A great parable about the whole "Nice Guy" thing..

Post Reply New Topic

I think there are a lot of people on this board who should take this story to heart. I have and it's helped quite a lot.

http://www.heartless-bitches.com/rants/ ... less.shtml

The Man With No Spine

There once was a man without a spine.

He was a very likable guy. The advantage of not having a spine was that he could fit himself to anyone, and he frequently did. He could flex this way and that.

But he couldn't stand up ...

...and being kinda mushy and flat most of the time, people often walked on him without realizing he was there.

So he got sad, having this dreadful absence of a spine, and he was resentful too. He wondered why other people couldn't fit themselves to him the way he fit himself to others, but that was silly because he never felt he had the right to ask anyone directly to fit themselves to him. He was formless, what was there to fit to anyway? In cyberspace he talked tough as if he had a spine, but people could clearly see by his rage and resentment that he didn't have one in real life, and he perished in the flame wars he provoked and only came out feeling more ashamed and ineffectual.

He wished he could be with a woman, to help him the way a spine would. If he clung to a woman with a spine, he could stand up, but women didn't like it when he did that. He often called them "b*****s" for the women with spines coldly asked him to let go of them, or unceremoniously shrugged him and his issues off onto the ground telling him to get his own spine.

If he fancied a spineless woman, on the other hand, he couldn't get her interest because they were looking for men with spines that they could cling to. But the spineless women would hang around with him for sympathy, and he'd be their platonic male friend and play "therapist" though he was as sick as they were. He'd often call himself a "feminist" and lecture these spineless women how to stand on their own when he had no idea of how to stand for himself.

With all the bending and flopping around he did, a spine never could get a chance to grow.

Then one day he had a brainstorm, he decided he'd make himself a spine.

He took a long stick.... and he put it far up his ass.

It was an improvement, though uncomfortable. It was the first time in his life he could walk tall, if not a bit stiff. He found he could have opinions at odds with others, and stand for them. He found out that he didn't have to be liked, that the world didn't end if he pissed someone off. He didn't want to fit easily with other people anymore, in fact he became inflexible.

People commented on the change, some people didn't particularly like him with the stick up his ass but they did notice him more. Some people felt that at least they could respect him, even if they didn't always like him because he did less whining. At least nobody stepped on him by accident.

However relationships still didn't come easy, it was hard for a woman with a spine to love him with the stick up his ass. He was stiff, cold, brutally opinionated, condescending, and self-righteously hostile. But eventually he did attract a very pretty woman without a spine who saw him as a tower of strength to cling to.

At first he loved this woman, he thought the stick up his ass was the answer to his dating problems. He was finally being loved the way he once loved others. At first it was great, and then it was good, and then it was ok, and then it was uncomfortable, and by the end of a year it was infuriatingly suffocating. The spineless woman clung like a straightjacket. The horror!! ! The horror!! !

But the stick up his ass made him so inflexible he didn't know how to get the spineless woman off of him, If only he could bend. He was trapped, upright in his "obligations", "duty to her", "guilt", "pride in his commitment", he spent months with his arms helplessly flapping about trying to get her off of him and trying not to look like he was doing that.

He was hoping that she would leave by hinting her indirectly, he used sarcasic tones, said mean things that were "just a joke", neglect, "constructive" criticism intended to insult. He only made the spineless woman feel more insecure, so she clung HARDER.

Spineless men envied him, called him a jerk for the way he was treating her, just the way he remembered how he used to envy other men before he had the stick up his ass (when he'd play consoler to their teary-eyed spineless girlfreinds). If only they knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of a spineless person's embrace they'd understand. He wished she'd leave him for one of the spineless men who envied him. He felt ashamed for the way he must have made women feel in the past when he was trying to cling to them, he knew that they weren't so evil after all.

One day he decided that there was only one way to be free of the spineless woman once and for all, the stick up his ass had to go.

So he pulled the stick out, and to his amazement a miracle happened: he was still standing! All of the years of inflexibility allowed him the chance to grow a spine. At first he was still a bit stiff but eventually he had the flexibility to contort a bit and yet maintained the firmness to struggle, push, and wriggle from the spineless woman's grasp (though she protested much). He stayed far out of her reach and the reach of other spineless women so that he could never be grasped by one again.

He was overjoyed with his new-found freedom; he could bend sometimes like he used to (but not too far) and also he could stand tall. He went out, partied, enjoyed life to the fullest, and eventually found a woman with a normal spine like his.

They stood together as separate individuals giving mutual support and enjoying time alone too, and lived (relatively) "happily ever after"...

The end
_____________________________

I just got out of the stick up my ass phase recently and it's been quite refreshing to have a spine.

Think about some of the most influential and good people in the world. They were hated by someone. Ghandi was despised by the British Imperialists, Abraham Lincoln was hated by Sessionists in the South, Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated because of hate.

Few of us will rise to such stature, but the lesson here is that, as the op states, being spineless in an effort to please everyone makes you invisible and forgotten.

What I've found is the more authentic you are, the easier it is to connect with people (both in friendship and romance.) As soon as I chose to embrace my awkwardness and my oddity and be ok with it, my luck turned around.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that nobody here is ever going to be a social butterfly. You will always be seen as bit weird or eccentric. The right people will find those things attractive in a friend or partner. The ones that don't aren't worth your time or effort.

Sounds like my life story. lol oh well at least the stick is gone. My butt's no longer sore!

Excellent parable!

Gotta say, I'm really sick of this nice guy shaming that's going on in society.

I am trying to grow a bit more of a spine these days. I think it might be sprouting. That and a bit of a resurgence of Christianity, something to do with having an existential meltdown, those are fun. That way I can love and respect people while having some beliefs and self-confidence. Just so long as I don't have to be a holy-than-thou, gospel-spewing evangelist every second of every day.

It's a bit scary how well that describes me.

Only problem is the spine I grew has collapsed under the weight of bullsh*t. I'm considering inserting the stick again...

The moral of the story: Even an A-Hole is more respected than a nice guy.

This author's descriptions are highly judgmental, subjective, and often inconsistent.

When the protagonist expresses opinions at odds with others, and stand for them, he is described as having a "stick up his ass".
When he assertively extricates himself from a miserable relationship, he is supposedly using a spine he's grown.
The author tells us that in one instance, his actions are inconsistent with his intrinsic nature, and in another instance, they are genuine.
So I ask: What is the difference between standing up for oneself and pretending to have a spine?
If the external, observable behavior is the same, then how would the author even know the difference?
It seems like the differentiation between positive or negative descriptions of the character
is determined merely by the social success or failure that follows the behavior, not the behavior itself.
Dating success or failure is frequently determined by variables far beyond our control, and outside of our knowledge.

The author's story has a clause to indirectly and preemptively avert criticism from skeptics like me:
"In cyberspace he talked tough as if he had a spine, but people could
clearly see by his rage and resentment that he didn't have one in real life."
I don't fall for that. I don't feel obligated to disprove any internal emotional states such as "rage",
since nobody can prove or disprove their emotional states online.
A non-disprovable accusation based on speculation carries no weight.

(Note that I didn't accuse the author of any emotional state—I'm criticizing the judgmental language of the narration.)

@Geekonychus Thank you for sharing the story nonetheless.

I'm gonna tell that story to my kids, which I will make as soon as I can find where I left my stick

There's ONE kind of nice guy. A nice person.

Then there's douchebags who pretend to be nice to girls in order to get sex. That's a different thing entirely.

Do I consider myself a nice person? Yes. Do I feel like I deserve a nice relationship? Yes. Do I want to use a girl just for her body? No

I don't know when 'nice guy' became an insult. What's wrong with being nice?