Mike, I can’t help thinking that maybe what these women you describe want is a man who is like you are as a friend . If you’re like most “nice” guys (and I have reason to believe you are), that person bears little or no resemblance to who you are in a relationship…or even when you’re working toward starting one. I’ve long heard men complain about how interesting, indepedent women suddenly become something else entirely when they enter into a relationship. I’m beginning to think that women aren’t the only ones.
Just a few days ago, I saw a forum post in which a man questioned why he’d experienced the same pattern in his last three relationships. There’s a big clue inherent in that question, don’t you think? The pattern he complained of was that women were very interested in him when he first started dating them , but “the more he did for them” the more distant they became. He interpreted this to mean that women were only interested until they became sure of him. To me, it seemed much more likely that every time he got a good thing going, he suffocated it.
I’ve dated some “nice” guys in my time. One liked to take me to nice restaurants, the theater, etc. and was a very interesting conversationalist…but as soon as we’d been on a couple of dates, he commenced calling me several times a day. I was busy at the time, working and going to school and doing volunteer work all at the same time, and I’d tell him I had to hang up and then, half an hour later, he’d call again. It didn’t take long before I started to cringe when the phone rang. A man whose company I’d enjoyed became a little cloying and then, not long after that, someone I wanted to avoid at any cost. I’m sure in his mind he was the “nice” guy who was attentive and spent money taking me to nice places and should have been every woman’s dream, but to me he was intrusive and demanding. The worst part was that I’d known him for a while before we dated, and I’d always enjoyed his company…but that was before he became unable to leave me alone long enough to finish a paper or have dinner with a friend.
Another “nice” guy called one afternoon and asked whether I wanted to go out that night. I’d had a stressful day and was tired and told him that I didn’t want to go out. That, apparently, was unacceptable. Spending half an hour going around and around in circles while he pressured me to do something “relaxing” with him that evening didn’t do much for my stress level, nor did the fact that he showed up unannounced and uninvited a couple of hours later to try again. Just a “nice” guy trying to do something “nice” for me when he knew I’d had a bad day, right? Why is it, exactly, that “niceness” so often looks so much like disrespect? Why is “nice” some kind of secret synonym for “can’t take no for an answer”?
Every man I’ve ever heard talk about how “nice” he was in a relationship and how he didn’t understand what went wrong was, on closer inspection, really just doing what he wanted to do with little thought to what the woman actually wanted. What he thought she shouldcajole, manipulate or pressure into the relationship he wants.
want, sure, but not what would actually make her happy. A man who bends over backward trying to keep a woman interested in him, or play the role of the perfect partner so that she’ll want to stay with him, isn’t being nice. He’s being self-serving. And as with anyone who gets so caught up in getting what he wants that he can’t see other people’s wants and needs clearly, he’s going to make life less pleasant for those around him…especially the woman he’s trying to cajole, manipulate or pressure into the relationship he wants.
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Nice Guy Seeking Selfish Woman
[...] I did, in fact, “accuse” you of that same kind of suffocating behavior I mentioned in my last post. I think it was the night you called me complaining that the woman who had asked you for space [...]
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