I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that this follows from anything I’ve said.
This seems like an unnecessarily uncharitable interpretation of his point. He’s saying jerkitude exists on a spectrum. At one extreme lies the people who give a damn about nobody but themselves. At the other extreme lie the doormats.
Seems like the reality we’re sussing out is that sometimes doormats look at normal people and call them jerks, and sometimes normal people look at sociopathically selfish people and call them jerks. It’s the whole ‘‘everybody who drives slower than me is an idiot, everybody who drives faster than me is an asshole’’ phenomenon. (As articulated by the great philosopher George Carlin.)
I think this is a good illustration of a complex issue.
Personally, I admire people with strong leadership skills. People who think “big picture” and aren’t afraid to call someone on their bullshit. These people tend not to navel-gaze or waste time kvetching. They just do the damn thing.
But strong leaders can often rub people the wrong way. They may talk over someone who is a more timid speaker. They may say inartful things when someone’s bullshit gets to be too much. They may not come across as sympathetic when all they hear is whining and crying. They may be impatient. They may have high expectations out of the people around them and get frustrated when those expectations aren’t met. In other words, they can look like a jerk.
But a person (a woman like myself) may be able to look the other way because their negative traits are offset by the positive. Or maybe the woman isn’t bothered by being interrupted and not having her every boo-boo validated, because those aren’t things she cares about. Not everyone values the same positive traits the same way.
It might not occur to you do this, but many guys would see this kind a reply as an invitation to engage in the Socratic interrogation. “Why don’t you feel a spark, huh?” So then what is already an awkward conversation becomes even more so.
Women lie not just because to spare men hurt feelings, but to spare themselves the headache of justifying their feelings to someone who likely has problems with recognizing boundaries. It’s an invasive thing to demand of someone, when you get down to it. So if you feel entitled to this–even if just a teensy bit–see this as a possible reason why finding an interested woman is difficult. You just might be doing other things that are creeping her out.
Things like:
- staring too intensely at her
- asking questions about her private life way too soon for your level of acquaintance
- invading her personal space by touching her or standing too close
- mentioning things about her that she hasn’t told you about, because you’ve been stalking her online and/or have acquired backdoor knowledge about her through other people
Or, it could be you’re doing none of these things. I’m just saying. But it’s hihgly unlikely a woman who just rejected you is going to lay all of this out. If there’s any chance she thinks you’re a creep, that kind of honesty is just not worth the risk. If you understand what I’m saying right now, then you are probably not a creep so congratulations.
Dating coaches are paid to give the kind of advice you’re talking about, though. It couldn’t hurt to hire one if you really feel like you need the feedback.
In the hypothetical, both ‘me’ and the girl are pursuing what we want, and ignoring what the other person wants. You said that “concern for oneself and one’s own needs and desires and lack of concern for that of other people’s” constitutes jerkish behavior, and in the scenario that’s exactly what ‘me’ and the girl are doing. It follows directly from what you said, I’m not sure how you can deny it.
And again, that’s not just a weird hypothetical, that’s a thing I’ve seen happen (and yes, the ‘third party’ guy does consider the person in ‘my’ spot a huge jerk who betrayed him). And it works with a number of other unhealthy social constructs, like the idea that someone is a jerk if they date ‘your’ ex within some time frame that you dream up - which fits your definition of ‘jerk’ too.
I don’t agree that people who stand up for themselves are jerks and fail to qualify as nice people because of that, or that doormats are nice people in a general sense. It also doesn’t fit the ‘jerks vs nice guys’ idea, because the ‘nice guys’ are clearly after their own interest and ignore or even get angry at a woman who’s interest isn’t what he wants. Also, a lot of abusive people (especially those with Axis II personality disorders) actually care deeply for their victim and believe that what they’re doing is for the victim’s good, maybe that they’re even making sacrifices, and most certainly give a damn about the victim. So the ‘abusive, violent asshole’ may not actually even qualify as a jerk using this standard!
Even if we accept this scale, how can we apply it to observing other people’s actions (especially in dating) when it depends entirely on the person’s internal mental state and not on actually what they do? I don’t see how you’re able to determine what motivates someone who, say, walks up to a woman and makes a pass - does he think he’s doing her a favor or does he not care about her? How do you factor in actions that happen when you aren’t there to see them (the majority of most people’s romantic lives don’t take place in front of acquaintances)? The definition he provided doesn’t appear to be useful to measure jerkiness in interactions.
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I don’t agree that people who stand up for themselves are jerks and fail to qualify as nice people because of that, or that doormats are nice people in a general sense.
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I don’t agree with that either and I don’t think Fotheringay-Phipps does either. I would argue that self-centeredness is just one aspect of jerkitude - but certainly it qualifies as a relevant factor. Particularly with outrageously abusive behavior – domestic violence, sexual assault etc. concern with one’s own needs clearly takes precedence to an unhealthy, destructive degree.
We don’t know, which is I think part of the point. We are free to ascribe whatever motivations we wish to behavior we find disagreeable, regardless of whether we perceive accurately. We do this all the time. I did it with my friend for acting like an idiot in order to get male attention; ‘‘Nice Guys’’ do it to whatever men get more ass than they do. It is in no way reflective of any sort of objective reality.
When I made the original post I didn’t realize just how complex the issue is. I’m not surprised though, since it’s human beings we’re talking about. There can be myriad reasons why some peope can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to dating. If I had read this thread twenty something years ago I might have been so intimidated that I would have just resigned myself to a life without any romantic attachments (which I sort of did the summer of 1995, right before I met my wife).
Friends and acquanitances once thought it was surprising I hadn’t found anyone; perhaps the truly astonishing thing is that I did. 
Life is nothing if not unpredictable. I certainly didn’t plan to meet the love of my life at the age of 18. Really nothing about me screamed ‘relationship material’ – I was an emotionally unstable, psychologically crippled, impoverished teenager. But he saw something… I dunno. I have no explanation for why I’m deliriously in love after 14 years with the same man and there are people much more worthy than me who seem to flounder in loneliness. My best conclusion is that it follows from the general principle that life isn’t fair. Our lives are full of things we don’t deserve – both good and bad. He’s just a good thing. The Good Thing.
I don’t even agree that having concern for one’s own needs should be called ‘self-centeredness’, or that placing one’s own needs above other people is remotely ‘jerk’ behavior. Knowing and making sure your own needs are met is part of being a healthy, functioning adult. Disregarding the concerns of people who have no legitimate interest in what you’re doing is also healthy, adult behavior. Calling someone ‘jerkish’ for being healthy is not a good or reasonable thing, and isn’t going to lead to any kind of useful understanding of dating habits.
That’s actually a huge part of the problem for nice guys. They hold a wildly absurd and unrealistic standard for people’s behavior, try to call other people out as ‘jerks’ for not following this standard, and can’t hope to actually meet the standard themselves, especially if they want a lasting relationship (Generally, non-abusive women don’t like doormats). Yes, it’s somewhat comforting to decide that you’re going to believe that every guy who gets dates while you’re alone is actually absuive behind the scenes because they’re not a doormat, but it’s not true and not going to get you anywhere.
I think the focus on extreme behavior is also completely useless to the discussion. The idea that ‘abusive people get dates and I don’t, therefore chicks must dig abusive behavior’ is stupid and toxic. No one actually seeks out abusive behavior, as people keep saying. It normally only starts once a relationship is established (and especially once people move in together), not typically during the ‘getting dates’ stage so is really irrelevant to a discussion of initial attraction.
He explicitly laid out a scale of jerk vs nice guy with a complete doormat at the ‘nice’ end and concern for oneself and one’s own needs, and lack of concern for what other people want moving one away from nice. It very much is what he said, and it’s really silly to dispute it when the words are right there on the page. I seriously don’t know what words you were reading, but it’s really clear and quoted right up there.
You’re adding the “concerns of people who have no legitimate interest in what you’re doing” part. That is not what I said, or a reasonable interpretation of what I said. The discussion of jerk versus non-jerk here has been about how people treat - or would treat - other people with whom they’re having some sort of relationship.
I suspect you’re attacking your own issues more than anything I’ve said.
I think you’re on to something. I was thinking about this thread earlier, and reflecting on my own dating days, and realized that at some point, I quit fearing that women would think I was a jerk, and was myself. Which while not actively jerkish, isn’t nearly so relentlessly “nice” as I had been acting.
So I figure it had a three-fold effect- first, I didn’t have that contrived, smothering niceness going on, and second, I was genuinely me, and third, being genuinely me, I was more confident and self-assured. And it did have an effect- getting dates went from being an occasional thing that happened if I was lucky, to something I could count on happening fairly frequently.
In my reverie about my dating days and this thread, I also mused on the genesis of the niceness in me; I think somewhere in there, I saw one too many TV shows or movies where the romantic, nice thoughtful guy got the girl in the end, and took away the wrong message, which was that being nice, thoughtful and romantic is what gets the girls, not being genuine, comfortable in your own skin, and confident. Had I actually paid attention to that part of the James Bond movies that I avidly watched, I’d have realized that those behaviors are something that both the nice guys and Bond have in common, but that Bond is NOT nice in the least bit.
Then from there, it became some sort of toxic vicious circle of trying to be nice, failing, blaming it on somehow not being nice enough, trying harder, etc… and losing confidence at each stage.
I think something similar happens to most “nice” guys, and they’re left utterly bewildered, confused, and deeply doubtful of their instincts on how to deal with women.
A couple of observations:
Putting one’s needs above all is one thing; it’s putting one’s wants above the needs of others that I have a problem with. I’m not going to say that people who do this have more dating success. Also, I wouldn’t say that the fact (or opinion) that I have always done my best to treat others as I wished to be treated is the reason for my lack of dating success in my twenties. I would, however, say that it isn’t enough. The first woman I could have seen myself married to told me when she was breaking up with me that it was hard because I was the nicest person she’d ever dated (not hard, since one bf ended up stalking her and the other cheated on her). I heard later that she eventually got back together with the guy who cheated on her, so she probably did me a big favor making me available for my wife.
I can’t say this is true do to miniscule sample size, but I wonder if someone who is lacking in social skills but kindhearted, nice looking, and gainfully employed may eventually have an easier time of it when he/she reaches a certain age. Maybe I was better husband/father material than I was boyfriend or hookup material. My wife had lots of relationship experience when we met, and knew exactly what she wanted.
Much of what you’ve said here, I’ve already said explicitly or at least implied in this thread. I’m not going to argue with you when I basically agree with you, I’m just confused why it’s not evident that I do.
Is it really your contention he was implying that being a complete doormat is a good thing? Remember, we’re not talking about nice guys, we’re talking about ‘‘Nice Guys.’’ It’s obvious to me that wasn’t intended as a compliment, we do not wish to emulate the doormats any more than we wish to emulate the jerks.
I’m adjusting to some hard-core AED meds right now so I’ll admit I’m having more trouble following arguments than usual, but this most recent exchange has me utterly bewildered. I asked someone else with a normal brain to read this thread to see if your contention made sense, and he didn’t think it made sense either. Regardless of how you choose to interpret the original assertion, it’s been made abundantly clear multiple times that what you want to read into it is not what was intended to be conveyed.
Again, sorry if I’m weird and/or stupid. That might always be the case but at least I have an excuse now.
There are two problems here. The first is that you said ‘others’ with no qualifier. It is reasonable to treat that as meaning ‘other people’ with no qualifier. If you meant 'people you’re in a relationships with, you should have put some qualifier on ‘others’. Since it’s relatively common for people to claim that person X, who they aren’t in a relationship with (or aren’t any more than acquantances with) is a jerk for not taking their wants or needs into account, it’s not at all unreasonable to take your words as meaning what they said. Especially when you never just clarified that you meant something different.
The second is that people you have ‘some sort of relationship’ also don’t automatically have a legitimate interest in what you’re doing. Deciding that you’re going to stay in contact with the ex- you left on good terms even if someone you started dating doesn’t want you to is not being a jerk, for example. Neither is telling someone you’re dating or married to ‘I go out to the bar with the boys on Tuesday, I’m not stopping that just because you decided to tell me to’ (to use an example from another thread on here). Or dating a black person if you have racist parents who object to you mixing blood like that. But in all of them you’re putting your own wants and needs ahead of someone who’s in a relationship with you.
I’m sorry that my responding to the words you actually wrote instead of some idea that you didn’t write bothers you to the degree that you need to project your issues onto me.
I think this argument really gets at the problem of defining selfishness or jerkiness or even bad behavior generally. Or good behavior, for that matter. There have been a ton of threads on the dope with topics like “Was I/this person a jerk in this situation?” “Is this selfish?” “Would you like it if someone did this?”
Given all of that, it becomes even more important to recognize (as several people have already said) that if we are going to make a claim that someone else’s choice in a mate doesn’t match their claimed personality preference, we’re likely arguing at least somewhat from plain old ignorance.
What exactly do you mean by ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ here? Dating is usually what happens well before you get into an entangled finances, so I doubt you mean needs as in ‘food/clothing/shelter’. But then what exactly are ‘needs’ and what are ‘wants’, and who gets to decide which is only a want so must be sacrificed, and which is a need so must be honored, and how do you resolve conflicting needs? In the real world, outside of really broken and financially entwined situations, I don’t see ‘need’ vs ‘want’ conflicts, I see ‘want a lot’ vs ‘the other person wants’ or ‘want a lot’ vs ‘thing she wants but I think she doesn’t want as much as me’.
And I’m not just nitpicking words for the sake of nitpicking them. A lot of these romantic ideas of sacrifice and self-negation are poison that plagues ‘nice guys’ and actual nice guys for YEARS. Letting other people define their wants as needs, then deciding that you have to respect their needs is a way to get taken advantage of, not a noble goal.
You’re right that when it comes to dating there are no real “needs”. But is a relationship where one party gets what he/she wants all the time healthy? Whether it happens because one chooses to let himself or herself be a doormat, one thinks only of himself or herself, or a combination of the two you’re probably not looking at a healthy relationship. Personally, if I let someone have what they want with no resistance it’s because I don’t care one way or another. Make no mistake, if I care about something and I feel the other person is unwilling to compromise I will stand my ground.
I may be off base here, but I often felt that part of my trouble with dating when I lived in the rural south was refusing to be either dominant or a doormat. I’m not saying all women there in the eighties were like that, it seemed to be the case in the small sample size I encountered. Also, b by the time they reached their late twenties and thirties their expectations may have changed. In my first two years after moving to NYC I dated more than I had my entire life up to that point.
People looking to see something can always see it, and there’s no way to figure out in advance and preclude all the ways such people might distort what you’ve said. Once you’re at the point where the straightforward people can figure out what you mean it’s not worth arguing with the others, and you need to let them just do their thing.
So, just do your thing.
And people who post badly worded and/or untrue statements can engage in irrational allegations about the other person instead of clarifying or defending their statements. You keep doing your thing buddy.
OK, so it sounds like we’re good.