Why Being Too Nice is Ruining Your Love Life

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Transcript

Oh, hi. Welcome to the So Hard Podcast. I'm Justina Victoria. I am a psychosexual expert for men and couples. If you are new here, welcome, and if you are returning, welcome back. As you can hear, I have a bit of a cold, so you guys are going to have to deal with my nasally voice today. Anyway, this episode is about why being too nice is ruining your love life. Whether you're dating or in a relationship, or even single, even just trying to get a date, we're going to talk today about why being too nice is ruining your love life. Let's start there. Let's start with dating, first and foremost, okay? Why do nice guys struggle in dating? So there's several different layers to this. First and foremost, as simple as I can possibly make it, women are attracted to strength. Any form of perceived strength. Okay? And, uh, this is one of the reasons why we can be attracted to guys who are not necessarily the most healthy. Um, cause guys who just like don't give a fuck, they, they have this perceived strength about them. So, what a nice guy is, is a person who is avoiding conflict. He is a person who is trying to people please to get into the good graces of a woman, to try to do everything right and perfect and not rock the boat and meet all of her needs and get his needs met in a very roundabout manipulative way. And I always tell my clients, when I use the word manipulative or manipulation, I don't mean like in a malicious way. I mean, like this is what our psyche is doing in order to not have to say, you know, not have to speak out loud, communicate what we need to another person and avoid rejection. So nice guys at the core are trying to avoid conflict, they're trying to avoid rejection, they're trying to avoid abandonment. And those things are like mortal wounds for nice guys, okay? So in dating, right, women, you know, we talk about these certain levels that there are, right? On the base sort of primal level, we as women are looking for perceived strength. Why? We are the weaker species, right? We need to be provided for, we need to be protected by the man. And that is encoded in our biology. I mean, it's just deep, deep, primal, deep brain stuff. And so we're looking for really any form of perceived strength. We're also looking for somebody who is really regulated. They're not necessarily afraid of conflict. They're authentic. They don't care about speaking their mind and their opinion and saying what they like and what they don't like and just being who they really are. Those are signs of strength, but also they signal to us safety, is very grounded in who he is. He's not, you know, got all this anxiety over, oh my god I'm gonna be rejected, oh my god I'm gonna be abandoned, you know, and he's just always overthinking, he's always in some kind of fight-or-flight activation. We feel safe because if a man was on high alert and he was in fight or flight, right, that meant there was something going on. You know, there's a predator around, there's – something is happening, and that would signal to us, uh-oh, we're not safe, right? Hopefully the man is going to take care of this and keep us safe. So in this modern age, right, we have very little external threats to us, but it's the same primal response. So a man who is in a heightened state, in a stress response, right, that is signaling to us that there is danger near. And we can even translate it as that man is dangerous because like he can't keep he doesn't feel safe, he never feels safe. How can he ever make me feel safe? So that's kind of the primal level. Let's talk about more of this like energetic level. So we as humans, we produce a magnetic field, an electromagnetic field. And electromagnetic fields send and receive information. And this is one of the reasons why, you know, we might get gut feelings or, you know, some intuition about people or whatever. We are energy that is being made manifest into material form. A lot of people get that wrong. They think it's material is creating energy, but everything solid in the universe is made solid first by a very specific frequency of energy. So we at our core as human beings, as I mean, not even just human beings, but everything in existence, right, is energy, is frequency. And so we produce a magnetic field, an electromagnetic field that sends and receives information that is way, way, way below our conscious thinking mind. And when we feel afraid of rejection, abandonment, when we feel that we have a lack of confidence, when we feel we're not good enough, that we're going to be embarrassed, or we're going to be shunned, or we're going to be told that we're just simply not accepted, then what happens is no matter how hard you try to hide that, if that is your core program, if that is what you really believe internally. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you believe wholeheartedly that you are worthless or you are not good enough, but it's enough to be afraid that that is true. Okay, so we either believe that it could be true that someone could reflect that to us and we could find out that it's true. Or we believe it's true, we believe we're not good enough, we believe that we're less than or, you know, we're going to be rejected or abandoned. So what happens is, is that this, this information is embedded in our field, in our magnetic field. Just like your Wi-Fi router sends a signal out, your phone picks it up, we as human beings are doing the same thing. So energetically, we are teaching other people, we are handing over information to them that makes them feel a bit uneasy about us, right? Because if you are you, you're in your own body, right? There's nobody else who knows you more intimately than you know yourself. Nobody else can have the experience of you except for you and you believe that you're inherently not good enough handsome enough, you know rich enough Funny enough, etc, etc Right didn't like why would someone else believe that? Everything is really just the meaning that we make up about it. Like nothing means anything. I always use this example in my coaching sessions of like a flag, right? Like a flag is legitimately just a piece of fabric. That's it. It's a piece of fabric that we put a little design on and you know, if somebody burns the flag, they're going to jail. They're gonna get beat up by somebody. This is sacrilege. You know, there's this whole emotional upheaval and uproar around burning the flag. And it's like, we made all that up. It's a literal piece of fabric, right? So we as humans, we're meaning-making machines. We make meaning about stuff and we all just go along with it. If we practice it enough times we just believe that it's real and true. It becomes the automatic program that we buy into without even questioning it anymore because it's been so practiced and so repeated that we just So when you have a negative self-concept, right, what your – it doesn't matter how hard you try to hide that, your thinking, feeling, and behaving has to align with that core narrative, with that core program. It has to. You can't act a different way. You can't feel a different way than what you believe, than what you feel about yourself, right? And this is one of the reasons why nice guys can be so awkward when they're trying to be confident, right, you're like, it's disjointed because it's not in alignment, right? Guy who's confident about himself believes that he's good enough, he believes that he's awesome, he believes he has something to offer, he believes that he can get a woman that he wants, right? There's no, he's not awkward, he's not disjointed He's not acting thinking feeling behaving out of alignment with what he believes, right? So things are smooth. They make sense. There's a flow to his thinking feeling and behaving so we know energetically as women when You simply just don't like yourself and you're trying to override that by being, like pretending to be something different. Okay? So in dating, this is a struggle because we as humans really need trust, right? We need trust to create attraction in the beginning. And so it's like somebody is playing a character, like there's this fake thing, and there's like a lie that's happening. And it's very, like we can't put our finger on it. We're like, I don't know, something is off about this. Now, if you don't try to override that, and you just go out there, and you just know you're a loser, and you just know you're not attractive and you just Know you're gonna be rejected, right? I mean that's gonna fall flat like there's not gonna be any magnetism There's not gonna be any spark. There's not gonna be any fun. It's just gonna be weird Now you could be a guy who hates himself and thinks he's a loser and thinks he's not good enough right but he also doesn't care, right? Like he's not looking to prove something otherwise. Like he's not trying to attach to somebody in order to get them to finally say, no, actually you are really good enough, right? He's just like, yeah, whatever, I'm a loser, I don't care. Like I don't expect anybody to love me. That's a different thing because he isn't acting out of alignment, right? He is acting authentically. He's just like, yeah, I have a low self-concept. I don't expect anybody to love me and I'm not trying to find love, right? There is like a strength in that because that guy isn't, he's not on high alert all the time wondering when someone's gonna say something to offend and reject and abandon him, right? He's not avoiding conflict, he's just like, yeah, this is me. And like, why do you like me? That's weird that you like me, right? And then you have the women who are like, oh my God, but you're so awesome, you have so much potential, blah, blah, blah, right? So those guys don't really struggle. It's the guys who are in fight or flight, worried about being rejected, worrying about is this person gonna prove once and for all that I'm really not good enough? Ah, right? So there is a repulsion, right? There is a, and I don't mean that in like a vomiting, like I'm repulsed, I'm going to go throw up. I mean the repulsion in the sense of like positive negative magnetism, right? When you have two magnets that are same poles, they're going to push each other away. They're going to repel each other. And so that same thing happens when a man is just not confident in himself. He doesn't have a high self-concept. He expects to be rejected and abandoned. He's hoping it's not gonna happen. He's trying to avoid conflict. Women are literally repelled by that. And you can be thinking to yourself, I don't understand. I'm doing absolutely everything I could possibly do to attract her in and trying to show her I'm willing to do anything to make her happy. Well, women don't want you to do anything to make them happy, right? Like women want you to be authentic and also care about their happiness. Like, it's extremely repulsive to be around a guy who we know is like pretending and like being really nice and being really like giving and loving because he's hoping that she will like him, that he is hoping that she won't reject him. him and it's like literally a skin-crawling sensation because it's fake it's there's this lack of trust it's like we can't trust you we just can't like versus being like I don't really feel great about myself you know but I like you and I don't know if you like me back but like I would like to take you out like that if somebody approached me saying something like that, they would get my attention. If somebody else was like, oh my god, you're so fun, I love being friends with you, let's get, like, guy friend zoning himself, it's like, oh my god, so repulsive. get past the dating part because they're repulsing women with their self-concept. They're repulsing women with their nervous system being activated all the time in fear of conflict, in fear of abandonment. You know, they're repulsing women with their manipulations, not telling the truth, like, hey, I just like you, I wanna take you out. You know, and they're just, oh, let's just hang out. Oh, I'm cool, I don't care about anything. Like, and so all of these little things that make up the nice guy strategy, right? Because that is a strategy. The whole creation of a nice guy, the people pleaser, the guy that doesn't rock the boat, and he goes along with everything. That whole persona is a strategy in order to avoid any form of rejection and abandonment. And we can't respect that as human beings, right? We want people who have courage, right, who are brave, who are brave enough to say, hey, you know what's true for me? I like you. And the truth and how I feel is more important than the potential of being rejected. If I'm rejected, okay, I'll go somewhere else and I'll try again. That is attractive. But the nice guy persona that is created as a strategy, and this is all subconscious, by the way, it's not like some guys are sitting down going, hmm, let me come up with a persona to protect myself. This is all subconscious. So this persona is a strategy in order, that the nervous system comes up with in order to protect you from the pain of rejection and abandonment. Now, in relationships, like let's say, let's say you get into the relationship and you become a nice guy. Let's say you were doing good, attracted the woman, got in, and then you became this nice guy, people pleaser, right? Again, same thing. It's like the attraction is going to start to dissolve because it's like we're attracted to strength. We're attracted to regulation. We're attracted to truth. Masculine is truth. Feminine is trust. We are attracted to a man who's like, this is who I am. And not in a mean, domineering, controlling way, but in a vulnerability way, you know, being able to say, this is who I am, and it may come at the consequence of being rejected. You may not like it and that's okay, right? And so in a relationship, again, it's the manipulation of, I'm gonna meet all of her needs all the time, which feels a bit strange, and I'm gonna hope that she then gives all that back to me, even though I'm not going to take any responsibility for my own needs and saying what I need and identifying and communicating that, because I could be rejected if I do that. So attraction starts to wane, it starts to dissolve, because, yeah, those dynamics do not... That strategy of protecting yourself from rejection and abandonment is the same dynamic that repels women. It's the same strategy or it doesn't create attraction. It doesn't nurture attraction. It dissolves attraction. So what's the difference between being kind and being a pushover? Again, it's just this sort of simple core understanding of this is that, you know, you can be kind and honest. Being a pushover is like, yeah, sure, whatever you want. I have no spine. I have no needs. I have no opinions. I don't need – I'm not even my own person. I'm just whatever you want me to be. You're just mush. How can a man stop people pleasing without feeling like a jerk? Well, it just comes down to vulnerability, right? Because some people kind of think like we have to swing to the opposite extreme, where it's like you have no boundaries, no needs, no wants as a people pleaser, and then we swing all the way to the other end where we have all these boundaries and we're domineering and we're controlling and we're like you're gonna do what I want you to do or go fuck yourself. But like people who are healthy live in the center. They go, hey yeah I'm happy to needs, like, what do you need from me? Also, here's what I need. That's it. So it's like, when you stop people pleasing, and then, you know, this idea of like feeling like a jerk afterwards, that is just coming from the swing in the pendulum of like, no boundaries to all boundaries. And it's like, no, we just want to kind of be in the center. There's nothing, you know, there's nothing asshole-ish about saying no when it's honest for you. There's nothing wrong or bad or mean about saying I need XYZ from you. That's normal stuff. That is what we're supposed to be doing in a relationship with people. What's the secret to being both good and dangerous in the right way. So I'm assuming this is like bad boy, not like woman beater. What's the secret to being both good and bad in the right way? Yeah, it's that confidence, right? So I would actually put this in a different way, this kind of like good and sexy or whatever. And I would just say like, the goal isn't to be a nice guy, but it's to be a good man. And the difference between a nice guy and a good man is that a nice guy is going to avoid doing anything that ever can possibly contribute to him feeling rejected or abandoned. So he abandons himself in that process by ignoring his needs and wants and boundaries and all of that. Whereas a good man, he doesn't abandon himself. He always stays connected to what he needs. He communicates that in a really healthy way, not through anger, not through begging. You know, it's right in the middle of like, hey, I need this thing from you. I always tell my clients who are learning how to identify and communicate their needs, that it's no different than just like going into a restaurant and ordering food. You don't go into a restaurant and sit down and the waitress comes over and you're like, oh, like, I don't know, like what would be good? What would be easiest for you that I could order? She would be like, what are you talking about? My job is to take your order and bring you your food. That's what I expect to do. That's normal. I'm a waitress, right? She would be really weirded out by you if you were acting like that. And conversely, if you came into the restaurant and you were like, hey bitch, get me a sandwich, she'd be like, how about you go fuck yourself? Like, no, I quit, right? And so like, you come into a restaurant, and the expectation is that somebody is going to feed you. Like, that's it. There's no question of this. There's no like, am I good enough to receive the food? Is it okay for me to ask for food? I don't know. They might get mad at me. They might kick me out of the restaurant, right? It's like, that's nonsense. We go into the restaurant, casually choose what we feel like eating, what feels true for us. We communicate it to the waitress in a really kind, neutral way, right? Like, oh, hey, hey, how are you? Um, thanks so much. I'll take the turkey sandwich. Oh, would you like anything with the... You know what? I'll go with the chips. Okay, great. I'll bring that right. Oh, do you like something to drink? Hmm. I'll take a Coke. Right? Like, there's no like, oh, I have to order the right thing or I'm going to be rejected. Or I have to say it in a certain way or I'm going to be rejected. Or this lady is going to do what I want her to do, and she better know that. And I'm in control here and I'm gonna dominate her. You know, it's just like super neutral. I'm just gonna order a sandwich. That's it, there's nothing tied to it. So being a good man is that you just expect, number one, that your partner cares about you, that they actually want to meet your needs and that it's their job to meet your needs. Like if you're in a relationship, if you're in a relationship, your job is to meet the needs of your partner. So as a human across the board, if you're in a relationship, the expectation is I'm, I'm responsible for meeting some of my partner's needs. Like that's just what we do in relationship, right? Just the same as if you got hired on as a waiter or a waitress, the expectation is like, this is the job I signed up for. Right? So, when we're a nice guy, we expect that people hate us. They don't want to meet our needs, that they're going to get pissed off when we have needs and all of this, right? But that's actually not accurate. That is not a true and accurate representation of reality. Now being like sexy or bad, right, I just think that comes along with being a good man, right? When you can identify and communicate what you need, when you can be both vulnerable and strong, meaning that your woman just feels like you can protect her, that you're not constantly in fight or flight. And that's not an issue, by the way. This is not like, oh my God, you shouldn't be in fight or flight all the time, right? But if you are in fight or flight all the time, something is wrong. That's not normal human functioning. That is trauma, right? So working with the nervous system and understanding how to shift out of that state and come back to what we call ventral state or safe and social, rest and digest, it comes with many names, is really vital, is really really vital. So like a lot of times I work with guys who are dating and it's like well let's actually map your nervous system like what state are you in, what state do you habituate to, are you always overthinking, are you always stressed, are you always worried what's gonna happen, are you always thinking about the future? Right? We have to resolve that first and foremost. You want a healthy woman in your life, you have to have a healthy nervous system. So being good and sexy, I just think that they're like one in the same. It's just like a good man is going to naturally be himself. He's going to be focused on what feels good sexually, right, in the relationship, passionately. Like, he is gonna do things, he's gonna kind of observe his woman and figure things out that kind of make her tick. And what makes her giggly and what makes her turned on and what makes her happy. He just does that naturally. And it's not a way of getting out of being rejected, it's because it's fun. Like, it's fun for him to, like, say a little something in her ear as he passes by in the kitchen to get the reaction of her giggling, her blushing, her being like, oh my god, what are you doing? You know, that's fun for him. So, you know, going from this is the problem I see a lot with a nice, you know, trying to cure the nice guy syndrome or whatever the hell they call it on the Internet. They're not changing their core self concept. They're not regulating their nervous system. themselves, they're trying to fake their behavior. But thinking, feeling, and behaving comes from the core narrative that you're holding. So trying to override a narrative by changing your thinking, feeling, behaving is going to be very, very difficult. So I'll give you, give you one more example of that, which I use with my clients. So if you quit smoking a couple days ago, okay, and you've been a smoker your whole life, and you go to a party and somebody offers you a cigarette, and you say to them, ah, God, I just quit smoking, oh, I just quit smoking. No, I can't, I can't, I can't. I just quit smoking, right, versus, oh, no, I'm not a smoker. Totally different thing. When you're saying, ooh, I just quit, you're still identifying as a smoker, but you're white knuckling through the cravings. When you say, no, I'm not, actually, I'm a non-smoker, but thank you. There's no, what are you fighting against, right? There's no identity to fight against. It's just like, no, this is who I am. Of course I'm turning down your offer for the cigarette, because I'm not a smoker. I don't smoke cigarettes. Versus, God, I am a smoker, but I'm not smoking right now. Very, very, very different. So we have to change the way we see ourselves in order for our thinking, feeling, and behaving to change. How do women really feel about nice guys versus bad boys? Yeah, so again, this is kind of the same thing. It's like we feel repulsed by nice guys because we know that they're lying, and that is a turnoff. They're really hyped up in their nervous system. That is a turnoff, right? Right? They really dislike themselves and they're afraid of conflict and they're afraid of rejection and there's a lack of courage There's a lack of bravery there. That is a turn-off Nobody wants and it doesn't matter whether you're a man or woman Nobody wants to be with somebody who doesn't Genuinely thinks that they are gross right, like if you walk around thinking that you are just a mutant and you have nothing to offer somebody Like who wants to be around that? like, you know and Bad boys. So the reason why a lot of women end up in unhealthy situations with these like quote bad boys is Because they are essentially mimicking strength That's literally all it is That's literally all it is. So, and it's annoying because it's like, we can easily get wrapped up in that because it is such an attractive thing. So I'll leave you with this last little bit. I had a client who, he actually moved back in with his parents. He went through a breakup, went and moved back in with his parents and decided that he was gonna give up his apartment so that he could spend like a year traveling the world, right? And he was saying, you know, we were working on confidence and stuff. And he was saying to me, you know, okay, like, if I take a woman out on a date, like, what am I like? And she asks, like, my living situation, like, what am I going to do? And like, I'm living with my parents, you know, like, oh, my gosh, he's probably gonna think, like, what a loser, right? And what I explained to him was, it's all about the way you see it. Doesn't matter the woman. It's the way that you see it, right? So I said to him, all right, think about the difference between sitting down with a woman on a first date and she's like, so like, where do you live and who do you live with? And you're like, um, so, Um, yeah, I'm like kind of living with my parents right now. You know, and you are uncomfortable with that? Like, you internally are like, I'm a loser. I feel like a loser living with my parents, right? Oh my God, that is what that woman is going to be essentially programmed into believing about you. Like, ew, okay, well he knows it's shameful, he looks shameful while he's telling me this, right? So it must be shameful that he's living with his parents. Wow, at his age, that's sad, that's pathetic, right? Versus, he sits down with a woman on a first date and she says, oh, it's like, where do you live? What do you do? Like, what's going on? Who do you live with, right? And he's like, oh my God, yeah, like I'm actually so excited. You know, I gave up my apartment, I moved back in with my parents so that I could have an entire year to travel. And here's where I've been already and here's where I'm going the rest of the year. Like, oh, my gosh, it's going to be so awesome. I'm so excited about it. Such a great opportunity to be able to do this and not have to pay rent. And it's just I'm so excited. Do you think that woman is going to be like, wow, that guy is a loser, he's living with his parents. No, right? So it's all about how you see yourself. If you see yourself as a person who is gonna get rejected and abandoned, and it will try to get out of that no matter what, cannot handle a woman not being happy with them every second of every day. You're gonna be stuck in the nice guy and the people pleasing stuff and it's going to ruin your love life. And it's going to continue to make you feel worse and you're going to collect more evidence for the story you have about yourself, which, by the way, is made up. It's made up. No one is either good enough or not good enough. Everyone is the same. We all have the same intrinsic value as human beings, right? There is only one of you. That means that you are the most rare thing in the universe. If something happened to you, we cannot replace you. You know, we talk about diamonds, oh, diamonds are so, oh, they're so rare, they're so, oh, whatever. And it's like, okay, everyone has a diamond. Literally everyone has a diamond. You lose somebody you love, there's no replacement for that. That's it. So every single human being has the same level of value. There's no replacement for that person. That person is uniquely special, rare, and cannot be replaced. And so all it comes down to is the story that you have decided to buy into about who you are and what kind of worth do you have and how attractive you are and what you have to offer. It's made up. have conversations with that story and reinforce that story and look for evidence for that story, the more that story is gonna trick you into believing that it is true. Thank you so much for listening. I hope this was helpful and I will see you in the next one. Oh, honey Oh, honey Oh, honey