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Notes -
Sometimes when people say this I think there might just be a permanent gender divide on what constitutes a “nice” guy that is somewhat self-serving, if mostly harmless in real life. What’s your definition of “treats poorly”?
To a woman, when she says she wants a “nice guy”, she means a guy who doesn’t cheat on her, abuse her, shout at her, or expect her to be his servant. Someone who maybe buys her flowers once in a while and puts in some effort. Often to a man, when he says women don’t actually want “nice guys”, his definition of that nice guy is some meek nebbish with a quiet voice who never stands up for himself (or his girl), is probably romantically and sexually submissive, cowers before other men, is probably not hot/fit, and is kind of a geek. To use the analogy of the hour, he’s more of a math Olympiad champ than a prom king.
But this is just reading some weird nerds vs jocks thing into it. There are plenty of men who meet the male ‘nice guy’ definition who are cheaters, abusive, bad boyfriends and husbands (in addition to being unattractive), and there are many strong confident and attractive men, who take control of their lives and have a protective instinct who are also nice, faithful and generally good people. It’s a false dichotomy.
IME when men say women ‘just want to be mistreated’ they’re never honestly evaluating what women see in these men. Sure, there are plenty of women who make bad decisions in choosing a partner, but I’ve never known one who picked the ‘bad’ guy because he treated her like shit. Usually these men are also handsome, charming, have money or other objectively attractive traits. Trashy women date drug dealers because they have money and status, and because like all good salespeople they’re usually charismatic and personable. I could say “men just want crazy BPD hoes”, but if every example I have is of ‘crazy BPD hoes’ who are hot, all I’ve really said is that men like attractive women who are willing to have sex with them, not that they secretly like being cheated on or having plates thrown at them.
I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that, presented with two equally attractive, assertive, confident and charming men, a woman would pick the abusive ‘bad’ one over the nice ‘good’ one. The issue for many women is that, of course, the ‘good’ one is likely to be taken pretty young by some smart woman, while the ‘bad’ ones spend their twenties and thirties in the dating scene.
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