Ah, yes: the heartfelt nice guy who wants you to know how much he cares about you by ubiquitously clinging onto you and telling you what’s wrong with your boyfriend.
Every four months or so–basically the beginning of every semster/summer break–I get the same piece of anonymous hogwash titled “To All the Nice Guys” or some other variant. It’s always the same story about a guy who keeps getting passed up by the girl of his dreams for some ambiguously evil “asshole.”
The chief complaint, as if you’ve never read it, is that the nice guy puts in all the time: purse-watching, clothes-advising, hand-wringing and providing a shoulder to cry on. Meanwhile, the asshole, who is presumably responsible for said crying, gets to put his hand under her shirt. It’s not fair! the story whines, so it begs the women of the world to quit dating the “asshole” and date the “nice guy” that wrote this.
Let’s examine the roles of the nice guy and the asshole.
The asshole is the villain in this letter. He’s presumed to be a jock, has perfect teeth and can “get any girl he wants,” so he presumably will use that ability to cheat on the nice guy’s stalkee. Do you see what I see? That’s right: it’s a stereotype.
The asshole isn’t anyone in particular, has committed no particular crime against the woman or nice guy and simply fills the nice guy’s role of “not me.” This stereotype, like all stereotypes, is more damning of the speaker than the target. Therefore, if you are in a relationship, chances are very good that you (yes, you) are an asshole to someone else. You don’t even have to cheat on the woman.
Granted, some assholes are actual assholes. These are typically the guys that act one way to bed a woman, and then transform into an phoneless leacher once the sex gets stale. So, although the writer of this letter is resorting to a stereotype, there could be an actual asshole he fails to mention. However, the letter is black-and-white in this regard: you are either a nice guy or an asshole.
The nice guy in this letter is the token (not-gay) male friend. He’s that guy who’s always hanging out with your girlfriend, buying her Christmas presents on par with/better than yours, taking her out for meals and prying secrets out of her whenever you’re not around. Every time your relationship gets rocky, he’s the one advising her that she “deserves better” (read: him). And why does he dote on her and pretend to be her friend? To get her in the sack.
I know, you’re thinking, “But he’s the nice guy. He wants a relationship.”
The nice guy’s complaint is that he already has the relationship, but no sex. If he was such the understanding friend, he’d realize this woman has no sexual interest in him and maintaining a relationship with such expectations is deceitful. So, by putting on an act to get sex from a girl that’s in a relationship with someone else … Sweet Ringo Starr, the nice guy is actually an asshole!
Now if you noticed a striking similarity between this and every emo song ever written, you’ve won yourself a cigar.
Whether it’s a song by Fall Out Boy, Good Charlotte or Dashboard Confessional, it is the anthem of the duplicitous “nice guy.” The protaganist is that guy who is “trapped in the unbearble sadness” of not having the woman of his dreams. He may have even had a one night stand with the woman, making him “a notch in her bedpost,” but she stayed with her asshole (a.k.a. boyfriend). So what does he do? He whines to anyone who will listen that he’s not getting his due; in other words, he’s bragging in the locker room like an asshole.
But who’s really at blame in this typical tale? The nice guy blames the asshole and maybe the woman. But if he was really a nice guy, wouldn’t he have told her no?
There’s an old concept that “nice guys,” as emo songs and this letter describe them, always ignore: minding their own business. There’s nothing wrong with being friends with a woman in a relationship, but by actively participating in the sabotage of her relationship, he’s butting into a situation that will never work out for him.
With the voluntary androgyny of emo-ness, there’s a pitfall: self-imposed emascualtion. The nice guy in these songs is frustrated by the very role he’s adopted: the token gay friend. In fact, the woman in question might not even notice him because he’s working his way in from the inside as an infiltrator.
If he wants to be an androgynous nice person, there’s a better role model: Emily Dickinson. The emo kid is already on his way there by staying home, writing a lot of poetry and waiting to die alone because “nobody understands him.” But nobody wants to really be Emily Dickinson (not even Ms. Dickinson, according to her poetry), so it’s obvious that this is all an act–a ploy for your undue sympathy.
Let’s just say, for the sake of covering all bases, that the nice guy is, in fact, better for this woman than the asshole. Now let’s look at the letter and emo songs.
If you’re trying to gain the affections of a woman, would you tell her how stupid she is? Both do so in this case, explaining she’s stupid for not dating him.
How about telling her that she’s marginally evil for “playing with your emotions” by being your friend? I’m sure that women love it when you devalue their friendship.
And do you think you’ll really convince her that you’re on her side by calling the man that she might very well love an asshole? Any man who’s tried to tell a woman how to feel will line up to slug you just for being an idiot. Seriously, if she loves the guy, she’s going to defend him and you’ve made the situation even more untenable.
So if you’re sitting at home, IMing a woman to tell her about your latest song or livejournal entry, hoping she’ll figure out that it’s about her and leave her “asshole” of a boyfriend, I got news for you: you deserve to be alone. Give yourself a few more cuts so you can cry about your self-imposed shortcomings, because you don’t know a thing about being nice.
Or here’s an idea: find a woman and tell her how you actually feel. If you can do so without getting maced, you might actually be a nice guy.