We often use the term Nice Guy® around these here feminist blogs to describe guys who are angry at women, at least the ones they will admit are women because they are the only ones they find sexually attractive, who refrain from giving out sex despite the fact that said Nice Guys® feel they’ve put in the requisite work of putting forth kind behavior, whether phony or at least somewhat sincere. Every single time the phrase is used, some guys—some actually nice but naive, most that eventually show they are Nice Guys®—throw a fit and demand an explanation for why women hate men who are nice. Well, not all women feel the same about any one thing, but women who mock Nice Guys® despise not niceness, but Nice Guyness®.
Thanks to Ampersand, I’ve found this cartoonist who explains why we call Nice Guys® what we do in a simple, easy-to-understand cartoon form. Her name is Leigh, and here they are:
I guarantee you we will still get someone “nice” demanding that we answer him about why women hate Nice Guys®/won’t sleep with him even though he knows how to open a door. It’s like running on a hamster wheel. It really is.
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I thought that whole round-and-round with the “my daughter is my property and I’ll do what I damn well please with her” guy on the other thread was running on a hamster wheel. This is a whole different kind of hell.
You know, looking at this post, I totally understand where you’re coming from. I think it might also have to do with their heightened awareness of “mean guys” who seem to treat their girls like shit, but those are the girls they want for themselves. So even if the Nice Guy wasn’t a direct misogynist, he learns to become one through these observations. I think it takes a little maturation and lots of reprogramming to come out of the Nice Guy phase, because as sarcastic as the name is, it’s still intently relieving them from understanding their roles in the misogyny they perpetuate. Not to say that it’s your role to educate these Nice Guys, but this post is a start.
I believe that the term “nice guy” should be reserved for actual *nice guys*.
Too bad the term is self appropriated by assholes.
I still think a recovery effort should be made.
The 21st century commitment to irony + the tendency of guys like this to sincerely believe they are “nice” and that entitles them, makes the label way too sticky to overcome. And part of the joy of the irony is that Nice Guys® are humor-impaired when thinking about themselves. Which is why the hamster wheel, of course.
“I believe that the term “nice guy” should be reserved for actual *nice guys*.”
…and I’d like the term “liberal” to be reserved for ACTUAL liberals, and not used to label everyone who isn’t a batshit insane Koolaid-drinking wingnut - but that’s not going to happen either…
jose, I don’t really think that’s how it goes…
Nice guys are losers who think that other guys get undeserved sex. Full Stop.
They give the rest of us losers, who, like me, are simply terrible at the dating game/don’t want to put effort into the dating game/don’t get out enough/too shy, whatever the case might be, a bad name.
Not to mention the asshole faction, men and women, who take general decency as something that only losers practice, and nice guyism only encourages them. Which is why I’d love it if someone would plaster NiceGuyTM with a different term.
So dead on. Because to the Nice Guy®, women are pussy vending machines! Give flowers, get pussy! Buy dinner, get pussy! Act like you’re listening when she needs a a friend to talk to, get pussy!
Orson Scott Card gave a speech at Harvard’s sci-fi convention a few weeks back that spent at least twenty minutes on his self-identification as a Nice Guy(r) and the cultural evolution that made women the bitches they are. I nearly puked.
Orson Scott Card gave a speech at Harvard’s sci-fi convention a few weeks back that spent at least twenty minutes on his self-identification as a Nice Guy(r) and the cultural evolution that made women the bitches they are. I nearly puked.
I’ve seen a “good guy” or “actually, truly a good guy” (lower caps) to refer to real nice guys, to distinguish them from Nice Guys. It says what it needs to say without the taint of Nice Guyness.
As a counter-argument, a possible help for jose, and some self-promotion, I re-present this post.
You know how if you’re actually a nice guy and not a Nice Guy®?
…Women actually want to date you.
So dead on. Because to the Nice Guy®, women are pussy vending machines! Give flowers, get pussy! Buy dinner, get pussy! Act like you’re listening when she needs a a friend to talk to, get pussy!
…if the pussy don’t get dispensed, hit the machine.
(And act surprised if you wind up crushed)
Le sigh…. I had a little run-around with an apparent MRA in the Ampersand comments… It’s a predictably fruitless endeavor with him specifically, but hopefully it may give other potential Nice Guys(tm) pause.
shah, I believe Auguste has exactly what I’m aiming at. The development of the process doesn’t just stem from thinking that other guys get undeserved sex. To the contrary, I think there are nice guys who genuinely cheer other guys when they get some too. But it’s not until they look at themselves hard and understand the dynamic they create when they enact the 5-point credo in the aforementioned post that they get their shit together. Plus, calling oneself a loser, NiceGuy or not, enables assholes through and through.
I was a Nice Guy (r) in my college years, I’d say. I was convinced of my own niceness to women, largely by comparison to the other guys we could see all around us who physically or verbally abused women, said despicable misogynist things, etc. I, however, Nice(R) as I was, would never have behaved in such a fashion. I may have imagined women to be less intelligent than me until proven otherwise, I may have expected women to have certain belief sets based on stereotypes, I may have lost respect for women who lowered themselves to sleep with me, and I definitely expected to be rewarded for my non-violence with, if not sex, at least a lot of respect and congratulations and maybe a little sex.
I came out of it, I think, mainly by talking to the other Nice Guys(R). In particular, one of my close friends, who also would never have physically or verbally disrespected a woman. He did, however, expect that this magnanimous commitment would get him all the brownie points and booty, and was mad when it didn’t. I clearly remember him saying, “Man, women just don’t want nice guys! They actually prefer assholes. I’m nice, and I can’t get laid or even get a date. I might as well just be a jerk.” And I though to myself, no dude, it’s because you’re boring and unattractive and your sense that women owe you everything because you don’t threaten them is visible from 10 feet away. And then I thought to myself, you know, it’s pretty much true of me too.
It’s taken a lot of introspection, plus marriage and fatherhood, to really get how far gone I was, and how far so many men are into that hole. And now I get, I really do, why these Nice Guys(R) and MRAs get so fucking fiery on feminist blogs - it’s a guilty conscience, plain and simple. Nothing is quite so furious as a man who suspects, at heart, that he’s wrong.
…if the pussy don’t get dispensed, hit the machine.
BTW, if anyone remembers me asking for advice on this problem earlier, the boyfriend with the ready hands is now very much an ex-boyfriend thenkyewverymuch, and her current is a genuine nice guy, no tm.
She’s fucking it up with him, but that’s her own damned fault and not something I’m going to help her with.
jose, and Auguste…
I don’t really contest with what you guys say, actually, which is a minor part of why I don’t like the term nice guy. The complex is a phase that many people go through, and I’ve always thought we should make a distinction between immature and insecure personalities and tru-blu NiceGuyTM. A genuine Nice Guy can act like a NiceGuyTM, because everyone acts like an asshole sometimes, and bargaining for intimacy via a mechanistic sense is simply a response to whatever anxiety you feel at the moment.
The difference is this. Real Nice Guys will have real women around, and real women (and don’t forget good male friends!) who slap ‘em silly when they’ve had enough of the guy acting like an asshole. They can be happy for others, and they can take criticism, and people feel like they are approachable in many situations.
Real NiceGuysTM, well, they don’t grow out of it because they never really grew into it. Real NiceGuysTM think in mechanistic modes ALL THE TIME, whether that be with prospective love dates or with play dates. They feel entitled to intimacy on their terms, always, and it’s not some kind of momentary autist reaction. That permanent sense of entitlement makes them a pretty classic example of why Envy is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. They feel *diminished* by the well-being of others, which is why they don’t get second dates or happy long term relationships!
It’s not wrong to wish that you had a relationship with a hot person, or to be jealous, or to think that you’d make a better match. Sometimes those feelings makes you act stupid and insensitive, and you can get isolated as a result. However, that happens to almost everyone if not everyone! But it doesn’t last. Decent people will eventually admit that they didn’t act in the wisest of ways, and get back to normal.
NiceGuysTM…They don’t.
Leigh Dragoon’s been getting lots of terrific press for this, which pleases me a lot. Many more people should know about her. Just FYI, she’s currently on the Board of Directors for Friends of Lulu, serving as VP for Public Communications. As a FoL Board Member emeritus, I must say I’m really pleased with the current crop of board members, they’re all real kick-ass feminists!
Shah, I have a question for you:
Why are you so fucking set on using a phrasology that conflates the two.
a “genuine nice guy” isn’t a nice guy. he or she is a nice person.
Because any of the values that one would ascribe to a real nice guy are values that are not fucking gendered.
You’re doing that same thing that people do when talking about maturity and selfishness, and distinguishing a “Real Man” from “guys who claim to be real men.”
As if Courage, Sincerity, Self-Respect, Confidence, Responsibility, Kindness and Gentility are traits you wouldn’t desire or expect of someone because they have a vag.
So, in the interest of de-gendering positive traits, thus making it clear to which you refer, start using the following terms: Nice Person, Adult, and Decent Human Being.
sardonic grin
karpad…
You did notice that the *only* gendered terms I used was Nice Guy and NiceGuyTM? That was intentional. Believe it or not, that little issue you pointed out was *another* reason why I don’t like the term.
Hi, my name is grolby and I’m a former Nice Guy ™. Auguste’s post on the subject is really dead on. Getting out of the Nice Guy hole is a matter of realizing that it is a non-productive and not-actually-nice attitude that has very little to do with women. I eventually realized that my lack of dating success really had everything to do with me. Being exposed along to way (in late high school) to some actual feminists, including a wonderful adult leader who was willing to call me out on my sexist bullshit, was also helpful in gaining perspective on my ideas.
Now, with that knowledge I did not suddenly discover previously unknown skills in becoming intimate (not necessarily a euphemism for sex) with women who I was interested in. In fact, I’m only very slowly gaining the confidence to actually tell my friends when I’m attracted to them, and finding that it’s really not all that difficult. Huh. Who knew? But anyway, the kind of self-realization and maturing that it takes to make that change made involuntary celibacy, well, not FUN or anything… but weirdly, it was more pleasant in many ways to know that it wasn’t the fault of the women in my life, and that if I could figure out how, there just might be something I could do about it. Too bad so many Nice Guys never get there.
Now where does Nice Guy Eddie fit into all of this?
I think now, I sorta want to ask a question…
What role did the sense of entitlement play in your nice-guyism? Was the desire to put women on a pedastal derived from a feeling that you deserved only the best, or what?
What role did the sense of entitlement play in your nice-guyism?
It’s the center.
I knew this one “Nice Guy” typer person who had a huge crush on this mutual friend who was seeing someone. He was creepy; whenever he would kiss her, he’d punch the wall or do something extreme to bring the attention back to him, while at the same time constantly bemoan the fact that girls don’t go for “nice guys” like him. One time I kind of got in his face about how uncomfortable he was making me (the girl kind of used him a lot, so she would never take him to task) the next day on my voice mail he left me this long, tear-filled message thanking me for “opening his eyes” and that from then on he would try to be a “true nice guy.”
Eventually the girl cut off all contact with him. I never got the whole story, but what made her do it was a time in which she was alone in a house with her and he got WAY too forward.
to clarify; The “nice guy” was creepy, as whenever the girl’s boyfriend would kiss her, the “nice guy” would punch the wall real hard.
your sense that women owe you everything because you don’t threaten them
Which is an excellent point about some of the other creepiness behind the Nice Guy(TM). It’s the implied threat: I *could* be an asshole jerk who emotionally and physically abuses you. But I’m not doing that right now. So you should have sex with me.
Heh, I also asked my mother how she felt about NiceGuysTM. It was pretty interesting, as I had to explain what the term describes…
She initially stated that most guys are NiceGuys, and that everybody tends to have a barter attitude about sex. Thus, if she had a daughter, she would make sure that said daughter did not accept anything from men she wasn’t interested in…
After talking about it some more, she decided that I was talking about a subset of “most guys” something like a person who pursues this line of thought to more of an extreme than most guys…
I’m working around this issue with more curiosity because I seem to have a different opinion than some here, so I wanted to work things out in my head a bit more. I tend to think of these guys (the people I’ve known in real life) as potentially dangerous and sneaky assholes because they never really accepted the fact that other people had a point of view, or that everyone had their own circumstances and things along those lines. Such people can be dangerous because they concoct these passive and not so passive-aggressive revenges based on who you were and to level some percieved advantage in their heads.
NiceGuysTM of the variety I think of correlate pretty closely to the people in MRA and NRA and people who fanatically believe that Affirmative Action discriminates against white people. They just seem harmless because they aren’t overtly abusive.
In other words, genuine assholes. People like Auguste and the other “recovering NiceGuysTM” seem like normal people who went through normal people troubles and came out the person they always were.
It makes me really think what it is like for a parent to think of something their children is doing, and reassure themselves, well, “It’s a Phase”. And whether some parents keep reciting that mantra long after everyone knows the child is rotten inside.
Elly: Is the text of the speech or a longer summary, available online anywhere?
The complex is a phase that many people go through, and I’ve always thought we should make a distinction between immature and insecure personalities and tru-blu NiceGuyTM.
I think that most guys in this society go through at least a brief Nice Guy phase. Most of the men I know did, and my husband says that he did, too. But very few of them stayed Nice Guys past the age of 25 or so because they grew up and realized they were being idiots. Only a select few go on to become true Nice Guys(TM).
As the parent of a not-always-perfectly-behaved-boy I think that you’re setting up a false dichotomy here. The capacity for good and for evil is in each and every one of us. I can not dismiss his misbehaviour as a phase, which I need not worry about nor can I attribute it to innate rottoness which I can do nothing about. Either path is abdicating my responsibility. It is my job to help the good in him win the battle with the bad in him. I think that the division between the rotten to the core “nice guys” and the recovered “nice guys” is not inevitable. The recovered, in different circumstances, could have turned rotten and the rotten, given the right guidance, might have recovered.
Heh, it’s not only guys, too. I went through a bit of a Nice Girl(tm) stage.
Granted, if you took a checklist of allllll the stereotypically masculine traits, and matched them against Falyne-isms, you’d have a much, much higher correlation than with stereotypically feminine traits.
I’m a Comp Sci gamer with no domestic skills (except food, I like food), admittedly minimally-sufficient-hygience unless I bother, and I grew up spending an incredibly disproportionate amount of time in scifi books and computer games, leading to a teenagely-stunted (college-expanding) level of peer-group social skills (I always got along great with superficial adult interactions).
Granted, most of my high-school-pathologies were of the “My life is worthless since I probably can’t live up to Mara Jade or Alexander the Great” variety, but they often had the subtext of “Well, at least I’m better than the rest of these sheep since I actually realize our lives are all worthless, while they’re just sheeple”, which kinda turned into a seedling form of the same sort of pride and entitlement. Except I didn’t have the framework of misogyny to project my inadequacy onto, so I wound up just fantasizing how maybe I really *would* be Alexander the Great Redux, since it was my destiny and those things should really just come to me.
If I did have that framework, though? Yeah, that probably would’ve been me in High School, too.
ah, the joys of being superficially shallow.
Which is an excellent point about some of the other creepiness behind the Nice Guy(TM). It’s the implied threat: I *could* be an asshole jerk who emotionally and physically abuses you. But I’m not doing that right now. So you should have sex with me.
Yup. It’s revealing when you look at what they’re saying from the bottom up.
“If I can’t get pussy by being a nice guy, I might as well be an asshole” translates very accurately into “The only thing that keeps me from being an asshole is that right now I’m getting my way”, which is an admission that you *are* an asshole.
It reminds me of the guy I knew who once said “If you just say yes, I won’t force you to have sex.”
When the threat stops being enough, these guys will go with the violence. And that, to my mind, is reason enough to stay the hell away from Nice Guys.
At least there seems to be growing awareness of this phenomenon. I haven’t read it myself, but apparently there was a book released in Sweden last year called “We Who Never Said ‘Whore’”, whore being the catch-all slut/bitch word in Swedish. I read an interview with the male author who said he’d gotten some negative feedback by people who thought it was a typical Nice Guy(r) defense book without reading it, and that he should probably have named it “We Who Never Said ‘Whore’ (But Thought It a Lot More Often)”.
I really do need to read that when I come back home.
If my dog can’t figure something out, she will just sit and bark at it. And so does the nice guy who can’t figure out how other guys are able to attract women.
Don’t know if I know all the vagaries of ‘niceguy-ness’ or whether I do or ever would have qualified as one. The general sense I see is how hung up someone is on women reciprocating their ‘nice’ behavior.
w/e. My general guide for interpersonal behavior, applicable to relations between the sexes as much as anywhere else, is this. Treat everyone with as much courtesy as you can muster. If you’re indifferent to that person, at least it reflects well on you with others. (and if you actively dislike or are hostile towards that person, courtesy becomes all the more important. No sense in giving them a ‘tell’.) If you don’t get or won’t get whatever it is that you want out of any relationship, then let your investment of time and attention in that person reflect that, and move on. Nothing ever wrong with the phrase “Well then, enjoy your evening.”
Mighty Ponygirl
I’m not sure I think that it’s strictly true that either genuinely nice guys are always pursued romantically by women or that women always romantically pursue genuinely nice guys. I mean, I think that it helps, and certainly doesn’t hurt, but I’m not sure I’d say everyone who has trouble with dating is an asshole. (Same applies to genuinely nice gals, of course — generally, they’ll be more attractive to men, but there are genuinely nice gals who have trouble dating successfully.)
Don’t know if I know all the vagaries of ‘niceguy-ness’ or whether I do or ever would have qualified as one. The general sense I see is how hung up someone is on women reciprocating their ‘nice’ behavior.
w/e. My general guide for interpersonal behavior, applicable to relations between the sexes as much as anywhere else, is this. Treat everyone with as much courtesy as you can muster. If you’re indifferent to that person, at least it reflects well on you with others. (and if you actively dislike or are hostile towards that person, courtesy becomes all the more important. No sense in giving them a ‘tell’.) If you don’t get or won’t get whatever it is that you want out of any relationship, then let your investment of time and attention in that person reflect that, and move on. Nothing ever wrong with the phrase “Well then, enjoy your evening.”
I think that most guys in this society go through at least a brief Nice Guy phase. Most of the men I know did, and my husband says that he did, too. But very few of them stayed Nice Guys past the age of 25 or so because they grew up and realized they were being idiots. Only a select few go on to become true Nice Guys(TM).
to one degree or another, absolutely. There’s a reason so many people (men) get defensive in this particular discussion: It’s very much a there but for the grace of god scenario.
I never really had such a phase, but I carry a lot of the earmarks of a typical NGTM. I was (and to some degree still am) socially awkward. I do have a fair dose of narcissism and occasionally find myself thinking how much wonderful X would be if the world listened to me. More importantly, I spent most of my time in adolescence hanging out with other socially awkward narcissists. More than a couple of my old friends from school turned into Nice Guys(TM), and there really isn’t much you can do aside from telling them it’s creepy, why it’s creepy, and refusing to hang out with them.
I was, however, blessed with a pretty strong emotional intelligence which came with a strong emotional education from my parents. “You are responsible for your own actions” and “Other people have feelings too goddamnit,” Kantian Nihilism aside, is probably the reason I’m an actual decent human being instead of a NGTM.
but I ramble in the wee hours.
There’s one more aspect to the Nice Guy ™ phenomenon that hasn’t yet been mentioned in this thread: “One woman rejected me, therefore all women are bitches.” There’s definitely a generalization step involved.
Is this really a thread about Nice Guys (R) that hasn’t had someone come on here and try to defend the practice of being Nice (R)?
This must be a first!
I see that two more former Nice Guys(R) revealed their past here. I think I did the same some two years ago.
The things that finally released me from it:
1) Realization of error/double standard (pussy is not a right to be given in exchange for good behavior - ya know on this score I find it really interesting since women are supposed to give it up for the Nice Guy (R) but if memory serves the Nice Guy (R) doesn’t have to give it up for a woman who lusts after him…. I, at least, was that way)
2) Realization of the right of women to lead, follow, take charge, hang back. Realization of my own cowardice. Shame
3) Having a strong woman take charge in a relationship and call me on my bullshit (eventually dumping my lame ass).
The learning process for my part was slow and painful. I am not conisdered to be stupid by anyone I know.
This leaves me with hope for Nice Guys (R), but the hope is kept in check by the realization of how difficult this process was for me.
I should also point out that somehow I had missed the awesome post from Auguste. Thanks for the repost.
For other former Nice Guys (R) out there who struggle with one or more Nice Guys (R) in the office, at school or whereever - don’t ever give em my writing just use Auguste’s fine post linked above.
It’s really fantastic.
I should also point out that somehow I had missed the awesome post from Auguste. Thanks for the repost.
For other former Nice Guys (R) out there who struggle with one or more Nice Guys (R) in the office, at school or whereever - don’t ever give em my writing just use Auguste’s fine post linked above.
It’s really fantastic.
One other thing for the Nice Guys(R): get a cat. Take care of the cat. The cat will do three things if you let it.
1) Relax you enough after dates to make you not try to figure out where she told you no and how that pisses you off.
2) Help you relate to long term single women with cats.
3) Get your mind off your silly narcissistic self.
Every step that helps you relate to other living things is helpful.
“There’s one more aspect to the Nice Guy ™ phenomenon that hasn’t yet been mentioned in this thread: “One woman rejected me, therefore all women are bitches.” There’s definitely a generalization step involved.”
Isn’t that pretty much the same dynamic that has pussy as an entitlement? The idea that all women are interchangeable, that it is only the surface detailing, especially hotness or doability, that distinguishes one from another?
I treated one woman a particular way, or watched a friend treat a woman a particular way, and pussy resulted. Therefore it should always work. So when it doesn’t, it must be her fault, right?
Julian: A good personality is always going to attract people over sheer whining entitlement. It might be that the particular woman he desperately wants doesn’t find a genuinely nice guy attractive, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t women who want to be with him.
…however, pining away for one unavailable and unattainable woman while you ignore very real, interesting women whose only flaw is that they aren’t her is actually symptomatic of Nice Guy(R)-ism because it points back to that sense of entitlement.
Isn’t this just due to lack of social sophistication? They’re being manipulated by their male peers (and I guess by their partners who seem to be complicit) into thinking misogyny is advantageous.
Also, some boys don’t understand flirting. They think it’s an invitation and get confused and frustrated when they find out it isn’t. Isn’t education and, if you can spare it, pity the answer here? And by education, I mean direct statements not hints and implications.
Also, don’t some women get a kick out of having men traipse after them? Or is that exclusively a vile delusion sustained by the corrupting power of the patriarchy?
me: Damaged people of both genders enjoy having interested people on a string. No gender holds the monopoly on that phenomenon.
Pity the poor misogynists?
Nice Guys ™ think flirting is an invitation (to sex?) because they think they’re entitled to pussy for not being violent jerks. They are confused and frustrated, but it’s not because they find out phony niceness doesn’t entitle them to pussy. They still think it entitles them to pussy; that’s the problem.
And re: education, this post (and ones like it) are not exactly beating around the bush. You say you want directness but clearly you’re put off by it.
What does your second post have to do with anything?
The thing about Nice Guys(tm) is they only count gorgeous women when they think about “women” as a whole. They don’t even realize that shy, maybe dorky women who don’t look like models even exist.
They don’t even consider the fact that plenty of women pine after men who never look in their direction or give them the time of day. Oh, no… it’s only men who suffer unrequited love.
Or you could just be nice and unattractive.
One of the things that kept me as a Nice Guy(tm) for so long was the cultural narrative that women aren’t physically attracted to men (i.e., sex is about access to wealth and power, or about “reflected” romantic interest, or some such nonsense), so there *must* be some other reason I wasn’t able to form non-platonic relationships.
Except that sometimes, that *is* the case, especially if “be with” has a sexual component to it. What makes someone a Nice Guy(TM) is that, when this happens, he decides that it’s something that’s wrong with the particular people who “should” be attracted to him.
jfpbookworm: unattractive men can still be found attractive if they’ve got a good personality. I’ve dated short, bald guys with hairy backs because they’ve made me laugh.
I’m not exactly a supermodel myself, but if the guy in question doesn’t feel like he’s entitled to one, there’s nothing stopping him from hooking up with someone, even if he isn’t hunky.
Oh, Jesus Christ - it’s like hearing my asshole former self. I’m pretty sure I’ve uttered those exact words, probably more than once…
Thankfully, my friends (both male and female) were genuine enough to call me out on that bullshit. Repeatedly. I think I’m over it now. I bloody hope so…
Don’t forget the line, “Women only like men who are rich, that’s why I can’t get a date”. A NiceGuyTM will blame everything but his own rotten personality and sense of entitlement.
One women = all women. We are interchangeable, just holes with breasts.
Elly said:
Not terribly surprising. Think of the major female characters in Ender’s Game - you have the one that broke down because of stress when Ender needed her most and you have the brilliant older sister, who nonetheless does everything her older brother says, setting him up for greatness.
I liked Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, but the guy can’t write a female character who exists for the purpose of anything except moving the male characters along.
Well, in a sense, that’s what I’m talking about. Given the way that we as a society talk about sex and relationships, it’s pretty easy for a lot of young men to go through a Nice Guy “stage,” in my opinion, most particularly those of us who were more socially awkward and nervous around people we’re attracted to. I don’t think that it’s a good thing, but it’s not as big a deal when you’re talking about people who you don’t expect to have reached maturity in their emotional development - like teenagers, especially young teens. And like I said, I think that it’s pretty normal. The difference is, some of us grow the fuck up. Many clearly do not.
I’m reminded of an open mic that was held around these parts back in November. One particular guy went up there with an electric guitar and “sang” (I use the term loosely) a whole lot of off-key, really bad couplets about this woman that he was pining over. And of course, they’re ‘friends,’ though he wants her real bad, and of course he hears all about her romantic failures and is whining about how he appreciates her so much more than those creepy jerks she dates, who do things like take her to Vermont or whatever, and if she would smarten up and stop fucking up, she would realize that she should be with him and everything would be great. Blah blah blah.
I think that’s really the prototypical Nice Guy: desperately pining for a woman who has him stuck in the so-called “friend zone,” yet who he doesn’t seem to have any respect for whatsoever. Gee, he sounds SO much more appealing than the other guy. And of course, it’s never even occurred to him that, if he’s interested, he should frickin’ well ask her if she’s interested too instead of assuming she’ll pick up his subtle signals (y’know, holding the door, listening attentively) that he wants sex by osmosis and whining when she somehow doesn’t get the message.
It’s incredibly ironic in cases where it might be that the woman involved is indeed making poor relationship choices - but the Nice Guy notices and points these things out only for entirely selfish, self-aggrandizing reasons, not because he genuinely gives a fuck about the well-being and happiness of his supposed friend, but because he thinks that she should be giving HIM the pussy, not those other jerks. I think that’s failing a fundamental test for whether you are really suitable relationship material, not to mention a big fat F on being genuinely “nice.” To say nothing of the fact that a Nice Guy whining about the poor relationship decisions of a woman he’s interested in needs to step back and remove the log from his eye before saying something about the spec in hers (I may be an atheist, but DAMN is that pithy!)
I just wanted to say that I suspect this is a very common defense/coping mechanism for kids growing up as nerdy outcasts. When practically no one in your peer group will validate you, what else can you do? I definitely went through a similar sort of “well, I’m just better than they are,” period in my life. To my eventually pulling out of it and developing halfway decent social skills for most situations, I credit good parenting and my receptiveness to said parenting. That, and the fact that I’m better than all the sheeple
.
grolby — this is why Ayn Rand is so popular with high schoolers.
I am impressed by the sheer sense of entitlement and thickheadedness involved in the dynamics at play in Nice Guyness and the recovery from it. Are men in general so fucked up that it’s *really* such a huge revelation when they realize that women are people with thoughts and feelings that should be/are independent from male desires?
I think this comment dovetails nicely with a few things other commenters have said and also points to another step in getting over Nice Guy(tm)-ism.
Being a Nice Guy(tm) and trying to date women (or even men, for that matter) who are assholes/manipulative/unhealthy aren’t mutually exclusive. Sometimes both apply at the same time. So getting past Nice Guy(ism) not only means getting over one’s own sense of entitlement, but, as a corollary, knowing how to handle situations in which the object of one’s desire has some clear issues him/herself. Usually that means realizing there’s a problem, disengaging, and moving on. That looks obvious, but when you’ve been steeped in one way of doing things, it takes some work to unlearn that.
A couple of thoughts on this:
1. I don’t think the Nice Guy(tm) phenomenon is indicative of some sort of essential fucked-upness on the part of men generally. I think it’s a case of internal emotional issues (such as self-esteem, etc., that many of us have) combined with certain cultural messages about relationships that get processed in such a way that these men learn the wrong lessons.
2. I suspect that Nice Guys(tm) actually do understand that women are people with their own thoughts and feelings, but they tend to abstract this understanding and, due to their own issues, have trouble applying this in their own specific interactions with women.
#17, PR: Thanks for the update. We rarely hear about women who survive abuse and move on and are perfectly normal, which gives victim-blamers room to say women seek out abuse because they’re masochists.
I’m not so sure, Linnaeus, that NiceGuysTM realize that women are people with their own thoughts and feelings. Before I wised up and came out, I dated a lot of NiceGuysTN and I heard, repeatedly, how I was supposed to act and think and look. I’d start to feel completely invisible to them as a real person. I wasn’t able to articulate that yet but I knew there was something wrong and inevitably dumped their sorry *sses.
Perhaps they saw me a person, but I certainly less real than they were.
What role did the sense of entitlement play in your nice-guyism? Was the desire to put women on a pedastal derived from a feeling that you deserved only the best, or what?
For me it was the sense that I was so much smarter than everybody else around me, and that therefore an appropriate match would be someone who was so much smarter as well, whereby “smarter” meant “not having made a single mistake, ever, and immediately seeing what a great guy I was.”
So, yeah, entitlement. Two-fold entitlement - the idea that I could just nice myself into bed with a woman, and the idea that she had to be perfect or was beneath me.
Perhaps, BadKitty, there’s some kind of gradient or spectrum with respect to Nice Guy(tm)-ism, and it’s worse in some guys than others.
What I was getting at when I talked about abstracting women’s personhood is that even Nice Guys(tm) would say that they do care about women’s feelings (indeed, they would say that’s the hallmark of being a Nice Guy(tm)), but there’s a disconnect between that belief and actual practice in relationships.
In my experience, they care about a woman’s feelings so long as they don’t inconvenience them. And they should be able to change a woman’s feelings by buying them flowers. Or apologizing, even if they have no idea what they’re apologizing for. They just figure that if they say, “I’m sorry”, the woman should stop being angry at them.
If they really cared about a woman’s feelings, they wouldn’t continue to mope/ harass / stalk a woman who isn’t interested in them.
I think it’s more that if a woman’s feelings aren’t what he thinks they should be, it’s her fault, the crazy bitch.
I think that’s the same thing, U in P. Either way, it breaks down into not seeing the woman as an independent, free-thinking person.
An oldie for your reading enjoyment(?)
In my experience, they care about a woman’s feelings so long as they don’t inconvenience them.
Nah, I don’t think that’s the same thing. Caring would imply having an interest in what they are, which I don’t think occurs often if at all.
In my experience, they simply tell you what your feelings should be, and won’t brook dissent, as they know better than you.
I had a great time with these guys telling them “gee, i’m sorry, but frankly i’m shallow and you just don’t do it for me,” at which point they’d have a brief (and enormously amusing) moment of utter confusion, then declare that I must not be a ‘real woman.’
I hate this thought, but I can’t help maintaining that the brain does not work properly in high school. I remember trying desperately to think logically about daily life, and my thoughts careening way off course into a land of fleshy nonsense the minute anything female-related came up. There was no logic, only drooling imbecility. My wife says she was creeped out by boys her age when she was a teenager, and I always tell her she had very good reason to be. Blame it on the patriarchy or whatever, but it happened despite my best efforts to be a thinking human.
As has been pointed out, there are those who weather that period and grow up and those who remain stuck in adolescence, a condition reinforced by mainstream male gender roles.
Amanda’s earlier post about the soldier sequence in “28 Days Later” was very accurate. Those who cannot get female attention often assume that force or subterfuge is the only way to bring it about, despite abundant evidence that women direct their attention quite readily at partners of their choice.
Nonetheless, the media is stuffed to bursting with myths about “snaring” mates and tricking people into relationships, either from the male or female POV. To get to the truth, one must climb an ever-growing mountain of false information, and it can take many years if you make it at all.
Charles: I love the cat-ownership idea of curing Nice Guys. I do think living with a cat does something positive to humans.
Re entitlement: As a child and young woman, I would constantly get told by my mother to never accept any gift of value, and never accept favours that seriously inconvenienced the granter. It may seem a bit extreme, but only now do I understand some potential Nice Guys that came my way were quite flummoxed by my attitude. People who genuinely liked me, wanted to do me a favour took it in their stride, but I think some Nice Guys felt thwarted.
Note this was a different country than the one I live in now, patriarchial and classist. Extreme measures were sometimes in order to protect oneself from arseholes.
Are men in general so fucked up that it’s *really* such a huge revelation when they realize that women are people with thoughts and feelings that should be/are independent from male desires?
Most boys and men are still taught from a young age that they don’t have any real feelings other than anger. They’re taught over and over again to tamp down their emotions and ignore them in favor of abstract “logic.” Not to mention that they are taught to loathe and fear anything that makes them “like a girl,” to the point where they refuse to watch movies or read books with female protagonists.
So, no, I’m not surprised at all. The way we raise boys in this society is deeply fucked up, and has improved only slightly. My niece comes home from first grade and tells me all of the things that the boys tell her she can’t do, because she’s a girl and only boys can do that.
Well, they do have an interest if the woman isn’t “in the mood”. It’s not they’re interested in why the woman is feeling a certain way. If they could stop the woman from being angry or crying, she’d have sex with them so they randomly try different things, apologizing, giving them flowers, trying to convince her that her feelings are stupid or wrong, etc.
Sort of like tilting and smacking the vending machine until the candy bar drops out. “Stupid thing isn’t working right….. maybe it needs some flowers or a piece of jewelry….”
I think it’s a little more like the typical small child (or clueless) who knows the words but hasn’t really grasped what they mean. “You mean the fact that you’re a person with your own desires and interests means you won’t always agree with me, and won’t always conform to my image of you? BUT WHY NOT?!?!?!”
One of the things that’s come up mostly by implication here is the way that NiceGuys(tm) seem completely clueless about women’s sexual and interpersonal agency. The closest they get to understanding it is in a bad way, when they complain about women (yes, all women everywhere, at all times) preferring jerks, which at least has a superficial aspect of the women in question making a choice. But then as soon as it’s translated to “be a jerk, get laid” it’s back to the transactional thing of what a man can do to get a woman to do what he wants.
Which brings me to another crucial part of the entitlement NiceGuys(tm) feel, namely the entitlement to be the pursuer, to pick their prey out of the herd blah blah blah. I know that one of the distinguishing features of my NiceGuy(tm) phase was that the very fact that a woman appeared to be interested in me on her own initiative was a definite sign that something must be wrong with her, and that I should go on vainly pursuing someone uninterested and unattainable.
Those who cannot get female attention often assume that force or subterfuge is the only way to bring it about, despite abundant evidence that women direct their attention quite readily at partners of their choice.
When G. and I were talking about this last night, he said he still wonders about the eternal question: why do women date assholes?
I gave several reasons, but one of the big ones is that, if he’s an asshole up front, at least you know what you’re getting. You don’t find out six months in that he’s a passive-aggressive jerk who resents being asked to stop off for milk on the way home. Better to know right off the bat that he’s a selfish, entitled idiot than to find out when you get really sick and he suddenly disappears from your life.
Also, mnemosyne, some assholes are hot. So women date them for the same reason some men date attractive women with terrible personalities.
Oddly, assholes who are up front about it are (in my own experience) far less likely to start acting REALLY creepy and entitled. Mostly, when you break up with them, they just leave. You don’t get the 2am phone calls threatening suicide and (once) telling me that I was going to get back together with him and it was going to be “an open relationship on one side! MY side!” I laughed at him and hung up….but then I locked my door.
‘they only count gorgeous women when they think about “women” as a whole. They don’t even realize that shy, maybe dorky women who don’t look like models even exist.’
They realize they exist…they (as in the guys) are just insecure because they see women as “trophies they want to be seen with,” or even from a genetic/evolutionary standpoint they may want their children to be super-good-looking, perhaps even because they don’t want the kids to go through the same things they are going through (it ignores how the things a kid will go through are largely independent of their parents; it’s akin to vicariously living through your kid’s sporting accomplishments but worse on several levels.) I also suspect that a lot of guys think that women care minimally about looks, if at all (or rather, “should” follow that modicum from what they’ve learned.)
As for why some guys keep trying to come back to the same woman who doesn’t want sex, etc. from them, I suspect they are over-reading-into studies like the one about how only something like 20% of married couples were attracted to each other when they first met (not sure if that’s the exact number.) And you can’t tell them to “move on from someone” because they (wrongly) think they have nothing/no one to move on to.
Those here who have pointed out their parents’ role in helping prevent this stuff are right on; a lot of this starts when these guys don’t reciprocate in proper relationships with their mothers at a young age (or sometimes vice versa) and develop the early seeds of a lack of respect for women, or if they see negative relationships between their father and mother/daughter, father TRIES to pass this kind of mentality onto them, etc.
I have no idea if he turned out to be Nice Guy or not, but I vividly remember one of my college dorm mates going into a major depression when he realized that Playboy centerfolds were starting to average his age and below. Having “read” the magazine for years, he had managed somehow to take it for granted that all he had to do was become old enough and they would be throwing themselves at him. Old enough in this case being 19 and in college.
I do think living with a cat does something positive to humans.
Totally. A cat will like you if he likes you. No amount of petting or sweet-talking or squeaky toys will make him like you if he’s not inclined to. Those things help your cause only if he’s interested in the first place. Object lesson for Nice Guys.
I vividly remember one of my college dorm mates going into a major depression when he realized that Playboy centerfolds were starting to average his age and below.
Wow. I wouldn’t know what to think of that if I didn’t remember how mind-bendingly irrational some people can become in college, if only briefly. It’s like being away from home and having to take care of your own emotions for the first time makes some brains shut down entirely.
I’m a guy, fercryinoutloud, and I understood what a Nice Guy (R) was ere I first encountered the phrase. This specimen causes no direct offense to me, as a male — that is to say, he wants nothing from me but to commiserate — yet I’ve still been exposed to his whining. Firsthand. Ad nauseum.
I’ve learned here that women tend to perceive passive aggression in this dude, whereas I’ve always seen a pathetic weenie… I’ll admit that I almost sympathize with the Nice Guy (R), or pity him, more accurately. Lots of us were borderline Nice Guys when we were still boys of about 16 years — I’m so sensitive and soulful, why can’t girls see that? — but outgrew it fast.
In fact, I’m not proud to say that the Nice Guy (R) arouses a cruel streak in me. So while I might take exception to out-and-out male-bashing (very little of which transpires here), I laugh with untrammeled glee when the Nice Guy (R) gets unfairly, cruelly and implacably savaged.
I am a horrible human being probably. Oh well.
One of the things that kept me as a Nice Guy(tm) for so long was the cultural narrative that women aren’t physically attracted to men (i.e., sex is about access to wealth and power, or about “reflected” romantic interest, or some such nonsense), so there *must* be some other reason I wasn’t able to form non-platonic relationships.
Really shows how we’re in a male-dominated society, honestly. Men are told that any guy can get laid by who he wants if he does A, B, and C. Women are told it’s all your looks, and while there’s some work that can be done in that department, it’s pretty cut and dry if you got it or don’t. You are a passive thing, in any case.
When G. and I were talking about this last night, he said he still wonders about the eternal question: why do women date assholes?
In my experience there’s also the high possibility that the other guy’s not actually an asshole at all. When a NiceGuy® is hanging around a woman with the sole purpose of getting in her pants — he can often mistake normal levels of relationship friction and grousing as validation of his opinion that HE is the right guy for her.
It’s also worth noting that Nice Guys® are the target audience for those pick-up artist books. They tell guys, “You’ve been nice for so long and it’s gotten you nothing, so now it’s time to go out there and be an asshole to every woman you meet, because you’re bound to stumble across a few that have low self-esteem you can exploit for sex.” It’s a revenge fantasy, except of course that the revenge is being acted on Woman X, who didn’t do anything to the Nice Guy® in revenge for rejection by Woman Y. A couple of fallacies are at stake—1) all women are the exact same woman and b) being rejected is a grievous personal harm that necessitates revenge, instead of just part of life.
Since when are short, bald guys with hairy backs unattractive, or is it that their underlying high levels of testosterone is so off-putting? I guess this explains the universal appeal of Fabio. But guys would never criticize a similarly hormonally-blessed woman the same way: “She was so tall, so busty, with such a round bottom I almost didn’t ask her out at first. But she’s so funny with such a good personality I decided to overlook her flaws.”
[/tongue-in-cheek mode]
It’s also worth noting that Nice Guys® are the target audience for those pick-up artist books.
Women are attracted to confident guys who can make them laugh, and these books teach shy (and thus self-focused) hesitant guys how to “fake it till they make it.” The guys would much rather that women would take the initiative, and that is actually how several nerdy guys I know met their wives.
I had a couple friends in college who were Nice Guys ™. They didn’t aim it at me, thank God, but I got really tired of hearing them. They had pretty low self-esteem. Mostly, they just couldn’t deal with a woman telling them that she frankly wasn’t interested in dating them. I dropped my friendship with one guy when he vandalized her car after seeing her with someone else, when she’d turned him down for a date. Because that’s where the mentality takes you. That girl was mine by rights, he thought, so he lashed out.
I think everyone feels like this a little bit when they get rejected — “Why not me? I would love you better than him/her!” But most people get over it, and come to realize that the object of their affections just doesn’t feel the same way about them.
I wouldn’t date a Nice Guy ™. I might have in high school, but not now. They’re too needy. In return for “niceness,” they expect you to be endlessly sweet and pliable. You’re their goddess, but they expect you to grant them everything they want — and they expect you to be exactly what they imagine you are, to be the fantasy character they have built up in their heads.
The guy I did date in high school was not so much a Nice Guy ™, but he did have the goddess thing going on. He used to tell me “That’s not very Caroline-ish” whenever I wore, said, or did something he didn’t approve of. Of course it was, by definition, since I was the one doing it — but it wasn’t what he thought I should be.
Er, the “everyone feels like this a little bit” was NOT meant to refer to violently lashing out. I rewrote that first paragraph after writing the second, and realized the transition says something I didn’t intend. What “everyone feels like” is just the “But I’m a good person, what’s wrong with meeee?” whine that starts off Nice Guy-dom.
The guys would much rather that women would take the initiative
I have never seen any sign of this in my experience. They tended to be kind of frightened when hit on and then, again (this is a pattern with me) decide that I was some sort of freakish non-woman and thus not someone they wanted to date, turn me down, and go back to mooning over someone appropriately feminine, withdrawn, and unattainable.
I’m not actually horribly ugly, either. Probably about a 6/10. So that’s not the reason.
I spent a lot of time with Nice Guys™ in college. Not because they were after me (except in one perplexing instance), but because they were after my roommate and quizzed me endlessly in an effort to figure out what exactly it was that would get her to notice them.
Oh, she noticed them, all right. She noticed they were creepy, and that they were following her around. But she had a great deal of social conditioning telling her she couldn’t just be a bitch to them to make them go away. And none of them had done anything outright awful. Not yet, at any rate. But the resentment was palpable. Neither she nor I knew how to deal with the simmering resentment behind a just-wanna-be-your-friend facade.
Yeah, I agree: they may say they want to have a woman do the initiating, but they tend to freak out when it actually happens.
Absolutely. Can we call it “Jessie’s Girl” syndrome?
he said he still wonders about the eternal question: why do women date assholes?
Tell him it’s for the same reason he hasn’t stopped beating his wife.
jfpbookworm: unattractive men can still be found attractive if they’ve got a good personality. I’ve dated short, bald guys with hairy backs because they’ve made me laugh.
Sure, “if” they’ve got a good personality, but it’s also possible to be both physically unattractive and dull as dirt without being an asshole or a Nice Guy ™. Heck, that’d probably be true even if we threw “stupid” into the mix, although you’d think natural selection would have weeded out that particular phenotype by now.
I have never seen any sign of this in my experience. They tended to be kind of frightened when hit on and then, again (this is a pattern with me) decide that I was some sort of freakish non-woman and thus not someone they wanted to date, turn me down, and go back to mooning over someone appropriately feminine, withdrawn, and unattainable.
I suppose it might be because the relevant issue isn’t that you’re hitting on them, but that in doing so you’re bucking social norms as they currently stand. If every woman acted that way, it might be a comfort to an insecure man, but if only one does, she’s being different, and if there’s anything even more threatening to the insecure than having to take the initiative it’s probably nonconformity.
Could be. I’d always taken the “why don’t women ever take the initiative” thing as more personal than a societal criticism. But that makes sense I guess.
Women are attracted to confident guys who can make them laugh, and these books teach shy (and thus self-focused) hesitant guys how to “fake it till they make it.”
Agreed. The philosophy these books offer is usually considerably more effective - not just at fooling women into sleeping with you, but in actually meeting women in a genuine way - than what Nice Guys grew up learning: “be nice enough and she’ll sleep with you in return.”
We can call it whatever you want — if you will get that song out of my head…
aaarrghhhh!!!!
Uh, I am his wife. G. is my husband. I probably should have made that clear.
*I* certainly got scared whenever women have showed initiative before. Sometimes I’m just clueless… The no initiative thing part, that’s just the being lazy part. I’ve since resolved to be openly interested in women I’m interested in. It’s not like I ever was subtle enough to hide it anyways.
I remember one girl saying “I’ve got tickets to go see Martin Lawrence.”, with the implication that I might want to come, and I was like all pedantic…”I’m hard of hearing, and comedy is hard for me to understand and enjoy.” I’ve since kicked myself for not really handling that better.
As far as NiceGuyismTM goes, I guess I have been that at some point or other, sorta, but my social reality was such that I never really got a chance to be very entitled. I wore hearing aids (which akin to the Pushing Daisies quote, was an effective birth control device), I was somewhat overweight, I was a black nerd in a preppy white school, and I was generally thought of as handsome and (I think) likeable…roll that all up with the fact that I wasn’t very interested in appearances or sex until *very* late made for a big bowl of wierd.
Still a wierdo
Just a blogkeeping note: I think the title of this post broke the RSS feed. I know from personal experience that using HTML entities in post titles tends to cause Blogsome’s RSS feed to barf.
I still think the “fake it till you make it” approach is bullshit. If you can’t attract someone on your own merits, quit trying to bullshit them. Do the hard work and improve yourself instead of trying to put up a false front.
@ Elly: If there’s a link to that speech, I’d like to see it. I’ve been reading the Ender series recently and as much as I like some of it, there is way too much stuff that makes me want to throttle Orson Scott Card. I swear, every women in his books, no matter how intelligent they start out, ends up either a raging lunatic or the loving mother with eight children. And the more I read, the more I’m convinced that Ender and Miro are the ultimate “Nice Guys”, and that Card thinks this is something to aspire to. It’s disgusting.
Card is a complete wackaloon.
Do the hard work and improve yourself instead of trying to put up a false front.
“Fake it till you make it” doesn’t mean “bullshit people”. It means act appropriately, even if you don’t feel it inside; don’t sit around and wait to develop a massive ego before you allow yourself to behave as though you have self-confidence. That sort of thing.
I was with a Nice Girl(TM) for a spell in my college days. I had been single for over half a year after my fiancee had broken it off and at the time was pretty lonely/bored. With that being said, though…sometimes solo barhopping was just solo barhopping, for sake of enjoying a scene and/or figuring out where I was going with my life over a few drinks.
I was, though, OK when this Nice Girl(TM) came along and expected me to be her pet/arm candy/fuckbuddy just because she was the only one who was flirting with me at the bar (like I was looking for it by virtue of being alone). I was also OK when she freaked the fuck out and acted betrayed when she’d catch me with a friend who happened to be female. Nice Girl(TM) went apeshit enough to strip half-naked and dance on top of a crowded bar just to make me jealous. At the time, it was amusing. Some four years later it…is still amusing.
And that’s really the long and short of my experience with Nice Girl(TM). Her thinking I owed her something = Amusing. Her digging me despite my ambivalence, chalked up mostly to her desperation = Amusing. The way she thought she was “breaking it off” with me = Amusing. A vague ambivalence overall, still amusing. Not worth ultimately giving a crap about, though maybe once breaking out a smile at the lunacy of it all.
So I guess thanks to the patriarchy for making it easy to shrug it off.
Are men in general so fucked up that it’s *really* such a huge revelation when they realize that women are people with thoughts and feelings that should be/are independent from male desires?
Not so much “fucked up” as immature and focused on their own (natural) desire for Teh Pussy. If you’re frustrated and desperate for Teh Pussy, it can really get in the way of noticing that the Bearer Of Teh Pussy happens to be, well, a person.
The epitome of this are the NLP Speed Seduction dickheads - they seem to see women as some sort of black box that will put out if only they get the right combination of inputs, like a friggin’ video game special fighting combo or something.
#17, PR: Thanks for the update. We rarely hear about women who survive abuse and move on and are perfectly normal, which gives victim-blamers room to say women seek out abuse because they’re masochists.
Mmm - I’m reluctant to call it abuse, given that she might have been giving as well as getting - and she certainly didn’t see herself as a victim, thank god. But it was a toxic situation and going down-hill, he was bigger and stronger than her, and I’m glad she let me help her get into a new place. She’s still going to fuck-up this new relationship due to youth and stupidty, but there’s not much you can do about those attributes without reengineering the human species.
“Do the hard work and improve yourself instead of trying to put up a false front.”
Remember, this is America…land of the quick fix and instant gratification.
(Although I suppose you can’t “wait around until after you’re improved” if you’re headed out to meet people NOW, headed to a club for the night NOW, headed out on vacation NOW, etc.)
shah8- You don’t seem that weird to me
{blushes}
Hm. During that spring I mentioned, I had this incredibly shy, incredibly dorky girl I was nuts over kick me to the curb. Because it had really, really been a while, I started going Nice Guy(TM) on another girl who was pretty much out of my league. For a while, she mostly tolerated me.
And then we got to know each other, fell in love, and got married. My wife is the most brilliant person I know, and I only got to realize this because I was a lame, self-centered prick.
Many methods to make a world.
“So I guess thanks to the patriarchy for making it easy to shrug it off.”
Yes, you are enjoying a level of entitlement in that scenario because you’re male. You were able to “laugh off” your Nice Girl, so why can’t we women simply laugh off our Nice Guys and just get over ourselves, isn’t that what you’re suggesting? What if the Nice Guy in question calls you incessantly and follows you home at night because he bought you dinner one time and now you owe him your attention? I guess I should’ve just laughed at him. That would’ve really solved my problem.
One other thing for the Nice Guys(R): get a cat. Take care of the cat.
Oh, REALLY clever idea, Einstein. The little furry bastards are already crafting our evolution in order to maintain their position as parasites on us, and now you want to systematically expose our species’ last remaining pool of uncorrupted members to their manipulations?
Single men of the world, I implore you - resist this attack! The fate of humanity depends on you remaining free of the wiles of our feline overlords!
Another defining feature of the Nice Guy® is the utter seriousness with which he goes about his quest. Nobody who takes anything as seriously as the Nice Guy® does his quest for romantic/sexual consummation could possibly be having much fun with it. Having some latent Nice Guy-ness of my own, what keeps me buoyed is my good-humored acceptance of everyone else’s right to be as fucked-up as I know I am. It means not expecting the world to stand still and make sense even while I’m free to be as inscrutable and unaccountable as I like. Above all, it means accepting each woman’s right to be as complex as she wants (or can’t help), without demanding that she make things easy for me.
Another thing worth mentioning is the Underdog Complex. A Nice Guy® can’t accept the role that whimsy plays in dating behavior, and thus assumes that getting a date is much more of a trap-laden obstacle course than it really is, behaving accordingly.
The thing about Nice Guys(tm) is they only count gorgeous women when they think about “women” as a whole. They don’t even realize that shy, maybe dorky women who don’t look like models even exist.
Yes, yes, yes. The thing that distinguishes Nice Guys(tm) is their outsized sense of entitlement. “I am male and Nice(tm)! That ENTITLES me to a hot supermodel with a PhD in philosophy who will give me blowjobs every night and breakfast in bed every morning!” Meanwhile, ordinary women might as well not exist, and the Nice Guy(tm) can go on whiiiining about how women don’t want to date him because he’s so niiiiiiiiiiiice.
I will venture to speculate that 95% of the men who get “mail order brides” from whatever poverty-stricken country, which allegedly is teeming with hot and submissive women (often willing to marry much older men), are Nice Guys(tm) with that mammoth sense of entitlement that impels them to purchase a woman who (allegedly) “fits” their “requirements.”
And yes, Nice Gals(tm) do exist. Maureen Dowd is a prime exemplar of this type. Only Nice Gals tend to think they are entitled to a super-successful man of a particular religion and race, and then wail that they can’t get dates because no-one wants to date smart women (or older women). Perhaps we should call them Smart Gals(tm); “men don’t like smart women!” often has the same ring as “women don’t like nice guys!” to my ears.
Fake it ’til you make it is not what pick-up artists teach. They have a bunch of rules that primarily center around expressing contempt for women, on the theory that if you put her down, she’ll sleep with you for aspirational reasons. I’ve definitely had guys try to pull this strategy on me. It doesn’t work on me, but I can see how it could work on someone with low self-esteem and a habit of feeling like she does have to prove herself to everyone who challenges her. I suspect such women are in low numbers, though, so PUA tactics work, I suspect, as a numbers game. Guys feel up to hitting on more women not because the tactics are as effective as normal people tactics (being complimentary, seeking common ground), but because it gives them an excuse to express misogyny and feel better than their marks, giving them a jolt of confidence at the expense of women.
I have not read a lot about “nice guys” prior to this post. It occurs to me that my ex was very much one of these guys.
His M.O was coming off all sweet and gentle, and acting as though women would not find him attractive. I think this worked over and over (and in fact I think it likely worked with the woman he is dating now).
In the end he turned abusive and assaulted me. He denied doing this and claimed he was the victim (I was out to ruin his life!). See, women ARE all bitches. I can only assume he used this poor me shtick on his latest GF (should I say victim?)
Chet made an interesting point in response to the role-of-entitlement question upthread that reminds me of a possible related facet of Nice Guyism:
Both my younger sister and I have run into this problem once each.
We met brilliant men who thought they deserved equally brilliant women. However, in both cases there was a conflict in the man between wanting an equally brilliant woman to show off and being uncomfortable with a partner of equal intelligence. My sister’s ex even admitted after they broke up that he was uncomfortable not having the upper hand intellectually. With my ex, I could see this excruciating push-pull: “is she smart enough? Is she too smart?” that resulted in alternating challenges and jealous put-downs.
Is this a facet of Nice Guy-ism, or a separate affliction? Not to go OT, but if it’s separate, I think it needs a name…
Please note: Chet’s idea is just a jumping-off point for mine; I am in no way speculating that Chet ever felt this way himself and he gives no indication that he has.
rules that primarily center around expressing contempt for women, on the theory that if you put her down, she’ll sleep with you for aspirational reasons
Yuck. Putdowns are supposed to be playful, flirtatious banter, not part of some psychodrama. “Amanda, you have beautiful eyes, beautiful lips — hey, what’s that stuck between your teeth?” is meant to be surprising and funny. You make it should like the guy wants to hear, “Ralph, you are my superior — take me to bed and have your way with me.”
You make it sound.
Need more coffee.
“Amanda, you have beautiful eyes, beautiful lips — hey, what’s that stuck between your teeth?”
Sexy.
I’m with Junk Science on this one, Hector. Those playful put-downs don’t strike me as sexy, and they are neither surprising nor funny, especially not when you get to the nonillionth one (which happens by about age 17).
Of course, Hector, you may be making the point that it’s a misguided attempt to be funny, in which case, right on, I totally agree!
Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner, Ph.D says, “What is flirtation but a series of teases?”
Teasing isn’t fun or amusing coming from strangers. Teasing is something for your friends to do, because you already know they like you, and they know enough about you to be specific in their teasing. A stranger assuming the kind of intimacy that teasing requires is creepy and off-putting. It’s as weird as putting your arm around someone you don’t know.
skm–The issue of intelligence of two partners has been discussed here (pretty recently, maybe a month or two; I’ll dig up the thread if you want) and it’s a different one altogether, but the “thought they deserved” means it’sskm–The issue of intelligence of two partners has been discussed here (pretty recently, maybe a month or two,) and it’s a different one altogether, but the “thought they deserved” means it’s also connected to this.
I was sort of the opposite when I was younger in terms of “having the upper hand”–if I was talking to girls I liked in high school, I actually tried to hold back in trying to flaunt my intelligence unless I was asked about it because I thought that I wouldn’t have a prayer if I came across as “too nerdy,” or that I’d come across as arrogant if I did show it. (At the same time, because I was a nerd who was at best average-looking and average athletically, my mind also pulled me in the other direction saying that I had to be openly proud of it because I was more wanting in other departments.)
Before that I did have somewhat of a uncomfortable element like you mentioned for those who were smarter than me (and I always had stiff competition, lots of 1400+ SAT scores at my school every year, and everyone went straight to college, mostly finishing in 4-5 years) but it fizzled away and completely swung the opposite direction… also connected to this.
Gah, I got lazy and mis-copied-and-pasted when I had to refresh the first time, resulting in the double first paragraph.
I had the utter misfortune of having a NiceGuy(TM) as a co-worker. He knew I was married, and he admitted that he had a girlfriend, but he never missed a chance to tell me that he was “a nice guy”, and I should leave my husband to be with him. When he found out that my husband was being deployed overseas, he flat out told me that he hoped my husband DIED so that I would be free to hook up with him.
Stuck me as something a true sociopath might say.
Single men of the world, I implore you - resist this attack! The fate of humanity depends on you remaining free of the wiles of our feline overlords!
Off-topic … but the cat-hating BH is determined to maintain the facade of Lord and Master…even as our last three rescues have been of his doing, and somehow never made it into the “placement catagory. The Lord and Master decreed that these “sorry” cases were a waste of time, and better left to annoy him in the workshop.
They have a bunch of rules that primarily center around expressing contempt for women, on the theory that if you put her down, she’ll sleep with you for aspirational reasons.
Are you talking about the “neg”? Because, based on what I saw on the TV show with that dreadful Mystery, that’s not how it works at all.
The “neg”, as I saw it, was simply the natural response to the fact that if you go up to a woman and tell her “omg, you’re so hot, I’m really interested in you” 100% of them are going to think you’re creepy.
Because it is creepy to show that kind of interest in someone with no prologue.
Now, I grant that most of the dumbass PUA-wannabes are likely to pull it off completely wrong, and come off with something cruel and assholish, but that’s more of a function of the kind of guy that needs the help of a PUA in the first place, not an indictment of the idea that your first conversation with a romantic interest shouldn’t be about how attractive and great you find them.
I suspect such women are in low numbers, though, so PUA tactics work, I suspect, as a numbers game.
Probably any tactic works as a numbers game, which is why so much of the PUA angle is simply talking to as many different women as possible, whenever you have the chance.
But the idea that you should be interesting, so that people will find you interesting, it’s hard to see that as anything but a marked improvement - at least for the rest of us - on “do things for a woman and she’ll basically have to sleep with you.”
My guess is that many of the guys who are tried the pick-up strategies have tried to legitimately become interesting, or find common ground or being complimentary as also mentioned above, and may have even tried to make themselves better-looking, etc. and are still failing with all of those. Any number of conclusions can be drawn from this (not doing well enough with trying the other things, talking to the wrong people, etc.)
Either that or, again, they’re just doing it because they want a quick solution as opposed to spending lots of time developing as a person.
It’s interesting that pick up came up. I’ve noticed much less trolling on blogs in general in the last few months. I thought it was mostlly better spam filters, more active moderation.
Maybe there are fewer trolls because they’re practicing pickup instead of playing on the interwebs.
And negs are a tiny part of pickup, quite a bit focuses on self-improvement, building rapport, changing physically to be more desirable.
Mighty Ponygirl:
You know how if you’re actually a nice guy and not a Nice Guy®?
…Women actually want to date you.
I’ve got to disagree with you for some reasons:
1. There are plenty of reasons why non-Nice Guy men, or for that matter non-Nice Girl women, don’t get dates. Shyness is one, as is living in a small town where most of the people are either kids or are married adults. Or, of course, there’s the whole thing about being happy and single.
2. Thus, to say that their lack of ability to date makes them Nice® is just not a good thing to do and is right out innaccurate. Niceness® as we understand it means that one feels entitled to a relationship as a result of not being a total jerk.
3. Furthermore, the situation you suggest doesn’t really encourage people to avoid being the Nice Guy®; it still goes back to the idea of being “nice” to score a girlfriend. Yeah, supposedly being “truly nice” would be different, but if a person is only nice in order to find a mate (even if they succeed at this better than the Nice Guys®), then maybe, just maybe, their motives aren’t all that good to begin with.
4. Nice Guyness® does work sometimes at getting men girlfriends, unfortunately. But…
5. Being a Nice Guy® should be avoided not because doing so will help a guy get dates, but because having a respectful attitude towards women is the right thing to do.
Sorry for the rant, and I don’t intend to put words in your mouth. I just felt that I should dissent on this matter.
instead of spending lots of time developing as a person.
True. I hear the Dalai Lama is a chick magnet.
junkscience and SKM: you two are obviously serious, intense people. To get to know you better, I would not waste your time with banter or overfamiliarity. Instead, I would suggest a day of volunteer activity, like performing household maintenance chores for elderly people. I am good at painting and faucet replacement. Then we would stop for a cup of shade grown organic Fair Trade coffee, dutch treat of course.
I second Ben’s motion, for the record.
Basing one’s self-worth or self-talk on how attractive women routinely find us is kind of what gets many men into Nice GuyTMism in the first place.
junkscience and SKM: you two are obviously serious, intense people.
If you described me that way to anyone who had ever met me, they would wonder if you were talking about the same person. I have very little tolerance for false intimacy from overbearing strangers, but there’s not much that’s serious or intense in the way I interact with people I know.
“Why do all women want to date assholes?”
“Is that guy who scored that hot chick you want really an asshole, or are you just bitter because he’s not you?”
1) Women DON’T like assholes. You are just calling any man who gets the poon you want an asshole because you are sad and bitter.
2) Thanks to a quirk of genetics that gave me an exterior that gets me a lot of that attention, I learned FAST that a man who’s playing “Nice Guy” is one millisecond away from wanting me dead. I dislike dealing with people who want me dead.
Nice Guys are like that freaky cokehead at the party who is desperate to score some blow. His pupils are the size of dinner plates, and he’s picking imaginary scabs off his scalp, chewing his fingernails until they bleed, and acting like a desperate, nervously giggling best friend to anyone he thinks might have some coke on them.
Substitute “Nice Guy” for “cokehead” and “pussy” for “blow,” and you get the idea of what being at most college get-togethers was for me.
I have very little tolerance for false intimacy from overbearing strangers
While I would never want to violate anyone’s privacy, now I’m curious how junkscience met her most recent (or any previous) boyfriend, i.e. how he progressed from stranger to intimate acquaintance. (I don’t mean to exhibit het privilege, I’m deducing from participating in this thread that men are appropriate partners for js and skm.)
Tell him it’s for the same reason he hasn’t stopped beating his wife.
Uh, I am his wife. G. is my husband. I probably should have made that clear.
I don’t know why you think you should have. Surely both of you are familiar with the good old “when did you stop beating your wife” bit, or, in its modern incarnation, the good old “why do women date assholes” bit. If not only does he know that he does not beat his wife, but he knows that you know, on account of you ARE his wife, then the point will percolate through his brain all the quicker.
Hector, there is nothing more uncomfortable & off-putting than someone who displays inappropriate familiarity - people I’ve just met who assume a closeness between us that does not actually exist.
I don’t know if it’s a male privilege thing on your part; I don’t know.
But as far as I can tell, women don’t appreciate that sort of thing. I know I don’t. It’s really creepy.
Amanda,
I’m a social conservative, oppose the feminist movement on abortion, use the masculine pronoun all the time, and prefer the term “mankind” to “humankind,” but I agree completely with your description of the Nice Guy(R). Nice Guys are boring as hell, needy, dull, and that is why they don’t get the girl.
The Nice Guy is not always the conservative who doesn’t get why the girl goes for the “meathead” who “treats her bad” when he would “treat her nice”. The Nice Guy is often the emasculated feminist man who thinks by going on NOW rallies women will like him.
Women want a man who sparks the fire, like Sam from cheers. He was probably a bit sexist, Diane was very feminist, but she still counldnt help wanting Sam.
I agree with SarahMC and Junk Science that assuming an easy familiarity with a stranger is creepy. I think one reason is just that it’s presumptuous, but on a more serious note (since apparently I am serious and intense, nyuk nyuk) there are some people who use familiarity to test personal boundaries. They keep pushing until you push back. Consciously or not, they are looking for someone who doesn’t feel entitled to set limits. Yes, it is a small minority, but they cause a hell of a lot of trouble.
I met my current long-term partner (6 years) just by striking up a conversation in the bar of a restaurant where I was with some friends, shockingly enough. No negs, no teasing. Plenty of jokesand humor though, which are entirely different.
And Junk Science, I too am pretty sure that “serious” or “intense” would be fairly far down the list of descriptive adjectives that friends would apply to me. They’re good adjectives, though.
Hector, there is nothing more uncomfortable & off-putting than someone who displays inappropriate familiarity - people I’ve just met who assume a closeness between us that does not actually exist.
But I wonder if there’s a bit of confirmation bias here. I mean, surely the people who attempted to secure an easy familiarity and failed came off as creepy, but the people who tried with you and succeeded - aren’t you simply more likely to remember those instances as someone who “clicked with you” or who had “chemistry” or who was “friendly” or some such?
I mean it’s hard for me to believe that every single one of your friendships began with an air of rigid standoffishness.
No negs, no teasing. Plenty of jokesand humor though, which are entirely different.
No negs? You’re sure? The reason that I ask is that I had a watershed moment watching that stupid PUA show; I realized that I had negged my wife, just a bit, when we first met - just by instinct, I dunno.
But the funny thing is, she completely disagrees. Which makes me think that the thing about the successful “neg” is that when you do it right, it doesn’t seem that negative at all.
AF: You seriously live your life based on TV?
I hate to break it to you, but … the Starship Enterprise didn’t really exist.
Women want a man who sparks the fire, like Sam from cheers.
And God knows crushing, boorish oppression is a real panty-peeler.
I’m curious how junkscience met her most recent (or any previous) boyfriend, i.e. how he progressed from stranger to intimate acquaintance.
The last relationship I had, we started out spending time with a group of mutual friends, and got to know each other gradually. We teased each other mercilessly once we got to know each other, but it was on a level somewhat more intimate than “you have spinach in your teeth.” When we didn’t know each other, we assumed pleasant friendliness until we did. There really isn’t a sharp divide between cold standoffishness and creepy overfamiliarity.
the people who tried with you and succeeded - aren’t you simply more likely to remember those instances as someone who “clicked with you” or who had “chemistry” or who was “friendly” or some such?
It’s not about “trying.” When there’s chemistry, it’s there, and it’s not something that can be forced. If you don’t have chemistry with someone, you don’t, and it’s not a failure on your part to try hard enough. I didn’t get this until I actually met people I had chemistry with, and then I didn’t have time to think of the next thing that was going to come out of my mouth before it did.
It’s not about “trying.” When there’s chemistry, it’s there, and it’s not something that can be forced.
How would you know, though?
I don’t understand how you could live as a teenager - and experience an education in how to interact with people - and not come to the conclusion that you can consciously learn to interact with people in a certain way.
I mean, you’ve never heard of salespeople?
The Nice Guy is often the emasculated feminist man who thinks by going on NOW rallies women will like him.
Feminist men don’t go to NOW rallies to get women to like them. They go to NOW rallies because they care about human rights and recognize women as human beings who deserve their help. A man who goes to a NOW rally to get women to like him is a failed misogynist. He watched all the ’70s sitcoms that told him being a sexist, insecure overcompensating boor would get you pussy, and it didn’t get him any, so now he’s decided to try to score himself some pussy another way. He’s spineless by nature, and doesn’t really believe in anything except his own loneliness and desire for pussy. He decided that since misogyny didn’t help him, feminism will. He’s not necessarily politically conservative or liberal, because nothing outside himself means much to him. He’s a misogynist, of course, but because he resents women personally, not because resenting women is his driving political ideology.
I get that from girls too, so it’s not exclusively a male privilege thing. But admittedly, I get that more from males than females.
The most awful part is, after you’ve spent a lot of time explaining WHY it’s inappropriate, they just don’t get it. >_
after you’ve spent a lot of time explaining WHY it’s inappropriate, they just don’t get it.
I see the deal now. If you don’t have the situational awareness to realize that your attempts at flirting are creeping the other person out, don’t even try. It’s like insisting on dancing a polka when a waltz is playing.
A man who goes to a NOW rally to get women to like him is a failed misogynist.
A similar creepy story: I worked with a middle-aged single guy who would ostentatiously read Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus in the cafeteria to make women think he was sensitive. He also studied massage and would keep a folding table in the back of his car, in case he had a chance to use his magic hands.
Chet, that is a false dichotomy. There’s a whole lot between being overly familiar with strangers and being stand-offish with strangers.
Maybe you’re not sure what we mean by overly familiar?
[quote]But I wonder if there’s a bit of confirmation bias here. I mean, surely the people who attempted to secure an easy familiarity and failed came off as creepy, but the people who tried with you and succeeded - aren’t you simply more likely to remember those instances as someone who “clicked with you” or who had “chemistry” or who was “friendly” or some such?[/quote]
The men who are good at it aren’t NiceGuys ™, though, are they? Once you actually succeed at getting pussy via conscious manipulation, haven’t you moved on to Overt Asshole-ishness?
[quote]I mean it’s hard for me to believe that every single one of your friendships began with an air of rigid standoffishness.[/quote]
There’s a lot of perfectly appropriate and endearing behavior between overfamiliarity and rigid standoffishness that you’re not acknowledging.
How would you know, though?
I don’t understand how you could live as a teenager - and experience an education in how to interact with people - and not come to the conclusion that you can consciously learn to interact with people in a certain way.
I did come to that conclusion, actually, and it caused me a lot of confusion and unhappiness when I realized how many of my interactions were forced and uncomfortable on my part. I couldn’t talk to another person without consciously wondering if I was saying the “right” thing. I’m not good at acting or concealing my emotions, so I had even less “success” with this method of interaction than I think most people would. When I learned to stop thinking I could control other people’s behavior through my own, and that there was a “right” way to interact with people to make them like me, it was like the clouds opened up.
I know I’m late, but…
I’m not sure whether this was intended ironically, but I have more than one first-hand report from friends that the Dalai Lama has an awesome sense of humor and an amazing way of putting people at ease that would more than likely make that untrue were he not committed to celibacy.Bah– where are my words when I need them?
True that he would be a “chick magnet” — not untrue.
Re: Bald and Hairy
Prime Minister Trudeau was balding, and Dr.McCoy was very hairy, but women love them because of who they are.
When I first saw a picture of Trudeau in history class, when I was younger, I thought he was rather plain…but when I listened to his speeches and reforms, well colour me a fangirl and everything he does is sexy.
…and it really depends, normally, I don’t like hairy guys, but I actually like the hairy arms look on Dr.McCoy. Warm and cuddly.
Maybe you’re not sure what we mean by overly familiar?
Could be, I guess. What I think you mean is “somebody trying to act friendly and familiar and failing at it in a way that makes it appear forced.”
Which, to my mind, leaves a middle ground - “faking” the chemistry in such a way that the recipient doesn’t realize its being faked.
“You can’t fake it” doesn’t seem to be a supportable statement, when, by definition, a successful fake is indistinguishable from the real thing.
“You can’t fake it” doesn’t seem to be a supportable statement, when, by definition, a successful fake is indistinguishable from the real thing.
Maybe a better statement would be “You shouldn’t fake it,” because you’re probably going to fail at it. Usually when you think you’ve succeeded, it’s because there was something real between you and the other person. Besides, if all you can do is successfully fake it, then you’re probably not going to be happy with your relationships in the long run.
Really, I don’t see what’s wrong with the “technique” of talking to someone and getting to know them, instead of trying to play games or act fake. It’s a lot less tiring, for one thing.
Ben:
…Because women are totally incapable of noticing a quiet, shy man. Because women are completely unable to initiate conversation when they are attracted to someone who is shy.
As for the small town or being happy and single, those are totally external problems unrelated to the man’s personality, those have to do with either desire or population, and have no bearing on whether or not his “nice guy” status is what’s keeping him single.
Their lack of ability to date is absolutely accurate. Women don’t want to date whining entitled assholes.
Wow. So, trying to point out that genuinely nice guys are actually quite attractive to women whereas men who are only playing at being Nice so that they can hopefully guilt trip a woman into a date are assholes encourages the latter HOW?
Yeah, she’s dating him, but she’s probably just desperate and doesn’t want to be alone. She probably doesn’t want to be dating him.
Uh, yes. And if you get that, women tend to find you more attractive as a person. Cart before the horse much?
You completely missed the point of my comment. The point wasn’t if you just “fake it better” you’ll get dates. Unless you feel that men can’t genuinely respect and value women, and all interactions are just some shade of deception, in which case you’re not qualified to discuss this matter.
I find this topic very interesting and I feel compelled to contribute something in spite of the fear of fucking up any valid points I might have.
I don’t think I’m a “nice guy (r)” or a nice guy. I’m sure a Venn Diagram has some overlap of both. I had a roommate in college that seemed to cycle through women all the time. Hell, I was his “accountant” helping him remember who he slept with.
I’m not sure if this is part of the standard “nice guy (r)” ritual but my experience was started with a fixation or crush on a select few women and then a lame pursuit that could stretch on for *years*. Simply talking about “I should really ask her out” could take a long time before it was actually done - An embarassingly incompetent or cliche attempt at getting their attention inevitably followed by rejection.
“Why do I feel this way?” “What am I doing wrong?”
Alcoholism/self medicating/self punishment “God you’re stupid.” ensues.
Initially when this was happening I didn’t see my interest or motivation as sexual but more like a naive tween looking for a bff of the opposite sex or something.
Anyway. I think a possible way to break this “nice guy” cycle is somehow get over rejection and simply keep going and going and going until you find mutual genuine interest rather than focus on a few people that really aren’t and hope that through “niceness” you hope to “earn” something.
However, I’m finding to my dismay as I’m growing older that I’m growing even less confident with socialization and navigating flirting, dating, and so forth. Maybe I really never knew how. Anytime I think of asking someone out I start feeling like “Woody” from one of those Coronet series of educational films from the 40s and 50s.
Golly whillickers…
Anyway…I think “Pussy Vending Machine” would make a great band name. I can see the cover art of kittens inside a claw game and inside the jewel case is a disturbing H.R. Giger (-esque) revision.
Chet, that’s not the sort of behavior I’m talking about.
The “too familiar” I’m talking about isn’t forced friendliness, but sincere presumption - the presumption that we’re already friends, that there is a familiarity between us that does not, in fact, exist.
Although it’s not a romantic scenario, my downstairs neighbor is the perfect example.
He’s probably about 40 years older than I am, and lives alone, like I do. We share a front porch.
When I moved in, he was already living downstairs. Right off the bat, he sort of assumed a familiarity with me that made me really uncomfortable.
Like, insisting upon lighting my cigarette for me when we’d both be outside smoking.
Like taking my hand to kiss it when I’d say something he approved of (when he learned I’m left-leaning politically, for instance).
Like acting huffy if I didn’t stop to chat if I passed him in the hall.
Like aggressively inviting me to have some of the stew he made for dinner.
I am just your neighbor, I’d be thinking. We don’t know each other well.
Some men exhibit the same type of behaviors in bars and other places where men & women meet.
Really, I don’t see what’s wrong with the “technique” of talking to someone and getting to know them, instead of trying to play games or act fake.
“Talking” is all very well and good, but what are you going to talk about? What are you going to say?
If you’ve never been the kind of guy who could have used the help of a PUA - or anybody at all for that matter - on the “dating scene”, you may not understand what a conundrum that represents. Hell, I’m married partly because the idea of just walking up to someone and starting to talk to them is fundamentally the most terrifying thing I can imagine having to do in the course of a regular day. And apart from what a great person my wife is, the single largest benefit for me in marriage is that it means the end of dating, the end of facing the choice between the horrifying fear of talking to strange women and crushing, empty loneliness.
If having a pick-up “game” or whatever means having some kind of plan for the talking, then I see that as precisely the tool required to address the dilemma, not as some kind of false pretense. Sure, if you’re creating a script that doesn’t represent you at all, that’s pretty stupid, but just the idea of having a set of pick-up routines doesn’t strike me as any more contrived than wearing clothes you didn’t sew yourself.
I’m not trying to come off as pitiful, but I am shy, and I suspect that’s a problem at the root of Nice Guy-ism. Like most shy people I’m perfectly fine among friends or in safe spaces. But for most of my life by the time I got a woman into that metaphorical place, so that I had even a chance of talking to her, I was already in the Friend Zone.
Chet, that’s not the sort of behavior I’m talking about.
Then I plead misunderstanding. Thanks for your thoughts, Sarah. That stuff does sound pretty creepy.
I regret, to my shame, that the very first comment I ever made on Pandagon was asking, in ignorance: “What’s up with the hating on nice guys?” I’ve now been educated.
So I have a genuine question: I just read this blog post defining Nice Guys. I know someone for whom this could have been virtually tailor-made for, every paragraph I read I was like: “Check, check, check.” But he is also very confused about his complete lack of success with women, given how ‘nice’ he is (and, I swear, “Nice guys finish last.” is practically his catchphrase). What is the best way to break this information to him, that he is a ‘Nice Guy’? Should I just send him the article, by-the-by, or should I just sit him down and say: “Maybe you should try this…” a bit at a time?
Er sorry, when I said ‘this blog post on Nice Guys’, I was referring to this.
“Maybe you should try this” works, but seriously don’t tell him to “OMG BE CONFIDENT” or “OMG BE YOURSELF!!”
That’s like telling someone who’s struggling to learn calculus (and has done well or at least sufficiently in previous mathematical work) that 1+1=2.
Anti-Feminist: You’re falling into the trap of using narrative as justification. Diane couldn’t help wanting Sam because *the character was written that way* (and, IIRC, the lead writers for Cheers were all men). Also, way to work in the classic “feminist men are just trying to get laid” dig.
I think you can generalize this to some extent: Are high school boys in general so fucked up that it’s *really* such a huge revelation when they realize that other people are people with thoughts and feelings that should be/are independent from their desires?
Yes, some of them are. Most of them grow out of it. Some don’t.
In high school, I was rather shy in many ways, and had numerous unrequited crushes on girls that were only interested in me as a friend. Many of them were in relationships with other people.
Although I had other issues (and probably still do), I never found myself asking “why is she with that total jerk” because, well, the boyfriend of the girl I liked was invariably someone I knew and respected. Clearly, they had known each other far longer than they knew me, and that was the reason I didn’t have a chance. After all, I Want My Beloved To Be Happy, right?
I liked and appreciated everything I read on Destructor’s link, except for this: This is because a Nice Guy does not seem to get that women confiding their relationship problems to a friend are not looking for the replacement model.
Ladies: there are friends and friends. Unless a guy is just like a brother to you, kindly do not confide your relationship problems in him. Save it for your girlfriends. Because a guy hearing a problem will first wonder why you are telling him this, and then try to solve it (this is not a cliche). Because, why else would you tell him if you didn’t want his help? And the easiest way for a guy to solve your relationship problems is to replace the guy you’re having the problems with. Especially if he’s attracted to you. This works with women too, as the link points out: Coincidentally, this tactic [complaining about a relationship problem] can sometimes score him a sympathy fuck if he’s got a backup girl to run to.
Now, you might just be wanting some insight into the male mind. Tell the guy this up front. Say, “You’re a man. Why would you do X or Y? I really like my boyfriend, but this thing he does drives me crazy.” This should work.
Mighty Ponygirl,
It looks like the thread is starting to come to a close, so we’ll have to agree to disagree on some of the specifics.
But I think we agree on quite a bit actually. I think what you’re saying (correct me if I’m wrong) is that being a good person (as opposed to a NiceGuy) is a positive attribute, and one that potential mates generally consider attractive. I agree with you 100% on that. Also, you’re definitely right when you emphasize that women in relationships with Niceguys find it very miserable (and of course viceaversa with guys and Nicegirls, and also with gay and lesbian couples). So, on a general level, yes, these things are extremely influential in making or breaking a relationship.
My point all along has been, that you can’t make assumptions about every person who is single. Being a good person is always a positive attribute, and yet, people are complex, circumstances are complex (as you admitted with that whole external/internal thing), so to say being truly nice is a guaranteed way to get dates is not accurate. Does it help? Yes, absolutely. It is not, however, a guarantee.
Nice Guy(r) is a reasonable term and insult, of course, though it muddies the waters for decent chaps looking to mature into the point where they can form sane relationships.
Nice Guy(r) is also a hate term, and should go in the box labelled ‘use with care’.
Still, a naive jerk typing in ‘Nice Guy’ into Google after their first rejection might learn a thing, and may grow into a decent chap. We can only hope.
I always suspected this about most women but now I finally have proof, thanks to ponygirl.
So ponygirl, your gonna judge a truly nice man from a fake nice man by whether or not he has a girl on his arm?
This is a big problem I have with, well I wont say all women, but a certain number of women judging by what I read on boards such as this…
You see the more I read certain women-friendly/feminist blogs and commentary, I can’t help but notice that there seems to be certain unspoken belief, though its been implied. And I think this beleif, this myth, is a major factor of all this labeling “Nice Guy ™” nonsense.
The myth I see implied is:
“If a man is unable to get a woman to enter a sexual/romatic relationship with him, then he somehow doesnt deserve it. The reason MUST be to due a moral failure/character flaw on part of the man. Either he’s an asshole, thinks hes entitled, a whiner, or refuses/fails to truly understand or relate to women as human beings. Or perhaps he has ridiculous standards and only wants to date women with model looks. Or he’s just not trying hard enough. Or some variations of these moral failings. Either way, he is unworthy not only of sex, but of sympathy as well”
Of course this results in a lot of “losers” having salt rubbed in their wounds, the biggest sufferers being the shy, meek, “sweet” guy who aside from having to be denied the sweet fruit of eros, must also then be horrendously demonized should he dare lament his fate.
Are women that blind to realize and own up to their own shallowness and superficiality*?
Can’t the “nice guy who can’t get laid” be JUST THAT?!
I always suspected this about most women but now I finally have proof, thanks to ponygirl.
So ponygirl, your gonna judge a truly nice man from a fake nice man by whether or not he has a girl on his arm?
This is a big problem I have with, well I wont say all women, but a certain number of women judging by what I read on boards such as this…
You see the more I read certain women-friendly/feminist blogs and commentary, I can’t help but notice that there seems to be certain unspoken belief, though its been implied. And I think this beleif, this myth, is a major factor of all this labeling “Nice Guy ™” nonsense.
The myth I see implied is:
“If a man is unable to get a woman to enter a sexual/romatic relationship with him, then he somehow doesnt deserve it. The reason MUST be to due a moral failure/character flaw on part of the man. Either he’s an asshole, thinks hes entitled, a whiner, or refuses/fails to truly understand or relate to women as human beings. Or perhaps he has ridiculous standards and only wants to date women with model looks. Or he’s just not trying hard enough. Or some variations of these moral failings. Either way, he is unworthy not only of sex, but of sympathy as well”
Of course this results in a lot of “losers” having salt rubbed in their wounds, the biggest sufferers being the shy, meek, “sweet” guy who aside from having to be denied the sweet fruit of eros, must also then be horrendously demonized should he dare lament his fate.
Are women that blind to realize and own up to their own shallowness and superficiality*?
Can’t the “nice guy who can’t get laid” be JUST THAT?!
“however, pining away for one unavailable and unattainable woman while you ignore very real, interesting women whose only flaw is that they aren’t her is actually symptomatic of Nice Guy(R)-ism”
“The thing about Nice Guys(tm) is they only count gorgeous women when they think about “women” as a whole. They don’t even realize that shy, maybe dorky women who don’t look like models even exist.”
I love how in these converations ripping on the “nice guys”…”TM”, they always mention all these nice but supposedly less-than-hot women who are pining over the alleged whiners but who those guys supposedly wont bother with because they are only pining over the perfect “10″.
I think I know where these women are. They’re at the same place where theyre giving out all those wonderful jobs that the panhandlers and welfare recepients would take, if they were not so damn lazy.
really really sorry about the double post. Didnt realize it accepted first one. Moderator, please delete one. I did not intend to post both on purpose.
damn I forgot to write a footnot to the asterisk too.
shallowness and superficiality*?
* Men are shallow and superficial too
What ass was this pulled out of? The guys you show here are literal caricatures that don’t exist in real life. At least, not in a sane capacity - if you actually know men like this then I’d examine closely your own psyche. Birds of a feather, and all that.
On another note, observing the US, you lot are getting quite shrill at basically demonizing men in every possible way. Now you’re ever attacking the nice guys with obnoxious canards.
When’s the self-loathing going to end?