I want to be less likable.
But kinder, too.
Psst: No audio version this week, as I’ve been hit with a pre-Christmas illness situation. I’m feeling relatively OK, but my voice is currently… not great! Very froggy! Apologies for the inconvenience. Rest assured that the next newsletter will include the usual personalized voiceover.
What I cover here today: Figuring out how to be less likable, and the seven boundaries I’m taking into the new year.
A year or so ago, I boarded a red-eye to London and settled into the economy aisle seat that I had paid extra to hand-select. As boarding continued and I busied myself with organizing and accounting for all my little things (water bottle, noise-cancelling headphones, lip balm), I watched most of the seats fill up around me. Miraculously, the single one next to me remained empty.
This plane had a 2-4-2 seat configuration, and the possibility of having the entire little section to myself for the flight was, as you can imagine, thrilling. But I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I could see that almost every other spot on the plane was filled. It seemed unlikely that I would be the lucky one. I even made myself wait until the last possible minute to buckle my seatbelt; I didn’t want to jinx it. But eventually, I watched the flight attendants do their final strolls down the aisle and it seemed clear: I was going to have the row to myself. I felt like I had won the lottery. I clicked the belt in place.
And then, of course, someone showed up.
A man about my age loomed above me in the aisle, looking slightly flustered, as if he had just barely made the flight. I saw him say something, but because I had my headphones on, I just assumed it was some version of, “I’m in that seat.” As I stood to let him in, he stayed put. I took my headphones off.
“My girlfriend and I are traveling together and I was just wondering if you’d be willing to switch with her so we could sit together,” he said, pointing to where she sat. She was in the same aisle but on the opposite side of the plane, in a window seat. She waved, hopeful.
I hesitated. You paid for this aisle seat, I reminded myself. I think part of me hoped that my reluctance to agree would be all the social cue the man needed to know that I didn’t want to move, that he would save me the discomfort of having to flat-out say no.
“It would mean so much,” he said, but he was still just standing there, frozen in place in the aisle. Waiting. “But you don’t have to if you don’t want to…”
I remember clearly thinking that if I said no, I would have to sit next to him for the next 8 hours. I wondered if he would think I was selfish or rude for not being accommodating. And then I thought, what if it was my husband and I? I’d never ask someone to do this, but sure, I’d want to sit next to my partner, too. I’d be so grateful. Either way, I figured, I wasn’t going to have an empty seat next to me on this flight anymore. So I said yes. He thanked me profusely.
I gathered all my little things and lugged my heavy bag down the aisle, then crossed over and snaked back up again to my cramped window seat. By the time I sat down, I was sweaty and anxious. I knew I had made the wrong choice. Still, I comforted myself with the idea that I had done a good thing. I leaned forward and glanced in the direction of my original seat, expecting to see the couple looking happy and relaxed. The girlfriend was there, but the boyfriend was nowhere to be found. That’s odd, I thought. Maybe he’s in the bathroom.
“That was nice of you,” the Australian man in the seat next to me said as he watched me stare at my original seat. “They were flying stand-by, you know.”
Even as the plane started moving, and then took off, I kept staring at my original spot and the girlfriend, expecting the man to appear from somewhere and take his seat next to her. Instead, I watched her spread out across the two seats for an hour or two, then curl into a ball and use the row as her own personal bed, then repeat the process. It was clear that I’d been screwed over in some deeply annoying way, but I couldn’t put the pieces together. Then, five or so hours into the flight, I saw the man again, his head poking out from his economy plus exit row seat as he stood up and stretched.
I realized that he must have had that (better) seat all along, and in some kind of a bargain, had promised his girlfriend that he would get her a good seat, too. That’s my best guess, anyway. Either way, he knew that his girlfriend would have that whole row, and I would be in her shitty window seat. For the entire flight, I glared at both of them from my cramped window seat, fueling my rage with small glugs from those very tiny bottles of red wine.
“You should say something,” the Australian man said again. “That wasn’t cool.”
I imagined myself stomping down the aisle, then crossing over and walking back up again, telling them just how inconsiderate they were. But what would that do? I thought of all those people staring at me. No, I thought. I’m just going to sit here in my window seat and be angry.
I will never forget seeing them in the terminal after the flight. They were wearing matching Louis Vuitton crossbody bags and smiling at each other. They seemed well-rested and fresh. Meanwhile, I could feel the crust of the last day of travel and the lack of sleep crackling on my skin. I felt like the worst version of myself. I felt stupid. I could have said something to them then, too, but I didn’t. I was angry at them, yes, but if I’m honest, I was so much more angry at myself.
I had been so uneasy with the idea of disappointing a total stranger or being perceived as difficult that I had made myself uncomfortable, instead. I thought that would be more manageable. And even though I could acknowledge their lie and manipulation as wrong, it was still me who had been stupid enough to say yes. He had even told me that I didn’t have to, I thought, and I still gathered up all my things and walked away. I still wedged myself into the seat I didn’t want and made myself small. That was on me.
I think about this moment on basically every flight I take now. No one has asked me to switch seats with them since, but part of me wonders if I would ultimately have the guts to say no now, even after all of that. To be anything less than agreeable is not natural to me. Politeness is woven into the core of me. I want to be liked so much more than I want to be happy.
Or, at least, that’s how it’s felt for me for a long time. It’s a feeling I’m really only now beginning to wrap my arms around. It feels so weak to say it out loud. It’s so much chicer to say I don’t care what anyone thinks. But god, I do care. I really do. I always have. I think it’s part of what made me decent at influencing. It’s what made it hard to step back from it, too. The ability to know in an instant that I was liked was too appealing to me. Too vital. As long as the good feedback outweighed the bad, then I was good. All I wanted was to be good.
I know I am good now, though, without any of that. Put me in an empty room on a desert island, and I still know who I am. No internet required. (Though a pen and paper would be welcomed.) I don’t really know that I could have said that and actually meant it until this year. The idea of being anything less than likable horrified me. But now, I am leaning into the idea.
Less likable, but kinder, too. I’ve had this phrase written and saved in a notebook for months now. Then as a title to a draft of a Substack post. Usually, for me, this means it is an idea that means something. It means that I don’t want to move my boundaries to make other people comfortable. I don’t want to be so afraid of being disagreeable that I forget myself, or my own needs. I don’t want to nod along when someone says something cruel, for fear of being difficult. I don’t want to be content with being flattened into something quiet and polite. I used to believe that kindness and politeness were the same. Now, I see them differently. Politeness is small and surface-level. Kindness is big. It is all-encompassing. It is empathetic and meaningful and strong.
So next year, I want be kind. Kinder. To myself and to others. For the first time, I will not account for whether or not that means I am liked.
In this week’s bonus content:
I’m sharing seven boundaries for the new year (for me!). I talk about my history with boundaries, why these work for me, and how I’m hoping to integrate them into my life in 2025.
7 boundaries that I’m taking into the new year.
For a long time, the mere idea of ‘boundaries’ was something I mostly dismissed as therapy-speak, even as someone who has been a big proponent of therapy for a long time now. I considered my perceived ability to be easygoing and adaptable a very good thing. Boundaries, I assumed, would ruin that. I would become difficult. They were great for other people, but I didn’t really need them. I could be flexible. I could easily switch plane seats, or let someone be mean to me. I could let it roll off my back. When I found myself annoyed or angry or hurt, it was my problem. I shouldn’t be so sensitive, I’d say.
In a lot of ways, I think this desire to be agreeable comes from a basic, life-long insecurity that I am simply not attractive enough, and a belief that I have to make up for this deficit in other ways. It’s a concept that has been perpetuated by society for… ever? I think the cool girl monologue from Gone Girl sums it up perfectly. A cool girl doesn’t need boundaries. I wanted to be a cool girl, always.
Now, I’m aware that I need boundaries. We all do! So there are seven (new + old) that I’m bringing into the new year.