I do something like this at the intersection closest to my house on occasion. There, two one-way streets cross with the eastbound having right of way and southbound having a stop sign. I’m typically coming home on the eastbound, turn south at the intersection and then take the first available parking space. If there’s a car already on the southbound waiting at the stop sign, I’ll typically stop and wave him through (assuming I can do so safely, i.e. there’s nobody behind me on the eastbound) because I don’t want to make the turn, stop to parallel-park and have the other driver directly behind me, possibly too close, possibly with his headlights on, making my attempt to park more difficult.
This is my co-worker. He’s so deep in his dysfunctional home relationships that even when told straight up that it’s rude to keep “insisting” on something “polite”, he’ll revert back to it within a week. So I’ll constantly get asked a string of “polite” “helpful” things like, “Are you cold? I can close the door. Are you sure? Are you sure?”, “I already know you will say no, but can I get you something at the store? Are you sure? Are you sure?”, “Do you want anything to drink? Are you sure?”, just things that make me wanna scream “I’m not a child, and I am capable of walking four feet to close a damn door if I am cold!”
He doesn’t even recognize it as rude or controlling. He’ll get food for people all the time without asking if they want it, tell everyone going down stairs to watch not to trip, insist on picking things up off the printer to deliver to people even if it takes him longer to sort it out than letting each person go and get their sheets when they’re ready, so on, and so forth. I’ve even explained to him directly that when someone says “Thanks, but I’d prefer you not do that next time.” they mean it and it’s rude to keep persisting after they’ve said that. But he simply doesn’t understand that continuing after that is disrespecting them.
But of course, seeing how he interacts with his adult son, it’s all a way to keep coddling and babying the son into submission by taking away the son’s agency. It’s how this coworker operates in making himself feel better than everyone else. After all, he’s only being polite. The thing is he’s so self-unaware that he doesn’t even recognize this is what he does, and it’s why the reasoning from above bounces right off him. He’s the most insincere person I know. A lot of people whisper to me to ask how I can put up with him.
If 40-60 is the age range of your parents and/or your friends’ parents, it’s most likely more about how people relate to their own children. I find that if anything, people tend to learn as they go through life and are less socially inappropriate than when they were younger, for any given person (unless their addiction etc. has become progressively worse or other specific reason).
“She’s the sort of woman who lives for others—you can always tell the others by their hunted expression.” --C. S. Lewis
That’s also what I thought.
Actually, I came across some of the most ridiculous instances of “aggressively nice” behavior when I was about 20 years old. I guess I was quick to learn how to fend off such situations before they even started. But initially those people freaked me out.
Two people stand out in particular. On the way home from some night classes I would stop at a pub near the school to have some beer and meet new people (preferably young ladies, of course). Once I met this guy who was so good at movies. His cinematographic education was amazing - it was a pleasure to converse with him. He was well dressed and unusually witty and polite. It turned out he took the same subway home, so we walked together, but on the way he prevented me from buying any street food on account of it being unhealthy, he insisted we should give alms to a drunk homeless person whom he moved to a cleaner spot and he eventually became offended when I refused to join him to the gym the next morning. While I was struggling to understand what was wrong with the guy, he called me a contemptible member of the proletarian scum and left. The second aggressively nice person was a massive fellow who could sing Neapolitan songs like Luciano Pavarotti. He knew O Sole mio and Santa Lucia in Italian and it sounded really good. I used to sing in a band in high school, so it didn’t take us long to bond and walk together home. Before we parted, he kept urging that I enroll in this choir where he also activated so that I could boost my musical career. I told him I was not pursuing any musical career anymore. At first he reproached me with my ungratefulness and when he realized I wasn’t going to fall for it he suddenly demanded that I ‘beat it’. He was a stout fellow: tall and fat. One minute he was all but sweet talk and the next he barked at me threateningly. His goodbye words were: “Make sure I won’t run into you again or else I’ll beat the crap out of you.”
This kind of sudden and unpredictable transformations made me wary of new acquaintances and I no longer walked home with guys I had just met. Unless we were in a bigger group, of course, and it didn’t matter.
I once had a dog who was aggressively friendly. Occasionally he’d run across another dog who didn’t have a sense of humor and get into a spat. But mostly he played gently with smaller or weaker animals, including cats, and could roughhouse with any huge dog around.
I’d call him the exact opposite of a bully.
I would not mind any person who behaved that way.