I have always been a nice person. Calling myself nice didn’t really seem like a negative thing for many, many years. I’d always tell people I was nice or often too nice but being too nice didn’t ever seem like a bad thing. One time I was asking a colleague for advice on a situation involving a landlord who had repeatedly wronged me. My coworker mentioned that I was too nice and her comment didn’t seem to have any positive tones attached to it. This made me wonder why being nice could be a bad thing and that realization opened up another world of perspective to me. I realized that being too nice had caused me to not take care of myself properly, stay attached to the wrong people and not establish healthy boundaries with people in my life.
There may be ways in your own life where are you too nice. Below are some consequences that can happen from being too nice.
1. People appreciate you less. You might find that you are the type who is very giving. You love to take your friends out to dinner, give spontaneous gifts, are always willing to have late night chats on the phone and you easily give your time and energy to another person. A nice person often believes that the more you give to someone, the more someone will appreciate you. Unfortunately that isn’t the case. People actually appreciate you less and start to take you for granted when you are always giving. After awhile your giving nature becomes an expectation. For instance, let’s say your friend always asks you for advice about her relationships. You always listen to her and offer your support thinking she appreciates that you are always there for you. After awhile your friend is calling you all hours of the night, at events and during times that are inconvenient to you. Your friend starts to not apologize for interrupting you but simply expects that you always listen to her simply because you do. As a result you spend so much energy supporting your friend, and you get little appreciation back.
2. Being nice can actually be unkind. One of the issues with being nice is that you might end up pleasing people at the expense of hurting others. Being nice may seem, well nice but there are often consequences to being nice. Let’s say your friend is venting to you about her boyfriend. You honestly think she’s overreacting and actually being unkind to her boyfriend. Yet because you are so nice, you tell her that she’s right even though she’s not. You unintentionally encourage her negative treatment towards her boyfriend to avoid hurting your friend’s feelings. Let’s take a more extreme example. Your loved one always needs to borrow money from you and very rarely pays you back. You discover that your loved one has a shopping addiction and poor financial management. Instead of doing what you can to help your loved one, you continue to enable their behavior by giving them money since you feel bad about not giving them money. Being nice can be unkind in many scenarios. You may want to avoid hurting someone’s feelings but as a result, end up promoting negative actions as a result.
3. You develop unrealistic expectations of others. When I was being too nice, I often felt resentful when a person did not return the favor. For instance, I remember at a holiday event I surprised a friend with a thoughtful gift. She did not have any gift for me in return and I felt annoyed about that at the time. Yet it was unrealistic for me to expect that she would treat me in that way, especially since the gift was a surprise. Being too nice may seem selfless in many ways, but you are very likely to develop the expectation that others will return your kindness to the degree that you choose to be. And when your friends don’t return the kindness in a way you would like, you may feel wronged or resentful about that.
4. You attract the wrong type of people. When I was too nice, I felt myself spending way too much time around people who were too needy or dependent on me. I started to wonder if these friends would stick around if I wasn’t constantly helping them. In some cases I felt like a therapist to some of my friends which isn’t a role I want to have with any of my friends. The problem with being too nice is you invest too much energy into people who need your support. As a result you have less energy for the ones who genuinely love and care about you, but don’t need your support to that degree. You will find that as you start to put the brakes on being too nice, that those needy friendships might fall apart or people will naturally drift away. True friends are the ones who need our support and will happily give us support too. These friends will not weigh you down with their issues and will realize that sometimes you need a listening ear too. Stop investing your time into people who are out to take advantage of your niceness and more into the people who just enjoy being around you.
5. You risk being misunderstood. In some contexts being too nice can make you look distrustful or like you have an ulterior motive. Keep in mind that people may not always think this about you but consider the context. For instance, treating coworkers to free lunches or giving free drinks during happy hour may come across the wrong way. Your intentions may be good but a coworker may be wondering if you expect something in return or if you have an ulterior motive due to your niceness. I would consider the context where you are too nice and how this should be adjusted. For instance, there may be nothing wrong with sharing baked goodies with your coworkers but treating people out for lunch randomly may come across as too much by certain people. There may be nothing wrong with offering help every so often, but always offering help to your colleagues may invite suspicion and distrust.
6. You don’t take care of yourself. Being too nice means that you usually invest too much time and energy into another person, leaving little for yourself. At my nicest I barely had time to exercise, eat well and I felt constantly stressed and depressed. The main reason this occurred is because I didn’t give myself enough time to take care of myself. Nobody will take care of your own needs except you. Being too nice might make you feel like you need the validation and approval of others. You will constantly be striving to be nice rather than focusing on how to be kind to yourself. At the end of the day, internal validation is what truly matters. As you focus on being kind to yourself, you’ll start to realize that you still have room to be kind and loving to the people in your life.
7. You might develop needy behaviors. It may be hard for you to let go of the idea of being too nice, because part of you enjoys the idea that someone needs and depends on you. Someone needing you may give you validation that you are important and that someone would feel lost without you. People who are too nice can often come across as clingy and insecure. If your partner doesn’t text you right away you start to feel insecure and worried that something is wrong. During the early dating phases you may try to give your date excessive gifts and be super nice to try and prove your worth. You might worry that your friends will not like you if you stop being nice to them.
8. You might view the world more negatively than it is. Being too nice can cause you to believe that everybody is taking you for granted. You see things from your perspective and anything that goes against that perspective can be interpreted as mean, unappreciative or taking advantage of you. For instance, when I moved overseas I was really annoyed with a couple of friends who could not seem to keep in contact with me. I’d offer to skype, suggest times to get together and go over board to try to meet with these people. Often times my friends would disappoint me which would make me question the friendship entirely and feel like these friends were never my friends to begin with. My tendency to be too nice and accommodating made me interpret a situation more negatively than it should have been. Realistically, my feelings of disappointment at not being able to speak to my friends was normal. However, my interpretation that my friends didn’t care about me and were never my friends was over the top and inaccurate. Being too nice may cause you to overreact and you may end up sabotaging your relationships as a result.
9. Being too nice may be inauthentic to your personality. For many years I incorrectly felt like being nice was just part of my personality. If people said, I was being too nice, I’d reply saying “well that’s who I am.” Realistically I am a friendly and kind person. My motivations for being too nice may have seemed authentic but were mostly centered around seeking external validation or feeling like I might lose people in my life if I wasn’t being nice. Reassess why you are being nice and be honest about where that is coming from. You are likely a very kind person, which is someone who cares about people in their life, supports their friendships and helps their loved ones within reasonable boundaries. Being too nice (unlike kindness) has no boundaries, can enable negative behaviors and builds resentment rather than love towards your friendships. Reevaluate if you would rather be a person who is too nice or treats their loved ones with compassion and kindness. You might find that being too nice isn’t authentic to you after all.
If you find that you are being too nice, reevaluate if it is time for change. I’ll write an article about how to stop being too nice shortly. How have you been too nice with others? What are some ways you have stopped being too nice to others?