“Nice Guys” and the Infamous Friend Zone

A dear friend sent me the link to this article the other day, and I just had to share it. I’ve put some excerpts here, but please go to Kelsey’s blog and read the entire thing. It is so worth the read. Any emphasis below is mine.

Peace

-_Q

In the interest of bringing everyone up to speed (since most of the people who read The Independent Review are here for the books, and not the feminism), the friend zone is an invisible place that exists only in the minds of men who don’t know how to move on after they’ve expressed interest in women, and have been turned down. They’ve been banished to a barren wasteland where they’re doomed never to have sex with the women they’ve lusted over for weeks, months, even years. And they are angry. They feel slighted. They missed the train to the holy land, the Bone Zone, and are now the one-man population of a lonely little western town named Sexual Frustration, where the local walk is the blue balls shuffle.

The friend zone exists almost exclusively in the minds of “Nice Guys.” I’m sure you’ve heard of them. They’ve coined and popularized the phrase “nice guys finish last,” sometimes with the pathetic addition of “so their women can finish first.” Nice Guys are positively despondent, having spent their whole lives watching the women around them fall into the arms of “assholes,” “jerks,” and “douchebags.” Sound familiar? If you’re still fuzzy, here’s their collective favourite assertion:

“I’m the guy who you’ll complain about your boyfriend to, but never the one you’ll date. I’m such a nice guy, but all the girls I’ve ever liked have put me in the friend zone, and then come crying to me when they date douche bags.”

I can guarantee you that everyone knows, or at one point has known, a guy like this. He proclaims to anyone who will listen that he’s just a genuinely good guy, and doesn’t understand why the world has chosen to take a big, heaping, diarrhetic shit on his head. All he wants is to get to the Bone Zone. Is that too much to ask, for just one girl not to think he’s “too nice” to sleep with?

The Nice Guy, you see, is put upon by the world.

The myth that Nice Guys perpetuate among themselves is that they are, in fact, “too nice” for girls to take them seriously. Pretty soon, every nice guy starts to ask his friends, “Should I just start practicing my asshole routine? Will that get this fucking slut’s attention?”

See, the Nice Guys aren’t so nice any more — but, the reality is, they never really were. The Nice Guy is, at his very core, a petulant, entitled little baby, who doesn’t like to be told no. He has been led to believe that he is entitled to a woman’s attention. Entitled, just by being alive, and by being “nice.” If he shows her how “nice” he is, by being her friend for a while, by letting her cry on his shoulder, she will in turn see how dateable he is.

When she doesn’t, the Nice Guy is shattered. He did everything right — he was a friend, he was nice! Why wasn’t that enough? A lady’s gentleman friends should naturally be upgraded to a relationship status. Why has he been unceremoniously dumped into the friend zone? The friend zone isn’t where he wants to be — he never wanted to be a friend, he just wanted to have sex. The Nice Guy doesn’t think a woman’s friendship is worth having…

…

So, do you identify as a “Nice Guy?” Do you feel like you are unable to score a ticket on the train to the Bone Zone? Do you find yourself watching girls ride off into the sunset with Prince Douchebag McJerk? Do you hear the world’s tiniest violin playing for you? Lucky for you, I have some advice.

If you want to see results with the ladies, it’s time for a major personality overhaul. In order to truthfully call yourself a nice guy, and not a “Nice Guy,” you have to earn that right. Don’t just tell people you’re nice — prove it. Start by acknowledging that you were not born with the god-given right to a woman’s attention, and really internalize that. Someone’s attention — be it male or female — is another thing you have to earn, because you are not the Queen of England, or George Clooney.

Stop treating a friendship with a woman as a way to eventually enter a sexual relationship with that woman. Be a good friend, a true friend, who is legitimately there for her without an agenda. Don’t be opportunistic with your friendship, and  don’t treat it as disposable if or when she does not express romantic interest in you. When you’re rejected, understand that it’s not because you’re “too nice,” or because she’s a “shallow bitch.” Sometimes things just don’t work out.

And, for God’s sake, have a real personality that can be described without using the word “nice.” Have hobbies and interests and a job you care about, take pride in yourself. One of the best things David Wong writes in the article I linked to earlier is that being “nice” simply isn’t enough:

[Women] won’t put it as bluntly as [Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross] does — society has trained us not to be this honest with people — but the equation is the same. “Nice guy? Who gives a shit? If you want to work here, close.”

Women don’t care if you’re nice (well, they care, but not that much). There’s a guy down the street from the woman you like who’s just as nice, and he doesn’t whine all the time. She works with a guy who’s nice and, get this, funny, and who loves dogs, to boot. At the laundromat she runs into a nice guy who’s an avid jogger, takes his mom to brunch on Sundays, and has travelled across Europe and Asia. Expecting “niceness” to set you apart will never work, because it’s the lowest rung on the ladder of dateability.

Be a real person — stop hiding behind the term “nice guy.” It’s a flimsy facade to mask your outdated and frankly dangerous misogynistic attitude. Accept responsibility for your life, your biases, and your problems, and drop the put-upon act. Whiners are weiners. And so are “Nice Guys.”

– Kelsey

-_Q

Please read this incredible article in its entirety. It is well worth it. Leave a comment for Kelsey supporting her clear, much-needed voice on this matter.

I’ve learned some harsh lessons over the past few years, as you well know readers. One of the main ones is not to believe who people tell you they are. Whatever they say they are, they are usually the exact opposite, like these guys claiming to be “nice.” It’s much more reliable when people show you who they are, over a long time period. Like, a year. Not three months, no, around that time, if you spend enough time with them, the cracks begin to show. After six, patterns begin to emerge. After a year, you will have a pretty decent indication of who they really are.

Maybe. That’s if you spend a great deal of time with them over that year and have at least of level of intimacy and communication beyond casual friends. Close friends, at least.

If you just see them at potlucks and dances and the like, you don’t know them. Not at all.

Don’t fool yourself.

(Another great read:  6 Harsh Truths that Will Make You a Better Person)

~ by omgrey on January 16, 2013.