Every day men call to tell me that the real problem in dating is that people STILL don’t like nice men. They all have different examples of how they have tried to be emotionally present and available. They have stories of how much money they have spent trying to woo the love of their life and feelings of utter disappointment and frustration. It is only natural that their perception of what is going on is related to what the mainstream dating industry has told them: People love jerks — especially men who act like jerks.
They ask whether I can teach them how not to be nice. I tell them there is other work to be done.
The truth is there is quite the double standard when it comes to emotional sensitivity in women versus men. Women are still expected to be “nice” and when they fall into this normative category, it can enhance their dating potential.
When men demonstrate similar levels of emotional sensitivity, however, they are not always treated in ways they desire. As a result, it leaves men who should be on their way to becoming our future role models feeling uneasy about what it actually means to be a single man looking for the love of his life.
Why Anxiety is the Real Problem
It is not that we all love jerks. Nor do we hate nice guys. We, however, will biologically respond differently to people who are being nice due to social anxiety and those people who are being nice due to high levels of conscientiousness and emotional security. In other words, it is not that people don’t like “nice guys.” People really don’t like anxiety. The natural response to being around someone anxious is avoidance. Unfortunately, in a dating context, this means that the anxious/sensitive men are constantly being rejected because they are completely unaware that other people are picking up on their anxiety. Their perception of the rejection, however, usually gets turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy that ALL people dislike “nice guys.”
In an interesting study by McDaniel (2005), the idea that young women prefer jerks was not fully supported. What McDaniel raises is the question of perception of what a date is supposed to look like. McDaniel’s research shows that young women believe that niceness is an important trait to look for (especially if one desires a long term relationship). However, what she found was that niceness was impacted by whether the date followed her perception of what a good first date should be. If he stopped short of showing romance and appropriate physical cues of interest, the young women were less likely to go on a second date. Thus, the role of social anxiety is really the primary issue that we all face — whether we suffer from it or we interact with others who suffer from it. Anxiety if royally messing up our personal lives and we continue to think it is everyone else’s fault!
The Role of Attachment, Self Esteem, and Emotional Intelligence
Many “nice” people believe that they are simply being nice and other people are not appreciative or grateful for their niceness. The truth is, that many of these “nice” people have toxic insecurity stemming from an insecure attachment. Anxiously attached individuals struggle to maintain high enough levels of healthy self-esteem and fear that other people will abandon them. In order to cope, these wonderfully “nice” people often bend over backward to try to please a partner without realizing that the lack of boundaries or the “trying too hard” is being interpreted as a lack of self-esteem. The experience of being around someone with low self-esteem drives many people away.
Why does any of this matter? The one huge difference between someone who has an anxious attachment and someone who is hugely emotionally avoidant and struggles with an avoidant attachment style is that anxious individuals often have higher levels of emotional intelligence than avoidant individuals. While both types of toxic insecurity can result in low self-esteem, anxious individuals potentially have higher levels of emotional intelligence. It means their potential for recovery and future wellbeing may very well be higher.
Taking Emotional Responsibility Can Transform Your Dating Experiences
Part of the work I have done for years is to teach how to turn anxiety into a personal strength. However, the only way to get there is to realize that you have personal work to do to better understand the source of your anxiety and how to manage your emotions. These skills are the foundation for living a life based on advanced emotional intelligence skills.
Almost half of our country lives in a state of toxic insecurity. Depending on these experiences, the way to cope with them will evolve into an anxious or an avoidant attachment style. The good news is that personal development work and therapy can help you move from insecurity to a place of emotional security.
How To Become More Emotionally Secure and Still Be Nice
It is pretty common for highly anxious people to believe that the antidote for social anxiety is to act like the people they admire. When you struggle with anxiety, you look up to those individuals who seem to not be struggling. Unfortunately, too many of us go to the opposite extreme and end up admiring someone that not only does not struggle with anxiety but often displays antisocial traits. In the dating world, this is the reason why so many men end up reaching out to a “pick up artist.” While the results of working with one of these people may have been helpful in the past (if you simply had the goal to sleep with more people at any cost), such behavior has dire consequences in the post #MeToo world.
So what is a better place to start? The answer rests in getting to know yourself. What are your values and do you treat yourself as “nice” as you try to treat your dates? The answers I usually hear are “I don’t know what I stand for,” and “No, I’m not that nice to myself.”
If you do not understand yourself, it is hard to expect someone else to be open to understanding you.
Values and Self-Compassion
Values are those character traits that define how you ultimately make life decisions. Most of us are not aware of our values and often get upset when someone else unknowingly violates them. I suspect that those with higher levels of anxiety probably have higher levels of traits such as prudence, loyalty, and fairness. There are 24 core character strengths researched by the VIA Institute on Character. The idea is that we should focus on our strengths, not our deficits and build our resilience using our strengths.
It can be very difficult to move to a more strengths-based mindset when you lack self-compassion. According to Kristen Neff, Ph.D., self-compassion is all about giving ourselves the kindness we would give to a good friend in times of distress. Most people suffering from high levels of perfectionism and social anxiety often lack this very necessary skill. At the core of self-compassion is the ability to self-soothe — something that our mainstream dating culture does not promote. Instead, we tell you to blame someone else when things go wrong. I prefer to teach you how to care for yourself so that your perfectionism, anxiety and negativity thinking stop you from continuing to try to meet the right relationships!
Final Thoughts
Niceness is a desired trait. Couple niceness with attractiveness and most people really like you. However, niceness at the expense of your own self worth or niceness as an attempt to people please will not yield the type of relationships you want. We are wired to avoid people who do not possess the skills to regulate their emotions. In today’s age, where there is such a focus on emotional intelligence, learning how to do this for yourself will make you a more desirable partner.
And for the rest of us who are interacting with the socially anxious, it can be wise to be patient. If someone is willing to work on strengthening the tools in their character toolbox and learn some more emotion regulation skills they may be a keeper. The level of conscientiousness is a better predictor of marital success than how much money they have and we should be learning more about this information than simply how to manipulate others into doing what we want! Dating is about learning not about obtaining.
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Previously published on Medium.com.
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Photo credit: By Tom Parsons on Unsplash