The typical nice guy relationship
After coaching nice guys for nearly 10 years, I’ve seen the same patterns in their long-term relationships over and over again… not to mention in my own relationships in the past.
They’re not all the same, but there are a lot of consistencies.
They usually start well, with the girl being over the moon at finding such a great guy. There are red flags and problems right from the first date, but for various reasons – be it naivety or unwillingness to face the truth – both people ignore them and increase the commitment over time.
Then the relationship starts to break down. Either it’s an obvious sharp decline where things are suddenly more painful than they are enjoyable, or more often it’s a long, slow death where everything seems “OK” but then one day she’s filing divorce papers.
Let’s look at how it breaks down, specifically the nice guy behavior that destroys attraction, so that you can repair or prevent these mistakes.
Note that not all of these apply to everyone, and they are not in order of importance or impact. Every nice guy has a slightly different experience.
The 3-6 month honeymoon period
The main issue in most cases is that the nice guy is fake during the dating / courtship period, or at least he puts in way more effort here than he’s going to for the rest of the relationship.
He starts off romantic, spontaneous, attentive, interesting, playful, and sometimes even sexually exciting.
But after a certain period of time, usually not more than 6 months, he finally feels “safe” in the relationship and stops trying so hard. This is the first time his poor partner is hit with the realization that she got sold one thing and ended up with something else.
The effort dies off. The decision making is handed over to the woman. The sex life nose-dives. The exciting spontaneity is replaced with soul-crushingly predictable routine. He fails to live up to his promise.
Reliable and safe and predictable aren’t necessarily unattractive traits, but suddenly switching over to them after being something else definitely kills the vibe.
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Too agreeable
Attraction is a kind of tension. It’s not the same as feeling safe and happy and comfortable.
Nice guys think that being agreeable makes people feel good and happy, and that makes them more likable. While this is true to some extent, being liked is not the same as being attractive.
Nice guys try to avoid confrontation because they have a fear of conflict. They also believe in the old “happy wife, happy life” bullshit. This combination of beliefs lead to very unattractive tendencies to prevent and reduce all tension.
Believe it or not, your woman has to feel mad at you, confused by you, frustrated with you, and even disgusted at you to maintain her attraction over the longer term.
Being disagreeable to an honest degree (not faking it to create false tension) will go a long way to keeping the fire burning.
Just because she rewards you for being nice doesn’t mean you should do it all the time.
Stop initiating sex
One of the main complaints I get from women is that their men have long ago stopped initiating sex, or even being sexually playful in any way. They say it’s like living with a roommate.
Some nice guys actually never initiate, and it only becomes obvious after a while when the woman calms down and realizes she’s doing all the leading.
But some nice guys start off with balls but slowly appear to lose interest in sex and stop putting in the effort.
I think sex isn’t even the main issue, but sexuality in general dies. No flirting, no playful touching, no raunchy text messages… the relationship slowly devolves into a close platonic friendship, because once the woman gives up leading nothing at all happens.
More on this issue here:
Plays it too safe
Risk-taking is sexy. Nice guys avoid risk. This is a bad situation waiting to happen.
You might not think that what you do in your work and hobbies has any real effect on your relationship, but you’d be wrong. Everything you do has some effect on your relationship.
If your woman constantly sees that you are a coward who avoids discomfort and risk-taking, she starts to lose respect, or at the very least (and even worse) she starts to worry about protecting you.
A man being safe and meek and cowardly doesn’t get the juices flowing. It provokes either contempt or pity, noth of which are absolute poison to attraction.
You might even avoid risks because she previously got upset about you taking them. You misread the signals: yes, she was upset at the time, but much later when she fucked your brains out it was partly because your bravery and even your bullish self-serving goals turned her on, too.
Porn and other addictions
There aren’t many nice guys in long term relationships who aren’t also compulsively using porn (they’re often the same ones who stopped initiating sex).
Sometimes there are other addictions too / instead. Gaming, gambling, alcohol and drugs, social media, and even work.
I believe if nothing else this kind of behavior wrecks sex-drive through draining testosterone and filling the neural pathways with the stress hormone cortisol (the main reason you just don’t want to get naked right now).
Addiction is also hard to respect. When a woman catches her man unable to control himself from doing something pointless and harmful, and he’s prioritized this behavior over engaging with her, she starts to feel disconnected and unloved.
Here’s a quick tip: the most attractive thing to a woman is to be desired by a powerful man.
Addiction means being ignored by a weak man… the exact opposite of being attractive.
People pleasing
Nice guys are people pleasers. Whether it’s at home or at work or even with their parents, you usually see them trying hard to make others like them.
Tell me, has there ever been a time where trying too hard to please others was sexy?
Another little saying that helped me out with relationships: if she knows you will stand up to her, she’ll feel sure that you’ll stand up for her.
If your partner sees that you bend over and sacrifice yourself for others, even if it’s for her, she’ll start to wonder about your masculinity in general. She’ll start to see you as a boy rather than a man. Or she might even start to see you as a little girl.
That can’t be good.
You doing what’s right for you even if it upsets others – even if those others are her parents! – might not get a “good” reaction from her in the moment, but in the longer term it sets up her image of you as a Real Man.
Real Men are frustrating and stubborn and selfish sometimes. Not all the time – that’s psychopathic – but when it counts.
Sometimes you’ll need to upset her and others to do what you know is the right thing, and integrity is definitely attractive.
Serious and stressed in the bedroom
Most nice guys have moderate to severe sexual shame issues. They often suffer from performance anxiety and erectile dysfunction.
More on how to cure this problem here:
In the bedroom, nice guys put a lot of pressure on themselves to do well. They worry about your pleasure to the point of actually seeing sex as a high-stress chore.
Maybe at the beginning they were more carefree. This was probably just because they didn’t care about you as much.
When nice guys fall in love or care deeply for a girl, they can switch overnight into an overly concerned anxiety machine who is constantly scanning for your pleasure and pain responses.
While this might make them skilled at giving head, the woman will often feel like the guy is too serious and stressed about sex, which makes it hard for her to get into it fully. She’ll feel like he’s forced into doing something he doesn’t really want to do, and that’s a huge turn off for anyone who’s not a rapist.
Not enough emotional range
I’ve probably already belabored this point, but in case it isn’t obvious you need to let your woman feel everything, even the “negative emotions”.
Nice Guy Syndrome is all about emotional control. Nice guys control other peoples feelings in order to feel safe and secure themselves. They try to reduce and minimize the overall range of emotions.
This is a death sentence to attraction.
Attraction is really the combination of a range of feelings. Excitement and boredom, joy and frustration, pleasure and pain, etc.
If you constantly manipulate your girlfriend into feeling “good” all the time, the only thing you guarantee is that she’ll lose sexual interest in you.
Doesn’t take care of himself
Self-care is sexy. From being in good physical shape to prioritizing your needs assertively, people who take care of themselves are simply more fuckable.
Nice guys sacrifice themselves to caretake others. They are often in bad shape physically, or it shows in other ways like a neglected business, ignored friends, quitting difficult projects, or poor mental health.
It’s hard to feel attracted and horny about someone when you feel sorry for them, or resentful about their low self-worth.
When you let yourself go, you’re letting her go too.
Treats partner as his mother
Yeah, women generally don’t feel attracted to their children.
In longer term marriages especially, nice guys tend to become children. They let their wife make all their decisions, they defer to her preferred way of doing things, they wait to be told what to do.
Even basic household chores can become a sign that the man is incapable of taking care of himself. And the worst is when the women is forced to do all the assertive/protective stuff for the partnership and the family.
“Yes dear” is not a sexy statement, and neither is “Whatever you think is best”, no matter how many women try to convince you otherwise.
“Step back, I got this babe” is much hotter.
I’m not saying you should become one of those inconsiderate macho pricks who resists his wife’s every gesture. Just when it matters you need to take the path you know is best and make decisions without permission.
Self-deprecating “humor” and low confidence
For some bizarre reason I spent the first half of my life thinking that making fun of myself was attractive. I have no idea how I reached this conclusion, other than perhaps I thought if girls were laughing then they were also into me.
They weren’t.
Like, they really weren’t!
Yes, confident guys can be self-deprecating, but they rarely do it, and even when they do you can tell that they’re joking and they actually love themselves. When a nice guy does it, you know it’s true: his vibe says that underneath the jokes he thinks of himself as a loser.
You might think it’s humble or endearing to be overly modest about your strengths and to highlight your weaknesses, but actually it’s just pitiful. It makes people feel sorry for you.
And it’s dishonest. You’re not quite the useless victim you’d have everyone believe.
Does feeling sorry for someone make you attracted to them?
What traits stay attractive when the physical attraction wears off?
How a person looks has a limited “Wow!” factor over time. Yes, there are plenty of couples who still think their partner is aesthetically pleasing, but you’ll probably find that this is more a projection of the other traits they find attractive than some refreshing look at their appearance.
More importantly, physical attractiveness is not nearly as important as people believe, especially when it comes to long-term relationships.
It’s much more about behavior than anything else. The way you act and speak is what will really make you hot.
So if, like me, you’re a bit plain looking, fear not: attractiveness is still under your control.
Firstly, integrity and authenticity. The right person for you specifically will be attracted to you being you. You might not make every girl drool, but there is at least a small niche of women who will find themselves attracted to you if you at least demonstrate consistent value-based behavior.
Honesty. Courage. Responsibility. Patience. Leadership and decisiveness. Spontaneity. Assertiveness. Ability to pay attention and understand what they’re saying. Protectiveness. Resourcefulness. Physical health. Kindness (real kindness, not the fake people pleasing shit). Resilience. Sense of humor.
These are all traits that any man can cultivate without needing to compromise his integrity or pretend to be something he’s not.
Choose the one you think is most lacking most in your relationship and dedicate yourself to mastering it. Then choose another and repeat the process.
How do you stay attractive over time?
Despite what Cosmo magazine might tell us, you don’t need to keep mixing it up and surprising your partner. Quite the opposite.
You need to keep doing what they found attractive about you in the first place.
Staying attractive over time means never compromising the guy who won her heart at the beginning.
If he was honest, stay honest even if it upsets her occasionally. If he was decisive, stop being a little bitch who looks to her for guidance in all things. If he was brave, keep taking risks even when she seems to disapprove. If he was kind, pay more attention when she speaks.
The problem is most nice guys start removing their attractive traits one by one in response to negative reactions (or they faked those traits to begin with). They think one negative emotional reaction from their partner means the whole trait has to go, permanently.
You’ve got to understand that what makes you attractive to her will also upset her on occasion. That’s the price she has to pay for having a partner she still wants to fuck.
How you can make massive progress in just a few months!
You can do all this on your own.
Through trial and error, books, courses and online content, you can figure it out slowly piece by piece over time if you dedicate yourself to it and are willing to fail often and get uncomfortable in order to achieve social mastery and build strong self confidence.
Or…
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Thanks for reading
Hope to speak to you soon
Dan Munro
Wanna escape Nice Guy Syndrome and become a confident authentic man? Take my social confidence quiz now to receive free advanced content: https://forms.gle/ZJNyBFzDGzYxMmgP7