Free The Nice Girl Syndrome by Beverly Engel Page B

plants. He likes his underwear and pajamas washed and folded a certain way and I just can’t seem to do it right. I either put in too much fabric softener or too little. And even though he taught me the right way to fold the laundry, I’m just not as good at it as he is.”
    When I asked Rhonda whether she thought her husband was too particular, she said, “I guess some people might say that he is, but these things are important to him. As he tells me all the time, if I really love him I should want to do these things for him. I should be able to learn how to do them right so he’ll be happy.”
    Rhonda had become so focused on pleasing her husband that she had lost touch with reality. The truth was that her husband’s demands were unreasonable. Not only was he too particular, he was browbeating her mercilessly whenever she failed to please him— which was most of the time. Rhonda was being emotionally abused. As is the case with most women who are being emotionally abused, Rhonda blamed herself rather than recognizing that her husband was impossible to please and that he had an investment in keeping her down and off balance. Had she not been so focused on meeting his needs, she would have become aware of the fact that his emotional abuse was affecting her self-esteem and making her
    depressed.

    Other Blind Spots
    Still another problem is that if you are overly focused on pleasing others, you can be blind to the fact that you are involved with some- one who is self-absorbed or narcissistic. Beth came into therapy because she was involved with a man for over a year yet he had never
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    told her he loved her. She wanted to know if she was doing some- thing wrong that might be turning him off.
    From Beth’s description of her current relationship, everything has been going really well. Since she didn’t really have a strong point of view on things, she explained, she was more than happy to listen to Cliff’s opinions and to agree with him on most issues. Since she didn’t think her life was all that interesting, she was thrilled to listen to his adventures.
    “I know he must care about me; otherwise, why would he want to be around me?” she shared with me during one of our sessions. But from Beth’s description, I surmised that Cliff was narcissistic. He seemed to be very wrapped up in himself and didn’t show much interest in Beth or what went on in her life. It seemed to be all about him. When I pointed this out to Beth, she immediately made excuses for him: “Oh, he just likes to talk a lot more than I do. I’m just not a big talker. And he’s so much more interesting than I am.”
    As I got to know Beth better, she admitted that she had often been taken advantage of by previous boyfriends and even by some women friends. She admitted to me that both men and women often told her that she was easy to be around and she suspected it was because she let them have their way and didn’t insist on their paying attention to her needs. Beth needed to learn that until she put her needs first, she was always going to attract people who were either users, abusers, or those like Cliff, who were narcissistic.
    As I was to learn later on, however, Beth didn’t even know what her needs were. She was so used to focusing outside herself that she didn’t know what she was feeling or what she needed at any given time. Instead, she spent most of her time and energy trying to please others.

    Nice Girls Also Become Resentful
    Women who consistently defer to the needs and feelings of others experience yet another problem: they become resentful and angry toward the very people they strive to please. Nice Girls often expect others to be as considerate and self-sacrificing as they are, only to become disappointed and resentful when those people don’t come through.
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    Even more problematic, some Nice Girls become resentful of others