Well confidence can be attractive, but it can’t (and shouldn’t be) forced IME.
Confidence can be interpreted as meaning something like “comfortable in your own skin”. Ironically, if you consciously make an effort to look comfortable, you appear uncomfortable, and make others uncomfortable.
There are a few statements I can think of that constitute true, but nonetheless bad, advice. I might make a thread about it 
Haha nice story. Is she friends with the other woman?
They were only casual acquaintances then and didn’t keep up. I do remember her name though!
Hey, maybe I inadvertently used negging!
My experience was that failures took away what little confidence I had. Would I finally have learned how to approach women if I hadn’t been married 26 years? I’ll never know. In the early months of our courtship I was nervous about being dumped, which had Ms. P and her therapy group thinking that maybe I was about to break up with her. I sensed something was going on, so I told her the fact that We were at the point timewise when I’d been dumped a couple of times. We got through it, and it wasn’t long before we were engaged.
I hear what you’re saying, but that doesn’t invalidate the criticism that PUA tactics are dehumanizing. If I’m selling snake oil with the promise that it will cure various childhood ailments, and well-meaning parents buy it and give it to their children, and those children are harmed by it, then I and my snake oil deserve to be criticized. The parents may or may not deserve various levels of criticism, depending on what they knew, or what they should’ve known, and when, and what harm came about as a result of their actions. If a parent steps forward and says “I bought Esprise Me’s snake oil and gave it to my child, and I realize now that was a bad decision and urge the rest of you not to make the same mistake,” that parent probably deserves to be forgiven for their lapse and commended for their insight and courage in speaking up now. But if a parent says, “well, I gave my child Esprise Me’s snake oil and I don’t think I did anything wrong. OK, so some children had their growth stunted, but I didn’t do that to my child. OK, maybe my child is a little on the small side, but so was his grandmother; I don’t think I caused that. Surely the problem is really just people misusing the snake oil, or using too much of it. What you’re failing to recognize is that I saved a lot of money by using this snake oil instead of going to a doctor, and I’m not rich, you know. Anyway, I’m offended that you’re attacking me personally over this thing I still refuse to disavow, so I’m outta here”? Maybe that parent started with pure intentions and was just as much my victim initially as was their child. But at a certain point, if you’re not willing to examine your own mistakes, you become part of the problem.
There is a difference between platonic conversations with either gender and escalating to a sexual relationship.
I am currently single after a long runup to initial dating, my marriage, and my other LTR. So this is more or less my fourth time through all of this.
At some point I need to escalate. I can go out and have platonic conversations, but I am going to need to harness my own frustration, whatever you want to call it, to get in situations where I can have what I once had.
Now with both of my LTRs there were strong signals from my respective partners. It was relatively easy for me to escalate. But both of those LTRs have ended, so I think I’m entitled to question whether I should be doing anything to expand my opportunities, give myself more chances.
There is such a thing as the friendzone. My opportunities with any woman at a particular time are going to be limited. If I don’t make a move, that opportunity is going to go away one way or another. I have had these situations as well, where maybe I wasn’t interested enough, or not good enough at reading the signals, and the opportunity went away. Maybe I would have done better with those women, at this point it’s really a fair question, isn’t it?
This is why I continually refer to sexual relationships and crass and elemental, and I’m somewhat baffled that people just do not get it. If you want a sexual relationship, you at some point have to take a risk and escalate. If I just want to be nice, I can platonic my way to my grave. I don’t consider sexual relationships “nice.”
I don’t disbelieve that someone in this thread has gotten advice that wasn’t predatory, no. I disbelieve, as I’ve said, that such advice is what’s these days commonly known as “pick-up artist”.
Did you read the article cited in post #293?
Do you mean, because the woman in question may take up with somebody else?
Because, if not, if she’s sexually interested in you she may well be so interested years later (unless, of course, something’s turned her off in the meantime.) And, for that matter, sometimes women who had no sexual interest in somebody when they first met develop it over time.
Do you consider them to be essentially nasty?
I would certainly do that, if she hasn’t paired off with someone else. I would also have to reignite interest, if possible.
My situation is that I get compared to Spock. I have only tended to get in relationships with women that are quite forward. I need to change this. I need to have more options. I need more connection. Simply performing well in a relationship, doing “nice” stuff, has proved insufficient.
“Doing the nasty.” Ya think?
As a man, I’m going to have women complain about me one way or another at one point or another. I’d rather have them complaining that I don’t return their phone calls. I’d rather be like Vic Ferrari. Do people here actually want to BE Latka Gravas? I think that was the whole point of that episode, that no one really cares if nice guys like that have sex or not. They’re the ones that have to care.
I’ve heard the phrase. I wouldn’t want to bed anybody who takes it seriously.
If you’re going into a relationship assuming that it’s going to be adversarial, then I suspect the only relationships you’re going to get are ones with other people who expect relationships to be adversarial. Not too surprising if that’s where they end up.
Those aren’t the only choices.
Anybody who actually wants to have sex with them will care.
I have known a whole shitload of genuinely nice guys – not Nice Guys™ – who got plenty of sex. With people who actually liked them.
(Including some who were also short, quiet, and broke.)
I’ve been thinking for quite a while now that some of the beliefs that @Jay_Z seems to have been expressing in this thread could very well be self-fulfilling prophecies.
I’m also confused by this. I have a good friend who married one of her housemates, a friend, after dating several other people. She told me, “well, i already know i can live with him”. She also described the “shortest ever walk of shame” as she snuck back to her own bedroom the morning after the first time they had sex.
I don’t know why she didn’t consider him as a possible date before that. Maybe he was dating someone else?
Anyway, “friend zone” isn’t some unchanging state of nature.
I was a committed partner in my marriage. It didn’t work out. Probably tried too long with the GF as well.
My ex wife and I did not have the best connection. It mattered. I suppose her current partner can do the “nice” stuff too. We fell apart because of connection, not because of lack of nice, honey-do, choreplay or any of that. That is my particular story.
Yes, some people can be too nice. I should have searched out more options before my ex wife. I didn’t have the ability to connect to those people because I couldn’t reach out, it took too much for me to take a risk. And it failed, it surely failed, I lived the life and it failed. Probably I would have been better off marrying someone else. We never got together because I either couldn’t see the opportunities or act on them. To me nice was a self limiting hell that failed for me.
Here is my BS-pull-out-of-my-butt-theory.
The female version of “The Nice Guy” is “He is intimidated by my intelligence/career/position etc”.
Now hold on! Put down those pitchforks and torches! Hear me out.
A “Nice Guy” is someone who, when he meets a woman he likes, tries to be as non-negative as possible. He doesn’t want to be rejected for some negative character trait. What then happens is that he displays little personality. There is nothing for the woman to “grab onto” to fall in love with. He is just bland. Sometimes those ‘negative’ traits are the quirky ones that they will actually be attracted to.
A woman who thinks men don’t like her because men are intimidated by intelligence/career/etc are different but the same. They seem (IME) to display much of the bland, nothing to grab onto and fall in love with, personality traits. They suppress their personality in order for the guy to not be turned away due to a negative trait.
Ok perforate me and torch me up 
You seem to be starting from the premise that nice guys get rejected because of their niceness, if in a roundabout way. I’m not sure that’s a valid premise.
It is if niceness is the leading character trait. That is when it becomes an issue. You can be Mr. Rogers, but Mr. Rogers still had a discernable personality, and that’s more of an issue with some of the nice guys.
@BlinkingDuck: not gonna flame you, just going to give you a boring speech about definitions.
A Nice Guy™ is someone who does things he thinks are nice for somebody else, usually for a woman – but he’s doing those things only or primarily to get her into bed, and he gets angry (whether or not directly at the woman) if she then won’t go to bed with him, because he thinks that doing those supposedly nice things means that he deserves to have sex with her: as if he’d gone into a store and paid the proper fee to buy something, but the store kept his money and wouldn’t give him what he wanted.
A genuinely nice guy (no caps, no ™) is somebody who’s nice. He’s nice to women, he’s nice to men, he’s nice to puppies. He’s nice to people he does want to go to bed with; he’s nice to people he doesn’t want to go to bed with; he’s nice to people who don’t want to go to bed with him; and if he marries somebody he expects to keep being nice to them and for them to keep being nice to him (at least most of the time; everybody’s got an occasional grumbly moment.) And, importantly, he doesn’t think his being nice means that he deserves anything other than for people not to be nasty to him in return. He’s not necessarily a pushover: if people are nasty to him, he’s often perfectly capable of standing up for himself, and will either quit interacting with them or insist on doing so on his terms.
You seem to have come up with a third version: I’ll use your terminology and call him a “Nice Guy”. He possibly is actually trying to be nice, but his idea of nice is to as much as possible just not be there. This person reads to me as if he has no idea what being genuinely nice is; he either thinks all there is to it is not being actively and obviously nasty, or somehow has it confused with having no opinions about or enthusiasm about anything.
Do you mean, women who think they need to hide their intelligence and their skills in order not to put men off? Again, many women used to be taught this as we grew up. Maybe some still are, though I hope at least fewer. I expect there are some men who are put off by smart and/or skilled women; what I don’t understand is why a smart and/or skilled woman would want to be partnered with one of them, except maybe just to get laid for the night; at least, unless she’s been taught all her life that it’s the only way to get any relationship at all.
It’s certainly possible that we don’t mean the same thing by niceness. It’s not, to me, in any way in opposition for enthusiasm about and/or obvious interest in any of a wide range of subjects. I don’t really understand why you and BlinkingDuck seem to think it would be. It’s not even in opposition to, say, righteous anger.
I think what @Jay_Z has said in other threads is he believed in bland agreeability and a willing hand in the chores as the way to a conflict-free life of domestic bliss. Then he married a psycho harpie who stomped him into the dirt then yelled at him when her shoes got dirty.
The lesson he took away was that bland agreeability is a loser’s game. And yes, he knows that he utterly picked a bad example of a woman. But he’s struggling to separate the good lessons he learned about bad people and the bad (or mistaken) lessons he’s “learned” about good people. This whole nice / nasty bipolar attitude comes from there.
IMO. YMMY. I am not a psychologist but I often stay at Holiday Inn Express.
What if though what I’m selling is actually not snake oil but something like eating a diet high in vegetables and fruits and low in added sugars along with exercising regularly … but to get people in the door I sex it up, because well, sex sells?
That’s basically the analogy that holds if @Mijin is to be believed. The actual product wasn’t Jedi mind tricks because there aren’t any. It was wrapping fundamental social skills training in a sex package to sell it to a demographic that often felt that as their biggest failing.
You mean about “Mystery”? Now have. And?
I read a marketing ploy.
And let’s be real: much of attraction isn’t a choice. Evolution and socialization have primed me to find certain traits, physical and behavioral, as attractive. I’m not rationally and logically deciding who I find desirable.
So here’s the risk. You let her know that you are interested in her romantically and ask her if she is interested in you that way too. She might say no. That will hurt. But you can move on to risk again another day. Or she might say yes.
I would say that nice guys can get rejected in spite of their niceness. When I was younger it irked me if a rejection was preceded by “you’re really nice, but…” or “you’re really sweet, but…”. I started thinking about how I wasn’t going to stop being nice to people, and I wasn’t going to be anything but my authentic self. Hiding the anxiety and insecurity wasn’t going to happen. That’s what led to me deciding at 30 that I should just get used to the idea of rarely dating and never having a life partner. I don’t mean giving up on any kind of social life, but that I was probably destined to be someone with only platonic relationships. It didn’t happen that way, but for a few fortunate moves it probably could have.