Just be Nice. For Once.

On Friday night, in a complete rage, I called my mom. The fiancée had failed, completely failed to call churches and get information for the impending wedding ceremony this week after promising to do so. He had tried the weekend before to convince me that getting married in a large, ostentatious catholic cathedral would be a good idea. This caused me to have a complete and total meltdown because I felt he was completely ignoring anything that was important to me in regards to the wedding. After spending two weeks researching reception sites and finding one we both liked, he then nixed that because all of a sudden his priest wasn’t available on the date that the ballroom was available. We yelled at each other. We said nasty things. But in the end we somewhat made peace and he promised to help with the planning. He spoke of making sure what we wanted was in sync and of not just insisting on doing what he wanted. He also promised me that he could call churches in the downtown area and get information. At the end of the week his progress was zero. Nilch. I was livid. The one thing he had promised me he would do to help, he hadn’t made the effort to do. This is where I hung up the phone with the fiancée and called my mother. I knew my mother probably wouldn’t support my anger. But I figured she might have some suggestions on where to go from here. She has made it through over 35 years of marriage and still likes her husband, an amazing feat if you ask me. Her suggestion floored me. She told me to be nice to him when he got home. To make him a nice dinner or to give him a shoulder massage or just do something NICE. I’m not a nice person. My mother once told me that I needed to break up with a boyfriend in college because (her words) “He was just too nice for me”. I did indeed tend to make that boyfriend cry on numerous occasions but that is a story for another time. I’m not good at being nice when I’m angry. I’m not good at being nice when I’m hurt. But after fighting on and off for the last two weeks I was ready to give it a shot. I couldn’t drum up the enthusiasm to give him a massage and he brought dinner home but I did greet him cheerfully. Or well, at least nicely. I even gave him a hug. And you know what? Shockingly, it worked. We got along for the rest of the weekend and had a great time on our trip to the stormy coast. Nice. So not me but worth a try in a pinch…