Apparently “NJB” had a moment on certain dating apps:
Pssssh, well, you should not be able to call yourself a Nice Jewish Boy unless a Certified Jewish Mom calls you that first.
I married a Nice Jewish Girl, but I’m not Jewish myself. No, it didn’t break her mother’s heart.
Yes, that’s a good summary, thank you.
Sure, I wasn’t really aiming my advice at you, I was aiming it at younger people in that situation. I understand that this is no longer you as you are now.
This would describe me in my twenties as well. My anger was directed toward me rather than the women who rejected me, though. I was miserable, and was probably heading toward voluntary commitment before I met my future wife at age 30. The thing is that there are different reasons that folks have trouble finding the relationship they desire. The danger would be “one size fits all” solutions. I can almost guarantee that if anyone involved in this discussion had met me in my late twenties and not discussed my dating or lack thereof it would never occur to them that I hadn’t been on a date in years. If any person or group of people make progress toward solving this dilemma they deserve to be on the cover of Time as “Person of the Century,”
As someone who has been a nice guy all my life, I think it’s time we bury the term. Not just because incel assholes have co-opted it, but because it was always a lukewarm compliment to begin with. “He’s a nice guy” was always the default phrase for someone with no personality or no discernable talents. At least in the groups I ran around with, it was not a synonym for kind, gentle, or polite - it was at best, a synonym for “non-offensive.”
The more positive descriptor was “good.” He’s a good guy, a good friend, the all purpose Southernism “He’s good people,” etc.
I think a lot of the problem is that people who are socially awkward, or just plain introverted, have trouble interacting with people in general, or at least people who aren’t just like them. As I went from high school to college, and from college into work life, I was forced to deal with people on a regular basis who I wouldn’t have even tried to talk to in an earlier stage. Eventually my social skills caught up with my genuine “niceness” and sustaining relationships with other humans got a lot easier. I’m still an introvert, but at least I can talk to an attractive woman for five minutes without feeling like I want to die.
Now that I think about it, I’m not sure if I’ve ever been specifically called a “nice guy”. Nice person or nice human being, yes. Even a nice man, or kind-hearted. Still, it didn’t feel good for someone to tell me that I was the “nicest person she ever dated” when she was dumping me. After a while it’s easy to take it as “you’re nice, but that’s not enough to make me want to date you.” Mind you I’m not saying that’s the right way to take it. Also, I’ve always been able to talk to any woman without wanting to die unless I wished I could ask them out.
I’m beginning to think this may be a human condition. One that’s gonna get worse as we isolate more and more.
I have no problem with women. I like them, loved a few and been loved back. I talk to women with ease (which is to say…same as I would speak with anyone). I enjoy their company.
That said, those thoughts have crossed my mind a few times. Nothing got weird and I am certainly no incel but I can not say I have never thought that.
Dunno what that all means in the end. Just putting it out there.
Well, when you see a woman take off with a known drug addict felon, then there can be real cause to shake your head and wonder.
I agree, and this, I think, is another way the Nice Guy issue has poisoned the debate. It has become difficult to discuss the issue of “why do some women like bad men?” as a stand-alone discussion topic in itself without someone immediately dragging in, “If you complain about that phenomenon, you must be an incel and a ‘nice guy.’” It’s a perfectly fair and reasonable topic to discuss without inceldom being dragged in, and it is simply a fact that some women do, confusingly, like men that would, on paper, be everything that women ought to be repelled by.
Feminist women wrote long and short, personal and theoretical, and knitted together their own individual experiences with their new analyses of patriarchal society, “We are pressured into being sexually passive. We are told that if we express sexual interest, it will ‘emasculate’ the guys. They want to feel in charge. They can’t perform if it’s with equals who have equal interest. We learn to hide our intellect, act like we’re stupid and clueless. Let the guys think they are conquering us, acquiring us, another notch to carve on their bedpost, because that’s how they are, pathetic though it may be”.
(That’s a transliteration / summary from a lot of feminist writings. Feel free to dissent with my summary if you think it unfair).
They were clearly explaining why girls and women behave in a specifically gendered and channeled way. They included tales of nasty things that happened to you as a girl or woman if you tried to react spontaneously or naturally to sex and guys and opportunities and feelings and so on.
Incels don’t read feminist theory. They should. A lot of them would get a smack-in-the-head “oh holy shit” experience, to realize female people don’t feel in control of the very same situation that they, the incels, hate so much, of how the sex game is set up.
So, you think there is a line. Now we need to decide where that line lies.
You can see the problem with that. We can go round and round forever on where that line ought to be drawn (if it should be drawn).
I have no easy answers. The world is complex. I enjoy being around women but I have had a few times where I was the “nice guy.” Or, at least, had thoughts like it run through my head. How do I know if the other guy was “bad” enough? When am I the “nice guy” being derided here?
Maybe this is akin to the porn case that famously went before the US Supreme Court and their opinion, because it was impossible to define, was something along the lines of, “I know it when I see it.”
Shoulda, coulda, woulda. They ain’t gonna read that.
If they’d listen to the women in their lives it should be clear.
If they watch women they work with or meet, it should be clear.
1000s of years and they still don’t get it about each other.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s in the DNA? Or brain wiring?
I was tired of hearing men don’t understand women, & vice-versa, when I was about 8yo. and a teacher told the girls we had to be lady like or boys wouldn’t like us.
Inside I was screaming, I don’t care! I don’t like them anyway!
Eh…I think it is about being smitten and the person you are smitten with does not feel the same.
Then the brain conjures up all sorts of reasons why they cannot see that “you” are the best for them.
I think women can do this as well as men. They just have not made a cause out of it. It is very weird men have…that they feel entitled (and the result of that, if they got their way, is nothing short of terrifying).
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” sound familiar? They don’t need to make a cause out of it because it’s expected. It’s literally a cliche.
Personally I don’t consider that a gendered behavior, but a generic human behavior. It just gets treated differently culturally according to the gender of the person acting that way.
I try to be a “kind guy”. I buy homeless people food, I stop on the side of the road to help change a tire, or give a tow…
“Nice guy”? Is that not a self loathing incel teenage male who could not get a date without pointing his AR 15 at her head?
I kind of prefer my version. It just seems nicer.
Women have agency just like men have agency.
“Why do some women like men I don’t approve of?!” has the same answer when the genders are reversed.
Do you owe your mind and body to every random woman who is nice and is attracted to you? Do you owe a random nice woman an explanation if you like a woman they don’t approve of?
I agree with that, but to try to actually answer the question… A lot of women choose what they know, how they were raised, men who share their father’s traits, for better or worse. I also think there is a biological instinct for women to be attracted to aggression. A lot of us get that out of our systems through romance novels about bad boys, etc. There is great appeal in the idea that you can be the agent of change in a man’s life, romantically speaking. They imagine that the bad boy is a threat to whatever could harm them, not really realizing that eventually the bad boy will be a threat to them.
This does not, of course, apply to all women. I just understand that instinct. “This guy will protect me” can be very powerful. So can, “Only I can fix this man because that’s how special our love is.”
My husband is a really kind person. Whenever a guy was nice to me I’d pay careful attention to whether or not he was just as nice to other people. I saw that my husband was really kind to everyone. I really just wanted something safe and predictable, and my husband is extremely reliable, cool-headed, gentle, and responsible. I do think he is extraordinary - I’ve never seen anyone handle a crisis as well as he does and he’s never dropped the ball. He’s also incredibly smart so I feel constantly challenged to meet him where he is, intellectually.
He is nothing like the men who parented me, but he does remind me a bit of my grandfather. They are both highly intelligent, responsible, rigid about how things should be done, small in stature, and unconcerned with material things. My grandfather has a nasty temper though. I think my husband has only yelled at me once in the 23 years we’ve been together.