With all the threads on Nice Guys I thought I’d start one. I used to be a “Nice Guy”, the type of person who thought he could impress women into a relationship. I used to resent guys who acted abusive toward women and didnt understand why women wanted to be with them.
Then I grew up, and grew out of it. I guess the real epiphany for me was having the situation in reverse- I met someone who liked me, but I wasn’t into her. When I explained how I felt, they seemed betrayed by the fact that I didn’t love them back. Even though we enjoyed doing platonic stuff together, she didn’t want to be friends with me.
It made me understand what I was doing wrong, and the misconceptions I had. When I liked someone, I was a lot more honest, sincere, and realistic about stuff. I went on many dates that didn’t go the way I wanted but I learned a lot. In particular I learned how, when we feel insecure, its easy to kind of latch onto people and get obsessed. I look back and regret the offers of friendship I walked away from. Being nice should be inherent in us, not a self-serving means to an end.
Over many years I developed healthier attitudes about relationships and I’m currently happily married. I’m interested to hear stories of other “Ex Nice Guys” and how they grew out of it. I know for me, to really understand what I was doing wrong I had to have the shoe on the other foot.
Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but I accepted all those offers of friendship and am still in touch with some of them. Of the ones I’ve lost touch with, it’s mostly because I’m a terrible long distance correspondent, and can barely keep track of friends I’ve known since childhood when they live three time zones away.
Never actually “stopped” being a nice guy, because I don’t think I was the kind of “nice guy” you are thinking of.
And by the way, it’s still okay to not like guys who are abusive towards women. That’s not a criteria for being a “nice guy”
Anonymous User, the category of “Nice Guy” is not a good place to be. It doesn’t refer to a man who, along with other characteristics, is both pleasant and agreeable. It refers to the shlumps who look at women and whine “why don’t women like nice guys? Why do they hang out with jerks? I’m a nice guy. They should be with me. Women don’t appreciate nice guys.”
Maybe Incubus could give us a working definition of what a Nice Guy is, for the upcoming conversation.
Let me clarify: when I say “Nice Guy” I’m referring to guys who think they are a nice guy for doing stuff like holding the door open for a woman they like/doing them favors/being unable or unwilling to communicate their romantic interest/complaining about being “friendzoned” etc.
Being nice in the benign sense is implicit- I would assume people think of themselves as nice by default and wouldn’t define themselves by such a vague and watered down ajective.
I wasn’t aware we have multiple categories of “nice guys”, but okay. But when I said that I wouldn’t stop being a nice guy, I didn’t mean the kind of nice guy that “look at women and whine, ‘Why don’t women like nice guys? Why do they hang out with jerks? I’m a nice guy. They should be with me. Women don’t appreciate nice guys.’” That’s the self-absorbed, whining version of a nice guy.
Incubus, I feel like there is a misconception held by certain people that women prefer men who are abusive. For one, the kinds of males who are shy or passive may also be the studious introvert who misreads jokes and teasing as abuse. Same type of guy may see sports fans and jocks as overly aggressive. He may also fail to recognize that some women prefer take-charge types; cocky guys can be a prize, too. Female fans of the more assertive guy may thrive on and instigate the drama that often accompanies passionate relationships.
And if the more passive, sensitive guy makes a habit of offering a shoulder for female friends to cry on, he should bear in mind he is only hearing one side of an argument. She’s not revealing how contentious, jealous, abusive, or unreasonable she can be, and it’s unlikely she’s going to cop to being an instigator in a fight with her SO, especially when telling her troubles to the patient, reliable gentleman on the phone. Unless an introvert witnesses actual abuse or see evidence of violence, he should probably reserve judgement on the perceived nature of a relationship. If both partners are attractive and desirable to a wide range of folks, the drama is amped up even higher by outside influences. Some couples thrive on this, some women find the angst well worth great sex or terrific fun, and some women are just as rowdy as the guys they are entangled with.
What looks like rowdy, inconsiderate, or passionate behavior is more often than not a difference in communication styles and personality. This may look unnecessarily dramatic and turbulent to introverted onlookers, but it’s a misrepresentation to label extroverts, athletes, or even rowdy frat boys as “abusive”.
I think the trend we’ll see here is ex-Nice Guys learned not to be phony and manipulative/passive-aggressive. In my experience, actual nice people rarely if ever self-identify, even to themselves. If I meet two people and one says he’s a jerk and one says he’s a nice guy, one of them’s lying and it’s not the former.
I’m a nice dude. I think the “nice guy” syndrome though is just insecurity. People try to classify it as something else and it’s not.
So, basically the nice guy “acts” like a phony. That doesn’t necessarily mean he is one. He just hasn’t found the courage to be himself.
Personally, it may be a good foundation to form your personality. You don’t really have the propensity to insult or criticize others. You can emphathize with others better because you’ve been there. It basically can result in a stronger, better person, if you learn how to manifest your mindset properly.
I’m just not grasping the idea that guys think they’ll get the girl by being the nice guy. I knew when I was very shy that I wasn’t going to get the girl by being the ‘nice guy’, so I got over the shyness.
Its a combination of several things. A lot of media/anecdotes give guys this impression if they are sweet and kind, women will appreciate them for that and fall in love with them. But they don’t apply it like that- they think by being “nice” they will get some tangible reciprocation from the woman. When it doesn’t pan out, they feel cheated.
Guys that think like this often think in a linear manner. In a game or a job you can put in X effort and anticipate Y outcome. But people by their nature are irrational and inconsistent, and it doesnt translate to human relationships.
Let’s see… I’ve always been a very good, ethical person, but for the longest time, I was being unnaturally nice in the mistaken thought that if I was myself, that women would think I was an ass.
At some point, I realized this wasn’t working at all, and figured I’d give the opposite a try (not being an ass deliberately, but not deliberately going out of my way to be nice).
Not surprisingly, the real me was much more successful than the artificially nice me, even if the real me says a lot more off-color jokes, and fairly crass things from time to time.
This is what I mean. In the past, Bump, you were probably reluctant to tell people you liked ‘no’. You probably figured the more accomodating you were, the more people would appreciate you. At some point you obviously realized being a pushover isn’t a genuinely positive trait. Its not that you stopped being nice, its that you stopped worrying as much about what other people thought if you told them ‘no’.
People are having a hard time understanding the difference here.
Well, I wasn’t ever a pushover, but there’s a certain point at which you start bending over backwards to be “nice” to women, and it must come across as some combination of desperate, fake and pathetic.
Once I started doing what I wanted to do, and saying what I wanted to say, I quit being desperate, fake and pathetic, and got a surprising amount of attention from women. I was never an asshole, but I wasn’t bending over backwards to impress anyone with my niceness either.
I think part of it is that once I got into puberty, I’ve always been tall, imposing, loud and personality-wise, a bit intimidating to people, so I tried to be “nice”, because I didn’t really know how to tone it all down without turning it off. It took me until my late 20s to get out of that particular mindset and quit giving a damn what others think.
One day I’m walking home from class to my fraternity house. It’s winter time and I see a couple of my “nice guy” fraternity brothers shoveling a car out from one of our street side parking spots.
“Hey msmith537!” they shout. “Give us a hand!”
“Sure!” I said, and swaggared over to the car.
Recognizing the sorority sticker on the back windshield, I immediately whip out my johnson and wrote our fraternity letters in the snow on her hood in urine (which as it happens, is also one of our fraternity colors).
“What are you doing!” They shouted, horrified. “That’s not cool!”
“You know what’s not cool?” I replied. “You two idiots out here digging this bitch’s car out of OUR LOT like a couple of parking lot valets while she’s across the street at a rival fraternity house blowing her boyfriend.”
So that’s one way to not be a “nice guy”.
That’s not a criteria for being a “nice guy”