5 Highly Annoying Things That ‘Nice’ People Do

We all have some vicious, horrible people in our lives. But we also have some nice, well-meaning ones that grate even more on our nerves. So, if you’re a ‘nice’ and ‘sweet’ person who is wondering why all your calls go to voicemail and why all you see is a twitching curtain when you ring the doorbell,  perhaps you’re guilty of the sins below.

1. You open requests with “It would be nice if you could…”

When did “Could you please” or “Just do it the fuck already” go out of fashion? It makes me want to spit when someone says it would be nice/good/great if I did something. It is the most sly and repugnant way to emotionally blackmail someone into doing your bidding. If you say no to such a request, you’re basically admitting to not being ‘nice’, to being a horrible person with no moral compass or human decency. How can you even say no? Sorry, but I don’t think I want to be nice? No thank you, I’m just going to carry on doing the not-nice thing I was doing? A direct request does not put the other person in this position of being nice or not being nice.

People who use “It would be nice…” think they’re being very tactful and open-ended, but really, they’re just being assholes and insulting your intelligence. Slap them down.

Example: “It would be nice if you could get the groceries on the way home.”

Answer: “It would be even nicer if you could.”

This normally causes the nice person to snap back to reality and say, “Just do it the fuck already.”

2. You hound people to wish others on their birthdays and anniversaries.

Guess what? Facebook is the mega-aunty of the entire freaking world. Facebook’s job is to remind you that it’s your second cousin’s birthday or your ex’s wedding anniversary (screw you, Facebook). People who are not on Facebook are too cool and unconventional to care whether you wish them or not and in any case no one can be bothered to stay in touch with them.

Yet, despite these contemporary realities, some people continue take it upon themselves to call and tell you to greet a relative or family friend on their birthday. If you refuse, they might even try to steal your phone and change their voice to wish that person, who clearly will not be able to survive the day without your greetings. These are people who buy birthday presents and add your name in the gift tag even though you didn’t even remember the damn day.

I once had a relative who called to thank me for a giant bouquet of flowers that I DID NOT EVEN BUY (another relative did, on my behalf). It was disturbing, like a stalker movie in which you don’t mysteriously get flowers but mysteriously give them.

This behaviour is unacceptable because the “nice” person in her own sneaky way is trying to run your relationships for you. For some reason, they are invested in how well you get along with or please someone else, and they feel everything will collapse into a heap of regrets unless they pull the strings.

The point is, if you’re an adult, you’ll remember if something is important to you. If you forget, you will, like an adult, deal with the consequences. Either way, no one but you should try and determine whether your relationships live or die, or if there are some frosty silences at the next family gathering. A relationship built on reminders by a third party is a lie. Choose truth.

3. You do everything for everyone, and you never complain

Lovely, right? No, manipulative and painful. You may be proud of never complaining, but your eyes always have the look of Jesus on his cross, and your tubercular cough is a persistent reminder of how you’re being taken advantage of. But try and help you and you’re outraged, you won’t allow it for a second, you stop coughing and insist on doing the washing up/childcare/filing. But when the dustpan is handed back to you, the tortured eyes and hack are back in five minutes. Guess what? You’re not helpful, you’re just addicted to being a martyr.

4. You prefer maintaining a dignified silence to fighting

I’ve already written about this at some length.

5. Your favourite saying is “to each their own”

Fool. It just shows you are too gutless and desperate to be liked to express an opinion. Now if you really did not have an opinion, it would be OK. It’s just a sign that you don’t think very much and that’s acceptable. However you DO have an opinion and guess what, it leaks. Your pained expressions, hurt sniffs, and sighs of disapproval don’t escape anyone. When you say “to each their own”, what you mean to say is “no better can be expected of these savages.”

 

Advice my daughter should ignore

Some monsters hide under beds and some lurk in closets. Others loiter near the playground, their fingers sticky with candy and nervous sweat. Then there are those that sit in the comfortable armchair near the window, wondering with gentle exasperation where the little woman disappeared with their afternoon tea.

As an Indian woman I am considered lucky because I got to have an education, didn’t have to give dowry and never feared that my daughter might be despatched along with the day’s trash. After all, what are rights for many women in the Western world are privileges for their South Asian sisters. This lucky and charmed life has spoiled me, some would say.

It is true that I have evolved parents, a wonderful husband and very modern in-laws. But despite my protected life, I have observed in friends and extended family how the insidious poison of patriarchy seeps into everything from domestic communication patterns to gendered ideals of behaviour. You don’t have to have third degree burns from dowry torture to feel angered by it.

Like me, no daughter of mine shall be dandled on the lap of the demonic force known as patriarchy. It has recruited uncountable foot soldiers and hand maidens through the generations not just by brute force but through the transmission of ‘values’ and platitudinous advice that are as lethal as they seem bland.

Here are some classics (might add more later) that I want my daughter to beware of:

1)      Be selfless: In other words, eat leftover scraps, abandon your own interests and priorities, become an unpaid servant at worst and a beloved pet at best. Selflessness is greatly valued in wives and daughters-in-law because it allows men and others further up the hierarchy to be selfish. In so many Indian households, you see the men enjoy festivals and other events while the women scurry about waiting on them, their pain a badge of honour.  I have noticed that many Indian men love the joint family system. Why is that? Because they have to do none of the work. Status quoists express great pain over the takeover of Western values, often introduced by rebellious daughters in law. The old days were so great, these men say. All of us were smiling and laughing and lived together happily. Nonsense. The women were voiceless slaves and you enjoyed their service. If India had such a great culture it wouldn’t still be ranked 101 in the 2013 global gender gap index. It’s still better than Pakistan or Yemen, right? The payoff for the selfless woman is that she gets to play martyr and at a later date perpetuate the cycle by using her list of sacrifices to get others to do her bidding. The whole charade creates an atmosphere of oppression and repression. If you are indeed without a ‘self’ then what about self-respect? Self esteem? Autonomy? It is important to teach values such as kindness and consideration but selflessness belongs in the dustbin.

 

2)      Obey your elders: Age and experience may count for something, but you are not necessarily wiser if you are older. You may have experienced a great many more situations and picked up a big bag of tricks but your values could be completely retrograde. In the traditional Indian family system, it is considered almost sacrilegious to question the patriarch and, to a lesser extent, the matriarch. If they told you drink gallons of ghee for better lubrication during childbirth, you did it, never mind how obese it made you. If they told you you were polluted when you had your period, you segregated yourself, perhaps thinking of it as a break – after all, you certainly didn’t warrant one if you simply wanted it. I will certainly expect my child to follow my house rules and learn certain values from me but I will never try to stop her from questioning me. I need to be accountable too – the things I ask her to do or not to do have to make logical sense. It is logical for me to stop her from sticking her finger in an electrical socket but it is not logical for me to throw a hissy fit if she wants to cut her hair short. She must conduct herself in a respectful and polite way to EVERYONE, but this does not amount to deference or blind obedience.

 

3)      Silence is golden: To which I counter, tell the truth and shame the devil. Using silence to conceal problems or punish others makes issues worse, perpetuates injustices and kills any chance of a meaningful, honest relationship. Indian women should be seen, not heard is a common expectation. Rendered voiceless, many victims often learn to employ their enforced silence as a weapon and make a bad situation even worse. My daughter must always speak her mind or at least not fear doing so. See this post.

 

4)      Always adjust: This is one of the sneakier ones. There is nothing wrong with being adaptable and accommodating. But ‘adjusting’ in Indian society is usually a one-way street. I will tell my daughter to be very wary if her in-laws tell her to ‘adjust’ to their way of life. It is simply a euphemism for obedience. She has to make it very clear that they will have to adjust to her as well. If she is not comfortable doing something, she should not to it and not have to face censure for it. Coercers know how distressing social rejection, pained sighs and huffy facial expressions are and you can have your arm twisted without even knowing it. Watch out and stand your ground.  Mutual respect is possible only with proper boundaries and with an acknowledgment and acceptance of differences. It goes both ways and with open communication it is sometimes even possible to find a middle ground. Live and let live is a far better cliché.

 

5. It’s up to you to keep your family together: We’ve all seen the sugary facebook forwards about how a woman gives all of herself to being a daughter, wife, mother. There’s always something in there about how no one notices the tears in her eyes or how everyone kicks her in the spleen while she’s having chemotherapy etc etc. This kind of advice tells women that they are defined by their relationships. The job description for a wife includes playing people pleaser, peacekeeper and punching bag. Just so that everyone can sit in strained, murder-plotting silence around a dinner table. My contention is that not every family is best served by staying together. Divorce is an example of eroded family values in the West, right? Then tolerating domestic violence and abuse is the Indian way. My second point is that everyone in the family needs to work on relationships. It is not the woman’s prerogative.

Go out there my daughter, and be a selfish ‘bitch’! You’ll be happier for it.

 

 

Silent but deadly

I’ve been thinking about the silent treatment recently, having just been on its receiving end. Wallowing is boring so I thought I’d think about it with a little more detachment.

Some background: I lost my temper not so long ago. One moment my anger was a hard little knot in my stomach and the next there were entrails and shit and blood spattering everything in sight. The issue itself was not very major, but it was a matter of principle. I felt sidelined by some relatives and, deeply hurt, lashed out in a way that I am not proud of. Words were shrieked over both ends of the phone. My cat cowered under the sofa and my baby, as a side benefit, was stunned into silence.

We didn’t intend to make you feel this way, they screamed. But you DID make me feel bad, I yelled back. You did you did you did. You were secretive, you excluded us, you who always insisted on acting as one big happy family.  No no no, they said. You wouldn’t have been able to participate anyway, so we didn’t tell you. You are disingenuous, I spat, hypocritical. And then the phone went dead.

Well, the said event was a family vacation. Truth be told,  I have a small baby and going on a whirlwind international tour was hardly possible. Still, I was enraged that my small family was not even told about this plan. I was constantly in touch with this trip’s organisers but they didn’t breathe a word of this to me until their tickets were in their hands. To add insult to injury, one of them rued in an email that it was too bad I couldn’t join. I hadn’t even been asked! Did they think I might spoil their plans if I was told? Show up uninvited to blemish their holiday photographs with my postpartum lard? Did they not know me at all? Their behaviour breached a familial code of conduct. The secrecy seemed deliberate and I could not understand why.  They were nice people, I thought we were genuinely fond of each other, our relationship was generally smooth, so why this and why now? These were people who expected and were given frequent updates on our lives and emphasised how important it was to be a close family. I breached a code too. Instead of staying quiet, I unleashed my hurt in a less than ideal way.

So, should I have stayed quiet? Silence is golden, isn’t it? I beg to differ. In relationships, if silence is golden then dog shit should be selling for $1000 an ounce. After the fight, my husband and I both sent out emails explaining our feelings to our relatives. I even apologised for the discussion becoming too heated. The hope was that we could resolve our differences and come to a better understanding. After all, hadn’t they also professed their deep and abiding love for us and our child? If a relationship is worthwhile to all concerned then open and honest dialogue can solve most problems. Communication is key, we all know. Psychology 101.

Instead, we got the silent treatment. That’s power play 101 for you. They replied to none of our honest, heartfelt missives . We do not know their position, we do not know their reaction to our position, and now there doesn’t seem to be any way of bridging the gap.  A problem that could have been solved with apologies and an open dialogue from both sides will now forever fester like the aforementioned dog shit. Yelling at people is immature and aggressive, but silence is even more so. It is fine to take some time out to cool down, but this is distinct from ignoring an argument altogether. Here is why using the ‘silent treatment’  as a way to avoid or react to conflicts is so futile and indeed, toxic:

 

1)      It halts communication: Without honest communication, relationships may as well not exist. Sometimes, communication means dealing with conflicts. Relationships do not always play out according to a script in which everyone sticks to their roles. We might as well sit around the family table with talking dolls for company. Yes, sometimes silence can help keep appearances up, but it takes its toll.  Silence can be the death of a wife who never raises a voice of protest against an abusive husband. In less extreme situations, it can result in living a lie just because the truth is uncomfortable. We all know the scenario: parents and children, husbands and wives who are virtual strangers to each other even if they are living under the same roof. It creates a culture of secrecy and resentment. Sometimes, you need to fight to make things right.

2)      It is a damaging display of power: In giving someone the ‘silent treatment’ you are asserting power by taking complete control of a discussion. You shut people out, with the implicit message that they are not worth your while. By abandoning an issue that is important, you abandon the people who have the issue. You take away their power vis-à-vis their relationship with you. You put them in their place – and that place is always going to be very far away from you. Silence destroys relationships. This paper on the use of Silence in Discourse describes the result beautifully: This form of power is detrimental, as it not only is a form of ignoring a specific issue that possibly needs to be further discussed, but it is also a form of disempowerment to the other individuals of such conversations. The use of silence as an impediment of conversation or dispute weakens the quality of interaction, as well as the relationship between the disputers, which as a whole is a form of destruction.” 

3)      Silence is a form of emotional abuse: The silent treatment messes with your brain, seriously. Most people who dole it out don’t exactly rub their hands and say ‘let’s scramble  xyz’s anterior cingulate cortex today’, but what they do know is the power of disengagement to seriously hurt those close to them.  This neuroimaging study, among others, explains how ‘the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was more active during exclusion than during inclusion and correlated positively with self-reported distress. ‘ This disruption actually causes pain to people. It’s that crushed feeling you get when you’re not invited to a friend’s birthday party or when your lover no longer takes your calls. Some people understand this very well and are adept at using silence as a tool of low-grade torture.

4)      Giving the silent treatment gives you a forked tongue and horns: Seriously, when you’re the one doling out the silent treatment, your targets aren’t thinking of you as the silently suffering martyr. If they don’t think you’re just indifferent, they think you’re the devil. By presenting a blank canvas, you’re inviting people to paint you in the most unflattering light. After all, you’re not making yourself present to paint a clearer picture of the actual situation. Your intentions will not matter. Even though giving the silent treatment is an act of passive aggression and egotism, your behaviour may also be the result of a serious feeling of hurt as well as a fear of overt conflict. But unless you say so, no one will ever know. You will forever be misunderstood and will forever misunderstand those you once held dear. Ask yourself: Is it worth it? Rejection begets rejection.

5)      Sage advice: The next question, of course, is, how should one deal with the silent treatment? The obvious first step of course is to initiate a conversation but if multiple attempts do not lead anywhere, you need to withdraw too. Silence does not truly indicate detachment or indifference. It is a tool that is designed to get a response out of you, be it guilt, grovelling or something in between. It is also usually a game of chicken. Don’t give in if your own convictions are at stake. If you are a people-pleaser like me, this can be hard, but it is worth the effort. And if there is no end to the silence?  Use the enforced meditative space to evaluate your relationship and the motivations of the people in it. What if the silence ends but the original issue is not discussed? Not acceptable: conflict has a purpose and it can result in the growth of understanding. By understanding, I do not mean ‘agreement’ – I mean an authentic insight into and acceptance of another person. Pretending something didn’t happen is futile because the seeds of conflict are still there.  No feedback? Just paint on the forked tongue and red demon eyes and get on with your life as happily as you can.