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How To Be Nice Without Feeling Like a Chump

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A while back I wrote about how nice guys are manipulative bastards. It is a lovely piece of prose, I suggest you consume it. Those “nice guys” who are really nice to women are being manipulative in their own way, just in a way that every one expects and thinks is fairly normal.

And it begged the question, how do I be nice without it being manipulative?

Here’s the trick. You can be nice, but you have to be nice to yourself first. You have to expect other people to be nice to you to.

If a girl asks you to pick her up from the airport at 3am, and it is really inconvenient for you to do that, then don’t.

If you wouldn’t regularly go out to a really fancy dinner on a Saturday night, don’t bring the woman you just met there on a first date.

The trick to being nice is that if you are going to go out of your way to do something nice, then do it because you want to, and because it makes you feel good to do it.

Be nice to women, but don’t do it at the expense of being nice to yourself.

Some examples:

If I am on a date with a girl, and I get a little hungry, I’ll grab a bite to eat, and I’ll pay for whatever she gets. It’s nice to do, but I’m not going out of my way to do this nice thing to her. I don’t make it a point that I am buying something for her, but if it comes up in the situation, it’s not a problem.

I like to cook dinner, so I would be happy to cook for a woman on a date. I like to do it, I would like doing it for myself, so I would be happy to cook for her.

If a girl I knew needed a ride from somewhere, and I was in the neighborhood already, sure, I’ll give her a ride. I’m not going out of my way to make myself available to her or to help her out.

Heh, this post was a lot shorter than I thought it would be. Be nice. Be nice to yourself. Do nice things for women, but only if it was you want to do, not because you expect something in return.

Nice guys are manipulative bastards

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The “nice guy” that we all know and recognize is a manipulative prick, who only does nice things to guilt trip women into liking him.

How’s that for laying down the gauntlet?

I’m not down on being nice, even if I am sometimes a little mean. It is wonderful to be nice to people, and I may even write an upcoming post about that very subject.

But what is not nice is when a man does something that seems nice, but is in fact not very nice at all. In fact some things that seem like they are very nice can have ulterior motives, and that is definitely not nice.

What do I mean by that?

  • A man that takes a woman out to a fancy dinner, because he expects her to like keep dating him or to “put out” after that, is not nice.
  • A man that does favors for and hangs out with a woman, hoping she might come around and like him back, is not nice.
  • A man that goes overboard and brings a woman flowers on a first date to go get coffee, in hopes that that the flowers will make the good first impression, is not nice.

None of these things are nice, because the nice thing is done with the expectation or hope that the woman will give the man what he wants in return. If you do something nice for a woman, with no thought of anything nice in return, that’s great. So often when a man acts nice towards a woman this is not the case though.

Story Time

Back in the day, I was out one night at a bar with my sister and one of her friends. We were having a grand ol time, and the drinks were flowing. We were sitting in the middle of the bar, plenty of folks around, so of course some guys started talking to us.

A few guys were hitting on my sister and her friend, and it was all good. They were nice enough guys, and everything was friendly.

Eventually the three of us got tired of the bar we were at and decided to take off and go to another bar. My sister went to settle our tab, which was pretty hefty. Over 100 bucks (we weren’t being shy with the drinks).

Something surprising happened. One of the guys that had been talking to my sister offered to pay for our entire tab. All three of us. My sister declined, but he was really insistent. It took a while for my sister to get it into his head that, no, he wasn’t going to pay for our tab.

Now, that could seem like a pretty nice thing to do. He offered to cover our entire tab. I wish people would pay for all of my drinks all the time. Very nice thing to do.

Behind that, however, was a certain agreement he was trying to force into place. He wasn’t offering to pay out of the goodness and kindness of his heart. He was not practicing random acts of kindness or anything like that. He was buying the drinks to make the two women I was with that night like him. I’m pretty sure that in his mind, he was thinking that he would pay for the drinks, and the women would go out with him because of that.

The *nice* thing he was offering up was really an attempt to manipulate them into feeling obligated to spend more time with him.

Catch it before it starts

This is easy to change. Whenever you have the option to do something nice for a woman that is above and beyond what you would normally do, ask yourself if if you are hoping for anything in return.

If you hope that doing this will make her like you, or do something in return for you, then it probably isn’t a good idea.

If you are expecting something in return, then your nice action is actually going to be tainted with manipulation. Manipulation just isn’t cool. Not towards women, not towards men, just don’t do it. You don’t want to end up like this guy, calling to ask for her share of what you paid for dinner on the date, just because she didn’t want to go out again.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a woman to like you. Don’t get the wrong impression. I have met plenty of women that I wanted to like me.

Rather than go overboard trying to show how nice and thoughtful I am, I know I will get much further by actually just being nice and thoughtful.

Be good, and be nice, but don’t be a nice guy.