The Dreaded "Nice Guy."

[Andara Bledin]

That's right. There's no logic. It's not a puzzle and there is no solution.

^-.-^

[Hyena Dandy]

I'm as much of a logical person as anyone. But I've come to accept that this is something I can never understand, because people aren't like puzzles.

But if you want to give up on romance, that's fine. What's not fine is to turn that into an attack on everyone else. There is no personality flaw in not liking someone.

[Lace Neil Singer]

^ Exactly that.

Also, there's the whole perception thing. When I first started dating Fiance, a lot of my mates thought that he was a "bad boy", due to the fact that he had long hair and rode a motorbike. He wasn't. XD But that didn't stop the male friend who'd hit on me saying that he was a bad boy and why do girls always go for the bad boys? At the time, I was unaware of the reasoning behind this and just thought it a bit over protective, but now, I wonder...

[guywithashovel]

You're all absolutely right. Love and relationships are not logical, and there is no "instruction manual." I was just trying to illustrate how many people who do the "but I'm nice" rants probably feel.

Fact is, if you're a decent person overall in spite of a few faults, and a fair number of people seem to like or respect you in a platonic manner, you can get flustered and discouraged if you can't seem to get anyone to like you in that special way, and that can lead to a "but I'm nice" rant. It's not about blaming other people or demonizing a whole gender. It's just frustration and confusion.

[the_std]

You're all absolutely right. Love and relationships are not logical, and there is no "instruction manual." I was just trying to illustrate how many people who do the "but I'm nice" rants probably feel.

I'm sorry, but the longer they continue to attribute their failure to these and other "nice guy" reasons, the more likely they are to experience that failure. Most women I know don't like being treated as though they owe a potential suitor anything based on how "nice" they are.

Some of the people I know who are in successful relationships used to be "nice guys", but then they realized that how they approached women and their expectations of them were the root of their problems. Breaking this cycle enabled them to rethink their whole persona and approach women as themselves, not as a chip in a bartering system.

Some "nice guys" end up in relationships due to their actions, but I've never seen a happy one. All of my experience with the women who give in to such actions is that they end up experience guilt and mistrust, due to the man using his "nice guy" actions as leverage in the relationship itself. It is a recipe for disaster.

[guywithashovel]

And once again, I'm not saying that anyone owes anyone anything because someone was nice to them. All I'm trying to do is show how people in this situation feel. It's called empathy.

[Ginger Tea]

I tried and for a very long time failed at explaining this to Captain Dickhead many years ago, he was trying to buy love by showering this girl he knew with gifts (two iPod's after she 'lost' the first), loaning her father money, paying her rent or parts of it and as she lied about being pregnant (he was never 'the father' it was her ex's) to get a council house (not just to the council but a fair few friends of her's and him) he got her a pram and baby nicnaks, most he got out of it was a cuddle and she never seemed 'friends' with him and he was a bit stalkerish at one point and before she severed contact with me, not that I minded, I told her to get a restraining order out on him which she said she would.

The guy was up to his eyeballs in debt, paying for things that she didn't need (not just the fake baby's stuff) and generally making himself look like a walking ATM, why should she feel the need to 'put out'? she was under no obligation to do so, I knew that, she knew that, yet he still felt that she would wake up one day and know he was the one, perhaps whilst pushing the empty pram around listening to what few songs she had on the iPod as she had no PC with which to sync songs with.

He's an arse and I believe to be not right in the head, he denies it mind, but she was poison to him, but even if she wasn't nothing he did should equate in anyones miind as "I paid rent now spread those legs", if he wan'ts that action for that kinda dogh, there is always whatever street corner that suffices as a red light district here in Cambridge.

I've not spoken to his girlfriend save for a brief chat 4ish months ago and I only have his word that they are still together, hell if it wernt for the fact they were snogging in the pub I would be hard pushed to believe she was going out with him, but he must have learnt his lesson somewhere along the line.

[Rapscallion]

Generally speaking, if someone actually refers to themselves as 'a good guy', then they aren't.

Being 'good', whether a good customer or a good person, is something you just do. If you are calling yourself that, or if you are following the societal expectations against what you want to do, then you're just acting.

Rapscallion

[Nekojin]

With regard to the "pushing the wrong buttons" analogy - the guy who is with the girl pushed the right buttons. For the guy looking on from the outside, those buttons weren't even there for him to push.

With regard to the "girls date assholes" trope - it's true that some girls do date assholes, get hurt, and rebound only to date another asshole. I've heard one theory on that why these girls keep dating assholes, and don't date the nice guys. The theory goes like this:

With the nice guy, the girl gets treated the same as everyone else. The guy is just as nice to her as he is to the little old lady down the street. She doesn't feel special with him.

With the dickhead, the girl gets treated nice, while the dickhead is a dickhead to everyone else. She gets to feel special, because he's treating her differently than he treats everyone else. That is, until he gets bored of her, and starts treating her like crap, too.

Might be true, might not. *shrug* Millions of different people do the same thing in different ways. This might be true for some of the asshole-dating girls out there, and false for others.

[Greenday]

Nekojin, I'm pretty sure most of it comes down to "Nice Guys" are basically wusses and no one wants to date a wuss.

[Nekojin]

That's just as much of a useless generalization as any of the others that have been brought up in the thread.

[Greenday]

That's just as much of a useless generalization as any of the others that have been brought up in the thread.

Maybe, if it was actually a generalization instead of being true the extreme majority of the time. This isn't some random made up theory. This is exactly what tons of women actually say about dating jerks.

[Nekojin]

Your very own word choice shows it to be a generalization, and you're making it worse. "Extreme majority of the time." "Tons of women say." Really? I'm sure you can back that up with evidence, and this isn't just you prjecting your own opinion as fact, right?

[Greenday]

Your very own word choice shows it to be a generalization, and you're making it worse. "Extreme majority of the time." "Tons of women say." Really? I'm sure you can back that up with evidence, and this isn't just you prjecting your own opinion as fact, right?

Yes, let me just get all my female friends from high school and college to join Fratching and have them agree with me.

But really, if you ask any female friend of mine, they'll all say the same thing.

[Nekojin]

Yes, let me just get all my female friends from high school and college to join Fratching and have them agree with me.

But really, if you ask any female friend of mine, they'll all say the same thing.

Of yours. A self-selecting circle, indeed. You're presuming that your experiences represent an adequate sampling size. I assure you (as do many of the men and women at the fandom conventions that I go to) that there are plenty of "nice guys" who could be categorized as "wusses" by a large percentage of the population out there... who still end up finding a girlfriend. You live in a bubble that feeds your confirmation bias, and your bubble is far from a statistically valid sample.