{"id":249,"date":"2013-06-28T05:39:45","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T05:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/?p=249"},"modified":"2018-07-18T07:37:32","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T07:37:32","slug":"stop-being-a-nice-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/stop-being-a-nice-guy\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Stop Being A Nice Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing&#8217;s worse than being pegged as a nice guy. You know, dependable. Always around to lend a hand. Designated driver. The kind of guy that girls call when they want someone to tell their troubles to. Sort of like the &#8220;gay&#8221; friend: nonthreatening and nonsexual.<\/p>\n<p>Now, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with being a good guy. I don&#8217;t come from the school that says you have to be a jerk to women to get them interested. It&#8217;s OKAY to have morals and values that you believe in. It&#8217;s OKAY to treat women right.<\/p>\n<p>But the problem with most nice guys is this:<\/p>\n<p>They were brought up to be &#8220;people-pleasers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t get over the number of guys who still think that the way to get a girl is to do things that please them. Girls don&#8217;t &#8220;date&#8221; guys that &#8220;please&#8221; them; they USE them.<\/p>\n<p>Doing things because you know it will make a girl happy is fine ONCE you&#8217;re in a relationship &#8211; in fact, it&#8217;s one of the foundations of relationships &#8211; but not before.<\/p>\n<p>It can be really hard to break the habit of being a nice guy, especially if you were brought up to always place other people before yourself. That&#8217;s why, in this newsletter, I attack three common reasons guys get pegged as &#8220;too nice.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>TIP #1. STOP BEING A &#8220;PEOPLE-PLEASER.&#8221; <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Stop this moment and have a think about the last three significant decisions you made in your life. Got them? Okay, now I want you to tell me honestly:<\/p>\n<p>* Did other people&#8217;s opinions play any factor in why you made the decision you did?<\/p>\n<p>* Can you quantify the influence of those people&#8217;s opinions &#8211; e.g. was 15% of the reason you made the decision, 1%, or 90%?<\/p>\n<p>Right.<\/p>\n<p>If you claimed that other people&#8217;s opinions played NO role whatsoever in the last three significant decisions you&#8217;ve made in your life, then you&#8217;re deluding yourself.<\/p>\n<p>The process of making good decisions necessarily involves seeking other people&#8217;s input and advice. You&#8217;d be a fool NOT to take other people&#8217;s opinions into account.<\/p>\n<p>But all of us can tell the difference between doing something to PLEASE someone else &#8230; and doing it because they made a valid point.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a HUGE difference between doing things to please people, and doing things because they make sense to you or reflect your values and morals.<\/p>\n<p>If other people&#8217;s opinions continually form the basis on which you make your decisions, then you need to make a mental shift from looking OUTSIDE for validation, and start looking inside.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re genuinely living life by your principles, then there are going to be times when you&#8217;ll hurt or offend people. That&#8217;s just life. We can&#8217;t please everyone all of the time, and we shouldn&#8217;t try. (Tell that to the politicians.)<\/p>\n<p>Now, there are going to be situations where you don&#8217;t really care about something one way or the other, so it makes sense to let someone else&#8217;s opinion guide your decision. That&#8217;s OKAY. The opposite of a &#8220;people-pleaser&#8221; isn&#8217;t a &#8220;jerk&#8221; &#8211; it&#8217;s a man of INTEGRITY. A man of integrity isn&#8217;t compromised by going with someone else&#8217;s wishes when it really doesn&#8217;t matter to him one way or the other.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TIP #2. STOP BEING A &#8220;SAVIOR&#8221; <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I know so many guys who find their greatest satisfaction in serving others. Even if they aren&#8217;t aware of it themselves, you can tell that they&#8217;re happiest when they&#8217;re helping someone else. Nothing makes them feel better about themselves than being the reason for someone else&#8217;s smile.<\/p>\n<p>Now, it&#8217;s GREAT to be the kind of guy who gets a kick from helping others. Being of service makes us feel connected to a greater community, like our lives have a larger purpose.<\/p>\n<p>But there are times when the only reason we&#8217;re helping people is so that we can feel better about ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>Take guys who help out women as an example. Some guys seem themselves as the &#8220;rescuer&#8221; type. They attract &#8220;homeless waifs&#8221; or seriously messed up chicks who need treatment more than another &#8220;friend.&#8221; These guys see themselves as the knight on the white horse who&#8217;s going to ride in and &#8220;save&#8221; her.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a compelling fantasy, but it&#8217;s also just that &#8211; a FANTASY. If you try to &#8220;save&#8221; a woman &#8211; if you try to be the one person she can count on when she needs a shoulder to cry on &#8211; then what you&#8217;ve done is create a CO-DEPENDENT relationship based on NEED.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, it&#8217;s not a bad strategy. Women fall in love with their &#8220;rescuers&#8221; all the time. But if you only feel good about yourself when you&#8217;ve made others feel good, then it&#8217;s time for you to stop rescuing others and start putting all that goodwill to work on YOURSELF.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TIP #3. JUST SAY NO. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I know a friend who&#8217;s always struggled with his weight. He starts eating right, then he&#8217;s at someone&#8217;s house and offered a beer and chips, and then his resolutions go right out the window. He just CAN&#8217;T say no to free food.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of guys are like that with women. They just can&#8217;t say no. If a woman displays any interest in them, then they are willing to give it a go &#8230; until they find themselves trapped in a relationship they didn&#8217;t even want in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t automatically take everything that&#8217;s offered to you. Being open and flexible are great traits, but knowing your own mind and being choosy are also incredibly important.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, we get trapped in a lot of situations because we accept something that implies an obligation. Think about how marketing works: they give you a &#8220;taste&#8221; of a new product in hopes of hooking you on it. They know that if you like it, they&#8217;ve got a customer for life.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, some women will promise you that they&#8217;re okay with hooking up and not committing any further. You&#8217;ll be amazed at your luck and think, at last, a woman who can enjoy things without pressuring you to have a relationship!<\/p>\n<p>But, like most &#8220;free&#8221; things, this one really comes with conditions. She&#8217;s hooking up with you now in hopes that, like a teaser, you&#8217;ll get hooked on being with her and want the &#8220;real&#8221; thing &#8211; i.e. a relationship &#8211; later.<\/p>\n<p>So if someone&#8217;s offering you something for &#8220;free,&#8221; with no conditions attached, don&#8217;t reach out and take it just because it didn&#8217;t cost you anything. Think about whether or not you&#8217;d still want it if it wasn&#8217;t free. If you wouldn&#8217;t have it if you had to work for it, then JUST SAY NO.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s all from me, feel free to share your thoughts!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing&#8217;s worse than being pegged as a nice guy. You know, dependable. Always around to lend a hand. Designated driver. The kind of guy that girls call when they want someone to tell their troubles&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-how-to-talk-to-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1004,"href":"https:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions\/1004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meetysweet.com\/men\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}