How Niceness Is Killing Your Relationship

Welcome to Shrink for the shy guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence first in myself second, and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Yo, welcome. Today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about niceness. Niceness and the problems that it might be creating in your life, particularly in your relationship, your romantic love life. And I had to record this because of a conversation I just had recently with a client in my mastermind program that reminded me of something from my own life and just how damaging niceness can be to your relationships. So we're gonna be getting a lot into this topic. I'm super excited to be with you today. If you're benefiting from this show, by all means do me a favor and go to itunes where you can, like type in this show shrink for the shy guy and give it a five star review or whatever review you think it deserves better be five stars or else we're done here. But if you're benefiting from it, that helps me because that helps me reach people and people can find this show. And, man, people need this. We need to learn how to be on our own side and be confident and really support each other to thrive and overcome some of these challenges. So that's what I'm here to do. That's my mission on this earth. So go to itunes and give this show a review when you get a chance. I would really appreciate that. If you've listened to this a lot and benefited from it, that's a way to give back to me so that I can give back to others and we continue this virtuous cycle. Beautiful. Let's talk about niceness. And if you haven't read my book not nice, I don't even know the subtitle. It's long how to stop people Pleasing, Being nice and stuff and start kicking ass and being assertive and shit. I think that's the subtitle. Anyway, if you haven't gotten that, I highly recommend it because we're going to be talking about this in this episode and I'm not going to explain a whole lot about niceness overall and theories about it and all that stuff because I want to get really into the specifics of how to identify some things in your romantic love life. But for a much further in depth study of that, check out that book. You can get it on Amazon, Audible, Kindle, Audible's great. It's me, me talking to you about it for 18 hours. Unless you listen to on 1.5 speed. That's my preferred speed for listening to books these days. 1.5. I used to try to go 2, but it kind of like I felt my body was like tensing up somehow. I gotta get this. Too much information. And 1.5 is like, it feels normal. Actually makes talking to someone in real life feel slow. It's like, dude, can I press 1.5 on you? Have you speed up. Like my YouTube and Audible. I wonder, I wonder if that's bad for my brain. But it doesn't seem to be affecting me in my actual interactions that I'm engaged with. Just ones that are kind of boring or like, I'll be, I don't know, getting some information from someone. Like, let's speed this up. So how niceness is killing your relationship? Oh, yes, strong language. So let me tell you a couple stories. One is there's a woman that I was dating. I'd already overcome a lot of my fear around social anxiety and was able to approach women and meet them and be bold in that way. But what I hadn't at all scratched the surface of was my excessive ultra niceness. And I had no idea how much that was affecting me. No idea how much that was inhibiting my relationships. And so sure enough, a couple months into this relationship with this woman, I was literally having panic attacks. And we never once had a conversation about where I expressed anything about something I didn't like or about problem or not even an argument, not even a discussion of differing desires, Nothing. So. But anyway, there was a moment. It was the first time that we made love and I don't remember how many dates it was. And I thought she was beautiful. We had a great connection. We loved a lot of the same things. We were kind of enthusiastic and energetic together. I thought she was really sexy. I mean, it was a great, great connection. Right? And we make love and I just remember it feeling. Yeah, you know, you want it to feel like. But instead it felt kind of, you know, that's. There you go. Express that through sound effect. And what it was was not that connected something, you know, it's like we're more connected when we're talking and interacting. And then all of a sudden we have sex and it gets a little distant and weird. And it was many, many years ago. So I can't even put my finger on exactly what the issue was. In fact, that was part of the problem is I couldn't point to something. It just felt off or something. And I remember. I think we did. It was at night or whenever we probably went to bed. And I remember the next morning, we're sitting at my table eating some breakfast that I'd made her. And I wanted to talk about it so bad. I wanted to say, like, hey, how was that for you last night? Something seemed like I felt less connected to you when we were having sex versus when we were talking. Like, what's up with that? Or what's going on? Or how are you feeling during it? Or, I don't know. I wanted to talk about something, but I'd never in my entire life done anything like that. Never talked about sex. Good God. In fact, I had a client this came up with has made me think of this story. And he hadn't talked about sex with his partner. Share more about that in a minute. But I asked him, you know, how come? And he said, well, my family, like, we never ever, ever talked about sexual. And I thought about it. In my family, never, ever, ever, ever talked about sex. It wasn't even like the awkward conversation. My parents, like, tried to talk with me about the birds and the bees or give me a book or anything. It was just their approach was like, that shit's uncomfortable. I don't want to do that. Do you want to do that? No, I don't want to do that. Well, he'll figure it out. He's in middle school. And sure enough I did. Sure enough I did. I figured it out from kids I went to middle school with. I had to figure out what masturbation was from them. Like, his kids talked about it. I remember I got into school in seventh grade is when I started. I went to a new middle school, and all these kids were there. And sure enough, they're talking about jacking off this and that. And I'm like, oh, yeah, totally. I'm in the know. And a nod, like, I know what's going on. But then I had to deduce, like Sherlock Holmes. I had to figure out what the fuck they were talking about. This was the days before. I mean, the Internet had just come around. We dialed up. We used something called Prodigy. Later aol, but dial up service and so there was the Internet. But you didn't just go to the Internet to find information. It wasn't like the hive robot brain that it is now where you want to know something and you're like, why talk to a person when I can just go talk to a machine? It's to going, going to tell me what I need to know. So back then I was like, well, I don't know what they're saying. So I had to keep listening, I had to deduce, what is this? What is this? So called jacking off. Hmm. And you know, I obviously figured I was like touching your penis, like okay. And then you ejaculate, you cum, like what's this? You know, and this is kind of a side note down into sex talk. But I thought I was doing it. I remember I was like this 11 year old kid, 12 year old kid and I'm touching myself in my room and I would get an erection and I'm like, oh, there I am, I'm jacking off. But one day, there was one day when something came out of me and I was like, oh, whoa, that, that's what Carl was talking about. Oh, that's very different. I was not doing that before. So, you know, it's kind of crazy when you think about this and I don't know if this experience, if you relate to this, it's pretty crazy to think about sex. Like arguably the most important thing to the human species, to all life on earth. Not to say that it has to be the most important thing in your day or your life, but in terms of things, you can remove, sports, you could remove from life. I know people would find it horribly tragic if their favorite team didn't exist, but life would go on. Even lots of terms of employment, like if, I don't know, cell phone companies didn't exist. I mean it would be a huge shift to society, but life would go on. You took out sex. That is not going on. Right. It is the thing that we must do to propagate the species and dominate the planet. Dominate it. We're winning at Earth, we're beating all other species having the most sex, but it's the most important thing. And we don't fucking talk about it. We have no understanding of it, no learning about it. And so that was my background. And then I'm, you know, in this, sitting around this kitchen table and there we are and I'm like, I got nothing and I couldn't bring it up. And I felt tense and pent up inside. And then we were, you know, hang out for a little bit, maybe make some polite conversation, and then we part ways for the day. But then we go on to date for months. And what I did not realize is that that was niceness. That was me not wanting to have an uncomfortable conversation. I didn't want to feel uncomfortable. I didn't want her to feel uncomfortable. I don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable. I didn't want to say anything that might hurt her feelings or upset her. Because if I conveyed that maybe I didn't feel as close to her during lovemaking, that's going to somehow hurt her feelings. I can't do that because I can't cause any discomfort in her, any painful emotion in her. And so that's all niceness. That's all approval seeking. When you do that in your life and the result is distance. The results when you don't. When there's something going on for you and you don't talk about it with that person, the result is going to be distance. You're going to create distance from that person. Emotional distance. So when we're sitting there and we're chatting over breakfast, there's a distance there. There's. We're not as close and it's not as exciting as the night before. It's just kind of like. It's a little awkward. It's a little. Hmm. And what's happening there is there's a lack of intimacy. There's a lack of sharing of the truth of what's really happening between you two. And here's the kicker. If you do that enough and you keep that distance, but then you're also in proximity with that person, you're going to start to build something else. Resentment. But if you're a nice guy, like I was, you don't even know you have resentment. You can't have resentment because that's not nice. So what happens? You get panic attacks. You get anxiety. You just get weird emotional things. I don't know what's going on. I'm just anxious. This morning, I remember, yeah, one time I had a panic attack. We were at a park. Talk about this in the book Not Nice. We're at this park, beautiful day in San Francisco, and I walk over this hill to go to the bathroom of the park, and I have a panic attack imagining going back and hanging out with her. I remember waking up one morning before she got up and was like, I have to leave. This was like two in the morning. Like, I have to get out of here. Raw panic. What's Going on? I don't know. But we never had one conflict. And I didn't bring the stuff up with her either. Just total lack of intimacy. So niceness and guess. Oh, by the way, how do you think that relationship ended up? Yeah, it died. Niceness kills your relationships. You tell yourself that you're doing the other person a favor or a service. It's bullshit. You're just not wanting to feel uncomfortable feelings yourself. And you're not doing yourself any favors either. You're hurting you. You're hurting another person. You know what made me think of this is a client I was just speaking with who, you know, was in a relationship of many years and early, and they'd sort of fallen out of having regular sex with each other. But that happened kind of early in the relationship, like a couple years in. But they'd been together many years since and kind of just adapted to it. And I was asking him, like, you know, a couple. Like, when that happened, a couple years in, did you guys talk about it? And he's like, no, not really. And maybe if I'd have had a few drinks, I'd try to bring it up. But it never really seemed to go anywhere, and it got awkward, and so I kind of just dropped it. And when I first heard that, it kind of, like, blew my mind. I was like, what? You didn't. You spent years in this relationship, and it wasn't like, oh, yeah, I have a totally. I'm totally satisfied. It was like, well, I like all these other aspects, so it's okay. I'll just, you know, just settle, basically, and do that for years. And now when I heard that, I was like. It's like steam coming out of my ears. I'm like, are you. What? What? We gotta help you with this, man. This is huge. You can fix this. But after that conversation, I didn't yell at him like that. I just. We talked about ways that he could address this. But after the call, I was like, kind of. My mind blown. Like, how could you not do that? How could you not do that? And then I remember that sitting around that breakfast table with that woman I was dating, and I was like, oh, I know. I know why he didn't do it. I did the same thing because it's uncomfortable, and I haven't built up that discomfort tolerance. And I don't. I didn't really see how it kills the relationship. I didn't really get that at the time. Because if I knew that at the time, it's like, Aziz, either have this conversation with this woman or you guys are done in a couple of months. I would have done it, but I really didn't. When we're in the nice person trance, we kind of, we don't realize. We delude ourselves into thinking that somehow this is going to keep the peace and make everything okay. And it will work. And I can just make it work. And you can, right, because the other person might have a similar level of desire to avoid discomfort, a similar level of niceness. And now both of you are just playing out a comfortable pattern in your relationship. You get to be just like your mom and dad and not talk about things and then not be that satisfied. But you can still stay together because most people are willing to settle and they'll say, well, losing this is too painful, so I'll just take this as it is. And then they have rationalizations. Well, this is just how relationships are, you know, you lose passion over time. You just don't, you know. Yeah, our bodies change. Well, we had kids, so, you know. Yeah, of course. We're just not that attractive. We're old and, you know, whatever stories we have, it's total bullshit. The biggest obstacle to people's passion and connection and relationships is not their appearance. It is not their age, it is not if they have kids or not. The biggest obstacle is lack of intimacy, lack of authentic sharing, lack of being real, lack of having honest conversations. And it doesn't have to be a blowout fight. In fact, it's better if it's an in depth exploration and discussion. But maybe there's differing opinions, maybe it's uncomfortable, maybe someone gets triggered and you have a fight and then you come back and say, wow, what was going on there? But we have to be able to have these conversations. And the nice person in you is like the biggest obstacle to that, says, no, I don't want to. No, that's wrong, no, that's bad. No, how can I do that? And so you don't. And then you're either sustained in that relationship for months or years, and year by year get more and more frustrated or down, or you just find a way to meet your needs outside of the relationship, or you get on antidepressants that don't really work anyway, or you have anxiety issues, or you cope with food or alcohol or other drugs, or you guys watch a shit ton of TV together. You just get home and hang out and watch TV together, watch movies together. That's your main form of connection and intimacy is side by side watching something together. Crazy side note, by the way, I Was doing some research for my book and discovered that. Do you know what the average American TV watching is up to as of 2017? I think it was maybe it's 2018. It's probably 2017. This is mind blowing. Five hours. Five hours of TV. Now, to me, that sounds like a lot, but you might say, well, I don't know, five hours, that's like a football game and maybe a movie. That's not so much. Here's the thing, that's five hours of tv. And when they do this research and they say tv, they mean tv. Now, in this day and age, people, who knows what you're watching? Is it really tv? Is this live tv? That's live tv. That's like cable and stuff. So what about when you watch something on Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime Video, whatever it's called, or you're looking around on your tablet. When you add in tablet, cell phone streaming and tv, do you know what the average American does every day? Take a guess. 10 hours and 39 minutes. Oh, my God, that just hurts. It hurt my soul when I read that one. I was like, oh, we're doomed. We're doomed. Species is done. At least we can make a lot more humans, though, because we're good at having sex, not good at talking about it. So let's shift this, right? Let's have those direct conversations. Let's get fucking uncomfortable and have those conversations. I remember when I really started to find my way out of this nice guy mess was when I joined a men's group. That's when I learned about the whole concept. I thought there was something literally broken in me, why I couldn't have and sustain a relationship. Like, I overcome my fear. I could date, I could ask women out, I could have sex. Like, what? What's. But then I could not sustain anything beyond like a month or two. Why not? I'm broken. That was my theory. It's a good one, right? But I, you know, still wanted to find a solution, even though I. Some part of me thought it was hopeless. And so I joined this men's group. And pretty soon on I learned I'm not broken. I'm just extremely nice. I'm false. I avoid uncomfortable conversations. I present the way that I'm not. I'm not right in myself. I'm not real. I'm not authentic. And that started to open up more potential. But pretty early on I discovered that. And then I also was able to see the truth. That the biggest. You know, you've probably heard something like this like, the biggest conflicts, like, if you think about relationships in general, romantic relationships, like, what do you think are the biggest hot button topics that come up for all relationships? Money and sex. Those are the biggest two. And in laws. In laws, you know, people are married and what to do and how to be around different family members and what to go, where to, for what holiday, and all that says, you know, all that stuff can create a lot of conflict, too. But the big ones are sex and money. And I remember hearing about that and being in the men's group at the time and seeing that play out for different members of the men's group. What conflicts were happening over in the relationship and seeing what caused relationships to fall apart. And I made a decision in there. I don't think I made it consciously, like, I'm going to do this, but it just. It became part of me. And what I started to do after that, somewhere in the middle of that men's group. Well, if everyone. If the relationship. If everyone's fighting about this stuff and no one could talk about it. Well, and it's the cause of the breakup of a lot of relationships. If I want to have an extraordinary relationship, which I do, and I did, I really wanted that, even though I don't think I used that terminology at the time. It was just like, I want to have something that lasts and gets better and is intimate and deeply connected, and I'm really deeply in love and passionate about the person and always want to spend time with them and want more time with them. And I wanted that. And they said, well, if I want that. And one of the biggest obstacles to that is talking about sex and talking about money in a good way. Well, let me learn how to do that. And so I started talking about sex with the women that I was dating. It was uncomfortable, but I did it. I'm gonna talk about sex. I'm going to bring up sex. I'm gonna talk about it before, after. And then when I started dating Candace, we actually. I realized you could even talk about sex during sex. What a concept. So I decided I'm going to do that. And maybe that's a decision that you want to make, too, to really have the life that you want. In fact, let's talk about how to turn this into action. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is to talk about sex or money or whatever is uncomfortable for you. So if you're in a romantic relationship, what's the thing that you kind of. What's the conversation that you've been avoiding? Yeah, that one the one that makes you a little sweaty. Oh, my. That one little uncomfortable in your chest. One that's the one to have. And if you're not in a romantic relationship and you're breathing a sigh of relief like, whew, dodged that bullet. No. What's the conversation you've been needing to have that you've been avoiding in some other relationship in your life? With your dad, with your brother, with your mom, with a colleague, with your boss, with an employee, with a friend? And it doesn't have to be a hor. This is a huge conversation. Listen, I've been avoiding talking about this for 17 years. You're not really my son or whatever. Doesn't have to be something dramatic like that. It could just be. Maybe there's a friend that you've noticed that you tend to be the one who always reaches out to them, and they seem readily enough available to hang out, but they never, ever, ever reach out to you, and you've noticed that, and it kind of bothers you, and you're like, well, geez, you know, what does that mean? Like, I would love if they reached out to me. Sometimes it makes me. I feel like they could really take the friendship or leave it. They don't really want that much time. Have that conversation with them. How do I do that? Oh, my God. Well, start with getting a book called Getting Real by Susan Campbell. I interviewed her for this podcast a couple years back. Now, Susan Campbell's book Getting Real teach you some skills on how to be authentic in your communication in a skillful way. Or you just get in there and start mucking around. You know, hey, I noticed that when. I noticed that when we hang out, it's generally, I've initiated that. Have you noticed that as well? Yeah, I'm curious about that. That's one of the most powerful ways to enter into a conversation is curiosity. Is that what's going on with them? Is that the case for all of their friendships, or is that just with me? I would like to know this. I noticed that I have a desire in the friendship for the other person to initiate as well. And I'm curious, but maybe there's a certain frequency that you want to hang out, and the amount that I initiate is about that frequency. So I reach out to you every two, three weeks, and that's how much you want to hang out. So you don't initiate with me because maybe your life is full and you don't want to spend more than that. What's going on? You just explore. You just talk about it with them. And if you're listening to this and you're like, oh my God, how could I even say something like that? Because what if they do only want to hang out with me every three weeks? Wouldn't they feel bad for saying that? And wouldn't I feel terrible for knowing that? And it's like, no. The more of these conversations you can have, the more you toughen up, the more you can just see people have different desires and there's nothing bad or wrong about you or them. They're just what people want and don't want. And you can explore that and you can talk about that whether it's in your how much you want to hang out with a certain friend or what you want to talk about or what you want to do together or your love life or sex life, what you want, what your money, what you want to spend the money on, how much you want to save, how you feel about money, all these things you want to talk about them, they're just wants and don't wants desires. And it's really not about figuring it all out and getting that person to agree with you. It's just being curious. Who are they? What do they like? What do they want? Who are you? And in that sharing is that intimacy that's created. And then from that comes closeness, passion, sex, deep desire to connect and be with each other. Flow, humor, love, all the good stuff. So just on the other side of that uncomfortable conversation is everything you want. So get out there and have it. Awesome. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com. It.