(Or, Nice Guys Don't Finish Last — Because They Aren't Even In The Race)
The problems that ‘Nice Guys™’ encounter are well known. I put ‘Nice Guys™’ in quotes because this is probably a self-selected term. Women would probably call these guys ‘Pushovers’ or ‘Pussies’ or, worst of all, ‘Friends’. (Well, the first two behind your back, anyway.)
I just watched the Woody Allen movie Anything Else (2003). It's rather painful to watch because of the high level of dysfunction of the characters, but Allen's grasp of women's ‘stupid’ behaviour seems to be fairly accurate. I wonder if he truly understands the psychology of women or if he is just speaking from experience. I suspect that he does understand.
I'm sure there are dozens of movies that are quite similar, but basically, our hero Jerry Falk is a Nice Guy™ and his girlfriend Amanda is the standard emotional female, though perhaps a little more screwed up than usual. Things start out okay because Jerry is an interesting guy and Amanda is strongly drawn to him, but Jerry turns out to be a pussy and Amanda pushes him around and eventually stops sleeping with him and then starts sleeping with other guys. In the end, they finally break up. (Actually, maybe this story is a little atypical since Nice Guys™ usually don't get the girl in the first place.)
Ladder theory is introduced at the Intellectual Whores web site (IW). It is just a particular metaphor for commonly observed phenomena. I'm sure there are lots of other metaphors out there.
A man has a ranking system for how much he wants to have sex (or relationships?) with every woman he meets. (Men make little distinction between female friends and potential fuck buddies.) The ranks are analogous to the rungs of a latter. At the top are the women he very much wants to have sex with and at the bottom are the women he would have sex with if he was very, very drunk. According to IW, the typical formula that a man uses to assign ranks to women he as just met has the following breakdown: Looks=60%, Estimation that she'll put out quickly=30%, Other=10%. These numbers seem okay for the typical man in the short term, but I think there are other significant factors for any longer-term consideration, such as “How sane is she?”.
A woman actually has two ladders: one for the men she wants to have sex with and the other for the men she considers to be only friends. This dichotomy is essential to understanding ‘Nice Guy™ Syndrome’. Lots of Nice Guys™ think that they're ‘in like Flynn’ with a woman just because they are great friends, he is fun for her to hang out with, and he does lots of favors for her, but little is further from the truth. Congratulations, guy, you're on the ‘Friends’ ladder, and it is very hard to jump from the Friends ladder to the sexual-attraction ladder and most guys who try will fall into “The Abyss”—game over— or at worse, you get LJBF'd and wish it was game-over (below).
A woman's ranking system for a man she has just met is defined by IW to have the following breakdown: Money/Power=50%, Physical attraction=20%, Competition attraction=8%, Novelty attraction=8%, Other attraction=4%, and Stuff that women say they care about but really don't=10%. “Competition attraction” is how much of a challenge he is for her to pursue. This factor is covered more in psychology, but basically we assign value to something in part based on how hard it is to get, regardless of any ‘inherent’ value. “Novelty attraction” means that you're different from other guys. It doesn't matter so much whether you are different in ‘good’ or ‘bad’ ways. Stuff that women say they want is covered later. In summary, to quote IW, “If you are very attractive, rich, and novel and show no interest in her, she is almost guaranteed to want to fuck you.”. I would say that a schedule of very minor rewards is more effective than completely ignoring her. This would be a slow-play version of the “give her lots of emotions” strategy.
Both men and women strive to be with the person who is highest up on their sexual-attraction ladders that they can get. If you're married to a person and someone else comes along who is higher up than you are and is attainable by your partner, then I have some bad news for you. Conversely, “If you can't be with the one you love / Love the one you're with” [Stephen Stills].
When a Nice Guy™ makes his move on a woman, she will frequently respond with “LJBF” (“Let's just be friends”) or some equivalent.
Being an LJBF'd friend can be much more painful than you may wish to endure, and you are mistaken to believe that things might turn around later on if you continue to be the same guy. She'll also have even less respect for you as a man than she did before, since she knows that you'll beg even for crumbs. A good plan is just to walk away—LJBS (“Let's just be strangers”). Only accept being just friends with a woman if that's truly all you want to be. (But then, you wouldn't have asked for more if this was really the case.) From the female perspective, if you are not already friends, then this line often means “I don't want to see you anymore, but I don't want to hurt your feelings (or mine by being honest with you). I hope the axe sticking out of your spine doesn't hurt too much.”
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It's possible to be a nice guy without being a Nice Guy™.
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