Thursday, October 06, 2005

Nice Guy Syndrome

Michael Dean has two posts up on Nice Guy Syndrome or just NGS.
For those that don't understand NGS here is how it usually works. You become friends with a girl, you are attracted to her and have strong feelings for her. At some point in the friendship you begin talking about possibly becoming more than friends. With NGS this conversation quickly turns to the female friend stating, "You're too nice to date, let's just be friends." Of course she fails to realize that in saying these words, that friendship will never be the same. The guy begins to think that someday she will find someone that's not "too nice to date" (read "a jerk") and will break your heart even more. Therefore that friendship falters and slowly fades away to nothing. Both sides are sad and upset, but usually the guy more than the girl, since his heart was broken.
Yup. I have been the victim of NGS several times. The last time was in college with a girl I knew in High School. It ended with her saying "but Jeff you're such a good friend, why would I ever want to date you?" Well you ripped my heart out, would you like to stomp on it a bit while it's on the ground?

Fortunately Amybear was able to cure my NGS with a small injection of BGI or Bad Girl Influence early in our relationship. Otherwise we might still be discussing our favorite forms of laundry detergent. Instead she gave me a kiss and I found better things to do than talk, like try to get another kiss.

Why is this such a problem? Michael says it is due to feminism breaking the male spirit. He has a point. When I was brought up, we were taught to be sensitive. We didn't do anything to offend the girls. We suppressed our juvenile rough housing. We learned to be quite passive really, because that was how good little boys behaved. Being good little boys, we listened and obeyed.

Now this whole thing is great if what you want is well behaved little boys. Which is what many of the uber-feminists want. They don't have kids or husbands and they just want men they can walk over. But most women aren't like that, which is why feminism is dying as a popular movement. Real women want partners not peons. So in practice, this feminist training doesn't work.

I'm a man. I'm not a little boy. Somewhere along the line, I realized a good little boy is just a doormat. Just think of the guys in High School who got the girls. The dicks. Who got to kiss Lois Lane more, Clark Kent or Superman? And Superman is still a big blue boyscout.

Good little boys get left behind. That is until we've had enough. Then we realize that the jerks are stomping us flat and nobody is going to stand up for us if we don't stand up for ourselves. We become adults. We become men. We start taking care of our own problems. We're still nice guys, but we don't take crap from bad boys.

Women want someone who will is a worthy partner. Someone who will defend them in a fight and keep their children safe. Someone with the decisiveness to take charge and solve problems. They want men. It is a damn shame we aren't training our boys to be men anymore.

Now this isn't the only reason of course. Another biggie is that women know many friendships don't survive becoming relationships. So if you spend a lot of time together and get to be good friends, she isn't willing to risk what you have now for what you might have in the future. You have invested all this friendship together, why risk it? But in a way this is just a penalty for going slow and being over-cautious. If you were more aggressive, you wouldn't have this huge friendship investment would you?

For those of you out there who haven't found your woman yet, just don't be a little boy. Be a man. Hit her over the head with your club and drag her back into your cave. She'll love and respect you for it.

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