Being nice isn’t a motive, it’s an attribute. Being nice isn’t a play or a disguise, it’s a genuine way of being that’s not contingent on its effect on women.
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Nice guys, like Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Rob Ford, have developed a rather unfavorable presence on the Internet.
In an attempt to regain authority, men of the Internet have taken to bashing women, arguing in favor of The Nice Guy with the empty argument that we “friend-zone every nice guy we meet and only talk about their disappearance when the bad guys hurt us.”
This proverbial Nice Guy the Internet speaks of — this often-alluded-to fallen hero men hide behind when cursing women for not dating them — needs to addressed. Because we’re throwing a big word around and many of us don’t know what it means.
What actually makes a nice guy… nice?
Many men have a very distorted view of The Nice Guy. They think he’s a guy who uses nice actions to sleep with women rather than playing the alpha male card. They think it’s the anti-alpha, the fallen hero.
What these guys don’t realize is there’s one crucial detail they got wrong with their definition. Nice guys aren’t nice because they want to sleep with you, they’re nice because they aren’t just thinking about sleeping with you.
A guy isn’t nice because he says he’s nice. He doesn’t say he “tried to be nice and it didn’t work.” Because being nice isn’t a motive, it’s an attribute. Being nice isn’t a play or a disguise, it’s a genuine way of being that’s not contingent on its effect on women. Unfortunately, many men don’t understand this.
They think every personality, every stereotype, every way of being is about getting women. They think if women don’t sleep with them, it’s because their ploy didn’t work; they think that because they tried The Nice Guy on for size and it didn’t pan out, women don’t actually want the nice guy.
Well, f*ck you for calling yourself a nice guy when all you’re doing is saying you’re nice to get in our pants. The real Nice Guys aren’t the ones who need to say it, they show it. The real guys don’t stop being nice because they aren’t getting ass. The Nice Guy is nice whether he’s sleeping with you or not.
Nice guys are nice because that’s just how they are. They display certain characteristics and qualities that differentiate them from run-of-the-mill assh*les.
So before you start putting down women by saying how nice you are, why don’t you take a look at the qualities nice guys actually possess and see if you fit any of them:
He wants to be your friend… and doesn’t complain about being friend-zoned.
The Nice Guy doesn’t whine and moan because you’re not treating him like the attractive alpha male he wants you to see him as.
He doesn’t throw a fit because you like him as a friend because he didn’t have any more motive. If hooking up happens, it happens. But he didn’t arrange for it that way.
He respects you… not because of what you can do for him.
A genuine, authentic nice guy respects a woman because she is his equal. He doesn’t respect her because she has tits or can provide certain services for him.
He respects them as people and not their capability to fulfill his desires.
He doesn’t give you everything… but also doesn’t expect anything.
Nice guys aren’t constantly trying to buy your affection because any woman knows that no man offers you gifts without expecting something in return.
Nothing comes free in this world, no matter how nice he’s pretending to be. An honest nice guy doesn’t buy you things because he isn’t expecting anything back.
He doesn’t treat you like a princess… he treats you like an equal.
You know he’s nice when he’s not bullsh*tting you. He’s on equal footing with you, not talking up to you on some pedestal.
Because every woman knows that if a man is talking up to you, it means he’s most likely trying to go down on you.
He does something nice… without expecting something in return.
His motives aren’t questioned. He doesn’t guilt women into doing things for him nor does he ever makes them feel like he’s expecting something in return for his kindness. He does nice things for women because he does nice things for everyone.
He’s empathetic…. even if he can’t understand it all.
A nice guy will be the first to admit he doesn’t know everything about women, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be empathetic towards them.
Just because he doesn’t have the same struggles or fight the same battles doesn’t mean they are less important. He feels for women, the same way women can feel for men.
He knows his strength… but he never threatens you with it.
While he knows that he’s stronger than you and many times society gives him advantages, he’ll never use them against you. He doesn’t see the advantages of being a man as ways to demean women.
He empathizes with the struggles of women and would never hamper them to make himself feel more powerful.
He listens when you talk… not just because he’s waiting for you to finish.
His conversations aren’t about sweet-talking you back to his place or putting up with your ramblings until he’s earned your trust.
He genuinely wants to talk to you and the conversations are centered around more than just watching the way your mouth moves.
He respects what comes out of your mouth… not what you can put into it.
He’s interested in what you have to say. He cares about the things that are coming out of your mouth, not just what you can do with that mouth later.
When he talks to you, it’s because he’s genuinely interested and his words, like his promises, are never empty.
This post originally appeared at Elite Daily. Reprinted with permission.
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Lauren Martin is a Senior Lifestyle Writer at Elite Daily. After graduating from PSU, she moved to NYC to write fart jokes at Smosh Magazine. Making her way to ED, she now writes riveting commentary on nude pics, condoms and first dates.
Photo: Leo Hidalgo (@yompyz)/Flickr
Excellent comments. Bravo! The one image I’m left with is the female praying mantis. They are known to rip off the heads of their male suitors and eat them after they are done with them. Beware, women can be as not nice as men. Did they give that up somewhere in their past in order to get what they need too? Possibly.
Lauren Martin is a Senior Lifestyle Writer at Elite Daily. After graduating from PSU, she moved to NYC to write fart jokes at Smosh Magazine. Making her way to ED, she now writes riveting commentary on nude pics, condoms and first dates. …. I get it now… This article was meant as a joke!! Every girl says they want a nice guy but they go for the guys that treat them like shit. Meanwhile, that nice guy will move on happily with his life. Never mistake kindness for weakness ladies. The nice guys you leave behind are the ones who… Read more »
The problem with this article is twofold. The first is that it assumes that guys who express their frustration put on an act of being nice. No. Their attribute is being nice and their frustration is the result of the girl USING them for goods and services. If you use a guy for goods and services, it is an implicit signal that you are interested. I agree with Ride the Power in this regard. I have tried being friends but the woman ALWAYS wants to use me. For me, if she wanted to use me for favors, it is a… Read more »
A few things I should point out: VERY few “nice guys” guys are actually expecting to get sex in return. However, regardless of whether or not they are hoping to get laid, guys will usually be super nice to women they are attracted to. That’s just the way we are. There is a difference between friend zone and appliance zone. I used to always give this girl rides to work. I had no interest in her and was not even attracted to her. I was just being nice to her because she was nice to me. But after a while,… Read more »
The “bad boys” are motivated by sex … and they tend to get it a lot more than the “nice boys”, even the nice boys whose niceness is an attribute rather than a motive. As much as my inner feminist screams at this, the reality is that “treat em mean and keep em keen” still works. I’m naturally a nice guy, I get the attribute thing. But for a while I was a spectator in the hook up scene. I spent too long watching women brush me aside to have their flings with the “bad boys”. The way that I… Read more »
“Oh, I also started dressing alot sharper and got fit.”
There you go. Doesn’t the women who you feel attracted to dress nice and are usually fit as well?
Of course women looking for casual sex will be more inclined to go out with men who seem to be less inclined to get attached. The same goes the other way around. The more you act fun, aloof and into yourself the more you will attract people who are just the same – and those people usually only care about flings, they aren’t into relationships at the moment.
Oh great, another lazy article on “nice guys” that tries to lump a large group of men into one oversimplifed, incorrect box, and what for? Well it sure does allow the women in these scenarios to appear perfect. As a nice guy who is motivated by nothing other than that is who I am, let me explain this to you. When I have been accused, but let’s go ahead and use the real world, slandered, of only being interested in sex the few times in my life I have also been accused/slandered of being a “nice guy” like this article… Read more »
I think maybe a root issue here is the over exaggerated importance of sex. Nobody is going to get sick if they don’t get laid frequently and if your main goal in interacting with someone is to get laid odds are it’s going to backfire. Relationships work best when both people have respect for each other. If one person feels like the other is only paying attention or doing favors because they expect you to put out later can you blame them for taking that tire change (or whatever) and moving on to someone genuine? Seriously, from experience I can… Read more »
“Nice guys” and guys with no boundaries are synonymous from what I hear in the comments. I feel like it’s pretty simple, if you would put up with it from a sane sex friend, don’t put up with it from an opposite sex friend. My husband is an angelic human being. Always left the good parking space for me, accompanied me to the occasional chick flick, opened doors, helped my friends, and he was not less attractive to me for his niceness. He didn’t have friends who took advantage, he didn’t let employees step all over him, and if he… Read more »
The article should be summarized as: “know your place in this world, as my cuckolded little bitch….if you’re lucky, I’ll introduce you to my fat friend who can’t get a date either..”
Not even her boyfriend but already a “cuckold”. And fat as being less valuable, right dudebro?
Isn’t it interesting that the writers of articles like these, are completely out of touch with the actual men that seem to read these sites. Or is the GMP really a site for women about men, about how women want men to be?
Dude get out, of the FZ next you will be carrying her purse, buying her Tampons driving her to the Airport so she can hook up with her real boyfriend, and when she getting ready to move, she will call you so you can help her move into her boyfriend/ fiance/husband, apartment no thanks……
Yawn.
Again – nice guyism is not something concocted from whole cloth by butthurt rejected men because they can’t get laid.
*I had women THAT KNEW I WAS INTERESTED IN THEM say the classic “why can’t I find a nice guy like you” to me.*
I get that some guys abuse the concept of nice, but please stop with this tired, spurious one-sided narrative that it’s just about guys being entitled dicks.
Once again, a woman is trying to define men.
Did anyone else notice this entire article is about what SHE wants? Men are often accused of being “entitled”, so what is any different when a woman does it?
Behavior that a woman approves of is not necessarily the same behavior that attracts her sexually.
I have sometimes thought that women often subconsciously seek out men who display stereotypical male gendered behaviour which annoys them. This enables them to vent steam by growling “Men!!” occasionally, allows them to feel superior to said men, and, most importantly, strengthens their feminine identity (aren’t gender identities ever so fragile?) by making the contrast more clear.
And men do the same thing, no doubt about it. E.g. I consider myself as progressive as they come, but it has always somehow worried me that none of my girlfriends showed any inclination to enjoy shopping. 😉
if everyone can take one thing from this article it’s this:
“Because being nice isn’t a motive., it’s an attribute.”
EXACTLY!!
Being nice may be an attribute.
But even if it is, doesn’t mean that the people around you can’t take advantage of it or abuse it.
Only if you are too unaware and let them take advantage.
Women get crap for not sleeping with their friends. I get crap because I actually do sleep with a lot of my friends. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
We should totally be friends.
Oh yay, another article on the FRIENDZONE! As if there was anything new to say on the topic that hadn’t already been said on the dozen other carbon copy articles on the topic posted on this site.
Precisely, I used to be a much nicer guy than I am now and I didn’t get anywhere with women. Now that I’m actually dating, I’m a less nice and less generous guy. But somehow that’s preferable to the nicer guy that I was. As you note it really is more of an “appliance zone.” The friendzone wouldn’t be so bad if women would give a guy a hand with other women, but from personal experience energy spent on women is largely wasted energy. You can develop a certain amount of self-satisfaction from doing it, but it doesn’t generally translate… Read more »
To Frank (above), again this is exactly the whole point of the article – that you obviously are rejecting as truth. ….so frustrating as a woman to hear this from men!! Because you say/feel “acting” like a nice guy previously in your life did not yield you success with the ladies, and now that you are less nice you are more successful with them…and somehow women at fault for this? (you trickery?) You are the poster-child for a jerk pretending to be nice just to get something for it. Stop it please! Expecting a reward for being nice, and then… Read more »
In defense of Frank, and other nice guys turned not-so-nice guys. Just because you stopped being nice in order to have success with women doesn’t mean that being nice was a motive for sex. Like the author says, being nice is an attribute. Unfortunately, it’s an attribute that can hinder your success with women. It’s more of a side effect of being nice. So, nice guys are often caught in the dilemma of “can’t have your cake and eat it too”. Also, I don’t think any one here is at “fault”. Women are attracted to who they’re attracted to. My… Read more »
ACGW,
Frank doesn’t say anything about “acting”, he says he used to be different.
I’m not acting, I stopped being as generous with women and started being more motivated by my own well being. It’s definitely women’s fault that they’re choosing to reward less virtuous behavior while taking advantage of generosity. The problem is that when genuinely nice guys get overlooked time and time again for people that are less generous, it sends a really strong message that we need to either accept reality and either be less generous/nice or accept that we’re not likely to get somebody that’s good enough. Assuming we can get somebody at all. At the end of the day,… Read more »
Dude says women having sex with men is a “reward”. And lso this: “I liked being nice, I certainly liked myself more, but we live in a society where you can’t just hit the person you like over the head and drag them back to your cave.” Yeah, just another idiotic straight American dude.
I wasn’t acting, I was genuinely that nice and generous. But after years of seeing jerks prosper and nice guys come in last I got tired of hoping that somebody worth having would be available for me. This is something that women don’t seem to understand, why should nice guys remain nice in the face of great adversity? What is it that’s so great about you that we should be willing to put up with all that punishment in order to win you over? The problem here isn’t that being nice doesn’t get a guy in with a particular woman,… Read more »
Thank you Frank! I seriously couldn’t have described the situation any better myself.
Ditto, Frank. I’m always surprised and disappointed to hear comments about how men fake being nice just to get sex. Where do they get this assumption? Being a genuinely nice, sweet, kind, and generous guy is who you are, and not getting success with women is what happens to you lol. I’ve found that the quality of women I have had success with has gone up relative to how much niceness I’ve decreased. The problem with being nice is that women see it has a “beta” trait. Humble, submissive, etc. Basically the opposite of confident, dominant, and other manly traits… Read more »
I think a lot of people don’t understand that many actually nice guys (and girls) are also human! Shock, horror. It is FRUSTRATING to be taken for granted and annoying to be used. We only have a certain amount of energy in which to do good for others but I think many nice guys are often giving too much of this energy to people that haven’t proven they deserve it yet. It makes it quite easy for them to be used if they aren’t wisened up to toxic people yet. As things like lust and love can make some people… Read more »
ACGW,
You are wrong. Frank’s natural attribute is being nice. That led him to being used. So he started putting on an act that he was a mean guy and that miraculously got him girls. That is his point. Read again.
Why would any guy act nice knowing that it is a bad strategy? Does not make sense.
Because you ARE nice so being with people who like “not nice” people is, in the end, gross? Because people who feel attraction to “mean” people are usually broken, and that’s weird to take advantage of it?
Nah, they are just straight dudes trying to get women… who cares about these women’s issues as long as you’re gatting laid, right? I forgot.
There is no “friend zone”, but there is an “appliance zone” where you are used for favors or unpaid labor by others. The only one who can put you there is you, so don’t do it in the first place. Look up Zeta Masculinity, which does not depend on approval from others, especially women. It doesn’t mean being a jerk, just being your own man.
Doing a favor for a friend, or even a stranger, shouldn’t make you feel like an “appliance”. It just proves the author’s point that a NOT “nice guy” who proclaims himself as a nice guy is the guy who feels exactly as you do…like you can’t just DO something for someone without feeling somehow used by it? Seriously, whether it’s a favor for a woman you may be interested in, or not, or a guy friend who just needs an extra set of hands to move a couch….just be (actually) NICE and help someone out for a few minutes of… Read more »
I don’t expect anything from anyone. Period. It’s less disappointing. My point was about certain women who take advantage of someone they know is attracted to them. I have no problem helping real friends.
ACWG,
Lending an extra set of hands when someone needs to move a couch, is what friends do.
Being asked, or taken for granted on doing unending “favors”, by someone who doesn’t have the slighest thought of reciprocating, should the situation be reversed, is when you start being used, or even abused, as an appliance.
It’s sad that you feel like that I love helping my friends, all my close friends are female.. So great men in my life but are married or just not attracted to them so can’t be as good as my females friends but would meet for a walk or maybe movie.
I help out where I can but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand when someone doesn’t return the favour. Friendship is a MUTUAL thing, not a one way street. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been there for people, especially women who will tell me alllll of their problems, I listen, offer advice where needs be, I help out in other ways too yet very few are there for me. Usually guys tend to be there for me more, but that could be just I am a better judge of character of men. I see similar… Read more »
Exactly, Archy.
I also find it significant that when you are there for other people and getting used, without some form of courtesy in return (e.g. being asked to help plan and prepare a party, only to disover you weren’t even invited yourself), when you finally stand up for yourself, all of a sudden YOU are the bitter, bad guy who’s keeping score …
Well, I guess if you’re the kind of person who usually don’t give anything, I guess you don’t have any score to keep either.
Whether it’s the good ally, the actual nice guy, the guy who is good in bed, the pefect date, the good dad, on all those lists of demanded traits supreme confidence and self-esteem always takes a central place. Part of it is surely lazy writing: Writers begin to write a list of traits and then start to become poetic and grandiose. How to be a good ally? Easy, just be the perfect human being! How to be a good partner for your spouse? Easy, just be the perfect human being! Etc. You get the point. But it is true that… Read more »
That’s sort of the problem, confidence is really only built upon past success or at least the ability to pretend like you’ve had success in the past. One of the reasons why online dating sites are such a god send for nice guys is that it gives us the ability to have some success that we can refer back to if things don’t work out. Everytime a person has some success, it makes it that much easier to deal wtih set backs that come. But, if you haven’t got that, then there’s little reasont to believe that you can overcome… Read more »