Being thoughtful is often a very big part of being nice, but it’s not a prerequisite, which is a good thing for me. Thoughtfulness is not my strength… at least compared to my wife. Here’s a demonstration of a major difference between my wife and I (and between most women and men):
- Me: I’m uncomfortable… oh, well. I can suck it up.
- Wife: I’m uncomfortable… I should ask how others are doing.
Both have their benefits and drawbacks. My wife’s has obvious benefits like she looks like a good person and people like her. At the same time, I’m happy with my answer. I think more people need to learn how to suck it up. Mama didn’t raise no whiner. As a typical guy, I’m pretty easygoing and I don’t need a lot of flare – I can work with what I’m given and I’m okay if the napkins don’t match the table cloth (that’s not an innuendo). My wife… quite the opposite, but she always has snacks, which is a bonus. Where I’m more relaxed, she tends to be more stressed. Where I’m thinking of doing my own thing, she’s feeling guilty for something that she doesn’t need to feel guilty about but it crossed her mind because that’s part of her thoughtful brain. It amazes me how she can think of things she could’ve done but didn’t, which now leaves her feeling bad. Meanwhile, I feel fine because I don’t think (no disagreement from my wife there). I definitely get the better overall deal. I’m more relaxed, have less guilt, and I have someone who’ll think to bring snacks. Yeah, I win big… most times. Being in my position with someone who is very thoughtful can also have very strong drawbacks.
Here’s the major downside for me (and most men). Where my wife is very thoughtful, she can also come up with some pretty elaborate ideas and accusatory assumptions. Her busy brain isn’t always working for her good: (wife) “They were trying to be hurtful.” Nope. (wife) “They didn’t talk to me because they’re angry at me.” Not even close. We recently spent time with some friends and at some point after the visit she said, “They didn’t tell me about [thing] because they think I’ll judge them for it.” (me) “Or you didn’t ask them about it.” I thought this was a pretty logical option, but she quickly retorted, “I couldn’t ask them about it. I wouldn’t want to make things awkward for them.” See how she’s thoughtful? Guess what my response was: “Well, the one time when you were busy with the baby, I asked them about it and we had a great conversation about it. There wasn’t any embarrassment or hesitation.” See how my wife’s thoughtful, but it’s not always helpful? (And why she can think I’m too direct?) My wife’s thoughtfulness essentially put her into a position where her brain ended up spinning a story against herself. The same creative brain that helps her be thoughtful can cause her to create untrue ideas that are usually at her own expense.
I would go so far as to say the biggest struggle between my wife and I right now is my wife is growing in thoughtfulness and niceness. That can sound like a joke, but her niceness is burning her out. It’s important to recognize there’s nice and then there’s too nice. It’s like there’s a good amount of sugar in a cookie, but then there can be so much it ruins the cookie. I never want to be described as the “nicest” guy (not that I’ve ever been close to being called that) because the “nicest” person is the biggest pushover. The other issue with being too nice is whenever we’re overly nice to one person we end up being mean to someone else, which is always ourselves and sometimes someone else.
Here’s something with which my wife has always struggled. Even now after trying to be better, she’ll have moments before company comes over where she’ll freak out because she hasn’t made the house spotless. Um, who cares? Our house is generally pretty clean minus toys. We have three kids and we’ve been under construction for the last two years. If our friends are going to judge us for a little dust (less than a week’s worth because, again, we keep the house pretty clean), or because there are a few child finger smears on the mirrors (something that happens seconds after she cleans a mirror), I think we should re-evaluate whether these people should be our friends. By being overly nice to them (in things they don’t care about), she’s mean to herself and anyone who gets in her way.
The day I started writing this my wife was panicking (aka freaking out) because she offered to bring fruit to her mom’s for her grandmother’s 95th birthday – she wasn’t “asked”; she offered. The problem was my wife was only able to cut up and make a giant platter of watermelon (that’s it? How could she?). She didn’t have time to buy a bunch of other types of fruit to cut up and put on another large tray. Who could’ve guessed a mom watching two girls and a six month old all day would have a hard time finding a chance to buy and cut up two large trays of fruit. Even worse (only in her mind), when we stopped at the grocery store, they only had the standard size fruit tray and not a giant one. (Just a standard? Perish the thought.) I originally told her she was fine with just the watermelon, but I was “wrong.” When she told me about only getting a standard fruit tray, I said she was fine, but again I was “wrong.” After her complaining about what a failure this was for about five minutes, I discovered she also bought a giant bag of grapes and two quarts of strawberries to go with it all. If I knew about those, I would’ve been much firmer to correct her self-bashing. Skip forward to the end of the party and guess how much of the fruit was eaten? It was barely touched. Apparently people were more interested in chips, cake, and ice cream – crazy! Actually what’s really crazy is out of the thirtyish people there, no one else brought anything because they were told not to. (They listened? Weird.) Because my wife had tried to be “nice,” she was the only one who ended up being stressed out going to this relaxed two hour party. Of course, I’m guessing the fact that her trying to be “nice” causing us to be an hour late didn’t help her stress. Sometimes we get stressed because we’re too nice and try to do too much and sometime we get stressed because we make the wrong priorities. So why were we an hour late? Besides her getting the fruit together, and the typical issues of getting a family with three kids out the door, we were still at our own house when the party was supposed to start because my wife was taking time to put carefully chosen stickers on a birthday card and put extra flare in the wrapping of a gift for a 95 year woman who threatened my mother-in-law not to even have a party. Guess where my wife gets the overly nice side from. I know on some level I need to accept this is who my wife is, but as her partner I need to help protect her from herself, especially when I see her setting herself up for failure. The good thing for me is I’ve learned not to care about being late: “You’re wrapping the gift now when we should be leaving? Great, I’ll do a little writing. I’m easy.” The only thing my wife received pushback on was from my cheapness: “Why are you so generous? Can’t you be cheap like me?” And yes, my lack of thoughtfulness isn’t the only thing that keeps me from being overly nice.
If you ever find yourself in a similar situation where you or your partner is overly nice, the best thing you can do is prearrange with your partner the plan for pointing out when it looks like the line from nice to overly nice is being crossed. If there’s a plan in place, it can prevent unnecessary hurt feelings… often to the person pointing out the other is being overly nice. Overly nice people tend to get very defensive when they feel criticized, which leads to an important point. As a workaholic, (I’m definitely not a nice-aholic) one of the main problems I have is struggling to see how I can be doing anything wrong. I’ve even said, “I work so hard. How can you not be happy?” What I’ve recently realized is criticism/suggestions don’t have to be received as insulting to my work ethic. They can actually be seen as a tool to meet my goal of working smarter and not harder in order to do more. Nice-aholics are at a similar risk. “I’m so nice, how can you have anything to complain about?” Similarly, criticism/suggestions don’t have to be seen as an attack on their niceness. They can actually be tools for helping the nice-aholic use their niceness more effectively, which can help them be nicer without doing more work. Thus, a nice-aholic -should be embracing criticism/suggestions and not getting upset at the partner trying to help. Ultimately, if you burn out, your niceness will shut down for awhile whereas someone who is appropriately nice can continue being nice without a break, which leads to more niceness being shared in the end.
This week may you consider what it means to be a nice-aholic and whether you or someone you know is at risk of this addiction.
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)