Mr. Nice Guy or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being the Beta Guy

When I was in middle school and got into one of my usual school related trouble ( I don’t remember if I tried to cover up a bad grade and it backfired or I got one because I clearly did not study and it was found out, but I guess that is not the point), my parents, both of them mind you, told me, “you are a nice guy and everyone always says what a nice guy you are, but in life nice guys always finish last, and you cannot go through life just being a nice guy.” For a long time I could never understand what they meant by that. I thought I knew what they meant, but I just could not understand how parents could tell their son, their baby boy, that he should not be a nice guy. I mean, I know that they meant that I just cannot be a nice guy alone, but that in order to succeed in life I would also have to be smart, hard working, and skilled; though as I have grown up that particular piece of wisdom has never left that middle area of the mind and keeps popping up every once in a while.

The reason I bring this up is because as I have gotten older I have come to realize more and more how accurate and dead on my parents were. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has parents, knows parents, or have ever seen half decent parents in action. No matter how much you disagreed or disagree with them, in the end, or at least as you get older, you start to appreciate more and more just how right parents are about all those things you thought you knew better than them. The “nice guys finish last” is just one of those things that once again they were spot on about.

The problem with us nice guys is that we are really not that nice, and before people completely tune me out and disagree, just hear me out. Nice guys are not bad people, it is just the reason why we are so nice is not as completely altruistic as we would like to believe.

Most of us, and I can say us cause I am one of the guys, do it because we probably were not the biggest kids who could just physically impose our will on others and get what we wanted, nor the loudest or whiniest of the kids and complain or agitate our way to our goals, we were the ones that chose what at the time seemed like the path of least resistance to achieve our aim (that aim could be anything from getting attention to getting some reward). We learned from an early age that to avoid conflict (and most of us hate conflict), attain our targets praise and admiration, or just receive some approval all we had to be was nice and helpful and to put others needs ahead of our own. Now again, I am not saying that we don’t do nice things just because we want to help or be polite, it is just that the reason why we do it all the time is because we have conditioned ourselves to believe that this is how we can get what we want.

Have you ever walked along a street or subway and bumped into someone and then immediately said sorry as they snickered or looked like you just victimized them, but as soon as you with your head down were walking away thought to yourself, “why the hell did I just apologize when he/she were clearly in the wrong?” Well, that was being the nice guy to avoid conflict, and that is beta, my friends. Nothing wrong with it when you are a kid but a bigger and bigger problem as you get older.

The thing is that as you grow, life becomes more and more about respect and less and less about approval and likeability. This is especially evident in dealings with the opposite sex. No matter how many times women say that what they are looking for is a nice guy, what they really mean is that they want a guy who doesn’t give a damn and who cares about his needs before others, and then they want to try to turn him into a nice guy, but he will not let them because he is not a pushover and women will only love that more. To us nice guys that guy is known as the jerk and asshole.

That is where our problems begin because we hear that a girl wants the nice guy, but we see that she goes out with the jerk, and we get frustrated and angry. She says she wants a guy that listens, but the problem is that we hear what she says and not what she actually means. Of course like most problems in life there is also the other side, and on the other side the girl does not see the nice guy we are trying to project, all she sees is a guy who is a pushover and who if it came to conflict would put the needs of the challenger before his, and even more importantly her own. What she sees is a Beta male who thinks that what she is looking for is a nice guy, when in reality she is looking for an Alpha male (or for those of you not familiar with game theory the lead dog).

You might be asking yourself why am I even talking about this, you are more likely asking yourself why did I just read all that babble? Well that is where our journey begins. You, dear reader, are most likely in the same situation as I and have made the same observations, and are now asking yourself what is wrong with me and what am I to do? There is nothing wrong with you, it is just the society that we live in, but in order for us to survive and succeed we need to know more about our surrounding and more importantly more about ourselves, and only then can we go about trying to decide what to do. That is the hope, because I have no idea, hopefully one of you does and if not then with some luck maybe we will stumble on a clue or something, and soon.

Lights -- Camera -- Action

Welcome to my little area of the Internet. I hope you enjoy your stay, although don't bet on it.

There is really only one point to this blog and that is for me to vent on any issue I feel like ranting on. Mostly it will probably revolve around post feminist society, relationships (or lack thereof), current events, politics, general life and hopefully some humor.

Buckle up and don't forget to comment, cause misery loves company and I love to hear other peoples thoughts and rants (even when they are about hating on me).