Why the Nice Guy Fears Approaching Women

This is an interesting article I came across. I think I fall into this category…

The original article can be found here.

In the past, I was the nicest guy in the world. That was my M.O.

I was nice with everyone.

All the time.

I always put people ahead of me.

I think I could have gotten a gold medal in the Nice Olympics.

I did it because it made me feel good about myself.

I had my first real relationship with a woman when I was 18 years old. It lasted two years.

This is very sad and disturbing for me to admit, but even though I really wanted to break things off with her, I stayed with her for a year longer JUST BECAUSE I FELT GUILTY.

I thought that this girl NEEDED me. I wanted to be a good person. I wanted to HELP her. I felt like I was being there for her, although I knew that ultimately I needed to break up with her.

After that mess of a relationship ended, I became best friends with a girl who was severely depressed. I felt like I was helping her. Although she was gorgeous, I didn’t really like her as anything more than a friend. She was obsessive and depressive and that was a turn off.

But I was best friends with her. We would talk for hours on the phone almost every day. She would go from guy to guy obsessing over why he didn’t like her. And I would be there for her as a friend.

I would try to help her figure it out. Of course, I enabled her obsession and made it even worse without me knowing it. But I felt like a saint. I felt like I was truly doing something good for somebody, even though I wasn’t happy. The relationship lasted years.

Being a nice guy was integrally tied to my self-esteem. Everywhere I went, I would put others ahead of me. I eventually read a life-changing book called Codependency No More. It taught me how to be responsible for my happiness and not other people’s.

If you have the terminal Nice Guy disease, this book is a great place to start to get over some of that. It helps you to understand boundaries within relationships and how caretaking too much can be detrimental to everyone involved.

But how is this related to pickup and approach anxiety?

Women are turned off by the nice guy. While most healthy women don’t want someone who is going to be mean to them, there’s a difference between being kind and being a disgusting wussy.

In my first relationship, I was a disgusting wussy. You know that guy, the one who says “Is everything okay with you? Are you sure? Are you really really sure?”

He avoids conflict at all costs. He wants everything to be smooth. Not only does this person lack honesty in the relationship, but he lacks all backbone and any thoughts and feelings of his own. He’s a wet blanket, not a person.

I was the nice nice nice guy. And I also had huge approach anxiety. These two are related.

Part of approach anxiety is a strong tendency to avoid conflict. You don’t want to BOTHER the girl. You wouldn’t be able to handle it if you did something to make her not like you.

Or if, God forbid, you creeped her out? It would take you weeks to get over it.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that relationships are about two independent people coming together out of strength rather than out a of desire to feel good about helping some other person.

Being super nice can kill attraction in seconds. Attraction is based on a push/pull. A bit of teasing. Show the girl that you are willing to lose her. Make her take responsibility for her half of the interaction. She wants to be challenged!

Instead, the nice guy wears insecurity on his sleeve without knowing it. He sees it as a badge of honor for why he doesn’t succeed with women. He clings to it to cover the pain of failure.

It’s good to be nice to women. But hoping that meekness will attract women is a fallacy. Niceness on this magnitude is read by women as overcompensation for not having balls. It is overcompensation for not being willing to take true risks.

Want to get out of Nice Guy Land? Try taking a few risks.

Try saying “Ewww” every once in a while when the girl says something, just to keep it interesting.

Try teasing her. Lovingly call her a brat or a nerd. “That’s so cute, you’re such a dork!”

When you throw in some spice like this, it shows you aren’t a yes man, but a true human being that can interact with her, call her on her shit sometimes, and give her a spank on the ass when she’s been bad.

She’ll love you for it.