The Nice Guy
Being nice isn’t always nice. Being nice can be disgusting to women.
A middle aged man told me a story. While hanging out at a buddhist temple in Thailand, he’d met an attractive Chinese woman in her early thirties.
“She was very pretty, and she smiled at me,” he said, through sips of his tea. “So I just walked over to her and said hello. This sort of thing never happens back in the states, so I wasn’t going to just pass up the chance.”
“Yes! And then what happened,” I asked, greedy for a good pornographic story.
“Well, I took her to a waterfall that no tourists really go to. And we went swimming.”
“Oh, the old secluded waterfall technique…one of my favourites.”
He took another sip. “Well, it wasn’t a technique I suppose.”
“It was a strategy.” I said.
“Yeah I guess it was.”
“And then what happened?”
He smiled shyly. “Well, I brought her back to my hotel, and she spent the night.”
I high-fived him. “So, where is she now?”
His smile faded, he looked into his tea. “Well, I asked her to travel with me, but she declined. She said, ‘But then how would I meet other men?’ I’m not sure if she was kidding or not.”
“Hmmm,” I said, scratching my chin strap. “Well, maybe she did want to meet other men, but she was most likely kidding. What did you do?”
“Well, I told her that she could ride my bike with me. I told her I would pay for her hotel rooms, her food, and everything she needed. I don’t have a lot of money because I’m on disability. That’s why I live in Asia, because it’s cheaper here. But I’d share it all to keep travelling with her.”
I leaned back and stretched. “My friend. There was your mistake.”
He knew what I did for a living. We’d discussed our work earlier, and he was an interesting guy himself. But he knew I knew a few things about women that he didn’t.
“What was it?” He asked.
“You offered her, EVERYTHING for free.”
I said nothing while I took a long sip of my coffee, so this could sink in. Then I continued. “You see, you gave her everything, so you had nothing left. You should have said, ‘Well, you can travel with me, but I’m afraid you might be a little high maintenance. Do you know how to change a tire? You need to be a useful road buddy, other than just looking cute.”
“Oh, you’re totally right!” He agreed.
“Yeah. And what you are doing by offering to pay everything, is giving away your power. That’s your mystery man. You gave away your Mystery. I bet you told her your entire life story.”
He smiled. “Yes, I guess I did.”
“We have a technique called push/pull. Like, the classic old line, ‘We’re too similar, we’d never get along. Be a bit of a challenge. You were no challenge, and so she dropped you like a cat drops the string. You need to keep something for her to figure out. Like, when women ask me what I do, sometimes I say, ‘I clean toilets. Me number one toilet cleaner in Bangkok.”
He laughed, because I’m funny, and he knew it was true. We shook hands and I went my way, and he went his, and perhaps my vast knowledge gained from pirated Internet books helped him in his future romances.
So much Internet Wow
And somewhere a man named Eric Von Marcovik, otherwise known as, “Mystery,” has no clue that dating coaches all over the world are still dishing out the exact same advice that he is, and pretending it is their own wisdom.
The moral of the story?
Don’t be so nice. It’s not sexy. It’s just nice.
