It’s dangerous to say it, but nice people are a nuisance, constantly imposing their values and preferences on others. And they usually get their way.
Because they are extremely aware of their own feelings, though, nice people come off as highly sensitive. That makes it seem obligatory to treat them with tender regard. Who wants to do or say anything hurtful to someone so pleasant? It doesn’t matter how impervious they actually are to the feelings of others (especially others deemed not-so-nice) or how imperious they are in asserting their own point of view. Deference is due the nice lest their feelings be hurt.
Worse, most people are too intimidated to say “no” because the nice, when they don’t get their way, get their pound of flesh. If you resist you are branded as mean, and you probably carry an inward load of guilt as well for stepping on such delicate toes.
Nice people know this, consciously or otherwise, and they use it. It’s not a case of passive-aggressiveness, it’s pure aggressive.
Consider how the nice insist that everyone conform to their preferred rituals and activities and how people should be act and feel. They have no compunction about openly criticizing others in ways that coming from a non-nice person would be considered rude.
A great study in how nice people get away with murder can be found in Spongebob Squarepants. Spongebob is classic nice, insisting that everyone conform to his view of what they should be doing or how they should be acting and feeling. In the process, he deeply insults his (platonic) friend Sandy the squirrel, lands his driving instructor Mrs. Puff in jail, constantly invades Squidward’s privacy, takes horrible advantage of good-natured Patrick and regularly puts bystanders and the entire town of Bikini Bottom in physical peril. In fact, he will stoop to anything to get his way. But the havoc he wreaks is excused by all. People can’t help but favor someone so forcefully sweet and sensitive.
Only one character, Squidward, openly objects to Spongebob’s awfulness. But Squidward’s evident preference for the life of the mind wins him little favor relative to Spongebob’s mindless extroversion. For holding Spongebob to ordinary standards of behavior, he is made out to be a cantankerous bully. Like anyone who stands in the way of the nice, he is bludgeoned with the specter of ostracism and loneliness and made to appear an arrogant fool. People would rather accede to Spongebob’s self-centered and platitudinous view of the world than deal with the moral complexity of Squidward’s truth telling.
This 2003 diatribe, in hindsight, is a bit harsh. Let me put it this way now: Nice people wield inordinate power because the rest of us don’t want to disappoint anyone who is so good. And to be clear, I’m talking about truly nice people, not those who are affecting to be nice for self-interest. Those kinds of people are much easier to rebuff. Most of us can spot the phonies and comfortably resist their demands.
But really nice people, who are never consciously trying to take advantage of anyone — they are difficult to resist and for that reason are used to getting their way, even when their way may not be to everyone else’s liking.