I get this part, but I don’t get why that means the guy is perpetually placed in the friend box, so that if he starts showing interest it doesn’t matter.
Well, if someone has more desire for short term relationships and “bad” has a component of "willing to take risks - as opposed to a ‘nice guy’ who is not just looking for hookups and is unwilling to hit on 100 girls to get laid three times - he probably is going to have more sexual partners.
My ex husband had little going for him - less than stellar looks, difficultly in holding a real job - yet while we were dating and married he was able to cheat on me many times - of course, he hit on women nearly constantly without a very fine filter. Since he wasn’t picky about the women, and tried with nearly every woman he met who wasn’t older than his own mother - he had success.
(By the way - he wasn’t a “bad boy” - i.e. not a Hell’s Angel or a musician - no tattoos or peircings - in fact, when I dated him he was in school to become an electrical engineer - not a bad boy sort of career - and he did treat me well with the exception of cheating on me.)
This all depends on the woman, really. Most of the men I have dated in my life have been a friend first and I am much more likely to consider a relationship with a male friend than with a stranger. If I were single and I had a male friend that I thought might be interested I would probably start looking for signs that he thought of me “that way” and trying to turn it into a relationship unless there was something about him that made me unwilling to date him (like if he has talked about being into BDSM or something else that doesn’t float my boat at all.)
There are a lot of women who won’t consider dating you once you are a friend but there are a lot of women who would have no problem dating a friend, they just know they are not compatible with you and that is why you are in the friend category in the first place.
The thing is, it is better to show interest up front. If a guy is too shy to show interest up front and becomes friends with a woman he is attracted to, and then shows interest later, he runs the risk of giving offence - because to the woman it may appear that his friendship was not sincere but rather a sort of manipulation.
Or alternatively, if the friendship is clearly sincere, she may not wish to risk it on the uncertanties of a romantic relationship.
There are many who beat the odds, but over all, it is best for everyone to demonstrate interest up front. Most women in my experience are flattered by the attention and, if they do turn you down, will do so kindly and no harm done.
Learning how to demonstrate interest, recognize interest in others, and accept rejection with good humour are perhaps the three best skills a young man can learn, because one of the areas in which sexual inequality is still very marked is that men are still, on average, expected to make the first move (though I’ll be the first to say this is no invariable rule).
Yowza, Cazzle, that’s a heck of a letter! It reminded me of a feature at Jezebel called Crap Email From a Dude. I admit I didn’t make it all the way through, but I didn’t read it as “I’m nice, you owe me sex” as much as “I’m way too invested in this”. Men who write letters like that don’t strike me as entitled, they strike me as weird. I would be weirded out by a letter like that from someone I’ve known for years, let alone a dude I’d only met once.
He probably thought it was terribly romantic. That’s another Nice Guy move, oversharing disguised as romance, trust, my heart on a platter for you! It’s too much, no one needs to know your every thought in detail no matter how long you’ve been dating or known each other.
I’d guess that if I was making a list of “Nice Guy” characteristics, boundry issues would be a big one. “Nice Guys” don’t respect your boundries - where nice guys sometimes have boundry issues the other direction - i.e. they are too closed and too private, and respect your privacy too much.
Another “Nice Guy” trait is insisting and arguing. If you tell a “Nice Guy” that 'I’m not that big of a fan of Die Hard movies" when he expresses they are his favorites, rather than chalking it up to different strokes - something that - should the relationship continue - he will have to indulge without you, he needs to convince you that Die Hard movies are classics of modern cinema. nice guys - lower case - respect your dislike of action movies and try for compromise where possible - maybe that’s 'I’ll see 27 Dresses if you see Iron Man next week." Maybe that’s “we don’t see a lot of movies together.” Doormats go see 27 Dresses, never go see Iron Man - because they wouldn’t go without you and if you don’t want to see it, I really guess I can pass…"
That’s an interesting study, but, it’s not clear from the study if the success with women for men with “dark traits” is due to the fact that women find them more attractive or simply because these men try more and are therefore statistically more likely to succeed. I suspect the answer is a little bit of both, but this particular study doesn’t seem to show that.
I’m not going to argue this, but you’re mistaken.
This is good advice. I’m trying.
I do mean it, and if I knew she was happy with her BF then I would be thrilled.
What the hell? Yes, I probably do have a lot of bitterness buried within me at women, misplaced anger from years of total rejection before I hit 21, but I’m working on getting over that irrationality, and I certainly don’t dislike women. If anything I like them too much! 
Maybe she was subconsciously manipulative and getting that ego boost, but she was clearly confused and had no ill intent in mind. She professed she loved us both. She said that “not sleeping with you was just a technicality,” which, was sorta true in that we did most other things… so, after I asked her WTF that meant, she said that she did feel we had a valid relationship, albeit briefly. In any case, I hold no grudge against nor regret what’s happened.
Her boyfriend did tell me “she does this every year. I rub her the wrong way and she rubs to some guy and uses him like a crutch.” That hurt, if it’s true. I don’t think it is, but it’s possible.
Well, this attitude I mostly show here when I vent, but I will be on the lookout that I don’t display it in meatspace. And yeah… definitely need to find less crazy girls haha.
A word on the “I just want her to be happy,” “I’d sacrifice for her,” “I’d give up everything for her,” romantic vs pathetic issue.
I will try to clarify more what I meant when I said “I just want her to be happy.” Yes, grandmas and cloying, pathetic boyfriends aren’t sexy. I understand that a relationship should be based around some form of equality. Passive-aggressiveness and emotional blackmail are very very bad.
With that said, I am willing to make sacrifices if I believe it’s in my SO’s best interest. A small example, SO wants to eat Thai food and it’s not my favorite. Sure, I’ll go out with her and eat the Thai food. A big example, say SO wants to go to Thailand for a good professional reason and I don’t really like Thailand. I’ll come along and support her. (I have no beef against Thailand ftr :P) Or, if I have a good reason to stay in the states, then we’ll talk about it and I would be willing to do that too, but what’s important is that she knows I’d be willing to go with her if that was the best choice for us as a couple.
I don’t think either of those examples show sycophantic, cloying tendencies. It’s a melodramatic and silly metaphor, and it’s definitely not appropriate in the early stages of a relationship (that is where I make my mistake… too much too soon), I believe I am my SO’s knight. I’m not weak, or whiny, and I don’t make myself a doormat and give up all my desires and wants just for my SO to be content. That’s horrible and I’m annoyed people would think me to be that spineless. But, with that said, I am willing to make appropriate sacrifices and romantic gestures if I believe it’s in the best interest of her, and us as a couple. Both require intensive communication and a strong relationship for them not to turn into passive-aggressiveness and emotional blackmail, and I recognize my main issue is not my approach to romance but my speed and intensity.
Your advice is sound, but you wouldn’t have felt the need to give it if you knew the full situation. I have pursued her, and I was very pushy. We flirted constantly and did some physical things together, short of sex. Now we have stopped talking for a week, and I think that’s for the best. I needed some time to catch my breath, and perhaps she has missed me and realized what she has lost. Her BF is not the reason why I am not talking to her. Of course her ex-BF doesn’t have my best interests at heart.
The problem is she has blocked almost all forms of communication. I am just left with communicating through a friend, or sending a letter to all families with her last name in the Greater Orlando area. That second option strikes me as insane and stalkerish. That leaves the first one, and although the friend has agreed to play middlewoman, I don’t know if that’s a good choice.
Agree! “Nice Guy” referred to trying to decide if he should kiss me when we were sitting on the couch. I was sitting at the far end of the couch, knees drawn up and arms folded in front of me… the “don’t touch me” pose. A normal person without boundary issues wouldn’t have needed to ask if I wanted to be kissed, “No” was written in every line of my body.
Habit, I guess. I did once end up having a romantic relationship with a friend, but it felt so very weird in the beginning and it took time to get over the feeling of doing something wrong when we first started being intimate with each other. I guess there are a lot of people in our lives who we might otherwise find attractive that are written off as “never ever” for good reason - friend’s spouses, bosses (for most people), relatives - and so reclaiming someone from the never ever catagory is relatively unusual.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Your post was excellent. While the harshly honest advice and ‘tough love’ has been necessary in this thread to snap me out of my bitter funk, perhaps like Aang in Avatar, I respond better to a more positive approach. (geek reference 4tw :D)
You are conflating “bad boy” with “jerk” or “criminal”. A “bad boy” is not necessarily, or even often, a bad man. The non-threatening diminutive “boy” isn’t in the expression purely for alliterative purposes. The term is pretty commonly used to refer to men who just look a certain way, like those who wear leather jackets or have tattoos. Many of these men are in fact very nice people.
Another type of “bad boy”, like the “bad girl” type popular with some men, is a man who likes to party and have sex and isn’t interested in mainstream respectability. As long as he’s honest about it, this type of “bad boy” might be considered immature but not necessarily a bad person. He’s definitely a bad prospect for a woman looking to settle down, but a woman with such a goal who prefers men who’ve made it clear they aren’t interested in commitment is a woman who has serious issues. For a woman just looking for a good time, a man like this might be a very reasonable choice.
But you don’t have to take my word for the fairly non-threatening way in which the expression “bad boy” is used. Urban Dictionary’s top definition for “bad boy” describes such a man as: “independent and willful; he does what he wants when he wants; he doesn’t follow trends, they follow him; he often looks scruffy, but hip; he’s not looking for trouble, but there’s a sense of danger about him.”
What’s so “bad” about that? Such a man might be difficult to put up with in the long term and isn’t every woman’s type even in the short term, but I can easily see why he’d be preferable to a man who isn’t independent, who is weak willed, who whines about how he can’t ever do or have what he wants, who follows the herd, who doesn’t look hip, and who is afraid of taking risks.
According to the studies I referenced earlier: Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy.
When a man is referred to as a “bad boy type” in real life, I don’t think the speaker normally means “he’s a psychopath”. My friend’s tattooed husband might be called a “bad boy” because of his body art, but he’s a very kind and loving man who’s devoted to his wife and their daughter. He isn’t a selfish or manipulative person at all.
As I have been trying to explain, “bad boy” is a pretty broad term that can be used to apply to quite a diverse group of men. I don’t think it’s productive to spend time wondering how women feel about “bad boys” or when that term could refer to all kinds of different men. I think the introduction of the subject to this thread has been nothing but an attempt to add some more stuffing to a straw man argument about what women are “really” like.
The rest of my post is not directed to you personally placebo, but to the thread at large.
Generally speaking, women prefer that the men they date be of a pleasant disposition and behave in a reasonably polite manner. This should be obvious to anyone who actually knows any women. What women don’t like are men who have the attitude “Why don’t women like nice guys? Why do women always date jerks instead of nice guys like me?”
There’s nothing nice about making this sort of complaint. It’s whiny, egotistical, immature, selfish, envious, and indicates a refusal to take responsibility for one’s own behavior. Without exception every guy I’ve ever known in real life who started with the “nice guys like me always finish last in the dating game” business was either a pathetic loser or a creepy psycho. That’s why women didn’t like them.
Gentlemen, it’s no skin off my nose if you want to act in a manner indistinguishable from that of pathetic losers and creepy psychos. I guess anyone can get to feeling down and say something dumb, but if a man insists on continuing to sing the “Nice Guy’s Lament” then the reason for his lack of success with women is no mystery to me.
See, I’m not really seeing why either of the examples you gave would be in her best interest, or in your best interest as a couple. If you’re just meh about a cuisine, eating it doesn’t really count as a sacrifice and labeling it as such makes you sound…well, like a Nice Guy. If you really hate the stuff, you sitting there gagging it down isn’t going to make a kind and loving SO happy–it’s going to make her feel like a world-class asshole. It’s part of the reason the subject of going out for Mexican pretty much never comes up in our house; he doesn’t want me to gag the stuff down, even if I do it with a smile on my face to make him happy, and I don’t want to make him feel like an asshole. If he has a yen for the stuff, he has friends to go out with who like it.
Same sort of thing with the work trip. Presumably, her employers know her skill level and wouldn’t throw her into something she can’t handle, so I’m not really seeing where she would really need you there. And if she can’t handle the work, unless you intend to step in and do it for her, you’re going to be about as helpful as tits on a boar. No benefit at all to you going someplace you don’t want to go.
So yeah, it does sound kind of sycophantic and spineless.
I’m sure you think the whole knight thing is just terribly romantic, but it really comes across as kind of creepy. You see, the thing about knights is that they’re really only helpful to damsels in distress, ie people who need rescuing. By and large, emotionally healthy women don’t need or want rescuing, and acting like we do is infantilizing. It smacks of that “boundary issue” thing they were discussing up-page.
You certainly “like” them to the point of allowing them to arbitrarily control your emotions. Truthfully, I question whether or not you like yourself enough to like a woman in the way you profess wanting to. A real woman, not just the concept of women.
I want to know how the conversation even got to that point. It seems to me that you are placing personal validation on things like relationships and getting laid, why? I can’t imagine a scenario where someone says to another that not having sex was just a technicality unless there was some serious guilt-tripping going on. The fact that you are hanging your hat on such a thing is pretty damned weird.
Heh. Totally dude, dem bitches are crazy. All you did was willingly get involved with a woman who acted nuttier than squirrel shit from the get-go, I mean how were you to know?
I’m sure you’re annoyed and will be taking a stand against that perception as soon as someone comes along to prop you up.
Obviously her ex doesn’t have your best interests at heart, but I really have to question if you even have your own best interests at heart. Realized what she has lost? Really? She is telling you she realizes what she lost by blocking almost all forms of communication, and what she realizes is she likes having you lost. Think about why that might be.
Don’t get caught in the messenger game. I know you didn’t get to really experience youthful romance, but for Christ’s sake that doesn’t mean you need to emulate that bullshit now.
You respond to a more positive approach because it tells you what you want to hear. In the same vein, you are only seeing what you want to see in this situation. She may have been manipulative, but she didn’t know she was doing it. She said she loved us both. She may have “technicalitied” all over my face and used me as an emotional tampon, but I don’t know for certain she’s happy with her boyfriend; so she may not have given up on us. Look man, she may love you or she may not, but it don’t bloody matter. How someone feels don’t mean a goddamn thing to anyone but them. What matters to the rest of the world is how they act, and if she acts like she don’t love you that’s the only information you need to know. Time to saddle up the pony and hit the ol’ dusty trail, cowboy.
When people have the decency to tell you who they are, have the sense to listen. That girl told you she would be nothing but trouble but you only heeded evidence that affirmed what you already thought you wanted.
Once in a while Brainiac4 will take me out for sushi - awfully nice of him, he doesn’t like the stuff. But he does like tempura, and we always pick a sushi place that will give him tempura.
If he didn’t like anything at the sushi place at all - I’d feel like a complete ass. Sushi is great, eating it while watching your love not eat and play the martyr is - a miserable fucking way to spend an evening. If that were the case, I’d save sushi for going out with friends or the occational lunch out (which I do anyway).
I go see romantic comedies by myself - he doesn’t like them. But there are movies that we both really enjoy together (we both enjoyed Iron Man) - so why, when there are movies we can both enjoy, should either he or I be forced to sit through something we don’t enjoy.
We don’t need to spend every moment attached at the hip - hell, we sometimes take seperate vacations (we’ve been married 13 years). I go off with my girlfriends on retreat - he goes off to Chicago with his buddies to see a band - or goes off to GenCon.
Business trips?! Ha. When I go on a business trip I get up at six am and am busy until 10pm. Why would I want my significant other there? He’d be in the way. His presence would also make me look unprofessional. Brainiac4’s business trips are worse than mine. A few times we’ve taken advantage of one free airfare, car rental, and the hotel for one of us to fly out and extend through a weekend.
Okay, then feel free to disregard it.
Then it sounds like it is time to explore the other part of not being a Nice Guy - Know when No means No. AKA “she’s just not that into you”.
You are quite correct that the second choice is stalkerish. The first is wimpy. If she doesn’t want to talk with you, then she doesn’t want to go out with you either.
If she contacts you again, great - if she wants to go out with you. If she contacts you again and wants to talk about her feelings and how conflicted she is and all that kind of thing, nuh-uh. No talking about the relationship until there is one, IYSWIM.
You want to go out with her. That means go and do fun things together and explore the possibility of a more committed relationship. But talking about being miserable is not “fun things together” unless you are into that sort of thing. And being into that sort of thing, again, relegates one to the role of Understanding Friend, not Hot Guy Who May Possibly Gain Access to the Fun Parts.
Maybe I don’t have access to all the facts. But “push until you get a definite answer and then move on” is not a bad general rule for romance.
If she wants you, she has to come across, and I don’t just mean sexually. But mooning after the unobtainable is part of what a lot of women object to in Nice Guys.
Pursue interests that you genuinely enjoy, and hit on everything in sight while you do it. That’s how you play the percentages to win.
Regards,
Shodan