The ‘Real’ Nice

It is truly one of the cosmic ironies of the universe that women should completely lack the capacity to truly appreciate the niceties of men – yet still perpetually claim to desire those niceties.

With the notable exceptions of natural born Alphas, I believe most men would overwhelmingly default to being compassionate, empathic souls, steeped in romantic notions of chivalry, dedication and honor. Whether this sentiment is the result of a genuine dedication to principle or inspired by a hope that women will appreciate his sacrifices to principle and reciprocate with her intimacy is really a Crisis of Motive.

That was really the gist of my question – are guys just playing nice to get laid or is “niceness” (for lack of a better term) something deep rooted that they have to necessarily repress in order to be taken seriously as a sexual competitor because women would despise him were he to be as ‘nice’ as he really has the capacity for.

Most guys make lame attempts to redefine raw, natural, Alpha masculinity to fit into accord with all these noble qualities. Tragically women and reality prove them wrong at virtually every instance, but their fallback denial is an easy one (ironically provided for them by the Feminine Imperative) – “those women who don’t appreciate your niceness are just Damaged Women®, no quality woman would value an asshole above a real Nice Guy.”

Men are simply never rewarded for displays of these higher-self aspirations with genuine appreciation of women. They certainly appreciate them on a by-need basis, and as a ‘value added‘ benefit, but the esoteric, self-actualizing concerns men believe women should prioritize as primarily attractive aspects of themselves are never what they hope women will appreciate. If anything overly ‘nice’ men are punished for it, either in the instance or progressively over time.

The only way to garner true appreciation, true valuation, truly inspired displays of affection, from women is to covertly imply the risk of losing a high-value Man. Whether the man is even truly of a higher value is irrelevant, only the perception needs to be reinforced for her. Risk of loss is all that factors. Risk of losing an investment in optimizing hypergamy is weighed against her own perceived sexual market value and the effort needed to reinvest in another, potentially higher SMV man. Risk of loss is why her imagination furiously spins the wheel in her head.

That sounds horrible, but the truth often is. Women’s lack of appreciation for the more compassionate natures of men, and their consuming regard for rewarding men that appease their hypergamy is so well proven it’s become predictable enough to develop techniques and behavioral modifications to exploit it (i.e. Game). Most guys would like nothing better than to honestly play the loving, white knight, romantic who women bemoan a lack of in the world. Yet for every sonnet composed, every provision met, every compliment delivered and every well planned candlelit dinner conversation, there’s a woman feverishly fucking her Alpha bad boy in his low rent apartment for fear of losing him to the competition.

Attraction and Arousal

Occasionally we return to a common theme of debate with self-proclaimed ‘red pill women’ in various manosphere comment threads about how women may be attracted to certain characteristics men would like to identify as being ‘nice’, but no woman is aroused sexually by these qualities. As I’ve argued in the past, attraction and arousal are two separate elements of hypergamy. Alpha Fucks is arousing, Beta Bucks is attractive.

A couch surfing Alpha will be arousing enough to bang women indiscriminately despite his impoverished condition. He has no relational equity, and so frustrates the efforts of men who believe that the definition of Alpha ought to be based on the equity they hope women will appreciate. Women will return (even if just mentally) to the callous or cavalier Alpha because he arouses her, but she will stay faithful to her well-providing husband because what he offers is attractive to her.

This is why I say, by and large, women love most men for what they represent – once they cease to represent that, once they stumble in maintaining that, hypergamy is free to run. On a personal level this may be you losing a job or how you failed a shit test, on a meta scale it may be women’s social capacity to provide for themselves.

A lot of guys get lost in these definitions. They believe a woman at her word in what she finds attractive in a man, but then conflate this list of qualities (read any woman’s online dating profile) with what a woman finds arousing. While there may be attraction without arousal, there is never arousal by way of what makes a man attractive. Your respectability, sterling character and being good with kids doesn’t make you look any better when your shirt comes off.

The New Nice

There’s an interesting social convention that’s developed as Game-awareness has become more widespread. As with all social conventions it provides a convenient rationale for women to cling to in order to alleviate uncomfortable truths, but the dilemma of the Faux-Nice Guy has picked up a lot of steam in the feminist / feminine-primary set of women. I covered this a while back in Play Nice, but since then I’ve been reading more about how this convention is dovetailing into the re-imagining of a so called Rape Culture.

As women become more aware of Game (even if just peripherally) there’s developed a convenient distrust of men’s ‘Nice’ qualities. The dynamics I put forth in The Savior Schema all become suspect for what in essence is really a tit for tat exchange of services rendered for intimacy at a later date (once his niceties have proven his worth).

The problem with this is twofold, first, the guy’s relying on Beta Game, convinced that what women say they are attracted to is what they are also aroused by, believe that faux Nice Guys are blowing their chances with the women they believe will eventually come to love them for their earnest Niceness. If all these charlatan Nice Guys are jading their pool of prospective nice-appreciating women it ruins their Game. Consequently they get agitated by women doubting any man’s sincerity and by extension their own. This then leads to Nice Guy infighting and greater, more sincere displays of a Niceness that really only ruins their Game that much more.

Second, women’s doubt of a Nice Guy’s sincerity and unsolicited ‘niceness’ is really a red herring meant to distract men employing Nice Guy Game away from the point that they simply don’t find them all that attractive (and certainly not arousing). Being nice, supportive, dutiful and possessing all the intrinsic characteristics on her list of attractive traits in the hope of proving his worth and qualifying for her intimate acceptance is really one long Appeal to a Woman’s Reason. It’s very convenient for a woman to enjoy (and often become dependent upon) the services a Nice Guy renders to her, but when that Nice Guy is discovered to have a sexual interest in her the “you weren’t really nice, you just expected something sexual in return” social convention finds its use.

Women have been aware of this Nice Guy Game, prequalification schema for generations, because it used to actually work in a time and culture where the Beta Bucks / parental investment side of women’s hypergamy was the predominant factor for determining of a man’s intimate acceptability. The problem now is that the deductive reasoning men use – find out what women want in order to become intimate, become it and solve the problem – in order to achieve a woman’s intimacy comes from an old set of books that no woman is still using. However the reliance on the responsibilities outlined in that first set of books are still useful when it comes to control the intents and actions of men.

Chivalry is an anachronism in a post-feminist society, particularly where equalism is concerned, but it’s a liability when it’s useful to the feminine imperative. It may be a man’s duty not to expect sex in exchange for his niceties and services, but when his chivalry is useful to her then it becomes his responsibility.