I said it poorly; what I meant was more “if having people focusing their attention on me makes me extremely uncomfortable, no class or seminar is going to change that.”
I think it’s more that
- Abusers are attracted to vulnerability,
- Women of that personality type can be drawn to unhealthy men because of a “fixer-healer” mentality;
- People often default to what is familiar, so a pattern of abusive relationships happens and forms - “its abusive but it’s familiar;”
- The whole opposites-attract thing;
- Being with an abusive partner can sometimes actually feed the abused partner’s sense of virtue - “I am a selfless, patient, and gracious man/woman, and definitely the morally better partner in this relationship.”
I think I’m sort of one of them.
Either I don’t know shit about these “nice guys” (with or without the quotation marks, come to think of it) or I have more insight into it than you folks do. (So here’s some salt to go along with this post: NaCl)
My inclination, as a male person who thought of himself as a nice guy back when still a virgin, is to think that the “nice guy” phenomenon has something to do with being gender-atypical, whether the guys in question perceive it that way or not.
• We live in a world where by the time guys get to 10th grade they’ve heard that girls are tired of boys being “only after one thing”; they’ve heard that girls feel like guys who pester and pressure them for sex are not interested in them as people, they just want the sex; they’ve heard girls complain that boys who behave this way don’t care what the girls want, so if she says “no” he just keeps trying, and that’s annoying and disrespectful; and that because girls run the risk of having a reputation as “sluts”, boys need to be more considerate and sympathetic and realize that direct overt indication of sexual interest may be thought of as insulting, i.e., “you think I’m a slut”.
• We also live in a world where sex is depicted, discussed, and thought of as something boys initiate, girls either consenting or not consenting to it. Male sexuality is about the intensity of his appetite and his skill at interacting with girls in such a way as to make sex happen. Female sexuality is about her desirability and her skill at negotiating where when and with whom she will let it happen, including skill at slowing down the process enough to find out if she wants a relationship with him and, if so, tapping the brake pedal enough for proximity and time to make that relationship happen rather than him scoring and moving on to the next girl. Note that I’m not saying this is the only depiction or understanding about sex and how it works, but it’s definitely out there as a notion.
• ALL the boys come of age in that environment. NOT all the boys who are attracted to girls sexually deal with it the same way.
• Boys who are more like girls, and had girl friends as a kid, are more likely to value what girls think and to internalize girls’ opinions on things and adopt those beliefs and impressions as their own.
•Boys who are more like girls are somewhat likely to want to be loved and appreciated for who they are, how they are, and that means being loved and appreciated for being a boy who is more like a girl, if you see what I mean.
• It’s very difficult to go around skillfully seducing girls if at the same time you wish to be seen by the girl as a boy who is more like a girl, and do not wish to be told that you’re acting like a boy and all you boys are only after one thing.
•If you have internalized a strong consideration for what girls thing, you probably aren’t going to be comfortable being thought of as someone who pesters and pressures girls for sex and doesn’t care if she doesn’t want sex and won’t accept ‘no’ as an answer.
So that much just kind of sets the stage. The final factor in generating Nice Guys™ from these fellows, I suspect, is that being a girlish male who is attracted to girls sexually can be really fucking frustrating:
•Boys like this keep expecting to run into a girl who will be delighted and amazed to find a boy who isn’t like the other boys, who doesn’t push her for sex any more than she pushes him for sex. Boys like this expect to be perceived as considerate in all the ways that boys in general are accused of not being.
• Not only does it keep not happening as years go by, but meanwhile boys like this see girls couping with boys who are conventional boys.
• At some point they may feel like they were sold a bag of goods, deceived into believing things that are not true; they may also feel that girls are not measuring them (or boys in general) according to the same yardstick they measure themselves by, and that although they have some of the same traits that girls value in themselves and value in other girls, girls don’t value those traits in them and prefer boyish boys.
•They get all angry and bitter about it and go around saying “Fucking FINE, you don’t like nice boys, well I can act like those other boys watch and see, I’ll just get all pushy about sex and show you that I can be grabby and not take no for an answer, since that’s obvously what you evil lying bitches respond to. See how you like it”. This is not the same behavior as the other boys (even if these fellows think it is), they’re doing it vindictively, they’re still partly wanting this behavior to appall and repel the girls (“see how you like it”), they are lashing out and they are hostile.
Obviously they aren’t being very nice people at that point.
Um, have you ever actually spoken to a woman before? This happens to women all the time. Usually women who less than average in attractiveness have to deal with it more often.
This is the issue though! Nice Guy acts polite, generous, kind, friendly to make people like him. Nice Guy “is polite, generous, kind, friendly, etc. to women” because he’s tryharding to get laid. Nice Guy doesn’t understand the difference between “being nice” to get into someone’s pants and “not being an asshole”. Nice Guys also tend to see guys who aren’t like them as Bad Guys, because they’re not Nice Guys, so they must be bad.
Great point AHunter3; we live in an era of blurring of gender roles - encouraging men to act like women and encouraging women to act like men. However…most people are, at their core, sexually dimorphic - that is, most men aren’t attracted to manly women and most women aren’t attracted to womanly men.
…We live in such a confusing society.
This describes almost precisely my life between around 15 and 25. I was never the most popular person at school and rather shy, but the first rejection hit me for six (a girl I didn’t get over for about four years), and it spiralled into less confidence, more reclusiveness, and then more rejection…until I stopped bothering but never got over it.
My friends never had the heart to explain to me what I was missing and I fell victim to the “Nice Guy” fallacy, and got bitterer and bitterer, and very depressed for much of the time. Then I finally found someone who I fell in love with and boosted my confidence.
I am a completely different person now and very confident, extrovert, and popular, and I have tons of platonic friendships with women who I respect and admire. If I had been this way fifteen years ago, I would have had a very different life. But I met my current wife, so it’s all good 
We’re expecting soon, and I hope, if it’s a boy, I can teach it to be respectful and yet confident in itself, in a way I never understood.
No , a class or seminar isn’t going to do that, but practice just might. I hate, hate, hate having to speak in front of a group of people - but my job requires it. It’s not such a big part of my job that it would have made sense sense to turn down the job , so I do it. I still don’t like it - but I no longer feel nauseated for a day or two before and I’m no longer sweating bullets while I’m speaking.
The job also “requires” that I walk around introducing myself and making small talk with strangers at large gatherings, That’s another thing I hate, but I do it and someone watching me would have no clue that I hate every minute of it. You shouldn’t assume that people who can tolerate having attention focused on them enjoy it or are even completely comfortable with it. Plenty of them are “faking it till they make it” to one degree or another.
Sorry, but that sounds exactly like an excuse a Nice Guy would use: “women just don’t get it, I hold the door for them and tip my fedora and they don’t want to sleep with me! What gives? Must be the rise of feminism and people forgetting how to be chivalrous!”
It’s not. It’s dudes who believe they are entitled to women who are way out of their league.
Not that I’m making a big argument for the absolute truth of AHunter3’s analysis, but I don’t think that the concept of just finding the right “league” in which to play is particularly useful, helpful, correct, or even meaningful. What defines a “league”?
I’ve come across numerous individual stories of this sort: *“I lacked confidence for the longest time, then I finally met someone who loved me too, and now years later I’m far more confident than before.” * Seems like, as with many other things in life, the 1st success is immensely important - it gets the boulder rolling down the hill.
Unfortunately, as is often the Catch-22 case, it’s hard to get success without success.
Those guys don’t bemoan not getting any because they are nice, but move on to the next prospect, convinced any rejection is because of her, not him.
Nice guys who complain are waiting for such clear signals to move that they never get them - or get them and miss them.
There is a happy medium between being over-aggressive and totally passive.
Your example in post 3 sounds a lot more like real nice guys.
Do they put their careers on hold for the women? If so, bingo.
I wonder how much of this is building up the date into something unreasonable - instead of just a pleasant time together, the first step in a lifelong relationship. When I was in the market the most relaxing dates were with women I knew socially already. I had nothing much invested, and so we had a good time and stayed friends after the one date. If I had fantasized about falling into bed with them immediately I can see how it might have been a disaster.
I think these guys are expecting things to click and are disappointed when they don’t, as opposed to giving themselves lots of opportunities with the expectation that when it clicks it clicks.
There. Fixed it for you.
“League” has nothing to do with it. You are not entitled to another person’s regard, affection or physical intimacy regardless of what relative 'league" they may be in.
I’d instead suggest confidence, strength, charm, unpredictability and niceness. Kindness, openness and trust are highly desired in partners (by both sexes). Very few women actively want to date jerks.
I disagree entirely. I know a fair number of femme-y guys, and I don’t see them having unusual problems meeting people. I also know a pretty substantial number of women who like femme-y men (and men who like butchy women, for that matter). I would suggest a bigger factor is the guys who are unclear about signalling “I am hanging out with you because we share similar interests” vs “I am hanging out with you because I’m interested in you”. (To be fair, women can have problems sending clear signals about this too.)
It sucks wide and large for those folks, but sometimes the answer actually just is “you’re just not lucky, man” and not anything that is actually wrong with them. No definable problem for a friend to point out or suggest they work on. Please note that these folks happen in either gender.
I know single people (of both genders) who had a really difficult time finding a partner just because they had a really difficult time finding a partner - and a few who haven’t yet. These are people who aren’t assholes, don’t have major physical, mental or emotional flaws that show up on the more-common “dealbreaker” lists, who have jobs, hobbies, friends and the like, aren’t expecting to date millionaire supermodels.
Some people are single because of things they’re doing (or not doing) or that they are (or are not) that either limit or eliminate their dating options. Like it or not, exclusively gay people have a smaller potential dating pool than straight people, as do people who will only date folks who share their faith or race or socioeconomic bracket or fondness for Random Indie Band 004 or involvement in their specific sexual kink. Some people, despite being told otherwise by the well-meaning, don’t brush their teeth or believe that deodorant happens to other people, or refuse to bathe more often than once a week, or otherwise fail to engage in baseline personal grooming.
Some people stay single because of character traits or behavior traits or other behavioral issues - here’s where a lot of “Nice Guys” end up falling. People (of both genders) can mostly tell the difference between someone who genuinely likes them, is interested in them, and cares about them as a person and someone who’s following down a script in order to obtain whatever their specific goal is (stereotypically, “getting laid” for dudes and “getting a commitment” for chicks). Not only can people mostly tell, but people mostly aren’t happy about it when they notice.
Unfortunately, some people are single through no fault of their own - or anyone else’s. Finding someone you can be happy with isn’t a sure thing - it’s never guaranteed for anyone. Why do you think so many people in happy relationships talk about being lucky to find their partner? That’s not a coincidence. I think in many ways, extroverts have an easier time dating just through simple mathematics, but even extroverts can get unlucky.
Part of what makes some Nice Guys so very unappealing to so many folks is that a lot of them give in to the (very real and very easy) temptation to blame women in general for the fact that they have not found someone they can be happy with. Being bitter about shit luck is natural, but if you nurture the bitterness, it just ends up poisoning your interactions, which just feeds into an ever-spiraling cascade of diminishing returns.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not a fan of the ridiculous One True Love, Harlequin Romance Novel model of romance. I think there is probably a fairly large number of individuals that any given person could be happy with. The thing is, when you start comparing against the entire human population, “a fairly large number” can turn into a really, really tiny percentage very quickly indeed. Heck, just think of the percentage of people you know who are single (which would be a baseline consideration for most people in a potential mate) right this moment. When’s the last time that percentage was over 25%? Has it ever been over 25% since you graduated from high school?
Also, nice men (and women) tend to hold views like, “Life is fair” or “life ought to be fair.”
On a somewhat unrelated note, I would like to comment that someone getting rejected because they’re “too desperate” is a rather tragic thing, if you think about it.
Yes, of course - desperation indicates bad mental health or emotional drama and a host of other issues. But it’s like denying someone a glass of water because they’re “too thirsty.” Or denying someone food because they’re “too hungry.”
Problems with that analogy:
- Food and water have no opinions about being eaten/drunk. Getting someone who is “too desperate” into a relationship, on the other hand, requires the presence of another party, who has to put up with whatever problems the desperate person has.
- No-one dies from not being in a relationship. There is no obligation to give lonely people pity dates that parallels the obligation to give starving people food.