The Exhaustion of Always Being the Bigger Person

There’s a lot to be said for choosing your battles; sometimes walking away is the most sensible thing to do, at work or at home.

But there’s a difference between choosing to let something go and becoming the person who is always expected to let it go.

If you’re the capable one, the reasonable one, or the person who can ‘handle it’, you can be casually handed the informal job of being the bigger person.

You make allowances, and you think carefully about everybody else’s perspective. You’re the one who flies the white flag after a bust-up because somebody has to do it... the unelected diplomat who calms everything down.

But after a while, that gets exhausting.

1. When being the bigger person becomes your job

Tom Keugler, in Why You Shouldn’t Be The Bigger Person Every Time, writes about repeatedly being the person who apologised first and tried to repair a relationship after conflict. Over time, what looked like maturity on the surface built resentment for him underneath.

That’s the part that interests me.

Being the bigger person occasionally can be emotionally mature, but being the only person who apologises or repairs the relationship creates a very different dynamic.

If you’re always the person thinking:

I’ll just leave it.

There’s no point bringing it up.

I know what they’re like.

…then everyone else gets to carry on exactly as they are, and all the while, you’re the one absorbing the discomfort.

2. Compassion does not require you to become a doormat

My mother used to say:

‘You don’t know what goes on behind closed doors.’

Her point was that we rarely know what someone else is dealing with, and there’s a lot of wisdom in that.

People can behave badly because they’re grieving, stressed, overwhelmed, struggling at home or dealing with something you know nothing about. Seeing a situation from somebody else’s perspective matters; doing it with empathy and compassion matters even more.

But understanding why somebody behaves badly doesn’t mean you have to keep accepting the impact of it.

There’s a difference between thinking ‘They’re having a really hard time at the moment’, and deciding that you have to become the punching bag for their emotional tantrums.

You can have compassion for someone and still say:

‘This isn’t OK.’

‘I understand you’re under pressure, but you can’t speak to me like that.’

‘I’m not taking responsibility for this.’

Seeing someone else’s perspective shouldn’t require you to negate your own.

A well-known body language expert I follow has a saying from his experience in the field: ‘the organism does what makes it successful’. If that is the case, the person avoiding taking responsibility for their actions might use this as their strategy to get away with bad behaviour.

3. The conversation you don’t have still takes up space

Iris Au’s piece, Why You Shouldn’t Always Have To Be the Bigger Person, talks about walking away from conflict and suppressing how you really feel in the name of ‘being mature’. Over time, she found that the feelings didn’t disappear; resentment built instead.

That makes a lot of sense because avoiding a conversation doesn’t necessarily remove the problem.

Sometimes it just moves it into your head, so you replay what happened while driving home and wonder what you should have said in the moment. You work out how you might bring it up, imagine their reaction, decide it’s not worth the hassle and then go through the entire process again three days later.

You’ve let them live rent-free in your head over a conversation that hasn’t even happened, which is a complete waste of energy because the other person is likely oblivious to the effect it’s having on you.

This is one of the hidden costs of being the capable one. If you’re already the person who anticipates problems, considers everyone’s needs and keeps things moving, unresolved conflict becomes another issue on the mental spreadsheet.

4. Resentment is often telling you something

I’m interested in resentment because it often points to something we’ve been tolerating for too long.

Maybe you resent that everyone thinks you’ll eventually sort the problem out, or that you’ve become so committed to being reasonable that you don't allow yourself to admit when you’re angry.

Being the bigger person can mean your needs are always made smaller.

That doesn’t mean every flash of irritation needs a major confrontation, but if you’re repeatedly annoyed by the same behaviour from the same person, it’s worth paying attention.

The third article I read in creating this blog, Is Being the Bigger Person Always the Right Thing to Do? Sometimes Yes, Sometimes No, makes a useful distinction: walking away can genuinely protect your peace, but silence can also become a way to avoid conflict or suppress something that needs addressing.

There’s a big difference between letting something go and swallowing it whole.

5. Being the bigger person should be a choice

There are plenty of situations where the healthiest response is to shrug, move on and spend your energy somewhere more useful.

But that should be a conscious decision; it’s not your job to constantly smooth things over or find the perfect wording that ensures no one gets upset or offended.

If something has been rattling around in your head for longer than you’d like, two questions might be useful:

Am I genuinely choosing to let this go, or am I avoiding the discomfort of addressing it?

And:

What is being the bigger person costing me here?

Because empathy and compassion are strengths; being somebody else’s emotional doormat isn’t.

If this is ringing a few uncomfortable bells, my free Resentment Audit can help you work out what’s underneath the irritation, what you’ve been carrying, and what might need to change.

Take the free 10-minute Resentment Audit here.

This piece was prompted and inspired by Tom Keugler’s Why You Shouldn’t Be The Bigger Person Every Time, Iris Au’s Why You Shouldn’t Always Have To Be the Bigger Person, and Is Being the Bigger Person Always the Right Thing to Do? Sometimes Yes, Sometimes No.

Their reflections on resentment, communication and knowing when to walk away helped shape some of the ideas explored here.