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If you're the nice girl, it might not be getting you any dates.
By Ossiana Tepfenhart — Last updated on Apr 29, 2023
I can’t really name how many times I have been told that I need to “be nicer to guys."
It’s a chorus that almost every single woman has heard at least once in their life. (Actually, if we’re honest, most of us will hear that at least fifty times a year, usually from the guys themselves.)
It's terrible, awful advice and we say it all the time.
If you’re like me, you’re probably sick of hearing this terrible advice, too.
It is, in fact, some of the most horrible advice I’ve ever received on how to snag a guy. Why? Because, as many women can tell you, “nice” isn’t enough, and actually doing what guys say they want you to do often ends up with them losing respect for you. I’d even go so far as to say that the nicer you behave, the less men actually respect you.
Think about it this way: “Nice,” means to be polite, sweet, and agreeable. It means being willing to make sure that guys are happy and pleased, right? It means that we avoid hurting their feelings.
Most women I know already tiptoe around guys’ feely-feels, because of the fact that being rude to them can often make them get violent, mean, and just terrifying if you’re unlucky.
But rejection aside, let’s really look at what men want in a woman and what happens when women give in to the desires men have.
If you sleep with a guy because you like him and because you want to make sure he has a fun time, you get called a sl*t. I know this because it happened to me all the time in college.
Guys decided that they were “the man” and that I was “damaged goods” because I decided to share myself with them. (Uh, what? Double standards, much?) Yes, it was cruel of them, and frankly, I regret sleeping with them because all I wanted to do was make them happy whereas they didn’t care about using and tossing me at all.
If you refuse to sleep with a guy in an “acceptable to him” time frame, then you get called a slew of different names.
You get called frigid, and mean, and are told to “be nicer” otherwise they’ll leave. Or, maybe they’ll respect you a bunch while they cheat on you with other women. I know because when I did this, that’s what happened to me.
Either way, trying to be a "nice person" or a "good girl" doesn't really do you favors, per se. If you're nice they don't respect you, and if you don't sleep with them, they hate you. It's better to just do what you want to do and forget about their feelings because you're going to end up being punished either way.
The same happens when you're nice to guys who are bad dates.
If you take the high road and try to “be nice” about a guy’s bad behavior on a date, the behavior gets worse.
In fact, this is often the way that guys choose their girlfriends if they have abusive relationships. They look for women who “turn the other cheek” because they know they will get away with more. Go ahead, ask me how I know this.
When you have what men want in a woman and you treat a guy well, he might appreciate it. However, we’ve all also heard of women who treat their exes like their weight in gold, only to have the guy leave as soon as he’s decided he can “get someone better.” Or, maybe he just likes the idea of having his cake and eating it too.
More often than not, I hear women complain that they’re unappreciated than I hear of them dating someone who appreciates the effort they put in.
Such are the double standards of dating as a woman. It’s a Catch-22, and once you’ve been around the block a couple of years, you realize that being nice doesn’t do s***.
But it gets worse. As you get older, you also see that guys tend to stick with girls who really don't actually treat them too well at all. I personally can’t name how many guys I’ve seen who have settled down with girls who don’t cook for them, insult them, refuse to contribute anything to household bills, and just act terribly towards them.
I hear their complaints all the time from my guy friends who work with them. I heard them every time that I see a lonely man drinking at the bar. I even see it online.
What amazes me about these men is that they date horrible women, they commit knowing that things aren’t already peachy, then they won’t leave even when the girls treat them even worse. This isn’t a one-off thing, either. Most guys I’ve met didn't stay with the girl who treated them the best; they stay with a girl who’s been mediocre to them.
Clearly, those guys didn’t date them because they were “good girls” or "nice people". They may have dated those girls on their appearance, for their social status, or because they felt like they were supposed to. Some might have been nice, too.
But in all honestly, it’s clear that Nice didn’t keep them by their side. So, let’s stop telling women that “being nice” is what men want in a woman and that it's all they need to do in order to get a guy. It’s a terrible piece of advice that will backfire.
Rather, there’s a certain point where women need to realize that it’s up to us to say enough is enough. We need to be okay with walking away from guys who treat us badly. We need to be okay with being blunt or even cruel with rejections because all that being polite has done is create men who can’t handle rejection anymore.
We need to be okay with giving guys the cruel, honest truth about dating. We also need to realize that guys have needs other than "nice," and unfortunately for men, it's not our responsibility to meet them.
Yes, being nice is a good trait to have, but in this dating field, it's more about what else you have to offer. Sadly, at times, it's not worth it. At other times, it is. It's up to you to decide whether it's worth it, but if it is, by all means, stop feeling like you have to be nice to men who won't appreciate it.
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Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, New Theory Magazine, and others.