Nice Guy Syndrome,Toxic Masculinity and Empty Hearts (and the Ultimate Warrior…somehow…)

To say a lot has changed in the four years or so since I’ve written anything here would be the understatement of the millennium. I’m thirty-nine now, working a far less glamorous job (though I don’t know if you could say insurance was glamorous) and I’m in a surprisingly steady relationship that I didn’t really plan to be in when it started. I’m still geeky, a bit schlubby and I’m still a bit of a manchild, sure, but overall I’ve really grown and learned a lot since the last time I wrote in this blog. I wasn’t really planning on coming back to this blog now that I’ve moved beyond being single, but a Facebook post from an acquaintance who wrote some sad and disturbing things about his frustration with being single got me thinking about something prevalent in the dating community, whether you’re geeky or “mainstream” and that’s this line of thinking in young men that leads to issues with toxic masculinity and the “nice guy Syndrome”.

In my mid-to-late twenties and my early thirties I either did a pretty decent job lining up dates or girlfriends for myself or I did really horribly, depending on how you look at it. That is to say I dated a decent number of girls and I had some relationships too, more than other men my age who were better looking and more mainstream than I am (and by “mainstream” I mean they weren’t into comics, action figures, videogames and my other geeky obsessions) but I always got dumped in the end. And I got dumped A LOT. We’re talking George Costanza levels of humiliating breakups.

Though thankfully I never had shrinkage in the pool.

If people tried to say “You’re a ladies man” or “You’re a player” for having a decent number of girlfriends or dates, I would ask “Am I really a player or a ladies man if I get cheated on and dumped all the time?” Also, if we’re going for a full confession here, for as many girlfriends or dates I had, I really didn’t get laid that often, if at all. That is to say most of the time the best I could get was some solid, super hot “Making out on the couch” action. And before that, when I was in college, you could say that even Screech from Saved by The Bell: The College Years or Geordi from Star Trek: The Next Generation got more play than I did.

And that’s NOT COUNTING his Holodeck women.

Don’t get me wrong, I was a good looking, fashionable kind of guy in great shape and there were girls who thought I was cute or hot, but outside of getting laid twice my freshman year, I probably got more action fapping to grainy porn clips on the Consumption Junction website than I did with any actual females (this was in the early 2000s, long before you lucky punks today had your Pornhub or Xvideos or…ahem…YouJizz… websites to look at your porn clips (yes, there really is a porn video site called “YouJizz”). I think part of the reason I did so terribly with women in spite of being a young, fashionable, in shape sort of dude who still had all his hair, was that I tried too hard with ladies and I started to buy into that “Nice Guy Syndrome” mentality.

So what is the “Nice Guy Syndrome”? Well, it’s when shy, less confident or shy, sensitive guys objectify women and think “If I’m really nice to Tina all the time, she’ll like me and be my girlfriend.” It’s not quite as bad as the toxic “Alpha Male” bullshit that we’ll touch on later but

Why Penny and Leonard don’t Work in Real Life (or) If You Want to be Happy for the Rest of Your Life, Make a Geeky Woman Your Wife

As I’ve said several times in the past, I’m really into The Big Bang Theory, it’s got to be one of the most realistic shows relating to nerd/geek culture out there, in spite of the haters trying to say it’s “blackface for nerds.” As realistic as I think the show and its characters are, I have to say the one relationship in the series that isn’t very realistic is the one that the show was sold on for the longest time, and that’s the relationship between Leonard and Penny. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that a geeky/homely man couldn’t get the prom queen and that you shouldn’t try such things (if that’s what you want to go for). I’m saying that you should be more realistic and honest with yourself when it comes to

For Geeks, When Harry met Sally is more Accurate than the Big Bang Theory or How Geeky Guys can Find a Relationship

It’s no secret that I love the Big Bang Theory. While idiots or self-hating geeks might call it “Blackface for nerds” I can say that I’ve met the real-life versions of almost every lead in the show over the years. An old roommate of mine from college pretty much WAS Sheldon Cooper (if Sheldon Cooper was less of a neat freak anyway), a guy I worked with at the Jerk Store (and I’ll touch on the Jerk Store in a later post or two) looked, acted and even sounded a lot like Howard, and another friend of mine who worked there was very much a Raj. Another

“Open” Relationships: What we Picture vs what we Get

So my not-quite-girlfriend Madison and I are in what the kids these days are calling an “open relationship,” that is to say we’re not mutually exclusive to one another, but we’ve agreed we’re not going to be getting wild and crazy with anyone else either. That is to say we’re

Single Guy II: The Wrath of Practicality

If you’re a geeky, schlubby, thirty-five year old man, you’d think that your biggest problem would be making an ass out of yourself in front of a “mainstream” (non-geeky) girl who’ll think you’re some kind of a freak or weirdo. The truth of the matter is that your biggest problem as a single guy, your kryptonite, if you will, is the choice you have to make between choosing a practical girl or going with a misfit.

Why Nostalgia is Bullshit

So I met this girl Kimber* eight years ago and I thought that she was pretty awesome. She was the kind of girl that was popular with guys (but not in a slutty way). That is to say that she had more guy friends than girl friends and pretty much every single guy friend that she had wanted her. She was a very interesting mix of three different kinds of girls, she was a tomboy (she was raised by her single father and two brothers, after all), a “girly girl” when she had to look professional for her job and she was a stoner as well. She was naturally very pretty but she didn’t really wear makeup when she wasn’t working. If I had to describe her I would say that she looked like Teri Hatcher (in her prime), a little bit like Alyssa Milano and maybe Mary Louise-Parker.

And before you ask, the answer is yes, finding a girl who looks like this AND is into weed and videogames is like a gift from the heavens…

I think that she was, in a way, every nerdy guy’s fantasy because she was a nerdy tomboy who was into videogames (her favorite game being Red Dead Redemption, a favorite of mine as well), a girly girl when she had to be, and, as I said

An Introduction, of Sorts…

I think it’s fair to say that I’m not Brad Pitt. Shit, even Brad Pitt isn’t quite Brad Pitt anymore. While I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m looking like Seth Rogen or Kevin Smith, it’s fair to say I’m not Zac Efron either. With that being said, in the past eight years or so I’ve done pretty well (or pretty terrible if you look at it another way) with women and have had my fair share of relationships. On the one hand you could say that I’ve done very well because I’ve almost always had two or three relationships a year for the past eight years, but if you were to look at it another way, you could argue that I’m TERRIBLE with women because I’ve been with two or three women a year for the past eight years or so, meaning that I’ve been dumped or cheated on multiple, multiple times over that period of time and I’m turning thirty-five next week and I still don’t have a wife or children yet.

So what’s the problem, you ask? The problem is, I, like so many other single-ish dudes my age, is that I’m a bit of a self-centered manchild, which would be okay if it weren’t for the fact that I’m also a very neurotic and self-centered GEEK of a manchild. That is to say I like my comics, sci-fi and pop culture. A LOT.