For me, the best advice I ever heard was “Being nice isn’t a personality, it’s literally the bare minimum”.

I always thought of myself as the “Nice Guy”, who just couldn’t ever find a girl to be with me. I didn’t understand it, I was funny, I was nice to girls, I did things like read books and watch intellectual movies, and so many stereotypes. I was single for most of high school and college and all the while I thought this.

It got worse with message boards/Reddit, where I had other people convincing me that yeah, I’m right, it’s the women who are wrong. They don’t want nice guys anymore, they want bad guys, they don’t know what is best for them. This caused resentment and anger in me.

In college I was lucky enough to meet some new friends that brought me out of this mindset, who sternly but lovingly told me that hey, maybe I wasn’t actually as nice as I thought I was. Maybe thinking that women only want bad guys and being upset no one wanted to date me was much more obvious then I let on, and the biggest gut punch that I think most nice guys need to here: Everyone knows you’re not being nice, you’re trying to manipulate them. Looking back, yeah I was, I was trying to be nice so they would want to be with me, not because I wanted to be nice.

After that I worked on myself. Not the cliche hit the gym or anything, but just worked on being more pleasant to be around. Being more self aware. My sarcasm is funny - to people who I know get it and understand I’m being sarcastic, otherwise they probably think I’m an asshole. Just be nice to people and don’t expect anything, just be a good person. Work on my personality, nice isn’t a personality, build hobbies and things to talk about, and show interest in other people’s hobbies - genuinely.

Which worked. By being less self absorbed and focused on getting a girlfriend, I became someone who was attractive, and not because I was buff or attractive physically, but because I was not exhausting to be around. I came out the other side a better person, and I hope others can too. Looking inward and having those hard conversations with yourself are not fun, but that’s life. Nothing in life comes easy, and working on yourself emotionally is one of the hardest, but also rewarding things you can do.

Nice guys don’t get shit from my experience

This is all going to sound super dumb and obvious, but I think that underlines how delusional young straight men can become about themselves and the world. The first step was sloooowly coming to the realization that:

A) I’m not unique, special, important, and/or entitled to anything. Ever.

B) I’m not nearly as fucking smart as I think I am, and everyone else is much smarter than I think they are. Which is the perfect combination to make me incredibly stupid.

After it took me embarrassingly far into my 20’s to come to terms with all that, I literally had to start from scratch on retraining how I thought about how I interacted with/viewed everything and everyone.

I had no empathy, respect, or regard. I spent years blaming my lack of quality relationships on other people and “society.” Whatever the fuck that means.

I was living in a vacuum. All I could do was judge people on whether or not they were worth my time, while having zero understanding that I absolutely wasn’t worth anyone’s time.

I thought being funny, knowing things, and being good at stuff made me a real catch and, sadly, better than everybody.

My father is a massive selfish pile of shit, and I spent my youth hating him for all of those exact same behaviors. I dunno what finally let me see it, but it took way too long to get there.

Years later I would read a quote from (I think) Sylvia Plath about how “women are not machines you put the nice coins in until the sex comes out” (paraphrasing, didn’t Google) and that exactly defines how I thought about women.

By my late 20s I had begun correcting my perspective. I spent a lot of time working on what I have to offer, rather than what others can offer me. It improved the quality of all my relationships. I’m in my early 40s now, ten years into a wonderful relationship. I look back at myself and think about how small and fragile I was. Now I think a lot about time. How precious it is, and you can’t get it back. My partner now loves me so much, I want to try every day to return that love and be worth her time.

I see other guys at all ages living in the same sad little world I lived in. I wish I could run a seminar teaching dudes they aren’t that fucking great.