好女孩綜合症(THE NICE GIRL SYNDROME)節選

以下文字引自
http://www.beverlyengel.com/newsletter/june_2008.html

Are you a Nice Girl?
Do people tend to take advantage of your patience, compassion and generosity?
Are you constantly let down because other people don’t treat you as well as you treat them? Do you constantly give others the benefit of the doubt only to be disappointed when they don’t come through?
Do you tend to give other people too many chances?
Is being too nice becoming a burden?

If you answered yes, to some or all of these questions not only are you not alone but you are in the majority. There are millions of other Nice Girls in the world who think and feel exactly as you do. In fact, it is safe to say that every woman has some Nice Girl in her.

Being a Nice Girl doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with morals. Monica Lewinsky was a Nice Girl because she was naïve enough to believe that President Clinton loved her and was actually going to leave Hillary for her. She was a Nice Girl because she put his needs ahead of her own and was willing to continue lying for him, even after they were caught, and because she kept hoping even when it was clear he had dumped her.

Neither does being a Nice Girl necessarily have anything to do with being kind or generous or respectful. Oprah Winfrey is all those things but I don’t believe anyone would describe her as being “nice.” As warm as she is she also sets very clear boundaries, letting people know what she will or will not put up. And she is a person you wouldn’t want to cross.

A Nice Girl is more concerned about what others think of her than she is about what she thinks of herself. Being a Nice Girl means that she is more concerned about others people’s feelings than she is about her own. And it means she is more concerned about giving people the benefit of the doubt than she is about trusting her own perceptions.

Nice Girls tend to be targets for con artists, rapists, and other attackers. Because they tend to be focused outside of themselves—helping others, worrying about not hurting others’ feelings—they don’t focus enough attention on protecting themselves—their feelings and their very safety.

Because they tend to be gullible and to give others the benefit of the doubt Nice Girls are far more likely to be taken advantage of, cheated on, abused, or abandoned by their partners than not-so-nice girls. Cindy suspected that her husband was having an affair for quite some time. He suddenly started having to work late, he was no longer interested in having sex with her, and she even thought she smelled perfume on his shirts when he came home. But each time she confronted him he swore to her that it was not true. He seemed so sincere and so deeply wounded because of her accusations that she always doubted herself. “I decided I was just a suspicious person and that it was unfair for me to accuse him when I had no proof,” she shared with me during her first session. The reason Cindy had begun seeing me? She found out that her husband was, in fact having an affair and that it was only one of a series of many.

Nice Girls are also far more likely to be taken for granted, overworked, underpaid and passed over for promotions than not-so-nice girls. For example, Kendra has been passed over for a promotion two times now. Each time her boss explained that the reason he hadn’t recommended her for a promotion was because he needed her too much where she was. “I just can’t function without you,” he’d tell her. “You’re my right arm.” It felt so good to Kendra to be needed that she didn’t recognize she was being manipulated. And it never occurred to her to ask her boss for a raise since she was so indispensable.