51 year old nice guy here (I’ve been known to sign things with “Nice Guy Inc,), following this thread with great interest (never married: I never asked, nobody ever asked me).
A self-identified problem I have is that I think and analyze too much, is it possible you do that? Also that I get into comfortable ruts about where I spend time (evenings at the coffee shop limits my pool of available potentials); are you spending too much time fishing in the same pond?
Maybe I console myself (rationalize it?) with the knowledge that **I** like myself, I like who/what I am. And I *won’t* compromise/change my values/morals/integrity for a quickie.
Anyway, when you find a gal, could you see if her mother/aunt/older sister is available and let her know about me??? :)
Oh yeah, if it makes you happy to make her happy, shouldn’t you allow her the opportunity to make you happy so she can have the same good feeling?
I was in your exact shoes 5 years ago before I met Nashiitashii. I had done all the right things, said all the right words, and yet I still lost out time and again. What changed it for me was quite literally simply realizing that most of the world isn’t worth dealing with. Most people are shallow, I’ll say it unabashedly. You have to take the time to find the wheat among the chaff.
You’ve always struck me as a decent looking, smart, nice guy with a killer turn of phrase that I can’t match. The problem is that most women in your age range are still a bit immature. You have to surround yourself with people who share your interests and level of discourse or you’ll never be happy my friend. Right now you are doing the male equivalent of the girl who tries to work on making the “bad boy” nice. Instead, focus on yourself and what makes you happy. If you find that there are single women in your circle that seem interested, be friendly but not eager. Let them know that THEY will have to work a bit to figure out the puzzle that is you. Let them know that spending intimate time, (not necessarily physical romance here), with you is a reward for their persistence and positive personality fit rather than simply given out as freely as you have in the past. Something that is free has no value.
Find someone that is interested in you, for YOU.
What helped me is taking time out from relationships for a while and focusing on casual physical interactions. I made it clear to women that I WAS only interested in one thing, and that any relationship that occurred would be transient or totally unexpected. Surprisingly, most found that approach refreshing, and i got as much action as I wanted. I was never a jerk, just honest.
Consider getting a proper make-over by someone who knows what they are talking about. A haircut, beard style,(if any), and clothing type that both fits your personality and accents your looks does a world of good; shallow but true.
Hang in there. PM if you ever want to talk.
-Acid.
I don’t want a nice guy. I want a good man. As **Mando JO **and others have said, it’s not about who you’re not (not a jerk, not living off your parents, not a player), it’s about who you are. Are you doing something interesting and worthwhile with your life? Are you kind to people when you’re not trying to get laid? What can you build/make/do? What are your goals and ambitions? “Nice” isn’t enough.
This is a wonderful point. I know scads of good men who are in very happy relationships, but they tended to settle down relatively young. Maybe that’s part of the issue–the young women who like nice guys get snagged early.
This is huge. I wouldn’t date a heavy drinker or someone whose idea of fun always involves alcohol. (And I love me some beer.) That’s inviting drama into my life that I don’t want to deal with.
It’s impossible to get inside someone else’s head and know exactly what their situation is, especially from these postcard-length personal sketches in this thread, but I’ve been in the situation of Unrequited Nice Guy, and i don’t recognize myself in the characterizatyions people have been offering. As I’m now married, with an 11 year old daughter, I think I’ve graduated from my Lonely Nice Guy status and may have some perspective on it. Unfortunately, I still don’t know what the answer is.
You can’t objectively look at yourself, of course, but I don’t think that I was being creepy or obsessed. I certainly didn’t have the attitude that "I’m being nice, therefore I’m entitled to intimacy with a woman, as tracy Lord keeps suggesting. I wasn’t shrinkingly shy, avoiding social contact with women, nor arrogant, expecting some sort of due. One problem was that I was definitely in social situations that were severely female-deprived – the schools I went to had a skewed ratio, or the departments I was in did, or the social groups I belonged to did. So i did seek out new social avenues that would get me in touch with more women, but without success.
What rankled was that this was not having much of an impact on my ability to get dates or to make friendships with women, and after a while THAT id what really got annoying. When the OP talks about his needs, I can really reelate, and it’s not because I thought I was entitled because of all the good stuff I was doing – it was because my sttempts at developing relationships seemed to be getting nowhere, while I could see other people apparently being successful.
My perspective as a 40 year old who hooked up with her soulmate at age 37: IMHO, These are just the thoughts that creep in when you have not yet found the right person and are going through a “dry spell”. The female version of it is “I’m not beautiful enough!” or something along those lines. When we are not getting laid, a lot of us quickly lose our perspective. Guys seem to start thinking “only jerks get the girls” when they are jealously/enviously looking in from the outside (that is, the place where they are not getting the girls).
Every situation is magnified by desperation and of course, if you expect to see something you are more likely to see it (aka confirmation bias). Therefore, if you think chicks only like jerks, you will see the phenomenon all around you. Couple this with the tendency of young women to view their platonic male friends as people they can complain to about their boyfriends’ jerkiness, and it further feeds your sexually-frustrated thinking errors. I think this too will pass, once you are getting laid regularly again (and *especially *when you finally find the right person).
I’m 29, but I can dimly remember being college-aged through the mists of my memory.
Guys who were nice always had girlfriends, whether long-term or not. Nice Guys ™ didn’t, and they weren’t really nice. I agree with everyone above who told you that guys who say they’re nice and complain about girls only wanting jerks really aren’t good catches at all. I’ve heard from guys giving the EXACT speech that you’re giving now: Girls only want bad boys, I’m great but they don’t want me, I put their happiness before my own, etc, etc. I wouldn’t touch those guys with a ten foot pole back then, and I wouldn’t now, because they are jerks who really don’t seem to like women very much (as someone stated above). They “put women up on a pedestal” by treating them like delicate flowers who can’t be trusted to act like people, creating a situation in which the girl is objectified and never really gets to know the guy at all. Putting someone’s happiness before your own early in a relationship is a recipe for resentment, not for a happy relationship.
I understand why a girl would go for an obnoxious jerk rather than a Nice Guy. At least a lot of obnoxious jerks (most that I’ve known, at least), treat girls like people. I mean, the guy may be obnoxious, but if he’s cocky to the girl, and cocky to his friends, and cocky to the waiter, at least that’s who he is and he’s not putting on some passive-aggressive act. He may be a pig, but at least he’s honest. Nice Guys don’t treat girls like equals, then expect us to slobber all over them because of it. It’s completely insane.
I’ve known exactly one guy who I thought was genuinely nice who had trouble with girls, and it had nothing to do with his niceness. He had a lot of other problems.
Dude… there are many things that I could argue about it with you, from the other side (being a 25 year old female that has never had a boyfriend).
But one thing that I want to point out… You yourself mentioned that your previous relationships failed because of what are very serious issues… Issues that come up in serious established long term relations, not just hook ups (kids, marriage, distance). It seems you are definitely seeing yourself in a serious, long term relationship. Which is fine, really!
But can’t you see that many women your age (or older!) do not want that? Or that they don’t want to be asked about those issues early in a relationship (I don’t know for how long or how serious you two were as a couple when those issues came up)? Heck, I’ve had guys flirt with me that mention "I see kids with your eyes in my future!: :rolleyes: OK, I’m fleeing from you and you won’t get anywhere near my pants!!!
Also, you seem to be in a serious relationship, yet you frequent bars. OK, so you can meet people in bars (I had a 2 years friend with benefits relationship with a guy I met at a bar, and most of the guys I’ve been with I met at bars)… but see my example… it does not for the most part lead to long term serious (boyfriend/girlfriend) relationships.
I like nice guys, but I am a bitch and I tend to chew them up and spit them out and that makes me feel like shit for a while. I hate feeling like shit, so I tend to prefer guys who are equally as shitty as I am – evens the playing field a bit.
That being said, I married a nice guy. We get along great most of the time, but when we don’t he bears the brunt of my bitchiness, which makes me feel like shit. There ya go.
So what happened here is that you broke up with your older girlfriend because she wanted kids and you didn’t. The thing that tipped that cart was finding another, younger girl online who was about to maybe break up with her long-term(?) boyfriend who you decided is a jerk. But she ended up going back with him and now you’re pretty convinced that girls don’t like nice guys, because you’re a nice guy and this other dude is a jerk and she went with him.
Could be too that people in general like “the old comfortable ratty t-shirt” instead of “starting over, going into the unknown.”
As for why you go home empty-handed from the bars…I agree with others who said that it’s not about who you AREN’T it’s about who you ARE. If you think being “nice” is agreeing with everything a girl says, only ever asking questions to her and never having a two-way conversation, and letting/making the girl make all the decisions…then you’re right, girls don’t like that version of “nice.” It’s boring and frankly annoying.
If you’re putting on a show all the time, playing Mr. Nice Guy, and not being relaxed and yourself, that’s also boring and annoying. If you’re always working by some sort of prescribed “rules” then that’s boring and annoying.
I tend to feel like if a guy is “really nice” all the time then he’s just putting on a face and he’s that way to everyone and doesn’t particularly like me. It seems so insincere. If you’re buzzing around the bar trying to chat up every bit of titty that walks by, because you’re trying to show off how “nice” you are, that’s not going to make one special girl follow you home. They’ll see right through that. But if you hang back and just watch what’s up and see who comes over to say hi, maybe you’ll catch more flies that way.
But I’m 29 and single, so I’m an old maid…I may be wrong.
I’m 39 and single, so if you are an old maid what does that make me?
Really good advice here though and a nice reminder to myself. One question that I’d appreciate your (or others input) on is where is that fine line between “really nice” and considerate?
I’m a 21 year old female, currently single. From what I’ve read here, I wouldn’t date you either.
I don’t actively seek out “Nice Guys” for a simple reason: most guys that call themselves that are passive-aggressive doormats. I’ve got quite a stubborn streak, and tend to hang out with mostly guys, and work in a male-dominated field. I have to be assertive and decisive all day long, and I certainly wouldn’t want to spend my leisure time with a clingy, “whatever you want, honey” guy. This does not mean I want to be turned into a 50s style housewife, with whatever the man says being law, nor do I want to be pushed around.
I’ve dated guys that followed me around like a lost puppy, and let me tell you, that was “sweet” for about 5 minutes, and then got irritating fast.
The boyfriends I liked the best, and am still good friends with after breaking up with them, are guys that were good friends of mine first, and continued to act like my friend while we were dating (with the addition of dating-related activities, physical stuff, etc). By this I mean we still tease each other, be sarcastic, and operate as though we are both still individuals. Just because we are now dating doesn’t mean that he needs to cater to my every whim and work to make sure nothing he does could possibly offend me. Being factored into his decision making process is great, but my opinion should not always be the deciding factor.
Not sure if that was coherent or best expresses what I wanted to say, but that’s the best shot I’ve got.
Auto, I have known you (on the dope) for a while now and I must say that you seem to be a genuinely cool guy. I think you seem to be pretty nice but I’ve gotta tell you one of the red flags in a man for me is that he announces himself as a Nice Guy.
A nice guy doesn’t have to tell you he is nice. A Nice Guy tells you all the time that he is nice because he is really an asshole and trying to convince you otherwise. The last guy I dated before I met my boyfriend told me all the time that all he wanted was for me to “let him” be nice to me. By “letting him be nice to me” he meant “have sex with him” and that was really incredibly obvious. When I broke it off because I met my awesome boyfriend he cried and kept going on about how he would never know me the way he wanted to know me (a.k.a. from the inside) and about how I obviously didn’t know what I wanted to be walking away from such a Nice Guy.
I’m not saying you would do such a thing because generally you strike me as someone who would be pretty understanding in a relationship, but if you learn nothing else from this thread learn this: never, ever, ever utter the phrase, “But I’m a nice guy!” again. Banish it from your vocabulary. Don’t ever let the words pass your lips in conversation. It is a cover for assholes and it is a signal for women who’ve dated a bit to know that they need to run away from a man who tells them how nice he is to women. Get a new hobby, learn a new skill, or do something else that would make for interesting conversation. Being nice isn’t enough, you also have to be interesting and fun to be around. (Drunk is not fun or interesting so if you are trying to meet women in bars you are going to have a hard time of it unfortunately.)
Also I must tell you that being kind and considerate goes a hell of a lot farther than being nice. My boyfriend will be the first to tell you that he is kind of an asshole but I have never met anyone more kind and considerate than him. He takes his 93 year old grandmother to lunch regularly. He helped an elderly woman get her wheelchair folded and stored away properly and get her seated on a bus when she asked for his assistance. He travels 100 miles by train once a month as a show of support for his mother at public readings of the novel she is writing. My parents bought him a plane ticket to come to Texas with me for Thanksgiving so that he can meet the family and he insisted that he would pay half of the cost of the ticket so that he can be accepting of their generosity and at the same time not be taking advantage of it either. When a friend of mine was mugged and afraid that the mugger would come to her apartment since he had her address and her keys my boyfriend offered to give up his apartment to her and move in with me for a couple of days (he lives very close to her work) while her landlord changed the locks so that she could feel safe. Maybe he isn’t always “nice” but he never ceases to be kind and I will take kindness over niceness any day.
See, the implication here is that which woman you’re “missing out” on doesn’t really matter either, just a generic hazy ideal of femininity. That’s not attractive.
There’s guys who are so shallow in their personalities as to not go beyond walking around saying what a nice guy they are. Then there are the guys who actually do nice, considerate things. Those things may be amplified by the fact that they’re slightly out character for them.
I was all over this one guy in college, but he wasn’t having anything to do with me except “just friends.” He was bemoaning to me the whole “I am such a nice guy, why can’t I get a good girlfriend” thing…like, right to my face, basically telling me that he wants a nice girl but that nice girl wasn’t me. I was a little heartbroken.
Then, he got a girlfriend and was very hot-and-heavy into a relationship. Then the relationship ended. Then he cried and cried to me on the phone. It was sad. After a few weeks of him crying I was completely cured of any romantic feelings I had towards him because I realized he was way too “emotional” for me. Apparently that’s how “nice guys” are (correlated with pbbth’s findings). I am not into it.
Auto, I like you, but I am so not in your demographic. But at 46 I might have some insight.
As many people have skirted over, many women do indeed like nice guys…the issue is that they don’t see them as sexual partners. And I’m never going to suggest that you go all cave man, for one thing, its not natural to you, and for another any woman who’d be impressed by that is totally wrong for you, but you absolutely have to be putting out sexual male signals…all those things that nice guys don’t do…the visual once over, the borderline not appropriate remark, you have to inject the possibility of sex into the friendship. Its not being a jerk or an asshole…its fanning the testorone in her direction. Now if that was all you did, yes it would be jerkish behavior, but you of course have a brain and appreciate hers, but still you find her hot and just have to show it in little ways…see what I mean?
And yes, I agree that you have to be a positive, not a neutral in her life…you have to have qualities she can like, not just ones she doesn’t hate. You can’t put her happiness ahead of yours, and in the early stages of a relationship you shouldn’t even put it quite equal to yours, because you don’t know her that well yet. Putting someone elses happiness first is what you do after months and years together, and even then not always. You need to have self-interest, because if you don’t why should she have any interest in you?
Every guy I’ve met in person who has whined at me about being a nice guy and unable to get dates has not been a nice guy. They’ve been needy. Or passive aggressive. Or manipulative. Or not ambitious (nice is not going to make mortgage payments, nice guys who live in their parents basements should understand that it isn’t an attractive place to live once you pass the two decade mark). Or more than one of the above - but they have all been - or all come across as - at least one of the above.
