What else? What else have you got besides the fact that he’s “nice?” What else about this person drove you to tell me he exists other than the fact that he’s single, I’m single, and he’s “nice?”

What’s a “nice guy,” really? Someone who’s not an asshole? Does that sound like aiming high enough to you? Or have we been so starved for positive attention and interaction in the dating space that a “nice guy” with little to no additional information available sounds great? I wonder if one of the reasons we get repeatedly disappointed in dating is that our standards (and self worth) are set low and the world is meeting us right there. It’s no wonder we’re disappointed when we never think we can ask for things that aren’t disappointing.

Let me tell you what a nice guy actually is. A nice guy is the product of a heterosexual singlehood narrative that shames women and cherishes men, combined with a dating culture that’s allowed men to get away with the very foulest of behaviors, privately and without consequence, and both of these factors combine to write single women a one-way ticket to settling — for damn near anything as long as it’s “nice.” A nice guy is what single women, particularly those of us over 30, have been groomed to believe is the very best we can hope for. A nice guy is what the world wants us to agree to so it doesn’t have to worry about us anymore. It’s perfectly content for us to worry about us for the rest of our lives when we realize we settled for the bare minimum, aka “nice.”

One of the most frustrating situations that exists in the singlehood and dating space is a date with a nice guy. You know the mood: You meet up, he doesn’t say anything insulting, he has manners, perhaps he even *gasp* holds the door open for you. His clothes are clean and he shaved this morning. He is the quintessential nice guy and you feel absolutely zero attraction to this human being whatsoever. And instead of simply acknowledging that this is not someone you need to devote further time or energy to, you internalize enough negativity and self-blame to fill a moon crater.

Suddenly, it’s not about your incompatibility (because you know, that’s a thing that happens with humans), no no — it’s your fault. It’s your fault for not feeling attracted to him. It’s your fault for not wanting to “try harder to like him.” It’s your fault for not falling in love with someone for simply being present in front of you and not being a dick. We have adopted such a scarcity mindset when it comes to connection and a shame mindset when it comes to being single that we feel guilty whenever we can’t muster self worth low enough to take what we can get.

To be fair, we definitely have help. Our friends, families, all sorts of loved ones and acquaintances just can’t understand why you wouldn’t want to aggressively pursue a relationship marriage home ownership and children with this nice guy! They just want you to be happy!

No they don’t. They just want you to be in a relationship, and there is a fucking difference.

I want to be extremely clear with you: You never have to “give someone another chance” when you don’t want to. You never have to go out with someone again when you don’t want to. You never have to try to “make” yourself attracted to someone, ever. You are not “judging them too quickly,” “self-sabotaging,” or my favorite: “being too picky.” There is nothing wrong with your natural human feelings just because they are feelings that belong to a single person. You don’t have a broken “picker,” you have a valid brain.

Let’s go further: You feeling zero feelings for a nice guy does not also mean that you enjoy being treated poorly, or that you’re only attracted to “assholes.” This might be an effortless, basic-as-fuck observation from someone outside of your life looking in (it definitely is), but these assumptions and judgments can also be internalized by single people, and they can make us feel insane, broken, or delusional. All we did was not like someone. Does that seem fair to you?

We don’t ask ourselves what we genuinely think we deserve often enough. It’s so easy to get swept up onto the dating roller coaster and ride the ride, because the end of it is such a promised prize. Checking in with our genuine feelings of deservingness often gets left behind, or left out entirely. It took me years to even examine why I was devoting so much of my time and mental energy to “finding someone,” why I was continuing to put myself through something that was giving me nothing but disappointment and pain in return. I never deserved that, but I never asked myself why I was participating, so it was really, really hard to stop — stopping never occurred to me as an option. We ask people on dates so many questions to get to know them better, but when’s the last time you asked yourself questions to get to a deeper understanding of what you’re doing, and why?

Did you know that if you don’t want to do something, you don’t have to participate in it? It seems easy enough to type it out or read it, but there is so much low self worth hiding inside of all the times we didn’t want to do something, or be somewhere, or meet someone, or settle for something, and we did it anyway, because we thought we had to, or we thought if we didn’t that we’d be in the wrong. How many times have you put presumed obligation over what you actually wanted? This isn’t a blanket statement, but many times doing things we don’t want to do rather than facing the idea of other people’s reactions to us not doing them is most definitely a low self worth kind of thing. Also, as an aside, other people’s reactions to you saying no are often much more chill than you think. And the people who aren’t chill in their reactions to you saying no were disproportionately benefitting from you saying yes.

When you want to say no but you say yes instead, you’ve taken on a burden, and the person who wants you to say yes has gained an advantage that doesn’t leave you with much self worth at all. You do not deserve to live an entire life perpetually being the one who settles, who agrees, who “takes one for the team,” who goes along with what other people want them to go along with. You are allowed to remember your worth, and use it to tell the fucking truth — especially when that truth is “no.”

It’s a practice, for sure. Developing self worth, particularly through in-the-moment analysis, is a skill like anything else, it takes time and repetition. Further, many times these self worth check-ins can reveal things you need to walk away from, to say no to—and that can feel scary. Saying no and walking away from things you don’t want (or deserve) can be incredibly challenging, I won’t hide that pill in cheese for you. The first time you acknowledge you don’t want what’s currently in front of you, that you don’t deserve what’s happening to you in the single and dating space (or any space), saying no and walking away can be terrifying. I will say however that after the first time, once you see that you said no to something and the world didn’t end, that shit gets a whole lot easier moving forward.

Try doing it the next time you’re on a bad date! Ask yourself if you really deserve to be living through this when you don’t want to be. Further, ask yourself what’s stopping you from ending the date and going home. Then ask yourself if someone else not getting offended is worth you continuing on with another date with someone you know is not your partner. If I leave this world having made one real change in it, I will help single women start trusting and valuing their own intuition again, instead of just assuming that the dating advice and dating coaches and talking heads who charge single people lots of money money know what’s best for our own lives and we somehow don’t. There is nothing wrong with your intuition, and there is nothing wrong with your authentic desires. There is something wrong with a world that’s taught you to be distrustful of both.

Have you ever thought about what people trying to shove you at whatever “nice guy” is around are actually saying through their words and actions? They’re saying, “This is the best you can do. Something you don’t really want is all you deserve. This is good enough for you, even though I have someone I actually want. You don’t deserve something you want. You’re still single past the age when I feel like you should be. How dare you not want this nice guy? See? This is why you’re single, you’re doing this to yourself.”

You’re never doing anything wrong by doing what feels right to you, and you never have to make other people happy by making yourself disappointed.

The presence of a “nice guy” does not require your desire. The absence of feelings for someone else does not indicate the presence of your own flaws. No one outside of you would want to sign themselves up for a lifetime of settling, so please give very little weight to their word when they try to encourage that same settling upon you. You’re not being self-destructive by being honest with yourself about how you feel — or don’t feel — about someone. You’re not hurting your chances, you’re protecting your future. Anyone who says otherwise is simply not nice.

https://shanisilver.medium.com/a-nice-guy-is-not-enough-3a5ed7a5871f

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45209868)

One rule bro don't out me

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45209880)

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQvi7mLjFnx/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45209928)

lol she was hot. now she's 39 years old and writing screeds and all of her insta posts are about "dating advice".

i really don't understand the logic of someone taking "dating advice" from a single middle aged woman. shouldn't the only women qualified to give dating advice are women in healthy and happy marriages? but i never see those types be dating gurus. it's always some aged shrew harping on and on about how they should keep waiting and never ever settle.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45211686)

Who would take advice from these people?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45211919)

i think another huge component is that it is essential to their ego that they not admit that they've irrevocably fucked up. they have to keep the fiction going that they're going to make it. that prince charming is right around the corner. the only reason they haven't yet is because, they're all, uh, dating gurus! that's right. they are masters of dating weeding out all the men who are not worthy of them. what might seem like a toxic personality, deep seated bitterness, and unreasonable expectations are really just being a strong woman making it a patriarchal world!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45214079)

also, this bitch hates men

https://shanisilver.medium.com/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45209962)

With some rhino legs and a booty that's flappin'

With some fire-oh head 'cause you know we love cappin'

Got her toes done up with her fingernails matchin'

Here dat big ol' butt that you're walkin' cross the street with

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45212068)

Single women get annoyed by being asked why they're single and being setup with "nice guys." Single men don't have this problem, people look at them and say, "Ah, yes, it makes sense why he's single, I have no questions," and of course aren't setting them up with anybody. The future has a lot of single people and a lot of men hiring WHORES

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45210085)

this ugly bitch prob didnt get touched at all until some drunk meth addicts pissed on her in the alley after some scummy get together so "nice guys" just dont get her going

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45210199)

Interesting premise implied by the title. Anyone want to read this and let me know?

https://shanisilver.medium.com/how-to-date-like-a-nazi-eb3ddbba5da4

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45211599)

“Why can’t I find a real man?”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45211643)

There is a class of guys though who are just desperate and think it will eventually work out if they keep dating, that there is a BBW out there for them somewhere.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45212012)

Furthermore, she doesn't even know what she wants... someone that isn't too nice or too much of an asshole... just right.

Society has been twisted and formed around empowering females such that it breaks the sexual marketplace and makes everyone unhappy, and it has resulted in a low native birthrate and the need to import millions of people from other countries to make our society still work.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45212117)

https://shanisilver.medium.com/enough-already-where-the-f-ck-do-i-meet-my-husband-fa365ab19c92

BTW that instagram birthday post was 64 weeks ago, so she's 40 now

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45212197)

Imagine the genders are reversed and it’s a single man describing his date.

“One of the most fortuitous situations that exists in the singlehood and dating space is a date with a nice girl. You know the mood: You meet up, she doesn’t say anything shitlib, she has manners, perhaps she even *gasp* has a sweet and feminine demeanour. Her skin is free of tattoos and she shaved her legs and armpits this morning. She is the quintessential nice girl and you feel as though you have met an angel from heaven. You begin mentally planning your wedding immediately.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5196956&forum_id=2#45214193)