Actually, its the smoking thing.
(And I’m not kidding - smoking really narrows down who will date you… want to increase the pool of people who find you acceptable to kiss - stop tasting like an ashtray - now suddenly you can date both women who will date smokers, and women who won’t!)
I have noticed that nice guys can be classified into two major groups (this is all in my opinion). Nice guys who are generally good people, or nice guys who are nice to get girls, and become bitter when it doesn’t work out.
I wouldn’t aim at being nice. I would aim at being a good person. Help people, volunteer, do your best to be your best, but don’t hang it all on catching a girl.
I’m a 24 year old female. When I was 18, I dated a terrible, terrible person. A “bad boy”. I learned. Since then, my focus has been on dating good guys. I have dated several, had some great relationships. No, they didn’t all work out, but most relationships don’t.
I learned. Some girls do, some don’t. I’ve been dating a good guy for the past 8 months. He’s a genuinely good person, the kind who gives up his seat on the bus and helps old ladies with their groceries. If I have a problem he’ll do anything he can to make me happy, but he doesn’t focus his own life only on my happiness. And I like him more for it.
Women are wired to desire the dominant male in a group - the most athletic, the most handsome, the wealthiest, the one who imposes himself, the guy who just effortlessly swaggars into a situation and takes control. If you are not “that guy” or in the group of guys who are “that guy” or even the brooding guy who doesn’t NEED to be that guy, you are an inferior good.
What does a girl want out of a man? Someone who will provide for her? Someone to excite and entertain her? Maybe show her a lifestyle she hasn’t experienced before? Great sex? “Polite and well groomed” doesn’t really play into the picture here.
Keep in mind, these “nice guys” tend to complain because that they aren’t getting the hot bimbos who are only out to bang entire Porsche driving lacross team. They are never complaining about not getting the shy but attractive girl with the glasses who just wants some guy to appreciate her.
You sound like you’re just looking for a place to stick it in, and that the world somehow owes you this. I can see this from what you’ve said, and I am terrible at finding subtexts like this. If I can see that, anybody else can, too.
Most women want something more than a guy who is desperate for somewhere to stick it in. We want someone who is interested in us, specifically, not just in having a girlfriend.
You have tried the standard stuff of meeting women in places other than bars, right? On-campus clubs, religious services (if you’re religious), classes, study groups, that sort of thing?
How long had you been going out with the first and third ex? If it wasn’t several years, those are unusual reasons for those breakups. Women can be scared off by too-early talk of marriage and kids just like men can. We’re not all looking to get married right out of college these days- the median age for US women to get married is now up to 25.9.
You won’t like hearing this, but there’s another problem right there. There are lots of women who won’t date smokers. A recent poll taken in Canada found that 51% of women were not willing to date a smoker. YMMV if you’re not in the US or Canada, but I’d say that if you are, smoking is definitely limiting the pool of women willing to date you.
So true! And well said.
Maybe it’s different for some women, but I’ve never suddenly found myself interested in a guy that I’d been “just friends” with for any significant length of time. (assuming we were both available, of course)
And if someday I do suddenly realize that I’m interested in some “just friends” guy, there ain’t no way I’d suddenly put the moves on him or something. After all, he’s already proven to me that he’s not interested in me by never trying to make a move on me. Why would I go after a guy that I know doesn’t want me?
Of course if he’s hanging around because he does want me, then he’s really just shot himself squarely in the foot.
And if he’s hanging around and I know he’s interested but I’m not but he’s still hanging around hoping for some kind of chance…well, I’m not interested in pathetic losers. Sorry.
Yes, you are.
Amen, RickJay. I’m so sick of this topic getting rehashed every few months, but it doesn’t matter anyway because the Nice Guys don’t learn anything. If males offer advice, they push it away saying ‘oh, you don’t understand what’s like to be me’ and if females offer advice they whine ‘well, you’re one of those girls who won’t give me a chance, so why should I listen to you?’
Looks are not the crux of the problem. Most men are decent-looking, or would be if they got a flattering haircut, clothes that fit, and didn’t reek of cigarettes and desperation. A lot of women aren’t attracted to ‘pretty-boys’ and there’s plenty of ladies who salivate over guys like Tim Roth who aren’t exactly conventionally handsome. In fact, guys are way luckier than women because definitions of attractiveness for women are so much more restricting. You have to be so tall, so thin, hair so long, breasts and booty just so, etc. If a guy’s sexy, he’s sexy. The sexiest man I ever dated was two inches shorter than me and covered in tattoos.
Most women don’t want whiny, passive-aggressive jerks. And that’s exactly what so-called Nice Guys are. Full stop. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. That’s it, right there.
I don’t disagree, but I think what you’re calling “confidence” here is more a matter of just being comfortable with oneself. Liking oneself, knowing one’s own values and preferences. It’s an inward more than an outward quality. By sending the message that you are happy with yourself, it encourages others to be happy to be around you as well.
Well, for starters I’ve noticed that the ones who are putting on a show do stuff in a way that indicates it’s a show… like cross in front of me in order to open the door for me. Or open the door for me, but not for that little old lady with a supermarket bag bigger than herself.
And anybody who says things like “I can’t live without you,” or who refuses to give his opinion on anything… specially someone who refuses to give his opinion and then pouts… yiiiiiiiiiiii! Bad puppy!
And I think it comes in ony two ways: either early and naturally in life, or if you lack it, only from a long and frustrating struggle with self-mastery. It is not something that can be taught - only learned.
If you’re nice, Auto, be nice, and stop advertising and demanding things in return for being nice. If you’re being a Nice Guy to get girls, that’s not actually kind, considerate, or any of the other things that are synonymous with “nice.” If you’re actually a nice person, just do that and have a some confidence that that’s worthwhile on its own terms, because it is.
Short advice: be funny. It Works. Being funny requires listening, which is always good, but it also requires you to have an opinion of your own and requires that you not take things too seriously, which are also good and you seem to be having a problem there.
I’ve been through some forms of what you’re going through. Here’s the thing: you haven’t been all that unsuccessful in relationships, really. But you’ve been looking for very serious relationships at an early age, and that doesn’t always work out. One reason is that people don’t always know what they want.
But if I had to give you one piece of advice, it’d be STOP COMPLAINING. I know everybody needs to vent, but women don’t like complainers, men don’t like complainers, nobody likes complainers. Self-pity is not attractive, so after you get that out of your system, do some work on yourself. Build up some confidence and develop your interests. “Being nice” isn’t an interest and you can’t have a lot of interesting conversations about it. My first memorable conversation with my girlfriend was about Ray Charles, and our first really long talk was about bad movies - and I did almost all the talking. Two years on, I know for a fact that this isn’t something she goes for. But she could see I really enjoyed it, and like somebody once said, “interested is interesting.” I used to think my interests were too geeky for women, and that’s partly true, but not always.
There are times I’ve made my happiness too dependent on other people, which is a bad idea for any number of reasons and it sounds like your basic problem. My girlfriend is very upfront about this, and it’s not always fun, but the thing is, she’s very perceptive and she’s right. When you take the approach of “I’m not happy unless you’re happy,” you’re putting a lot of pressure on the other person to be happy because she won’t want to be the cause of your misery. It’s not chivalrous, it’s a bad setup that puts all the pressure on the woman. That’s not a very manly way to handle things and most women like to see more assertiveness than that.
Certainly not true in my case, or in the cases of my commiserators. That’s a pretty broad brush yer swingin’ there.
The one good thing about that is the fact that we can now reassure him: he’s definitely NOT the nice guy he thinks he is. So, based on his own theory, he should find it easy to get a date.
So true! I well remember all the wasted years when I was only willing to ask out Ms Hottie McHotterson. What a dolt! :smack:
Well, except not, but apart from that, the point was perfectly valid. :dubious:
I found it a particular bugbear when I was being given pity-reassurance by someone who’d basically taken one look and run a mile. I wonder if I managed to get across how insincere she sounded? Maybe. We ended up as penfriends and she quite valued my usefulness as someone who could provide a helpful insight into how the male of the species thought, and could articulate same. Of course, she could have actually had a relationship with someone like that if she’d wanted, but I guess dating and marrying a leather-clad money-waster while having a True Friend to complain about him to was more fulfilling. Ay-de-mi.
But yeah, getting well-meaning kind words from someone who knows darn well that there is no way in hell she will ever follow them up with action… yep, that’s part of the problem too.
Of course. And by the time we’ve spent a while thinking over what it is we find attractive about you, and learning to appreciate you as a person, and generally not merely thinking of you as an eligible member of the desired sex, it makes it so much the less painful when the inevitable smackdown comes when we’re barely halfway through asking for the date, as you’ll readily understand.
waving to the peanut gallery. Thanks for your concern, but I **am **over it. It’s just that I see no reason why I can’t, as an ex-competitor, provide feedback for the benefit of those who are still in the game.
That’s the best kind of confidence, yes. The problem is that being essentially an egotistical bastard is sometimes, by the inexperienced, mistaken for this.
Conceptually it is the difference between being “centered” and being “self-centered”.
You want to be around “centered” people. You do not really want to be around people who are excessively “self-centered”.
I certainly haven’t suffered at the hands of a Nice Guy, but I have dated a few. Want to know why it didn’t work out? They were boooorrrring. Not because they were nice guys, because they were Nice Guys. The lack of a backbone, the cowering, kicked puppy reaction to any sort of conflict, the I-would-walk-through-poison-ivy-to-pick-you-a-flower personality. So so dull.
Have opinions and expect them to be respected. Treat your girlfriend like a special person, but not a goddess. Demand a little give and take, for goodness sake.
Dating my last NG brought out the bitch in me. He let me walk all over him and came back for more under the guise of “unconditional love”. It wasn’t unconditional love, it was neediness and low self-esteem disguised as niceness. I feel bad about the way I treated him now, but some of the blame is his. If he would have stood up for himself and told me “yanno what? you’re being a brat and I deserve better” I would have been shocked and delighted that he found his stones.
You may well be right. On the other hand, I believe that a bitch should take ownership of her bitchiness, and not blame the NG any more than a man should beat his wife and blame her for being too weak to stop him. And the odd positive reaction to being stood up to would help, too. That said, there’s truth in what you say, though I truly believe this will tend to end in the NG getting dumped - possibly to his eventual benefit, agreed - more often than it will in the bitch mending her ways.
Heh, stop right there - if they got dates, they were already doing better than most self-proclaimed “nice guys”.
The essence of the “nice guy” complaint as I usually hear it is not that women treat them badly in relationships, but that they fail to get dates at all. 
And as long as we’re analyzing you, Autolycus, have you ever thought about whether it’s significant that you’ve only had serious relationships with women who were somewhat older than you? I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with a ten-year difference; I’ve been in such a relationship myself. But the fact that that dynamic consistently reappears in your life seems like it might be a signifier. Are you looking for something in particular in a relationship (i.e., beyond the general “someone to love”); is there some need in yourself that you’re trying to fulfill?
This is just rank speculation on my part, of course, and I apologize if I’ve overstepped the bounds of SDMB virtual familiarity. Certainly, you needn’t feel obliged to respond. I’m just throwing out some ideas for you.
Auto, on a lighter note, one of the Google ads for the first page of this thread invites one to “Meet Albanian Women.”
The income disparity and linguistic incomprehension might be obstacles, but I’ll bet a lot of them are smokers. 
Sounds like it would be easier if you just stopped being a nice guy and started being a jerk.
Or maybe just give up this whole woman business and buy a Playstation or something.
Simplest solution = best solution.