Transitioning from Nice Guy to nice guy

[brynndragon]

I get the feeling that the defensive reactions demonstrated by some of the comments in my post on the topic of Nice Guys is because people recognized more of themselves than they are comfortable with in the rant I linked to. If you're one of those people, or you got that mildly ill feeling in the pit of your stomach when you read that rant, you might be interested in an essay on becoming a nice guy. I know I found it to be useful. . .

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

1. In my CFT, I've been musing about "Cute Girls", who are in some ways the contrapositive of Nice Guys. (Quick summary: they're not cute, though they might think so or act as if other people should think so, and use it to push relationships the same way Nice Guys use Nice.)

2. It's all about the intention. This is the thing that I think a lot of people are "Nice Guys" are missing. Unfortunately, no one bothers to explain this, and in fact culture teaches the opposite. E.g., movies (especially during the 80s!) made it perfectly clear that hanging out with a woman for the express purpose of sleeping with her -- heck, blowing up buildings or shooting people or kidnapping her with the goal of impressing her enough to sleep with you -- was perfectly acceptable, and further more that doing so basically guarantees attraction and sex, unless you're a malformed freak.

So men (especially) got encouraged to take certain actions. But intentions color actions the same way intonation colors speech. The root action -- say, taking the girl out to the movies -- might be the same no matter the intention, but the execution of those actions ends up very different; creepy vs. sweet. Then the less-clueful guy mentally reviews, "Hey, I did just the same things as Bob, why am I getting hit with a harassment suit?", and ends up very confused. This is worse for the rules-based mind, since "obviously" there is a clear set of steps that you follow and then the girl puts out -- which I think is the real correlation with Aspergers' / INTJ / whatever.

[aerynne.livejournal.com]

I'd be psyched to read a diatribe on Cute Girls, since I fear I may be one occasionally.

[water-childe.livejournal.com]

I can already imagine how it might sound.
Cute Girls are girls who act all sweet and totally interested in a guy, purely to get them to buy them things, or pay their way at the bar/ resturant. They use body language and or flirty behavior revealing outfits as their aids. They like the attention, and subconsciously or even consciously see it as a sort of power worthy of braggng rights.

cute girls do all the aforementioned things not because they want attention , drinks, or other items. They exhibit these behaviors because they are genuinely attracted and intersted in the guy/girl. The fact that you might be willing to pay for dinner/drinks/other entertainments is an appreciated and possibly even reciprocated side perk.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

That's a real issue, but a different one than I'm trying to isolate. Like Nice Guys, my Cute Girls rely on the expectations of society to force their prey to act a certain way. Your Cute Girls are using an asset at their disposal to manipulate, but not really "guilting" men into doing things...

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

This is worse for the rules-based mind, since "obviously" there is a clear set of steps that you follow and then the girl puts out -- which I think is the real correlation with Aspergers' / INTJ / whatever.

I'm definitely an INTJ and probably borderline asperger's but somehow I managed to internalize at a very young age the idea that rules are not always as straightforward as they seem. I think I learned this from science class when we talked about designing experiments - for a proper experiment you need to create a control that only varies from your experiemental sample by ONE variable - if more than one variable differs you will never be able to tell what caused your result. Interpersonal realtionships have a damned lot of variables and if I do the same thing twice and get different results, clearly there was simply a variable I failed to control for - it doesn't actually throw my rule out the window. Thus I can preserve my image of the world as a logical rule-based place :)

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

New thesis topic: "Women as independent variables: a double-blind study." :-P

While I grok what you're saying, it's hard to be that rational about relationships, especially when you're (ahem) horny...there seems to be a tendency to ignore all evidence of disinterest and go with what is supposed to work, just trying to do it better and more correctly. ("Wave the flags just like they did, and the cargo planes will arrive and drop off magic goodies!" "Speak *louder* and *slower*, and the foreigner will understand you!" "Show up at midnight with flowers and a boombox and sing love songs, and she'll HAVE to go out with you!")

I suppose that your approach is a sanity-saver for those who fit the above criteria and get rejected. (I'm something of a non-expert at rejection, so I can't really say much about it from a first-hand perspective...)

[water-childe.livejournal.com]

It's only recently that I was able to rationalize why the 'hey baby yo baby' technique is still so often used.
If you are a)looking for sex and not much else b) care very little about the possibility of a repeat/actual relationship of some form, and c) are willing to put up with a rapid fire string of rejections until you find someone who meets conditions a & b, then it's in many ways the logical way to go.
It persists because in some way or another IT MUST WORK.
I still hate it though.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

It's the spam of the interpersonal relationship game; low-cost, high-volume, with a low but non-zero success rate. Sometimes it works, and that's enough -- even if it hasn't worked yet for that particular guy, the legend is there. And of course it's upsetting like spam, for exactly the same reasons.

(On top of this, hooting at mate-able women appears to be a biological imperative in men; we apologize in advance. Doing something that gets your attention, even dipping your pigtails in the inkwell or whatever, elicits a pleasurable internal response. It's just that those of us with half a brain work to fight down the reflex...)

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

It's real-life spam, complete with nonsense sentenses to get past filtering software and catch-phrases to catch the unwary.

[water-childe.livejournal.com]

Then there are more advanced techniques like the 'low level compliment snare'
This is when a guy/girls praises your appearance in some way but somehow makes it seem like you are 'deficient' in some way. Example: "Wow. I find you really attractive. You're like a 6 or maybe a 7." This is supposed to prey upon your insecurties so that you might protest this only slightly over middle of the road rating. If you take the bait, this proves to the guy/girl in question that you can somewhat easily controled and will suggest things that you can do to convince him/her of your attractiveness. Counter attacks are to completely ignore the bait, or else tell so and so that you think it's utterly presumptious of them to assume that your actually attractiveness/self worth has any bearing or real dependancy on their opinion. If anything this ploy has the power to completely turn off any genuine or budding interest I might have had in the first place. It's like the kiss of death.

[doctorellisdee.livejournal.com]

the trick is not better or more correctly, it's more frequently.

[doctorellisdee.livejournal.com]

like everyone else said better with the spam analogy. buggerment.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

i'd be psyched to see your version of the contrapositive. i have some odd views on this, based on my solo explorations into dating early on - new to area - no possee to hang with or learn the ropes. HS was the pits and college was too busy studying and trying to make something of myself to date seriously or with intent. by the time i was seriously ready to Date, i was done for. i found the market predatory and harsh. too many games and odd expectations. i've met a lot of Nice people, and was horrified. i'm sure i've come off that way sometimes, but i'm betting i've had it "done" to me more often.

as for defensive, that's fairly natural. most people are about something, true or not. even if one ISN'T, one does not want to be perceived as. for anything.

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