How to Stop Being a Nice Guy. Thoughts?

[As_for_my_House]

Why you wouldn’t want to be married to a nice guy.

1. You will never know how he really feels about anything. So it is very hard to make choices and decisions for your marriage.
2. You will end up with *all *the responsibility of making decisions, especially the hard ones where somebody has to say no or be the bad guy. This will effect the raising of your children and all your relationships with extended family and friends.
3. Your nice guy spouse will attract users and losers into your circle and you will be the one stuck having to get rid of them.
4. Your nice guy will appear to the outside world as the nicest person that they have ever met! You will here these comments all the time. To the outside world he is the ideal husband and it will take you years to figure out why you do not share this same opinion with the rest of the world.
5. You will be neglected because the man who is all things to everyone cannot have you or his family as a priority.
6. Over the years your nice guy will grow in frustration as he feels the drain he has put on himself for decades of not meeting his own needs and find himself unable to say yes to everyone. He will then develop an unhealthy dependency on you. He will become resentful when you can bear the weight of meeting those needs.
7. Your nice guy will now begin to try to meet his needs but he will do this by still putting others first then himself and you last. His good guy image is too important to sacrifice.

This is an overall picture but I can give many concrete examples of how this is played out in real life if anyone is interested.

The more I read the Bible, looking to Jesus as an example of how we should treat our neighbor the more I see that Jesus was definitely * not* a nice guy.

 

[Xantippe]

Why you wouldn’t want to be married to a nice guy.

1. You will never know how he really feels about anything. So it is very hard to make choices and decisions for your marriage.
2. You will end up with *all *the responsibility of making decisions, especially the hard ones where somebody has to say no or be the bad guy. This will effect the raising of your children and all your relationships with extended family and friends.
3. Your nice guy spouse will attract users and losers into your circle and you will be the one stuck having to get rid of them.
4. Your nice guy will appear to the outside world as the nicest person that they have ever met! You will here these comments all the time. To the outside world he is the ideal husband and it will take you years to figure out why you do not share this same opinion with the rest of the world.
5. You will be neglected because the man who is all things to everyone cannot have you or his family as a priority.
6. Over the years your nice guy will grow in frustration as he feels the drain he has put on himself for decades of not meeting his own needs and find himself unable to say yes to everyone. He will then develop an unhealthy dependency on you. He will become resentful when you can bear the weight of meeting those needs.
7. Your nice guy will now begin to try to meet his needs but he will do this by still putting others first then himself and you last. His good guy image is too important to sacrifice.

This is an overall picture but I can give many concrete examples of how this is played out in real life if anyone is interested.

The more I read the Bible, looking to Jesus as an example of how we should treat our neighbor the more I see that Jesus was definitely * not* a nice guy.

That was very insightful and helpful.

 

[Xantippe]

I’ve skipped a page or two of discussion, so apologies in advance, but it occurs to me that “alpha” is pretty circular and tautologous as a term if it means “guy that women like.”

If that’s the definition, “women like alpha men” means “women like men that women like.”

That’s not completely devoid of semantic content, but it’s not exactly helpful.

 

[EasterJoy]

Why you wouldn’t want to be married to a nice guy.

1. You will never know how he really feels about anything. So it is very hard to make choices and decisions for your marriage.
2. You will end up with *all *the responsibility of making decisions, especially the hard ones where somebody has to say no or be the bad guy. This will effect the raising of your children and all your relationships with extended family and friends.
3. Your nice guy spouse will attract users and losers into your circle and you will be the one stuck having to get rid of them.
4. Your nice guy will appear to the outside world as the nicest person that they have ever met! You will here these comments all the time. To the outside world he is the ideal husband and it will take you years to figure out why you do not share this same opinion with the rest of the world.
5. You will be neglected because the man who is all things to everyone cannot have you or his family as a priority.
6. Over the years your nice guy will grow in frustration as he feels the drain he has put on himself for decades of not meeting his own needs and find himself unable to say yes to everyone. He will then develop an unhealthy dependency on you. He will become resentful when you can bear the weight of meeting those needs.
7. Your nice guy will now begin to try to meet his needs but he will do this by still putting others first then himself and you last. His good guy image is too important to sacrifice.

This is an overall picture but I can give many concrete examples of how this is played out in real life if anyone is interested.

The more I read the Bible, looking to Jesus as an example of how we should treat our neighbor the more I see that Jesus was definitely * not* a nice guy.

This hits the nail on the head. This is the kind of “nice guy behaviors” that the original links were trying to point out to those who unknowingly use these strategies to gain a reputation and self-concept as being a “nice guy.”

These are the aspects of “being a nice guy” that lead to women avoiding taking on the job of “helpmate” to such a man. She can see he gains his reputation not by being a giving person who nevertheless has healthy boundaries and a mature ability to set priorities but rather by being a doormat, an enabler and a people-pleaser.

Women do it, too. Whether male or female, they attract manipulators and users and wonder why they have such “bad luck” with the opposite sex. It has nothing to do with luck. It is as predictable as rain-caused erosion on a slope with no roots in it.

 

[Xantippe]

Need to understand this in the context of SMV. Who is more in demand in the Sexual Market Place? That’s the Alpha. They can be more selective because there are more consumers pursuing what they have to offer.

For women- it’s the woman in their early 20s, who are fit and take care of themselves. She’s the Alpha.
They are more in demand, as marketing to men for that initial interest is pretty simple.

Now- the SMV concept isn’t about long term relationships. Again, it came out of the whole PUA approach and involves seeking women of similar mindset. They aren’t looking for long term relationships and therefore can only assess those things readily apparent in initial contact.

George Gilder did address this in his book, “Men and Marriage” from a long term relationship aspect. But came from kind of the some starting point-- men and women are looking for specific things long term but are initially attracted by those things which can be readily detected. Therefore - young women have the highest value,** rich middle aged men the next,** older women, young men with resources, than young single men the lowest value, etc. Interesting book in that it explores how marriage is essential for a society, that marriage through its assurance of paternity binds a man to having a greater interest in society and its future for his children. That the breakdown of marriage and rising out-of-wedlock birthrate in some communities was responsible for rising crime and other social ills due to alienation of the father from his kids and therefore interest in society’s future as a whole.

Anyway, so any individual relationship may start with an attraction due to externals but will continue based on a whole slew of other factors.

And yet, if we sent a bunch of rich middle aged men to a fraternity party to mingle with late teen/very early 20-something women, I don’t think they’d do that well getting phone numbers…

Young women really aren’t usually that into middle aged guys. When I was in college, I dated a guy 16 years older than myself for a while, but it never crossed my mind to marry him even though he wanted to marry me–we were just at very different life stages at that point and wanted dramatically different things. A few years later, I married a guy 2.5 years older than myself, much like the median US first-time couple. A 2-4 year gap in age between spouses who are marrying for the first time is a long-standing cultural norm in the US–you can look back 120 years and see the same pattern.

There’s a reason why the median age at first marriage for men in the US is 29, not 40+.

I think that 40-something professional guys are very attractive now, but I had to get to be a 40-something myself before that switch flipped.

 

[EasterJoy]

I think you’re expecting me to defend Ayn Rand. I’m not. My comment was pointing out she was a believer in personal responsibility and assumed folks were better looking at looking out for their own interests in coming to mutually beneficial agreements.

Yes. Her problem was that she was openly contemptuous of people who were willing to give to others who couldn’t reciprocate. She wanted to see a benefit, results, production, and doing things simply for the sake of giving someone else dignity as a person did not qualify.

 

[styrgwillidar]

And yet, if we sent a bunch of rich middle aged men to a fraternity party to mingle with late teen/very early 20-something women, I don’t think they’d do that well getting phone numbers…

Young women really aren’t usually that into middle aged guys. When I was in college, I dated a guy 16 years older than myself for a while, but it never crossed my mind to marry him even though he wanted to marry me–we were just at very different life stages at that point and wanted dramatically different things. A few years later, I married a guy 2.5 years older than myself, much like the median US first-time couple. A 2-4 year gap in age between spouses who are marrying for the first time is a long-standing cultural norm in the US–you can look back 120 years and see the same pattern.

There’s a reason why the median age at first marriage for men in the US is 29, not 40+.

I think that 40-something professional guys are very attractive now, but I had to get to be a 40-something myself before that switch flipped.

Gilder’s writing was from the perspective that Rich guys were abandoning their older wives and trading them in on younger models. He saw this as disruptive to society as it reduced the number of prospective partners for young men. The problem came in after his initial writing (first version was called something like ‘Sexual Suicide’ kind of that Rich guys advantage was bad for society) when he did more research and found it that in longer marriages it was more often the women wanting the divorce, not the man. Rich guy ended up back on the market and affect was the same- more likely to go younger, thereby limiting availability of suitable partners for younger men.

That aside, his more interesting points were looking at out-of-wedlock birthrate and disintegration of marriage resulting in a lot of men detached from an interest in a stable society. Given our rising across-the-board out of wedlock birthrate, he predicts dysfunction spreading into all demographics that we currently associate with ‘inner city’.

 

[styrgwillidar]

Yes. Her problem was that she was openly contemptuous of people who were willing to give to others who couldn’t reciprocate. She wanted to see a benefit, results, production, and doing things simply for the sake of giving someone else dignity as a person did not qualify.

I think a lot of her problem was her experience (hardest thing to overcome) with one extreme of human political systems, communism in the Soviet Union. She jumped to the other extreme. No ability to see a middle ground.

 

[EasterJoy]

I think a lot of her problem was her experience (hardest thing to overcome) with one extreme of human political systems, communism in the Soviet Union. She jumped to the other extreme. No ability to see a middle ground.

This is a fair-minded assessment. It is impossible to judge her interior situation. What she said, though: lots of repugnant things that are totally incompatible with Christianity.

 

[EasterJoy]

And yet, if we sent a bunch of rich middle aged men to a fraternity party to mingle with late teen/very early 20-something women, I don’t think they’d do that well getting phone numbers…

Young women really aren’t usually that into middle aged guys. When I was in college, I dated a guy 16 years older than myself for a while, but it never crossed my mind to marry him even though he wanted to marry me–we were just at very different life stages at that point and wanted dramatically different things. A few years later, I married a guy 2.5 years older than myself, much like the median US first-time couple. A 2-4 year gap in age between spouses who are marrying for the first time is a long-standing cultural norm in the US–you can look back 120 years and see the same pattern.

There’s a reason why the median age at first marriage for men in the US is 29, not 40+.

I think that 40-something professional guys are very attractive now, but I had to get to be a 40-something myself before that switch flipped.

Not to be too cynical, but if they bring the best booze and are obviously better able to “show a girl a good time” than the college guys, I think they could find someone willing to see the town with them. (There is a reason Donald Trump was able to get someone young enough to be his daughter to marry him.)

 

[DarkLight]

Not to be too cynical, but if they bring the best booze and are obviously better able to “show a girl a good time” than the college guys, I think they could find someone willing to see the town with them. (There is a reason Donald Trump was able to get someone young enough to be his daughter to marry him.)

I have to think this is some of the reason for the negative view of women among the redpillers and others of this sort of guy. If the primary thing you’re offering is your chance to “show a girl a good time,” you’re going to attract a certain sort of girl - and it’s not going to be the sort of hardworking woman who is looking for a stable life partner to commit to and start a family with.

 

[starshiptrooper]

Every human person is to be valued for who they are.

Nobody deserves a trophy just for showing up. Please explain what possible value a pedophile, a murderer, or a socialist has to me though.

If your only criteria is youth, fertility, and beauty, then you’re setting yourself up for a bad marriage and disappointment.

I never said that those were my only criteria. If the Red Pill is so terrible and deceptive as you claim, why do you have to put words in my mouth?

I don’t think you speak for the majority of “devout” Catholic men. Certainly not in Ireland anyway.

I do not claim to speak for anyone other than myself and anyone who agrees with me. I do not consider myself a good Catholic, and I am honest enough to admit it.

They get really, really angry over this sort of oppression. Imagine if they actually faced the oppression women went through throughout history, lol. People keep going to the extreme when it comes to gender issues.

I dislike playing the game I like to call ‘Oppression Olympics’ since it is unhelpful. However, I guarantee that for any historical instance of oppression against women, I point out how men had it just as bad if not worse. For now however, I will name 3 rights that American women have that I do not.

1. American women have the right to vote without registering for the draft. If I refuse to register, I have committed a felony and lose my right to vote in addition to several other sanctions.
2. American women have a legal right to genital integrity.
3. American women have the right to call nonconsensual sex with a heterosexual assailant rape. The FBI’s definition of rape specifically excludes the possibility of a female perpetrator and a male victim.

 

[starshiptrooper]

I have a few concerns about this:

1. I would counsel any young woman to avoid a man who has that attitude, because if he primarily values her for youth, beauty and fertility, what happens when those qualities are gone? Is he going to chuck her out, Donald Trump style, and replace her with a slightly younger model?

Donald Trump is very much an extreme example of an alpha male. Like or hate him, you cannot deny that he is a charismatic, confident driven, dominant, successful man, with a “no dangs given” mentality. The smarter thing for a woman to do is look for a guy with a more balanced mix of alpha and beta traits. Given that the vast majority of American men are more or less beta due to the culture and that women initiate 70% of all divorces, the odds of a guy who is not an extreme alpha type leaving her are relatively low.

1. How many kids does the average American guy want, anyway? As one can see from CAF, while infertility is a thing, it’s also easy to wind up with more children than one can comfortably handle, even marrying a woman in her mid/late 20s.

Personal preference on my part. The only reason I would ever consider a civil marriage is because I found a woman worth starting a family with. Otherwise there is no real reason why marriage benefits a man.

1. I suspect that you overestimate the contemporary American male love of female virginity. After all, only a small minority of American men marry virgins these days, which suggests that it isn’t exactly their #1 priority.

I am not the contemporary American male who is either shamed into marriage because that is what grownups do or because it is his only shot at having a sex life. As I pointed out previously, it significantly lowers the odds of divorce.

The facts on the ground suggest that US men prefer a woman with a solid education and income to a virgin, if they have to choose between the two. Also, on average, they want to date and cohabit for a number of years before marriage–which doesn’t combine very well with virginity.

And the average American guy is beta and blue-pilled and probably heading towards a dead bedroom and a divorce. Take my buddy for example, he is a good guy but extremely beta. Very little experience with women since he went to seminary out of highschool for a few years and just recently decided it was not for him. He is currently dating a girl we both knew, for the purposes of discussion, her name is Susie. Susie went to college and is most definitely not a virgin given that she screwed her way through a bunch of losers who were most definitely not husband material by your or my standards. She is now a single mother. Does she like my friend because he sets her heart aflutter or because he diligently applied himself a technical trade and now makes good money in a job that is not going to be outsourced?

 

[EasterJoy]

I have to think this is some of the reason for the negative view of women among the redpillers and others of this sort of guy. If the primary thing you’re offering is your chance to “show a girl a good time,” you’re going to attract a certain sort of girl - and it’s not going to be the sort of hardworking woman who is looking for a stable life partner to commit to and start a family with.

Sometimes, it is two people who may be very different ages but who are both going through a period of very bad decision-making, maybe each going through the most foolish time of his or her entire life. It does seem to happen more often just as we’re getting into adulthood and then again when we realize we’re staring old age in the eye. There is probably some brain chemistry in play that leads to this unfortunate pattern.

(Put it another way: People you thought were smart and sane do these things, too. You never know.)

 

[Xantippe]

I have to think this is some of the reason for the negative view of women among the redpillers and others of this sort of guy. If the primary thing you’re offering is your chance to “show a girl a good time,” you’re going to attract a certain sort of girl - and it’s not going to be the sort of hardworking woman who is looking for a stable life partner to commit to and start a family with.

Riiiight.

It’s basically a selection process for gold-diggers.

Nice young women feel uncomfortable about accepting expensive entertainment or gifts from older men. (Young women probably wouldn’t know this explicitly, but traditionally, single women aren’t supposed to accept expensive gifts from any non-relative non-fiance. As a rule of thumb, any item you couldn’t easily buy for yourself is too expensive to accept as a gift from a man who isn’t either a relative or a fiance.)

And back to the original topic, giving expensive gifts is one way that a “Nice Guy” might attempt to (ineffectually) buy affection.

 

[XndrK]

Riiiight.

It’s basically a selection process for gold-diggers.

Nice young women feel uncomfortable about accepting expensive entertainment or gifts from older men. (Young women probably wouldn’t know this explicitly, but traditionally, single women aren’t supposed to accept expensive gifts from any non-relative non-fiance. As a rule of thumb, any item you couldn’t easily buy for yourself is too expensive to accept as a gift from a man who isn’t either a relative or a fiance.)

And back to the original topic, giving expensive gifts is one way that a “Nice Guy” might attempt to (ineffectually) buy affection.

I was going to say, this was getting strangely off-topic and started turning into … dating advice, I want to say?

 

[EasterJoy]

I was going to say, this was getting strangely off-topic and started turning into … dating advice, I want to say?

The point is that being “nice” in the wrong ways is going to attract persons who want to be around you out of the wrong motives while it repels those whose motives are favorable towards a happy long-term marriage.

I don’t think anyone believes, for instance, that either jerks or the people they manage to attract wind up happy together after they marry. Good people do tend to find marriage enjoyable and, when life is not exactly enjoyable, then at least sustaining.

Life with someone who is sold on an unsustainable brand of “nice,” however, is something else again, as the author of the piece in the last link of the original post found out rather late in life.

 

[edwest2]

Not necessarily, helping the people you care about is perfectly consistent with Objectivism.I read the essay. Rand has very little influence on this culture which is primarily enmeshed in a blue-pilled, altruistic, Leftist frame. She is the antithesis of those awful things and is consequently despised by the American Left. To lump her in the Culture of Death is ridiculous, especially since her ethics are based on the value of life.

I am fairly sure that other than Socrates, Rand is the least-read yet most strawmanned philosopher ever.What is wrong about concern for my interests (the definition of selfishness)?You seem to think that my quest for happiness comes at the expense of others. You are wrong. I have no desire to interact with other people except insofar as they offer value to my life.

I watched an interview with Ayn Rand and Mike Wallace circa 1959. Her philosophy is every man for himself. No need to help anyone and the same for yourself. If you made a mess or got in trouble and need help, you’re on your own buddy. Mike Wallace said. “But Ayn. Aren’t we our brother’s keeper?” She didn’t agree.

Ed

 

[starshiptrooper]

I watched an interview with Ayn Rand and Mike Wallace circa 1959. Her philosophy is every man for himself. No need to help anyone and the same for yourself. If you made a mess or got in trouble and need help, you’re on your own buddy. Mike Wallace said. “But Ayn. Aren’t we our brother’s keeper?” She didn’t agree.

Ed

“The fact that a man has no claim on others (i.e., that it is not their moral duty to help him and that he cannot demand their help as his right) does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance.” (The Question of Scholarships, Ayn Rand)

 

[Rau]

“The fact that a man has no claim on others (i.e., that it is not their moral duty to help him and that he cannot demand their help as his right) does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance.” (The Question of Scholarships, Ayn Rand)

How does one in need “demand” the assistance of another? Under which system of ethics (morality) does Ayn assess one’s moral duty?