/Advice

What does it mean when a girl tells you that you’re “a really nice guy”? All my friends say it’s code for “never going to have sex with you,” and I know that people say nice guys finish last, but as someone who can’t help but be a nice guy, I hope that’s not the case. So I want to get your take on that. Am I ever going to get laid?


When I say "you're a really nice guy," it's genuinely meant as a compliment. That said, I had a friend who did equate niceness with unfuckability. And she had a history of dating pricks.

First, ‘nice’ is pretty vague. Nice could mean shy. Nice could mean harmless. It could be an asexual sort of niceness, a brotherly niceness. A funniest-guy-in-the-room niceness. And all of those versions of ‘nice’ could make it harder for you to get laid, depending on where you meet women and the sort of women you like to meet. It could also mean that you're great to be around, trustworthy, comfortable, reliable.

One of my closest friends growing up was a nice guy, and he also happened to be the sort of guy I’d never fuck. He just didn’t seem sexual to me, and he was understandably annoyed when I fucked his friends and deflected his advances. He also hated being called ‘nice,’ so when he got to college, he worked hard at becoming a complete asshole. He was ultimately successful at that endeavor, but it didn’t help him get laid. Instead of being a sex-deprived nice guy, he became a sex-deprived prick.

My take on the nice guy quandary? I think the qualities that attract a girl when she’s 18 aren’t usually the same qualities that attract her when she’s 30. You fuck enough misogynist pricks and eventually you start to value other qualities. For me, one of the qualities I look for is niceness. And by niceness, I mean sincerity, honesty, openness, tolerance, a non-judgmental and easy-going nature. All the characteristics that would’ve triggered my eighteen-year-old libido got old by the time I was 20, and became intolerable by my mid-twenties. Sometimes I hear people say that women are attracted to assholes, not nice guys. I’d change that: some women are attracted to assholes. And if you’re nice, then those aren’t the women you want.