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9 Responses to “Nice Guys (TM), summed up.”

1. violet says:

   December 12, 2008 at 12:03 pm

   I was totally going to blog about this (someday). Damn yooou! :-p

   More seriously, that comic is as wonderful as the forum thread is head-deskey. Hundreds of comments to the effect of, “Get out of my head, Randall!” To which the only reasonable response seems to be, “Yes, I think I ought to. It’s fucking creepy in here.” Then there’s this guy, who demonstrates enormous empathy by saying, “I was the jerk! And it sucked (for me!), because after we broke up, she started dating this guy she was friends with. You just don’t do that! Because it hurts me, obviously!”

   And there’s this,

   To me, all of the people in this strip are dysfunctional, but the girl is the worst here, because she wants the most unequal thing out of all of them: for someone to listen to her without question and who gets nothing in return but her constant complaining about her preventable problems.

   Because, obviously, (1) it’s totally unreasonable to support a friend without getting anything in return, ‘cuz friendship totally doesn’t work that way, (2) all her problems would be solved if she’d just fuck me!

   And then there are some people who seem to get it. In response to this piece of work:

   Steroid wrote: “Action: Come right out at first meeting and ask for sex
   Action: Come right out at first meeting and ask for a loving relationship.
   Action: then ask for a loving relationship.
   Action: then ask for sex.
   Action: get nothing.”

   Oh look. I found your problem. You’re treating intimacy as a commodity. It’s not. And that, not the timing of your advance, is what makes you a creep.

   Steroid wrote: “Result: Be subject to “where did this come from?!” shock and possible damage to friendship.”

   “Be subject to”? If you haven’t indicated an interest in sex before, then yes, bringing it up might result in some surprise. Don’t act like a woman’s negative reaction to “so can we have sex yet?” is some sort of ordeal for you.

   And if it happens that a woman realizes what comes across so clearly in your post – you were only in the friendship because you thought it would be the best strategy to “get” sex from her and you do not characterize your friendship as a loving relationship or a worthy end in itself and indeed are not so much interested in friendship as in a “friend-like bond” (what the HELL) sufficiently chummy to merit sex – then yeah, your “friendship” is going to take some fucking damage.

   So I still weep, but slightly less hard.
2. Stacy says:

   December 12, 2008 at 12:08 pm

   Having been there and done that earlier in life, I submit that the “or we could be friends!” results organically from what any sane person should agree is a noble impulse – “I think if we got to know each other there might be something there afterall”. Really, tell me how I’m supposed to fault someone for thinking that way.

   The rest is all true too, and sad, and is ultimately just part of the learning curve for a lot of men – and women.
3. Phoenix says:

   December 12, 2008 at 12:18 pm

   Oh my god. This happened to me–I was the girl. After two years of friendship, I hooked up with this guy because I thought we were both just horny–and he tried to pressure me into a huge relationship. Craaaaazy.
4. violet says:

   December 12, 2008 at 12:19 pm

   “I think if we got to know each other there might be something there afterall”. Really, tell me how I’m supposed to fault someone for thinking that way.

   Authentic relationships are ends, not means. It’s fine to have a crush on a friend. It’s fine to crush on someone and end up becoming friends. It’s not fine to predicate a friendship on an eventual romantic relationship or use it to “get to” a romantic relationship, even subconsciously.
5. zingerella says:

   December 12, 2008 at 12:32 pm

   Authentic relationships are ends, not means.

   YES. THIS.

   A million, squillion times.
6. Stacy says:

   December 12, 2008 at 1:08 pm

   It’s not fine to predicate a friendship on an eventual romantic relationship or use it to “get to” a romantic relationship, even subconsciously.

   Ok, so we do agree on this topic – there’s no way I condone having a manipulative friendship with an agenda. I do, however, think it’s perfectly fine to keep the door open in a “you said no (again) and I’m moving on, no biggie but I wanted you to know I still think you rock” kind of way. And yeah, most people don’t really manage to pull that off and it’s probably better if they don’t try.

   I think the trick is that if your crush is dating someone else and seems happy, your primary emotion should be that you’re glad they’re happy, and a little bit wistful (but not so much that you can’t have a romantic attachment elsewhere yourself) If you’re jealous and just thinking about how unhappy YOU are, then you’re the “nice guy” in the comic strip.
7. Kilgore Trout says:

   December 12, 2008 at 2:04 pm

   Ugh. Yeah I feel like an idiot here because I totally was this guy up until recently. I didn’t think about how much I was trying to manipulate the situation, and how disrespectful that was to the woman I obviously cared about.

   I wrote about this exact comic strip, only to have a commenter leave a pretty brutal assessment of the typical nice guy, and I was guilty of almost all of it. Then it came out that the anonymous commenter was a girl I had done almost exactly this same thing to. Although I still contend that I was obvious about wanting to date right from the start. She had told me this but until I experienced it from the other side I didn’t get it.

   The learning curve of love is steep and full of pointy objects at just about heart level.

   Heres my post and the subsequent comment thread that followed.
   http://quintessentialrambling.blogspot.com/2008/12/xkcd-wrote-one-about-me.html
8. Hari says:

   December 12, 2008 at 2:53 pm

   Having been a Nice Guy until about 19, I don’t think the longterm permutations of pity-dating really occur to Nice Guys. They only think about the self-esteem boost they anticipate from the conquest, not the relationship itself.
9. Lisa Kansas says:

   December 12, 2008 at 3:28 pm

   I saw that comic strip before…! somewhere, but now I can’t remember where. I’ve never had one of those relationships but I’ve seen ‘em in action, with both men and women variously playing the role of Nice Guy (TM).