🚗The Passenger: When going along for the ride is the only option

How it started

Growing up, your independence was systematically undermined by your caregivers' excessive help and protection that sent a clear message: you shouldn't handle the world on your own 🛡️. Normal childhood tasks were painted as risks and disasters waiting to happen, teaching you to fear rather than explore your environment. Meanwhile, your parents' anxiety became your anxiety through their constant over-involvement and over-protectiveness. You learned that speaking up or asserting yourself often made things worse, so you developed a survival strategy of learned helplessness—freezing, accommodating, and letting others take the wheel became your safest option ✨. This created an incredible ability to surrender gracefully when situations become overwhelming, to find peace in letting go of control, and to trust others to navigate difficult terrain when you feel lost.

How this looks now

Now you find yourself automatically deferring to your partner's decisions, even when you have strong opinions or preferences of your own 🤐. In relationships, you often take the passenger seat—letting your partner choose where to eat, what to watch, how to spend money, and even major life decisions that deeply affect you. When conflicts arise, you freeze and shut down, rather than stand up for yourself, because your nervous system has learned to associate advocating for yourself with danger or abandonment ⚠️. You secretly believe you're less capable than others and need someone stronger to guide and protect you, which creates an unconscious attraction to partners who seem more decisive and confident—even when they are actually less knowledgeable than you.

The core pattern

Decision-making feels overwhelming. You don't trust yourself to handle difficult issues on your own or try different solutions—you immediately ask your partner's opinion. When your partner is not around, you worry that any action you take might make things worse, so you avoid making decisions altogether. When your partner asks you "What do you want?" it sometimes produces mental panic—you either freeze with complete indecision or swing to the opposite extreme and make impulsive choices just to assert some sense of self 🙋🏼. Your partner may initially appreciate how "easy-going" you are, but over time they might feel burdened by always having to be the decision-maker or frustrated that you won't share your real feelings 😔.

Sex / Intimacy

In the bedroom, the same patterns play out—you default to passivity, instinctively suppressing your own desires to avoid "rocking the boat" or seeming "difficult." Your body knows pleasure, but your mind hesitates to ask for it, trapped in an old script: Your needs are secondary. Good partners don’t make demands. You follow, never lead. Sex becomes something that happens to you rather than something you actively shape. You wait for cues, defer to your partner’s preferences, and rarely initiate—not because you lack desire, but because asserting it feels wrong, even shameful. "Whatever you want" is your mantra. Your orgasm is their responsibility. You don’t guide them; you hope they figure you out. If they don’t, you stay silent, reinforcing the belief that your satisfaction isn’t yours to claim. Early experience taught you that love means merging and de-selfing. But true intimacy requires both surrender and assertion—the ability to say "This is me, and I trust you’ll still want me." Until then, you’ll keep playing a relationship role instead of being fully known. The tragic irony is that your survival strategy of surrendering initiative to others, which kept you safe in childhood, prevents you from being a full partner. You've become so skilled at being the passenger that you doubt you're even capable of driving.