Dr Robert Glover wrote No More Mr Nice Guy. This book discusses the concept of men who regularly victimise themselves and blame their circumstances on other people and dumb luck. Glover has dubbed such people “Nice Guys”.
I’ve seen countless posts on the topic and I felt I had to share my two cents. Too many posts seem to patronise the Nice Guy. As a recovering Nice Guy myself, I wanted to give my own account. After all, this book had a huge impact on my life, and I think we all carry some of these approval-seeking tendencies.
I know a lot of the concepts might seem counter-intuitive… After all – it’s good to be nice, right? If that rings a bell, I’ve been in your shoes. And I’ve had so many revelations from this book, I want to offer my top advice. Hopefully it help others live a better, happier life as well.
We’ll start this post with a background of what Nice Guy really means and how this trend started. Then we’ll dive into the psychology of a Nice Guy: where it comes from, and how we can avoid being this archetype.
Because I had so much to say on the topic, I decided to write an additional post on how to stop being a Nice Guy. That post focuses more on actionable recommendations and the benefits of leaving the Nice Guy lifestyle behind.
Without further ado, let’s dive right into the mind of the Nice Guy.
So What Is a “Nice Guy”?
Speaking in the broadest terms, Nice Guys don’t do or get what they want in their lives. The problem is they focus so much on pleasing others that they don’t really know what they want themselves. Their goal for too long has been to please others.
They might constantly be trying to fix their partner’s problems, or help fix friends’ cars or listen to their mother’s venting on the phone for hours. For some reason, Nice Guys feel like they have to be a less-satisfied version of themselves to be loved.
Nice Guys also complain a lot. They might feel like their partner treats them poorly, or that their work isn’t satisfying. Nice Guys often become jealous of what other men have.
Rather than being motivated by a challenge, they tend to default to a state of victimhood. Nice Guys would benefit from learning to focus on what they can control and embrace their fate. After all, The Obstacle is the Way.
At the root of the problem, Nice Guys will usually do things for everyone in their lives – everyone except themselves.
Rather than set clear boundaries, Nice Guys regularly make themselves out as victims. This is the core issue! This mentality makes it difficult for most Nice Guys to understand what they want exactly and how they can go about getting it.
What are Common Traits of a Nice Guy?
Are you or someone you know a textbook Nice Guy?
Before we dive into the psychological theory behind Nice Guy behaviour, here’s a list of signals to look out for.
Nice Guys Brag about Their Own Kindness
Nice Guys take great pride in being nice. They think that because they always act nice, they deserve to be loved by the entire world.
The issue here is that they believe that showing basic human decency and manners makes them particularly “nice”. When we look a bit deeper, we often find that a Nice Guy’s motivation to perform kind gestures usually has the core motive of seducing a woman.
Nice Guys View Dating As A Meritocracy
Nice Guys often take personal offence when someone doesn’t reciprocate their feelings. They think they deserve a satisfying relationship with the person they like because they “ticked all the boxes”. After all, they’re so nice.
Rather than understanding that most people are simply not compatible for serious relationships, Nice Guys see dating as a hierarchy. And that because they’re so nice, they deserve to be on top.
“Women Like Bad Boys”
Another common trait of Nice Guys is insisting they get rejected simply because “women like bad boys”.
They don’t understand why acting nice doesn’t entitle them to relationships with beautiful women. Instead they play the role of victim complaining about hypocrisy in what women say they want and the men they actually go for.
When things don’t go their way, they complain about being “friend-zoned” even though the person was usually never interested in the first place.
Nice Guys Put Down Other Men
Rather than accepting other men as their peers, Nice Guys often become jealous and try to put them down. At its core, this is the result of narcissistic tendencies.
It’s important for well-integrated men to have strong relationships with other men.
Choosing Toxic Partners
In a similar vein to putting down other men, Nice Guys might be prone to starting relationships with toxic partners.
Nice Guys often enter into relationships with people who suffered some traumatic experience and take it on as their responsibility to “fix” this other person.
Starting a relationship with someone who is more psychologically damaged makes them feel like less the centre of attention. Their own toxic shame makes them feel better about themselves when they have more miserable company around.
In this sense, Nice Guys might seek partners who act as lightning rods for negative publicity. They may also enter into abusive relationships, because they don’t feel they’re worth anything better than that.
Where Does This Trend Come From?
In 1910, nearly half of all people lived on farms in rural communities; by 1980, this figure shrunk to 4%.
Historically, men in rural communities would spend the greater part of a day with other men. You would have several generations of men in the same setting teaching and learning from one another. This was the male-bonding event that taught young boys to hone their male energy and desires.
Since World War II, however, men have tended towards jobs that make them leave home early in the morning, only to return late in the evening.
If you consider a boy’s environment in today’s society, he spends many days at home with his mother. Most of his teachers are female. And there is no way a woman can understand and teach the intricacies of what it means to be a well-integrated man.
Without a visible role model, he might grow up empathising with radically feminist statements such as “all men are rapists”. It’s important for young boys to grow up without toxic shame of their gender.
The Psychology That Makes a “Nice Guy”
Before we put down Nice Guys, it’s important to understand where this behaviour comes from.
Nice Guys usually had a tough upbringing. They often spent their childhood revolting against or catering to one of their parents in an unhealthy way.
For example, they may have felt abandoned as a kid. Maybe they felt they had to act a certain way to care for younger siblings and keep their families intact.
Many Nice Guys also grow up with an abusive father or a father who wasn’t around. As a result, these men often grow up demonising their father and wanting to do the exact opposite.
Examples might include:
- If the boy’s father left his mother, he may smother his partner with love and neediness
- Had his father regularly yelled at the family, he might grow up resenting conflict
- If his mother complained about things his father did, he might grow up avoiding these things
Nice Guy behaviour starts in childhood as a misguided coping strategy. It’s important to realise where these tendencies come from before we can understand better ways to cope.
Approval-Seeking Behaviour
At the end of the day, Nice Guys are approval seekers. They are concerned with looking good and doing things “right”, because they crave external validation.
Just about everything a Nice Guys does aims to gain approval or avoid their disapproval.
Nice Guys tend to believe that if they are “good,” they will be loved, get their needs met and have a problem-free life.
They are also happiest when others around them are happy and will do anything to avoid conflict. The value of having difficult conversations may be lost on these people.
Nice guys often use attachments to seek approval. For example, a Nice Guy may have a cool car that he regularly cleans. But despite what he may think, nobody actually cares about his car.
Seeking Women’s Approval
For most Nice Guys, a woman’s approval is the ultimate validation of his worth. However, approval-seeking brings many negative consequences:
- Seeking others’ approval gives them the power to set the tone of relationships.
- It gives them the power to determine your worth.
- And it may result in a negative attitude towards women.
When this strategy fails, they tend to lean in further to the “Nice Guy shtick”. Of course, this only results in more frustration and resentment.
To find happiness in life, Nice Guys must learn to avoid approval-seeking behaviour.
Cover-up Artists
As a result of approval-seeking tendencies, Nice Guys are ashamed of their mistakes and try to cover them up. They may think they have to hide or distract attention from any of their perceived shortcomings.
This might include moments where they forget something, or are late, or break something, or don’t understand something or do something wrong. It might even include pain, depression or something else deeply conflicting.
The real shame is that the Nice Guy’s need to hide is often most pronounced in areas of just being alive. They harbour toxic shame that they are sexual, have bodily functions and have needs. It may include the fact that they are getting older or losing their hair. Shame also results from their imperfections.
Cover-up artists might try to hide the evidence by lying, trying to fix things or turning the tables. Another common response is grouped as DEER: defending, explaining, excusing and rationalising behaviour.
When they’re not able to cope in other ways, they may put up walls. Such walls can take the form of addictions, humour, sarcasm, intellectualism, perfectionism or isolation.
You might call Nice Guys “Teflon Men’ because they work hard to be smooth. That way nothing can stick to them. However, people aren’t attracted to perfection. Instead, we crave shared interests, shared problems and another individual’s life energy.
Covert Contracts
Nice guys might think that if you meet someone’s needs without them having to ask, they should meet yours. If he is nice to a woman, he thinks she should repay him by becoming his girlfriend, because that’s how relationships work.
Rather than being honest about their intentions, Nice Guys will often form such “covert contracts” with the target of their affections.
These unconscious, unspoken agreements follow the reasoning that:
“I will do this–(fill in the blank) for you, so that you will do this–(fill in the blank) for me. We will both act as if we’re not aware of this contract.”
Pretending They Don’t Have Needs
Nice Guys often develop survival mechanisms based on false interpretations of the past.
Common Nice Guy mental patterns include trying to appear needless and wantless or making it difficult for others to give to them.
Nice Guys will often focus on care-taking, which involves focusing one’s attention on other people’s needs. By focusing on another person’s problems or feelings, they feel valuable and try to get their needs met. After all, care-taking is much easier than dealing with one’s own problems or feelings.
Though these coping methods may have created the illusion of security in childhood, they only increase the odds of their needs going unrecognised and unmet.
The Victim Triangle
Nice Guys victimise themselves in three steps.
- The Nice Guy gives to others hoping to get something in return.
- When he doesn’t feel he’s getting as much as he’s giving, he feels frustrated and resentful. The Nice Guy is secretly keeping score, but he’s not objective.
- When frustration and resentment build up, it spills out in unhealthy ways. Rage attacks, passive-aggressive behaviour, pouting, tantrums, withdrawing, shaming, criticising and blaming are a few of the ways.
As a result of this triangle, Nice Guys don’t feel in control. They feel they’re doing the “right thing” but that the whole world somehow seems to be abusing them.
Nice Guys in a Nutshell
The problem with Nice Guys is their tendency to seek others’ approval. That makes it impossible for them to get what they truly want. Too often, they don’t even really know what they want.
Nice Guys are so busy finding excuses why they don’t have a perfect life. Rather than framing the problems they can solve, it’s much easier to think that if you’re nice, you deserve a good life.
Really, we should just expected people to be kind. Being nice doesn’t make you special. Constantly seeking approval and avoiding conflict will never bring the life you crave.
In our next post, we discuss how to stop being a Nice Guy.
Learn more about Nice Guys Syndrome with Mind & Practice today.