Stop Telling Me What a ‘Nice Guy’ I Am
I appreciate praise, but it actually has to mean something
“You’re such a NICE guy!”
It’s something that so many of us social outcasts have heard throughout life. Growing up. Adjusting to puberty. Gaining entrance to legal adulthood. Watching our bodies age.
I want to say, right upfront, that I’m sure many people have been completely sincere when they’ve told me how “nice” they think I am. I realize it wasn’t necessarily some encoded backhanded compliment. The messenger may have genuinely felt they were giving me accolades.
But here’s the thing: if there was a perpetual thought-bubble hovering over my skull, revealing exactly what I was thinking every moment of the day…I suspect most of you would be using every adjective in the dictionary OTHER THAN “nice” to describe me.
Let me also disclose how I’m both homosexual and autistic. For those reasons, I was forced to navigate my heteronormative and neurotypical birthplace in very precarious ways, in order to emerge from childhood and adolescence in one piece. Still, there are many concepts and principles I can glean from the heteronormative world to repurpose within the context of my own life.
In my K-12 school days, I was frequently pegged as a “nice guy” because:
- I was nerdy
- I never swore
- I was physically nonthreatening
- I refused to make trouble in class
- I was naïve
- I was gullible
- I had no athletic abilities
- I didn’t seek out romantic connections
- I was socially-awkward…and everybody knew it
What others perceived as “niceness” in me was largely out of self-preservation.
If it seemed as though I wanted to give classmates the benefit of the doubt, it was because I hated not having friends. Yeah, thank you for taking advantage of that.
If I appeared to be a good-mannered little boy scout, it was because teachers would be harder on me when any obscenities slipped out of my mouth (apparently, unlike other kids, I wasn’t a “lost cause,” so the school’s faculty was even more incentivized to keep me whipped into shape).
If I seemed antisocial, it was because my brain chemistry is such that I couldn’t learn to socialize through conventional methods. My Kindergarten teacher, for this reason, viewed me as a freak.
If I seemed disinterested spending more time in the building than I had to, it was because I just wanted to finish my education so I could move away to someplace better, to get away from all of you judgmental lemmings. And, for that reason, I had to earn excellent grades…which, in turn, got me labeled as a nerd.
If I didn’t seem interested in dating, it’s because I knew I’d be ostracized for expressing sexual interest in other boys.
And, guess what? I still struggle immensely with it.
No, Dan Savage…it doesn’t always “get better”…
Upon reflecting on how these skeletons have followed me into adulthood, I’ve recently done some Internet reading about how the heterosexual world grapples with the presence of “nice guys.” My research led me to conclude there are two basic categories that heterosexual women appear to identify.
There’s the experience-deprived nice guy, and then there’s the deceptive nice guy.
According to psychologist Mark Travers, straight women are more attracted to straight men who are moderately-altruistic, rather than those who are hyper-altruistic or barely-altruistic. This seems to be a happy medium when reckoning with the stereotype that women must be natural nurturers. Medium writer Veronica Huerta Foster specifies how, for her, she values common interests and emotional reciprocity in a man moreso than any stilted niceties. In fact, she views forced chivalry and neediness to be major turnoffs.
Likewise, writing coach Alyssa Berthiaume pushes back against the narrative that being agreeable is a universally attractive quality in a man. To her, placating one’s partner, being a pushover, being overly-deferential, or romanticizing the concept of desire indicates that a guy lacks confidence or self-esteem. Leadership development trainer Jennifer Bridges defines “nice” as pertaining to a man who can balance kindness and amicability with assertiveness, courage, strength, and collaboration.
Rina Magsombol, a freelance writer, similarly eschews dutiful behavior from men. She contends that women enjoy the chase and the challenge when pursuing a guy; in her eyes, the cliché of “Nice guys finish last” should be interpreted literally. Magsombol argues that heterosexual men who are actually nice should WANT TO “finish last” — because, by that point, the woman whom he’ll marry will be someone who has matured and gotten over her passive-aggressiveness or indecisiveness.
Dating coach Chris Manak adds how those who are considered nice guys tend to become overly-agreeable because they’re desperate to no longer be alone. Many of them, he says, put women on a pedestal, which can cause a woman to walk on eggshells around him and compromise her true self. Manak believes a lot of these men become entitled, ultimately viewing themselves as more worthy than the “bad boys.” But, clarifies Manak, one of the reasons why many women go for “bad boys” is because they want a guy who is authentic, has a backbone, values his own independent interests, and shows his humanity.
That brings us to a second “nice guy” archetype. One who builds his persona on deception.
Indigenous paralegal/blogger Pam Rentz classifies men who fall into this mode as being self-absorbed, having ulterior motives for their apparent kindness. Maxim’s Zeynep Yenisey calls out their impulses as being driven to behave fraudulently in pursuit of sex.
The real problem, says digital entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, is these are bad guys posing as nice guys. Their fake kindness may result in short-term gains with the lovers whom they hoodwink. But it is consistent kindness that wins out, in the long term. Such kindness, emphasizes ‘Gary Vee,’ shouldn’t be confused with letting oneself be passive or a pushover. Instead, he refers to it as “radical candor” — being unafraid of honesty or jolly political incorrectness.
In her piece entitled “Bad Boys Are Better Than Nice Guys,” Medium writer Isvari explores her perspective on this Bad/Nice binary. She prefaces it by specifying how she believes there are outliers who fall outside of this binary, such as witty or artistic men. She also makes clear that she’s excluding men who specifically engage in sexual violence. But, overall, Isvari prefers the traits she sees in so-called bad boys — they are relaxed, interactive, self-assured, brutally honest, and protective. By contrast, she finds nice guys to be unstable, dishonest, manipulative, needy, and exploitative.
Writing for Huffington Post, Lindsay Dodgson sums it up nicely: if a woman wants a successful long-term relationship, compassion should always trump any superficial qualities. She believes that women who seek out selfishness and narcissism in men are only really looking for a short-term fling.
Okay, leaving the heterosexual world, and heading back into my reality…
How do I process this? Especially when I’ve been the recipient of that “nice guy” label, even if the observer hasn’t already assumed I’m gay?
On-balance, I’d say I’m more experience-deprived than deceptive. In fact, perhaps I could be called an “experience-deprived bad boy” (if we’re applying the definition of “bad boy” that many heterosexual women use). I tend to be very upfront about what I want from people, romantically or otherwise, while acknowledging my limitations regarding the (lack of) social life I’ve led.
I’m the first one to admit I’m not an outwardly “nice” person. I tell it like it is, and I’m an equal-opportunity disparager. At the same time, I don’t go out of my way to be intentionally or unduly cruel to others. Maybe my lack of gratuitous showmanship, when it comes to my public and private behavior, is mistaken by people for niceness?
If I come off as “nice,” you can probably assume one of three things:
1. I genuinely like you, and want to get to know you better (regardless of whether it’s platonically or romantically).
2. I find you to be a toxic person, and I’m simply “faking it” with you in order to beat you at your own game out of necessity.
3. If we’re just ships passing in the night, I have respect and appreciation for your occupation or (if relevant) service role — and I think it’s appropriate you’re given your due acknowledgment for that.
It’s a struggle to navigate the heteronormative dating advice that I hear from so many mainstream guideposts. Admittedly, I’ve had very few romantic relationships throughout my life. But there are also a number of extenuating factors that have contributed to that:
- I was a “workaholic” for at least six years of my life, leaving very little time for recreational dating
- In one particularly abusive long-term relationship of mine, I suffered from codependency or a form of “Stockholm Syndrome”
- I’ve had to confront issues related to sexual incompatibility and geographic undesirability with several guys whom I’ve dated
- The place where I currently live has a minimal social scene, especially for LGBT+ people
As I’ve endured firsthand: schools are often complicit, or directly responsible, in the matter of spawning toxic masculinity. Not only can some educators subconsciously reinforce gender roles or ethnic shame…they might also have different expectations out of students due to whether the pupil is considered to be an “angel” or a “lowlife.” I hope we can help members of the Centennial and Alpha generations navigate this a lot more effectively than us Millennials and GenXers were able to.
So I embrace the reality that I can be “bitchy” — but it’s for good reason. When you’ve endured physical violence or sexual harassment or assault from classmates, emotional abuse from one’s family, or been used and shit on by teachers (who are supposed to be our society’s protectors) for a bulk of your life…wouldn’t you also layer your rage and indignation with a veneer of perceived “niceties,” out of fear of being rejected or ostracized?
Yes, social justice is important to me. But I can only hide my combative tendencies to a limited degree. I value fairness, equality, and equity — but I won’t succumb to an embrace of binaries or philosophical reductionism, in order to get there.
If you initially think somebody is “nice,” be careful not to underestimate what could be underneath the surface. Because, unapologetically, in my own case…
I’ll cut a bastard.
