In my six years within the dating advice and pick up industry, I’ve noticed a pattern among well over 90% of the men. Their general sentiments about women skew to one of two extremes. Let’s call them Women Lovers and Women Haters.
Women Lovers skew to the extreme of loving women to the point of worship. They put the pussy on a pedestal. These are the guys who are usually far too supplicant and people-pleasing. They suffer from Nice Guy Syndrome. Most of the women they’re interested in put them in the friend zone. In relationships, these guys get walked over and become extremely codependent. They’re often terrified of intimacy and commitment for this reason.
Women Haters on the other hand, don’t exactly hate women per se, it’s more of a love/hate relationship. But they don’t empathize with women. They see a strict dichotomy between the sexes: women are some kind of other that is to be researched and conquered. Pick up tactics and game is devised as a form of self-serving desire and at times manipulation. Women Haters tend to suffer from the Madonna/Whore Complex and can be extremely judgmental of women. They lash out about women being sloven, dirty, slutty, not knowing their place, ignoring their social roles. They typically hate feminism. These guys are more interested in being players and the few relationships they have tend to be dysfunctional.
These two extremes sound quite different, but they’re actually similar. Both types of men have an unhealthy fixation on women and sex. Both types of men usually end up as playboys. Both types have trouble in relationships. Both harbor their own love/hate situation with women, one emphasizing the love, one emphasizing the hate.
I’m not a psychologist, but I imagine both Women Lovers and Women Haters originate from a dysfunctional or distant relationship with a boy’s mother. Some men handle it by lashing out and becoming angry at women who don’t show them affection. Others worship it and treat it as more important than themselves.
I’ve always naturally been the Woman Lover. To this day, I often get completely swept away in the beauty and excitement of connecting with a new woman. I’ve had friends who were very good with women who totally fall on the other side of the spectrum. Often the two sides blur. As a Woman Lover, I’ve often fallen into stints of angry sex or slept with women purely to cultivate a sense of power and dominance within myself. Likewise, Women Haters I’ve known have fallen smitten and completely head-over-heels for the occasional conquest and been completely at a loss of how to handle their gushing emotions towards women when they do surface.
Women Lovers who fail miserably with women fail because they hold their love for women above their own will, desires and values. Women Haters who fail miserably with women fail because they hold their disdain for women above their own will and desires. For example, the Woman Lover who fails will be the classic guy who is way too nice: doing her favors for no reason, agreeing with her even when he shouldn’t, pampering her with compliments and affection. The Woman Lover who succeeds with women will still have the same pathological obsession with a woman’s affection, but he’ll simply assert his own desires over that love, ironically in order to get that love.
Women Haters who fail will often say things like, “I’m not going to approach her, she’s a fucking slut.” Or, “I don’t want to call her back, she’s such an entitled bitch. I don’t have time for such self-centered bitches.” Therefore they sit at home complaining about the women of the world. Women Haters who succeed though will still hold that disdain but they’ll assert their own desires over it. So if they feel like a woman is dirty or is being a bitch, they won’t let it affect their mission to sleep with her or what they do with her. They’ll fuck her anyway and just not call her. They’ll use her. Ironically, this will make some (dysfunctional) women far more attracted to them.
Women Lovers will tend to attract hopelessly romantic and codependent women. These women will fill their need for high levels of affection and attention. Women Haters will tend to attract melodramatic and insecure women. Basically women willing to put up with a little bit of abuse. Both types attract women with lower self esteem. Women with higher self esteem will be reticent to catch themselves swirling in the Lover’s vortex, as they’re apt to know it’s a mirage. They also are unlikely to tolerate any of the negativity and misogyny from the Hater.
When it comes to learning game, the Lovers tend to focus on emotionally-rich experiences, managing multiple relationships, and receiving as much validation and adoration as possible from women. These are the guys who come home ecstatic when a girl tells them that they’re the best guy they’ve ever dated. They’re less concerned with lays as much as how many women fall in love with them, or how hard women fall in love with them. It’s like a drug to them. Lovers will focus more on emotional connections and getting a woman as invested as she can possibly be in him for no other reason than his own ego gratification. They’re usually out of touch of the abusive side of their behavior — the false expectations, the misleading romance, their self-serving purpose.
Haters will focus more on the player side of game. They’re usually more interest in quick lays. One and done’s. They’re the type of guy who will take a drunk girl home, fuck her, and then lie to her and say that he’ll call her again, when really in the back of his mind he thinks she’s a dumb slut. Their sex life is more like a stat sheet or participation in their favorite sport. He’s comfortable teasing and insulting girls to their face. Sometimes it makes them more attracted to him, sometimes it doesn’t. Usually he doesn’t care.
The Hater is very aware of the abusive side of his behavior. Although he’s out of touch with his abnormal need and desire for affection. In fact, he’s terrified of it, often suppressing it, resenting it and sabotaging any relationship that sprouts between him and a woman.
I come from the Lover side, and although I’ve had my bouts of Hater behavior and beliefs, I still fall strongly on the Lover side of the spectrum. I feel like I’m addicted to female affection some times, which obviously, isn’t the healthiest thing in the world, although I suppose there are worse addictions to have. In general though, I’m understanding and sympathetic to both sides.
Typical Hater behavior on industry message boards and meetings always drives me crazy. I find it misogynist, cold and it seems like a sad and lonely existence to me. To Haters, the Lovers sound like a bunch of wishy-washy wusses who are just rationalizing away the fact that they still put women on a pedestal.
The truth is both Lovers and Haters put women on a pedestal… otherwise they wouldn’t be signed up on a fucking message board or attending meetings about them.
These two polarities aren’t static and as men develop and learn game will often cross over to the other side for periods of time or in specific situations. Like I said, both types come from the same source, and both emotions are usually going on at the same time, it’s merely which emotion each guy is conscious of and which one he’s suppressing. For instance, a Women Lover may go through a phase where he enjoys playing a bunch of girls and lying to them about who he’s sleeping with. That same ego that desires their affection and adoration also enjoys the power and the rush of controlling them. Likewise, often the Haters will end up with a girl who truly lavishes affection and love onto them. Despite their ambivalent reaction, part of them needs it and wants it and may even succumb to it at times. It’s not uncommon for Haters to go through many 2-4 week relationships full of intense drama and dysfunction. These relationships usually burn out just as quickly and violently as they began.
Overcoming both the Lover or Hater pathology will most likely involve delving deep into your own psyche and resolving whatever emotional knots are present down there. Ultimately, both types of men will continue to have trouble throughout their lives with relationships with women, and will always have some sort of fixation or obsession on sex. I’m not sure if it can ever be 100% resolved. I know that I’ve come a long way, but I’m still by no means “normal.” But then again, who is?
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What I always noticed and found funny is that if a player has women hating or misogynist tendencies and you call them out on it they always say,
“Hate women? I don’t hate women. I *love* women! Why else would I spend so much time thinking about and chasing them?!”
But the way they say it, you get the sense they don’t mean ‘love’ the way most people do, more like “I love them as sex objects or things to conquer”
Insightful and useful. I now see patterns where I saw none.
Could you talk a little bit more about this:
“Women Lovers skew to the extreme of loving women to the point of worship. They put the pussy on a pedestal. These are the guys who are usually far too supplicant and people-pleasing. They suffer from Nice Guy Syndrome. Most of the women they’re interested in put them in the friend zone. In relationships, these guys get walked over and become extremely codependent. They’re often terrified of intimacy and commitment for this reason. ”
I dont get why a guy would be afraid of intimacy and commitment if he was codependent?
Also, could you talk about how you escaped the woman lover stage? It seems to me like it is about being self-sufficient and non-needy and being able to stand up for yourself. Personal Development stuff…would you agree?
Again a great post! two things:
1.) How did you “heal” yourself from the Nice Guy Syndrom (besides reading “No more Mr. Nice Guy” and understanding the roots and the consequences of this syndrom)? I am about to join a selfhelp group and to ask my best friends to watch me better and to critize me when I do something needy. What can I do else?
2.) the term “Women Lovers” is not a good choice in my opinion. Just by reading the title of the post you could the impression that it is wrong to love women, what is obviously not true. everybody who reads the whole post though will understand what you mean by this. But I think a term like “Women worshipers” would be less confusing, just saying.
The biggest problem nice guys have is they make friends with women before moving into a relationship.
The best way to cure this imo is learn to escalate physically asap with any woman you meet and are interested in.
That means touching her in a non-creepy manner when the timing is right, usually after a few drinks…
Nope. It’s not the timing.
All my boyfriends were may friends waaay before we became couple, and I was never romantically interested in any of my fuck buddies (or any other guy I didn’t know well or liked in a non-sexual way, for that matter).
“Nice guys” do tend to lack sexual confidence, though, so you may have a point with introducing physical contact into the relationship at some point.
I don’t think he is asking how to get a girlfriend, he is asking how to get rid of nice guy syndrome. No offense but this isn’t really territory for women to comment on, since it’s likely something you’ve never felt yourself.
I was a nice guy once, and now I’m sitting on over 200 lays. If there’s one thing I know how to help this guy with, it’s how not to be a nice guy. And in my very experienced opinion, the first place he needs to start is on working kino properly, a.k.a. treating the target like a potential girlfriend, not like a potential friend.
Yup, because girls never hit on guys, fall in love and get rejected. We never spend years being really nice to someone who completely ignores us. We are never in desperate need of sex or attention or approval.
We also never think about our male friends and what in their attitude makes them attractive or not.
Yup – we completely devoid of any standard human experience, and the last thing you want to do when you try to figure out something that relates to women is to actually ask them what they think because it’s a known fact that women don’t know shit about themselves without a guy telling them.
And although I’m very impressed by your 200 “lays”, I’ve been a woman for 26 years so I think I *my* experience entitles me too to have an opinion on the subject.
And now after we finished throwing insults.
He was asking about the nice guy syndrome. You were telling him how to get a woman laid, I suggested that there is more to this syndrome than the mechanics of how much and how soon you touch a girl, and I did say you had a point, only that you didn’t pin the source of the problem, only put a band aid on it. It is not physical touch these guys need – it is confidence in themselves and in their sexuality.
“He was asking about the nice guy syndrome. You were telling him how to get a woman laid, I suggested that there is more to this syndrome than the mechanics of how much and how soon you touch a girl, and I did say you had a point, only that you didn’t pin the source of the problem, only put a band aid on it. It is not physical touch these guys need – it is confidence in themselves and in their sexuality.”
Sorry, didn’t realize you made a point here.
My response to this is: he wants to break free of nice guy syndrome so he CAN get laid. The biggest problem nice guys have, is they are nice to women, and treat them like friends. Or in other words, they give them distance and respect but in the process they fail to make their intentions known to the women. She then misinterprets this as “This guy just wants to be friends.” And so that’s how it ends. Proper physical escalation is the first step to letting a woman know you are interested, which of course is also the first step to getting laid.
Physical escalation doesn’t have to be overdone and it doesn’t have to lead to sex either, it can start with something as simple as a touch on the shoulder or arm. The thing it does help with, is clearly defining your intentions to a woman.
(Disagreeing with me without suggesting that I don’t know anything because I’m a woman would have been nicer)
What exactly are you trying to prove here? That somehow as a woman you have experience in Nice Guy Syndrome? You are not a guy, therefore you have no experience with nice guy syndrome. This is a fact, and no amount trolling will change it.
I realize you are just being reactive and I could have written my comments in nicer manner, but I have to call you out as wrong here. Your desperation to somehow gain foot in this argument suggest to me that you’re brain is hard at work searching for a reason to degrade my status in your mind. There are a number of phenomena related to this issue.
Apparently it won’t let me post links here (I would appreciate an explanation of how to do so), so you can just search for the information on google, check out:
Dunning-Kruger Effect
Cognitive Relativity
Motivated Reasoning
This isn’t some game where we are trying to get a high score by waving our dick’s and ovary’s at each other. This is a discussion on pick-up, what works and what doesn’t. Although you may be the exception, a very large majority of women know absolutely nothing about it, at least not from a man’s point of view, and yes I learned this over the past six years and 200+ lays.
I think you both have a point and I’m not exactly sure why you’re arguing. Hilanoga is saying that the problem isn’t the touching itself, but rather the lack of confidence, sexually and otherwise, that leads to the nice guy syndrome.
Fluffy is saying a good way for someone to get away from nice guy syndrome, is to practice being more sexual.
You’re both essentially saying the same thing only in different ways. It’s kind of funny because it’s almost a fractal of the whole male/female paradigm right here in this one little argument. Hilanoga is focusing more on the emotional side of the problem, while fluffy is focusing more on the physical action side of the problem.
I got mad because fluffy was rude to me
You keep patronizing me. Saying that everything I say on the subject is not valid a priori does not count as a real argument.
If you had taken the time to actually figure out what I was trying to say instead of attacking me, you would have probably figured by yourself that I wasn’t even contradicting you, as Breeeeeeeeettttttttttttt pointed out.
But since you seem more concerned about whose opinions “count more” than actually discussing pick-up from various perspectives, which is what I’m interested in, I will have my conversations with other people.
hilanoga, this is the first thing you said to me:
“Nope. It’s not the timing.”
Then you continued to not provide a single shred of evidence to back up your claim. If you don’t want people to be rude to you,
don’t be rude to others. If it’s not the timing then what is it? Why is physical escalation bad, and why do you think physical escalation leads to fuck buddy status and not a real relationship? Every relationship I have had in the last six years started with physical escalation on the very first encounter. Some of them ended up as fuck buddies and some ended up as girlfriends, I never saw a correlation with this, but please enlighten me.
Perhaps I over-reacted, but in my opinion the last thing a nice guy should do is go around trying to make friends before lovers, which is basically what your suggesting.
I think you might also be confusing what I call physical escalation. It doesn’t have to be a full blown hands down her pants grope fest. It can start with something as simple as a touch on the elbow, or a hand on the shoulder. Until you reach some level of physical escalation, you will be just a friend.
This obviously isn’t the only thing to overcoming nice guy syndrome, maybe it’s not even the most important, but it’s a start.
“You have to remember Fluffy, she may not have experience BEING a nice guy, but you have no experience DATING a nice guy.” – Well said, but I hope you understand why I got set off by her first comment.
Nope. It’s not the timing.
I was saying exactly that – the timing is not the issue.
I gave an example that in my opinion proves it:
All my boyfriends were my friends waaay before we became couple
I also added that for romantic purposes, it is a good idea to have some friendship in the equation as well, just in case he wants more than *just* getting laid:
and I was never romantically interested in any of my fuck buddies (or any other guy I didn’t know well or liked in a non-sexual way, for that matter)
(Could have been clearer on that one).
I didn’t say that touching a girl is a bad idea. I said the opposite:
you may have a point with introducing physical contact into the relationship at some point.
And I gave an explanation why I think it works:
Nice guys do tend to lack sexual confidence
All I was saying is that you can escalate whenever you want, it doesn’t have to be right at the start, and if you already have a female friend with whom you haven’t escalated to physical touch, it is still possible.
I’ve seen may guys who I’ve known for years and practically considered a-sexual turn sexy before my eyes, and yes – physical touch had something to do with it (along with other flirtatious behaviors). I think that they started displaying sexual confidence, and this is what made them attractive.
And I know exactly what you meant when you said physical escalation. As I said – I noticed the changes in my male friends (and have been reading pick-up literature for several years, which rather helped noticing these nuances(.
Ok ok ok, you win, I conceed and I apologize my my rudeness =]
Sorry forgetting mad.
You have to remember Fluffy, she may not have experience BEING a nice guy, but you have no experience DATING a nice guy.
Both perspectives are useful.
I like how the articles come in by the boatload after your hiatus.
agreed
Getting your sense of self worth from a woman, whether it’s love and affection or notches on the belt, is just like basing your identity on your job, your material possessions or other external trappings. Women are to men the mothers that they are so desperately searching for a pat on the head.
And Alex just summed up my 1,000 word article in two sentences. Damn…
“Women are to men the mothers that they are so desperately searching for a pat on the head”
My shrink says that this is very common and “normal”. I remember my 3 sisters and my mom talking about men and they used to say: Men are grown ups kids, and when they get sick they want a mom to take care of them, they are cowards, they don’t like to feel pain, thank God they don’t have to give birth. Lol!
Are they searching for validation from the women they have sex with? Or do they feel the need to get those notches on their belt to prove their worth to other men?
I’m also not so sure there isn’t a significant grey area of men that don’t fall into either category. I have fallen into both categories at some point in life myself, but at this point in time I would say my view is quite a bit more neutral.
I realize that mark wants to relate this by categorizing himself, but after a certain level of self-awareness was attained you probably stopped acting like either of these and gravitated towards a more centric unbiased view of women. Or at least that’s how it feels for me.
1. love women
2. get burned by women
3. hate women
4. play women
5. reflect on your actions, see both sides, and realize the error of both thought lines you took… sympathize with women.
“These two polarities aren’t static and as men develop and learn game will often cross over to the other side for periods of time or in specific situations.”
So is this suggesting a grey area exists or that it’s either black or white? Like I said before, I understand the idea to paint the picture with just black and white, but I’m curious if you have ever felt grey (indifferent).
In my current position I feel rather apathetic to be honest. I’m neither a Woman Lover or a Woman Hater. I understand the views, and I probably fit more into the Woman Lover category when I was younger, but at this point I just feel as if there is no energy to expend towards either of these views.
what if you feel like you don’t fall into either category?
If you were a guy on the street, I’d say good. If you’re a guy who has been reading this stuff for 2-3 years and taken bootcamps… I would say that maybe you’re not entirely in touch with your needs/desires.
Just because I know you, I def see you on the Lover side… with wanings of the desire for accumulating the stat sheet…
Psychology says that the M/W Complex (of which the Lover/Hater phenomenon results) is a result of mother/son relationship… but honestly, I’m thinking it’s more of a father/son issue…
May write another post for this series.
I can see both Mark. A quick summation of my relationships with my parents over the years: close with both when I was young, grew away from my father as a teen and probably had my mother as a role model in that time, then slowly and carefully grew closer to my dad in late teens/early 20s. Still much closer with my mum. My parents relationship: married in love but flame died out and stayed together for the kids and convenience+not be alone. Both not very romantic people. Dad has very clear intimacy issues, that he thinks are well covered by semi-alpha personality. Did a good job of taking care of most things, but lack of romantic love obvious since I was little.
The results. From my mother: I put women on a pedestal, because in my mind no-one could match up to her. Probably developed in my teens when I lost my father as a role model. From my father: his intimacy issues and masculinity as a front meant I had trust issues with women, some of which have resolved themselves thanks to relationships with women. Also, lack of a masculine role model, which explains why my personality developed more feminine traits in my teens. From their relationship: sexist ideas of female roles (my dad always thought my mother should be home when he was, should do all the housework, etc), most of which I have overcome myself. Also, lack of intimacy between my parents made me see my mother as pure, which in turn created a M/W complex.
So my relationships with both parents were responsible for a range of sexual issues. I really can’t pick either one as being more important, because although I think the M/W complex developed from putting women on a pedestal because of my mother, the biggest reason she influenced me so much is because I lacked a strong role male model and closeness with my father. And the lack of intimacy in their relationship originated from my father’s inability to be emotionally open with women.
I see where you’re going with Father/Son, but I think if my parents had divorced and my mother dated other men, then things might have changed a lot, just by realising that she was a person with romantic/sexual desire too. Instead, I ended up wanting a woman who was as emotionally strong and amazing as my mother, but pure and innocent too.
Fuck man, I consider my childhood to have been a relatively normal one and I’m sitting here realising that my parent’s relationship has probably defined most of the big decisions in the last 3 years of my life. Like you said, guys don’t read this stuff for 2-3 years and take bootcamps unless they are trying to resolve some deep subconscious issues.
I feel like I’m so much more obsessed with the intellectual side of pick-up rather than the practical side, not because I’m a keyboard jockey with serious AA, as I was for the first couple of years of getting into this, but because I’ve been trying to figure out issues that look really simple and obvious when I write them above, but that have only just become clear as I wrote that.
I don’t know where this leaves me but I feel like I need a break from all this. It took 3 years of reading a hell of a lot of pick-up to get me here, and I don’t think 3 more years is the answer to getting it sorted.
Damn. Nice insights man. It sounds like you had a breakthrough. Those last 3 paragraphs could have been written by me also.
Interesting… similar for me too… Dad is a great guy, but completely emotionally retarded and not very good at expressing his feelings. Also very needy.
My relationship with my mom has always been phenomenal. In fact, it’s just in the last few months after reading some of this psychology stuff that I’m starting to wonder if it’s TOO good. There’s a lot of psychology literature about boys needing to disconnect from their mothers emotionally, and until they do they’ll never be able to have stable relationships or emotions with other women.
After the divorce my mom and I were alone for about 5-6 years. We really bonded during that time and emotionally relied on each other. She and I have a relationship that I don’t think my older brother has with her. And interestingly, my older brother does not share my obsession with women and pick up (he’s read my site and finds it interesting, but he’s never gotten into it). I think that on the one hand, my time with my mother explains my deep intuition and appreciation with women, but on the other hand may explain my constant need for affection as well as my lack of ability to commit often.
It’s all interesting.
And yes, the intellectualizing plagues this community/industry, mostly because I think a lot of smart guys use intellectualizing as a means to avoid our emotional realities. My father does it. Sounds like your father did it. I do it. You do it too.
Damn, I’m connecting very strongly with everything the two of you are saying. The only difference, is that my parents never got divorced. My dad is a great guy, just also emotionally retarded and also VERY needy. I didn’t even realize how needy he was until I started doing all of this stuff – now it hits me like a wrecking ball when I see it, and actually annoys the crap out of me.
I think because my dad has been so emotionally retarded and needy (and also a ginormous pot head with the attention span and short term memory of a methed up squirrel), my mom has turned to me for emotional connection, maturity, and oy, masculinity (can anyone say oedipus complex?) I’m often referred to as “the adult” in our family (I’m an only child). Anyway, who knows what the fuck this has done to me, but I’m slowly working it out, and also probably need to disconnect from my mom a little bit.
I think the best part though is that my parents, both of them, have always shown me the most ridiculous levels of unconditional love and support, that have actually given me a REALLY strong inner core of confidence covered up with all the gobbelty gook mentioned above. As a result, I’d say that I’m a fairly unique person that a lot of people have difficulty understanding, but still a nice, cool, fun, guy. jkahfdalkjhe
Yeah… I feel the same way around my family… like I’m the father figure and the male role model. Which is bizarre considering I’m the younger brother. It’s particularly uncomfortable around my father.
When you say “Psychology says…” can you be more specific about the sources you’re referring to? Psychology is a huge field that goes back for over a hundred years.
Did you get your info out of a 2010 academic journal article? A book on couples therapy written by an experienced marriage counsellor? A pop psychology book? A 500 word article that just popped up in a google search? A reference to ‘studies’ made in some post on AskMen.com? A 90 year old book on psychoanalysis?
In this case, Freud.
Ok, I’m gonna rattle the bee hive here.
Mark: “If you were a guy on the street, I’d say good. If you’re a guy who has been reading this stuff for 2-3 years and taken bootcamps… I would say that maybe you’re not entirely in touch with your needs/desires. ”
Just curious as to why you feel someone has to fall into one of these two categories to be in touch with their needs/desires. It just seems to me like quite the opposite is true. That these categories result from a lack of awareness of one’s needs and desires.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting what your saying, and you’re directing this argument at men who have been trying to gain success in seduction but have been failing, in that case I would have to agree, it seems like most newcomers should fall into one of these categories.
I have returned home from college after my freshman year. In this first week back, I have felt feelings of hate, resentment and anger swell up. I won’t even speak to my mother for more than a few sentences anymore. I am desperately seeking out a job, just in hopes of staying away from my mother as much as possible (also to make monies).
I just wonder, how long will these feelings last? Will they ever go away? Personally, I just want to hate my mother, not all women. It feels so terrible that all my fear and hatred towards my mother somehow gets subconsciously pinned upon all women. I tried talking to my mom about this a couple months back. I suggested that she may have not been the most perfect mother and some of my problems may have originated from her. She yelled at me, and then began to berate me…
I just wonder Mark, how do you fix this deep inner problem?
You only get one mother, so why waste time hating her…
“I tried talking to my mom about this a couple months back. I suggested that she may have not been the most perfect mother and some of my problems may have originated from her.” Most people would respond negatively to such criticism, it sounds like your being an ungrateful little prick to me. I’m sure you weren’t the perfect son, I know I wasn’t.
Why don’t you just try to wipe the slate clean and start fresh, love her for who she is and not who you want her to be.
Very interesting article. I think in my case, I developed my Nice Guy Syndrome because my father suffers from it as well, though to a lesser extent. I have a very close relationship with my father, and I honestly believe he was one of the best role models anyone could ask for, except when it comes to asserting myself and dealing with woman. Its only been in the last few years that I’ve really noticed just how much crap he puts up with from my mother in an effort to make her happy and put her needs above his, and I think on an unconscious level this is where I modelled my needy behaviour towards woman from. This probably led to my prior beliefs that woman were to be put on a pedestal, and that they were fragile little angels that needed to be protected. Interestingly, I think my fear of rejection came from my mother, whom I have a difficult relationship (although it’s gotten HUGELY better since I moved out). Growing up, I constantly felt my mothers disapproval, and I often made decisions that I knew would please her, as I feared her rejecting my rejecting my decisions and ideas was a reflection of me failing in some way. I’m convinced this fear has spilled over into my relationships with woman in general.
Wow, your story sounds just like mine… I no longer suffer from nice guy syndrome but I used to long ago, and my relationship with my mom and dad was basically the same as what you just stated.
I still have a lot of respect for my dad though, I realize he is a nice guy, but it’s simply a by-product of the time he lived in. Thank god for contraception, the internet, and justin beiber.
Don’t know if you ever saw the Nice Guy archive over at Heartless Bitches International; here’s a letter from a dude who is really annoyed about Nice Guys ™ –
http://www.heartless-bitches.com/rants/niceguys/coin.shtml
For the record, I don’t agree with everything on the HBI site, or with their whole approach, but I really like the above link.
It was an OK article tbh thorn, the author seems to be confusing the ‘nice’ in nice guy syndrome though. Plus there are some things that are just plain far fetched, like below:
“Some fucked up people spouting weird shit about how women need to be protected/ nurturing/ told what their place is/ (insert patronizing, puritanical gender role here), and how “that damned feminist movement is ruining everything.” These people need a news flash: as we gain more and more knowledge in the fields of psychology, anthropology, and biology, it seems that we find less and less cause to believe that gender roles are anything but socially constructed. Neither sex is “inherently” anything, and it boggles my mind that people still try and cite some bogus gender role to back up their argument that women are inherently attracted to such-and-such, or that this-and-that are in their nature. No they’re NOT. Women, like men, are “inherently” in possession of their own fucking brains; it’s not like they all run off some computer program, and it’s not like they were put here as part of some “divine plan” where step 1 is that they have to be good mothers and obedient wives.”
Basically, he is saying humans have the ability to control their brains at all times. I completely disagree, if someone comes up to me and punches me in the face, I will fell fear and anger instantly, it’s not in my control. If I set next to a hot naked chick long enough, I will probably get aroused, once again out of my control. I could think of a dozen arguments against this, not that I disagree with his premise though. Guys that fall into the overbearing possessive category annoy me too.
Maybe it would be a good topic for Mark to write about =]
Curious to see what your thoughts on ‘normal’ approach to relationships is.
Doesn’t seem too helpful to talk about pathology without comparison to a control group.
My guess is that most people have this to some extent or another. It’s just this community seems to attract the extremes.