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TL;DRI talk about what Nice Guy Syndrome is, the faulty mental model I think causes it, and how that faulty thinking is reinforced by fairly commonplace and uncriticized portrayals of romance. |
What is Nice Guy Syndrome?
Nice Guy Syndrome refers to a pattern where people who tend to proclaim prominently/frequently that they are such a nice guy also tend to rapidly devolve into angry and bitter tirades that include sexist slurs when romantically rejected, and to hold negative, derogatory attitudes toward women in general even when not being currently rejected.
For example, you will sometimes come across dating profiles (i.e. things meant to be read by potential partners) that talk about how irrational women are for preferring brutes and assholes over nice guys who care for them. Calling members of a gender irrational in a place where they can read it is not likely to be a successful dating strategy.
This contradictory combination of traits that are an obvious turn-off for women as well as persistent evaluation of oneself as a real catch is the reason why people have given this phenomenon a name.
Where does Nice Guy Syndrome come from?
Part of the reason why this phenomenon happens is that the norms in our society is that guys have to make the first move. This results in a lot of rejection, and rejection sucks. However, this doesn’t explain everything.
For one, the perceived badness of rejection varies a lot. I have not done a thorough survey (although I wish someone would) about how painful people rate romantic rejection to be. My naive assessment not having experienced romantic rejection but having experienced other forms of social rejection would be 5 or 6 out of 10, where 10 is the most emotionally painful thing I can imagine and 0 is no pain. However, people who have the experience of being rejected romantically have told me they estimate the pain to be 1 or 2 out of 10. That’s a huge difference!
The second thing that has to be explained is why some people respond much more bitterly and with more resentment than others. For example, I have several friends (both male and female) who throughout their life have tended to ask people out more often than they get asked out. Yet, when they get turned down, they may be bummed out or resentful, but they quickly move on. They don’t fling verbal abuse at the person who rejected them or write sexist screeds in their dating profiles. What creates this difference in the level of bitterness and resentment?
It is true that buy-in to ideas that women are irrational, or biologically predisposed to prefer assholes to sensitive nice guys, which comes to people via Red Pill theory, exacerbates these things. But I think the mistake people are making is much deeper and more fundamental than choosing the wrong ideology to believe in. After all, even with a Red Pill ideology, it’s not clear why you’d be resentful toward behavior you recognize as irrational or biologically predetermined to some extent.
The faulty thinking underlying Nice Guy Syndrome
Instead, I think that the faulty thinking that underlies Nice Guy Syndrome (and the Red Pill-style rationalizations built on top of it) is a weird model of romantic attraction where certain actions as input (for example, being nice) reliably produces romantic attraction in response.
In other words, the romantic process for women looks somewhat like the diagram I draw when teaching people about functions:
There are inputs you send into the system, which is a black box, and the black box outputs romantic feelings. The same input reliably produces the same output. This model is odd because I don’t think anyone would apply it to themselves. Sure, external actions by the other person have an effect in creating romantic feelings, but a lot of the development of romantic feelings are about internal preferences/tastes or seem mysterious or arbitrary (coming out of nowhere). In other words, people recognize in themselves that the exact same inputs (such as nice actions) do not produce the same output (feelings) regardless of who does it. However, the resentment seems to assume this is how it works — “I did everything right. Why didn’t it work??”
Where does the faulty thinking come from?
While you might think, “Wow, that is such a weird way of thinking of romance — why would anyone buy into it?” I would say, it’s actually really common to see this mode of romance depicted in media. As examples, I’ll examine three fairly recent animated movies: WALL-E, How to Train Your Dragon, and The Lorax. I pick animated movies mostly because 80% of the movies I watch are animated and so I have the most familiarity with them, but they also have the benefit of being children’s movies / aimed at general audiences and hence make the point that people are exposed to this model of romance from a very young age. The first two movies are also extremely highly-reviewed, and to my knowledge, the way romance was depicted was not criticized.
WALL-E (2008)
Let’s look at what the beginning of the relationship looks like. WALL-E is an example where the main couple are strangers in the beginning. When EVE first arrives on the planet, she spends the first few minutes unaware of WALL-E’s presence. On the other hand, WALL-E is immediately entranced. When they finally have a close encounter, there is a moment when dust clears and EVE glows softly through it (what is called a crush filter — a trope where romantic interest is implied visually by giving the crush object a divine/celestial aura, as if you’re seeing them through the awestruck eyes of the person with the crush). In the time that follows, WALL-E is fascinated with EVE, following her, giving forlorn sighs as he watches her leave, etc. By contrast, EVE’s attitude toward WALL-E in the time that follows is antagonism (her first reaction toward WALL-E, far from wide-eyed wonder, is to shoot at him repeatedly), disinterest, befuddlement at his antics/strange behavior, or a distant professionalism.
Although WALL-E was immediately into EVE and that remains unchanging throughout the entire film (minus a bit of drama at the end), EVE’s feelings toward WALL-E are a big unknown all throughout and form most of the driving drama/character development throughout the film. After the initial antagonism, EVE warms to WALL-E through conversations/time spent together; in space, the friendship EVE has with WALL-E is tested when he meddles with her mandated diagnostic checkup which brands her as a rogue robot to the point where she decides to send him back to Earth. But after WALL-E finds and saves the plant that it is EVE’s purpose to search for, EVE tackle-hugs him and kisses him, and they share an ecstatic dance through space. Later, EVE reviews the memory log kept on Earth while she was dormant, realizes that WALL-E took pains to take care of her while she was sleeping, and looks sad. The rest of the movie is spent on her efforts to protect WALL-E and the ship’s citizens, and the climax of the film is her sadly giving WALL-E a goodbye “kiss” after he loses all memory of her. Now the question is: when did EVE develop interest/a crush on/romantic feelings for WALL-E?
Early in the film, when she laughs because of something WALL-E does, is she purposely flirting? Is she interested in him? Is the reason why she was willing to send WALL-E back to Earth because she honestly wasn’t that into him? When she kissed and danced with him a few minutes later, was it because she realized how much she loves WALL-E? Or is it because she was overcome with relief because she thought both he and the plant were both gone? Does she view their kiss and dance as romantic or just happy? When she reviews the log kept while she slept, does she see WALL-E in a new light, going from platonic interest to romantic interest? Or did she already have romantic feelings for him, and just felt bad he went through so much worry not knowing what had happened to her?
There are so many possible answers here. I think the reason for this is because where WALL-E stands with EVE at every moment of time in the movie is intentionally vague. If you knew exactly what EVE thought of WALL-E throughout the movie, there’d be no trepidation, nervousness, uncertainty, no payoff at the end of the film when EVE finally does unambiguously return WALL-E’s feelings.
How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
The relationship between Hiccup and Astrid, unlike WALL-E and EVE, doesn’t start with them as complete strangers + love at first sight; instead Hiccup already has a (presumably long-standing) crush on Astrid at the start of the film. Again, this is revealed through a crush filter (a particularly humorous one in this case, because what transforms Astrid into a celestial figure in Hiccup’s eyes is her battle prowess and the raging fire of destruction behind her).
Astrid and Hiccup’s relationship is an interesting one. It goes from indifference on Astrid’s part at the beginning of the film to active rivalry and jealousy in the middle as Hiccup knocks Astrid from her place as a star student due to his unique knowledge about dragons. A scene that starts from a place of antagonism (Astrid interrogating Hiccup on his secret knowledge and going to tell the rest of the village about Toothless and then being given a rough ride by Toothless) goes to friends and then at the very end to the start of a romantic relationship when Astrid kisses Hiccup.
Again, the question I ask when watching this film is: When and why does Astrid develop feelings for Hiccup? Was she attracted to him at the beginning but he was too pathetic for her to admit it? Or did she find him unremarkable and was generally uninterested in him? Was her rivalry and competitiveness once he started showing prowess in battle an expression of potential romantic interest? Or was it purely a professional rivalry? Was the dragon-back ride the first moment when she developed some romantic attraction for Hiccup? If so, what changed — was it that she realized Hiccup had more going on than she had thought before? Was it that Hiccup wasn’t as much of a loser as he’d been at the start of the film? Was it that she appreciated being shown what it feels like to fly and suspects he might be into her? What’s going on?? You can certainly write a coherent narrative of what Hiccup looks like from Astrid’s point of view, but that would be an entirely different movie than what we got.
The Lorax (2012)
The opening dynamic between the main character (Ted) and his best friend (Audrey) is summarized in the movie’s trailers.
In this opening, both characters clearly like each other a lot and are close friends, but the only one you know has romantic feelings for the other is Ted (his manufacturing of excuses to talk to her, the crush filter yet again). Later in the movie, Ted’s grandmother drops hints in front of Audrey that Ted has a crush on her — Ted immediately takes off in embarrassment but Audrey’s reaction is a happy one, suggesting she actually returns his feelings (and maybe has had a long-standing crush on him). The next time you see her being actively interested in Ted is when he shows her the plant he found and she replies ecstatically, “I could just kiss you right now!” Even though in this movie she shows signs of having a crush on Ted earlier than is typical, she is a complete mystery at the beginning of the film. It’s obvious what he’s thinking as they lie in her backyard talking about trees — he wants to impress her and do nice things for her. But what is she thinking?
In short, in all three movies there is a very clear difference in the way romantic attraction is portrayed in men as opposed to women. In men, the romantic attraction is immediate and irrational — it either happens at first sight or is present from the opening of the movie. You never know why the protagonist is attracted to their crush — they Just Are. This crush can exist even when the crush is actively violent or indifferent toward the protagonist (i.e. not a nice woman!). By contrast, in women, the romantic attraction is seemingly not immediate and it is seemingly rational. Although the inner world of the love interest is a mystery at most points of the film, externally she goes from antagonistic/friendly to romantic, seemingly in response to the protagonist’s actions e.g. being kind to her while asleep, taking her on a romantic ride or other date-like experience, finding the world’s last remaining plant, etc. In other words, the women’s behavior matches exactly the machine pictured above — inscrutable but responding predictably to external action — while the men’s behavior matches the normal view of romantic attraction, what it feels like inside — arbitrary and unexplained.
How to avoid resentment
In general, all three movies reinforce the vague idea that doing nice things for women or doing something heroic/impressive unrelated to women results in them showing stronger romantic interest in response. In order to avoid being resentful, it’s important to realize that romantic attraction just doesn’t work like that. A much better way of modeling romantic attraction is to model it closer to the way male romantic attraction is depicted: arbitrary and relatively unrelated to external actions.
It is okay for one’s first reaction to being rejected to be a defensive one — bitter, resentful, angry. But the second reaction, how we explain and understand the rejection, is more important. You owe no one your romantic feelings, and no one owes you theirs.
Finally, the next time you see romance depicted in fiction, try to reconstruct what the female character feels toward the male character in every scene they have together and why her feelings change. It’s surprisingly hard.
