Why there aren’t more nice guys
I think the most frequent complaint I hear from straight single women is that there just aren’t enough “nice guys” out there. This is not one of those bizarre mysteries of life that can’t be explained…
There are actually two problems: 1) Ours is not a culture that considers “nice” to be a masculine quality and 2) Women don’t always know how to appreciate a nice guy when they do stumble across one. These are in many ways just different sides of the same coin, but we tend to discuss them (or ignore them) as completely separate issues.
The qualities we consider “manly” these days have more to do with ambition and action than with kindness and reflection. To consider other people’s feelings, or even to understand your own, is fucking gay. (Why that is still such a bad thing is another important discussion for another time.) Men who, left to their own devices, are inclined to be sweet and considerate are often taught that such behavior is no way to get ahead in this world. Men who “look out for #1” and bulldoze anyone who gets in their way are rewarded. When we so often reward this kind of antisocial behavior, why should we then expect men to go against everything they’ve been told they’re supposed to do, just so they can be more compassionate partners? Not that men aren’t capable of rising above the most basic social programing. Many do. But once they have already started swimming against the tide of “appropriate masculine behavior,” what rewards await them?
I frequently find myself in conversations with women who wish that the men in their lives would be more sensitive to their feelings and treat them with more respect. But, in those conversations, these same women will often say that they wish a particular man would “take charge” or “grow a pair.” While it might be humanly possible to walk the very fine line between respectful and dominant, you are probably setting yourself up for disappointment if you expect anyone of any sex to embody both qualities all the time.
I suspect that most women who want a man to “take charge” are looking for strength rather than dominance. But we’ve learned to look for signs of strength that can often be misleading. The truth is, being kind doesn’t make a man weak. And telling you what to do doesn’t make him strong. Being able to admit that he is imperfect and vulnerable is sometimes a greater sign of strength than exuding confidence and certainty. And, if you want a healthy relationship, the ability to be himself around you is of much greater value than his ability to act a part.
Perhaps if we are better at figuring out exactly what it is that we want, we will have more reasonable expectations. And if our expectations are more reasonable, we are less likely to be disappointed all the time. There are a surprising number of nice guys out there. We just need to convince them it’s ok to show their true colors and not punish them for being the people we claim we want them to be.
Sex and the Single Feminist 
People are like dogs. Meaning we all thrive on positive attention. So here’s what I propose: Nice guys deserve to be rewarded with sex (way more often than that jerkoff friend of your roommate’s who keeps txting you drunk at 2 a.m.).
A lot of “take-charge” behavior would be called bullying in other contexts. And a lot of it, viewed in another light, is just selfishness.
Its interesting the phases most women I know go through in their lives. When they are in their early teens they are attracted to the nice guys, who are usually too old for them (Young teacher/The subject/Of school girl fantasy…), and then there is often a dramatic shift to the cultural stereotype of the bad boy or the jock. The “take charge” kind of guy. Perhaps smart, but the goal is physically fit and commanding. I would suspect that the mechanism is biological… he would produce healthy children. He might slap you around, but the biological imperative has taken hold. Then there is a shift, in the later years of college/grad school towards the Father role: someone stable and reliable who will “be there.” There are usually clashes here when the guy reflects back on the previous stage when he was the “take charge-get laid” guy and now he is the “daddy, fix this” guy. He still “takes charge” and that gets the young women who are in the previous stage all hot and bothered, so the new “girl” in marketing and her tight skirts is a reminder of what he is leaving behind as he shifts to “Stable Dad” mode. More and more this ends in divorce. The Guy holds onto his former title for a few more years, and the woman now is in Cougar mode. She starts going after the guys she once was was pursued by… The Prey has become the Huntress. And then, when a woman gets into her fifties, possibly late 40s, they go back to the Nice Guy mode. They don’t want to have to work for affection. They realize they can have all the hot stuff with a Nice Guy, and so much less of the BS of dealing with the 2 year old “Me Me Me” demands of their former husbands.
So, for Nice Guys, you get the most attention from 13 year olds or 53 year olds. Wow. That’s creepy.
Then again, most Nice Guys are too stupid to realize when they have met the exception to the rule, and screw up those relationships for dumb reasons like, “too long distance”, “we’re going in different directions,” or “i dunno, something’s just not right.”