I more or less agree with this. I don’t get how women can think that guys who hit on women feel entitled to sex any less than “nice guys” do. But the “nice guys” seem to feel that the woman should realize their interest and do something about it. The nastiness comes when she goes out with someone who really has done something to show he is interested.
From the self-narration of “nice guys” around here, and from some observation, the fear of offense begins long before sexual advances, more like going out as something more than buddies. Women don’t seem to really comprehend the fear involved for some men. They seem to think that politely asking for a date will cause her to banish him forever. My wife certainly thinks that it is easier for men than women.
I think it was a bit easier when I was in high school, since there wasn’t a lot of just hanging out, so if you wanted to see a girl after class you pretty much had to ask her out. if the concept of friend zone existed back then, I never heard of it.
I think this is a really important point. The archetypal “nice guy” insults other men constantly by claiming that you can’t be both “nice” and successful with women. And of course he insults women all the time.
I’d say that the only thing that guarantees romantic success is confidence. Being a nice person certainly doesn’t hurt, but it’s not enough by itself. Looking good and being in shape helps, but it’s not enough either. Women always told me I had the second two qualities, but no one ever told me they liked how confident I was. If they had, they would have been lying. Once I was an adult I didn’t blame anyone but myself. Quite possibly if I hadn’t been in the right place at the right time I’d be the most pathetic person on this board.
I don’t know about the nice guy thing but I do know I would rather establish that feelings are mutual whatever they happened to be before I advance to next levels. When I was younger and doing the ba thing it was pretty much a given that if you left the bar together you were going to get laid. When I got older and started doing the internet dating thing it became a lot more complicated. Some ladies really wanted relationships and would get their feeling hurt if they gave it up thinking you were falling for them. I was perfectly fine with a few dates before any sex.
Exactly. It puts everyone on the defense.
If you’re a guy who has a SO and/or you’ve never had a problem getting a date, then you must be some kind of “bad boy” or stereotypical macho man. Your name might as well be Chad.
If you’re a woman who admits she is attracted to guys with some swagger, social competency, and certain physical attributes, then you must be superficial and probably think your shit don’t stink.
I’m not curious enough to actually wade through that blog entry to follow the source. But I am curious enough to wonder if this Dr. Beaver asked his subjects how frequently they 1) socialize and 2) approach women. I’m gonna take a wild-ass guess and wager that Choir Boys are less likely to put themselves out there than Bad Boys.
I’m also gonna guess that Bad Boys tend to have more non-sexual relationships for the same reason. If you’re spending every weekend (barring Sunday’s church service) studying for your exams, chances are your friend circle is much smaller than the guy’s who spends his weekend hanging out at the beach with his bros. Does that mean that men don’t like “nice guys”? Or is just that everyone likes people who are more extroverted?
Does he insult women during the friends without benefits stage, or only after the woman has the nerve to not read his mind and jump on him?
I’ve noticed this with some men too. I honestly don’t really understand where it comes from, but it is pretty extreme and unfortunately common. I’ve had a lot of conversations with fellow men that goes like this:
Nice Guy: I met a girl at the gym and I’m interested in her. What do you think I should do?
Fuzzy Dunlop: Why don’t invite her to have dinner with you?
Nice Guy: Wooooooah! Are you serious? Don’t you think that’s coming on too strong??
Fuzzy Dunlop: 
On the contrary, I think it’s literally just about the least you could do and still clearly convey your romantic interest. When I said dinner did you hear finger her in the locker room? 
Uh yeah, this. I wanted some brain-bleach after learning about “nice guys.” I’m not at all surprised they have no success with women. They are the OPPOSITE of nice. I’ve met men like this (never realized they had a name before) but they are what we used to call jerks. It has nothing to do with sex, they are jerks in all aspects of their lives. They don’t know how to relate to people. I don’t know what name is being used to describe “nice guys” who happen to be women these days, but I’m sure there is something. Probably a name far more accurate than “nice.”
You have just hit on something I’ve been theorizing for a while:
Nice guys have been conditioned into believing that women, on a fundamental level, don’t like and don’t want attention from men.
(Which isn’t an unreasonable belief for them to arrive at, considering that many women do indeed complain about getting unwanted attention from men. Women usually want to be pursued by men that they like, and don’t want to be pursued by men that they don’t like - and even then, women usually only want to be pursued at certain times and circumstances - but a nice guy can easily conclude that women don’t want to be pursued by men, at all, ever, period.)
So what does this mean? This means that a nice guy will, on a fundamental level, believe that approaching a woman requires subterfuge and subtlety - why? Because he is trying to get her to do something she doesn’t want - namely, get into a relationship with him. Thus he fears “blowing his cover” - namely, making his intentions known.
This is the same attitude that some salesmen have - they believe that their potential customers would say “No” if they ask directly, so they have to do all sorts of leading-in with indirect questions and chitchat before they can slowly lure their customer into buying the product.
I would not be surprised one bit if it turns out that successful salesmen are the salesmen who believe that the customers *want *the product that they have to sell, and the unsuccessful salesmen are the ones who assume that the potential customers don’t want it and that they have to find a way to get the balking, unwilling, customer to buy in.
Maybe, but I don’t really think so. I mean, “nice guys” aren’t stupid. They know that other men are having success by being assertive. They also know that other people are pairing off left, right and center, seemingly without any effort involved by either party.
But “nice guys” have a fundamentally low opinion of themselves. They believe, on a fundamental level, that women don’t like and don’t want attention from them in particular. Hence the perceived need to “trick” women into liking them.
Again, there isn’t any confusion on this matter: “Nice guys” don’t think they’re doing what everyone else are doing, or what is expected or wanted of them. They certainly don’t actually believe sneakiness and subterfuge is what women want. I mean, that doesn’t even make any sense. They know that they’re playing a game, and they know damned well that there’s dishonesty involved on their own part.
What they do think is wanted of them, as you say, is for them to simply leave women the hell alone. But that’s about them, specifically. I don’t think they believe it applies to the world.
Thanks. I do agree with you that this cognitive mistake is a big part of Nice Guy’s problems. It’s not the part that makes other people dislike them so intensely or that causes us to call them misogynists, but I do believe it’s a root cause of their romantic failure.
You might be right about the subterfuge and subtlety, but from my perspective it’s always struck me as a man who has stagnated in a very primitive stage of emotional/romantic development. I say that because it reminds me very much of my approach to girls when I was first developing an interest in them - late elementary school or early middle school. It seemed like everyone was very coy about their romantic interests in those days. Most of us just grew out of it at a very young age.
A common trait I’ve noticed in Nice Guys is that they’re extraordinarily lacking in self-awareness. To the extent that if you point out that other people may be seeing them very different than they see themselves, they’ll angrily insist you are dead wrong. I think that plays a role in them seeing that women don’t like men who won’t take no for an answer, or who pursue them by making crude or sexual comments, and concluding that they can’t even ask for a simple date. In truth, most Nice Guys couldn’t possibly be that persistent in the face of rejection or sexually suggestive even if they tried to. But Instead they do nothing for weeks or months until the passive aggressive feelings boil over and they reveal themselves to secretly be jerks, angry that the target of their affection wasn’t able to infer their interest.
One of the guys I… dated, if that’s the right word (I mean, can you call it dating when one of the parties isn’t sure if it’s dates or bananas?), would
- insist on imposing these old-fashioned notions of etiquette on everything, for example freaking out if I ever happened to move so I was closer to the edge of the sidewalk than he was (dude, that there’s tarmac, not mud!),
- jump away if I tried to touch him (uh, ok, so… he wants to be just friends?)
- seemed to want to be alone, yet if we were alone would keep his distance like a gay monk in the best little whorehouse in Texas, (juuuust friends, ok then I guess)
- and then managed to royally piss me off when, after a few weeks of that, he grabbed me, stuck his tongue in my ear and whispered “I am so dying to try that bed of yours” (an alabaster vase! where is an alabaster vase when you need one!)
He managed to combine too slow and too fast, and treating solidly-built me like I was some sort of china doll with that oh so delicate proposition. He wasn’t a bad guy but sweet Jesus I sure do hope he’ll have learned something since!
I want to reply to more of what Martian Bigfoot wrote. He made me so mad I almost couldn’t see straight, and I still don’t care for the hostility and contempt I feel from his posts, but…
he’s right about a couple things—
and I owe a couple apologies so I’d like to make them at this point.
•as Martian Bigfoot explains, being indirect (he says “passive-aggressive”) is not necessarily a more pleasant behavior to be on the receiving end of than the most direct and bluntly overt sexual aggression mode. and yes, I have made statements that imply otherwise, and so have Nice Guys™ in general. We do often make claims and otherwise behave as if our way of expressing sexuality is, well, “nicer”, i.e., more admirable, better, however you want to express that. Yeah, OK – he’s right, that is bullshit.
and at least indirectly connected to that,
• we have also behaved and made statements to the effect that we think we are nicer people as a consequence of this “nicer” way of being sexual; we have blatantly presented ourselves as goody two-shoes characters who are just better people and we have been pretty damn hostile towards conventional mainstream sexually aggressive guys (Bad Boys™) and also towards the Nice Girls™ who prefer them to us. And, well, that’s bullshit too.
Let’s have this conversation, if you’re willing to let me say “I’m sorry” and start over?
We’re not better than anyone else and our way of being sexual isn’t better than other people’s either. Are we really not at all good people though, not as good, is our way of being sexual truly horrid and disgusting?
I don’t think all of us are bad people. I try not to be.
This way of being sexual, that I’ve described, and which you’ve heard also described here in less compimentary terms? It’s how I am. OK, maybe it’s not morally superior and so forth, but it’s what fits my character and personality. That’s largely true of Nice Girls™, too. They get identified as such, defined as such, primarily by their approach to sexuality, as do their opposite number the Bad Girls™.
So, finally, there’s the bit about us bringing up the subject. As Martian Bigfoot says, just by bringing it up (to complain that we get left out in the cold and that girls aren’t picking us up and stuff) we’re expressing interest in sexual matters. Here, I suspect, is where a lot of people would say “Oh, but you so-called Nice Guys™ are not just like the Nice Girls™, because THEY aren’t bringing up the subject and practically demanding that someone come on to them in order to make the world fair”. Right? Yeah, well, they don’t have to, they do not generally need to bring it up in order for people to understand the kind of behaviors and scenarios they’re likely to respond to.
But although we do have reason and need for expressing this stuff, explaining our existence, it is still true that, tactically speaking, it is counterproductive to us to make these public statements and to express these sentiments. Why? Well, because although there aren’t too many female-bodied people going around taking the more bluntly sexually aggressive role towards guys and thus reversing the conventional flow of operations, there are some, but they like to feel like it was their idea, that they are making it happen. Walking around wearing shirts that say things like “Properly Chaste Until Chased Properly” makes a great political statement but it isn’t going to get you pounced upon.
What we need to become skilled at is flirting — inoccuously enough that it doesn’t really get noticed except by someone who was sort of looking for it, unintrusive and unobtrusive, formulated in such a way that no one is going to feel squirmy and creeped out, experiencing it as sexual pressure. Stuff that’s easy to ignore for someone who doesn’t find the signal alluring.
It’s what works.
The Nice Guys you’ve heard about are mainly described from the outside, and the occasion of the described encounters are mostly us in Whine Mode, complaining about how being the way we are is very frustrating and things seem unfair to us.
We have said hateful things about normative traditional guys, and that’s wrong. But please try to understand that their way of being in the world has been held out in front of us as the model we were suppsoed to emulate and aspire to, and that gets old, as does the attitude and expectation that we consider ourselves substandard when compared to guys like that. But yeah, understanding why we do it doesn’t make it right. I don’t want to be like you, you who are guys like that – but I’m sorry I’ve been hostile about it. And yeah, it’s been mutual, but after all I’m asking you guys to stop with the hostilities, so I need to do so as well.
This is me, me, oh so much me. Fuck, I need to get over this belief.
Now, I have been told by family members - so it may or may not be true - that I actually get interested looks from women all the time; I’m just too busy/foolish to look up and recognize it. In my case, there’s no telling when I can ACTIVELY address this problem, however, because I am SO damn busy with university/work that takes up literally ALL of my time seven days a week. I also can’t really pursue any women I go to school with because I live fifty miles away and most of them live either (a) down there or (b) up to fifty miles away in the OTHER direction.
FWIW, I once had a woman I was interested in call me a “nice person;” I knew right then that my chances with her were shot. YMMV of course.
An actually nice person who realizes they’re doing wrong tries to STOP DOING WRONG. Full Stop. No buts, no asking for understanding. And definitely no bargaining or blame shifting. This is a prime example of what people mean when they say that Nice Guys aren’t actually nice people - you’re trying to say that you’re so nice it is part of the correct term for yourself, but you say hateful things about people. And they’re not just ‘I was angry so I said some BS off the cuff’, you’ve made it clear that this simmering resentment is a constant, core feature of your personality.
NO!
Dear God, and I even though I had you on board for a while there.
Sorry. I’m really on your case, aren’t I? I apologize. Really, I’m very, very sorry. But I feel like I’m hitting my head against a brick wall. Please, stay with me for a moment.
Look, the first part of your post was wonderful. That was proper insight and understanding. It almost brought a tear to my eye. No, I’m not being sarcastic, I mean it. It was literally moving.
But then this is your conclusion? What you’re describing there is still standard “nice guy” behavior! It’s the same thing, in practice, that you’ve been doing all along. It comes from the same place. It’s all about hedging, being covert, maintaining plausible deniability. Maybe the intention is flipped around now, but the behavior, and the reaction we’ll get, is exactly the same.
(Yes, I said “we”. What, do you think I read about this shit in a book? This is about me, as much as it is about you.)
This slithery, slimy stuff, this hyper-subtle, coy, “unintrusive and unobtrusive” crap an is exactly why we creep people out. Can you seriously not see it?
You know what that is? That there is cowardly as shit. People who flirt *successfully *aren’t actually all that coy about it. Certainly not compared to us. People are actually supposed to notice. There is risk-taking involved. It is putting yourself out there.
It’s not about being able to slither right back into your shell when the girl notices what you’re doing, and pretend that you were just minding your own business all along. Again, that is exactly what makes us come across as creepy.
Cowardly is not a good look. Scared doesn’t turn anyone on. We need to grow some balls. Tiny, wrinkly, pathetic ones may be the best we can do. But we can’t walk around like goddamned eunuchs when we’re flirting. That’s the highway right back to “nice guy” again.
catches breath
Anyway. I think we’re half way there now.
What we actually need to learn is to be more honest. Or at least that’s one thing.
Another thing I want to talk about (or maybe it’s all part of the same thing): One problem I’ve had with being a “nice guy”, and one that has been harmful to me, is about always being “on”. Whenever I’ve been around someone I’ve liked, every interaction, every conversation, everything I say or do has tended to become part of the “nice guy program”, Everything becomes instrumental: It’s always about saying the right thing, doing the right things, in order to, as someone put it earlier, eventually make her legs spring open.
That’s something I’ve been trying to get away from, and I’ve come to realize just how much mental energy it has drained from me in the past. Another thing is that it actually stops me from being able to really care about, or care for, the other person. Everything become about me.
I’ve tried to change that. Now, if I decide to flirt, I bloody well flirt. I take the risk. And if I decide not to, I don’t. I stop second-guessing myself. I stop constantly worrying about projecting the right image while also simultaneously maintaining plausible deniability.
I try to either shit, or get off the pot. Not just sit and strain forever. And this is something that has been a massive relief for me in recent times, in my life. The best part of it? I can actually see other the person now. My dick isn’t constantly blocking my view.
Are “Nice Guys” more passive in their play because they don’t want to come across as jerks?
Or are they afraid of rejection?
Or is it both?
I can certainly understand both positions. Not all women want “male” attention, so guys do need to appreciate that direct propositioning may not be welcomed. And there is no rulebook that can help you figure out when you should be assertive and when you shouldn’t.
And of course rejection hurts. Why wouldn’t it?
But what advice would “Nice Guys” have folks give them that doesn’t come across as accusatory or shaming? I guess that’s the part I struggle with.
I once had a very negative experience with a Nice Guy. He befriended me, but never once let me know that he had feelings for me. And then when it became clear I wasn’t going to make the first step, he became enraged–scaring the shit out of me–forever ruining our friendship. I’ve revisited this experience many times in my head, and for the life of me, I don’t know what I did wrong other than being nice to him. Should I have given him a cold shoulder from the very beginning? I don’t know.
Even when I was terrified of him, I was sad for him because it was clear his life was one of constant frustration. But I really don’t know how that is my responsibility or the responsibility of anyone else. Knowing that he meant well and that he was fundamentally “good” doesn’t make me any less wary of “Nice Guys”. I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that I keep guys from befriending me now. I’m friendly towards them, but I don’t want a re-play of what happened before. I don’t know what that makes me. “Mean Woman”, maybe?
Christ, I’m not actually done yet…
It’s not bloody easy to ignore! You know what is easy to ignore? A guy who is upfront, someone you can say a clear yes or no to, and who, if it’s “no”, drops the fucking subject and gets on with his life. The next day, you can forget about him. Heck, even if he works at your office, you can forget about that interaction, as long as he’s not a dick in general.
What is not easy to ignore is the guy who is constantly breathing down your neck, but when you turn around, he has had the time to run off and hide behind the nearest tree. And then he may, or may not, be following you home, and hiding in the bushes. You’re not entirely sure.
That shit is pretty much exactly the *opposite *of easy to ignore. Whatever you call that behavior, “easy to ignore” is just completely backwards.
You want to come across as not showing sexual interest? Don’t show sexual interest. Or do it properly, and then leave it the fuck alone the rest of the time.
A little of both, plus a lot of a factor you don’t seem to be getting: some of us just don’t mesh with the aggressive-overt role, it isn’t how we are. Not only do we not wish to come across as jerks, we’re also snobbish and do not wish to beg for sex.
I just said I don’t see this as a “genuinely nicer” way of being in the world, or being sexual, than any other. But I don’t see it as bad or wrongful either.
And by the way, if it is wrong, it is wrong for anyone and everyone regardless of sex.