To be terrible at your social communications there is a way: extreme love! This sort of behavior is motivated by best motivations but ends in a feeling that is as annoying as rudeness.
Extreme love can be seen while we laugh at the CEO’s spoiled jokes or on your first date, when you completely agree with all the things your future partner says or thinks, And praise his/her opinion on every subject or on every books or movies he/she has recently read or seen.
People with extreme love are guilty for 3 sins:
First, they believe they should agree with everything. If someone says that the world is a complete chaos they will immediately nod in agreement as well as if someone else predicts a balance and a utopia in future.
This may seem nice, but is definitely for the lack of care and not listening to the speaker at all.
Second, their praise has an evil purpose. Those who are too loving show an extreme interest in our umbrella, our credit card is from their favorite bank, our chair is beautiful, and … but if their approval do not relate to our understanding of success, none of them will matter to us. Everyone appreciates being praised, but incorrect praise is also a form of insult.
Third, these people’s love is cruelly optimistic. They tell us how good-looking we are, how attractive our job looks like, and how exciting our life is. They want to make us feel good, but the danger of exposing our true personality’s darker side is extremely increasing by their false praise.
People with extreme love are miserably humble. Their guilt is the lack of self-confidence which is the reason of others’ satisfaction. The failure of this type of people teaches us that if we want to be successful in pleasing someone, we must first take the risk that we probably make him/her unhappy by expressing our own nature. True happiness is rooted in the sense of security that we can survive social failure. The best way to make others like us is to believe that in the end it is not a problem if they do not like us. We have to deal with the risk that we may not have any friends. Only then we may have a true chance of finding a real friend.
From the book “On Being Nice” by Alain de Botton
