Another take on the "nice guy" conundrum

[vvvexation]

A comment (and addendum) I posted elsewhere--fortunately not a propos of anything in my life at the moment, but I've been chewing on it for a while:

Dan Savage had some scathing things to say once to a disabled guy who wrote in complaining that he couldn't get chicks--mainly because, as Dan pointed out, he was only looking for "hot" chicks and didn't seem to have considered dating disabled women for a moment. I've since been convinced that what all those guys who complain that women won't date them because they're "too nice" really mean is that beautiful, bitchy women won't date them. Maybe if they actually went looking for nice girls--and bothered to include shy girls, plain girls, and nerdy girls in that pool--they'd have better luck finding a few who genuinely like nice guys.

(Okay, so I have known some genuinely nice guys who can't seem to get dates. In fact, that description fits a fair number of my closest friends. But you know what? Absolutely none of them, to my knowledge, have trouble getting dates because they're too nice. Some of them have self-confidence issues, and some of them are just nerds surrounded by too few nerd-loving women, but niceness is definitely not what holds them back.)

Comments

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

the aforementioned "nice" guy was reading a book called something like "Don't Be Nice, Be Real".

I want someone who attempts to understand me (and often succeeds) not because they want to be nice or be seen as nice, but because they really DO.

I want to like someone for who they are, not to meet their need to be likeable. Does that make sense?

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. It sounds like you're defining "nice guys" as "guys who make an effort to 'be nice' for the sake of being able to call themselves nice guys," whereas I meant the term to include guys who are just naturally nice. Going by your definition, I agree with you completely; going by my definition, I certainly prefer people to be genuine, but I also tend to like them better if one of the things they genuinely are is nice (for some vaguely defined value of the term).

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

well, yeah. Absolutely I like guys who genuinely and naturally nice. And smart and geeky.