The Real Reason Why Nice Guys Struggle To Get the Girl
It’s not the reason you think
It’s popular to say that what are termed “bad boys” get all the girls and what are termed “nice guys” don’t, it’s also popular to say that “nice guys” finish last. But the problem is nobody even really knows what a “bad boy” is defined as nor what a “nice guy” is defined as. Not really.
Who is a “bad boy?” Is he a thug, a criminal, a macho man, some people call James Bond a “bad boy.” Is he? And then what about “nice guys”, some people call Pete Davison the ultimate “nice guy”, others call him the ultimate “bad boy”. Which is he?
Then there is Kanye West. Some people call him an atypical “bad boy.” Is that why he’s good with women? Is he good with women? Then there is Dwayne the Rock Johnson, some call him the ultimate “nice guy.” Is he? What is a “nice guy” and what is a “bad boy?”
Fundamentally, they don’t exist — at least not in the way people are attempting to define them. That’s why they can’t be properly defined. The creation of the terms are at best an extreme example of oversimplification, but in reality, are complete manipulations of an extraordinarily complex reality.
The reason these complex realities are manipulated is for one reason, profit.
Bad boys don’t get the girl and nice guys don’t finish last, it is just profitable to say otherwise
The myth that nice guys finish last is born from the fact that typically aggressive guys and predatory guys tend to appear more successful — at least superficially — than their more reserved counterparts.
This is because they tend to make for highly compelling stories, and so their stories get told more often and talked about more often.
So, they are not more successful, we just talk about them more which makes them seem as such.
They’re not alone, guys who lack confidence and who are so shy that they don’t even approach women tend to make for highly compelling stories — think the hapless romantic.
This is why we talk about such men more than their nice guy counterparts who get the girl.
I have seen this myself personally in practice countless times, for example, at University I was friends with a guy who liked a girl in our class, and she liked him. I’ll call them Bob and Sarah.
The problem was, Bob never asked Sarah out and Sarah never asked Bob out and so they never got together. But somebody did ask her out, and that was a guy who treated people like dirt. He was a guy who chased every girl under the sun and put all his time and effort into trying to get with as many as humanly possible. He never treated any of them or spoke of any of them well. I’ll call him Drake.
There were lots of other guys and girls in our class and all just went about their business romance-wise in quiet, mainly because nothing was interesting in their love lives to talk about. There was nobody to root for, nobody to root against. No compelling narrative. They were good people and they had atypical relationships. So nobody was interested in talking about them.
But everybody talked about Bob and Sarah, along with Drake — who dated Sarah for a while.
The whole year everybody was rooting for Bob and Sarah to get together and hated Drake for getting in the way. Also, they hated the fact that Drake was taking advantage of Sarah and leading her on. Everyone talked about it non-stop.
The amazing thing was, just how often people discussed how it just wasn’t right that the bad boy gets the girl and the nice guy doesn’t. That means everyone was constantly talking about how it was wrong that the bad boy to get the girl rather than the nice guy.
But why did the bad boy get the girl? Was it because he was not nice?
There is only one reason a bad boy ever gets the girl — it’s not the reason you think
Bob never asked out Sarah and she never asked him out. I asked him why, and he told me that the opportunity just never came around.
The thing about Bob was that he was extremely placid, he kept himself to himself, was extremely shy and awkward and he had terrible social skills. Sarah was the same.
So as crazy as it seems, the reason they were not together was that neither of them knew how to initiate getting together with each other.
Drake on the other hand had amazing social skills, and he used them to get Sarah into a situation where he could express his romantic interest and form a romantic connection with her, which he did.
It had nothing to do with him being good or bad, and everything to do with the fact that he had the right skill set to persuade Sarah that he was a decent guy and form a romantic connection.
Just to make this point clear. Drake got with Sarah because he persuaded her he was a nice guy. She got with him because she thought he was a good guy — just misunderstood. Think about that.
Then think about how in films we constantly portray a guy who appears to be a bad guy but by the end turns out to be a good man, except people had not realised it, except of course for the women in his life. Sound familiar?
The bad boy who is actually a nice guy makes for a great film narrative
People love stories of redemption and they love stories of people who are misunderstood, they also love coming-of-age stories. Having a man appear to be a bad boy but then by the end turning out to have been misunderstood, and having him come of age and turn out to be this great man, makes for an exceptionally powerful and entertaining narrative.
This is why a popular narrative in films is to tell a story of a bad boy who is not actually a bad boy, he just appears to be one, because then you can show his transformation into being a good man, a better man even than the guy who was nice in the beginning.
Often, it even pays to make the nice guy turn out to be the bad boy, and the bad boy turn out to be the nice guy. Boom, what a narrative right there, the dollar’s role in.
This is why in films — along with other popular storytelling mediums — the bad boy virtually always gets the girl, and the nice guy finishes last, because the bad boy is actually the nice guy and the nice guy the bad boy — even when it doesn’t seem it.
Even when the so-called “geek” gets the amazingly hot girl, the same narrative is being told just in a different way. The geek is misunderstood and transforms by the end into a great man which is why he gets the girl.
Whether you start as a bad boy, a geek, a nice guy, whatever, the story is always the same, misunderstood man becomes great man. It is just the most compelling narrative is typically the bad boy becoming the great man because bad boys are always more complex.
But it is all deception, and it does not tell the story of what actually happens in real life, which is a very different reality.
We only ever focus on small segments of the spectrum
We only talk about in real life, and present in film and media, the most interesting stories. But by doing this we end up only focusing on a very small spectrum of people.
This is why we have inevitably ended up up with the idea that so-called “bad boys” get the girl and so-called “nice guys” don’t, because it’s all we talk about. But just because it’s all we talk about does not mean it’s the reality.
To prove this, I wish to turn your attention to another guy I knew from university, I’ll call him Richard, Richard was just as much a terrible person as Drake, he treated people like dirt.
But here’s the thing, he couldn’t get a date to save his life despite doing everything he could to try to. He was angry and bitter and hated women because of this, he would tell everyone he was a nice guy and that that was why no one would date him.
But it wasn’t and he wasn’t. It was because he was a terrible person and unlike Drake — luckily for the world — he lacked the ability to manipulate people into thinking otherwise.
This brings me to another guy from my class, I’ll call him Fred. Fred was an amazingly nice guy, he was also really good with women, and women loved him. He was a serial dater, despite this, none of the women he dated ever had a bad word to say about him.
But it wasn’t because he was a good guy per se that allowed him to be successful at dating, it was because he had great social skills and had a good ability to put himself into environments where he could make romantic connections with women.
That was something he had in common with Drake, the difference was Fred did not need to use his social skills to manipulate people into believing he was a good guy.
That gave Fred a massive edge on the dating scene, but it also made him an uninteresting subject to talk about.
Being a nice guy that is successful does not make for a big talking point, but it does make you more successful
Nobody ever really talked about Fred much other than the odd passing comment — normally to say how awesome he was. Drake, people talked about non-stop — normally to say how horrible he was and how much of a creep he was.
This is actually a normal human behaviour, psychologists believe that we actually invented socialising to warn people of dangers — so of people like Drake, not Fred.
And here is where the myth that the “bad boy” gets the girl gets shattered. Everybody loved Fred but most people just tolerated Drake because he was there, and any person who got to know Drake had no interest in dating him.
In fact, the kindest comments the women who knew him said were typically along the lines of: maybe for a one-nighter he may be fun but even then really, I would probably catch something off him so I doubt I would ever go there.
Literally, Drake only ever succeeded romantically with people who did not know him or people who were extremely naïve like Sarah, because then he could deceive them into believing that he was nice — which he wasn’t.
Fred on the other hand, everybody who knew him liked him — because he was an awesome guy. And the women in the class frequently talked about how much they would love to date him and be with him. The reason, that he was such a great guy.
That means that the so-called “bad boy” — Drake — only got the girl if the “nice guy” — Fred — was not in the picture and the girl didn’t know who Drake was or could be easily deceived.
This story rarely gets told. Why would it? The good guy who is successful gets the girl and the bad guy who is legit just a manipulative loser does not. Where is the compelling narrative to tell in that?
At first glance, it may seem like a great narrative. The good guy wins the day and the bad guy does not. The problem is, the story would literally be over in a second, there’s no chance of character growth or drama.
Take Disney’s original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Prince is barely in the story simply because he is already the ultimate good guy. That means the only reason it makes for a compelling story is that he is kept out of the picture for the entire picture. Think about that.
That’s why all we ever hear about is the story of the bad boy getting the girl and the nice guy not — even though in the real world the opposite is true the vast majority of the time.
But I hear the question, if this is true, why do more people not talk about it to expose the truth?
It pays for content creators, dating gurus, and angry people to keep up the lie
Let’s say that you are a terrible person, either male or female, it doesn’t matter which, you are just a selfish person. You have access to social media or a blog or whatever, are you going to go onto that blog and say nobody wants to date me because I’m a terrible person and selfish; or are you going to say I’m a nice guy or a nice girl and it’s men/women that are the problem?
If you’re struggling at dating, and you have a choice, are you going to be more inclined to read information that tells you what you need to do to change yourself to improve your chances of succeeding at dating, which would be hard work; or are you going to more often favour reading somebody telling you that you are not at fault and the problem is other people? Giving you an easy way out.
If you are a content creator or a proclaimed dating guru, and you are desperate to get views, what is more likely to get you lots of clicks and interactions, a post telling people that they lack social skills or are not good people and that’s why they’re struggling to net a date, and they need to work on one or both if they wish to change that; or a post telling people that it’s not their fault, it’s because they are a nice guy and women are at fault, or because they are a nice woman and men are at fault?
The answers to the latter three questions are why very few people talk about the truth, it’s more profitable to keep selling the lie i.e. that the nice guy doesn’t get the girl and the bad boy does.
Final words
Nice guys don’t finish last and bad boys don’t always get the girl, the guys that get the girls are the ones who have good social skills and an ability to put themselves in an environment where they can use those social skills to form romantic connections. There are genuine nice guys who have this ability and there are genuine bad guys who have this ability, on the flipside, there are good and bad guys who don’t. The same goes for women.
But one thing is clear, if there is a nice guy who has good social skills and there is a guy who treats people like dirt who has good social skills, it is the nice guy who will come out on top. Not every time, but virtually every time.
So, if you wish to get the girl, or the guy for that matter, don’t aim to be a bad boy or to treat them mean to keep them keen, work on being a good person with good social skills. He is the winner every time.
That means to round things up, if ever you are struggling to succeed in the world of dating, it is never because you are a nice person. The only reason a nice guy — or girl for that matter — struggles to make a romantic connection is either because he or she is not a nice guy or girl, or because he or she is but lacks social skills and so needs to work on them. And the only reason bad boys/girls ever succeed romantically is if they are able to persuade people they are good people. Next time anybody tries to tell you that nice guys — or girls — finish last, think about that.
That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy the following:
The Seven Main Reasons Why Dating in The Modern World Is So Difficult
52 Fascinating Facts About Sex That You Probably Didn’t Know
The Psychological Reason Why Bad Boys Are So Attractive
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