The worst thing about being a nice-oholic is, by default, you end up being mean to someone else and that someone is normally yourself and possibly the people closest to you (aka the people with whom you live). When you’re overly nice, there’s always a penalty to pay. Sometimes there’s meanness because the nice-oholic is burnt out and there isn’t any niceness left. This is why some of the nicest people you meet (typically women) have partners who agree with others’ comments about the niceness: “Yes, they’re so nice,” but it’s through gritted teeth as they’re thinking, “But you don’t know what they’re like at home. Being this nice in public has its sacrifices.” Other times the meanness isn’t directly mean; it’s more collateral damage from the person being mean to themselves. My wife can be really bad for this. As nice as she can be to others, she can be equally terrible to herself. This is incredibly frustrating for both of us because she wants to be a good person to everyone, but that’s not possible if she’s too nice to someone, which she can’t stop herself from doing. What’s difficult for me is if it’s pointed out that I experienced collateral damage to her being mean to herself, it makes her feel worse, which is expressed through some type of defensive behavior. Thus, the question for people in my position is do I just take it, which typically leads to distance through resentment or fear, or do I tell her I’ve been hurt and cause her an even higher level of hurt (which might also hurt me more in the long run)?
The other weekend was the best example of what can happen when you’re with someone who is a nice-oholic as I ended up facing a very strange situation because what do you do when the person is upset at you for something you didn’t do? Like a lot of nice people, my wife was bottling up some feelings and eventually that had to come out. I’m not sure how it started, but my wife and I had a pretty intense conversation that lasted ten minutes. I teach that serious conversations should always be less than five minutes, but I didn’t know we were embarking on a serious conversation until we were already a few minutes into it. We also had a few petty comment moments like this one: (wife) “The other night you went to bed without saying good night.” (me) “No, I said good night. You must not have heard me. But even if I didn’t, you didn’t say good night to me last Wednesday and Thursday.” (wife) “No, I did.” (me) “Really?” This was a petty conversation because I ended up going for the one-up moment: “Well you did it twice!” I was also petty because if I didn’t think she said good night I should’ve asked her the next day about it: “Hey, last night did you go to bed without saying good night or did I not hear you?” Instead I bottled it up and ended up using it at the wrong time. I’d also argue that thinking she didn’t say good night gave me an excuse to give her a lousy good night and just call down into the basement instead of going to her and saying good night to her face like I should have: “She didn’t say good night to me last week, so I can justify being lazy.” I hadn’t planned on being passive aggressive with it. My original plan was to stuff those moments down until I could forget about them. This is a weak person’s attempt to reduce conflict. Yes, I have my not so great moments, but I’m human (or this is an A.I. post and I’m just trying to hide that by saying I’m human).
Fortunately, I was overall able to keep the conversation on track as I mostly asked my wife questions to understand what was bothering her without defending myself. Defending ourselves is the second worst thing we can do in conversation. Besides it being rude, defending ourselves ignores the other person’s feelings. It’s also a stupid move. If my wife has a problem with something I did and I try explaining my side, is she going to say, “Thank you for proving I’m wrong for feeling this,” or will she double down on her original point? This is how fights can explode. It becomes the one person asking “Why are you brushing off my hurt?” versus the other asking “Why are you assuming the worst of me?”
The conclusion of our ten minute conversation can be summed up in a one sentence statement my wife gave (summarizing the conflict into one sentence is very helpful): “No matter how hard I try, I’m a constant disappointment to you.” That was a pretty intense statement… and very confusing to me because I’ve never used the word disappointment about her or even thought it. Fortunately, instead of defending myself, I asked questions to make sure I understood her properly before having a time out from the conversation. I needed to process it and regroup with some better questions.
In this situation, either my wife is right and everything she does is a disappointment to me or she’s wrong. If she’s right, I need to apologize and adjust my heart and actions. If she’s wrong, she needs to apologize to me for such a harsh accusation and adjust her heart and actions. From the beginning I knew which side I was rooting for, but let’s break it down. What are the options in this situation where I didn’t think she was a disappointment like she claimed?
- She is a disappointment and I just hadn’t realized it.
- She is disappointed in me and this is a projection of her own feelings.
- She’s feeling negative stuff and twisting what’s happened to somehow be her fault in order to help her feelings make more sense.
And the winner is… number three – like a nice-oholic does. My initial belief was number two, but that’s why questions are important. Like her, my conclusion was proven wrong. I will be very clear (especially because there’s a chance my wife will read this one day), my wife has not been a disappointment to me. Has she made me angry? Absolutely. Has she made me angrier than anyone else I’ve ever met? By far, but I’ve never used or thought the word disappointment. I don’t know when it became a thing for parents to say “I’m not angry. I’m disappointed,” like this is somehow a better thing than anger. I’d rather make someone angry. Disappointment is condescending and cruel. Having a parent yell at you makes you angry in return, which can be empowering. Having them say, “I thought you were better than that; you’re a big disappointment,” is soul crushing. My wife hasn’t been a disappointment, but she regularly makes me angry like the one time I said, “You need to stop buying the kids toys because they have too many already,” and the next day she received an Amazon package in the mail that was a new toy. Then later that day when she had the girls out at the store, she bought them another toy. That makes me angry because it should. Of course, I didn’t say anything because what’s the point? In moments like these she knows where I stand and she’s on edge afraid I’ll say something, which means she’ll have a very emotional defense if I do say something – she’s ready to burst. The best thing I can do is vent privately to help reduce the risk of bottling up any bad feelings and give reminders in calm moments that we have too many toys.
The second option made sense because people accuse others of doing what they feel. I know she has been disappointed with me in the past. She’s been very clear that she almost didn’t marry me because I’m too “picky an eater.” I think the better way to put it is I don’t care about food. I’m not a foody, and she wishes I was. That being said, I think she’s learned to appreciate my eating habits. I’ve saved us a lot of money because I don’t like eating out at restaurants and I’m simple to feed. I also never complain when I finish work to find she forgot to leave me food because she was distracted feeding the kids because I’m happy eating leftovers in the fridge or quickly frying some eggs; something a foody wouldn’t likely be able to handle. (Everything has a good and bad side). Since she’s been disappointed in me in the past, however, it stands to reason she could think I’d be disappointed in her (especially if she’s disappointed for something in me now).
So what do I do with this conclusion? Ask her about – never assume. A few days later when the timing seemed right, I started a less than five minute conversation by asking her, “I find we accuse others of doing what we do ourselves, so if you think you’ve been a disappointment to me this year, is that a sign that I’ve been a disappointment to you?” And she replied, “No.” I double checked and she still said no. That meant I was wrong about my conclusion… who’d have thought I could be wrong? This led to exploring the idea of option three:
Me: When you said you’re a disappointment to me, did you consider how I’ve been very clear this has been the worst year of my life?
- Wife: Yes, but if it was just a bad week or month I could understand it. If it’s a year, it must be more. Me: So even though this terrible year has been based on our addition being a total disaster (we’re almost two years in and still far from being done), you thought this was about you?
- Wife: It has to be.
- Me: So even though I’ve been telling you for the last year the house is killing me and I’m again repeating that, you want to make it about you being the problem?
- Wife: That’s what makes sense to me.
- Me: Well, that’s too bad because you’re very wrong. It’s just the house.
Later, we had another conversation:
- Me: Has the addition been stressful for you?
- Her: I don’t think about the house. I have to shut it out because otherwise I’d be a mess.
- Me: So if every day I have to focus on the house and not shut it out like you, can you see why I’d feel a lot of stress about it?
- Her: Yes.
- Me: Can you see that my year of emotional struggle has been the house and not you?
- Her: I still think it has to be me.
So based on these two conversations, the conclusion I had was she saw me as being disappointed in her because she was being mean to herself. By her being mean to herself, I end up feeling completely misunderstood and falsely accused – collateral damage. Fortunately, after a couple quick conversations where I asked her questions to better understand where she was coming from and seeing that there’s no way of convincing her she’s wrong (minus planting some seeds of doubt with my questions), I need to let her have her beliefs even if it means letting her be mean to herself. I need to give her that because I can’t control her. My job is to work on my own heart. After all, the worst thing I could do is twist it to be a reason to be mean to myself and/or resent her for her belief. I need to love her enough to let her be mean to herself with the hope that she’ll eventually accept that my moodiness this year has been less about her and more about the demoralizing frustrations of the house, especially because if I don’t give her space, I’ll end up even moodier: “The house sucks and now my relationship does, too!” I need to work with what I’ve been given (as frustrating as that can be)
This week may you consider how nice people can be mean to themselves, which can cause collateral damage and that ultimately means we need to work on being fair to ourselves and not mean even if the motivation is simply for the sake of others. After all, nice-oholics typically don’t know how to be nice to themselves.
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)