By Sam
I'm a nice guy, and there are so many nice girls. Why won't any of them date me?
Based on my experiences with girls this is something I believed all through my teenage years:
Nice guys don’t get the girl.
Or possibly the reverse:
Awesome girls end up with douchebags.
Actually, come to think of it, I probably believed it well past my teenage years, but you can’t really blame me. If you’re a guy it seems to be irrefutably true on face value. We can all point to at least a couple of experiences. For me it was stretched across six months around the beginning of my final year of school. There was this girl. She was smart, she was beautiful, and she had a wicked sense of humor. I spent months listening to all the problems she was having in her life, especially the problems with her not-good-enough-for-her boyfriend. Eventually they broke up and she got a new boyfriend -- and yes, I got to hear about him too. Lucky me.
That was my own personal experience torn from the pages of my private life. So why does it sound like I just cut and pasted it from the comments section of any decent relationship website? Because it happens to a lot of guys, and I mean a lot of guys. It happens to a lot of guys to the point where I would say that, unless you're the god-king of seduction, the first time you’re the pathetic platonic friend to a girl is the when you truly become a man. It’s like a girl’s first period, only with less blood and more unfulfilled teenage angst.
I see girls who are with douchbags. I see nice guys who get no girls. This seems to be a fairly clear-cut phenomenon with plenty of evidence to support it.
As I was saying, for guys the “girls like douchbags” rule seems to be fulfilled everywhere you look. Go to any club on a decent Saturday night, pick the hottest girl there and see who her boyfriend is. Yup, he’s the guy in the muscle tee who appears to be simulating anal sex on his best friend. Wow, why do women always end up with guys like that?
But there’s a flaw in that thought process, it stems from the way we guys can ignore any aspect of a woman in favor of her physical attractiveness.
It’s not that women are attracted to dick guys. Stupid people are attracted to stupid people. However, more often than not stupid people are also incredibly, incredibly hot. Be honest here, when you see a mind bogglingly attractive girl you don’t give a crap about her as a person. You couldn’t care less if she was so evil she stomped on puppies and so stupid she couldn’t count to one on a banana. It’s natural. When a guy sees a toned body in a slinky skirt all those bits of his brain that do the thinking divert power to the boobies cortex. That’s just life right?
Well, sort of...
The thing you forget is that the reverse holds true for her view of you. I think it’s probably a safe bet that you’re not a tanned, muscular Adonis with rippling muscles and eyes as blue as the deep, deep ocean, so how do you expect to compete with her tanned, muscular, idiot boyfriend with washboard abs? With about as much hope as you’d have trying to wrestle a moving bullet train, that’s how. She doesn’t want you for the same reason you didn’t want her ugly friend: you didn’t tickle her man-boobies cortex. If you rate a woman’s overall attractiveness based on her physical appearance I’m not here to tell you’re wrong, whatever works for you, but you have to give women the same leeway to choose a man's physical attractiveness over all other factors. Anything else would make you a hypocritical bastard, which doesn’t really fit with the whole “nice guy” thing.
I may not be an Adonis, but I’m pretty good looking, and girls still don’t want me. They go for guys who're the same level of physical attractiveness and are dickheads. Surely that’s a pretty good indicator that it’s the dickness that’s doing it for them?
Firstly, how good looking would you rate yourself? Above average? Far more than 50% of people believe that their looks are above average. It’s a form of mental self preservation. Psychologists have found that people’s self-concept tends to be over optimistic as a way of protecting our self esteem, and trust me that’s a good thing because we have found people with an accurate self concept that includes all of their faults and flaws. They’re commonly referred to as “people suffering from depression.” I guess what I’m getting at is that there’s a chance that you may be basing you’re assumption on… umm… incorrect data in relation to… oh for fucks sake I’m just going to say it: there’s a possibility your face looks like a caricature drawn in shit by a schizophrenic chimpanzee holding the paint brush in his ass cheeks.
However, let’s assume that you’re right and that you are the exact same level of physical attractiveness as the other guy. Why is she choosing to take him home for a night of wild, rambunctious sex while you’re stuck drunkenly jerking off onto your housemate’s toothbrush?
Here we come back to the problem of stupid people looking stupidly attractive (see what I did there?). When you see a girl who makes you want to, as the old poets say, “bonerize her until your wang makes sad face,” you stop thinking about things that would usually impact on your desire to get to know someone. Separate the situation from your lust for a second and you’ll see what I mean.
There are few ways you can get the measure of a person before you actually talk to them. Basically a collection of semi-accurate generalizations and stereotypes that your brain uses as shortcuts. Psychologists call them heuristics, because any science worth its salt has to make up fancy names for things. A good example is this: imagine you see a group of guys acting like dicks, urinating on an old lady or something . Those bastards! Also, why are you not helping the old lady? It’s okay I’ll wait.
…
Good. You showed them. Also, I think you probably got imaginary urine on your hands when you helped the old lady up. You might want get an imaginary tissue or something. Anyway, now the dicks are across the street and one of their friends joins them. They like him, he likes them. He dresses like them, walks like them, talks like them. It’s probably safe to assume that, just as they are dicks, he too is a dick. You just used a heuristic. You’ve never seen him do something dickish, but you used the available evidence to fill in the blanks. It’s like a superpower!
Back to the club now. The hot girl hangs out with douchebags. They like her, she likes them. They walk the same, talk the same, and do you see where I’m going here? Chances are she’s the female version of them, but you don’t notice. Why? A couple of reasons. We already discussed the whole “she’s hot so I don’t care” thing, but it’s more than just that. Douchebags treat the same sex worse than they treat the opposite sex because anyone the same sex as them is competition. A guy who treats other guys like he has four more balls than they do can seem like a pleasant, decent guy to a girl because he’s never treated her like that. Similarly, there’s a chance that the douchebag girl treats other girls like dirt, puts them down and generally acts as if her ovaries are made of solid gold, but to guys she seems like the life of the party.
Do you care that she treats other girls like shit? It’s a trick question really. If your answer is “No I really don’t care,” then why should she care that her dickhead guy friends treat other guys like shit? If your answer is “Yes I really do care,” then why are you pursuing someone who’s the very embodiment of the moral cesspits of humanity that you despise when they’re the same gender as you?
There is, of course an answer to that last question. “Because she’s hot, duh,” but once again that answer sort of negates the whole “I’m a nice guy,” premise, since it implies that -- as far as you’re concerned -- she’s nothing but a pleasing frame for a vagina and a set of tits.
But, that’s just one specific situation. I respect women. I know lots of girls who are smart, funny and beautiful. I know this because I’ve actually got to know them properly as people. They're in no way a female douchebag, and they’re still dating a dickhead over me (and not only that, he’s an ugly dickhead). Answer that mister smarty internet man!
Example time.
Let’s say there’s a girl. She works in a comic book store. She loves cheese, but hates beetroot. She likes horror movies. She loves playing Scribblenauts on the Nintendo DS. One day she really wants to see India; and she’s making a costume so she can go to the next Sci-Fi convention dressed as Aeris from Final Fantasy VII.
Do you think she’d be likely to date nice guys?
Answer: how the fuck should you know?
I’ve given you a whole list of specific details about this hypothetical girl. You can probably make a few inferences about her personality from them. Hell, it’s the internet, some of you are probably ready to ask her on a date; I know you people.
Here’s the problem. Nice as a concept is too general.
This problem is something psychologists ran into early on, and it’s one of the reasons that guys assume girls must be either deluded or stupid when it comes to dating decisions. You can’t apply general data to specific predictions.
Let’s say you want to find out if a woman is likely to use condoms for contraception in the next year (by the way, they actually did this survey). You ask her about her general views on contraception, she thinks it’s a good idea. At the end of the year you visit her again, and what the fuck? She has two kids and a case of HIV. Did her boyfriend’s sperm have teeth or something that let them chew through rubber? You scream at her for being a liar.
After she’s stopped crying and the police have taken you away, you might stop and think that perhaps you were approaching this all wrong. If you want to predict a specific behavior you have to ask a specific question. The more specific the better. Kind of obviously the best question would have been “What are your views on using condoms as contraception in the next year.”
Nice tangent, but how does this relate to nice guys and dating?
Ask a girl if she’d rather date a nice guy or a dickhead.
Nine out of ten times I’ll bet they tell you they’d prefer a nice guy. The tenth girl probably spent a lot of high school coming up with excuses for the black eyes. Either that or she’s apprehensive about what’s coming next. Namely:
Well I’m a nice guy. Why won’t they date me?
Do you see what happened there? We started by dividing the entire male population into two groups. Based on that extremely general data we moved to make a conclusion about an incredibly specific situation (your relationships).
Girls aren’t stupid, they don’t bounce around with cotton wool in their heads until some predatory dick-face plucks their virtue like a fresh daisy. If you give them a binary choice they’ll choose one of the options, but when presented with an individual guy with all his personal quirks, flaws, tastes and merits they’re going to look at those things. You would too.
That’s great, but I really can’t emphasize this enough: this girl is going out with an ugly dickhead. He once told her that her vagina smelt like a fish stuffed camel rotting in an open drain.
Yes, you’re clearly nicer than her boyfriend. He treats her like crap and is probably ruining her life.
(As a side note, she should have hit him first by telling him that he hadn’t washed his dick in so long it looked like it had been prospecting for gold in a cheesecake, and smelt like he slept with it tucked safely away a homeless guy’s ass. The best defense is a good offense.)
However, remember what I said about specifics?
Looking at this awesome girl dating this odious guy instead of you we have to come to one of two conclusions:
The first is that she is a deluded moron. She has no idea what she’s doing and her tiny female brain has been overwhelmed by this deceptive, emotionally manipulative cad. Granted there are people on both sides of the gender divide who are expert manipulators. Once they get into a relationship can drag even the smartest, most grounded person into a spiral of paranoia and self loathing. However, the majority of boyfriends aren’t like that. All relationships have their ups and downs, and if you imagine that she’d never have a bad day if only she dated you then you've clearly never seen her on a bad day.
The other conclusion is that her boyfriend has specific qualities that attract her to him that you don’t have.
Let’s say I offer you $10,000. Awesome right? What if I give you a choice? Either I give you $10,000 that you get to keep in its entirety; or I give you $20,000, but I take back $5,000 next week.
Assuming you possess basic math skills and a modicum of economic sense you’d take the $20,000. Yes it sucks that I’ll be taking some of that away from you later, but in the end you’re still $5000 richer than you would have been with the $10,000. Guess what. In this analogy you’re the $10,000. Her boyfriend's qualities come with all sorts of annoying drawbacks, but when it all balances out they attract her more than yours do.
But come on, I get along with her better than she does with her boyfriend. We can talk about life for hours on end. She never has conversations that deep with him.
Yes, you’re a wonderful way to pass the time. You lie somewhere between reality TV and a Sex and the City box set. And you know what? She doesn’t want to date them either.
This is where the shitty part of this situation lies: being nice isn’t enough. If you stopped thinking with your dick for about thirty seconds you’d realize that. Yes, I know you listen to her; yes, I know you at least feign interest in the things she has to say; yes, I know you hold all the same opinions.
Now imagine she’s a guy. Take your wang out of the equation and replace it with another man’s wang (attached to the other man obviously). You don’t have to look at it, just be aware that it’s there. Perhaps you can feel the soft heat emanating from it, pulsing with the slow throb of the mega-vein. You know the one I mean. The point is it’s there, and there’s no escaping it.
Only when the carrot of possible sex is removed do you realize just how boring those conversations are. Also you realize just how much she talks. Seriously, I know you’re proud of what a great listener you are compared to her boyfriend, but the only difference between you and a tape recorder appears to be your ability to say “I can’t believe he did that.”
Fuck you and the lame horse you rode in on.
I feel you man, but I’m not trying to be insulting. The point I’m making is that when you’re talking to an attractive girl your brain becomes stimulated, and your brain is really, really bad at working out where arousal hits are coming from. Your brain is telling you that the conversation must be interesting and engaging because your level of arousal has gone up, when in actual fact it’s her low cut top. That’s fine, except for one teensy problem. Despite the fact that you’re both hearing the same words, your difference in arousal means that you’re each experiencing a completely different conversation. For you, it’s one of the most gripping conversations of your life; for her, it’s a way to keep her mouth moving so she doesn’t feel bored.
Now I feel like shit. Thanks man, you’ve been a great help. You should do this professionally. That was sarcasm by the way. I wish there was an emoticon for “I kick you in your smug balls”. Actually: |--oo / o_0. That means “I kick you in your smug balls” from now on. Is there any way I can get the girl and be happy?
Stick with me. Keep imagining she’s a guy. Why did you become close to your guy friends? It’s not because they’re nice.
You already know nice, boring people. We all do. They’re not bad people, they’re… nice. You’ll make the time to see them sometimes, you’ll ask them how they’re going if you run into them by accident, but it never goes further. Compare that to your real friends. If I asked you to explain why you liked them I doubt you’d say that you enjoy how nice and inoffensive they are. You’d have reasons why it’s worth spending time with them.
Okay, the guy can turn back into a girl now. I imagine there being a noise, kind of like the sound of a small child slurping up a string of spaghetti.
The girls who would want to date you need to be attracted to you at a level beyond that of ordinary friendship. They’re the ones who, for a variety of reasons, click with your personality. You make them laugh, and almost as important, they make you laugh; and not the kind of laugh you give a hot girl because she’s hot. Actual. Genuine. Laughter. You both feel like you have something to bring to the relationship, and you both take something away.
Here’s the shitty part: if your personalities don’t click, then they don’t click. There’s not a lot you can do at that point, and that sucks. There’s nothing worse than looking at a girl so beautiful you’d strangle a toddler for a chance to touch her and suddenly thinking “I have absolutely nothing in common with you and I will never convince you that we’re compatible.” You can try to force it, and you will want to. Your boobies cortex will be ramping into overdrive, convincing you that the mindless inanities spilling from her face hole probably aren’t all that stupid from the right point of view, but it’s not the same. No matter how hard you try, if you’re trying to adjust your personality to suit hers you end up becoming the conversational equivalent of a wind-up monkey that claps its symbols every time she inserts an opinion.
So how do I find this fabled “girl who clicks”?
Luck mostly. You can increase your chances by going out of your way to meet more people, but at the end of the day pure random chance is going to play a big part. Take heart though, there are more people who click with you than you think. Hollywood likes to perpetuate the myth that there’s a specific special someone out there for you, but as we all know, Hollywood statistics are bullshit. As it turns out, most people end up dating someone who lives within driving distance of their house. So either we’re far luckier as a species than we thought, or there are lots of people out there who are compatible with you.
That’s great, but seriously. There’s this girl I like. She’s so cool, I get along with her better than anyone I’ve ever met. She’s even said as much to me. We like the same things, we laugh at the same jokes. I feel like we’re made for each other, and she still doesn’t want to go out with me. Why?
I dunno, maybe she’s just a frigid bitch.
|--oo / o_0
Ow! my smug balls!
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