I’ll go one further than DianaG here–yeah, it’s acceptable if a bit immature to greet jerkishness from someone with jerkishness in return. What’s not acceptable is when Mr. Naive Guy starts complaining that “Women are bitches” when what he means is “that one girl I never quite dated was a real jerk to me and i’m latching onto that as an excuse for why I’m a bitter jerk now”. Whereas, an actually nice guy would pull something like “wow, that was a bad situation for me to be in, I’m glad I learned some warning signs that help me spot people like that before they can put that kind of hurt on me. Say, you wanna go get some dinner later?”
Ummm…no.
As someone said above…assholishness begets assholishness. Sure, you can stop yourself from acting like an asshole when you are treated that way…but I can’t see blaming someone for responding in kind.
I’m married to a great woman for which I am happy. However, I spent part of my life being treated like nothing by women. At first I was a “Nice Guy” as talked about in this thread. I then changed an really became a jerk…which worked! (though as I said above it wasn’t because I was a jerk but that I exuded some personality…I see that now)
However, when my opinion on women changed from “Women are great! I should treat them well because they are very special and I want to love/be loved by one” to “You know, women are assholes and should be treated as such” {I feel ashamed at how I treated some…when all they wanted was to be with me which at the time I attributed to the fact that I was treating them poorly}
I am not the asshole I once was…but neither am I the nice guy either. I feel no compulsion to help an unknown single woman (excempting her life is in danger of course!).
For example, a few years ago I picked up a woman in an old broken down car on the side of the road and drove her to a mechanic. I was doing well financially and was driving my Infiniti G35 (great car!). During the trip, she started to break down…slowly at first…then started crying. See, she was pretty much alone in the world, was a single mom, might lose her job and didn’t have the resources to fix her car and no more credit available.
During this whole time I felt…nothing. I looked at her like all the women I would have liked to know when I was her age…attractive, seemed nice but would not give me the time of day. I was invisible to her kind…so…why should I care she had a kid with some guy and he isn’t around to help? Not my problem…she should have chosen better.
Bitter? Sure…but not as much of an emotion to me…just a recognition of reality/the way the world works.
Make me an asshole? Probably…Hell yes…it makes me an asshole. However, i didn’t START as an asshole. I became an asshole through the actions of others. What comes around, goes around and I don’t think you can put all the blame on one person.
Oh, simulposts, how I love ye.
No. There’s a difference between turn the other cheek and not accepting slapping behavior in the first place. Responding by turning the other cheek and responding by getting all bitch-slappy yourself both show poor boundaries.
That’s not to say that one should respond to abuse by getting mad, getting indignant, or any other form of getting upset. If you can stop the unacceptable behavior while retaining both your composure and your good humor, then you win.
First of all, stop saying “you” the particular scenario we’re discussing never happened to me. And again, you really need to read the whole post. I specifically acknowledged that it’s usually the guy’s fault. Although, yes, I think the initial fault is no more than the guy being clueless about women, taking some things they say at face value, and missing signs that she isn’t interested. I specifically gave MOST women a credit for being too nice to come out and stomp on the guy’s hopes.
But, there is a specific subset of women (note: the term subset inherrently implies that it is some not all, which is a distinction that you’re missing), who are emotionally needy and when a Nice Guy latches onto them, they take advantage of the Nice Guy to get attention when there isn’t someone more desireable to give it to them. (And agin, this never happened to me, but I’ve seen it plenty of times.) In that situation, as his bitterness and resentment builds, the Nice Guy often acts jerky toward the girl doing the leading on.
You may not like this. You may want to assign all the blame on the nice guy for retaliating to her manipulation of him. You might want to think “nice guys” are all inherently assholes That’s your perogative. However, in my opinion, it’s an unreasonable one and one that ignores a fundamental aspect of human nature, namely that people are unlikely to be nice to someone who they feel (somewhat legitamately, in this case) has wronged them.
No, you made a bunch of choices to be an asshole. Own it.
MichaelQReilly, are you really not getting that what I am saying is not about gender, and it’s not about never behaving badly, and it’s not about who behaved worse?
It’s about the fact that you (that’s a universal “you”, by the way, and always has been) are solely responsible for your actions. Until you can accept that, hell, EMBRACE that, you are unworthy of consideration as a partner.
I agree completely with you. As I said, most “nice guys” eventually get a clue and move on, just like you said. I, and others in this thread, did. As I said though, the only time I think Nice Guy’s jerkiness is justified is when some attention whore takes advantage of him. Even then, Nice Guy’s jerkiness is still just as much his fault for not getting a clue.
That has been my exactly complaint about how the “Nice Guy” label is being applied here.
It’s also been my complaint about how women are being pigeonholed into the “f*cked up” camp if they have any interest at all in the bad boys. People are complex, and you can’t just blindly categorize women into two extreme camps. Frankly, I think that doing so is rather insulting to both men and women.
I understand. But, the purpose of my original post was to explain how I think the “nice guy” situation comes about. I specifically mentioned one scenario I’ve witnessed that has particularly nasty results where Nice Guy gets led on by an emotionally needy girl and eventually hates her and acts like an ass to her.
Obviously neither person in that scenario is at that point where they are worthy of a mature relationship and each is responsible for their own actions. Yet, it obviously happens again and again. I was trying to explain each party’s mindset, motivation, and the resulting feelings. I wasn’t attaching a value judgment to it, which is what you seem hung up on doing. You don’t think a mature person should respond to jerkiness in kind, I agree. But, I sympathise with someone who didn’t know any better and, FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE, was taken advantage of by an emotionally needy woman, and I understand why they respond with jerkiness, even if a mature person shouldn’t. But that goes back to my point, guys who wind up as “nice guys” AREN’T mature, I’m arguing that’s the source of their whole problem to begin with. So of course they respond the way they do.
Guess what? Change the sexes and similar things happens to many single women out there (or at least to me). I don’t go around blaming half of humanity for that, though. 
And like DianaG said, that is not a lie. You want someone who is nice, and who also has something else that makes you attractive to them, whatever that thing is.
In that particular case? Unless you’re leaving something out, I’d say not. You were a good samaritan to help out a complete stranger, but it’s not like you owed her a new car or a new life or anything. Now if you’d helped her out more by pretending (even to yourself) that you were being really really super nice, and selfless, and a really super guy, all with the hidden agenda that she might reward you by letting you touch her boobies? That would have been a true dick move. That would have been manipulative in the name of being “nice.” As it was, though, I think you acted right.
I had an epiphany about this many years ago. I met someone through a personal ad. She seemed sweet, energetic, and sexy. When we talked on the phone, she was depressed and non-talkative. Like ultra-morose. I told her that maybe we could talk another time, when she was in a better mood. A few nights later we did, and she was wonderful. Over the course of the next few conversations, her mood continued to flip flop. When we finally met up, she was in a down mood. Really down. I called off our date after about 5 minutes.
Was I a dick for doing so? I don’t think so. The girl obviously had problems, but I realized (against my gut, Nice Guy reaction) that I owed her nothing. I was in no position to help her, nor was I obligated to. And if I did, best case scenario? I’d be in a relationship with someone with severe problems, and I’d be miserable. And that wouldn’t be fair to her.
Walking away from that scenario was quite empowering. I know, it seems bloody obvious. But in Nice Guy World, walking away from a bad situation often doesn’t even occur.
Looking back on this, from a great distance, the nice girls were probably the ones I thought were Out Of My League. I thought they would not give me the time of day nor even admit they owned a watch. :smack:
ETA: I read the first 50 posts, but I couldn’t handle reading another 100. Sorry.
What’s the old ax about absolute power corrupting absolutely? If a woman is gaga over some guy, maybe he trots out the hoops for her to jump through. Reverse the roles and it isn’t that much different.
A wise woman once remarked to me, “Every relationship is a struggle for dominance.” I’ve looked around me and thought about that a lot…there may be exceptions but there’s much more truth to it than I would have thought at first blush. It isn’t always the man who’s “in charge,” either, though the woman may act like it.
It’s hard, I think, even for mature people who are in love not to manipulate each other. Freud said something to the effect that we’re never so defenseless as when we love. And it seems a common thought process out there that you’re supposed to love unconditionally so a lot of bad behavior gets a pass. Not too many people are self-regulating, self-judging, self-correcting etc. so when bad behavior slides, the transgressor is reinforced, gets bolder, etc. And the more he/she gets away with it, the less he/she respects the other, which usually makes the other try harder. That’s the death spiral.
Makes sense to me.
And understanding a behavior is not the same as endorsing that behavior.
Does anyone over the age of 25 or so even think in terms of “nice guys” and “bad boys”? I thought that was more of a high school up to at best post college sort of mentality.
I see these shows on VH1 like The Pickup Artist, Tool Academy and Tough Love (not to mention all the “win a date with this retard” shows) with these people in their 20s, 30s and even 40s who act like they have the mentality and social skills of a junior high dropout. Full grown adult virgins. Golddiggers. Functioning drug and alchohol addicts. Violent douchebags. Unemployables. Weirdos. Is there some sort of infantilization of society going on where people just aren’t growing up into functioning adults anymore?
We all make the world the way it is. If you allow other people to dictate your behavior, the blame sits squarely on your shoulders.
Although I don’t see how driving a woman to the mechanic makes you an asshole. You aren’t responsible for taking care of her entire life. Even stopping to pick her up is pretty nice and probably more than I would have done.
Well, as others have pointed out, there’s a difference between being a what a lot of genuinely nice men call a nice guy, and the Nice Guy who thinks conforming to a bare minimum of decent behavior means his path should be lined with mega-hot women falling on their backs with their legs in the air.
I prefer to refer to genuinely kind and considerate fellows as good men, to avoid the confusion. These men are good to their wives (the vast majority of the ones I know are married or at least in long-term relationships) because they’re good to everybody. It’s just who they are, and they don’t expect pussy as a reward for it. Hell, they don’t even expect a cookie or a gold star for their foreheads, because they don’t consider it in any way special. If they’re single, it’s because they haven’t found the right woman for them, not because all women are psychotic masochistic bitches who really want to be treated like shit.
I’ve never had any problem listening to and feeling sympathy for someone who is disappointed to have not yet found the right person; one of my husband’s best friends (such a great guy that I’d rip the lungs out of anybody who maligned or mistreated him) spent a really long time looking for someone with whom to have a serious relationship, and it kind of broke my heart to see him alone for so many years. But if he’d spent his time pissing and moaning about how women don’t like him because he’s a great guy, I’d have told him to fuck off, I didn’t want to hear it. Also, if he was that kind of guy, I’d let people say or do anything they wanted to him without the tiniest twinge of urge to rip any lungs.
Decide which kind of nice guy you are, and proceed accordingly.
Keep in mind that if the girl was around your same age, she probably didn’t have a lot of relationship experience either, so she was probably figuring things out as she went along, just as you were.
The other thing that jumps out at me, though, is that you seem to be describing “being nice” as a means to an end; i.e., that you wouldn’t have treated her nicely if you didn’t think romance was in the cards. I don’t know if that’s what you meant to imply about your outlook back then, or if I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying as of now, but I think that’s an element of the stereotypically defined “Nice Guy.”
Well, I’ve got a few friends who would do the lungs-ripping-out thing on my behalf, which is a good sign. Doesn’t make the way forward much clearer, though.
Thanks.
I think that we have a basic failure to communicate here, because that is not at all what I think of as a Nice Guy. Not a bit.
Maybe we should redefine the term to Nice Guy Species I and Nice Guy Species II. I submit the following:
Nice Guy Species I: The Nice Guy who thinks conforming to a bare minimum of decent behavior means his path should be lined with mega-hot women falling on their backs with their legs in the air. This is a guy who is not truly nice at all. He’s a jerk who puts on an act whenever he wants something from someone. He manipulates people to get his way. He’s a faker. He’s a manipulative prick. Think Eddie Haskall.
Nice Guy Species II: The Nice Guy who feels unworthy of anyone, including those he wants nothing from. The kind who says “I apologize for not liking ketchup.” Ever met a guy who follows up whatever opinion he has with a nervous little laugh, as if he’s created a major offense by even speaking? He’s not a faker, he’s genuinely spineless. He’s the kind of guy who, when someone else bumps into him, apologizes for it. Think Radar O’Reilly but not so endearing.
Granted, these two types have many things in common. They’ll both suck up for approval. They both have poor self-esteem. They’ll both act manipulative, though only Species I admits it to himself. They both try to get what they want through being nice, though Species II believes that he actually is being nice. They both want women, though Species I wants to be a playah, and Species II will suck up any crumb of approval, no matter how pathetic. They will both, at times, blame the world for their own shortcomings, though Species II will often blame himself as well.
Does that make sense? (And yes, these are somewhat extreme examples.)
Well, I didn’t have any sisters or live near any girls, so just about any girl would have had more experience than me back then, lol. But, in my case, the girl had dated an older guy so we weren’t at the same place.
No you’re totally right. The thing is, I didn’t know any better. Its funny because looking back on me at 15, I acted like myself, which got the girl to like me. Then, when I realized she liked me and I liked her, I turned on the “nice guy” and that’s what derailed things.