Too Nice for Your Own Good

Description

At some point back in the mid-sixties, I sat in my office late one evening tuning in to a

pleasant youngster talk about the lady he intended to wed. He adored her and

couldn’t bear the idea of harming her, yet she continually expected things from

him that drove him crazy. Also, every time he felt along these lines, what he did either

exacerbated the situation between them or caused him to feel false to himself. For most

of great importance he wavered between abandoning this relationship and taking steps to

improve at what he had been doing, despite the fact that he realized it wasn’t working. He

felt confounded and lost. Thus did I.

Driving home that night, I thought of the other pleasant individuals whose accounts I

had heard as of late: a widow who never disapproved of her companions and was all singed

out; a moderately aged man who would never be straightforward with individuals who

disillusioned him or needed more from him than he could offer; a lady who

would never please her out of commission mother and didn’t have the faintest thought how to

talk with her.