Shortly after my divorce in 2022, I decided to get into therapy and “sort things out.” I have written a fair bit about that phase of my life previously:
At around the same time, I came across a book that made me do a double-take:
For someone who had identified himself as a “nice guy” much of his life, and took a lot of pride in it, the title was a proper sock in the gut. What was the title saying? That I should stop being nice? Change the best part of me? Maybe it was going to teach me to be more assertive. I had heard that one before. I could learn to do that.
But, no.
There was a lot more that the title was suggesting – that a Nice Guy fails to get what he wants in love, sex and life because he is “nice” not in spite of it. The Mr. in the title was also suggesting that being nice was perhaps not-so-nice after all!
With a sense of foreboding and a gulp, I started reading the book. The very first pages hit me so hard that I did not see it coming:
[Nice guys] believe that if they are “good” and do everything “right”, they will be loved, get their needs met and have a problem-free life.
Of course, that is right! Who is going to argue with that? I had lived nearly 50 years with that belief and surely I was on high ground for all the “good’ things I had done “rightly.”
But then why was I feeling uncomfortable? When I examined it a little more, I asked myself: was I loved, did I get my needs met, and did I have a problem-free life? Heck no. Far from it. My life had been one long pursuit of trying to be loved and failing; and it was problem-ridden at every turn. As for getting needs met, I did not even know what they were, let alone get them met!
The fact that others did not acknowledge or appreciate my “niceness” only heightened the sense of aggrieved righteousness.
While my Mr. Nice Guy mind was still trying to come to terms with this first blow, along came the knockout punch.
On page 26, Dr. Glover lists the not-so-nice traits of Nice Guys:
- Nice Guys are dishonest
- Nice Guys are secretive
- Nice Guys are compartmentalized
- Nice Guys are manipulative
- Nice Guys are controlling
- Nice guys give to get
- Nice guys are passive-aggressive
- Nice guys are full of rage
- Nice guys are addictive
- Nice guys have difficulty setting boundaries
- Nice guys are frequently isolated
- Nice guys are often attracted to people and situations that need fixing
- Nice guys have problems in intimate relationships
- Nice guys have issues with sexuality
- Nice guys are only relatively successful
Oh, man! Is there a list more damning? You got to be kidding me!
Dishonest? Me? No way. Manipulative? No way. I said no, no, no, no, no – all the way down the list. All of them were false.
Then came the moment of reckoning as I read it a second time, slowly. In the secure confines of my mind, I went tick, tick, tick, tick, tick…and with each tick that felt like another nail in the coffin being hammered in, I sank deeper into the bed, feeling utterly miserable, and I just lay there crying.
I closed the book thinking, “Oh my god, have I just lived one big lie?”
My earliest memory of taking on the identity of being nice came from my mother’s extended family, where I was called samathu by my aunts. It’s a Tamil word for being obedient, soft-spoken, agreeable, la dee dah, you get the drift. This was in sharp contrast to my older brother, who was the antithesis of me. He was murattu – loud, abrasive, angry, confrontational and demanding.
So there it was – my passport to belonging, acceptance, and even celebration. Be nice. Fly under the radar. Stay out of trouble. Keep things harmonious. Don’t upset the apple cart. Be invisible, but try to be seen as being invisible.
I had been trying to buy love by being nice. Little did I realize then it would be utterly self-defeating.
It also laid the ground for a lifetime of conflict with my brother. Gosh, how exasperating it must have been for Rajesh to not be heard and seen for who he was, to be constantly compared to this saint of a brother!
In how many different ways did I play this up so he could be seen as more abrasive and I would be seen as more accommodating? If I have to be honest, I would say it was there in some form or the other all along, right up to a few months before he took his life.
For example, when we were teens, I would refuse to buy new clothes for myself, choosing to wear torn/old stuff so I would not be a burden to my parents who were struggling financially. When he would directly ask (and get) an entire new wardrobe for himself every time he visited India, I would see it as selfish. Despite feeling resentful, I would think better of myself for being more sensitive. He would rail at me for being a tyagi (martyr); that would only make me dig my heels in deeper. I would ask, “What is wrong with that? I am contributing to the family by demanding less!”
I made a virtue of being a martyr! And I wore it on my sleeve with pride. I played the Victim for years to come, through my marriage, the divorce, and for a while after.
My father was astute though. In my admissions form to Rishi Valley School, one of his observations about me was that I had a tendency to be sly and secretive. I read this many years after he passed away. I was sorting through some old papers when I came across a copy of the form. I was shocked when I read it – firstly, at the thought that he thought that of me, and secondly, that he had the gall to put it on my admissions form! Lol.
There were other rumblings that I had ignored over the years. One of my oldest friends once called me a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Others had called me manipulative. I was called a loser a few times. I felt injured by these remarks, and I distanced myself from these people because even if I could sense the truth in what they were saying, I did not know what to do about it. In the safety of a reality of my own making, the world was wrong, and I was right.
It took me a few days to pick up the book and start reading it again. The truth of it had sunk in by then, and I was wondering: “Now, what?”
The chapters of the book are:
- The Nice Guy Syndrome
- The Making Of A Nice Guy
- Learn to Please Yourself
- Make Your Needs A Priority
- Reclaim Your Personal Power
- Reclaim Your Masculinity
- Get The Love You Want
- Get The Sex You Want
- Get The Life You Want
The list of chapters should give a good sense of the book’s trajectory. Beginning with the shocking blow that being nice is essentially inauthentic, the book traces how the Nice Guy is made (childhood experiences), how he is trapped in a web of his own making (coping mechanisms), and how he can take responsibility to grow into an authentic person who gets the love, sex and life he wants.
I want to highlight three ideas from the book that hit home hardest for me and the changes that emerged from these hard-hitting truths.
Caring vs. Caretaking
The first one was to differentiate between caring and caretaking.
Caretaking:
- Gives to others what the giver needs to give
- Comes from a place of emptiness within the giver
- Always has unconscious strings attached
Caring, on the other hand:
- Gives to others what the receiver needs
- Comes from a place of abundance within the giver
- Has no strings attached
From my teens, I had tended to fall into a caretaking role in relationships, and again it was a source of pride. First, with my parents, I essentially acted as their counselor, a go-between, someone who would ease the tensions of their tumultuous relationship, which would sometimes blow hot and then blow cold. Then, in my marriage, I took on, took on, and took on. The shocking realization was that I was continuing to be a caretaker well past my divorce. Setting that right has been a massive challenge but I have made good progress. When it has reared its head in later relationships (at work or personal), I have been able to catch it early and avoided taking on that role.
Covert Contracts
The second idea that was difficult for me to come to terms with was that I was in any way inauthentic or dishonest. I had prided myself on being the opposite; it took me a while to understand where the dishonesty lay. What drove home the point was the idea of making covert contracts.
Covert contracts stem from a dilemma that Nice Guys face: How can they keep the fact that they have needs hidden, but still create situations in which they have some hope of getting their needs met?
To do this, the Nice Guy makes a contract that reads like this:
I will do this _____ (fill in the blanks) for you, so you will do this _______ (fill in the blanks) for me.
On the face of it, this exchange seems fair enough, except that it makes a relationship transactional (give to get). More importantly, this contract is entirely in Mr Nice Guy’s head; it is not mutual or explicit! And the kicker is that the Nice Guy will act as if he is completely unaware that he has made any such contract in his head! Lol.
I made a list of situations where I had done this and began to recognize that it stemmed from a belief that I could not get my needs met if I asked for them directly and openly. Learning to do that was the first step out of the mess. It has meant taking risks, being open to hearing a No, learning to negotiate, expressing one’s likes and dislikes, and drawing boundaries.
Company of men
The third insight from the book was something counter-intuitive: that Nice Guys need the company of men to be able to grow into their masculinity. Most of my friends are women and I feel most at ease in female company. I have justified this in different ways including thinking of myself as more feminine than masculine. Remember how my brother was aggressive and my aunts were so validating of my niceness?
Essentially, I had not built strong male friendships and it was a big lacuna. Luckily, I had a few male friends that went back decades and a couple of new ones that emerged. I began giving time and energy to those friendships and these guys are now my go-to people in times of need and to have fun.
At this time, my therapist had suggested an all-male group called Biradari, a men’s circle that met weekly to “nurture an intimate, sacred and audacious brotherhood with the intention to see and be seen, to listen and be heard, to heal and be held.” I attended a few sessions – it was a mixed experience for me, but the upside was that it opened up the experience of an exclusively male company.
I started listening to The Man Enough podcast which “explores what it means to be a man today and how rigid gender roles have affected all people.”
I read The Seasons of a Man’s Life to understand how men tend to transition from one season of their life to the next.
NMMNG has led me to explore and express what it means to be a man in the modern world. It is a work in progress.
The book has a helpful format: first identifying dysfunctional behaviors, then understanding the impact of those behaviors, and finally practicing how to break free of them. The activities are immensely helpful. Here is one example:
Identify one covert contract between you and a significant other. What do you give? What do you expect in return? Share this information with the other person. Ask the other person how it feels to respond to an unclear agenda.
The important step in this process is the sharing. That is what enables a breakthrough in the relationship. Trying to figure things out in one’s head and saying everything is now OK is more Mr Nice Guy behaviour. Breaking away from old patterns requires risk-taking, putting yourself out there, acknowledging what you have been doing, and making a commitment to be more authentic in the future.
If you identify as a Nice Guy, please buy this book and work through these activities, and see the changes that emerge in your life. Living authentically can be quite challenging, especially after a lifetime of people-pleasing, but it is well worth the effort. One way of looking at it is that a Nice Guy is a boy stuck with early coping mechanisms and hasn’t yet learned the skills to live powerfully in a complex world.
If you know someone in your life who seems to be trapped in being a Nice Guy, do him a favor and gift him this book. At first, he may be very offended but will eventually come around to thank you for it.
NMMNG has been a bible of sorts in my attempt to live authentically and with integrity. It is not a magic wand that makes life problem-free; in fact, that is precisely the kind of magic thinking that Nice Guys are wont to do that the book helps dispel.
A life that is not always harmonious or smooth is not a problem. Developing the courage to meet problems as they arise, and taking responsibility for all aspects of one’s life is the act of growing up that this book helps with.
Thank you Dr. Glover for this gift.
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