Jade Exposes the Fallacy of "The Nice Guy's Dilemma"

Written by:

[Riffed by ]

Apologies to "Joe" - apparently this was submitted by a Steve Seversen, and erroneously credited to him. Joe pointed out this mistake and we prefer to give appropriate credit to those we riff. The original article (in all its whinging, self-pitying glory) can be found at Joe's own site at: JoeTown

The Nice Guy's Dilemma
Joetown, February 19, 2000

Observation: women hate nice guys. It's absolutely true, and don't deny it. Nice girls don't like nice guys,

[Nice guys don't like themselves. It's like a tired pick-up line these losers use. If you're truly a nice guy, you don't have to advertise it. Being a nice guy is not a synonym for being a co-dependant lump, however, calling yourself a "nice guy" like it is some badge of martyrdom, IS.]

and you know it. Evidence: Remember the incredibly gorgeous girl in high school? Remember the loser guy she was dating?

[Life doesn't always fall into stereotype.]

He was probably some jock, but he definitely wasn't a nice guy. And think to college - think of the girl in your psych

[As a matter of fact, I often wondered what "nice guys" saw in "gorgeous" girls. Judging people on a superficial basis doesn't make you a "nice guy," and ironically, you get what you deserve when you judge people by what's on the outside.]

class who is just amazing. She's smart, funny, outgoing, and is well beyond beautiful. Is she single? Are you kidding? That's her boyfriend sitting next to her, the asshole frat guy with the Amercrombie baseball cap.

[I can hear you eating your heart out from here. Use a napkin.]

Let's face it, guys, women don't like us. Not if we're nice, anyway.

[Well, aren't there any OTHER girls that would draw your interest, NICE GUY? How about the nice girl sitting beside you?]

Now, I understand that this entire rant here is subjective, so I should in all fairness clarify my terms. When I refer to "nice girls," I think my standards are pretty universal. Physical beauty, intelligence, sense of humor, creativity, and style come together to combine a general niceness factor, and that's what I'm talking about.

[Yes, I can see how all that goes into *your* definition of NICE (when it applies to women).]

And when I refer to "nice guys," I'm referring to guys who basically have their shit together. They're smart, they study a lot and work hard, and they try to be generally nice to everybody. They're friendly, polite, and they like their mothers.

[I notice that physical beauty has nothing to do with a NICE GUY, so tell me, if you aren't interested in a less-than-immediately attractive girl, why should any beautiful woman want to be with a troglodyte such as yourself, using your standards?]

Here's your basic test to see whether or not a guy is nice: Tell the subject about this thing you heard that was really rude. If the subject laughs and says, "Dude, that rocks. I wish I could be that mean," you know he's not a nice guy.

[My definition of a genuinely nice guy is one who will treat everyone as an equal, and who DOESN'T EXPECT to get anything because of his nice behavior.]

But women love him. That's the true defining characteristic of an asshole. Great women date losers. They LOVE assholes. But they stay away from nice guys like the plague.

[Nice guys like you are the plague. Who wants to spend time with someone with hypocritical values, a whiny and self-centered outlook, and feels that his "nice" behavior is like a barter system. Nice guys like you are hardly in short supply. You tend to shit on your friends, then cry about being alone. Nice guys don't finish last, whiny, I'm-so-sorry-for-myself-I'd-kill-myself-but-I'd-rather-mope guys finish last, and so they should. Grow a spine, stop expecting something for practically nothing, and get over the envy.]

My friend Phil and I have given this problem a telling name: The Nice Guy's Dilemma. In an effort to discover why the Nice Guy's Dilemma exists in the first place, I decided to go to the source: I found some nice girls and asked them why in the hell they were being so stupid.

[Anything to avoid working on the REAL problem: yourself.]

My expectation was that the girls I talked to would disagree about why the Nice Guy's Dilemma exists. I even expected some to deny that it exists at all. To my surprise, not only did every single girl I talked to agree that women

[And how many WAS that, exactly? I really hate these do-it-yourself surveys.]

are largely attracted to assholes, but with only minor variation did they disagree about why.

[To your face, anyway.]

Without any doubt, nice guys in today's college environment are the victims of a massive conspiracy.

[Yes, we conspire to shut you out of the dating scene. (And guys complain about women with 'victim' mentality!)]

Women are attracted to excitement. They crave drama and suspense in a relationship. The nice guy can't offer these things, because he is inherently unexciting. The nice guy will always be there for you, and will always have a shoulder to lean on.[Is that ever an understatement. The "nice guy" will wrap himself around your leg, vowing never to let you go. He worries when you're out with your friends. He does "nice" things for you only to throw them up in your face later, which tells you that the act of kindness was really a spiderweb of power.

Where the hell is the excitement in that? College women are looking for a relationship that is reckless; they want a boyfriend who will be just a little too daring. They want somebody who will frustrate and challenge them.

[Someone who will be his own person? Of course someone with the personality of a wet dishrag would perceive anyone even slightly more stimulating as "reckless".]

I don't know why, but it's true. My friend Kristen suggested that in a way, all women are looking for a challenge. It's a maternal instinct, she says, to seek out the problems in a guy and try to fix them. Women, she says, are attracted to asshole guys because they think that they can fix them.

[That's a different problem altogether, but one thing about this is not surprising. I am not shocked that one co-dependent person found another to befriend. Healthy people just aren't attracted to that type of behavior.]

Women are inherently social workers.

[Well, the co-dependant kind would be. Anything to avoid fixing their OWN issues. Much like "nice guys." And of course, you don't notice the healthy ones.]

Nice guys don't present a challenge, because they don't have the same readily apparent problems for women to want to fix. The truth, of course, is that even the nicest of guys has personality issues that run extremely deep.

[You have a host of problems to fix, to be honest, but who wants to bother with someone who tends to be a controlling crybaby and thinks of himself as a 'victim'? ]

Nice guys choose to conceal these flaws, of course, because we think that women will find us unattractive if they know that we're not perfect.

[You THINK you are hiding your flaws, but in reality you are so transparent it's a wonder you can see yourself in the mirror when you shave in the morning...]

If we only knew the truth, that women actually like character flaws because they want to fix those problems. My friend Tara agreed with my summary: Women are inherently social workers.

[No, your friends are social workers. I don't waste my time. There are a lot of women like me, too, but we stay away from guys like you.]

So there you have it: A clear explanation of why women choose to date assholes instead of nice guys. Nice guys aren't nearly as exciting or dramatic as assholes, and we don't present any flaws for women to want to fix, either. Basically, we're fucked.

[In the head, yes.]

So how do nice guys get around this dilemma? How do we overcome the problem of not being rude and arrogant? Fortunately, it appears that time is on our side. "They're just getting it out of their system," said Kristen.

[Funny how self-confidence can be misinterpreted as arrogance. Self-confidence is attractive.]

Women apparently go through a phase in their early twenties in which they crave the experience of a reckless dating relationship. My friend Julia explained that women are afraid that they'll suddenly be 40 years old and married without ever having dated some reckless punk like John Travolta in "Grease."

[Oh yeah, that's exactly what every woman fears.]

No girl wants to marry Travolta's character, but they all want to date him for at least a little while. I can testify to this fact from personal experience: An ex-girlfriend once said that the reason she thought we should end our relationship was that it was "too stable." The logic that once seemed flooded with bullshit is now crystal clear.

[What she meant was that you were BORING, overbearing, and whiny and probably wrapped yourself too tightly around her leg. Let's face it. When you become aware that you are dating someone who could be one of those guys that snaps and stalks you later, you'll say ANYTHING to lessen the blow and get your ass outta dodge.

And she's right. You ARE long-winded and boring. You disguise the fact that you're whining about your fate by dressing it up in this article as an insightful look into the Nice Guy dilemma, when in fact you're really wondering why YOU can't get a date...well, from a woman who LOOKS good, anyway. Pathetic.]

So apparently, all we have to do is wait. Sometime in their late twenties or early thirties, women start to think more about permanent relationship status. Sometime in their thirties, women start to think rationally.

[Do tell. As late as that? Tell me, when do men like YOU start to think rationally? When do you get off the self-pity pot?]

They begin thinking about marriage and children, and then it suddenly hits them that they need a stable, nice guy to date, not an asshole. The evidence for this shift is obvious: You don't see many thirty-year old guys running around with Amercrombie sweaters and baseball caps, making plans to get "totally wasted" this weekend.

[No, they just buy tools they don't need, tinker around with cars, have midlife crises that involve dating someone young enough to be their daughter and buying a pussymobile. I don't even want to talk about sporting events with a couple of their friends.

Actually, aside from the midlife crisis stereotype, I'd ENCOURAGE a man to get out of my ass and have his own interests. He SHOULD be doing this. If his every waking moment is devoted to me or the family, he's just hiding from his problems involving himself. In other words, he's in desperate need of therapy, and I'm not the one to give it to him.]

And if you do see those guys, you notice that they're single, unlike in college, where they've got their selection of the best girls on campus. So buckle in, nice guys, and get ready for the ride. Prepare to fly solo for another few years, and just be there when this magical change happens in the gender that makes no sense.

[ From your side of the fence anyway. Sorry to crush the only thing that gives you comfort, but if you're waiting for age to make you suddenly attractive, think again. By the time YOU hit thirty, you'll stop expecting that gorgeous woman to notice you, and you'll start ranking those women you consider to be less attractive UP a notch.]

Or, if you're like me and refuse to wait for some mythical common sense to befall our female counterparts, you can try Plan B: Be an asshole.

[That was what this was about? Your justification as to why you're an ass? You didn't need to write ME for that.]

Just be sure to drop by Abercrombie for your costume.

[Assholes wear clothes from anywhere, but true to form, you judge by the outside appearance.

Sit in your own shit and cry.]

Forward this ARTICLE to someone who needs to answer the CLUE PHONE

Pause your cursor over each link below for a more detailed description

Want to link to HBI?

  Want to know when we update? Subscribe to our "What's New" RSS Feed

(What is an RSS Feed?)

Get SharpReader - our favorite RSS aggregator - it's free!

If you don't have a Newsreader, you can subscribe to updates via email: