Thrive Again - Your relationship podcast

Why Nice Guys Silently Ruin Relationships

• Michael & Amy • Season 1 • Episode 69

Share episode

Ever felt like kindness is your superpower, yet your relationship still feels flat, tense, or strangely distant? Michael goes solo to unpack the quiet patterns that so many men mistake for love: covert contracts, conflict avoidance, and the endless chase for approval that looks like connection but drains desire. Through candid personal stories and clear frameworks, he lays out why these strategies once kept you safe, why they now sabotage intimacy, and how to trade people pleasing for honest, grounded presence.

We explore the five core behaviours that silently erode trust: giving with hidden expectations, smoothing over every disagreement, seeking validation instead of being known, suppressing direction out of fear of being controlling, and overgiving that creates pressure rather than warmth. You’ll hear what happens inside a partnership when needs go unnamed, why “I’m fine” breaks trust, and how a lack of clear leadership forces your partner into roles she never wanted. Michael shows how authenticity and simple, steady direction can restore polarity, safety, and attraction.

Expect practical steps you can use today: naming a need without defensiveness, inviting healthy conflict without escalation, offering plans with room for choice, and giving without a ledger. If phrases like “I say yes when I mean no” or “I give so much and feel unseen” ring true, this conversation offers a path back to truth, clarity, and real closeness. For more support, check out No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover and our coaching options for one‑on‑one or group work where you can practise these shifts in safety.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs it, and leave a quick review so more couples can find these tools. Your stories and questions shape future episodes—message us on Instagram or Facebook to keep the conversation going.

Thankyou for listening, if you liked it, please remember to subscribe.

Join our Private "Thriving relationships - Deepening connection to self and others" community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1107209283451758/

Website: https://michaelandamy.com.au/

Join our free 7 day relationship challenge: https://michaelandamy.com.au/free-relationship-challenge

If you would like to book in a private discovery call with us, here is the link: https://michaelandamy.com.au/call

SPEAKER_00:

We're Michael and Amy, your couple's connection coaches. Our mission is to help couples thrive using a conscious and holistic approach. This podcast is for couples and singles who want to unlock their relationship potential and reconnect on a deeper, more meaningful soul level. We share insights, client breakthroughs, and personal stories to help move your relationship from surviving to thriving.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to another episode of Thrive Again, your relationship podcast. You're here with me, and Amy isn't. So it's just it's just a solo episode today, and I am going to be running through a very familiar topic for me. Uh, because the title is Why Nice Guys Silently Ruin Relationships, and a lot of this is based on my own experience as a people pleaser, as the nice guy, as the guy that avoids conflict and stays silent and doesn't know how to speak his truth. Um, there was a lot of silent little contracts that were that I'd placed in there with expectations that really just added confusion into the dynamic and a lack of clarity. So that's really what I want to dive into. Um yeah, I see this pattern in so many men uh that are in relationships, and yeah, just before we go anywhere, let me say this nice guys are not bad men, they're not weak, they're generally not immature, they're just men who have learned a set of survival strategies in childhood that made perfect sense at the time. But today it's silently sabotaging their connections in relationships as adults. So I just want to get this thing clear is that most nice guys grew up believing one foundational rule, and that is if I'm good, agreeable, low maintenance, and never make any waves or upset anyone, I'll get love. So maybe they had an overwhelmed parent, maybe they had a parent that withdrew approval when they spoke up. Maybe they had a family where conflict felt unsafe. Or maybe they were praised for being the good girl, the good boy or the good um, in this case the good boy, and the easy kid, uh, or the emotional caretaker and the helper. So they basically learn to suppress their own needs to avoid conflict. They stay small, they to please, to perform, to be whatever the adult needed them to be. So it was like this adaptation that sort of took place. And it worked as a child, it kept them safe, it kept them kind of predictable, and it actually earned them love in their eyes. But when this boy grows into a man and he walks into an intimate relationship, these same strategies now begin to destroy the connection because he avoids discomfort, he hides his truth, he he gives, but only to get something back. So there's like this silent manipulation that happens, and all the while he's suppressing his masculine energy, he becomes resentful, he doesn't know how to express it, and he becomes kind of invisible in the relationship. So it's this silent undercurrent because they're not ruining relationships loudly, like we sometimes see in the movies, they're ruining them through silence. So today I'm actually going to break down the five biggest ways this pattern quietly erodes intimacy, not from judgment, but from understanding. Because once a man actually sees these patterns, he can shift them. Alright, so let's go through the first one. The first one is nice guys operate through hidden contracts. This is the most common nice guy behaviour. I definitely had this in my relationship. Here's how it kind of works He gives, but there's an unspoken ex expectation that's attached to that giving. He thinks if I'm always kind, she'll appreciate me. Or if I never argue, then she'll give me affection. If I take care of everything, she'll never leave me. These are called covert contracts. And they're never spoken. But believe me, they run the show, and this is how they ran in my relationship. So what's the problem with this? Well, his partner has no idea she's part of an agreement, right? So when she doesn't respond the way that he imagined, like more sex, more appreciation, more affection, more attention, then he feels betrayed. He becomes passive, aggressive, distant, or maybe resentful. But the issue here is that nice guys don't know how to express their needs. They hint at them indirectly, and they hope that their partner will read their mind, but when she doesn't, then it slowly poisons the relationship. So this is the covert contract. So just understand nice guys operate through hidden contracts, and people are generally not aware that they're part of those contracts in his mind. So number two, nice guys avoid conflict at all costs. This is massive. Ask any nice guy. I just about promise you they have discomfort at the thought of conflict, whether it's with their boss, with a mate, with their partner, of course, with anyone really, because they believe conflict equals rejection, or conflict equals danger, or conflict equals I'm failing as a partner. So they swallow it, they swallow it down, this emotion, they minimize the problems, they pretend everything's fine, maybe like smooth it over, but avoiding conflict doesn't prevent disconnection, it actually creates it. And this is something I've had to learn in my own work in relationship, right? Because I've had to collapse some of these patterns too. So when a man refuses to tell the truth, his partner feels alone, these issues sort of start to pile up, the tension really grows in the background, and resentment builds, and guess what erodes? Trust, right? Trust erodes. Because she stops believing when he's saying I'm fine, that he's actually fine. She can feel the suppression. Women are intuitive, right? She can also feel the hidden frustration. This is why men can't hide, like, and as frustrating as that is, like, it is the truth, and eventually the nice guy explodes, right? And it's never nice, right? Not over the big issue, but normally it's something tiny that he explodes over because it's been building and building and building in the background. So avoiding conflict isn't kindness. That's almost a mantra that's needed for every nice guy. Avoiding conflict isn't kindness, it's emotional abandonment of himself and of the relationship. So that's the second one. Nice guys avoid conflict at all costs. The third one. Nice guys seek validation, not true intimacy. They don't want connection. They want approval, dressed up as connection. Right? So they shape shift into whatever they they think will be liked. Alright, it's like this chameleonizing effect. Right, they agree to things they don't want to do. They say yes when they really mean no. They hide their preferences. This creates performance, right? Not intimacy. So their partner never really gets to see the real person underneath underneath the facade, and never get to experience that. Yep. So intimacy actually requires authenticity, but that's the very thing that the man is afraid of. If a woman cannot feel a man's truth, she cannot feel him. The end. Because women are emotional beings, they have this ability to attune to what's happening in the emotional body, whether there's authenticity or whether there's a facade or a covering over. So nice guys unintentionally deprive their partner of depth, of polarity, of emotional honesty. And eventually this leads to disconnection and the one thing that collapses is desire. I know that Amy's spoken about this many times. She lost desire for me. It was unattractive that I wasn't able to step into masculinity, which was stating my preferences, saying yes when I actually mean yes, saying no when I mean no, like not agreeing to things anymore. Just because I want to smooth things over, I needed to change that pattern. So that was number three, which is nice guys seek validation, not true intimacy. It's all dressed up. So number four is nice guys suppress their masculine energy and leadership. And this is what I was alluding to in the last point. Most guys are terrified of being seen as controlling or demanding. For me, like in my early childhood, I witnessed someone that was controlling and that was demanding and that was overbearing and that was domineering. So that's the last thing I want to be. Right? So instead, I became passive. I stopped initiating, I stopped making decisions, right? I'm waiting for permission to lead.

unknown:

Right?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm outsourcing emotional leadership to my partner, which means that she has to step into her masculinity. She needs to step into leadership. And actually, what happens is it's not that she has to step into it, it's more that I'm attracting that kind of woman. Someone who's already in their masculinity. And in order for them to remain in their masculinity, even though they don't want to be in their masculinity, I have to remain in my feminine. And so the partner ends up carrying, right? The emotional load, the relational leadership, the planning, the responsibility, the conflict navigation, the endless list. Right? So this actually drains her. She doesn't want to be in that position. She starts to feel more like his mother, not his lover. The nice guy thinks he's being considerate, but she feels abandoned, unsupported. Right? Masculine energy isn't dominance, and this is what I teach with men. It's not dominance, it's direction. When a man suppresses that, the whole relationship becomes unstable. So that is really like a massive one in this context of nice guy syndrome. Nice guys suppress their masculine energy and leadership because they're worried or terrified about being seen as someone who's dominating or domineering. So the final point I want to bring up is number five. Their overgiving creates pressure instead of love. Nice guys often pride themselves on being generous, right? Because in order to be seen as being the generous one, I get to receive something from that. I get acceptance, I get belonging, I get love. So if I do enough, I'll be enough. That's maybe a mantra that a nice guy runs by. If I sacrifice myself, she'll love me. If I take care of everything, she won't leave. And this creates invisible pressure. The partner feels obligated, she feels watched, she feels like she owes him something. She feels guilt rather than gratitude. And the nice guy giving isn't actually generosity, it's emotional bargaining. Right, you gotta get this, you gotta understand this. When when the partner doesn't respond in the way that he hoped, he becomes hurt, quiet, or cold. And over time, this turns love into sort of like this transactional energy that takes place. So that was the final one, which is their overgiving or their generosity creates pressure instead of love. So, I want to reiterate this: nice guys don't ruin relationships because they're bad men, they're ruining relationships because men were never really shown how to be fully themselves in love. The good news everything a nice guy does can be unlearned. When a man starts expressing his needs directly, setting boundaries clearly, embracing healthy conflict, right, stepping into owning his truth, stepping into leadership, he becomes not just a better partner, he becomes a free man himself. Right, because he's anchored in himself, he's practicing authenticity, he's choosing truth over approval, and that is the biggest learning for me. Was once I learn how to how to flex those muscles, and I realize that I'm not abandoned, I'm not lost, I'm not left in the dark when I do it, it gets easier the next time. So, this is actually where real intimacy begins. And I wonder if this is you. Like, if you're a man listening to this, or maybe you're a woman and you're listening to this, and you're like, Man, that's my partner all over, then there is work to do if you want to turn this ship around, otherwise, it's just gonna the the gap's gonna become wider, the resentment's gonna grow larger, and the relationship's gonna eventually collapse or implode, and by then there's too much pressure for the man to change. And so what I encourage you to do is there's two two different couple of different paths you can go with this. The first one is start to educate yourself, start to read books, listen to podcasts. No more Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover is an amazing book that actually changed my life. So start there, and if you feel like you're ready to do some deeper work to uncover some patterns, I have a couple of options personally working one-on-one with me or in a group container where we're dismantling these behaviors in safety so that we can practice authenticity, we can start to step into leadership, and you can realize that actually, even though it feels unsafe initially, what's really happening is you're becoming a more authentic version of yourself, which is actually what you're on this earth to be. Alright, thank you so much for listening. If you've come this far, um, I definitely appreciate um you listening, considering it's just me and I don't have Amy on. Um, but yeah, I hope you tune in to the next podcast. And if you have any questions, make sure you send us a message through Instagram or Facebook, um, and we'd love to hear from you.