Why do so many women think this behaviour is normal?

The lost etiquette of relationship building

Social media has created the conditions that blur the distinction between familiarity and relationship. Reading someone’s work, following them for a period of time, using the same platform, writing about similar topics, or sharing broadly compatible values can create a feeling of connection that doesn’t actually exist. This is the essence of a parasocial relationship, a one sided sense of familiarity that can lead people to assume a level of reciprocity and influence that has never been established. Relationships are built through repeated interaction, curiosity, rapport, demonstrated understanding, and the gradual development of trust, allowing both people to determine whether they value each other’s judgment enough to be influenced by it.

Social media norms have normalised increasingly immediate and transactional interactions while removing many of the social cues and consequences that ordinarily regulate how relationships begin. As people adapt to those norms, a gradual loss of basic manners has intensified the sense of urgency to connect, creating the impression that existing in the same virtual space is akin to a professional speed dating event where everyone is looking for the same thing: getting yourself out there by any means possible. The slower process of relationship building has been deleted and it’s as if people forgot it ever existed.

In professional relationships influence is earned through building rapport and trust before it can be exercised. Yet I constantly receive messages from women who discover my work and within the first interaction they:

• press me to make time to speak with them

• propose collaborations

• suggest additions to my thinking

• offer frameworks they believe my audience would benefit from

• ask for my platform to share their ideas

• offer to fill in gaps and provide value to my audience

There’s an underlying assumption in these messages that we’re already operating as peers despite never having met or worked together. Self-described expertise is then treated as sufficient to influence another person’s work without an invitation to do so.

Interactions that involve outreach to someone who has something you want or need, or whose work you respect, have an etiquette and follow a process that both parties use to assess trustworthiness, competence, motives, and the potential for relationship formation. You don’t walk into a conference, meet a keynote speaker for the first time, and begin by explaining how their framework should be expanded, and you don’t introduce yourself to a respected consultant by explaining how their methodology would be stronger if they incorporated your model. You earn the right to influence another person’s thinking by first demonstrating that you understand it and by building enough rapport for them to decide whether your judgment is one they value. We read, observe, ask questions, demonstrate understanding, and build rapport before assuming our ideas deserve serious consideration because influence follows trust, not self described expertise. When someone bypasses those stages, they bypass the process by which influence is legitimately earned.

The overwhelming majority of these messages are from women. I’ve written repeatedly about covert status seeking, unhelpful feedback, relational aggression, and the etiquette of professional relationships because the same underlying pattern keeps appearing in different forms. Disowned insecurity and envy distort the normal process of relationship formation, making these approaches seem entirely appropriate to the person sending them while bypassing the rapport and reciprocity that legitimate influence depends on.

Why does this behaviour seem socially acceptable to so many women, particularly those in the helping, coaching, and therapeutic professions who often regard themselves as highly self-aware?

From investigating my own and others’ behaviour patterns, and analysing hundreds of private messages and emails over many years, this is my explanation.

Women are socialised to seek connection and belonging through relationships. They pursue status indirectly rather than through overt competition, making relationships one of the primary ways women establish influence. Many women also have an implicit model of sisterhood where supporting another woman, saying yes to requests, opening doors, sharing platforms, making introductions, and collaborating are treated as natural obligations rather than a privilege earned through trust. That model shoves into the shadow the darker realities of female relationships where rivalry, status regulation, and insecurity can fuel professional ambition and shape how women relate to one another. Social media provides the conditions that normalise bypassing the relationship building process, making familiarity easy to mistake for reciprocity. When women perceive another woman as having higher status, envy and insecurity can become invisible drivers of rapport-bypassing outreach while they perceive their behaviour as generosity, contribution, networking, helping, collaboration, or support rather than status regulation.

Women rarely experience their own status anxiety reactions as status anxiety because the internal narrative is they're strengthening relationships, supporting another woman, opening a door, contributing something useful, or creating connection. The behaviour serves a status regulating function while remaining outside their awareness of what they're actually doing.

Before you call me a woman hater, I’ve made connections through Substack with women including Holly MathNerd , Skye Sclera , Anuradha Pandey , Katherine Brodsky, Ellie is Based in Paris, Karina Schneidman MBA, MS-MFT, Kelly Thompson TNWWY and many others because they approached me with genuine interest in my work, curiosity, generosity, and grace, allowing rapport and trust to develop naturally over time. I’d collaborate with any of them any day, if they wanted to collaborate with me. I don’t need to be on anyone’s pedestal to engage with someone who is being sincere. I do however recoil when I can see the same pattern when it's delivered with the overconfidence and entitlement compensating for a momentary feeling of inferiority.

That doesn’t mean every invitation to collaborate is driven by envy and insecurity, nor that only women behave this way. It does explain why I receive so many messages that assume familiarity, reciprocity, and influence before a relationship exists. From the sender’s perspective, they’re offering me something valuable. From mine, they’re asking me to give them trust that hasn’t been earned.

Thanks for reading,

Nathalie

Have you spotted this pattern or is it just me?

You can show your support for this article with a one time contribution through this link

If you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription. Special discount in celebration of 5 years on Substack.

---

Hack Narcissism and support my work

Hacking Narcissism is for people trying to make sense of and effectively navigate a morally distorting and chaotic age. When moral development is disincentivised, people lose reliable reference points for discernment and struggle to distinguish between what’s real, what’s performative, and what’s covertly shaping their perception.

Narcissistic traits are expressed in everyone (often referred to as Cluster B traits). They flourish during periods of moral decline because they help secure status, protection, and significance in environments where norms of what appears correct, rather than what is grounded in moral principles, regulate behaviour. The effect of this behaviour is experienced in all types of relationships, including in workplaces, where people can be punished for violating norms they never agreed to and were never made explicit.

By supporting my research and writing, you’re supporting an effort to understand the processes shaping reality and relationships, to disentangle from dysfunctional relational dynamics, and to remain anchored to truths that guide perception rather than allowing external influences to shape it. Your support enables me to continue making sense of patterns that many people recognise but struggle to articulate, and to clarify the actions that allow people to free themselves from those patterns.

Here’s how you can help:

• Order my books: The Little Book of Assertiveness: Speak up with confidence and The Scapegoating Playbook at Work

• Support my work:

• through a Substack subscription

• by sharing my work with your loved ones and networks

• by citing my work in your presentations and posts

• by inviting me to speak, deliver training or consult for your organisation