If you asked me to pick out the “nice guy” of the Friends characters, I would say Chandler.
I can’t remember whether or not I’ve posted this theory of mine here, but here goes.
I believe that a lot of this problem comes from the fact that it’s typically mothers who teach their sons how to attract women. They don’t explicitly sit us down and give us a lesson on “How to get a girl”, but they teach us indirectly by making comments here and there about how certain modes of conduct will make girls like us, or praising our attributes (real and imagined) that girls will like. For me, this type of “instruction” led me to believe the following:
“Girls/women will be falling all over me because I’m (A) handsome, (B) intelligent, and (C) talented. Combine these attributes with gentlemanly behavior, and I will be irresistible to women.”
While that belief may look good at first glance, it makes one glaring omission: making an effort to actually pursue a woman. It’s somewhat embarrassing to admit that I was honestly convinced that, due to my attributes (A, B, and C), and the fact that I knew how to be a gentleman, the women would be pursuing me. No effort required on my part! As you can imagine, this resulted in a certain amount of disillusionment on my part once I was an adult.
If the father has anything to say on the subject, it’s usually to just to half-heartedly confirm what the mother has said, and maybe mumble something about not getting anybody pregnant until you’re married. Dad’s not going to disagree with Mom if he wants any sex for the next month, after all 
The problem here is that mothers tend to become historical revisionists when it comes to telling their sons what attracted them to Dad. My mom was raised by a chronically-unemployed, alcoholic father, and her mother pretty much supported the family. My dad, on the other hand, was raised by a father who owned his own business and was a hard worker who supported his family well, and dad’s mom stayed home and raised the kids. According to my mom, she chose my dad essentially because his family was exactly the opposite of hers. In other words, she actively picked him out from the available choices. This is according to her, of course. My dad never weighed in on why he picked my mom.
Now, Mom actively dated one other guy in high school besides my dad, but chose my dad over the other guy. She chose Dad for the reasons explained above. But the other guy (whom I’ve met, and who lives in the same town I do, nowhere near the town where they all grew up) seems to me to fit the criteria she taught me (handsome, intelligent, and talented) far better than my dad, which makes me go “huh?”
What my mom never mentioned when describing why she picked my dad over the other guy:
The other guy was a scholar. My dad was a halfback on the football team. My dad was a brawler. My dad joined the Marines. The other guy was polite and well-spoken, and went off to college. My dad was (and is) a loud, opinionated, boorish asshole.
My dad is a now-retired cop who could never afford anything beyond the basics for our family (though strangely always had enough money to buy new guns for his collection) and who left my mom after 32 years of marriage and ran off with a much younger woman.
The other guy owns a large corporation, is a millionaire who sent one of his kids to Princeton and his other kid to another good university, and is still married to the same woman he married after high school.
So looking back and analyzing the situation, it looks like my mom was actually attracted to my dad because he was aggressive, strong, and self-confident. But once she had a son (me) she unconsciously transferred all the other guy’s attributes to my dad and presented those to me as “what attracts a woman”, while never mentioning the real reasons she was attracted to my dad. And then she did everything she could to make sure I didn’t turn out like my dad, which was easy to do since Dad pretty much left all the kid-raising to her. Overprotective, self-deluding, idealistic mothers do not produce sons who are attractive to women.
Eh, you say “myth,” I say “tomahto.” I was using the term employed by the OP, who, to challenge (or at least question) the “women like assholes” mythmeme, linked to another thread as evidence to the contrary.
I was making a point that others have made before, but one which is easy to forget: offering up this board as a cross-section of public opinion has its pitfalls, because the SDMB—bastion of top-percentile hyperintellectuality, social sensitivity, and equal-opportunity physical attraction that it is—may not be a suitably random sample of society.
As to your billion-combinations-that-defy-categorization notion—a fair point, but the fact that, for example, a few troubled exceptions might exist to the generalization “people don’t it when you jab them in the eyeball with an oyster fork” does not make that assumption invalid. There is a widespread view that many women are attracted to men who are, if not “total bastards,” at least a bit callous, aloof, jerkish—and in my humble opinion, fairly widespread anecdotal evidence supports that view.
Which is why in school they taught you to not give any credence to anecdotal evidence 
In fact, if indeed SDMB is a
then you’d hope enough of that intellectuality would be applied that belief in myths would be soundly disdained.
I wonder how we could tie ‘women love bastards’ to religion. Then it would be beaten into the dust as a worthless, unproven piece of storytelling 
I could swear what I typed and proofread, several hours ago, was “people don’t like it when you jab them in the eyeball with an oyster fork.” (Which I stand by, resolutely.)
This board has gremlins—and not the furry hydrophobic kind, nor the 1970s luxury car kind.
What’s the origin of the meme? Observation of reality. It’s not universal, it’s not especially pretty, but it does happen.
The appeal of something different is enough to work in the short term. Hot chicks probably hook up with assholes due to the novelty, if nothing else. Jerky guys are quite likely to act like dominant males, won’t have confidence issues, will be persistent, and those characteristics are definitely plusses in any social situation. Most of those relationships are short-lived, though. Like other people said, once his inner asshole comes to the fore most women with a decent sense of self-worth are out of there. Of course, the ultimate is a powerful, good-looking, dominant, confident man who treats her well. But if one of them isn’t available she’ll take a halfway decent simulacrum of such.
One of the things I learned somewhere along the way is that if you want to meet a woman, you have to get her attention, by any means necessary. For particularly good-looking women that often means treating them a bit badly. Everyone since she was a kid has probably been telling her how cute she is, every guy since she turned 12 or 13 has been trying to get into her pants and has probably used compliments to try and influence her. It’s old, she’s seen every nice approach anyone with any imagination could come up with. Sometimes, the way to stand out from the others is to be a bit of a jerk. Everyone else kisses her ass. You can’t do the same thing or you’re just competing with other guys to see how good of an ass-kisser you can be, and nobody really respects a doormat. You can always change to being a bit nicer to her later, after you’ve already met her and made the impression that you’re not like the other guys.
I’ve had a lot more success meeting women when I didn’t really care what happened. When I had the attitude that if it went well, great, if not, move on, not only was it more pleasant and less nerve-wracking for me, it was probably more fun for her. Nervous, self-conscious people are not usually the best company. Sometimes that not-caring could be interpreted as being an asshole when I disagreed with something she or one of her friends said and wasn’t that nice about how I worded it. Sometimes I was pushy or outspoken. I’m sure that at least a few people thought I was being a jerk. I alienated a few women with that attitude, but I also attracted a whole lot more than I did when I was a “nice” guy, back when I was immature, self-effacing, and less publicly opinionated.
Because of another thread, I recently talked to my wife about the night we met. I thought I was nicer than she remembered me being, though I know I was at least a bit of a jerk that night. Apparently, I cut her off when she tried to start a conversation with me and was dismissive of at least one of her ideas. I didn’t remember that, but she did. Vividly. I knew I disappeared for a while because I had a friend to pick up and I partially ignored her when I got back because I found out that she was supposed to be set up with my friend. I also badgered her into doing one of the bar games that everyone was supposed to do in order to get a drink. Some flirtation and fun stuff was mixed in too, so I was running hot and cold the whole night.
Sure worked well. She didn’t warm to my friend but she made an effort to contact me, even though I was kind of a jerk to her at first. I ended up dating her for a few years and we got married last September. My aunt joked that I’d better never let her get away because she’s probably one of the few women who’d put up with me. (I’m stubborn and opinionated, and I was never shy about showing either quality around my family.) Later, and more seriously, she told me that it’s obvious how much we care about each other by the little things we do for the other person.
We’re actually the kind of couple who make people sick because we’re nauseatingly nice to each other, still show affection in public, and rarely fight about anything. I don’t kiss her ass, but I do take care of her. In other words, being a bit of a jerk in the beginning works to get her, but having a core of gooey and genuine kindness works to keep her.
The first time I saw my now-husband, he was playing one of those collectible card games at a gaming store. As I drifted by where he is, the game he was playing when I wandered in finished up, he put his cards back in the box, and said, “Okay, which deck should I beat you with now?” (When I call him an arrogant bastard, he generally says something like, “Your point?”)
At the time I met him, he had that sort of swaggering self-confidence oddly mingled with being extremely shy. The important thing to me was that he dealt with me as a human being; I didn’t get different treatment on the basis of being female, either creepy or solicitous. We could discuss a wide variety of things that we had shared interests on, riff off each other, and generally interact; I found him to be a genuinely good person. (I don’t generally use the word ‘nice’, because it connotes ‘inoffensively bland’ in the ‘You’re so nice, you’re not good, you’re not bad, you’re just nice’ sort of sense.)
Which leads me into something I think hasn’t been mentioned (I agree largely with the suggestions other people have made – the ‘nice guy’ turndown, the visibility of dramatic relationships over stable ones, bastards showing their true behaviour when they’re done with courting time, people confusing alpha behaviour for asshole behaviour, people bitch more about their partners’ failings than share the reasons they’re with them, and so on): not everyone evaluates being an asshole the same way.
For example, one of my standard ways of displaying affection in close relationships is a lot of light razzing and teasing. To someone who isn’t comfortable with a cultural expectation of the put-down tease as an expression of intimacy, that sort of thing would look like being a complete jerk. “That person’s so mean. I wouldn’t treat you like that.” If someone isn’t willing to put up with the banter/insult state, they may interpret its presence in a relationship as a sign that at least one person involved is an asshole. I know I find certain social behaviours too jerkish to consider getting close to, but it’s apparent to me that some other people aren’t bothered by them because they do not appear to find them remarkable and continue to have those people as partners.
So maybe someone takes my razzing as a sign I’m a jerk, or my husband’s smug self-assurance as a sign he’s a jerk, or whatever else; I’m confident that I’m not a jerk by my own standards, because I don’t harass my partners with “Does this make my ass look fat?”
Women are all batshit crazy.
I never thought someone could be too “nice.” Really. I thought it was completely impossible. Then I had an experience.
My husband and I experimented/have been experimenting with an open marriage. The first and only relationship I have had outside of the marriage was with a long-time online friend. At first, it was great fun. Then, however. . .things got iffy.
I’d try to talk to him; getting him to talk about himself was nigh impossible most of the time. Half the things he said were compliments. If I was having a bad day (and, having mental health issues, my bad days are bad), all he would do is tell me how perfect and wonderful I was.
Nicest thing in the world. Also irritating as hell after the novelty wears off.
On the other hand, my husband will talk about his day, and will save the compliments for more unique circumstances. If I’m having a bad day, he will call me on it, either asking what’s wrong, or getting upset if I’m being a bitch. He’ll worry about me; he won’t spoon feed me self-esteem boosters just to make me feel better (which doesn’t work).
My friend also wasn’t good at confrontation. It was all passive-aggressive–multiple IMs, that kind of thing. With my husband, it’s direct.
I’m not saying my husband’s perfect; in fact, he can sometimes be a big jerk. So can I. But having the sometimes-a-jerk as opposed to always-on-woo-mode. . .well, sad to say, I’ll take the former.
I’m wondering if there’s really that much difference between the genders here. How many guys in high school would choose the bookish girl who is the best math student over a cheerleader who hangs out with the drinking crowd?
Is this before or after the bookish girl takes off her glasses, shakes her hair down, and reveals herself to be a smoking hot nymphomaniac?
Because things usually change after that point in the movie.
Er, I would. I had my fill of vomiting cheerleaders before freshman year was half over.
Stranger
I would, and did 
Actually, I don’t know how good she was at math, but she was the principal violinist in the school orchestra (where I was the bassoonist).
Well then, I guess, based on a non-random sample of three, us guys do use a different part of the brain at times.
Actually that’s the answer right there…bitches be crazy!!
Seriously though, I think most people would rather be with someone who is genuine, if sometimes a bit jerkish, than someone who is phoney-nice all the time.
It’s the reason we hate salespeople. We don’t know them and it’s offputting having someone you don’t know talking to you like they’re your best friend.
I think there’s also a bit of what I call a “King Kong” syndrome with a lot of women. The guy might be a total violently destructive gorilla to everyone in the world, but with her, he’s totally sweet and gentile. He’s HER gorilla.
I see this with my own girlfriend. She has litterally said while we are watching King Kong “hmmmm…I know how SHE feels”. Not like I’m a total bastard or anything…well, I’m not a total bastard to her at least.
I’m afraid I don’t quite understand the behavior you’re describing. Could you offer some specific examples?
Okay, this must be a cultural thing, because I really don’t get it – the only way to be a competent employee is to be good at verbally abusing unreasonable customers?
How exactly is being able to respond to problems by “outcussing” an indication of being capable of “caring for” onself, the kids, the cats, or the fish?
I think the implication is that you need to be able to push back in a reasonable and professional manner. I see this in my company with younger managers. They are like “yessah!! yessah!! three bags full!” to anything the client asks and then drives the team crazy with their unrealistic deadlines. 90% of the time, if they just said “we need at least a week” and explain why the client would say “okay”.
If you’re afraid to stand up for yourself, are you going to stand up for the people who depend on you? Or will you leave them dangling in the breeze all so you can avoid confrontation?
I’m going to disagree with what most everyone one has said thus far, and contend that the meme began with me.
I am a total bastard. And women dig me.
I’m also a pathological liar, why do you ask?
All right, brutal female honesty here.
I’ve personally had far worse dating experiences with self-identified “nice guys” than the ones who either admit they’re assholes or feel no need to describe themselves in such terms at all. *
The ones that I’ve dated who wander around wearing “nice guy” as a badge are also the ones who declare their love for me two weeks into dating. The “nice guys” blame all of their woes on the cruelty of women. The “nice guys” are the ones who’ve stalked me on the Internet. They’ve been weenies, and whiny weenies at that. They lack self-confidence, and yet bluster egotistically. They are so desperate for love that they will decide the most innocuous thing has great meaning. They’ll latch onto women who are far more good-looking than they are, and then mutter and curse about how shallow women are for only being interested in looks. And, when I try to break up with them because they’re suffocating me like fourteen year old girls with their first crushes, they complain about how women only like jerks.
Do I like jerks? No, not really.
I’d done a term paper in my senior year of college, reading women’s erotica and romance novels, to see how this relates to what women find attractive in men. While there are certain cultural factors that have changed over the years, there’s a pattern that can be found in all of them.
The man that women most often fantasize about seems to have these qualities:
[ul]Has some position of power, either through wealth, social power, physical power, or simply prestige. Examples are kings, CEOs, lawyers, police officers, firemen, secret agents, ranch owners, and pirates.[/ul]
[ul]Is autonomous. He doesn’t need anyone’s acceptance or someone else to give him permission to act. He knows what he wants to do and he does it.[/ul]
[ul]Has traits that are associated with masculinity in his culture and time. A square jaw, “rugged features”, stubble, a tan, rough hands, or whatever else is most stereotypically seen as a masculine trait is going to show up. Femininity in fantasy object men doesn’t show up often, and generally there are elements of homoeroticism when it does.[/ul]
Now, all of these qualities can combine to make a real asshole, but being an asshole would be a side-effect of these qualities, not a desire in and of itself. If he knows what he wants, has confidence, and has some sort of cultural power, he might very well be an asshole. But he might not. Also, what women fantasize about and what they really, truly want aren’t always the same thing, either.
So women might lust over the bad guy in the movie, or swoon for the pirate in a romance novel, but be perfectly happy with the nebbishy guy next door.
- My own dating experiences may not reflect what the rest of the world has experienced, of course. In fact, I really hope they don’t.