From Tucker Park Road

I've come across too many articles to count that aim to dissect the Nice Guy myth, i.e., that nice guys finish last and that women only date assholes. Here's a recent article from Wired dealing with this issue, and I think it's one of the better ones: Alt Text: The Nice Guy’s Guide to Realizing You’re Not That Nice.

Normally, I find these kinds of articles refreshing because they articulate a problem I've seen among men. In the past I have expressed agreement with the various authors who have come out either to criticize this behavior or defend women for not liking Nice Guys; however, I've recently been having a change of heart. I still think that many of the observations are accurate, but there are a few problems with the way these arguments are being presented. I'll discuss some of these below:

1. Confidence is sexy to both men and women: Nod your head because you know you agree with this. Problem solved, right? In my experience confidence is pretty ill-defined and encapsulates too many other and often contradictory ideas. When I think of confidence I think of someone who is comfortable with themselves. Here's the problem: Hardly anyone is comfortable with themselves. I know what you're thinking, confident people fake being confident. No, I disagree. In fact, I don't think that most "confident" people are even aware that they're being confident.

I have been told quite a few times that I come off as confident, self-assured, comfortable in my own skin, etc. I accept the compliment and move on to other discussion topics. I'm not at all comfortable with myself. I don't fake being confident either. I'm not a good actor. When I try to fake confidence I come across as a moron. So, I'm not sure what people are perceiving, but it sure as heck ain't a representation of my internal state.

One final point about confidence: I don't see other people as being confident either. Most people, to me, seem insecure, vulnerable, and threatened by anything and everything that disrupts the pattern that they think they need to follow to be happy.

Personally, I think confidence is a load of crap as it's usually defined. I know a little bit about this because of my fascination with magic and deception. There are entire books written about how to appear interesting to people for the purposes of performance. There isn't much in there about confidence. It's about social gimmicks, which I won't go into here.

2. Desperation: The argument here is that too many Nice Guys are desperate. They desperately want someone to fuck them, whisper sweet things to them, play video games with them, or whatever. This is supposedly bad behavior and men should avoid it. Once again, I call bullshit. Most people are desperate. It's actually desperation in a lot of cases that leads to sex. What do people do when they hit puberty? They go looking for people to fuck because they're desperate. What do both men and women fantasize about? Sex on a regular basis with someone that's going to be there for them, love them, cherish them. It's a beautiful sort of desperation in some cases, but it's desperation nonetheless.

The problem with Nice Guys is not that they're desperate.

When you walk into a bar, which is still a popular place for hooking up (don't ask me why), what do you see? You see a lot of desperate people, a fair number of whom will be getting laid that night with other desperate people. Some of these desperate hookups will end up getting married. These people aren't confident; they're often lonely and horny, which is pretty much the default state for human beings. Sit back and watch them. In particular, watch the people who are successful. Do they look confident, sexy, and smooth to you? Look again. They're not. They're awkward, often poorly dressed, drunk, and frequently obnoxious. They're desperate.

And when you move outside of the bar it's not that different. Sharing a drink with someone you met at a conference? Do you think the laughter that carries them into a cheap hotel room together isn't desperate? Office romances? How can you possibly get more desperate than that? Pick a club, job, university, and even a volunteer organization. All of those places are drenched in desperation. Heck, many of the reasons people join things is to get laid.

3. Flirting: Nice Guys are supposedly devoid of sexual energy. They should stop being so passive and learn to flirt. This will generate sexual energy. There's a bit of truth to this, but it gets both oversimplified and made unnecessarily complicated at the same time, which should be a contradiction (Hint).

Look, to be perfectly honest, most people are horrible at flirting. We have an ideal in mind and we never reach it. We think of flirting as something that should subtle, witty, etc. It's rarely that.

Flirting consists of a few basic things: (1) Being interested enough in someone to ask them questions and answer questions. This is a basic building block of any relationship, romantic or otherwise; (2) Not being too worried about pissing someone off. This is confused with being confident. It's not confidence, it's an acceptance that in order to communicate with people you can't be so overcome with fear about offending them that you carefully monitor every bloody thing you say; and (3) If there's an attraction there's no wrong way to flirt.

This last point is probably going to irritate a few people. Here's my explanation: If you're attracted to someone it rarely matters how bad they are at flirting. Girls take home guys who are engaging in sexual harassment. Men do the same with women. Context matters. The reverse is also true: People end up in relationships due to behavior that most people would not identify as flirting. This has happened to me on a number of occasions, where just being polite is seen as being flirtatious. Why? Because people are desperate.

Finally, flirtation has nothing to do with sexual energy. If you're a man and you've recently had your penis and testicle removed you can still flirt. You don't even have to be sexually interested in someone to flirt, i.e., a gay guy can flirt with a straight woman.

I know this is taboo to say, but if you listen to friends carry on with one another, even if they're straight and of the same sex--it's a heck of a lot like flirting. The only difference is what follows from the flirting.

By the way, if you want to have sex with someone, you have sexual energy. You don't have to cultivate or even project sexual energy. It's a dumb way of describing wanting to have sex with the person in front of you. You could be the world's worst flirter and still get laid. You could not be flirting at all and still get laid.

4. Passive-aggressiveness: Nice Guys are often described as emotionally manipulative because they enter into friendships with girls that they're romantically interested and then get pushed into the friend-zone leading to bitterness and the presumption that girls don't like nice guys. The explanation offered for this behavior is that Nice Guys aren't willing to put themselves out there, that they should be direct about their intentions, and that true friends aren't manipulative.

A "true friend" does nice things because they care about you. They don't have any ulterior motives. They're not being nice because they want something. They certainly don't befriend you for the purposes of fucking you and then get upset when it doesn't work out.

Yeah, yeah. There's something here, but it's all mixed up.

Fact of life: A HUGE number of friendships become romantic relationships. Nice Guys choose this strategy not because they're cowards, though that might be part of it, but because it works. They've made an accurate observation about male/female sexual relations. Now, a lot of people fuck this up, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Also, can we please stop pretending that we always know what other peoples' intentions are? If you're friends with someone for a year and they suddenly come out and tell you that they're interested in you, don't leap to the conclusion that they only became your friend to fuck you. A lot of times the attraction wasn't there to begin with or other shit was going on so it developed over time. It doesn't mean you were being manipulated. You might argue that the friendship was never the same after that, leading you to believe that the friendship was a lie. Please, get over yourself. The friendship isn't the same in a lot of cases because we're emotionally fragile people and it's weird to just go back to being friends with someone who you know might have masturbated to their personal fantasy of you.

Some observations and suggestions for Nice Guys:

1. Since many of these discussions focus on geeks, I'll point out that people with narrow interests tend to have a limited circle of friends and there might be a closed-mindedness to other experiences. If you mostly hang out with other guys and take no interest in what the girl down the street does on her weekends then that's going to seriously affect your ability to get with anyone.

2. You don't participate in the culturally sanctioned activities that are most popular for finding people to have sex with. This doesn't mean that you will never get a girlfriend, but you have to be realistic about these things.

3. You can't deal with rejection: Yep, like so much of life, you're going to have to deal with rejection to get what you want. It's a hard lesson, I know, but unless you're extraordinarily good looking, most people get laid through a process of trial and error. You only have to count your successes.

4. You're not interested in people. Not really. Attraction occurs for a variety of reasons, many of which are terribly complex and not easy to control, so worry about what you can control. Being interested in other people enough to ask them questions and express yourself in a meaningful way is vitally important. If you can't do that, then the pool of potential mates shrinks considerably.

5. You care too much. This ties in with rejection. You're probably too empathetic. You're constantly worried about hurting or offending others. You have to be a bit selfish to start a relationship. Sorry.

Next week on Tucker Park Road Jonathan, Arif and I will be discussing Afterschool, the debut film by Antonio Campos. Here is the trailer for the film.