She complains about jerks all the time, so I should be the opposite.

by Jonathan
(Arkansas)

I used to have nice guy syndrome. I am still suffering some of its symptoms, but considerably less than I did four years ago.

Basically it comes down to what I heard from women, both in the media and who I was friends with. They complained about the jerks that cheated on them, never did anything for them, didn't listen to them at all, made no effort to console them and who just saw them as sex objects. The line every time, "Don't be like him!" A chorus of women chanted that mantra to me as I explored the wide waters of dating. So I take their advice, thinking that there's no way that all these drastically different women can give me the exact same advice and be wrong. I'll never have a bad relationship. Wrong.

At this point, I have NGS (nice guy syndrome). Every girl afterwards breaks up with me for the racey "bad boy" (most of them don't wait to break up with me). I eventually figured out that I was too nice. When my girlfriend needed someone for anything, I was always there. No matter how trivial. They didn't have to work for it. Which is where the problem came from. Because I was doing all the work and recieving nothing in return, my self-image, confidence etc. plummeted. Because they don't have to work for my attention, because almost no matter what they do they get it and then they lose interest. Then they see the me I became because of what happened: sulky, zombie, obessed, and quite frankly, stalker me.

I learned afterwards the same thing this article says. Women want the bad-boy and the sensitive type. Combined. To me(especailly at first), this is like being two different things at once. Drastically different things. Like bunny/rabid wolf different. The best thing to do to cure yourself of this, guys, is stop trying so hard. Stop all of your hard work, and let her do something for the relationship. Attention is a two-way street, just like everything else in a relationship.