looked like such a good idea at the start. It looked like a really noble thing. Something you were probably proud of. You might have even bragged about it.

“Hey, we never fight.”

Well maybe it wasn’t as good as it appeared to be.

You’ll notice the relationship changes over time. The petty disputes go up. You probably got along pretty well in the first few months of your relationship, though some of you had drama from day one and didn’t pick up on that red flag.

You’ll probably notice that she seems to be getting more sensitive over time. Her expectations of what you’ll provide for her keep going up and become impossible to meet. They feel unreasonable and unfair compared to where you were at the start.

Sex and intimacy probably go down. That’s a classic reaction to the drop in attraction in a relationship. Even just attraction itself dies off. It’s very hard for her to be attracted to someone who’s scared of her. It’s very hard for you to be attracted to someone you’re scared of. That dynamic is really not going to work out for attraction.

Expectations coming from her become too hard to meet. Expectations from yourself become impossible. You demand higher and higher performance from yourself around managing her emotions and not cracking any eggshells. Over time the standard becomes suffocating.

At the start you could manage this. You wouldn’t even listen to a podcast like this because it was working in your opinion. But there’s a tipping point where it really just starts going downhill.

It feels like you can’t control the thing anymore. She starts to seem more sensitive. She’s more easily disappointed. More easily offended. Her standards have gone up to a point that feels unreasonable.

And you feel that world closing in.

The prison walls getting tighter. You’ve lost your friends. You’ve lost your hobbies. Your life becomes all about trying to prevent someone else from having emotions.

There’s codependence there. You feel trapped by the need for you. You feel like they would fall apart without you. Somehow the rest of their life—who knows how they survived before—but now they really do need you. So you’re trapped by that idea.

The idea that maybe you’ve deliberately fostered this arrangement might not readily occur to you.

But we’ll get to that.

In the long run the worst outcomes of walking on eggshells are cheating, breakups, violence, or massive outbursts from you as all that resentment bubbles over. When you lash out it can get really dark.

All because you’re trying to be a good guy and trying not to upset her.

Why We Learn to Walk on Eggshells

So let’s now talk about the “why” behind this.

If this thing is indeed backfiring and is an unhealthy way to have a relationship, then why would we do it? Where do we get this idea from? Why do we believe this to be a good idea if it so clearly creates bad results?

Let’s start with childhood, where most of this stuff starts.

For some of you this didn’t happen until you got into a specific relationship. But for others, you know this walking on eggshells behavior goes beyond just one relationship. It’s a strategy you’ve been using with lots of people for a long time. If that’s the case, then it’s probably a childhood thing.

Usually it starts with an unpredictable home life. Unpredictable is the key word.

Walking on eggshells is like walking through a minefield. You don’t know where the damage is going to happen. You don’t know where the threat is. So you tiptoe because the threat could be anywhere.

You don’t get that in a predictable household. In a predictable household there might be dangers or threats, but they only happen under specific circumstances. As long as those circumstances aren’t happening, you’re safe.

People who tiptoe usually come from environments where there wasn’t a clear set of rules. The rules changed all the time. What caused harm or punishment was never consistent. So you developed a radar for early warning signs because the threat could come anytime and anywhere.

You had either real or imagined dangers. Maybe you were just a sensitive kid and got upset by banter and called it bullying. Or maybe you were genuinely in a threatening environment that included abuse or violence. But at some point you figured out that those who don’t provoke get the least harm.

There is a safest way to behave. There’s a narrow range of behaviors that cause the least reactions. You learned that staying inside that range meant less punishment. Doing anything outside that range caused more damage.

So you unconsciously formed a pattern of behavior that got the best results. If you had a strict parent, there were probably lots of ways to break the rules. But you learned that if you were very good all the time and barely noticed, you broke the least rules. So you tried to be good all the time. You tried to stay within that safe narrow range of behavior.

Bullying in childhood can also contribute. You develop the belief that “only the noticed get shot.” If I don’t put my head above the trench, I won’t get shot. Walking on eggshells becomes a strategy for staying off the radar.

If I don’t get noticed, nothing bad happens.

If I don’t bring up the conversation, there’s no argument.

If I don’t do the thing people don’t like, there’s no upset.

I just won’t get noticed. Problem solved.

For a child, that is a simple and effective solution to painful situations. The idea that later in adulthood this might ruin your relationships, kill your career opportunities, and make you loathe yourself does not occur to you. When you’re a kid you’re just trying to survive the day.

Days are long when you’re a kid. You’ll take any way to reduce pain.

The problem is when you’re over the age of twenty and still using the same strategy.

The Belief in a “Problem-Free Life”

You might also simply have been a sensitive kid. Not necessarily emotionally sensitive, though that can happen. But maybe physically sensitive.

I feel pain more. I feel temperature more. I’m more easily bothered by sounds and bright lights. I have some level of autism maybe. There’s just a lower tolerance for hassle.

So you might develop walking on eggshells as a way to reduce stimulation. Less emotion around you, less noise, less conflict – just a calmer environment. There’s usually also shame and fear around certain emotions.

Another underlying belief is that there is some grand solution. Dr Robert Glover calls it the “smooth problem-free life.”

The reason we try to stamp out every emotional ember before it becomes a fire is because we actually believe it’s possible. We believe that if we get everything tuned perfectly, our partner will never be upset again.

When we say it out loud we know it sounds ridiculous. Every client I’ve ever worked with says the same thing when I ask them that question – “Of course not, that’s stupid.” And yet they behave as if it were true.

Why else would they try so hard to prevent every possible provocation? It’s because they’ve seen what looks like “success” in the past. They’ve seen moments where they did fix someone’s feelings, they cheered someone up, they calmed someone down, and they turned pessimism into optimism.

They did it before, so they think if it worked sometimes, then maybe it can work all the time. Just dial up the strategy. Repeat it constantly, and eventually everyone will always be cheerful and calm.

It sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud. But if you look at your behavior, you’re behaving as if you believe it. You’re looking for a final solution, and that belief is one of the reasons you’re exhausted all the time.

It’s like you’re almost there. You almost have the formula. Then something slips through the net. You’re trying to catch every fish in the ocean. One slips away. And you think you’re so close.

As if emotions were something you could control.

Why the Strategy Feels Like It Works

This often comes from a childhood shame where you think them being upset is personal to you, that you are somehow the cause or you’re responsible for it, that you’re not good enough as a partner if they are upset, that there’s something wrong with you if people around you have emotions that you’re not comfortable with.

So you automatically frame a large range of emotions as problems that must be solved by you.

This is your fault. This is your mess. You must clean it up.

So the idea that emotions aren’t problems and they’re nothing to do with you just doesn’t exist in your framework. It’s like all emotions are yours to deal with.

If anybody around you has emotions, they must feel this narrow band of comfortable emotions at all times or otherwise you are a failure. And if they’re upset, that is bad and must be stopped. And you must be the one to stop it, because you can’t get upset either, otherwise you’ve failed yourself.

This extends to the belief that good relationships have little to no conflict.

There’s this idea that if you were a great person and managed everyone’s emotions correctly, the end result would be a relationship with absolutely no conflict. Just love and fun and good times all the time – just like it appears everyone else is enjoying on Facebook.

You’ve got this idea that this is possible. That it’s what a good couple looks like. Anybody who fights or has disagreements is failing as a couple.

You may even see yourself as superior to them because you have less drama, so if you have a day where you managed to keep your partner happy all day, you consider that day a massive success. A day where they’re miserable all day would be a failure.

Trouble is, that’s not entirely wrong. Good relationships do tend to have less conflict. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have confrontation, disagreement, or people setting boundaries with each other.

Conflict and confrontation are not the same thing. Disagreement and confrontation are not the same thing as destructive conflict.

But in your mind they are. Any negative emotion means failure.

The Fear of Honesty

One of the driving beliefs is the idea that being honest would be worse, that if you were to crush these eggshells and tell the truth, there would be some explosion.

That the resulting drama would be so chaotic and devastating that whatever damage walking on eggshells causes is still better than the alternative.

So you run a kind of cost-benefit analysis in your head: If I tell her what I really think, she’ll explode, so it’s better that I lie. It’s the lesser evil.

But when you frame it differently, what you’re really saying is this: A short-term explosion is worse than a lifetime of being disrespected, hating yourself, and having a poor connection with your partner.

It sounds ridiculous when you say it that way. But, again, that is how you behave. You avoid the short-term explosion and accept the long-term misery

The Short-Term Reward Loop

It’s not your fault that you believe all of this. Your brain has seen “evidence” that this strategy works. You’ve seen short-term loops where you fixed someone’s feelings or prevented them from being upset, and that made you feel better.

It looked like the relationship was doing better. But because you’ve been focused on the short term, you haven’t been able to see the long term. And the brain is wired for short-term thinking.

Your partner is sad. That makes you feel guilty and ashamed because your partner being sad means you’re a failure. You make a joke. She laughs. Now she’s happy. You’re both happy.

You think: this is a good relationship.

That loop has probably happened hundreds or thousands of times. You wouldn’t be using this strategy if it hadn’t worked many times before.

Maybe it worked with bullies when you were younger. Maybe it worked with your parents. Maybe it made you the funny guy in your friend group. Maybe early girlfriends said things like, “It’s so easy to be around you.”

You got all this feedback that said your strategy was working, so you thought you were on the right track.

Even if people were grateful and experienced happiness as a result of your actions, that doesn’t mean what you’re doing is healthy.

It’s like eating ice cream. The sensation of eating ice cream feels amazing. You could say you’re doing “well” with eating because it feels good. But if you eat nothing but ice cream for ten years, you’re going to end up in a terrible situation.

Walking on eggshells is the relationship equivalent of eating ice cream.

It gives you a little hit now and then. Doing it occasionally isn’t bad. Doing it constantly destroys the relationship.

The Disconnect That Keeps the Pattern Alive

One of the main reasons people keep doing this is because they don’t connect the dots.

They notice problems in the relationship, but they don’t connect those problems to walking on eggshells. In fact they believe walking on eggshells is the solution. It’s the one tool they use for every problem.

So as intimacy goes down and distance increases, they think: “I must not be walking on eggshells carefully enough.”

They dial the strategy up, not realizing they’re increasing the dosage of poison. This is one of the great tragedies of the human condition. We struggle to see how short-term wins create long-term losses even when it’s right in front of us.

Sometimes we even try to solve the problem with the thing causing it.

The Blame Narrative

As the problems continue, another thing happens. You start to create a story about your partner.

You tell yourself: “I’m doing everything right and she’s still upset, so she must be the problem.”

Some people resist this blame for a long time. They keep believing everything is their fault.

But many people eventually shift into blaming their partner. You start telling yourself things like: She’s too sensitive, she’s unreasonable, her standards are too high, she doesn’t appreciate what you do for her, and she’s punishing you with her emotions.

You start to interpret her sadness as something malicious, as if she’s deliberately trying to make your life harder. And you slowly build a picture of her as the bad guy.

This is actually one of the reasons nice guys sometimes end up cheating. It seems strange for a nice guy to cheat, but after years of telling himself he’s with someone cruel, unreasonable, and unappreciative, he starts to feel justified when someone else treats him kindly.

The Hidden Payoff: Why You Keep Doing It

There’s another painful truth behind all of this.

You like it.

You like being the fixer. You might not admit this to yourself, but there have been moments where you could have stopped doing this. Moments where your partner solved her own problems. Moments where you realized her emotions weren’t actually your responsibility.

And you still stepped in.

You chose to keep doing it.

You’re more attached to being the fixer than you are to having an enjoyable relationship. This is the hardest truth for people to accept. You are doing this because part of you wants to.

You have never done anything you didn’t choose to do.

You could have walked away from the relationship. You could have changed your behavior. But you didn’t.

You chose this path, partly because you thought it was the right thing to do, but partly because you like the dynamic. You like the sense of control.

If someone depends on you, they’re less likely to leave you. Most nice guys secretly believe the only value they bring to a relationship is problem solving. They believe their partner isn’t really with them for who they are, they’re with them for what they provide. And if what you provide is emotional fixing, you fear that if you stop providing it, you’ll lose them.

So you’re actually invested in keeping the dynamic alive. Otherwise you would have changed it by now!

Accepting Responsibility

We’ve looked at what walking on eggshells is, why it happens, and why it doesn’t work. Let’s now look at the solution.

How can we deal with this in a way that actually gives you a great relationship, where you can enjoy your life and like who you are?

Confidence and connection.

First and foremost, you must accept responsibility. This is not her fault – it’s not your fault either. It’s nobody’s fault, but it is your job to fix it. Absolutely your job.

If you can’t accept that, you can’t do anything about this. It’s as simple as that. She’s not going to drag you kicking and screaming into a healthy, interdependent relationship. You aren’t actually doing your fifty percent yet.

You haven’t done your job. You haven’t even started.

So if nothing else, remember this: You chose this relationship. You’re not forced to stay in it. Don’t use your kids as an excuse – you could leave. You choose to do this every single day. Take responsibility for that choice. You’re not being forced into the situation.

Even if she threatens to commit suicide if you leave her, that’s still not force. You could call the police and move on with your life. You choose to be here.

Which means if you want the situation to improve, it’s your job to improve it. If you cannot accept that, then suffer. But suffer knowing that you chose to keep suffering, because you don’t have to.

I’m not saying you should leave the relationship. Sure, some of you have done too much damage. Some of you are with someone who is too dysfunctional to have a good relationship with. But before ending it, if you want to know you’ve exhausted all options, let’s try taking responsibility first.

See what happens.

Recognizing the Real Cause

Secondly, you have to accept that walking on eggshells is a cause, not a solution. The strategy you’ve been using your entire life is the direct cause of your problems.

It doesn’t happen in real time. What looks like a win in the moment becomes a loss in the long run.

So you must accept that at least half the drama or problems in your relationship are caused by you trying to prevent them. Your attempt to solve the problem is creating it. It might seem illogical or counterintuitive, but that’s what’s happening.

So you must stop using this strategy. Whatever other method you try after this, stop using the one you’re using now.

If you’re reading this far into the post, then things are not working.

You’re going to have to commit to being brave. This is a fear-based problem, so you’re going to have to face your fears, which means you’re going to have to get emotionally uncomfortable on purpose. And not stop that discomfort; not prevent it; not solve it.

You’re going to have to initiate conversations and behaviors that make you feel guilt, shame, and fear, and you’re going to have to keep doing them while those feelings are happening. You’re going to have to embrace those feelings.

They’re horrible. I have empathy for you because I’ve been through it. I still go through it when I relapse.

But I don’t have pity for you, because I know you can do it. It’s not too hard, but it is extremely uncomfortable.

There will be moments where you’re deep in an argument with your partner and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get solved.

And you’re not allowed to use your old tools. You’re too far in now. You’ll just have to ride through that horrible experience.

Yes, that’s going to happen.

Many of the solutions are the exact things you’ve been avoiding. So doing the opposite of what you’ve been doing is probably healthier. That might cause short-term spikes of discomfort, but that’s better than the long-term misery you’re living with now.

And yes, for some of you the relationship will not survive this change.

If your relationship is built on codependence, changing the dynamic might end it. But if being honest and self-respecting is the thing that ends the relationship, did you ever really have one?

If you have to keep eating poison to keep something alive, is it worth keeping alive?

Maybe you think being alone is worse. I don’t think so. You’ll have to decide that for yourself.

Let People Have Their Emotions

There are two main solutions that must happen simultaneously.

The first is this: Stop treating her emotions as problems to be solved.

Allow your partner, your boss, your friend, or whoever this applies to to be upset. As long as nobody is being physically harmed, their emotions are not dangerous. They can be upset all day long and there will be no injuries or scars.

If she says something is offensive, you can let her be offended. If she’s angry, you don’t have to calm her down. If she starts throwing plates, then you leave the room.

But if no abuse or harm is happening, you don’t need to do anything. Let them be upset. It looks like such a threat but it’s not.

If they’re disappointed, let them be disappointed. Disappointment simply means they expected something different from reality. It means they were wrong – you don’t need to fix that. If you fix it, you reinforce unrealistic expectations.

If they’re sad, let them be sad. Maybe they’re grieving, or maybe they’re processing something. Let them process it.

If they’re angry, let them be angry. Maybe they need that anger to finally set a boundary.

Whenever someone around you has an emotion you’re uncomfortable with, stop and ask: Is there actual harm happening? Or is it just emotional discomfort?

If the answer is discomfort, then you don’t need to intervene.

Honesty Over Harmony

The second solution is this: You must prioritize honesty over harmony.

Doing the thing that is true for you will never produce perfect harmony. There will always be disagreement in an honest relationship. If both people are being honest, there will be moments of tension.

If you never disagree, someone is being dishonest. Probably both of you.

So when you reach that crossroads where you must choose between keeping them happy or being honest, choose honesty. Instead of lying to maintain peace, tell the truth.

Throwing the Ice Water

Sometimes honesty comes at the worst possible moment.

You might notice something that needs to be said right when everything is going well. It feels like it will ruin the moment.

Say it anyway. Throw the ice water all over that good time.

Honesty often destroys comfortable moments. But if you don’t say the thing, it will never come out, and you’ll return to walking on eggshells.

You’ll start to loathe yourself. They’ll start to lose respect for you.

Remember: Someone being happy in the moment does not mean something good is happening in the relationship.

Supporting vs Fixing

You must learn the difference between supporting someone and fixing them.

Fixing means doing the problem for them. Supporting means encouraging them to solve it themselves.

If your partner is struggling with something, ask yourself: Am I encouraging them to deal with it? Or am I solving it for them?

You are not their therapist. You are not their coach. You are not their problem-solving machine.

Of course couples help each other but that’s different. You know when it’s different.

If your partner complains about their boss and your reaction is to call the boss, that’s fixing. Instead ask: “What do you think you should say to them?” Let them think. Let them try. Let them fail. Let them learn.

That’s how everyone learns, including you.

Crunching the Eggshells

Eventually you must start crunching the eggshells.

All the things you’ve been tiptoeing around—let them happen, or make them happen.

Start doing the things you’ve been avoiding. Play your music in the car. Go out with your friends. Disagree.

Stop negotiating your own life.

Let the reactions happen. Just live and allow consequences to occur.

It will feel like the world is collapsing. It will feel like you’re causing chaos. But you’re not – you’re just stopping the avoidance.

If you go out with friends and she gets jealous, go anyway. Don’t negotiate. Don’t justify.

Just live your life. Let the reaction happen.

The Transition Period

There will likely be a transition period. She’s used to a codependent dynamic, so when you change, she may try to bring the old dynamic back. Don’t let it happen!

She might react badly at first. But she may adjust. She may discover she actually prefers the new version of you.

In my experience coaching men, roughly sixty percent of the time the relationship improves dramatically. The woman actually wanted a confident partner and didn’t want to be codependent either.

About forty percent of the time, the relationship ends. Once the man becomes healthier, he realizes the relationship itself was unhealthy. In those cases, there was never a path to a good relationship.

Final Thoughts

Some of you are with abusive partners. And the reason is simple: people who walk on eggshells attract controlling people.

Sometimes you think you’re the controlling one, but often you’re just hypersensitive to their emotions. You’re reacting to feelings that aren’t actually attempts to control you. Sometimes people are just having emotions. Human beings feel things, that’s normal.

So be loud. Go out with your friends. Refuse to rush. Let small bad things happen that aren’t your responsibility.

Crunch the eggshells.

Let the reactions happen, and don’t try to fix them. If no one is being physically harmed, you don’t need to intervene.

Expect a transition period.

And if you’re going to make a big change, tell your partner first. Let them know you’re trying something new (but don’t promise results). Tell them you don’t know exactly how it will go, but you’re doing it for the relationship, not against it.

And that it may feel uncomfortable at first. But you’re committed to changing the pattern.

A Serious Invitation to Coaching

If this post resonated with you, there’s a reason.

Most men who end up working with me aren’t looking for motivation, hacks, or surface-level confidence. They’re tired of circling the same problems with information overwhelm but not implementing successful changes.

They know what they should do. They’re just not consistently doing it.

Coaching is not for everyone. It’s not therapy, it’s not cheerleading, and it’s not about “fixing” you. 

It’s a structured, honest working relationship focused on behaviour change, taking responsibility for yourself, and improving the way you make decisions—especially the ones you keep avoiding.

This work is for you if:

• You’re functional and capable, but something fundamental still isn’t working.
• You’re done with intellectualizing your patterns and want them to actually change.
• You’re willing to be challenged, not reassured.
• You’re prepared to take responsibility for your choices instead of waiting to feel ready.

I’ve spent years making these mistakes myself and over a decade helping others stop repeating them. The difference coaching makes is not insight—it’s traction.

What working together looks like

• Clear diagnosis of where you’re self-sabotaging (not just why)
• Practical, uncomfortable actions that build real confidence
• Direct feedback when you drift back into old patterns
• A focus on integrity, not image or performance

If we work together, it will be because it makes sense—not because you were persuaded.

A no-pressure first session

I offer a free initial trial coaching session with no obligation to continue.

You can use it to see how I work, ask hard questions, and decide whether this is something you want to commit to.

If it’s not a fit, that’s fine. If it is, we’ll be clear about what comes next.

👉 Apply for an initial coaching session here

I only work with 8 clients at a time, and only with those prepared to take this seriously. I have 5 intro session spaces available each month – you may need to go onto a waitlist.

Dan Munro

If you’re looking for reassurance of your victim-story, this isn’t it. If you’re ready to change how you actually live, let’s stop messing around.