The Sneakiness of Covert Contracts In Relationships
Your Unspoken Agreement Will Wreak Havoc
“Covert contracts” is a term originally coined by Robert Glover to describe how “nice people”, rather than set boundaries and ask for what they want, will long for and expect their love interest/partner to say certain things or act a certain way for them.
They are the centrepiece of people-pleasing, the theme of Robert Glover’s “No More Mr Nice Guy” book which aims to dismantle the toxic behaviour.
It’s a bad habit many of us can pick up, to detrimental effects — which we’ll talk more about later.
I used to be a covert contractor during dating. I’d lower my boundaries, abandon my authenticity, and then expect the other person to choose me. Maybe if I was a certain way or didn’t speak up about the fact they weren’t committing to me they’d come around.
Or so I thought.
Other examples of covert contracts could be as simple as you tidying the flat/house and expecting your roommate to do it in return. Maybe they’ve been slacking, but instead of calling them out, we tally up the credits of the thing we’ve done in the hope our actions get noticed and their underlying message clear.
A more worrying covert contract could be your chronic people-pleasing in serious relationships. Maybe you’re the perfect wife or perfect husband, you tend to your partner's needs despite the fact you feel they’re mistreating you because in your mind, “If I’m the great partner, then surely they’ll return the favour”.
But as we will look into, covert contracts don’t do what we intend them to do. They instead create an unstable environment which causes more harm than good.
So, what the repercussions of covert contracts, and why must you be aware of your own tendency to expect things from others?
Why Are Covert Contracts Harmful?
When we aren’t clearly stating what we want from someone but expect them to meet our needs, we leave a lot of room for miscalculation.
After all, how can someone even hope to meet our needs if we aren’t saying what it is we want?
They simply can’t — most of the time.
Ironically, despite covert contracts being doomed to fail, when others fail to meet our wants and needs we start to become resentful.
Resentment is a valuable emotion to have because it tells us when someone is doing something that we feel is unfair, unjust, and harmful to us.
But the thing about covert contracts is that we end up feeling resentful for someone who doesn’t know any better.
And this isn’t to discard someone else’s mistreatment of us, but there is a role we play in choosing what we let in. A covert contract is a sign we want or need something from someone, but lack the boundary-setting skills to properly ask for it.
Covert contracts are examples of blind hope. Rather than set a clear boundary that states, “I have this need or expectation, can you or can you not meet it?”, we just assume if we act a certain way that they can and will.
Which sets us up for a huge amount of disappointment when they don’t. As resentment festers within us, we may then begin to act out, blame them (for not knowing any better) or even worse, explode.
One time I was in a brief situationship with someone who I’d been bending over backwards for and covert contracting, hoping if I didn’t call them out for not committing to me then they’d come around, only for them to ask me to leave one night after I’d slept with them.
I was enraged, and also a bit drunk.
How could this person do this to me? I’ve let them into my life and they don’t want to spend the night with me? This was just another sign they didn’t want me, despite my attempts to change the mixed signals and writing on the wall. How could they?
In hindsight, it was a classic sign of indignation: the anger that arises from feeling mistreated.
Despite being angry at the time I can look back now and see that yes, maybe they should have told me that they didn’t want a relationship, but if I wanted something serious (and suspected foul play), why didn’t I just ask?
Because, and this is the crux of covert contracts, we’re afraid.
The Origin Story: Where Covert Contracts Come From
As covert contracts are the boundaries left unsaid, in order to understand why we revert to subliminal messages we have to look at why we don’t speak up.
One of the reasons we don’t speak up is that we fear the repercussions if we did. In a way, it’s almost easier for us to sit in bitter resentment than ask for what we want and potentially be rejected.
That was exactly the reason I didn’t speak up in the afterformentioned situationship. I feared losing them — and likely would have if I’d set an ultimatum (because the writing was on the wall, as it so often is when we ignore mixed signals).
But whilst we may be better off temporarily not setting boundaries, covert contracts will cause emotional damage over time and set the stage for a relationship built on secret messages rather than clear and honest communication.
There is a chance, of course, that someone might actually commit and change their behaviour if we call them out. Some times people just don’t know any better until we tell them. We’ll never know, however, because we don’t ask.
It all comes back to self-esteem, as it so often does.
Do we have a good level of self-worth to be ok with setting a boundary and potentially being rejected?
Do we have the courage to engage with someone in conversation over a problem we’re having?
If we’re in a habit of not setting boundaries, I’d say we don’t.
People-pleasing may also be the way we previously found success. If we grew up with an anxious-attachment style, for example, and were modelled this way of behaviour, it may be all we’ve known. Maybe we couldn’t speak up for our needs when we were younger due to repeated rejections from the people we love. But we innately have needs so covert contracts are no.1 mode of getting them met (we hope).
Moving Beyond Covert Contracts
If low self-esteem and covert contracts go hand in hand then high self-esteem and clear boundaries are the way forward. Thankfully, starting to set boundaries is where our self-esteem can grow. As Mark Manson says, “Boundaries are the by-products of high self-esteem”, with one feeding into the other.
There may also be a traumatic route to this behaviour and our low self-esteem, which of course would require work on your own or with a therapist to understand. If we can understand the route, we’ll be better aware of why we resort to covert contracts, which will help us change with compassion.
Some will worry that in opening up communication in a relationship that has historically lacked it will bring a risk.
What if they reject us and we lose them?
And in honesty, we very well might.
Maybe this relationship has been built on covert contracts and a lack of communication and maybe that works well for your partner, especially if they’re more avoidant on the attachment spectrum. It might trigger their own wounds to have someone try and initiate some emotional depth.
If so, it’s time to have an honest discussion about the type of relationships you want moving forward. Do you want one where you have to resort to covert contracts to hopefully get your needs met, or do you want a relationship that puts your needs (and theirs) at the forefront?
Growth in any relationship comes from communication. When we communicate a need we give the other person the option to grow with us — but they may not want to, for various reasons.
Do we sit back and allow our resentment to make us bitter? Do we set a boundary and potentially raise the level of the relationship to one where more intimacy is present and needs are met? Or do we walk away, head held high that for once we did something that was truly in service of us (should they not want to change)?
Inevitably, you can choose whether you want to initiate that discussion, or not.
The choice is yours.