12 Traits All Boring, Unsexy Nice Guys Have in Common

In “How to Use Astrology with Girls", Balla puts in a request in the comments section:

“Yo Chase, I think you should make an article about un sexy friendly guy traits. Like how you mention not to hug because it’s platonic, sending girls pictures/asking, laughing or smiling to much and a few other things guys might not know what they’re doing that are very hard to detect. You just point out all the negative mannerisms and characteristics and tell us what we should do instead. I think it’ll be a great article.”

I thought this would be both a fun article to do, and one that hopefully will point out to some guys some harmful thinking they might have going on, and things they’re doing with girls that they’re shooting themselves in the feet with.

So, here goes... 12 traits that all boring, unsexy nice guys have in common.

#1: Don’t Mind Waiting... and Waiting...

Across the board, if there’s one thing nice guys have in common, it’s that their time is not valuable, and they have no problem handling large chunks of it away to no one in particular.

In dating, this manifests in things like spending months gearing up the nerves to ask a girl out, or spending even longer than that chasing after women who aren’t being responsive.

It can mean going on one date after another after another, with no game plan in place, no attempts to close things out (have sex), or cut things off if they have tried and they aren’t going anywhere.

And it can mean things like pining after that one special girl even though she’s out dating other guys and they’re just patiently waiting for her to break up with her current boyfriend(s) and realize their inner beauty... however long that takes to happen.

As anyone who follows this site knows well, waiting around is the exact OPPOSITE of what you want to be doing with women (that is: moving faster with women, since attraction expires), and in any event... time’s the only thing you’ve got that you can never get back or get more of. It’s distinctly unwise to spend yours on people who don’t care for it or value it – and that includes women who aren’t anything short of thrilled about you.

Nice guys end up in the friend zone because they are fine with waiting, comfortable with it, and complain not when women shunt them into their man-queue... no matter whether they’re 2 men deep in that queue, or 20. After all, they have time...

#2: Want Points for Being “Nice"

“I don’t understand why she doesn’t like me," thinks the average nice guy; “after all – I’m nice!"

What most nice guys usually don’t realize is that this is the same exact thing morbidly obese women with legs that look like sacks of flour stacked one atop the other say about themselves in relation to their lack of dating options too: “Why don’t men want to date me? I’m so nice! Clearly, men are just shallow pigs."

Nice is the lowest common denominator. Almost everybody is “nice."

Saying that someone should like you because you’re “nice" is like saying that someone should like you because you have two lungs and breathe air. Well, yeah – if you’re a fish and breathe water, you’re automatically out of the running for a human female as a mate. Same deal if you’re antisocial, mean-spirited, and bitter. Being nice is a bare minimum requirement, NOT a shining, redeeming, rare, heroic quality.

The only reason that men in the West think they ought to get points in the mating game for being nice is that we have a highly feminized culture that attempts to coddle the feelings and emotions of its citizenry, to the extent that people get told growing up by parents, teachers, media, and any and all other authority figures that they are “nice" – it’s a way of giving someone a compliment when there’s nothing else to compliment them on.

And instead of buckling down to develop real capabilities, a lot of people polish that gold star they got in the fourth grade, smack a look of pride on their faces, and strut around feeling like kings of the hill knowing how “nice" they are, until they make it out of artificial “make their feelings feel good" land and smack straight into the brick wall that is the real world, which no amount of pats on the back can help them climb.

#3: Get Upset When the World Doesn’t Play Fair

If you’re a more normal kind of guy, and you spend time around cool / strong / sexy guys who do well with women and run their own businesses and generally are likable, self-possessed people, you’ll notice that these men tend to take everything in stride: when encountering adversity, neither do they start yelling or pouting about how unfair it is, nor do they bend and yield and break and let the world steamroll them.

Instead, they sigh, shake their heads at having to handle yet ANOTHER annoying problem, then roll up their sleeves and get to work.

That’s another way of saying that all boring, unsexy nice guys have a penchant for victim mentality. When life hands them lemons, they throw the lemons on the ground and scream at them.

But what about the nice guys who DON’T dwell in victim mentality – you know, the ones who DO have that “roll your sleeves up and get to work" mentality?

These guys are not boring, unsexy nice guys. They’re just regular guys who haven’t quite figured out how to be optimally attractive to women yet... but they will, because they’re problem solvers, and they’re not going to take this one sitting down (or opting out because, like, the world is just too mean and unfair, so screw you, world).

#4: Believe in “Justice", “Karma", or “Just Desserts"

In university, one of my professors had our class read Maus, the biographical graphic novel about the author’s father’s actual experiences as a Jew in Nazi concentration camps. The author’s father survived, while others died, often seemingly through pure chance. There was nothing about his father that was more “just" than those who perished; if anything, some of those who died probably “deserved" to live more. For me, it was a jarring read, and I sparred with my professor over its message, not wanting to believe that there was any real role of chance in the fate of someone’s life.

The society we live in does everything within its power to dispel the notion of an unjust world, because people who feel the world is unjust – that the things that happen to us are as much or even more randomness than anything under our control – leads most people to descend into despair, and then the things that really ARE under their control don’t get done.

There are many things that are actually under our control, but we as people tend to draw the wrong conclusions about what those things are and how much control we have over them – and this is often fueled by the information sources we surround ourselves with.

For instance, one belief that seems prevalent is the “if I’m a good enough guy, some girl is BOUND to notice and want me to be her man", as if it’s possible to become so saintly that the goodness just radiates off of you and makes it clear to all who are looking that you are ideal husband material, or at least boyfriend material.

Yet, women keep ignoring the guys who take this path and chasing down the bad boys who make them cry – because those bad boys know how to advertise themselves to women.

“Justice" has nothing to do with it – some men know how to get women’s attention and arouse their interests (because they’ve studied it, worked to, and learned how) and other men just don’t (because they prefer to hope that women will recognize what they have inside... somehow).

#5: Consume a LOT of Media

I have noticed that boring, unsexy nice guys tend to consume a large quantity of media, including news and anything pundit-related – sports commentary, stock market commentary, political commentary. None of my friends who are any good with women have any patience for the perspectives of pundits, but boring nice guys don’t seem to be able to get enough of it.

The media you consume is a big part of where you draw your mental model from, and because most media is an escape from reality, that means that as you consume more and more of it, you will tend to get increasingly fantastical, non-reality based mental models running in your head.

That is to say, don’t watch any media and the only reference point you’ll have for how to get girls is your own firsthand experiences and observations. But, absorb a lot of media rather than go out and live your life, and you’ll know that the way to get girls is to save them from horrible things, and then they will be yours forever.

Which, of course, if you snap back to looking at how things play out in the real world, and how those damsels in distress really treat their white knight saviors, you’ll quickly realize, jarringly, that this couldn’t be further from the truth, at least in today’s society of attractive mates-a-plenty, and quite possibly always.

#6: Think Women are Victims of Men

Men have always been defensive of women – whether knights in shining armor riding to the defense of a woman wounded by some slanderous insult, or townsfolk rallying to lynch the outsider who doesn’t look like them who made passes at or slept with their women, men tend to treat women like resources in need of guarding and defending. Which, of course, makes sense... if not your seed in her belly, then someone else’s.

Yet, the times are different now, and the environment has changed in a way that women have moved into direct competition with men on a variety of levels. Women still naturally cry foul any time a man competes with them too hard, however, so what you have is women competing with men in men’s spheres, then complaining that men are competing with them too hard and asking other men to intervene and boot those men out of the competition (allowing the women to win whatever they’re competing for, of course). This is a competitive tactic, and in today’s day and age you must be able to recognize it.

Men who are good with women tend to laugh at women’s attempts to pull things like this off – they’re silly and cute, and doing what women do (complaining and nagging and whining to try to get their ways).

But men who aren’t that well-versed with women, don’t know and understand women that well, and still find women to be mythical, magical, fantabulous beasts? They take all of this posturing and pointing and gesticulating at face value.

No wonder nice guys think women are such sorry victims of male aggression... at no point in recent history have women been in such constant competition with men, and at no point in recent history have women spent so much time complaining about men’s unfair, anti-competitive practices against women (that really are just men’s A-game for beating out THEIR competition... male and female alike).

Nice men hear this and think women are victims of men... and then scale their OWN behavior way back so as not to offend.

Which, as you might imagine, makes them quite harmless, unthreatening, and ineffective in everything they do that remotely has any overlap with womankind.

#7: Extra Soft, Friendly, and Gentle with Women

Related to the “women are victims at the hands of uncaring men" sentiment that all boring, unsexy nice guys hold is it’s opposite: their efforts to show women what soft, gentle, friendly, and harmless dudes they are.

“Oh, Cliff? He wouldn’t hurt a fly." That’s what a boring, unsexy nice guy aspires to have women say about him.

Because boring, unsexy nice guys believe that women find themselves victims at the hands of most men, they’re also very sensitive to the notion that any given woman may feel victimized by them.

Which means, of course, that they need to act as gentle, friendly, soft, and unintimidating as possible around women so as to not scare them off.

This includes things like:

• Defusing tension the moment it crops up with things like telling lots of jokes or saying they “didn’t mean it" after making a witty or flirty comment

• Laughing and smiling a lot, which defuse tension and, in larger quantities, indicate nervousness or submission (making them not a threat to women)

• Moving slowly and going out of their way to do “just friends" stuff with women to not come across as wanting sex and remove any feelings from women of needing to “decide" about them one way or another
  

• Doing things that communicate hoping for something long-term with women, like sending them pictures (something you’ll never bother doing if all you want is a fling) or doing them favors, to prevent women thinking they just want to sleep with them / encourage women to “think about them" more

• Going out of their way to give women other forms of investment and supplication to communicate that they aren’t like those bad men who aren’t going to stick around

• Opting for friendly / chummy actions, like hugging women, greeting them excitedly, high-fiving them, letting women gripe to them about bad things in their lives and vent to them emotionally, and others, to show that they aren’t “just about sex" like all those other bad men, and instead care about women as friends, too
  

If a sexy man can be thought of as a sharpened blade that cuts through the apathy of women’s lives and introduces excitement, adventure, and lust, these actions by boring, unsexy men designed to make themselves extra soft, friendly, and gentle with women are all things that help to dull the blade and make it hard or impossible to cut through the fog of normalness that surrounds her day-to-day life.

#8: Don’t Have Any Interests or Passions

High school athletes are usually passionate about their sports, or about being fit or staying in shape. Debate team members are passionate about rhetoric and argument structure. Chess players are passionate about tactics and strategies. Science and engineering and programming club members are passionate about their projects and inventions or innovations.

All of these men have one thing in common that sets them up to be attractive to women: they’re focused on triumphing over other men.

Athletes tend to be the most attractive to younger women, because their triumph over other men is the most visible to those with less mature social awarenesses. But as women grow more socially experienced, they begin to recognize broader and broader forms of passion as attractive, as they begin to realize that all forms of passion involve overcoming worthy and formidable opponents.

And if there’s one thing that boring, unsexy men all have in common it’s a distinct lack of passion, or a passion purely for uncompetitive things (like an austic’s license plate counting).

Ever meet anyone who tells you, “I have no passions"? Sometimes this is just exaggeration, or being dramatic; even Jay-Z says “I have no passion" in “Big Pimpin’", despite the fact that he clearly has passion for excelling both in music and in business.

But, there really ARE legions of men out there who have NOTHING remotely passionate in their lives... and who indulge in nothing remotely competitive, or care much about winning in those things that they do compete in (like school or their careers, or even the dating game).

A man with passion has a fire inside of him that is visible to women; it’s something that says to her, “I strive to conquer other men."

A man devoid of passion, on the other hand, communicates the exact opposite: “I attempt to conquer no men, and if a man saw fit to conquer me, he would most likely succeed."

#9: Can’t Understand Why Women Want Bad Boys

Boring, unsexy nice guys have the trait in common that they absolutely cannot understand why on Earth women have to date bad boys. It seems like the biggest, most bizarre, most irrational mystery in the universe to them... why women would keep telling them over and over again that they hate, hate, HATE bad boys, players, philanderers, and the like... and then keep ditching boring, unsexy nice guys – who are the complete opposite of those men women claim to hate! – and then go date those men they “hate" so much instead.

There’s a good reason why not a single one of these guys can understand why women date the men they do... it’s because they do not understand women a bit, and aren’t able to truly empathize with them and get inside their heads and see things from a woman’s point of view.

When a woman says, “Oh, I HATE playboys!" what she isn’t saying is, “I never want to date another playboy again because they don’t match my interests in the slightest," but, rather, “I really, really LIKE playboys, but I’m really frustrated because I can’t seem to get them to do what I want them to do in relationships (like stay loyal). Not that I’m going to give up and quit trying, of course."

Imagine doing something you really enjoy doing, but that is also difficult, frustrating, and hard – say, imagine playing some really addictive, but challenging, video game. Right after you die again, you throw your hands up in the air and say, “Oh, I HATE this game so much!"

Just then, your mother walks in and say, “Hey honey, I picked up that Teletubbies matching game for your little cousin, but she won’t be visiting until later this week – would you like to play that instead?"

That’s exactly what it feels like to a girl when she’s raging about how hard sexy men are, and a boring, unsexy nice guy offers himself as the not-so-challenging alternative.

He’s the Teletubbies game. Guess how many women want to play with him.

But because he doesn’t understand where her emotion is coming from, the boring, unsexy nice guy doesn’t get that.

#10: Think Women Don’t REALLY Like Sex

This stems mainly from sexually inexperience and/or being bad in bed.

The sexually inexperienced man will tend to believe whatever he’s told about women’s sex drives by the main influencers in his life, which in the case of most men’s lives right now are the media, and the media in the West paint a picture of women as not very desirous sexually (why the media portrays women that way, specifically, we could talk about all day).

The bad-in-bed one is just pure firsthand experience; just like if you’re bad at sales, you may just assume customers aren’t interested in whatever product you’re selling and give up on a useless market (while the guy down the street may be consistently selling out of the very same thing, unbeknownst to you), so too does the man who’s bad in bed come to the conclusion that women just don’t like sex... after all, they’d be acting a lot more excited about it around him if they did.

There’s not much to say to change a man’s mind on this – we’ve talked about it on the site before:

• Book Excerpts: Women Love Sex
• Women Really Do Like Sex
  

... but it’s really more that a man’s just got to train up his sexual prowess, learn how to make a girl orgasm, and then go out and rack up some new sexual experiences with his new talents in-tow.

Most men will never do this, though, because they don’t even realize it’s something they can do (or, they may not be willing to do it even if they are – “If she can’t get off, that’s her problem!").

#11: Believe They Must Promise Relationships for Sex

A symptom of believing that women don’t really like sex is the conclusion that if they want sex – when women clearly aren’t all that interested in the act themselves – the boring, unsexy nice guy must necessarily offer something else in exchange for sex.

That something else inevitably ends up being a long-term relationship.

That immediately wipes out any girl who’s looking for anything not-serious; if she just wants a quick fling, she’s out, because the boring, unsexy nice guy is doing his darnedest to show her he isn’t that kind of a guy and he has so much more on offer.

That also immediately puts him in contention with all the other guys competing for any given girl’s boyfriend role, many of whom will actually be perfectly charming, attractive men, and not boring and unsexy and having the sole redeeming quality of “niceness" attached to their names.

So, the boring, unsexy nice guy mopes around wondering why no one wants to date him, even though he’s utterly removed himself from contention for one role with women, and forced himself into contention for another role where he’s likely to be outmatched against his competition (since he hasn’t worked to develop himself in any way other than being “nice"... which all the other men he’s competing with are too, plus a bunch of other, more standout, traits).

#12: Can’t Believe Any Girl Could Want Them JUST for Sex

Because women don’t really like sex, they know, and because one must trade a woman things she values – long-term relationships, yacht rides, or copious amounts of alcohol – in order to sleep with her, the idea that any woman could possibly want them JUST for sex is utterly alien to the minds of nice guys.

The weird thing is, a lot of guys – average-looking or less – once they’ve worked to develop a baseline of skill with women, tend to look back over their past and say, “Whoa, I just realized, Amy, Heather, and Jaclyn ALL wanted to sleep with me at various points, and I totally could have had I just led them somewhere private and put the moves on them. They just wanted sex! (and I didn’t give it to them)"

The reason why this was invisible to them before was partly because they didn’t know what to look for... but also partly because they didn’t even believe it.

Everything in life is like that. Almost anything you want is lying around within reach if you only knew where it was and how to get it.

There’s a story by my favorite author, the early 20th century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, called In the Walls of Eryx. In it, the protagonist is lost within an invisible maze constructed by an alien race, able to see his freedom in every direction, but running into invisible walls at every step he takes, unable to escape. Finally, he resigns himself to his death and commits suicide, only to be discovered by the command of his military unit a few feet from the maze exit.

Stephen King’s The Mist wraps up in a similar way... and Ricardus has a story about something similar in his article “Dating Tales: A Girl from the Past, a Friend Who Let Go"; while Ric was awash in women, a friend from years before decided to take his life because he couldn’t get the girl he wanted – had he simply booked a plane flight and gone to meet Ric, Ricardus could probably have gotten him laid with a couple of girls within a few days. They wouldn’t have been that girl that he wanted specifically, but do you think the guy would’ve still axed himself even if they hadn’t exactly been his dream girls? Hardly.

The moral is that very often, things that we very much want or appreciate are right in front of our noses, but they may as well be a thousand miles away because we don’t know how to look for them, and often don’t even know TO look for them in the first place... because we don’t even believe they’re there.

For your standard boring, unsexy nice guy, he doesn’t believe any girl could ever want him just for sex – how could she? – even if, occasionally, some girls do... and he passes them up.

Hope for the Boring and the Unsexy

If you found yourself cringing and going, “Gulp... that’s me, I do that," as you read down the list, do not despair. It’s my hope that this article has served as something of a wake up call, a call to arms or to action, for anyone who might be guilty of some or all of these.

If you’re a “nice guy" but you’re not guilty of ALL of them, then you’re in good shape... you’re at least somewhere on the road to recovery. Get ‘em all squared away and you’ll be rolling.

Even if you ticked off a checkmark next to every single one of those 12 items above though, so long as I’ve got your mental wheels turning and some new ideas popping and resolves forming, there’s hope for you yet. You’ve found your way out of the maze... no need to pull your breathing mask off because you’ll never get out.

The nice thing about boring and unsexy is that it isn’t a death sentence... and it’s firmly in your control. The moment you decide you don’t want to be it anymore? Well, now you’ve got all the direction you need to go be the exact opposite of it instead.

Chase Amante