To all the girls: Why don't you like nice guys?

In My Humble Opinion
341

I smell the distinct odour of the “No True True Scotsman” fallacy here.

Look, I’ve said several times that I quite agree that such types exist. What I disagree with is the categorical statement that anyone, anywhere who has ever considered themselves a “nice guy” and wondered why they have no success with women falls into this category.

If you wish to define the issue so that only those who meet your particular requirements are “nice guys”, than of course it is true - it is self-definingly true, as in the ‘No True Scotsman’.

Of course, feel free to assume I’m “cognitively learning disabled” if you wish; I really don’t care very much. I’ve never been “Nice” or even particularly “nice”. :smiley:

342

Well Polerius, it’s like that Onion article pointed out this year-women are increasingly settling for dead end jobs rather than dead end relationships with dead end guys.

Seriously, setting aside the issue of the whiny Nice Guy, to focus on genuinely nice men who aren’t whining about why the world doesn’t hand them a plate of p*ssy, but STILL can’t get a date-

  1. They have issues-just because he’s nice doesn’t mean a girl will want to go out with an agorophobic or compulsive handwasher

  2. It’s difficult to meet people outside of the type of social networks where people are willing to meet people-school etc… And this doesn’t just go for dating, it’s hard to find friends if you move somewhere new and everyone you work with is old and married etc… If you are less-than-aggressive in real life, this can really kill your love/dating life.

  3. They work a lot. I do know a lot of really accomplished, actually very good looking men who are quite nice…but you know, they’re the ones who elected that cardiology residency etc… Category 3, however, doesn’t spend as much time distraught over it because they’re usually too busy.

  4. They don’t meet current expectations

Now take a woman who may be earning reasonably-to-quite-well at her own career. Exactly why should she burden herself with some dude, start a relationship with him, bear his children etc. etc. simply because he’s a “nice” person? Especially if she isn’t attracted to him physically, mentally and doesn’t see a values overlap?

Honestly, I think a lot of it is that women have a lot more economic power and often will opt out of marriage rather than tie themselves down to someone who doesn’t do it for them, especially if he is lacking in upward mobility. I saw a lot of these trends when I was in law school regardless of ethnic background-women are just fussier and not willing to settle unless they have that special “chemistry” because they no longer have that economic and cultural incentive to get married.

Anyway, the answer to all of this is, I suppose, is simply to step up, be a bit more enterprising & aggressive, and make more money. You really can’t change the tide of women not being AS desperate and having career options they were barred from in the past. At least if you go for this option you always have the a) shallow woman pool (money grubbers) which will always exist and b) the heavy percentage of high income/well educated women who also prefer a working professional with upward mobility.

I mean, really, I didn’t see the guys in my law school having ALL that hard a time finding women unless they threw themselves into the partner-by-X-age track before they found a girlfriend. And they weren’t all these stunning Alpha-male Adonises either, nor were they married to superhot model types. Most of them were quasi dorky nice average men married to/dating attractive professional women. I just saw them as stepping up to current expectations.

I don’t think of it as wanting a “bad boy”, however.

Just my opinion, of course, I am sure a lot of people feel differently etc… I will say that my own current boyfriend and most of his friends fall into Category 3. There are some careers that are just brutal and not at all conducive to successful relationships (or even attempting to start a relationship).

343

Just to clarify, it seems that in order to have sex with wild abandon, it helps if the other person is not intimately aware of all your problems and personal issues. That’s where I think the stereotype arises, at least in mens’ folklore: women have one nice guy who listens to all their problems, and another guy whom they have sex with but never talk about their problems. How true or false is this myth?

344

You’re an Intellectual Whore. One of the few dynamics proposed by Ladder Theory I’ve found to be entirely true. Once a woman starts talking to you about past/current boyfriends and their various negative qualities, you’ll never get into her pants. “You’re a great listener” is a death knell.

As to why she wasn’t interested in you, but rather whatever abusive rebel she’s complaining about - well, it’s because you’re a Nice Guy and are not being viewed as a good sexual partner.

Oh, any by the way, those of you (ladyfoxfyre) making the assumption that since Woman X’s behavior bothers Man Y, that Man Y is an embittered misogynistic rapist woman-hating he-man need to get over yourselves. Any anybody actually asking for a cite in a dating discussion can fuck right off.

345

So… you can say they’re stupid, plan to act like a jerk in order to have sex with them, then leave, but this in no way means you dislike them. Also, you can be angry at them because they’re not providing something they have no obligation to provide, but that doesn’t give the impression that you’re entitled.

Fair enough.

346

Women like nice guys, but looks are also important to them as well, and if you are unattractive physically, it makes little difference how nice you are.

I have always been a pretty nice guy, but I wasn’t a very attractive one. I had less-than great hygiene - I bathed fairly regularly, but didn’t care about deoderant and I didn’t wash my face enough or shave very often, so I usually had BO, a few days growth of the scraggly sort on my face, and bad acne that persisted into my twenties. I had long greasy hair of the fine, limp sort that does not look good long, and I wore old worn out jeans and ugly clothes (80s metal t-shirts, shirts with cheesy paintings of wolves or dinosaurs on them, etc.). I was overweight and out of shape. I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 20, and that was with a drunk woman almost twice my age. Until I was in my late twenties, I was only with three women, two of them weird and much older than me, and one of them was very fat. None of the relationships lasted more than a couple of months. I was a funny guy, very nice, and I had plenty of female friends (most of my friends were female), but none of them wanted to date me.

Then, I had a friend who made it her project to make me more attractive. She took me clothes shopping, made me start wearing deoderant and wash my face more than once a day, and I cut my hair shorter. I lost some weight, and suddenly I was a much more attractive guy. My confidence was built up by females hitting on me, and before long I had multiple women wanting to be with me. I had the same personality, though I was maybe a bit more confident. I didn’t start acting like a jerk to women or stop telling weird jokes, I just looked better, and it made a world of difference.

347

I think the point is that sometimes a given woman *feels as if *a given man dislikes or disrespects women, or feels entitled to sex. It doesn’t matter whether or not it is actually true (that this man dislikes woman and feels entitled to sex, etc). If a woman feels that way about a man, she is perfectly entitled to not date that man, and she is not required to defend that.

The quality of being “a guy friend to whom she pours her heart out and tells all her problems (about school, work, other people, etc) day in and day out, and he listens patiently and provides support” is not remotely sufficient to be boyfriend material.

It is also exactly the sort of relationship a girl could have with someone with whom she is not at all romantically interested. What you describe sounds like he’s acting like her best girl pal. He shouldn’t be surprised if she treats him like one. But there is more information necessary before I can answer your question: Has this guy friend indicated his romantic interest in her? Does she find this guy attractive? Is she looking for a romantic relationship of any kind?

There are a number of women in this thread who claim to have fallen in love with and even married men who are rather a lot like the one you describe.

348

This. Someone who blames lack of dating success on being too nice qualifies as deranged in my book.

(btw, I’m married to the nicest guy in the world – his kind and genuine soul was what attracted me to him.)

349

If acting like a jerk works, what’s wrong with it? The women must like it if it works, right? Besides, the guys I’m talking about only talk like this. The guys who actually do it are busy doing it.

It’s not anger at them, it’s anger at the situation and befuddlement.

Of course, and once again I have never said anything even remotely approaching that women “should” date or not date a particular person or type of person. Whether or not it’s true is in fact what matters, as it is my only point of contention.

350

Where do women get the idea that Nice Guys don’t like women? Gosh, I don’t know, it’s just this irrational inference we draw when they accuse us of being stupid and/or crazy.

Nobody here has said that genuine nice guys dislike women, just that many of the ones who claim to be nice guys do so. It’s a not terribly subtle and rather important difference to make.

As for genuine nice guys, they usually can get dates. Maybe not tons and tons of dates, and generally not with everybody they ask, and women aren’t falling on their backs with their legs in the air when these guys walk past, but that’s a far, far cry from “not being able to get a date.”

There were a lot of guys in high school and college (well, not much of college, since I was involved most of that time frame) that were really nice that I would absolutely have gone out with. They all had three things in common: 1) they looked more like Woody Allen than Antonio Banderas 2) they had absolutely zero “bad boy” signifiers and 3) they never asked me (or to my knowlege anyone else) out.

Why nice guys like that can’t get dates isn’t really much of a mystery, surely?

The nice guys I knew who did ask (non-psycho) women out typically found girlfriends in fairly short order. (None of us were having our doors broken down by people offering us modeling contracts, but completely presentable girlfriends nonetheless.) The one exception was a guy who…well, he’s one of my very favorite people on the whole planet, but he’s one seriously odd little duck. He didn’t want to date anyone he hadn’t been friends with for a while, and he didn’t want to bother going on a few dates with someone he couldn’t see a fairly long-term future with, and and and…and even he dated from time to time.

And if the professional student math geek who makes horrible hawking sounds every 30 seconds because of ungodly allergies to everything can get a date on a regular basis, I have only one response to someone who says women don’t like nice guys: bitch, please.

351

How does this work?

I (a woman) feel that Man X disrespects women and feels entitled to sex.

Therefore I decline to date him.

He insists that it is not true that he disrespects women. (I can only conclude that he reckons that I am either lying or deluded for thinking so.)

Is this somehow supposed to demonstrate his respect for women and get me into bed?

I’m honestly confused at what you’re getting at.

352

When some women accuse men of being shallow and/or immature because they are attracted to young women with big breasts, do you think that these women dislike men?

I think they are upset and disappointed at what turns men on, though I doubt all of them dislike men.

Same with men who are upset and disappointed at what turns women on.

353

Men who reckon can’t get women because women only want bad boys are plainly going after the wrong women.
It’s the same thing - in reverse - as those single women you hear moaning and groaning because no men ever ask them out. Yet when someone does ask them out, these same women get all uptight and complain about some creepy stalker feller having THE NERVE to ask them out.

Both of these subsets of men and women need to lower their expectations of just how much of a catch they actually are and what kind of a prospective match they can reasonably attact. Because the evidence of their own experiences should show them that they’re deluding themselves.

354

You’re saying that sometimes men come off as disliking women and feeling entitled to sex, which puts you off so you refuse to date them. I have no quarrel with anything in the preceding sentence. I do however claim that these men in all probability neither dislike women nor feel entitled to sex. This does not mean you “should” date them or anything even slightly similar.

355

You are being too reasonable. Someone will be along soon enough to accuse you of just not getting it. :smiley:

356

I remain agnostic on the question of “whether most men dislike women or feel entitled to sex” and I don’t see how it’s relevant to this discussion, since it’s about the subjective experiences of individual people.

In any event, the truth of that statement cannot be known by any of us, we might as well be arguing about the truth about what most women actually think … oh, wait …

The only “truth” that matters is how individual people feel about other individual people.

357

IME this is not true at all, though I don’t speak for all women so YMMV. If I can’t talk to you about what is going on in my life I am not going to have sex with you. I have to trust you and respect you and know that you trust and respect me if I am going to have sex with you and that is a non-negotiable in my world.

As far as the people arguing that women are making up the Nice Guy Syndrome, I can’t really explain it because no explanation I give would be acceptable to you. All I can say is that I had never heard of the Nice Guy Syndrome but developed the theory on my own after dating a few Nice Guys. Then this thread popped up and I see that many, many other women have experienced the same thing and came to the same conclusions all on their own. There are a lot of men out there, though they remain in the minority to be sure, that behave EXACTLY the way the women here have described. I know there are women out there who turn down perfectly nice men for others who have sculpted abs and a motorcycle but they are in the minority too.

I recently had an argument with a coworker who was going on and on about how all men are fucking cheaters and her last 6 boyfriends had all cheated on her, yadda yadda. I told her that I was sorry that had happened to her but that honestly that pattern says more about her than it does about the cheaters. If you are cheated on once that sucks and probably isn’t your fault but if it becomes the pattern in your relationships then it means you should probably take a look at the choices you make when seeking out an SO. She was upset that I said that to her but after she thought about it she was able to recognize the patterns she was repeating that were causing this to be a problem in her life and hopefully now she can make better decisions. I would say the same thing to all the men out there who complain that women are constantly dumping them or turning them down to date “bad boys” or something. If it happened once that sucks for you and probably isn’t your fault, but if it keeps happening then there is a pattern you are setting up for yourself and is just as much your fault for choosing the wrong women as it is the women who are leaving you and you are probably one of the Nice Guys we have been talking about in this thread. Does that make a little more sense?

358

If that’s your view then we disagree about nothing that matters. Other people, however, have made statements beyond this, and those I disagree with.

359

Just had to say, CrazyCatLady, you made quite a bit of sense in your post. Plus, it rather made me laugh. :slight_smile:

360

Well, I think there’s a difference between “attracted to young women with big breasts” and “don’t like older or flat-chested women.” You can think someone is hot without disliking all other types of people, after all.

But yeah, when women say that guys ONLY like young floozies with big tits, or empty-headed bimbos or whatever, I do indeed think those women have a shitty opinion of men as a whole.