I don’t completely agree with the Craigslist poster but sometimes it’s just frustrating when I get “You’re a nice guy, but…” and then “He’s such a jerk, why can’t I find a nice guy?” every month after that. I don’t care if you’ve never asked that question but I have received it. I try not to think much about it but it always comes back to “Someone just like you but not you.”

I’m frustrated and confused. The long time spans between girlfriends are just unbearable. Should I be myself? Adapt and survive? What’s a guy to do?!

TL;DR: There are always two sides to a story, and it DOES matter if you are in a relationship and can talk down to people who are not, or if you are part of the folks which are not in a relationship and try like crazy to get into one only to see all their efforts crumble to dust. A rich man can lightly say that money does not really matter in life, while the poor man will certainly say the opposite. So don’t be so fucking full of yourselves because you were lucky and others were not.

Oh and nice point by Person of Consequence. I think popular media does tend to reinforce the idea that Nice Guys get the girl (which is usually wrong).

But To Zach. I wish I had your email address so I could actually respond to you but I know almost exactly how you feel. I would describe myself in nearly the same way. Just turned 21. Intelligent, cool, classy, slightly arrogant, etc. The only difference is that I have been on a few dates. Nothing past 2nd base hahaha but I’m not really worried about that. They were fun. And yeah I think our problem is that we are sometimes a bit too passive just like you were thinking and many other people noted.

yeah I have mostly girl friends and I can say, upon a little reflection, that most of them started out due to attraction and only evolved into friendships later after I got to know them better. So I think this relates back to what another person said. We are speaking different languages in that we do little actions that are hard to notice. Sometimes what is required is actually to just be blunt and come out and say something. I’m usually a quiet person but I’ve learned that being quiet seldom leads to being acknowleged. So make sure to make yourself heard when you need to be. Relationships almost never magically happen. There needs to be an initiator. And don’t be afraid to intiate early (before getting to know them well). Getting to know the girl on a date is a fine thing too .

And last thing since it appears I’ve also rambled a bit … if you are like me you almost exclusively talk to your female friends. Try to hang around them a bit less and talk to your guy friends a bit more or go out and find some. I think the change could be helpful. For example, you could talk about questions like the ones you just had.

The movie implies that he completely cuts his best friend out of his life for the crime of not having the hots for him. That’s pretty cruel, but kids can be cruel, so I’m gonna cut him some slack for his youth.

He comes back to town years later and he’s a physically attractive flashy record executive, superficially charming but whose interactions with women entirely consist of keeping out of “the friend zone” (so “former nice guy”). After some unnamed career disruption, she’s working her way through college by bartending and living with her parents. Huh. I detect a certain amount of schadenfreude on the part of the writer.

The movie comes to a head when he calls her out in front of an entire bar (her workplace), slut-shaming her for daring to sleep with other people in high school but not him. It’s deeply misogynistic, abusive shit. Of course, this being a deeply misogynistic movie, she never replies that her vagina is not a trophy men deserve for being “nice”, that she has a right to manage her own sex life according to her own preferences, or that pretending to be a person’s friend for years when you’re really just hoping to get something out of them, and then cutting them out of your life when you realize that their vagina (their only valuable feature, apparently) is off the table, is pretty much the opposite of nice.

Then he comes to his senses, apologizes, and…happily ever after. Until, you know, he doesn’t get his way in the next argument and the abusive misogynistic asshole comes back out to play.

It’s made me consider my own actions, and it’s interesting because I’m generally quite reflective on my life, but often when dealing with completely different aspects, not romance.

See, I’m a 21 year old guy who has always considered himself nice. I mean, mot JUST nice…I’m intelligent, and principled, and I like to think I’m caring and witty and all of that (and okay, one of my faults is obviously a rather large allotment of pride and indeed sometimes arrogance, and the latter at least isn’t good), but I’ve NEVER had any luck with romance. I mean, I’ve got plenty of female friends, but never a date, and sometimes I’ve wondered if my approach has been wrong, or if I was doing something incorrectly, or if I’m just not compatible with the kind of girl I generally find myself attracted to, or if I’m unattractive, or whatever. Never been on a single date, and not for lack of trying. Never been kissed, blah blah blah, you get the point.

But I wonder if it’s been the way I’ve thought about it that’s entirely wrong. I mean, a policy I have is not making any move romantically until I get to know a girl and can make certain I have genuine feelings for her, but when I think about the past, I realize that a lot of those friendships with females that I liked probably started because of an attraction to them- or at least it was a major factor. I like to think that I value them as people, as friends, as whatever you want to say, and I think I do, but maybe not as much as I should. Am I good friends with these girls because they’re kind, intelligent, passionate people with common interests, or because I find them attractive (it’s not as easy to figure out as it sounds as those are things I’m attracted to anyway)? I mean, there are girls I’m friends with that I’m not attracted to, but the ones I know best are the ones I am attracted to.

So I have to ask myself, what are my actual feelings about all of it? Exactly what do I think about these people? What are my motives? Are they sexual, romantic, friendship, what? And if there’s more than one, what is my main motive?

I mean, obviously I don’t want to be like Former Nice Guy up there, ever, even if I am without realizing it. Especially if I am without realizing it, really. So I really need to evaluate things.

I’m starting to ramble and repeat myself so I should probably stop typing. I guess I’ll do some reflection today and try to figure out if there’s anything really undesirable about myself like this that I haven’t noticed…

Then my girlfriend cheated on me and i beat the shit out of her

She’s homeless now, probably a prostitute

Isn’t it funny how some things work

The tone and tenor of your post is rage-filled bitterness. That is what makes you a loser. It’s the same thing that makes the original “Internet Nice Guy” post an asshole: the bitter, rage filled contempt.

To address your individual questions: Yes, you were a jerk. You were a probably jerk because, according to your next sentence, you were going through this to hit on her. That’s what jerks do, making dishonest calculated gestures with an expectation of them paying off later, but that doesn’t make you a bad person, necessarily.

You were not at fault (except for the jerk thing, above), but you maybe should have taken the hint that she was trying to let you down easy, based on the next-day boyfriend thing. But that’s probably ok, since it takes time to learn these things.

You were not being a pussy, you were being a creepy stalker. You should stop doing that (both the fake smile and the stalkerish hope for the pick-up on the rebound).

You are not in the wrong, since you are not either acting like her friend, nor a nice guy yourself (see above).

Yes, and yes again, since you are clearly playing this out for hopes of sex, or at least a relationship, hence the ‘telling about my feelings’ followed by the rejection followed by the emotional manipulation (fake smiles, passive-aggressive co-dependance, ect.), and the anger being in her life is causing you.

Happily, all of this is fixable. You don’t have to be a loser, or a creepy jerk asshole. If you want to display how important you are to this girl simply remove yourself from her.

Do something else. Read a book. Go jogging. Join a bowling league. Volunteer at a shelter. Better yourself, so if she does decide that she has feelings for you and not her no-good boyfriend you’ll be soemthing other than her emotional punching bag who complains on an internet forum that you get punched.

Also, go listen to Dan Savage at the Savage Lovecast. You’ll get some perspective on things (well, at least I’m not a 35 year-old clown fetishist with intimacy issues), you’ll laugh, and gain tips on how to run a successful relationship.

Good luck, Frodo. If I knew enough for a Lord of the Rings joke this is where I would put it.