You’ve heard all the tropes when it comes to dating, relationships, and how life treats you when you’re a “nice guy.”
‘”Women only want to date jerks. Why can’t a nice guy like me get a girl?”
“All the things I do for my woman and she still treats me this way.”
“You have to be a cheat to get ahead in life. Guys like me always get the short end of the stick.”
It’s all BS.
You don’t need to be rich, jacked, or 6 feet tall to get the woman of your dreams. You don’t need to be super-aggressive, dominant, and bold to get what you want from life itself.
When it comes to your relationships, both with women and the world, you don’t have to be perfect to get them to work.
There are men of all backgrounds with different talents, attractiveness, characteristics, etc that do just fine with women and the world at large. You can be one of these men while having a ton of healthy qualities.
You can be reasonable, optimistic, confident, authentic, engaging, generous, assertive, inspiring, curious, honest, bold, compassionate, and kind
But you can’t be nice.
“Nice Guy Syndrome” Explained
Nice guy syndrome has nothing to do with being nice. You should be nice to people, period. But you shouldn’t be nice.
Niceness is feigned, insincere, and manipulative.
Nice guys have the underlying belief that women owe them something just because they’re nice to them. The nice guy isn’t confident enough in himself to just be himself and let women of the world take it or leave it. No, the nice guy uses covert ceorcion and tries to play tit for tat games to get women to like him or stay with him.
That’s the problem.
He doesn’t understand the rules that govern attraction — rules that apply both women and the world. He doesn’t understand how healthy relationships work.
Insecurity drives his behavior.
He thinks that women don’t want him because of some characteristic, e.g., height. No, women don’t want him because he feels insecure about his height and projects it out to the people he interacts with. Again, this attitude extends out to the way he deals with the world.
When he’s in a relationship, he treats it like a scoreboard and expects things to go smoothly just because he does ‘x’ amount of tasks to score a point in the win column for boyfriend or husband.
Robert Glover puts it well in his book, No More Mr. Nice Guy
“Just about everything a Nice Guy does is consciously or unconsciously calculated to gain someone’s approval or to avoid disapproval.”
The good news and the bad news are both the same. The nice guy’s problems are all in his head.
What can the nice guy learn to stop trying to manipulate women and the world and instead interact with them in an honest way?
If you suffer from nice guy syndrome, here are some observations and tips you can use to change.
Stop Trying to “Negotiate” Attraction
Back in college, I remember sitting at a bar with a woman I’d been trying to get to date me. Pretty drunk at the time, I went into the most cringe possible monologue to try and change her mind. I literally asked her why she wouldn’t date me and gave her a bullet point list of reasons why she should.
Although most nice guys don’t go so far as to say this out loud, they do it in their mind when they want to date someone. They think that attraction is some logical math equation when it’s a combination of factors, many of which you can’t control.
You can’t convince a woman to like you. You can’t convince anyone to like you.
Nice guys have a bunch of these little ‘covert contracts’ — they expect to get a specific result if they perform a specific action. Nice guys try to build themselves up to be this perfect partner on paper hoping that it will cause attraction. But it won’t.
So what does cause attraction?
First, just be the best version of yourself for the sake of being the best version of yourself. Then, present yourself in a positive way to anyone you’re trying to get to know, not just women. Learn to like yourself first.
Have a normal conversation like, you know, a human being. You’re naturally funny and charismatic — think of the way you are when you talk to your friends Do you overthink those conversations? No. Did you present a resume for your friends to get them to like you? No.
You just ran into them and engaged with them enough that you wanted to keep spending time with them. Throughout your life, you’ve met thousands of people. Some you clicked with and some you didn’t. Did you fail to click with certain people because their resume wasn’t up to par?
Nope. Just didn’t click. Nice guys need to understand that you’re some people’s cup of tea and not others. Simple.
Stop Trying to Weasel Your Way Into Relationships
Let’s talk about the infamous ‘friend zone.’
Women don’t put men in the friend zone. Men put themselves in the friendzone, again, by being manipulative and disingenuous. That manipulative and disingenuous energy is the core problem ‘nice guys’ have.
Here’s what happens to guys who get in the friend zone. They’re attracted to a woman. But, instead of making it known that they want to pursue a romantic relationship, e.g., just asking her out, they spend time with her under the guise of friendship and try to slowly ease their way into a romantic relationship over a long period of time.
Again, it creates that weird energy — the feeling you have to ‘butter them up’ before asking them out. Then, if a woman doesn’t want to have that type of relationship, which is her right, the nice guy will get upset and claim that she somehow wasted his time.
This speaks the way people interact with the world in general. The underlying ‘nice guy’ energy isn’t just exclusive to men. People spend their lives not going for what they want, not asking for what they want, not being intentional about what they want.
So the world puts them in the ‘friend zone.’ Their life purpose puts them in the ‘friend zone.’ You can’t expect to never give a sincere try for a goal and have it just fall into your lap somehow.
The opposite of a nice guy is simply a man who’s honest about his intentions. You don’t have to be aggressive or pushy about it (don’t do that!). You just have to be honest. If you want to ask someone out, ask them out. If you want a raise, ask for a raise. Want to start a business? Start the damn business.
You put your intentions out there and you get a yes or no answer back. Again, you live with that answer. Not everyone woman is going to like you. Your boss might not give you that raise. You can start a business and fail. Doesn’t matter.
Just keep going on your mission with playful energy and look to tackle life’s challenges.
Stop Being a People Pleaser
Nice guys are inauthentic and display people-pleasing behaviors.
Let’s say a nice guy likes a woman. He will try to be whatever he thinks the woman wants him to be to try to attract her instead of, you know, just being himself.
I’ve learned all these lessons the hard way. Back in college, this girl I liked mentioned that she liked fishing. Also, she liked listening to these weird indie bands. Honestly, the music was awful. But I found myself listening to random 10-minute songs like “The Mariners Revenge Song” by the Decemberists. I took up fishing (which ended up being I hobby I loved).
Long story short, I didn’t get the girl. Even Barack Obama said he tried to read the same books and philosophers as the female students at his college so he could date them.
You see the theme here. The nice guy isn’t confident in himself the way he already is. Ironically, the number one way to kill a woman’s attraction toward you is to fundamentally change who you are to try to please her or get her to like you.
When in a relationship, a nice guy forgoes his own needs to try to please his partner, but this creates problems because people can subsconsciously feel you compromising who you are for their benefit. And no matter how nice the deeds themselves are, the underlying motivation is unnatractive.
In general, people-pleasing behavior is a sign of neediness. Neediness repels everyone, not just women. Does this mean that you should never compromise? No. Does this mean you shouldn’t highlight the best parts of yourself to be attractive? Of course not, you should do that.
It means that you need to find the best intersection between the things you’re interested in, your values, and your personality with the people you want to attract or bring to your cause. This is how dating works. It’s how getting anyone into your life works. It’s how business, sales, and even getting fans for your content works.
Never re-shape who you are, people please, or pander to try to manipulate people into engaging with you.
How to Stop Being a Nice Guy and Start Being a Real Mam
Do you need to play games with women to get them to like you? No.
Do you have to be an asshole? No.
How do you become the type of man who has healthy relationships with women and the world at large
You need to have a few things:
- Boundaries – Be intentional about what you want and what you don’t want in a relationship. Be willing to respectfully say no and disagree. Don’t accept every request just to be liked. Stop being a doormat and speak your mind.
- Your own life – Life isn’t just about dating. If you don’t feel whole without a partner, you’re always going to have that needy energy driving your interactions. Get some hobbies. Find a purpose for your life independent of dating. Learn how to be alone. Women want to be a part of something that’s already happening. They don’t want to be your entire world.
- Confidence – Learn to love yourself first and other people will love you, too. Confidence just means you feel good about your ability to engage with the world. Sure, you’ll have to practice it, but get the idea out of your mind that the circumstances are to blame.
- Giving energy – Learn to give good vibes to women and the world freely and see what happens. Stop having an agenda for all of your behaviors. Rid yourself of expectations. Focus on getting to know people instead of getting something out of them.
- Real masculine energy – What’s true masculinity? It’s not about ‘getting jacked’ or being a player. Nope, real men have integrity, protect those around them, stand up for what’s right,, are open about their desire and sexuality, have a mission for their life, and engage with the world in an open and honest way.
The Fundamental Lesson Nice Guys Need to Learn
The moral of the story for nice guys, or for people who exhibit this nice guy energy into the world is simple.
Stop lying.
Stop operating in a disingenuous way.
Women can tell. The world can tell.
It’s funny. You’re more likely to get what you want in life if you stop fixating on it and trying to finagle your way into getting it. “It” could be a date, a career, an outcome, whatever.
Instead, you’re better off attracting things into your life by the person you are.
There are 7 billion people in this world. Enough of them would love to engage with you just the way you are. So, engage with the world fully but get rid of your agenda.
The agenda is the hallmark of the nice guy.
You can be intentional about what you want without being rude, disrespectful, or crossing over into other people’s boundaries. Don’t be a nice guy, be a human being who’s genuinely interested in getting to know other human beings.
That’s the lesson.