Originally Posted by MSD

Why do Nice Guys(TM) never get the girl? Because they're Nice Guys(TM) (hereafter abbreviated "NG") and not just nice guys. I consider being a NG a personality disorder. The NG has it in his mind that nice guys finish last, and sees himself as a sort of tragic hero. He's not just what women want, he's what they need, he's better than all those other guys out there, he'll treat them like they deserve to be treated. This breaks down into our first two major problems with the NG.

First, women want a man, not a doormat. They want to be treated as equals, not put on a pedestal and worshipped. If he gets into a relationship with this mindset, the NG will range from clingy and creepy to outright codependent. As much as he professes to understand women and their needs and wants, he will become insecure and jealous when they don't return his unconditional love and dedication. The other extreme is that he will become disillusioned and jaded with a relationship that isn't the fairy tale he envisioned, and grow resentful and misogynistic and extol the virtue and truth of Ladder Theory.

Second, the NG thinks that being nice is enough, that women will be attracted to him because of his personality, but he always ends up in the "friend zone." He ends up there for one or both of two reasons: one is that he's deluded himself into thinking that being nice is all that matters and fails to develop any other redeeming qualities; the other is that he hasn't developed the emotional intelligence to realize that he needs to be proactive in seeking non-platonic relationships.

This leads him into a downward spiral of being the guy whose female friends see him as a big brother who they can go to for help with their problems. They genuinely like him as a friend and assume that since he hasn't shown any outward signs of interest that he feels the same way toward them. Meanwhile, our NG sits by, assuming that his friends know how he feels waiting for the day when they realize that they don't want the boyfriends they complain to him about, they want him. Some of these friends think he's a genuinely a good guy who wants to be there for them when they need someone to vent to, someone to help them out, a shoulder to cry one. A few may recognize him for the doormat that he is and take full advantage of it; sure, it's manipulative, but he's willing to be manipulated.

I guess it is kind of tragic in a way, because it's all his fault and he can't understand why.