When Fitting In Costs You Yourself: What The Hunting Wives Teaches Us About Boundaries and People Pleasing

In The Hunting Wives Season 1 (watch on Prime Video), Sophie O’Neill doesn’t move to East Texas looking for drama. She’s searching for community, friendship, and a sense of belonging. But in her eagerness to fit in, Sophie ignores her instincts, hides parts of herself, and follows people who don’t have her best interests at heart.

While the show is packed with scandal and suspense, Sophie’s story mirrors a real mental health struggle: the dangerous side of people pleasing and sacrificing your own values to feel accepted.

The Naive Newcomer Trap

Being the “new person” in a neighborhood, workplace, or social group can make you more vulnerable to unhealthy dynamics. You’re learning unspoken rules, eager to prove you belong, and hyper aware of your outsider status.

From a therapist’s perspective, this is a perfect setup for boundary erosion. Without a strong sense of self worth, it’s easy to adapt your behavior, opinions, and even values to match the people around you.

The Lake Scene: A Turning Point

One of the most telling moments in The Hunting Wives happens at the lake. Sophie is with her husband and young son when Margo shows up unexpectedly on a jet ski, inviting her to leave.

When her son asks, “Do you have to go?” Sophie says yes, when the truth was no.

No one was forcing her. But the pull of Margo’s approval outweighed her instinct to stay grounded in her own priorities.

From a mental health lens, that was a moment of self abandonment. Sophie chose inclusion over alignment, and it became one of many choices that would cost her.

The Wrong Kind of Self Sacrifice

There’s a healthy kind of self sacrifice, when you willingly give time or energy to strengthen a meaningful relationship or uphold your values.

Sophie’s choice was the unhealthy kind: abandoning her own boundaries to hold onto someone else’s approval. That type of self sacrifice doesn’t lead to deeper connection. It leads to emotional depletion, loss of trust, and, in Sophie’s case, life altering consequences.

The Fallout

By the season’s end, Sophie has lost far more than she gained such as her safety, her peace of mind, and her sense of who she is.

It’s a cautionary tale about what happens when the need to belong overshadows the need to stay true to yourself.

Mental Health Takeaways

• Check your motives: Are you saying yes because you want to, or because you’re afraid of being excluded?

• Pause before agreeing: That brief moment of hesitation can help you make intentional choices instead of reactive ones.

• Notice approval seeking patterns: Changing yourself for someone else’s comfort is a sign your boundaries need attention. Therapy can help you strengthen boundaries and build self worth.

• Prioritize core relationships: Don’t trade the people who truly matter for those who offer conditional acceptance.

The desire to belong is human. But belonging that requires you to abandon your own identity isn’t belonging, it’s performance. The Hunting Wives shows how people pleasing, weak boundaries, and the wrong kind of self sacrifice can spiral out of control.

If you’ve ever given away pieces of yourself for approval, it might be time to pause and ask: Is this relationship building me up, or breaking me down?