Why Do Women Get Angry When I Say What I Need?

Why is it common for women to become angry when another woman asks for what she needs? I know that I am not alone in having had girlfriends, some of them close friends, become angry with me when I set my boundaries, said no, told them that I felt hurt by their behavior or words, and wasn’t available when they expected me to be. Most, if not all, of these tearful, angry outbursts felt over-the-top to me and disconnected from what I had said, and they left me feeling baffled, guilty, and afraid to speak up for myself. In my professional relationships with women, I have also experienced disproportionate anger and blame when I set my boundaries, said no, and couldn’t provide what women felt entitled to.

One example that baffled me for years happened with a friend and colleague with whom I did co-supervision. We met each month at her house because it was easier for her with a new baby. As her child grew older and started crawling around, focusing on our professional discussion became more difficult for me. I was distracted by what her child was doing and the children’s program playing on her television screen. Eventually, after coming away from one of our co-supervision sessions feeling exhausted and headachy, I told her that it was time she found childcare for our future sessions so that we could talk in peace. My request wasn’t well received. She reacted with what felt to me as an out-of-proportion amount of anger, accusing me of being unsupportive and uncaring. I felt confused because all I had asked for was some uninterrupted time for our co-supervision, so that we could process our therapy work without distractions. I also felt hurt about how her anger invalidated how much I had accommodated her needs as a mother, by always going to her house and fitting in with her schedule.

Sadly, this incident wasn’t unusual. A girlfriend became angry when I told her that I felt hurt that she hadn’t informed me that she was going out of town for an indefinite period when I had specifically asked her to let me know when she was leaving. I made this request because my friend had a habit of disappearing without letting me know, and she also didn’t allow me to text her or call her mobile. I needed to know when she was away because I had no way of reaching her. Another girlfriend became angry when I told her that it was exhausting to keep processing a book that she had been wanting to write for years but wasn’t writing. I’ve had girlfriends react with anger when I told them that I needed them to do more of the work in arranging when we meet up. And in professional relationships, I’ve been accused of being selfish, uncaring, and money hungry when I expected to be paid for my time and expertise.

Emotional Impact

For years, my first reaction when a girlfriend became angry with me when I asked for what I needed was to feel guilty about having upset her. I would ruminate endlessly about what I had said and how I could’ve said it differently, so that I didn’t invoke her anger. Even when I couldn’t come up with a solid answer to my ruminations, it was hard to not blame myself, especially when my friend ended our friendship.   

Having spent a lot of time trying to understand why this was happening on too many occasions, I learned to recognize that I have learned to have a default setting that makes me blame myself for other people’s behavior and feel hyper-responsible for other people’s needs and feelings. From childhood, I was trained to blame myself for my mother’s anger and to apologize for anything and everything, even if I hadn’t done anything wrong. This relationship dynamic with my mother stemmed from the violence and emotional neglect she had suffered from, which led her to need me to be her emotional helpmate. And my default setting also stemmed from my female socialization, that taught me to believe that it is my responsibility to do most, if not all, of the relational work, and to feel responsible for, and ever so accommodating of, other people’s needs.  

It makes sense that I repeated the silencing and invisibility I experienced with my mother and my female socialization in my relationships with other women. We repeat what we know, and my family and society’s messages taught me that it is normal to take responsibility for a friend’s needs and to put my needs on the back burner. It is what a nice caring female is expected to do. But girlfriends becoming angry with me when I say what I need is so ubiquitous in my relationships and my clients’ relationships, that this dynamic needs to be unpacked. This common dynamic needs to be understood because it is pointing to something bigger than our individual arguments. And because it has a detrimental effect on women’s voices, truth, visibility, and self-worth.  

Social Context Women Relate In

Mothers and daughters do not relate in a cultural vacuum, and neither do women. Like all women, I navigate my relationships with my girlfriends and my professional relationships in a patriarchal environment that views women as caregivers who are not expected to receive the care they provide. I write about the Culture of Female Service in “The Mother-Daughter Puzzle”, identifying how this global patriarchal belief system expects women, and particularly mothers, to be selfless, self-sacrificing, self-neglecting caregivers.

The selfless, sacrificing, and self-neglecting gender role expects women and girls to be hyper-responsible for other people’s needs and happiness, and it explains why I learned to see myself as a listener and caregiver. It also explains why women get angry when I step away from this role expectation and assert what I need. By no longer fitting in, by not being overly accommodating, and by “selfishly” prioritizing my own needs and feelings, I am seen as breaking this key female gender code. And as with mothers and daughters, this gender code sets women up to fight over whose needs get to be met in their relationship, because women do not know a reality where all their needs are heard and honored. And as a mother-daughter relationship expert, the punishment for breaking this gender code is even more harsh. As a mother-daughter therapist, I am expected to be the quintessential “good mother”, which is code for selflessly prioritizing everyone’s needs over my own.

Understanding this underlying dynamic helps me release my learned feelings of responsibility for my girlfriends’ tears and anger, and it helps me keep hold of what I need, what I am feeling, and what I am experiencing. It helps me challenge the selfless, emotional silencing, and hyper-responsible training I have internalized, and to re-examine past events from a new normal. Understanding this wider socio-cultural patriarchal context that my girlfriends and I relate in, helps me to reclaim the language that was lost in the situations I mention above – What was I feeling, thinking, and needing? And it helps me invoke the 3-second rule, which I write about in “The Mother-Daughter Puzzle”. The 3-second rule is a tool that helps challenge toxic guilt by asking what crime you have committed when you feel guilty, or when someone is angry with you. If you cannot come up with a real crime in 3 short seconds, the guilt you are feeling and the tears and anger someone is directing towards you aren’t yours to own. Their tears and anger are theirs to own because it is about them. And the sexism they have internalized that has taught them to blame you for their unacknowledged feelings and unmet needs is theirs to uncover and heal.

Looking back, I can see that I needed to have been less accommodating with my friend who was a new mother. I can be helpful and accommodating, without erasing my needs. And with the friend who didn’t want me to text her or phone her, I needed to have voiced my concern about this much earlier. I should have seen her request as the red flag that it was. And whenever someone accuses me of not being who they need me to be, I need to remind myself that it is my job to decide who I am, it is my job to decide what I can and cannot do, and it is my responsibility to meet my needs, which includes voicing them in relationships, regardless of whether someone is willing or able to hear them. And it is my responsibility to NOT allow other people to erase my truth with their tears and anger.