On-line daters watch out for "nice guy syndrome."

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Alonewith2cats

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Ok, this is a rant. I don't want to offend anyone because I know there are genuinely nice guys in the world.

This is another reason why I have fears about on-line dating. I just got a text message from one of these dates who I went out with three times, didn't feel any attraction and cut it off. I'm going to repeat the whole texting conversation:

Him: Hi there
Me: I don't recognize this #. Who is this?
Him: His name.
Me: Hi, how are you?
Him: Fine and u?
Me: Good
Him: What's new?
Me: Not much Been busy with work, friends, and family. What's new with you?
Him: Well I have no family here and I work ficking long hours. Other than that I seem to have no life. So yeah it ******* sucks. How is your dating life? Any new guys?
Me: I go out occasionally.
Him: Cool. Yeah, I am so done with going out on dates. I spend money, time and then they say they just want to be friends. No one wants to fresia me. I am so done with that. It's not worth it. Can't believe meeting a woman can be so complicated. Sick society.
Me: Ok. Well these things can't be forced. They either feel it or they don't. Sex is not a trade for money and time spent. Dates are for getting to know people. If it happens great, if it doesn't well, you simply got to interact with another human being. Not necessarily a waste of time.
Him: I know u r right but I really feel it's a waste of time both for her and me. And I know it can't be forced. But I feel being nice is a bad thing. Women lose attraction for nice guys. They like to be treated bad. They won't say it and it's paradoxical. The whole thing is convoluted and it's a game that needs to be played.
Me: Because you are sexually frustrated I guess. I don't feel that way (about it being a waste). I find human beings fascinating.
Him: Well as a woman it's easy for u. As a guy I have to spend money and I have to sacrifice a lot to earn that money. So if it is just talking then simple coffee is enough. but to take someone out to dinner and all. It's a lot and if nothing happens after that it's really a waste. I think it's a lot harder for guys. And I am absolutely frustrated. I am hitting a wall.
Me: But you being upset because women don't want to fresia you is exactly what scares me and other women from on-line dating. There are too many like this. Women don't seek out jerks. They go for what they are attracted to. By the way there is a term called "nice guy syndrome." If you are putting kindness coins in order to get something, in order to get sex, you're actually not nice. Sex can only happen naturally between 2 people who really want it. There is no other way. I hope you feel better. Take care.
Him: Yea, it's easy for u to judge. I was simply expressing my frustration to u. Didn't know u were judging me. Bye. Take care too. U r a nice girl.
Me: Sorry.

WTF! I haven't heard from him in months. I deleted him from my phone with the understanding that he didn't join OK Cupid to make friends and I respected that since I didn't feel attracted to him after giving it a 3 date chance. I never asked him to buy me chinese food. He did that all on his own, I never take advantage of men that way. They want to treat and I say thank you. And now he texts me to complain about not getting laid after investing so much time and money on dating women! Was I mean to him? I just felt like telling it like it is.

P.S. What really pisses me off tonight is this. It's late. I have to work tomorrow morning and if he didn't text me to complain about his bad luck I wouldn't have stayed up late communicating with him by text and then getting the urge to rant about it on here. So I'm not going to get much sleep tonight and tomorrow is Monday, the most dreaded day of the week. I'm going to ignore his texts in the future. Only friends are allowed to call or text me with their problems and even then I can't sacrifice too much sleep if I have to work the next day. Last time I checked I never got my therapist license. Never pursued that as a career.

Well, good night.
 
Alonewith2cats said:
Ok, this is a rant. I don't want to offend anyone because I know there are genuinely nice guys in the world.

This is another reason why I have fears about on-line dating. I just got a text message from one of these dates who I went out with three times, didn't feel any attraction and cut it off. I'm going to repeat the whole texting conversation:

Him: Hi there
Me: I don't recognize this #. Who is this?
Him: His name.
Me: Hi, how are you?
Him: Fine and u?
Me: Good
Him: What's new?
Me: Not much Been busy with work, friends, and family. What's new with you?
Him: Well I have no family here and I work ficking long hours. Other than that I seem to have no life. So yeah it ******* sucks. How is your dating life? Any new guys?
Me: I go out occasionally.
Him: Cool. Yeah, I am so done with going out on dates. I spend money, time and then they say they just want to be friends. No one wants to fresia me. I am so done with that. It's not worth it. Can't believe meeting a woman can be so complicated. Sick society.
Me: Ok. Well these things can't be forced. They either feel it or they don't. Sex is not a trade for money and time spent. Dates are for getting to know people. If it happens great, if it doesn't well, you simply got to interact with another human being. Not necessarily a waste of time.
Him: I know u r right but I really feel it's a waste of time both for her and me. And I know it can't be forced. But I feel being nice is a bad thing. Women lose attraction for nice guys. They like to be treated bad. They won't say it and it's paradoxical. The whole thing is convoluted and it's a game that needs to be played.
Me: Because you are sexually frustrated I guess. I don't feel that way (about it being a waste). I find human beings fascinating.
Him: Well as a woman it's easy for u. As a guy I have to spend money and I have to sacrifice a lot to earn that money. So if it is just talking then simple coffee is enough. but to take someone out to dinner and all. It's a lot and if nothing happens after that it's really a waste. I think it's a lot harder for guys. And I am absolutely frustrated. I am hitting a wall.
Me: But you being upset because women don't want to fresia you is exactly what scares me and other women from on-line dating. There are too many like this. Women don't seek out jerks. They go for what they are attracted to. By the way there is a term called "nice guy syndrome." If you are putting kindness coins in order to get something, in order to get sex, you're actually not nice. Sex can only happen naturally between 2 people who really want it. There is no other way. I hope you feel better. Take care.
Him: Yea, it's easy for u to judge. I was simply expressing my frustration to u. Didn't know u were judging me. Bye. Take care too. U r a nice girl.
Me: Sorry.

WTF! I haven't heard from him in months. I deleted him from my phone with the understanding that he didn't join OK Cupid to make friends and I respected that since I didn't feel attracted to him after giving it a 3 date chance. I never asked him to buy me chinese food. He did that all on his own, I never take advantage of men that way. They want to treat and I say thank you. And now he texts me to complain about not getting laid after investing so much time and money on dating women! Was I mean to him? I just felt like telling it like it is.

P.S. What really pisses me off tonight is this. It's late. I have to work tomorrow morning and if he didn't text me to complain about his bad luck I wouldn't have stayed up late communicating with him by text and then getting the urge to rant about it on here. So I'm not going to get much sleep tonight and tomorrow is Monday, the most dreaded day of the week. I'm going to ignore his texts in the future. Only friends are allowed to call or text me with their problems and even then I can't sacrifice too much sleep if I have to work the next day. Last time I checked I never got my therapist license. Never pursued that as a career.

Well, good night.


sorry you had to put with this garbage. He isn't a nice guy at all. Awful, dreadful. Hope he doesn't bother you again.
 
That sucks. He's definitely not a "nice guy." He may think he's nice, but he acted more frustrated and desperate than nice. Might want to block his number.
 
Yeah... I don't think this is the kind of dude you want to talk with. Hopefully you won't run into guys like him again x.x
 
Every time I see the word Therapist, I picture Sean Connery saying "The Rapist"
 
Well, it was bad for you because it wasn't really a conversation. It was just complaining, and no one wants to hear that. Complaining tends to turn people off. But at the same time, the dating world is a little frustrating. We're raised to be nice people. Parents, teachers, society all raises us to be this way, with good intentions. But that isn't how attraction works, and when people try to apply it to attraction it winds up this way. I think this is my problem as well. The other problem is that there is no instruction manual for being attractive, and again, society raises us with the idea that if you have a question or a problem, you can just look for instructions and follow the step-by-step process and figure it out. I believe there are steps, there are right ways and wrong ways, what works and what doesn't as far as attraction goes. But we don't have this in our instincts, like how wild animals instinctively know how to survive.

So there's no instructions when we've been raised to look for instructions, and no instincts. Hence the frustration. You ask and ask and ask and nobody seems to know the answer. You try to apply what you've learned and have always been told is true, and it doesn't work. Frustration builds. You see bad people break the rules you've been taught to believe in, and ride the gravy train. It can really get to you. All the while you hear women say, "where have all the nice guys gone?" right before going off with some dumb-as-rocks, pseudo-biker *******.

I'm not saying you should have dated him or even entertained the discussion. I'm just saying, this "nice guy" thing is a bigger, societal problem. Not just a "well those guys are stupid" problem.

Sometimes I half-joke that if things don't change with women, I'm just going to give up on being nice and become "gangsta" :p
 
Sure the guy wasn't someone previously banned from ALL? ;)

A bad experience for you, it sucks and it isn't right when you have been trying to, put yourself in the way of finding someone special. But they aren't all like that, though. And sometimes for your own sanity its best not to even begin to enter into discussion with f**k-wits, it is entirely unproductive.

Oh, and on a completly non related issue, Skishy, wouldn't you need to get a tattoo for that?:p. **snort*s laughing**
 
"Nice guy" thing is a bigger, societal problem indeed. I think it's called, hm, entitlement. I don't say male because tons of women have this kind of behavior as well. "Nice people" get mad when they don't get their way because they think they are entitled to sex or romance after paying for a few dates or whatever the female equivalent is.

All of that masquerading as low self steem or confidence issues, since they think they are "nice people" and other people are just going out with "********" or "sluts" and the people who reject them don't know what they are doing or are just flat out dumb for not going out with a "nice person". A "nice person" therefore demonizes and guilt-trips people for saying no. Which isn't what a nice person with genuine low self steem or confidence issues would do.

I understand the guy's frustration a bit, seeing that no one seems to get romantically involved with me no matter how hard I try (I have given up actually, it ain't my cup of tea after all) BUT being kind to people just in hopes of getting laid is 1) fake 2) manipulative 3) people can see right through it which is probably why people who behave this way fail to find a partner.

This post isn't directed at anyone by the way. I'm just explaining how I see the whole "nice guy thing" behavior.
 
jaguarundi said:
Oh, and on a completly non related issue, Skishy, wouldn't you need to get a tattoo for that?:p. **snort*s laughing**

Just one? I'm going to go the whole hog! I'm going to get sleeves. Then I'm going to get a 40 oz. of the worst possible beer, and a Mac-10 which I will make a point of not registering. Then I'll get enough subwoofers to fill the trunk of my car, and blast hardcore rap until 4 in the morning, nightly. I'll learn an entire encyclopedia's worth of gang signs. I can see it now, women will literally be beating my doors down.

And hey! At least with my new job as a weed dealer, I'll have my financials covered :D
 
Going to complement a bit on TheSkaFish's stuff, which I kinda agree with, but feel it's very incomplete :

Guys often complain that girls end up with bad boys - this is definitively "true" (under a certain definition of bad boys) but guys themselves often end up with "bad girls" and don't see it as a problem. The rest of us (either gender) actually tend to be more lonely, this is the way of things.
 
Ymir said:
"Nice guy" thing is a bigger, societal problem indeed. I think it's called, hm, entitlement.

See, I really don't think so. I really hate that word by the way. I think it's a word that "in" people use to talk down on the "outs". I think it's more like, people try to solve their problems in the way that they've been taught to solve them. No one ever comes out and says that it doesn't work for everything. So they try and try and try, using the methods they've been taught. That is, applying the Golden Rule to courtship. And when it doesn't work, they get angry.

Ymir said:
BUT being kind to people just in hopes of getting laid is 1) fake 2) manipulative 3) people can see right through it which is probably why people who behave this way fail to find a partner.

I don't think they are just being kind to get laid, I think they want to get a relationship. They want to get a little warmth. They want to end the search and start enjoying the destination. I don't see how that is any more manipulative than, say, getting a bunch of tattoos and a motorcycle to attract girls, or some guy making a big show of himself revving his car at a stoplight, or fake-tanning and wearing like 3 polos on top of each other like a guido. Or any of the other million other stupid things guys do to show the world (and women) that they are "tough guys".

Now if you'll all excuse me, I have to go and misspell some curse words on children's play equipment, break some car windows, steal a case of cheap beer and smoke some dandelions.
 
The "nice guy" label as a pejorative still appears to include men who are respectful and don't expect sexual favours in return.

It includes polite men who women don't like for various other reasons (ie. too dull.) I wish people would stop using it.

This guy thinks paying for dinner makes him "nice". He isn't nice, he's a sleaze.
 
ardour said:
The "nice guy" label as a pejorative still appears to include men who are respectful and don't expect sexual favours in return.

It includes polite men who women don't like for various other reasons (ie. too dull.) I wish people would stop using it.

This guy thinks paying for dinner makes him "nice". He isn't nice, he's a sleaze.

"Nice guy" syndrome is different. This applies to the fake nice guys who do expect sexual favours in return for being "kind" and are angry when it doesn't happen. Real nice guys are awesome. Yes, I agree he is a sleaze and he is not allowed to talk to me anymore. The next text message he sends me I will tell him politely to leave me alone and ignore all further texts until he's gone. It was awful because when he first started texting me it seemed he just wanted to say a friendly hello which is nice but at soon as he vented about his frustration and anger regarding the women he has invested his time and money on paying for dinners and they didn't f***k him and of course I am one of those women (and I did say thank you and buy him a cup of coffee, I'm not a user) he was directing all this frustration and anger at me out of the blue via a surprise text.

I am actually completly turned off by on-line dating sites such as OK Cupid and Plenty Of Fish based on my experiences. I don't have a Plenty Of Fish account anymore and I am looking forward to the day I will be deleting my OK Cupid account forever. For now it's a just small supplement to meeting people in the real world off-line and I am reducing my activity to only logging in to OK Cupid maybe once per month and showing little to no interest in the men on the site unless someone special magically shows up. This is by no means a motivation on my part to be mean. I'm not mean, I'm just a scared little rabbit. Internet dating is blind and scary for women.
 
I'm curious, 2cats, how well do you get to know a person before you go on a date with them? You said dates for you are about getting to know people, but to me the thought of going on a date with someone I don't know is a really awful one. Of course, people's shitty thoughts and opinions can surface much later on, in any kind of relationship.
I guess I don't really have the balls for dating :p
What if I'm forced to sit there and spend time with a complete moron? Natural stupidity I can tolerate but shitty opinions I can't.

Also on the topic of nice guys, I think that often a big difference between the genuine nice guys and the horrid ones, is whether or not the guy in question is being called nice by someone else, or by himself. It's the self-proclaimed ones that are more likely to be the shitty ones, imo.
 
painter said:
I'm curious, 2cats, how well do you get to know a person before you go on a date with them? You said dates for you are about getting to know people, but to me the thought of going on a date with someone I don't know is a really awful one. Of course, people's shitty thoughts and opinions can surface much later on, in any kind of relationship.
I guess I don't really have the balls for dating :p
What if I'm forced to sit there and spend time with a complete moron? Natural stupidity I can tolerate but shitty opinions I can't.

Also on the topic of nice guys, I think that often a big difference between the genuine nice guys and the horrid ones, is whether or not the guy in question is being called nice by someone else, or by himself. It's the self-proclaimed ones that are more likely to be the shitty ones, imo.

In an ideal world I would want to know the person at least a little before accepting the date. On-line dating forces you to accept the date without knowing them or having developed a single ounce of trust. On OK Cupid I have had a few exchanged paragraphs of on-line chatting before agreeing to meet them for coffee or whatever. It sucks when you give your phone # to a couple strangers on OK Cupid to take a chance, and then when the dates don't work out and you really want these specific people out of your life and they contact you anyway. I feel that even just giving my phone # to someone I don't know is being vulnerable. I deleted this guy as a contact from my phone because when I told him I didn't feel chemistry but I like him as a person (although not anymore) he said that he didn't join OK Cupid to make friends. That's understandable. I respected that. So logically we both should have deleted each other as contacts right? Then why does he sporadically text me sometimes? It makes no sense.
 
All I see is a frustrated guy. Probably not the most pleasant person to talk with. I wonder why he picked you to rant to after three months of silence.
 
Alonewith2cats said:
"Nice guy" syndrome is different. This applies to the fake nice guys who do expect sexual favours in return for being "kind" and are angry when it doesn't happen. Real nice guys are awesome. Yes, I agree he is a sleaze and he is not allowed to talk to me anymore. The next text message he sends me I will tell him politely to leave me alone and ignore all further texts until he's gone. It was awful because when he first started texting me it seemed he just wanted to say a friendly hello which is nice but at soon as he vented about his frustration and anger regarding the women he has invested his time and money on paying for dinners and they didn't f***k him and of course I am one of those women (and I did say thank you and buy him a cup of coffee, I'm not a user) he was directing all this frustration and anger at me out of the blue via a surprise text.

I am actually completly turned off by on-line dating sites such as OK Cupid and Plenty Of Fish based on my experiences. I don't have a Plenty Of Fish account anymore and I am looking forward to the day I will be deleting my OK Cupid account forever. For now it's a just small supplement to meeting people in the real world off-line and I am reducing my activity to only logging in to OK Cupid maybe once per month and showing little to no interest in the men on the site unless someone special magically shows up. This is by no means a motivation on my part to be mean. I'm not mean, I'm just a scared little rabbit. Internet dating is blind and scary for women.

I’ve never taken part, but I have visited some of those sites just for a laugh, mainly at the male profiles. I mean, if this were your last resort, if this is what it has come to then… wouldn’t you want to make an effort?

Somebody needs to tell some of these guys to :a) Shave b) Comb their hair c) Smile
 
It's to bad you had to deal with that type of idiot, but to be honest I think people like that are the most plentiful. Admittedly I have to laugh, because I spent a long time on a few different dating sites (including those two) and averaged less than one date per year out of them combined. It's easy for that type of guy to tell women what they want to hear on those sites and it seems a lot of women are willing to listen to it. From my experiences all those sites are primarily used as hook up services.
 
Alonewith2cats said:
In an ideal world I would want to know the person at least a little before accepting the date. On-line dating forces you to accept the date without knowing them or having developed a single ounce of trust. On OK Cupid I have had a few exchanged paragraphs of on-line chatting before agreeing to meet them for coffee or whatever. It sucks when you give your phone # to a couple strangers on OK Cupid to take a chance, and then when the dates don't work out and you really want these specific people out of your life and they contact you anyway. I feel that even just giving my phone # to someone I don't know is being vulnerable. I deleted this guy as a contact from my phone because when I told him I didn't feel chemistry but I like him as a person (although not anymore) he said that he didn't join OK Cupid to make friends. That's understandable. I respected that. So logically we both should have deleted each other as contacts right? Then why does he sporadically text me sometimes? It makes no sense.

How does it force you to meet people you have no trust for? I think it would speak volumes about the kind of man you're talking to if he blew you off for wanting to get to know him first before giving him your phone number or arranging a date with him. Surely a great way to filter the douchebags from the ones worthy of your time?

Of course giving your phone number to people you don't know is making yourself vulnerable. These people can, as you see, contact you at any time of day or night for whatever reason... which is why I would never give mine to someone I don't know.

Alas, I am sometimes lonely. But I think I would rather be alone than have nutjobs bothering me like this.
I hope I don't sound condescending to you or anything, I just want you to be careful.
 
Alonewith2cats said:
I deleted this guy as a contact from my phone because when I told him I didn't feel chemistry but I like him as a person (although not anymore) he said that he didn't join OK Cupid to make friends.

So if you don't mind me asking, how was he on the date? Was he rude, ugly/out of shape, smoker, unemployed, gross, boring, or had clashing views? For example, if you were a republican and he was a democrat? Was he really pessimistic, angry, complaining and whining, or sad on the date?

I just want to see where people go wrong, so if you could tell me, that'd be great.
 

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