Every so often some young man will come in here to complain that women only date assholes, and what’s a Nice Guy like him supposed to do.
These posts are invariably followed by about 5 pages of comments from women (and more than a few men) about how the Nice Guy is usually either a wimp or a passive-aggressive and the OP needs to work on his personality.
But I can’t remember a post from a young woman complaining that guys only date sluts or bitches and all the guys treat her like a sister and what’s a Nice Girl supposed to do.
Do young women have a counterpart to the Nice Guy? What is the personality profile of a typical Nice Girl? If they aren’t complaining about it on the Dope, who do they complain to? And what advice do they receive?
I don’t know if women complain about it, but I can definitely say that I’ve avoided dating girls who were too nice, i.e. there was no chance of getting laid until I’d committed way more effort than it would be worth.
I can absolutely see how a girl who doesn’t realize that she puts out that sort of “getting laid will be a total drawn-out pain” vibe would think that she’s too nice and that guys only date the sluts.
It’s more like being “one of the guys” or an “invisible girl” than being a *nice *girl, but yes, there’s a lot of guys who only seem to date Bitchy women and wonder why they are unhappy.
Interestingly, the advice I got (from people like my mom) when I complained guys never noticed me was to be even more passive, because the right guy would notice my inner beauty. [sarcasm] Yeah, that worked. [/sarcasm]. There’s also the “dress like a slut” advice (gotten from friends), because you can still be a nice girl on the inside. I also got advice to be less smart. ??? It’s not like I was ever a Nobel prize candidate.
The female counterpart to “women don’t like me because I am too nice” is “men don’t like me be because they are intimidated by my intelligence and/or assertive personality”.
Like the “nice guy” thing, this is something that may be true on some occasions with some women to some degree, but is over-attributed because it’s the least painful explanation imaginable for a lack of romantic success.
This question makes me think of the song “Fuck Me Pumps” by Amy Winehouse. She sings about these women who wear skimpy outfits and go to clubs every night, but they don’t have the long time boyfriends that they want.
I think that would be a counter to the “Nice Guy”, the “Easy Girl” because these women are trying to fulfill a role that they think men want- they show skin, have sex easily, and not realizing that their actions aren’t sending in the right direction toward the man they want, or if they do, its just for a night. Conversly, the “Nice Guys” are trying to fulfill a role that they think women want- they have the long conversations, and they listen to these women while trying to hide the face they want to sleep with them, and their actions aren’t landing them a girlfriend.
I was going to say this. To be fair, I haven’t heard that excuse in years. When I did, it was rarely that the girls were truly intimidating men. Most of the time, they were either aiming out of their league or so full of bitterness they drove men away. Kind of like “nice guys”.
Really, though, I think it’s because those of us with good self-esteem are more likely to classify rejection because we’re not pretty or easy enough, or we’re too smart (and yes, I’ve seen an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous friend get dumped with the explicit phrase “you’re just too smart”) as an indicator that he wasn’t the kind of guy we’d want to be with anyway. It just means that particular guy wasn’t a good fit with us, not that there’s something inherently wrong with all men.
And women with poor self-esteem are likely to try to change into what they think guys want, under the premise that there’s something wrong with them, not that there’s something inherently wrong with all men.
I think that’s the real difference. The Nice Guy rant has at its root the assumption that there is something inherently wrong with all women, and women just don’t seem as likely to make that sort of assumption.
I don’t hear the latter as much as the former – but it is similar in that, while I’ve definitely observed it (overly nice guys and intimidating women), the person in question rarely points it out him/herself.
Let me teach ya’all a little something. I am sick and tired of hearing that being a Nice Guy is tabu. Passive aggressive my eye! (per a post early in this thread). Just because this world is depraved of wholesome values and women WANT to date trash doesn’t make it right. You get what you deserve. If you want a lazy husband who makes you a sports widow, hangs around at the bar, and flirts with all your girlfriends, and has no vision for the future, then DO NOT COMPLAIN! Like birds of a feather, you’re all made for each other! But, DO NOT mock the future-husband who KNOWS where he’s going in life, understands commitment, and wants a stable home to raise loving children. Sure, it’s lonely at the top of the food chain. But, considering the alternative, I will not yield to become some bar fly or couch potato. Life is too short, and somewhere along the line we’ve forgotten we’re supposed to be ABOVE the animals. So unplug yourself from your soaps and (so-called) reality TV, dump the liquor, and start living up to the obligations of being a member of the so-called HUMAN RACE!! On this note, it’s no more Mr Nice Guy from me! I’ve had it with what people have lowered themselves to becoming. So, wake up people! …and trash all those trashy Cosmo magazines that show you something you’ll life will NEVER be! It’s time to stand for something wholesome, damn it!!!
In my experience, women who want but can’t get boyfriends usually attribute this to men only wanting to date women who look like models. Or stupid women who look like models. Or stupid, slutty women who look like models. But if men could only recognize this woman’s inner beauty, they’d be all over her.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman express the idea that men hate women who are good and love women who treat them badly, a Nice Girl can never get a break, she should just become a total bitch like the ones all the men like, boo hoo hoo. She’s going to say that the problem is that she’s either not hot enough or not traditionally feminine enough (“I’m too smart/independent”) for dumb, shallow guys to appreciate.
Of course, the complaining woman might be every bit as deluded as the typical Nice Guy. She may very well have a horrible personality that would drive men away even if she looked like Marilyn Monroe and cooked like Betty Crocker.
I work with a woman who really has a difficult personality, but she attributes all her dating problems to the fact that guys are obsessed with looks or that they just can’t handle that she’s so incredibly intelligent. She says all this without a trace of irony.
We’ve been through this on these very boards many, many times, but I’ll say it again in the vain hope it’ll get through this time: There is a difference between a nice guy and a “Nice Guy”.
I’ve never understood the fetish some women have with bastards (and that’s quite a lot of women, I admit) - why would you want to be with someone who doesn’t treat you with love and respect??! So I’m married to genuinely nice guy - he’s kind, loving, faithful, considerate, all that a woman could want from a man.
I have also, in my time, dated some “Nice Guys” and they’re a very different breed. They offer immediate and Total Devotion. When, as is usually the case, the woman in question find this a bit off-putting (because if someone, within days or even hours of meeting you, offers Total Devotion without really getting to know you, it suggests not so much that they really want to be with you, rather that they just really want to be with someone), the “Nice Guy” reacts, not by understanding that perhaps they need to slow things down a bit, but with emotional blackmail. Tears, guilt, yet more outpourings of devotion - “How can you do this to me, I just want to be with you?!” So you give him another chance, because you don’t want to hurt him, and besides, he really does seem like a nice guy, he hasn’t really done anything wrong other than just try and rush things, and hey, it’s good that he’s so keen, isn’t it…?
But by now our Nice Guy has realised his hold on you is tenuous, and reacts by becoming even more clingy. The more he does this, the more you pull away, because what you wanted was a boyfirend, not an emotionally needy limpet, and the more you pull away, the more he clings. So you try to extricate yourself, gently at first, but eventually the emotional blackmail he inflicts on you causes you to snap and to dump him in quite often a rather cruel and unusual way, because it’s started to feel like that’s the only way he’s going to get the bloody point that you don’t want to be with him anymore!
So he crawls away to lick his wounds, and ends up one of two way - either he learns from the experience, realises you can’t rush straight into offering Total Devotion and deathless love without scaring people off, and as a result becomes a better boyfriend and a genuinely nice guy in the future. Or he gives no thought whatsoever to what his part in the whole horrible experience might have been, decides it’s all the woman’s fault, because all he wanted to do WAS LOVE HER, DAMN IT, becomes very bitter with women in generally, and ends up ranting about how all women only want to be with bastards, what the hell is wrong with them, why don’t they want a Nice Guy like him?!! None of this, of course, will prevent him from making the same mistakes with his next victi - er, girlfriend, so the whole horrible cycle will repeat itself, and he’ll end up even more bitter and even more toxic to women.
To answer the OP, I think the female equivalent is the Slutty Girl, who thinks by giving men want they want straight away they stand a better chance of getting a boyfriend, when in fact the opposite is generally true. The similarity to our Nice Guy type is this: He offers Total Devotion because he thinks that’s what women want; she offers Hot Monkey Sex because she thinks that’s what men want. And in fact in both cases they’re often right, but what they’ve missed is that we don’t want those things straight away. We want to feel we’ve earned it.
Where the heck did that come from?