Date a "nice guy"?

[lovesjoyajm]

ooh, I didn't know about the making out! Nevermind my last post, then!

No making out! Just a few little kisses. And holding hands. It was cute. I was glad of it mostly because I thought that sort of clarified that there was interest on both sides, but now I'm confused.

[lovesjoyajm]

Think whatever was there has kind of fizzled out. He came out to dinner with me and my friends tonight. It was nice, but I just don't feel anything. Maybe it's because I don't think he's interested and I'm just protecting myself. It might be.

[lovesjoyajm]

We played foosball last night and he CHEATED the whole time. That's it, no more of this.

[vashti]

Cheating? How do you cheat at foosball?

[Yggdrasil]

The Nice Guy Syndrome

"Although women often portray themselves as wanting to date kind, sensitive, and emotionally expressive men, the nice guy stereotype contends that, when actually presented with a choice between such a 'nice guy' and an unkind, insensitive, emotionally-closed, 'macho man' or 'jerk,' they invariably reject the nice guy in favor of his 'so-called' macho competitor."

Source: Niceness and Dating Success: A Further Test of the Nice Guy Stereotype by Geoffrey C. Urbaniak and Peter R. Kilmann (Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA) - ISSN 0360-0025

"It's not that women like jerks. Women prefer polite over rude, and attentive over distracted. The problem is the way nice guys present these positive characteristics. In order to appear friendly and romantic, these 'nice guys' think they have to turn off their sexuality. They hide their desires in order not to offend, presenting an androgynous, asexual persona. The first impression they give is one of emasculation, weakness, and lack of desire. At best, they confuse the woman as to whether they even find her attractive. That's what jerks offer women that nice guys don't: they're not afraid to be sexual."

Source: The Layguide by T. Clink - ISBN 0-8065-2602-5

A condition very similar to the Nice Guy Syndrome was described by late Harriet Braiker in 2001. Like the Nice Guy, the People Pleaser will suppress his own needs in order to satisfy the perceived needs of others. However, while the Nice Guy Syndrome was clearly elaborated as a men-only problem, the Disease to Please focuses more on women who can have very similar behavior patterns.

Source: Harriet B. Braiker: The Disease to Please. Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome. McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-138564-9

It was found that women were sexually attracted to dominance in men (though dominance did not make men likable to women), and that dominance in women had no effect on men.

Source: Sadalla, E. K., Kenrick, D. T., & Venshure, B. (1987). Dominance and heterosexual attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Bogaert & Fisher studied the relationships between the personalities of university men and their number of sexual partners. They found a correlation between a man's number of sexual partners, and the traits of sensation-seeking, hypermasculinity, physical attractiveness, and testosterone levels. They also discovered a correlation between maximum monthly number of partners, and the traits of dominance and psychoticism. Bogaert & Fisher suggest that an underlying construct labelled "Disinhibition" could be used to explain most of these differences. They suggest that Disinhibition would correlate negatively with Agreeableness and Conscientiousness from the Big five personality model.

Source: Bogaert, A. F., & Fisher, W. A. (1995). Predictors of university men’s number of sexual partners. Journal of Sex Research.

Another study found that women had a higher preference for surgency and dominance in their mates than men did, in a study of dating couples and newlyweds.

Source: Botwin, M. D., Buss, D. M., & Shackelford, T. K. (1997). Personality and mate preferences: Five factors in mate selection and marital satisfaction. Journal of Personality.

[lovesjoyajm]

Cheating? How do you cheat at foosball?

He kept spinning my bars to put my men upside down. It's something that lots of people do maybe once or twice when they first play, and it's never bothered me before, but he was doing it every single time we played a new ball, at least.

I certainly let my competitive, aggressive, overly-serious, overly-sensitive side out and kept giving him death glares. It didn't sink in. I told him, "if you think that pisses ME off, wait till the others get here. They won't even play with you if you do that." He asked, "why?" and I said, "Because it's CHEATING!"

He didn't stop.

[lovesjoyajm]

Advice for nice guys:
Be as asshole-ish as you can possibly be when you first meet a girl. The worst possible thing is for her to start out thinking you're a nice guy (-1) and then find out you're actually a jerk (-1). It needs to go the other way.

[Yggdrasil]

Advice for nice guys:
Be as asshole-ish as you can possibly be when you first meet a girl. The worst possible thing is for her to start out thinking you're a nice guy (-1) and then find out you're actually a jerk (-1). It needs to go the other way.

Right on

[vashti]

Uh oh. What happened?

[lovesjoyajm]

Uh oh. What happened?

Oh, that advice was a bit generalized. The guy isn't a jerk, per se, but he says some weird things. Mostly it just fizzled out. We've gone out a few times since that time we kissed, but I think all chemistry is dead and I'm not interested anymore.

[vashti]

Well, buh-bye to him, then...

[lovesjoyajm]

Well, buh-bye to him, then...

Yeah...

He's called me a few times to hang out since then too, and I've lost all interest in being around him. Is that terrible?

[vashti]

Nope.

You might want to tell him you aren't interested anymore, and tell him why (if you are feeling charitable). That way, he can choose to take the opportunity for self-improvement (or not).

[Lite]

So, you're posting snippets of books and studies without context or meaning. Go you.

Here's the simple reason for women wanting to date assholes. Because insecure asshole is often confused as confident man.

And the truth about nice guys is, most of the time they're not nice. They're whiny spineless assholes that will do anything and everything to separate a woman from the man she's dating so that he can have the chance that he feels he DESERVES because he's lonely, pathetic, and cannot respect that the object of his unrequited affection is in a relationship.

If you want to be a man, be a man. Admit your insecurities, do some actual work to fix your personal issues, and don't worry about whether or not a woman, or even a particular subset of women don't like you.

[Yggdrasil]

So, you're posting snippets of books and studies without context or meaning. Go you.

Here's the simple reason for women wanting to date assholes. Because insecure asshole is often confused as confident man.

And the truth about nice guys is, most of the time they're not nice. They're whiny spineless assholes that will do anything and everything to separate a woman from the man she's dating so that he can have the chance that he feels he DESERVES because he's lonely, pathetic, and cannot respect that the object of his unrequited affection is in a relationship.

If you want to be a man, be a man. Admit your insecurities, do some actual work to fix your personal issues, and don't worry about whether or not a woman, or even a particular subset of women don't like you.

Strangely enough, those snippets of books and studies confirm what you typed.