You’re Not Kind, You’re Convenient

With absolute certainty, you know there is that certain type of person who keeps getting taken advantage of, and they can’t quite figure out why. They are smart and not necessarily weak either but they suffer from a lack of boundaries, i.e., they are painfully nice.

Painfully nice isn’t a personality; it is a recognizable pattern

How can they not be? They smile through irritation and say it’s all good, even when it clearly isn’t. If you are nodding already, then I was right: you do know someone like that.

If such a person is you, then I will say with absolute certainty again that you have already met an exploiter, more likely, you have even hosted one. It is a rare people pleaser that hasn’t.

And you will also be interested to learn that the clean, clinical word Psychologists have for this quality of yours is “agreeableness.”

In real life, it manifests as people who hate friction and would rather inconvenience themselves than make things awkward for someone else. Their other qualities, among a host of others, are that they are people who:

give the benefit of the doubt too quickly;
always feel too guilty for saying no;
overexplain their boundaries (if they ever set them)
are helpers/fixers;
are emotional first responders; and
feel good just being needed.

Now, there is nothing bad in being seen as easy to work/be with. The downside comes with thinking your kindness will be returned in kind. Of course, it often is by decent people, but exploiters are not decent people. Exploiters never miss this trait.

Your kindness is an open invitation

You see, to them, those traits are not subtle at all. They are like a shiny beacon that they can spot a mile away. And once they spot extreme agreeableness, they exploit it. Perhaps slowly at first, as is the way of the well-practiced exploiters, then they come in as hard as they possibly can, and your limits be damned.

The most unfortunate thing is that, for extremely agreeable people, they don’t just tolerate being exploited; they enable it. You may not do so intentionally, but when you always avoid conflict at all costs, you teach people that there is no cost. Keep absorbing each and every inconvenience with a smile on your face, and you are only training them to keep on doing what they are doing.

“Avoid conflict at all costs, and you teach people there is no cost.”

Hence, the “chemistry” that exists between agreeable people and exploiters:
agreeable people get their sense of worth from being useful, and exploiters get their sense of power from being indulged.

It is a perfect little arrangement. At least, until the agreeable person starts feeling tired and confused about why the relationships always feel exhausting instead of mutually fulfilling.

Most times, should they finally speak up, they are shocked by the reaction of their exploiter: the exploiter is offended because the agreeable person is now being “difficult all of a sudden.” And technically, they are right because you never seemed to have a problem with their behavior before.

Extreme agreeableness also usually comes with another feature: weak/invisible boundaries. If you are always focused on what others need, you don’t spend much time figuring out what you need, and if you don’t know where your line is, no one else will, or respect it, for that matter.

“The thing is, when you are endlessly understanding, someone else gets endlessly entitled.”

Unfortunately, you don’t help matters much by shying away from negotiating on your own behalf, because you feel rude being assertive and selfish for standing your ground. So you default to cooperation, and exploiters love this because they don’t need to argue with you; they just need to wait.

It is all the better if they can frame their wants as emergencies and necessities, while their irresponsibility is simply a circumstance you need to accommodate. You being “nice”, you probably will. At least till the day comes when you realize the relationship only works when you bend.

Finally, the BIG QUESTION: better communication or disappointment

At this point, we usually ask for what the fix is:
How do we stop being exploited without turning into jerks?
(Even this question tell us a lot, because even now the fear of being disliked still persists.)

Here is the straight up truth: in reality, you won’t stop being exploited by learning magic phrases or communication hacks; you stop being exploited the time you become willing to disappoint people.

That is all there is to it!

Once you begin to say no without apologizing or rushing to explain yourself into acceptability, you will begin to notice a couple of things:

Some will adjust, and these are your healthy relationships, and
Others won’t, because they were merely transactions to begin with.

Of course, a few will declare you have become “difficult,” like you have a personality flaw. You don’t really, because what you really have is a boundary, finally doing what it is supposed to do. Don’t get me wrong, being agreeable isn’t a problem, but agreeable to the point that you believe your value comes from compliance is.

At some point, you have to decide whether being liked is worth being constantly exhausted. Extreme agreeableness doesn’t make you virtuous; it just makes you convenient. However, stop being “convenient,” and you learn where you really stand with people around you really fast. Then you know what’s what and who’s who.