Well, it’s also not wanting to come across as jerks, but only in the secondary sense that coming across as jerks might get them rejected.
Which, BTW, is understandable. One thing they don’t tell you at player-school, is that rejection fucking sucks. Dear God, it’s awful. “The worst thing that can happen is that you’ll get rejected.” Yeah? You make it sound easy. You failed to mention that it’s completely soul-crushing. Frankly, I’d rather have my balls crushed in a revolving door any day of the week.
So, yeah, there is that. That’s one problem I haven’t sorted out yet. I have no idea how other people deal with it. At the moment, I just suck it up when it happens. But yeah, it’s not good. I hope it gets better eventually, or I will have to rethink this “up front” stuff at least somewhat.
So… sticking a pin in that particular subject. May need some work.
For me, rejection is easy. The more you’ve been rejected, the easier it gets. Plus you also have the satisfaction of knowing you had the balls to put yourself out there. And you no longer have to drive yourself crazy wondering what could have been.
That’s the problem with NGs. They’re so afraid of rejection they avoid it at all costs. Unfortunately, the down side to this is they never grow a thick skin towards rejection. So yeah, I think it would behoove some guys to grow a pair and just put yourself out there.
Do you think telling someone, “I’m about to confess to something. I really like you. A lot. Would you like to go on a date some time?” is "aggressive-overt?
Because as someone who doesn’t like when men approach me, I think this is 100% okay.
I think there is a big zone between “passive” and “aggressive.” Expressing your intentions honestly but in a diplomatic, respectful way is NEVER aggressive. It may be inappropriate for the time and place. Doesn’t mean you won’t rub SOMEONE the wrong way. But that doesn’t make you the “bad guy” in the interaction. It just makes you someone who is confident enough to say what you mean.
I really don’t know how to respond to your last two comments, since I haven’t labeled anything as “bad” or “wrong”. But I will say that if you aren’t getting the results you want to get, then your approach isn’t working. That doesn’t make it objectively bad, but perhaps bad for whatever you’re aiming for. It’s really up to you to decide whether it’s worth it to modify your interpersonal style so you can get what you want. Personally, I think being the person you want to be is worth a lot more than nookie and all the heartache that comes with it. But I realize that’s an unpopular position.
But whenever this topic comes up, I flashback to that guy in my past. He fit the Nice Guy stereotype so well that it would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.
I think he assumed that I was more socially and emotionally competent than he was, and so OF COURSE I would intuit that he had feelings for me and pick up the ball for him. When really, I am just as inept, but perhaps better at faking. So I do kinda blame myself for not having been the type of woman who can pick up “signals”. He was certainly throwing them out because others noticed them (but didn’t think to clue a sista in).
It would have made things weird for me if he had asked me out on a date and confessed his feelings, since we were coworkers and I don’t like rejecting people. But it would have been a tolerable awkwardness that would have faded quickly, especially when compared to the weirdness I felt when he called me evil and heartless.
I don’t even really understand where this is coming from, but I’ve never begged for sex. I guess it’s a pretty private thing so I wouldn’t really know if any other men I know have to beg for sex, but I’m definitely not following why you would assume we do.
If you have that level of worry about rejection, you need to see a therapist. Having your balls crushed in a revolving door is the kind of injury that would leave extreme pain for weeks, probably require some therapy to learn to walk again, and would forver impair your sexual functioning. Going to a therapist and getting some anxiety meds, talking about your issues and/or getting some things to work on is much simpler and less expensive than the treatment you’d need to do for what you say you’d rather have happen. Those ‘assholes’ who get laid all the time typically get rejected more often in a weekend than you have your entire life, they are just better adjusted and don’t dwell on it.
Or you can just be bitter and blame women and ‘assholes’ for the serious psychological issues in your head that you refuse to treat, that seems to be the standard Nice Guy plan.
When you characterize guys who are actually successfully socially interacting of begging for sex, it’s pretty obvious that you think there is something wrong with what they do.
Um… well, I didn’t mean it literally. If we’re being strictly factual here, I would obviously rather be rejected a bazillion times over, by everyone I’ve ever met including all the kittens, before I put my actual balls anywhere in the general proximity of the business end of an actual revolving door. I’m not totally crazy.
It was just, you know, exaggeration for attempted comedic effect. My apologies if that wasn’t clear.
But, yeah, I don’t find rejection to be a picnic.
Um, not to get all defensive here, but dude, context? Have you read my other contributions to this thread, at all?
My experience with frustrated Nice Guys is that they’re profoundly bad at predicting how other people see them. I’m not really sure why - I don’t think it’s clear why that would intrinsically go along with the rest of the Nice Guy pathology. It’s just something I’ve observed to be nearly universally true when talking to them.
So I’d say they probably do have wildly inaccurate ideas about what would be perceived as being a jerk.
That works both ways, by the way. They’re overly passive because they have the incorrect notion that a respectful romantic gesture will be perceived as jerky, but then they’ll turn around and be as freakish as the guy you mentioned, oblivious to how they’re being perceived.
In my case, I am getting the results I want so my approach IS working. But let’s do a rewind. There was time when things were not working for me. The conventional wisdom of the time was that I should… let’s see, how was it expressed upthread? “man up and be assertive”. But that would not have been good advice for me.
Not with me I agree completely.
Hmm, complicated. If a girl from the high school you attended had engaged in the behavior that, when you engage in it, or that successfully socially interacting guys engage in it, is not “begging for sex” when they do it, would she be seen, either in her own eyes or in the opinions of other people attending that same high school, as “begging for sex”?
There is behavior that I am already now on record as saying it is not morally wrong behavior per se, that it is not “less good behavior”… but it is not right for me. It would make me feel as if I were begging for sex, and also in the process making a bothersome nuisance of myself, and because it would make me feel that way, it is wrong behavior for me. That same behavior is likely to be behavior that I welcome with gladness when it is manifested by women, for reasons that should appear obvious at this point. So I do not mean to be condemning the behavior itself as “begging for sex” or anything of the sort.
I think I’m meeting you way more than halfway parsing that sentence, but I’ll answer no, it would not. Are you very young by any chance? I’ll grant you that high school boys are a lot more likely to beg for sex than any grown man is. I’m not quite sure why you bring up high school.
I don’t doubt that you already described this behavior, but since I don’t believe it was specifically in the context of how it constitutes begging for sex, could you give us maybe 3 examples?
It’s not just fear of rejection. It’s also the calculated chance of rejection. Which is probably, in many cases, correctly estimated at very close to or equivalent to 100%. I mean, let’s be honest: In many cases, “nice guys” never have a chance with the women they want in the first place.
The problem is that this estimate is then combined with the belief that a certain kind of consistent “nice guy” type behavior will improve the odds, over time, until the legs of the woman in question magically spring open. Which is the part that is deluded six ways from Sunday.
This is relevant to something that was touched upon earlier. As mentioned early in the thread, “nice guys” will persist in their, um, pursuit, for lack of a better word, even with women they actually don’t have a snowball’s chance in Haiti of actually getting anywhere with. And they know the odds, they’ve done the math, and the math checks out. At that point, the sane thing to do would be to abandon the project. But they think that by doing X, Y and Z long enough, the odds will change.
I suppose this is part of the whole Nice Guy Complex of Horror: In part because of this, they can be really, really crap at picking the right women to crush on.
It wouldn’t have helped if you were clued in. What could you have done? Avoid him? Heartless bitch! Rejected him without a move? Heartless conceited bitch! Gone on as it was? You saw how that worked out.
I’ve been out of high school longer than the WWW has existed, so I don’t base anything in my life around what some high schooler from the last millennium might have thought about whether an activity is socially acceptable for which gender. Even with less of a gap, if you’re not still in high school, why do you give a crap what high schoolers think about social activities? That’s not a rhetorical question, is there any reason that the hypothetical opinions of some kids back at the start of the 90s are relevant to anything happening now?
(From what I’ve seen, an obsession with High School is pretty common among Nice Guys and a lot of other people who don’t do well dating. And it’s not a healthy thing at all.)
I’m not totally sure if you’re joking or serious, but just in case you’re serious that is definitely not wise or prudent. If you want to be successful you need to figure out what is expected of you at your current age and behave accordingly.
If a man were married at 18 and divorced 30 years later, would you try to date like a teenager did in the mid 80s, or would you awkwardly figure out how middle aged divorcees date in 2016? The latter is the correct answer.
You’re nut sure? WFT? First it was Pantastic upthread, and now you? What is this, “take MB’s obvious jokes at face value” week? I don’t recall normally having this problem.
Yes, I’m joking! I’m joking!
BTW, here’s a rule of thumb: If in doubt, I’m joking.
I agree completely.