About those "Nice Guys"...

Note: this is somewhat of a follow-up to the two posts I wrote rejecting the notion of the "Friend Zone"; see here and here.

Several years ago I read that women don't like nice guys. Back then I did not understand what this meant and I wrongly assumed that much of what I'd been taught and told about being a decent person was false, especially when it came to love, dating and relationships. I was baffled as to why women would be attracted to men who would be disrespectful or outright degrading towards them when people - both men and women - had taught me that women appreciate being treated with respect and politeness. Fortunately, I had misunderstood what "Nice Guy" meant and I'm pleased to say that I have now long since learnt the difference between what constitutes a "Nice Guy" versus a good man. So what is the difference?

Nice Guys are only interested in women for sex, nothing more. They appear to go at great lengths to be nice to women and specifically to women, but their "kindness" is factitious: they often go overboard to the point where their behaviour is creepy and this usually overdone niceness is just an act to manipulate women into having sex with them. A Nice Guy believes that pretending to be nice to a woman is all that's needed to bed her; he doesn't or won't understand why any woman would refuse him. In his mind, he went to all the trouble to treat her like any living and breathing human should be treated and believes that it's only fair that she reward him with sex; she wasn't supposed to be just reciprocally kind to him.

Nice Guys usually aren't interested in committed relationships; to them, women are just sexual vending machines and once the "niceness coins" have been inserted, they expect payout. Most if not all Nice Guys see sex with their target woman as the goal and once that goal has been achieved, they disassociate themselves with her, not wanting to be any more involved beyond satisfying their own selfish needs. Love and genuine caring between two people are almost always alien concepts to Nice Guys, and for them, having a friendship with a woman is a failure because there is no sex involved.

A good man, on the other hand, is kind to women because he understands that treating women respectfully is one of their fundamental rights as human beings. His demeanour is genuine, not at all a ploy just to have sex and he does not consider a friendship with a woman to be a failure. He does not view women as sex objects, nor does he regard all other men as competitors and therefore doesn't constantly overreact with aggression and excess jealousy towards them. A good man places value in relationships and doesn't view sex as the only factor that matters during them. His authenticity does not make him immune from having a broken heart and he will still experience bitterness, but his respect for women prevents him from blaming or hating all women just because one turned him down or hurt him.

Unfortunately, there are men who misunderstand the definition of a Nice Guy and they assume that women desire being degraded and/or only respect men who use their fists. What worries me here is that this misunderstanding might lead to some of these men becoming rude jerks at best or committing violence against women at worst; even during the days when I completely misunderstood what Nice Guy meant, I never believed that deliberately mistreating women was key to being attractive to them, but not all men think as I do. I sincerely hope that no man has ever misunderstood the term in this manner and ended up overreacting as such, but my concern lingers; it's imperative that men and women fully understand what separates Nice Guys from good men.

I should note that sexual desire itself does not transform a good man into a Nice Guy. A good man will still have his own romantic and sexual interests, as nearly all men (and also women) do, but it's not the only thing that's important to him during his interactions with women and he also cares about his girlfriend's/wife's sexual needs, unlike Nice Guys, who only care about their own. There is nothing shameful about wanting to have sex, but no person should ever be exploited or deceived for another person to obtain it.

Without wanting to distract or deflect from this post's main topic, I am sure that there is a female equivalent of Nice Guys (possibly called Nice Girls?); it's also likely that Nice Guys have their equivalents among the LGBT community, but I don't know enough about these counterparts to give an informed opinion about them. If they do exist, I'm sure they receive the same cold reception that Nice Guys do.

At the end of the day, people should be kind to others, men and women alike, because it's what they should do as good humans. I hold the optimistic opinion that, regardless of gender, if someone is a genuinely nice person then their attractive qualities will be noticed and they will quickly find themselves in a relationship, but if they're only nice just to trick others into having sex with them, then their attractive traits will be clouded by that veil of deception.