No More Mr. Nice Guy

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So it seems more likely that’s our actual problem: men who don’t listen to women, develop fucked-up ideas about what women want, and when conforming to that fictional ideal doesn’t pay off, their resentment of women grows.

If you don’t rely on any science, you can’t claim a science degree gives what you’re saying any authority. Work out what actually is good and bad about you, and openly embrace the one, and just as openly work to fix the other. The second is through being emotionally unavailable to a primary partner while playing the night sky roll outside of the relationship.

Anyone who actually listens to other perspectives, who actually takes the trouble to genuinely find out why, for example, they are so frustrated in relationships, will find a dozen female voices explaining that “someone who believes himself to possess genuine ‘nice guy’ characteristics…actually may not. You are not “the provider” or “protector” or “leader” in your relationship; and if you think you are, your relationship is not likely to go well. When we look at what is actually going on in his own examples of men he claims have been affected by this, it becomes clear the problem is that these men haven’t been listening to feminism or women at all, and have instead invented fictitious witchery in their place. Perhaps the only thing of use regarding Glover’s book is that it consists of a man telling men (or at least, a certain specific subset of men) what they are doing wrong in relationships, and that it is the fault of their behavior and attitudes, and not women’s.

These recommendations conform to a general rule I advise following as much as you can: do not rely on any author who isn’t an actual expert specializing in a pertinent field, discussing actual empirical science or findings in the subject; or an author who is competently conveying what such men and women have written.Over the last several years, I have watched countless men "do something different "by applying the principles contained in this book. When we look at the science, by contrast, the problem seems more likely a defective male culture, not a Freudian crisis of fatherlessness.

Moreover, one can all too easily confuse “wanting to be what others want you to be” (a form of tit-for-tat thinking; getting what you want, by acting a certain way) with genuinely wanting to be a good person and using others’ whose opinions and judgments you respect as a guide. No one wants to pay for a real health care system, just as no one wants to pay to put our nation’s kids in front of good teachers in capable schools—we think we can get everything “on the cheap,” but what we really thus get is mostly garbage. When that toxic male ideal conflicts with reality, rather than abandon the ideal, men resort to tricks and tactics and excuses to try and “make” it work (like, for example, “hiding” their real views, prioritizing “getting a woman” over forming healthy relationships, and so on). The possibility of the availability is a term used to describe the subjective measure of a woman's sexual availability. Which means when you don’t have good data—as with most of psychology—you are really just doing a disciplined form of philosophy.

Next on my list is Katy Milkman’s How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.

As long as they are focused on the arousal and pleasure of their partner, Nice Guys can distract themselves from their own toxic shame, feelings of inadequacy, or fear of being smothered. Confidence is a question of either doubting or trusting your skills, knowledge, or odds of success in a given situation; self-respect is a question of believing on real rather than delusional evidence that you are a good person—more particularly, that you are the sort of person you like and admire, the sort of person you’d prefer to have around you in life, and not, instead, the sort of person you actually dislike or despise and would usually avoid or get away from. Eldridge explores how Christian men are conditioned to be “nice” and how this robs them of their true masculine selves. Likewise many of the things Glover is classifying as a problem have been traced to a very different theory of a dysfunctional male culture rather than some half-assed Freudian pseudopsych (see the essays of Phil Christman and Matthew Rozsa and Harris O’Malley on the point, backed by real science in psychology, sociology, and anthropology). This kind of power not only successfully deals with problems, challenges and adversity, it actually welcomes them, meets them head-on, and is thankful for them.

I’ll add the point that, IMO, basic CBT should be a standardized required subject in all high schools.