No More Mr. Nice Guy! (16 page)

A note: The majority of the men with whom I work are heterosexual. Though I have observed similar
relationship issues with gay men, many of the examples I use in this chapter reflect male/female
relationships. More often than not, I will use the pronoun "she" or "her" when referring to the Nice
Guy's partner.

Intimate relationships are often an area of great frustration and bewilderment for Nice Guys. Most Nice Guys profess a great desire for intimacy and happiness with their significant other. Nevertheless, intimacy represents an enigmatic riddle for the majority of these men.

Here is what I have concluded after several years of observing countless Nice Guys:
Even though Nice Guys often profess a deep desire to be intimately connected with another individual,
their internalized toxic shame and childhood survival mechanisms make such connections difficult and
problematic.

Why Nice Guys Struggle To Get The Love They Want

There are a number of reasons why Nice Guys have difficulty getting the love they want. These include:

● Their toxic shame.

● The dysfunctional relationships they co-create.

● Their patterns of enmeshment and avoidance.

● The familiar childhood relationship dynamics they recreate.

● Their unconscious need to remain monogamous to their mother.

● They are "bad enders".

Toxic Shame Prevents Nice Guys From Getting The Love They Want

Intimacy implies vulnerability. I define
intimacy
as "knowing the self, being known by another, and knowing another." Intimacy requires two people who are willing to courageously look inward and make themselves totally visible to another. Internalized toxic shame makes this kind of exposure feel life-threatening for Nice Guys.

Intimacy, by its nature, would require the Nice Guy to look into the abyss of his most inner self and allow others to peer into these same places. It would require the Nice Guy to let someone get close enough to see into all the nooks and crannies of his soul. This terrifies Nice Guys, because being known means being found out. All Nice Guys have worked their entire lives to become what they believe others want them to be while trying to hide their perceived flaws. The demands of intimacy represent everything Nice Guys fear most.

Co-Creating Dysfunctional Relationships Prevents Nice Guys From Getting The Love
They Want

The Nice Guy's ongoing attempt to hide his perceived badness makes intimacy a challenge. The moment Nice Guys enter a relationship they begin a balancing act. In relationships, a life-and-death struggle is played out to balance their fear of vulnerability with their fear of isolation. Vulnerability means someone may get too close to them and see how bad they are. Nice Guys are convinced that when others make this discovery, these people will hurt them, shame them, or leave them.

The alternative doesn't seem any better. Isolating themselves from others recreates the abandonment experiences that were so terrifying in childhood.

In order to balance his fear of vulnerability and fear of abandonment, a Nice Guy needs help. He finds it in people who are equally wounded and also have difficulty with intimacy. Together they co-create relationships that simultaneously frustrate all parties while protecting them from their fear of being found out.

Even though it may look like many of the problems Nice Guys experience in relationships are caused by the baggage their partner brings with them, this is not the case. It is the relationship the Nice Guy and his partner co-create that is the problem.

It is true that Nice Guys often pick partners who appear to be projects, and indeed, they do at times pick some pretty messed up people. The fact that these partners may have challenges — they are single moms, they have financial problems, they are angry, addictive, depressed, overweight, non-sexual, or unable to be faithful — is precisely the reason Nice Guys invite these people into their lives. As long as attention is focused on the flaws of the partner, it is diverted away from the internalized toxic shame of the Nice Guy. This balancing act ensures that the Nice Guy's closest relationship will most likely be his least intimate.

Patterns Of Enmeshment And Avoidance Prevent Nice Guys From Getting The Love
They Want

This intimacy balancing act gets played out in two distinct ways for Nice Guys. The first is through becoming overly involved in an intimate relationship at the expense of one's self and other outside interests. The second is through being emotionally unavailable to a primary partner while playing the Nice Guy role outside of the relationship. I call the first type of Nice Guy an
enmesher
and the second type an
avoider
.

The enmeshing Nice Guy makes his partner his emotional center. His world revolves around her. She is more important than his work, his buddies, his hobbies. He will do whatever it takes to make her happy.

He will give her gifts, try to fix her problems, and arrange his schedule to be with her. He will gladly sacrifice his wants and needs to win her love. He will even tolerate her bad moods, rage attacks, addictions, and emotional or sexual unavailability — all because he "loves her so much."

I sometimes refer to enmeshing Nice Guys as
table dogs
. They are like little dogs who hover beneath the table just in case a scrap happens to fall their way. Enmeshing Nice Guys do this same hovering routine around their partner just in case she happens to drop him a scrap of sexual interest, a scrap of her time, a scrap of a good mood, or a scrap of her attention. Even though they are settling for the leftovers that fall from the table, enmeshing Nice Guys think they are getting something really good.

On the surface it may appear that the enmeshing Nice Guy desires, and is available for an intimate relationship, but this is an illusion. The Nice Guy's pursuing and enmeshing behavior is an attempt to hook up an emotional hose to his partner. This hose is used to suck the life out of her and fill an empty place inside of him. The Nice Guy's partner unconsciously picks up on this agenda and works like hell to make sure the Nice Guy can't get close enough to hook up the hose. Consequently, the Nice Guy's partner is often seen as the one preventing the closeness the Nice Guy desires.

The avoider can be a little tougher to get a handle on.
The avoiding Nice Guy seems to put his job,
hobby, parents, and everything else before his primary relationship.
He may not seem like a Nice Guy to his partner at all because he is often nice to everyone else but her. He may volunteer to work on other people's cars. He may spend weekends fixing his mother's roof. He may work two or three jobs.

He may coach his children's sports teams. Even though he may not follow his partner around and cater to her every whim, he still operates from a covert contract that since he is a Nice Guy, his partner should be available to him, even if he isn't available to her.

Both patterns, enmeshing and avoiding, inhibit any real kind of intimacy from occurring. They may help the Nice Guy feel safe, but they won't help him feel loved.

Breaking Free Activity #30

Are you an enmesher or an avoider in your present relationship? How would your partner see
you? Does the pattern ever change? What roles have you played in past relationships?

Recreating Familiar Childhood Relationship Patterns Prevents Nice Guys From Getting
The Love They Want

It is human nature to be attracted to what is familiar. Because of this reality, Nice Guys create adult relationships that mirror the dynamics of their dysfunctional childhood relationships. For example: If listening to his mother's problems as a child gave a Nice Guy a sense of connection, he may grow up believing such behavior equals intimacy. In order to feel valuable and connected in his adult relationships, he will have to pick a partner who has her fair share of problems.

If he was trained to caretake and fix needy or dependent family members, the Nice Guy may find a way to do the same in his adult relationships.

If he believed he could only get his own needs met after he had met the needs of other more important people, the Nice Guy may sacrifice himself for the sake of his partner.

If he was abandoned in childhood, he may choose partners who are unavailable or unfaithful.

If he grew up with an angry, demeaning, or controlling parent, he may choose a partner with similar traits.

Occasionally, the person the Nice Guy chooses to help him recreate his childhood relationship patterns isn't the way he unconsciously needs her to be when the relationship begins. If this is the case, he will often help her become what he needs. He may project upon her one or more traits of his parents. He may act as if she is a certain way, even when she isn't. His unconscious dysfunctional needs may literally force his partner to respond in an equally dysfunctional way.

For example. As a child, I never knew what kind of mood my father would be in when I came into the house. More often than not, it wasn't good. I learned to come home prepared for the worst. I later recreated the same pattern in my marriage. I projected my father's unpredictable moods onto my wife and would frequently arrive home prepared for her to be angry. Even if she was in a good mood, my defensiveness often triggered some kind of confrontation between us. Thus Elizabeth came to look like my angry father and I perpetuated a familiar, though dysfunctional relationship dynamic.

Breaking Free Activity #31

We tend to be attracted to people who have some of the worst traits of both of our parents. Instead
of blaming your partner for your unconscious choice, identify the ways in which she helps you
recreate familiar relationship patterns from your childhood. Share this with your partner.

The Unconscious Need To Remain Monogamous To Mom Prevents Nice Guys From
Getting The Love They Want

The tendency of Nice Guys to be monogamous to their mothers seriously inhibits having any kind of a genuinely intimate relationship with a partner in adulthood. Nice Guys are creative in finding ways to maintain this childhood bond. What all of these behaviors have in common is that they all effectively insure that the Nice Guy will not be able to bond in any significant way with any woman except his mother.

Breaking Free Activity #32

The following are a few of the ways Nice Guys unconsciously maintain a monogamous bond to
their mothers. Look over the list. Note any of the behavior patterns that may serve to keep you
monogamous to your mother. Share this information with a safe person.

●
Over-involvement with work or hobbies.

●
Creating relationships with people who need fixing.

●
Addictions to drugs or alcohol.

●
Sexual addictions to pornography, masturbation, fantasy, chat lines, or hookers.

●
Affairs.

●
Sexual dysfunction — lack of desire, inability to get or maintain an erection, or premature
ejaculation.

●
Forming relationships with women who are angry, sick, depressive, compulsive, addicted,
unfaithful, or otherwise unavailable.

●
Avoiding intercourse or taking vows of celibacy.

Being Bad Enders Prevents Nice Guys From Getting The Love They Want
Finally, Nice Guys have difficulty getting the love they want because they spend too much time trying to make bad relationships work. Basically, Nice Guys suffer from the age-old problem of looking for love in all the wrong places. If a Nice Guy spends all of his time stuck in a bad relationship, it pretty much guarantees he won't find one that might work better.

When healthy individuals recognize that they have created a relationship that is not a good fit, or that a partner they have chosen lacks the basic qualities they desire, they move on. Not Nice Guys. Due to their conditioning, Nice Guys just keep trying harder to get a non-workable situation to work or get someone to be something they are not. This tendency frustrates everybody involved.

Even when Nice Guys do try to end a relationship, they are not very good at it. They frequently do it too late and in indirect, blaming, or deceitful ways. They typically have to do it several times before it sticks. I often joke that, on average, it takes Nice Guys about nine attempts to end a relationship.

(Unfortunately, this isn't far from the truth).

Strategies For Building Successful Relationships

There are no perfect relationships. There are no perfect partners. Relationships by their very nature are chaotic, eventful, and challenging. The second part of this chapter is not a plan for finding a perfect partner or creating the perfect relationship. It is simply a strategy for doing what works. By adapting the points below and changing the way in which they live their lives, recovering Nice Guys will change the way they have relationships. Nice Guys can:

●
Approve of themselves.

●
Put themselves first.

●
Reveal themselves to safe people.

●
Eliminate covert contracts.

●
Take responsibility for their own needs.

●
Surrender.

●
Dwell in reality.

●
Express their feelings.

●
Develop integrity.

●
Set boundaries.

●
Embrace their masculinity.

Previous chapters have included illustrations of what can happen to relationships when Nice Guys begin to make these life changes. Let's examine a little more closely how applying a couple of these life strategies can help recovering Nice Guys get the love they want.

A Warning

If you are in a relationship, the program of recovery from the Nice Guy Syndrome presented in
this book will seriously affect you and your partner. One of two things will happen:
1) Your present relationship will begin to grow and evolve in exciting and unpredictable ways.