Most of my friends are men. None of them look like Jason Stetham, are as wealthy as Tiger Woods, nor as witty and intelligent as Clint Eastwood. ALL believe they deserve to be with Angelie Joilie or her twin sister.
That, to me, makes them all far from “nice”, no matter how impeccable their manners are. Gee guys, then you get pissy because you get snubbed most the time. It’s not women who constantly turn you down, it’s the 5% that can literally get any man they want who turn you down.
Try being a bit more realistic about yourself for once. After you come to grips with your less than perfect traits, try flirting with a less than perfect woman instead of that “hot blonde”. Trust me - there are a lot of less than perfect women out there that would just LOVE you!
Hollywood has told these guys that beautiful women are tired of rich, good-looking guys who mistreat them (and are chiefly interested in sex), and just want someone that’s nice and cares about them (and is chiefly interested in sex). What these guys don’t notice, is the “nice guy” in the movie looks like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Cruise, or Brad Pitt, while most of them would get cock-blocked by Kevin James or Jim Belushi.
Isn’t that the message of Big Bang Theory? All of the guys on the show see themselves as nice guys, but they’re all actually neurotic and creepy.
How (genuinely) nice a guy you are, and how successful you are with women are two largely independent things. <pause for dramatic effect> …at least in initiating relationships.
I know it’s very controversial here, but just things like confidence are much more important in the early stages. The idea that women can perfectly tell how good a person you are, and that it would trump all other factors is fantasy.
…So what I’m saying is that I think the “nice guy fallacy” is being committed by some people on both sides of this debate: the fallacy of thinking how nice you are is a significant factor in your success (or lack of) with women.
And women have told them that they are not superficial and are not interested in looks. Its the men that are shallow. But those of us in the real world know thats not true (except for apparently Christina Hendricks, how the hell did that happen?). I have known plenty of smooth talking assholes who put up numbers like Chamberlin. And its obvious that they are going to treat women like shit. For good or bad women have been told all there lives that men are focused only on looks. Men are told that women are noble creatures who are only interested in character. The reality for both lie somewhere in the middle. I’m not putting anyone down for it. The biology of attraction is all part of it. After years of getting hit with reality some guys get bitter.
No thats exactly right. Some guys are not blessed with good looks. But there are ways to improve yourself to make yourself more attractive. Women are not attracted to nice.
I’m not waving off anything. Women, like men, prefer to date attractive partners. Humans in general try to get the most attractive partner they can attract. Sometimes attractiveness has more to it that physical beauty (confidence, attitude, humor, etc.), but we are still looking for attraction. All of us.
Women do not need to explain or justify this. We are under no obligation to date out of charity.
Thanks for the background. He sounds like a manipulative rat to me, and his pressure on you not that much different from the “I paid for a nice dinner, now sleep with me” attitude.
Based on the evidence from “nice guys” complaining in other threads, it seems to me that they want a closer relationship than the woman wants, and not just sex. They seem to live outside the relationships take two sphere. Lots of young men have crushes, often on women who don’t care. (And vice versa I’m sure.) Maturity involves either trying and accepting the consequences or reading her reaction well enough to understand where you are.
I think this is far easier to do after you’ve actually been in love, because then you know what it looks like. People get the wrong message from books and movies (and even Shakespeare) where no matter how much the girl dislikes you at the beginning she’ll fall into your arms by the last act.
Another way to look at it - the non-nice guy who has had success has a script of what works - sometimes. Your example did. The nice guy has no clue.
The set of genuinely nice guys is not equivalent to the set of those who call themselves nice guys. I’d say that genuinely nice guys ask politely, but clearly, and accept whatever answer they get.
Absolutely, and on first draft of my post I also made the distinction between nice guys and guys who call themselves that.
But the Dope is nowhere near neutral on this issue. It seems whenever the word nice appears anywhere near to guy or man you get all the vitriol about self-entitled, whiny men.
And the OP here continues this trend: “A nice guy sees a pretty woman and initiates his typical nice guy material”. That’s not what nice guy means.
And if the term “nice guy” has been appropriated to mean “dick”, how do I describe the majority of men I know who are generally polite and considerate (without being doormats) to everyone they meet, male or female?
Mijin, most people I know will think of the negative connotation of the term “nice guy” first, 99% of the time (ymmv and all that).
The lengthier option I sometimes use is “he’s a really nice guy (not a Nice Guy)”*.
The shorter option, though, and one that I personally like, is “he’s a good person”. Removes the NG stigma and even though good is technically as generic as nice, it really does have more positive connotations that support what you actually mean. Nice is more facile and bland, while good feels more altruistic and genuine. Again ymmv.
if you really wanted to get all fancy, you could do something like “… not a Nice Guy[sup]TM[/sup])”.
I think because the context here (and elsewhere) is “I’m a nice guy. It isn’t fair that women claim they like nice guys but go out with jerks.”
How many actual nice guys call themselves that? They don’t need to; they show, not tell, and are more successful and thus not whiny.
The real issue is about different forms of characteristic whining.
One stereotypical-or-common form is the “I’m a nice guy, so why do women all date assholes and not me?” type.
Another is “I’m a nice girl, why are all the men I meet assholes?”.
The first kind of whiner often complains about the second kind of whiner - as in, “the women I know all complain about guys being assholes, but I’m a nice guy - why won’t they date me?”. The second kind of whiner then promptly adds the first kind of whiner to the “guys she meets who are assholes” in the ‘self-entitled whiner asshole’ category.
“Those of us in the real world?” That women like attractive men isn’t some deep dark secret - the world’s chock-full of groupies, we’ve seen them squeal over boy bands and actors for generations, there are male models and male strippers. Perhaps what “nice guys” are missing is the *other side *of the media programming telling them girls want nice guys - it’s telling girls that attractive guys like Taylor Lautner are passionate, sensitive and caring, and they wind up dating good-looking jerks. So maybe while the nice guys are thinking “I’m nice, why doesn’t she want me?” the nice girls are thinking “He’s gorgeous, but why isn’t he nicer?”
I was in a university faculty that had 10 guys for every girl. I was naive and young. I was also cute, funny and smart.
I made a lot of guy friends over the course of my degree and fully 50% of them later told me that they were really just trying to date me. It was partly because I was too dumb to pick up the signals, I imagine.
Anyway, we’re talking about 30 or so guys who were, in their own way, trying to use becoming my friend as a jumping-off point for a relationship.
The funny thing is that of these guys only three of them ever made a move. One I ended up dating for over a year and the another I am married to. (The third declared his affection while I was dating my now husband. Needless to say, I shot him down. However, I would have dated him if he had made a move a year earlier.)
What I am trying to say here is being friends first is good but make a move. If you don’t she is always just going to see you as a friend.
perfectparanoia, you actually bring up another good point. A lot of these dudes who are self described Nice Guys complain that girls never fall for them, but they never make their intentions clear.
I can’t tell you how many guys over the years have professed their love for me much after the fact.
“I was head over heels for you and you rejected me!”
“I’m sorry, I what?”
“You rejected me!”
“You asked me out? I don’t remember that.”
“No, but I mean, it was OBVIOUS I was in to you and you just like to date jerks.”
