My Reckoning With Being "Nice"

“Were you nice enough?”

Someone seriously asked me this in a professional setting once.

It threw me off completely.

I don't know how this goes for men (for obvious reasons) but for girls, being "nice" is very important. Being nice means never saying no to anyone, not hurting anyone's feelings, and generally not coming across as "rude" (read: disagreeable).

As women, we're trained to say yes to everything and everyone. We accommodate people. We put other's needs before our own. A lot.

I am still baffled about the depth with which I have internalized this.

My mother and the other women in my family are all very competent. They have good jobs, make good money, and at least in my mom's case, they were also the main breadwinner for the family.

You'd think they'd be very confident. And in some ways they were. My grandmother and my mother both never took any sh*t from anyone professionally. I never once got a vibe of "people don't take me seriously because I am a woman" off of either of them when it came to their jobs.

They're also very good at dealing with officials—the tax office, the unemployment office, and any other office of authority. They both used the word "Dienstaufsichtsbeschwerde" (a major complaint about government employees) without batting an eyelash whenever someone was not treating them appropriately.

And yet, they never taught me that I could say "no". I think I learned how to please and appease both from them, but also to get along easier with them. They were and still are both forces to be reckoned with.

My behaviour towards men mirrors my mother’s and grandmother’s behaviour towards the men I saw around them.

My grandmother still shows my grandfather the finances and pretends he is in charge of the money. The woman worked for the tax office for decades and makes all the financial decisions, but she insists on having my gramps nod off on things. As far as I can tell, he couldn't care less about what she does with the money as long as they're comfortable.

My mother is really, really bright and one of the most competent people I know. And yet, she always dimmed her light as soon as a guy entered the picture. “Her "by herself" and her "with a man" were two completely different people. For the longest time, I thought that changing myself to please a man was the height of romance.

So despite my mother’s and grandmother’s professional success, I learned to be nice, to say yes, and to please people. All people, really, but especially men.

I can't say if it is because I am a woman or just because I was raised the way I was. I've never been raised as a boy, so all I can do is guess.

When I started dealing with these behavioral patterns, I worried that if I stopped being so nice, I'd be seen as bitchy. The thought of saying "no" without a really good reason mortified me. I had no boundaries. At all.

It was a little nugget by Brené Brown that finally helped me over this hurdle. She says "Clarity is kind. Unclarity is unkind".

I realized that by people-pleasing I was often unclear. I didn't communicate what I wanted or needed, I didn't give clear "yeses" or "nos", and I often waited for things to really get messy before resolving a situation. Being clear scared because I was afraid of hurting someone's feelings by stating my boundaries.

Once I realized that through my lack of clarity, I was being unkind to others, my view started to shift. I learned that a "no" might temporarily hurt someone's feelings because nobody likes rejection but it is rarely as bad as all that.

First of all, most people don't mind getting a "no" every now and then. They think about it a lot less than I do. Secondly, even if it stings a little in the moment, it is a lot better to get a "no" early and move on than to be disappointed down the line, after much more emotional investment.

So for me, it comes down to this: I don't have to be "nice" to everyone. I can be direct and to the point as long as I am not rude. However, I do want to be kind. A simple "Sorry, that's a no from me" can be said in a kind way. Even if I have strong feelings on something, saying "no" doesn't mean saying "OMG NO ARE YOU CRAZY?!"