Until You Can Say No, Your Yes Means Nothing

When someone makes a request of me, I have sometimes had a very hard time saying no. I have been like this for most of my life. I started trying to change it when I was about thirty-five. That was around the time I started counseling.

It used to be much worse than it is now. In those years I would rather buy something I did not want than disappoint a salesperson. In my head, the damage of owning a thing I did not need seemed smaller than the damage of telling another person no.

My counselor gave me an exercise. I went to a clothing store at the mall, into the suit section. When the salesperson said that something looked good on me, and I did not agree, I was supposed to say, “I disagree.”

I remember the first time I actually said it. My heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest. I lived with a lot of fear before I started making that kind of change.

Some of you will hear that and think it cannot be real. Why would a person buy a suit they do not want? That makes no sense. I agree with you now. Today I can say no to a purchase I do not want. I could not say it then.

The problem was bigger than a jacket I did not need. When I could not be honest with another person, they never got to meet me. They met a polite version of me that I had assembled for the occasion. I pretended to be someone I was not. The person God made was standing there, but he was not the one doing the talking. That is a loss of self. It does not look dramatic. It looks like a smile and a credit card.

To stop losing myself that way, I had to become able to say yes when I meant yes, and no when I meant no. That comes with a risk. The other person may be disappointed. It also comes with a benefit. Other people can finally see the real person in the conversation. Over time I did learn to live without arranging every room so that no one would be upset with me.

In Mark chapter 12, in the story of the greatest commandment, Jesus says we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We are to love God with everything we have. We are also to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Loving someone can look, from the outside, like what I used to do in the suit department. In both cases you end up doing a thing you would rather not do. The difference is the reason.

When I bought the thing I did not want, I was trying to keep something bad from happening to me. I was trying to avoid the feeling of disappointing someone. That is fear. Fear is focused on me.

When you love someone, you also spend something. You spend time, or money, or comfort. You do it for them, not to protect yourself from their reaction. That is a different kind of yes.

I could not get to that second kind of yes until I could say no. As long as every yes was driven by fear, none of my yeses meant very much. They were not gifts. They were payments. After I knew I could refuse a request, I finally had a real choice. I could say yes even when the yes would cost me something, because I was no longer saying it in order to survive the conversation.

That is why the capacity to say no matters so much. It is what makes a yes mean anything. That includes the yes we offer to other people. It also includes the yes we offer to God. A yes you cannot refuse is not love. It is how you disappear.

If you are still buying the jacket, the practice is small on purpose. This week, say one honest no. Say it in a low-stakes place if you need to. A salesperson is a fine place to start. You do not have to give a speech. You do not have to apologize for having a preference. You can say, “I disagree,” and then let the silence sit there.

Your heart may pound. Mine did. That pounding is not proof that you are being unkind. It is often just the sound of a real person arriving in the conversation.

This is a pastoral reflection, not clinical care and not a substitute for it. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 988 or local emergency services.

Drawn from a homily first preached in 2023. Source homily: H65 (Thursday of the 9th Week).