Why the Nice Guy Fears Approaching Women
by 
Eric Disco
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.
Posted in Acceptance, Attraction | 
160 Comments »
Big Nick – Please do not fall into the “they all hate me trap”! Look ahead to things that YOU really doing and look forward to doing them with someone else. What changed from when this was easy?
You made some decent points there. I checked on the
web to find out more about the issue and found most people will
go along with your views on this website.
I think this base on European standard.what do you say about Africa standard if Lot of women are undergoing starvation and poverty? If you provide for them “do you think they will not love you for it?
@ Morris – in poor cultures, economic security is a strong incentive for a woman to get close to a man who can provide. Note however that buying her affection with things just means she likes the things the guy buys her, it does not necessarily mean she likes the guy.
In such environments the approach scenario is very different; social circle plays a much bigger role in meeting women. There is usually much social stratification in such societies, with the rich preferring to meet other rich or well to do; the middle class is small , and a large underclass pretty much takes what it can get from the mass of similarly poor people.
Within a middle up or well to do social circle, what is discussed in the post does pretty much apply; the basic rules of male – female attraction are the same across most cultures
Mr “Disco”.
Going over your litany of nice guy transgressions from your past, I wouldn’t so much categorize them as ‘nice’. You say it’s a symptom of compulsive people pleasing when in reality, as it is with most ‘nice guys’ bitching and moaning about how little pussy they get from all the hard work and manipulation it entails, it’s actually just lying to get what you want. It’s resentment and fear of women who don’t want to sleep with men who want to “help them”… or whatever you think a “nice guy” does.
Adding childish, random insults to remind her that you’re neither a ‘Pussy’ nor a ‘Nice Guy’ and in fact, have now been elevated to ‘Empowered Guy?” No, dude. You just make no sense. Here’s what women want; between a guy who’s choosing to be mean and one pretending to be ‘nice’ (and really, you were pretending by acting out whatever human gestures get categorized as nice) we’ll take neither! Because we don’t like dicks, you’re right, and also because we don’t want to feel lied to or pacified. Know what’s creepy? Thinking someone is ‘nice’ and discovering they think that’s a weakness. Or, they think acting nice will get them pussy and turn decidely ‘mean’ when they find out otherwise.
Any dude on here calling himself a Nice Guy is actually quite manipulative- a smart woman will see through it. You pay attention to her? You follow whatever rules for asking questions or other ridiculous things on here, you pretend you care to get her to like you? That’s not nice. You can’t congratulate yourself for acting out human gestures of interest and compassion and hope she falls for it and fucks you.
You may have missed the moment in actually relevant media last month, but guys who call themselves Nice Guys are universally considered otherwise.
Because in the end, giving yourselves titles that invariably vilify women who don’t give you what you want is just lame, and pussy, and totally transparent on dates. My boyfriend does all those things you tell men NOT to do- risk their masculinity, power and situational upper-hands. He avoids conflicts AND has a backbone. Plus he spanks me and calls me a dick when I deserve it. He’s an actual nice guy, and know what? He’s the last person to call himself one, and thinks it’s creepy when other guys do.
Ms. “NF” – I really tried to understand your essay, but I imagine that I missed the point. First of all, “nice guys” do not even play. They are out of your “game” completely, which DEMANDS that males jump through the hoops.
It is YOUR attiitude that makes Disco so necessary, or an army of other guys would not even bother with this. And Disco goes through all of this to convince “nice guys,(?)” that women are worth approaching?
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