How nice or jerky should a man be?

 

“Save in the good times, spend in the bad times.”

  

I tend to think to think that most men, on more than a few occasions in their life, have asked themselves or others why certain women end up with men who treat them badly.  It’s a question most men will ask, as contrary to what many fallacy mindset women will try and convince you (and herself), most men (>80% of men) are nice guys.

Q-tip 1:

It is an easy link for women to broadcast that most men are jerks, because women do not like to face up to the reality that most relationships and interactions consist of the woman playing with the man’s emotions, far more often than the inverse scenario. 

Where do I stand on this topic?  As always, I like to illustrate the variables before issuing the answer.  Although this post was devised over eight years ago, and granted my writing is most likely more polished now than it was then, nothing has occurred in the interim time to change my view one bit.  Time will pass, life may change, but women’s emotional habits, psychology and decision-making generally stay the same.

Whilst I would fully recommend reading the full post, I snapshot the following:

·       The hotter the woman, the more of a jerk the man should be.

·       The less attractive the woman, the more beneficial it is to do nice things for her.

·       Any man, with any woman, should not be too nice, and he should not be too nice all the time.

·       The more physically attractive (especially 8/10 or greater) the man, the more productive his niceness will be.

·       The less physically attractive (in particular below 7/10) the man, the more productive his jerkiness will be.

·       The bigger the gap in physical attractiveness between the woman and man – where she is (in usual scenarios) better looking than him, the more of a jerk the man needs to be.

·       The smaller the gap in physical attractiveness between the man and woman (and in particular in rare situations where he is as or more physically attractive than her in gender relative terms), the nicer, within reason, the man needs to be.

·       Even a hot man (say 8.5/10) hitting on a cute woman (say 7/10), in spite of the above points, should not construe being too nice as being beneficial.  It is simply more a case of not being too cocky, arrogant, or apathetic.  The nuance should not be oversighted.

·       Men should not be too giving, in both emotional and monetary terms, too early on in the relationship dynamic.  If he is, he sets himself up for a fall later on.

·       If a man attains other appeal blessings – personality, wealth, high status, charisma, style etc – in addition to his top end physical attractiveness, he needs to be a margin nicer in comparison to the equally good-looking male counterpart without these none male beauty positives. 

·       An aesthetically pleasing man with very little else to offer – hence, a lunkhead jerk – should just continue being a jerk.  There are enough cute and hot women out there who love jerks for being jerks to outweigh the jerks in number per se, and him becoming nice would only serve to lose his own unique (or at least rare) selling point.

·       If a woman has a self-opinion of herself that is higher than what she truly has to offer (hence mainly her physical beauty), a man consequently needs to crank up his jerkiness level to align with her self-leverage. 

The limitations of nice guy / jerk online information field

I do not mind saying that I’m quite critical of the information given to men on this subject – information and advice distributed by both women and men. 

My critique towards women advising men will always be primarily due to the fact that women by nature, and this includes even the more honest women out there, will often inform men that they (men) should do the things that aren’t in conjunction with how women truly feel or how women act out in reality.  Don’t get me wrong, some female writers and vloggers do give a reasonable amount of honest counselling, but it seems to me like they are incapable of doing this in entirety. 

My condemnation towards a lot of male instructors was alluded to further up.  That is, these men are only offering one source of instruction on a one size fits all basis.  They are, or at least the vast majority are, never taking into consideration the variables which impact on the sweet spots between niceness and jerkiness in so far as analysing robustly the differing calibre of the woman and man within the dynamic.

Maybe this is due to time constraints?  I accept that to put a video together (and to a lesser extent, a written post) with all the editing involved is a hard enough task as it is, therefore to sub-divide each inconstant as I subscribed above (and there are a few more I haven’t shown) may be beyond feasibility.  On the other hand, are they just ignorant to the variables, or too bloody-minded to accept this is a major implication on the final product and end results?

A final thought

When all is said and done, and with all the complexities to consider as explained above, it perhaps is an easy conclusion for a man to simply say that he should just be himself, and let the rest take care of itself.  This argument could be further reinforced when you consider that, when you do not know a woman personally, you only have your gut instincts and past life experience with other similar women to fall on.  She could in fact be different to your perception of how she is.

To be fair, this isn’t half bad advice.  If a man obtains the knowledge that women are complex creatures, and he holds the authority that she just accepts him for who he is and the rest is the rest, then in theory this approach should be a golden ticket.  It is effectively then, in theory, no skin of his nose either way.

The problem is, this is, as repeated, in theory.  In practice, most men do get stressed over women, they do get manipulated by women, and they usually leave the scene of crime with more questions than answers simultaneous to placing his head in his hands.  Therefore, a man being himself in isolation to anything else, as good as it sounds on paper, rarely can be used in practice to reap the final rewards.

This is why I always think there is a sweet spot to strike between the two schools of thought.  I agree that a man should not change his general persona and habits for a woman (although compromises always have a place in my life), however this should be in conjunction with ascertaining the full grasp of how women are psychologically and emotionally made up, and how their decisions are a by-product of this.  When you mix the two pieces of the puzzle together – being yourself in addition to understanding women - perhaps then it will genuinely be no skin off your nose.

Q-tip 2:

Many men are outright misogynists, and they detest women of all kinds because of the ill experiences they have sustained.  Believe it or not, there are some men out there who know women for what they are, they choose to tailor their game to how women will act, they accept the outcomes for what they will be, and they gain pleasure in sharing these experiences (which will sometimes be failures of some nature, coupled with more than a few success stories) to benefit the good guys of the world in hope of a brighter day for them.  I guess it is up to others to distinguish between the two types of men as exampled.