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

[brewergnome.livejournal.com]

In general I think that the original writer hit it on the head in her note that those who doth protest too much are usually the culprits.

Yeah, for those of us who don't read innuendo and body language as... eloquently as others, it's a bitch. Which is why I try to be upfront with people about those issues and explain why I'm blunt and dense. Thank goodness too or my boyfriend would have broken up with me 9 times over. Instead we're quite happy and succesful.

[randysmith]

I think my defensiveness is around the boundary between "being attracted to someone" and "only spending time with them because your trying to get into their pants". I perceive there as being a stereotype out there that's always ready to pounce (:-}) that if I'm attracted to someone then that's the reason (implicitly, the only reason) I'm hanging out with/expressing interest in them. And it's not just fear of that stereotype; I've moderately internalized it, which results in a fair amount of internal second guessing around my own motives. And that sucks.

I think I do ok at avoiding being a "Nice Guy" (tm), but at the cost both of tending to spend *less* time with people I'm attracted to and of not generally expressing attraction when I feel it. Not surprisingly, I'm not completely happy with that balance :-} :-J.

[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.

[water-childe.livejournal.com]

I also think that many women unwittingly 'reinforce' or 'enable' certain forms of 'Nice Guy' behavior, by depending on body language and not stating directly that they are uninterested because of 'not wanting to be perceived as a bitch'. Saying as calmly and politely as possible, "Thanks, but I'm not interested.", is not really all that bitchy IHMO. Using profanity and yelling that you're not interested is usually OTT, and generally is generally uncool. I've done it, but it's something I try not to have to resort to. If I tell someone clearly and directly 'no', more then twice, then I will call in, management, a bouncer, or friends to help me feel safe, and get my point across. But really, don't unwittingly enable bad behavior. Be assertive.
For gods sake, don't resort to fake phone #'s. That's a shitty thing to do, no matter how much so and so is hounding you.