Family of Origin Roles Series: The Easy One (From Accommodation to Authenticity)
This article is based on the Reimagining Love podcast episode “Family of Origin Roles Series: The Easy One (From Accommodation to Authenticity).” To listen to this episode, click here.
This article is the first of six articles (based on solo episodes of the podcast) that we’ll be sharing here over the next few months about Family of Origin Roles.
Hi there, and welcome back to the blog! This article is the second of six articles (based on solo episodes of the podcast) that we’ll be sharing here over the next few months about Family of Origin Roles. The introductory episode of the podcast came out a few weeks ago, so if you didn’t have the chance to listen to that, I’ve linked it here. Last time, we talked about the Perfect One role. I hope that was helpful to all of the Perfect One readers out there, as well as for folks who are partnered with– or in any kind of relationship with– a Perfect One. And, if you’re familiar with Family of Origin Roles, then you’re all ready to dive in with me today as we explore the second of the six roles in my framework. Today’s article is all about the Easy One role. Remember that this work is about getting to know yourself, but it’s also going to help you get to know the people around you. So even if you suspect that you’re not an Easy One, I hope you’ll still read this article. It could help you better understand someone close to you and lead to deeper connection with them.
In this article we will look at the origin story for the Easy One, the cultural factors that might create and reinforce that Easy One role, the impact of being an Easy One on friendships, work relationships, and intimate partnership, and then interventions– not to fix you because you are broken, but to free you from patterns of accommodation and silence, so that you can feel more authentic in your relationships.
Telltale Signs
If you’ve already taken my Family of Origin Roles quiz, which you can find here, and identified yourself as an Easy One, you probably already have a sense of why that role suits you or captures the experiences that you had in your family system growing up. But here are some check-ins for you, some telltale signs that this may have been your role. You were used to existing in the background or “going with the flow,” while other members of the family took up more space, were noisier, or struggled in some way. You didn’t feel like the “main character” in your family. When things got tense at home, you tried to make things easy on the adults by being amenable and ignoring your own needs. Present day, you’re a certified people-pleaser and find yourself avoiding confrontation, rocking the boat, and/or speaking up when something doesn’t sit well with you. You can easily acclimate to different social situations and dynamics because of your agreeability. You sometimes struggle to get in touch with your own opinions and needs and stand your ground. And, for each of the 6 roles, I am assigning a sort of BUMPER STICKER or catch phrase. For The Easy One, the motto or core belief is this: I am loved to the degree I am accommodating.
Additionally, I wanted to share some examples of the Easy One in pop culture. As I said last week, I love how art and media give us a chance to see ourselves in characters on the screen. My team and I are having fun brainstorming the fictional representations that we think capture each of these roles. So for the Easy One, think Luke Dunphy from Modern Family, and the way he floats along in a family full of strong opinions and big personalities. Think of Kevin McAllister from Home Alone, who is ignored by his adults and siblings over and over again, only getting their attention when he causes a scene. Then he’s accidentally left at home by his family when they take a vacation overseas, and they don’t realize until they’re already on the plane! Think Yellowstone’s Kacey Dutton played by Luke Grimes who does what’s expected of him without raising a fuss. Think Dustin from Stranger Things. Last time we referenced Hermione as a Perfect One. Now we’ll cite Ron Weasley as an Easy One. Someone on my team suggested Lexi from Euphoria, and someone else suggested Sugar from The Bear. By the end of this article , I bet you’ll be able to think of some examples of your own. Send me an email or a DM and let me know who you come up with! Note that I don’t think any of these characters is an oldest child. We know birth order has an impact on personality and temperament, and in my experience, Easy Ones tend to be middle children or youngest children, more so than oldest ones for sure!
Origin Story: FOO
Last time, we talked about how the utility of this Family of Origin Roles framework is that it provides us a way of connecting then to now– the impact of your past on your current, present day relationship dynamics. We also talked about how systems create homeostasis, safety, and stability by any means necessary, and family systems are no exception. So your family system cast you into a role, and you took this role on, because safety is so primary to all of us throughout our lives. This is the reason that we get put into boxes, and unfortunately, those boxes become limiting when we carry them with us into our adult life. Carrying a belief that, “I have to be this way in order to be loved, in order to be connected, in order to belong,” is exhausting.
So, what forces might have contributed to you being cast as the Easy One? How did you come to be that way? Underneath their tendency to accommodate and make yourself palatable, you had a fear of being shamed, of being called out, of being judged. There’s a knot of feelings that you experienced when you were little (fear, shame, sadness), and you therefore learned how to avoid that knot with coping mechanisms that are all about placating, accommodating, blending into the wallpaper, and not rocking the boat. Reminder that when we talk about coping strategies, we talk about behaviors that fall into four buckets: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn. For the Easy One, the primary coping strategies are Fawn (appease and comply) and Flight (retreat, avoid, disappear, shut down). Developing this coping mechanism was smart of you. This was a survival strategy. It was adaptive in a context in which self-expression was dangerous and risky.
Let’s get a little more specific. What might have been going on in your Family of Origin that led you to feel afraid of being a problem? Although there are many possibilities, let me talk you through seven, and you see if any of them land or if any of them help you connect the dots in your own family history:
Your parents were critical, so you learned it was safer to fly beneath the radar, go unnoticed, and not stand out. Standing out was dangerous or risky. Blending in was safer. Perhaps you had the experience of making a fuss and getting shut down, punished, criticized, or judged for speaking up or expressing what you wanted or needed. That experience stayed with you, so you deflated yourself and learned to go along to get along. Or it may have been that you watched somebody else in the system getting in trouble for making a fuss and you learned by observation.
Your parents or siblings were fighting a lot, and it was safer to escape and make yourself invisible. One of the ways somebody shows up as an Easy One is as a “lost child.” There’s so much chaos in the family that the Easy One feels ignored, left behind, left unnoticed, because they’re not the squeaky wheel. There’s too much chaos for them to get attention, so they hide out or retreat from what feels unpredictable, as a survival strategy or way of coping.
Your parents could not give you what you needed physically or emotionally, you implicitly learned to stop asking. The Big People were busy, distracted, wrapped up in their own pain, and there wasn’t capacity to focus on your needs, so you made yourself as easy as possible in an attempt to stop the hurt of being ignored.
One of your siblings was the Struggling One, a role that we’ll explore later in this series, so you adopted the Easy One role in an attempt to take the pressure off parents who were already overwhelmed.
One of your siblings was the Perfect One, which is the role we explored in last week’s episode. You felt like you could not compete, so you just gave them the spotlight. It’s what they wanted after all!
One or both of your parents are Easy Ones themselves, so you had this behavior modeled for you. You learned that the best and most appropriate way of being was to blend in and not ask for much. Your parents taught you to pipe down and make sure that everyone around you was comfortable.
You grew up in a family in which there was conflict about chores or making plans, so saying, “I’m fine with anything” was your attempt to create harmony. You might have been a bit like tofu, just absorbing the flavors of the dish.
Origin Story: Culture
Because we are socialized within our families and within the larger cultural systems, let’s briefly widen out and look at how your socialization may have dovetailed with and amplified your family role as the Easy One. Let’s start with gender. For girls and women who identify as Easy Ones, there’s pressure from both gender socialization and this family of origin role to be good, nice, and accommodating. Someone who is socialized in the feminine absorbs so many messages that she shouldn’t take up too much space, and if she’s also an Easy One, that will be amplified. She laughs at everyone’s jokes. She makes sure others feel validated and are comfy at the expense of herself. She takes the smallest helping of food. She apologizes. She shrinks. Standing her ground and finding her voice are not safe options. Accommodation equals safety. More generally, If you tend towards being an Easy One and you occupy one or more marginalized identities, then part of your Easy One-ness likely comes from your socialization in that marginalized identity. Women, queer folks, BIPOC folks, and other marginalized groups already receive messaging of varying kinds that they shouldn’t take up too much space, that they should observe and accommodate those with power and make sure they don’t step out of line or be inconvenient in any way. Here again, cultural rules reinforce and cement the family role.
When I think about boys and men who identify as Easy Ones, I think about the work of Dr. Robert Glover on what he calls Nice Guy Syndrome, which has been amplified by my friend Connor Beaton. Nice Guy Syndrome, Glover argues, emerged when boys don’t have the privilege of growing up with a secure and safe male role model to look up to. They end up feeling confused about what to do with their own strong emotions. Rather than turning their anger into healthy assertiveness (“Hey, this isn’t gonna work for me”) they suppress their frustrations and they instead act “nice.” The problem with suppressing so-called negative feelings for the sake of being a nice guy is that we can’t do selective suppression of emotions. So suppressing appropriate anger because it feels too scary and threatening means also suppressing enthusiasm, passion, vitality, and joy. I think we’re frankly in a confusing cultural moment in which a lot of men are confused about the difference between assertiveness and aggression, between actual strength and “toxic masculinity”, between healthy expression of needs and domination.
INTERPERSONAL
Now that we’ve explored the Easy One’s origin story, let’s come back to the present moment and look at the Easy One as an adult– at work, in friendships, and in relationships. At work, if you have a tendency towards being the Easy One, you’re probably rewarded for your adaptability and for being a team player. Your organization can put you anywhere. That’s great! You’re seen as someone who can be given any task and you’ll figure it out. This is a valuable quality. You say yes to new stuff, you don’t ask a lot of questions, you don’t make a fuss, you’re not a squeaky wheel or a pain in anyone’s butt. I want to point out two things.
You are more likely than others to experience imposter syndrome. Why? Well, you are adaptable, you are up for anything, you are there to meet the system’s needs… regardless of how well-prepared you are to do so. So you may let yourself be put into a position in your organization that you aren’t trained for or are not ready for. And then you understandably feel like a fraud. In this situation I want you to be careful not to personalize that which is systemic. Yes you are the one walking around with a raging case of imposter syndrome but it’s because you have let yourself be in the service of the system.
As an Easy Ones, you may also struggle to find your voice at work, even when you are being asked to weigh in or speak up. In order to practice flexing that muscle, try speaking up in more structured environments, such as annual reviews. Before your review, think of one thing you want to flag and one thing you want to ask for. It will likely be easier for you to advocate for yourself in a more structured setting that is designed for the giving and receiving of feedback versus an open meeting.
What about Easy Ones in friendships? Well, first off, who wouldn’t want you as a friend? You go with the flow, you’re flexible, and you probably are awesome at making people feel comfortable and at ease. It’s possible, however, that some of your friends might feel like they don’t really know you, because you’re somewhat of a relational chameleon. Do they know your opinions, your favorite and least favorite things, your pet peeves? Easy Ones may also need to work on receiving in friendships, whether it be compliments, gifts, or favors. The Easy One is averse to being needy, so when a friend offers to help them, they’re outside of their comfort zone. But remember, Easy Ones, research shows that being the helper is good for our mental health. It’s called a helper’s high. Helping releases feel good chemicals in your brain. In fact the Dali Lama once joked about “selfish altruism.” So, you’re actually doing your friend a favor by letting them be helpful to you!
Now let’s talk about dating. When it comes to the early days in intimate relationships, Easy Ones have some things to look out for. In dating, you might be swept off your feet by someone who is clear they like you. Why? Because the other person initiating keeps you out of the uncomfortable spot of needing to pursue. Pursuing is anxiety provoking for all of us to some extent, but as an Easy One, pursuing feels especially vulnerable and risky. The other reason you may be swept off your feet by someone who is clear that they like you is that if they are taking the lead, you would need to rock the boat in order to slow things down. And you do not like to rock the boat!
This means that when an Easy One is being pursued, because of your tendency to follow someone else’s lead and accommodate, you may find yourself in a relationship that is getting pretty serious pretty quickly. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is definitely worth turning your attention inward and checking in with yourself. Ask yourself, “Do I like this person largely because they like me?” Of course it feels good to be liked, but if you can’t actually identify things you like about them, it’s worth slowing down and speaking up.
Intimate Relationships: Two Easy Ones
In each of these articles, I’m also exploring what happens when two individuals of the same role get together romantically. Two Easy Ones is an interesting case! They may do a really good job of growing the friendship part of their relationship. They each want to make sure the other one is comfortable and happy, so they’re able to create coziness and safety between each other.
John Gottman, one of my favorite researchers to cite, talks about three types of happy couples: Volatile Couples, Validating Couples, and Avoidant Couples. Volatile couples fight hard and make up hard. They have high relationship satisfaction because there are guard rails and lines that don’t get crossed. Validating couples prioritize active listening, checking in, and processing. Avoidant couples prioritize keeping the peace, and not a lot of strong preferences are expressed. Two Easy Ones might fall into the Avoidant Couples category. That’s types of “happy couples,” and they can have great relationship satisfaction as an avoidant couple! There’s just not a lot of conflict, strong opinions expressed, or power struggles. They’re tending towards accommodation, unity, and harmony. That’s a lovely way of being within a relationship.
Every way of being has a shadowy side effect, and for the Double Easy Couple, it may be hard to tap into erotic energy, which can depend more on polarity and charge. What they get in coziness, they may struggle with in electricity. Desire expressed is a vulnerable need, so Easy Ones paired together may struggle to put themselves out there in that way, as opposed to when an Easy One is paired with a different role or personality.
In general, Easy Ones coupled together may have a challenge around differentiation. That is, they may have a hard time standing on their own two feet and feeling connected. Separate but connected. Fear of a loss of connection. They might sacrifice expressing what they want and need because they’re focused on keeping peace and making sure the other one is happy.
TREATMENT
I want to talk now about how the Easy One can de-role themselves. How they can step out off the sidelines and onto the field so to speak. The theme here is going to be authenticity. I don’t mean to suggest that Easy Ones are fake as much as the fact that easy ones are so adaptable and amenable they may have lost sight of what feels good and real and true to them.
What do I mean when I talk about authenticity? If you’ve been a part of Team Relational Self-Awareness for a while you know that I believe the self is inherently relational. We are made and remade again and again in our relationships. We come to know ourselves in the context of our relationships. So I want us to reimagine the notion of authenticity. I think of authenticity as an iterative practice, not a destination. It is a way of showing up in relationships, rather than a personality trait. To me, authenticity is not like introversion or extraversion, it is more like a practice. Authenticity is a skill, a way of being. Authenticity is a commitment to checking again and again for any gaps that may exist between how our insides are feeling and what our outsides are showing. Authenticity is a process of learning to recognize friction between what we're saying and how we're feeling. And a commitment to course-correction.
Because we are infinitely relational, we are forever scanning the scene to figure out who we need to be in order to be liked, to win favor, to stay safe or to fit with the cultural notion of how we are expected to behave. This scanning can be so ingrained as to happen outside our conscious awareness. This is true for all of us but even more so for Easy Ones.
Healing is not about deciding, “I’m going to be authentic from now on.” I think that’s way too much pressure to shed years of adaptation/coping/socialization. Healing is about learning how mis-alignment feels inside your body. What are your internal “tells” that let you know that there’s a breach between how you are feeling? What you are needing and what you are showing? What you are asking for? For me, my inauthenticity feels like a twist in my gut and/or like a sense I’m getting kind of floaty, like I’m not connected to my body, and my breath, and my voice. I wonder, what does that disconnect feel like inside of your body?
I want to make a note here that to me the biggest problem with inauthenticity is not what it does to your relationship with other people but rather what it does to your relationship with yourself. When you shut down your perspective to be pleasing, you are sending yourself the message that you are not right as you are, that you are not acceptable and lovable and knowable as you are. I worry less about how your struggle with authenticity hurts the other person and more about the damage that this struggle does to you. To your insides. How it is an abandonment of self.
Liberatory Practices for the Easy One
Ok, let’s get specific. Our goal is to help the Easy One be more authentic in their relationship, right? I’m going to offer some strategies to the Easy One. Then I’ll provide some strategies to the partner of the Easy One. Finally I’ll offer some strategies for the couple.
Easy One, you’re up first! Let’s discuss some practices just for you, designed to liberate you from a lifetime of accommodation. I want to start with a little diagnostic check in. Do you notice what you want, but push it down to make others comfortable, or do you really not feel preferences / desires? In other words, are you liberating your voice? Or are you reconnecting with your voice, reclaiming your preferences? If you know what you want but find yourself afraid to ask, you’re going to focus more on giving yourself permission and affirming yourself when you speak up, regardless of the outcome. If you are disconnected, you’re going to focus more on embodiment. On getting in touch with what a yes feels like, what a no feels like, noticing and amplifying even the tiniest of preferences.
I want to share 6 practices you can start doing today to shed the Easy One role and move into a more authentic way of being.
One reconnection strategy I love is of course, rewinding the tape to the time before you lost touch with your authentic self. So, connect with Little You– What did you use to love as a child? What activities did you gravitate toward? What did you enjoy reading? What colors appealed to you? What foods? What scenes and settings? What are the grown up versions of those loves that you might be able to bring into your life today?
Journaling prompts
I can take up more space today by….
It is helpful to my loved ones when I express my opinions because…
The price I pay for being the Easy One is…
Space Journal. Instead of a gratitude journal, keep a space journal. At the end of the day, list 3 things you did to take up space, make a request, express an opinion, or state a preference.
Ask for help with a task.
Let a server know when they got your order wrong.
Make a small request of your partner for more snuggles or help cleaning the house. No apologies necessary, only Thank You’s.
Strategies for the Partner of the Easy One
Partner of the Easy One, you’re up next. It may feel really nice early on in a relationship to be with someone so accommodating, but the long-term price you pay is that person is at risk of feeling resentful, flattened out, or purposeless. You have the privilege and the honor and the responsibility to love your Easy One in such a way that they can take the risk to step into authenticity. They have spent a lifetime fading back, and shrugging their shoulders, and saying “it’s fine” or “whatever you want.” But when that’s their MO, you aren’t getting their fullest self, are you? So you are tasked with co-creating a relational ecosystem that welcomes their truth. Where they can notice a preference or a lean or a need bubbling up inside of them and they can bring it to you. Not in an angry way, not in a blaming way, not in a demanding way, not in a controlling way. But in a way that says, “hey wait, let’s factor me in too!” Here are 5 strategies you can practice today to help your Easy One be less pleasy and more real:
Slow yourself down enough that you can pause and check in with your Easy One to make sure their yes is really a yes rather than just the option they think is the quickest route to peace. This might sound like saying, “Well, we could do it that way, but let me give you a few minutes so you can check in with yourself and see how this sits with you.”
Make it safe to disappoint you. If you have a tendency to pout or shut down or grumble when things don’t go your way, you are likely reinforcing your Easy One’s people-pleasing tendencies. When something doesn’t go your way, take a breath and keep the big picture in mind. If you wanted Path X and you guys end up on Path Y, be careful not to point out the hiccups that happen on Path Y.
When your partner asks something of you, understand this is a big deal. If you can accommodate them, this is going to reinforce for your Easy One that it’s safe enough for them to ask for what they need. When you give your Easy One what they want or need, know that you are doing your part to co-create that atmosphere or authenticity. It’s healing for your Easy One to be able to practice this skill of self-advocacy. And trust me when I say that in the long run it’s so much better for you to be with someone who is a force to be reckoned with rather than an agreeable shell of a person.
When your partner says no to you, feel so proud that you’ve made it safe for them to decline something! This is huge. Rather than feeling ashamed about whatever you’ve asked for, rather than feeling angry that you aren’t getting the thing you wanted, just feel so proud of yourself that your Easy One feels comfortable enough with you to push back.
When your partner disagrees with you, resist the urge to get into a debate. Remind yourself that you are an ally in your Easy One’s healing. And, here again, try to remember that your Easy One partner didn’t grow up disagreeing with the important people in their world. If they are just learning how to self-express, it might be clunky or surprising. Have some grace. Practice patience. Rather than debating your perspective versus your Easy One’s perspective, ask these two questions instead. Question #1: “How is our problem-solving enhanced by having BOTH of these perspectives?” and Question #2: “What is the path forward that honors BOTH of our perspectives?”
Strategies for the Couple
Let’s do our couple strategies. You know, structure makes scary things feel safer, so these strategies are things you two can do as a couple to help the Easy One step forward a bit more. To help the Easy One be more at ease speaking up, being in the spotlight, receiving. These strategies add some scaffolding.
Schedule Boss Days: When there’s an Easy One in a relationship, you can get in these endless loops of “What should we eat?” “I don’t care.” Or “What do you want to do this afternoon?” “Whatever.” If you both are Easy Ones, this is even more so! So schedule boss days a couple of times a week. The boss makes all decisions (what to eat for dinner, where to go to run errands, what show to watch).
Heads up that the remaining strategies are all sexual in nature. I didn’t go into this Easy One article planning to focus the couple-based healing strategies on sex, but I think it makes sense. Our Easy One is comfortable fading back and we want our Easy One to step forward, to be a bit more selfish. Well, sex certainly gives us lots of chances to explore taking up a bit more space! We know that the realm of the erotic provides us with a powerful arena for healing. And that because sex is all about communication and connection, when we are intentional about our sex lives, it pays off in other realms of our relationship as well. I’ve organized these next strategies from least erotically risky to most, so just see where you and your partner both are, what you might be up for, and modify as you see fit. No rights no wrongs, just chances to try new ways of being with each other:
Explore turn taking in the bedroom with the 3 minute game by Betty Martin. When it comes to sexual intimacy, we tend to prioritize mutual stuff, activities where both people are giving and receiving pleasure at the same time. This game is a creative and simple way to explore how it feels to ask for what you want in terms of touch. You have a chance to play with 4 different vibes:
I tell you how I want to touch you
I tell you how I want you to touch me
You tell me how you want me to touch you
You tell me how you want to touch me.
I have linked her website which has a handout and some videos to teach you how to play.
Explore turn-taking in the bedroom with sensate focus: Sensate focus is a wonderful, powerful, and tried and true activity for couples. I have linked an article describing it in the show notes but what you really should do is grab a copy of the book called, Desire, by Jennifer Vencill and Lauren Fogel Mersy (who were guests on Reimagining Love). They offer the best description of sensate focus I have ever seen! The point of sensate focus is to explore how it feels to be the giver of touch and how it feels to be the receiver of touch. For our Easy One, it is probably more comfortable to either do mutual things or to do things that center on them being the givers of pleasure. So we are wanting the Easy One to have some experiences receiving touch and pleasure.
Explore turn-taking in the bedroom with giving and receiving manual stimulation and oral sex. As you know from other Reimagining Love episodes we’ve done about sex, if the Easy One is also someone with a vulva, chances are pretty high that they are going to be most uncomfortable with the sexual stuff that is going to also be the most orgasm-inducing for them– manual stimulation and oral sex. Those acts are centered on them and their pleasure in a way that might feel really uncomfortable. But here again, I want to plant a seed to encourage you to let yourself and your pleasure be centered. After a lifetime of saying “it’s OK” or “I’m good with whatever,” I want you to have some practice feeling entitled to letting the focus be on you!
Explore power exchange in the bedroom. The whole realm of dominance and submission is huge. What I want to say for our purposes here is that there can be tremendous healing in playing with power in the bedroom– safely, lovingly, and relationally. When you zoom out, you can see that kink is another variation on the themes of the boss day we talked about before. I want to invite couples with an Easy One to even to just dip a baby toe into the world of kink- to play with control and surrender- as a way of stepping out of those long-held patterns. I have linked a bunch of resources for you in the show notes including some from my most trusted sexual resources like the Pleasure Mechanics, Dipsea, and Vanessa and Xander Marin.
Wrap Up
I want to wrap this up with some mantras for the easy one, phrases that you can repeat to yourself, whenever you need to:
I get to take up space.
My preferences matter, and expressing what I want strengthens my relationships.
I can receive without guilt.
Letting people be there for me makes them feel good, too.
Asking for what I need is a way I take care of Little Me.
I give myself what I need without questioning why I need it or if it’s valid.
The opposite of easy isn’t difficult. The opposite of easy is authentic.
I seek out and cultivate relationships in which people are curious about my needs and preferences.
My hot takes are part of what makes me who I am / interesting.
As a reminder, if you’d like to take the roles quiz, you can find it here. We’ll be back soon with exploration of the next two roles: The Struggling One and The Peacemaker. And at the end of this series, we’ll be sharing a worksheet with tailored journaling prompts and practices for all of the roles, so if you’d like to receive that later this winter, make sure you’re signed up for my newsletter, which you can find a link for in the show notes. Or, visit dralexandrasolomon.com/subscribe to get added to the list. Thanks for joining me, and until next time, be well.