Image from George Takei's Facebook page."

In his accompanying text, George Takei asked "Who's been there or done that?*"

Short answer, of course, would be me! And about eleventy-million other guys who mistakenly believe that smothering a partner in devotion and near-servitude will buy love any better than money or threats.

The problem is that relationships, real relationships, last only between equals. Yeah, you might worship the ground she walks on, and be prepared instantly to set anything and everything aside to do her the slightest favor. But...

But...

To a first approximation, whereas nearly everyone enjoys visiting a spa pretty much nobody wants to live in one. Similarly nobody wants to marry their doorman, waiter, shoe salesman, or even masseuse with the expectation that they'll continue to be treated like a customer or patron.

Don't get me wrong. Loyalty's great. Backrubs are great. Being willing to listen is great. Making time for someone you're interested in is great too. Nothing wrong with any of that, m'kay? People do it all the time even.

But never making demands in return? Never expecting favors in return? (Except for "validation," a relationship, or, um, sex?) Always "being there?"

See. Here's the thing. It all presupposes that women are only interested in parsons or monks. (You know, like men are only interested in schoolmarms, right? Oh wait!) Or, of course, that women are secretly interested only in "bad boys." (You know, like men are only interested in strippers, right? Oh wait!)

The fact of the matter is that "bad boys" aren't any better off that "nice guys." It's just that social expectations (particularly the expectations us men are indoctrinated with) make it very easy to notice, and remember, when the next boyfriend is a "bad boy." Those same expectations make it almost invisible each time a woman dates a "good boy" after breaking up with a "bad" one. I think that's called selection bias.

Note: The comic is curiously devoid of authorship or even provenance. I tried tracking it to its origin with Google Images search. If Google's to be believed the thing has been posted and reposted more than 19,000 times! By every imaginable kind of website from individual lawyers to MotorTrend Magazine's website to, well, George Takei's Facebook funnies page. If you recognize the style I'd be interested to know whether the original artist identifies as a man or a woman.

I'm guessing man. Because while I really actually have known women who've left their perfectly nice but stiflingly sweet partners for "bad boys" I've never, ever known a woman to say, in advance, "yeah, he's so nice. I think I'm gonna break his heart and dump him for a greaser."

Extra bonus clue: The vast majority of women I know who've left stiflingly "nice guy" ideal partners have left them for...

... nobody at all!

Because, sometimes, after feeling boxed in by someone who at least outwardly behaves as if he's willing to wait on you hand and foot? Sometimes you just want to be on your own for a while.

In practice I've noticed that, stereotypes and anonymous cartoons notwithstanding, it's almost completely random who someone dates after a breakup. Ones again, yeah, we notice when someone breaks up with someone "ideal" and later takes up with someone "less than ideal." But when they instead later take up with someone who's just as ideal or (gasp!) is otherwise a more equal, suitable, compatible match? Maybe it's because it's more of a "dog bites man" story not a lot of people brood loudly about that. Or draw comics about it.

* Yes, it's happened to me.

Lynn Gassiz-Sax of Noli Irritare Leones has the definitive takedown of the “women want bad boys” conceit.

If we women really crave, above all else, guys who are nothing but trouble for us, shouldn’t John Hinckley have totally nailed Jodie Foster? Aren’t scary violent guys with guns exactly the kind of jerks that, according to the Nice Guy™ narrative, we should be falling over ourselves to sleep with? Or could it, just possible, be that the reason lonely murderers weren’t getting laid to begin with was that they already had that violent streak in them, and when women met them, they encountered things that made the hair on the back of their neck stand on end.

She said it here.

And while a seeming counterfactual would be the numerous fan mail, including marriage offers, tendered to Ted Bundy after he confessed to being a serial killer, the fact that his admirers numbered at best in the low hundreds in a nation of hundreds of millions says only that for every Whacko Jacko there’s a Whacko Jill.

Lynn continues (emphasis mine)

In fact, though we’ve all had the experience of rejecting guys who were genuinely nice enough, but not for us (the guy, say, who totally disagrees with you about whether he wants kids, or who’s the most amiable fundie you could ever meet, but you’re Unitarian, or who otherwise just isn’t on the same page as you regarding something on which you really need to be on the same page), we’ve also all rejected guys who made the hair on the back of our neck stand on end. The guy who carries a knife, and one of his first questions is whether you’re connected with any guy bigger than him, who could beat him up. The drunk who volunteers, right off the bat, that he’s going to beat up any guy who pays you any attention. The guy who tells you a long story about how God sent messages to him in traffic lights to go and find his ex-girl friend, and then says, by the way, you look a lot like her, and you look rather romantic, right now, against that post. Oh, we may sometimes fall for the smooth talking guy with great pecs who will cheat on us in the end (just as men fall for the female equivalent), but we also have a basic sense of self-preservation that, when we listen to our gut, leads us to avoid the most scary dangerous men who want to go to bed with us.

That line about bigger boyfriends who could beat him up is classic by the way. And classic projection too. I’m not sure you could completely parse the notion in a thousand pages but some of the high points include:

• Internalizing the worthiness trap that says men must be “higher status” to “earn” or deserve “higher status” women. (When, in fact, women, being human beings just like everyone else, tend not to imagine themselves as prizes granted.)
• Tacitly acknowledging their acceptance of a particularly primitive patriarchal system wherein female partners are effectively spoils of war instead of, well, partners.

• Weirdest of all, an abiding insecure certainty that their place in the system is uncertain and, especially, that they’re unlikely to succeed in it. (This is similar to the assumption I think drives a lot of men’s preference for virginity or inexperience which is that they won’t compare favorably to any of the woman’s previous partners.)

But the big thing that’s implied is that the NiceGuy™ strategy is really a secondary strategy in an “alpha male” paradigm… that if the NiceGuy™ was only bigger, only able to beat up other men, and maybe better with a knife (a knife?!?!) then instead of all the smarmy “Pickup Artist” tactics he could just grab you by the hair and drag you out and nobody better try and stop him.

There’s also the… interesting assumption that all women want big, rich, violent partners. There’s also the assumption that all women’s attraction is transactional — that if you don’t “lock her in” some how she’ll kite off with anyone bigger, richer and/or more violent than her current partner.

There’s also the equally interesting tangle of assumptions that — assuming women are autonomous anyway — their attractiveness quotient is linked to their attraction to big, rich, and violent men such that the more beautiful the woman the bigger, richer, and more violent her partner is likely to be. Or, assuming women aren’t autonomous, that the more physically attractive they are they’ll automatically fall prey to end up in relationships with those selfsame bigger, richer, or more violent men.

What’s most disturbing, of course, is that none of this seems to be particularly true about women. Yes, some women sent Ted Bundy love letters just like some men are Ted Bundys or John Hinkley Juniors. But just as it would be… rash to assume all men are or want to be closet Ted Bundys or John Hinkley Juniors, so it would be rash to assume all women have or would like to send them love letters.

Hugo Schwyzer is teaching a course on men and masculinity and brings up the “Nice Guy” syndrome (which is sometimes snarkily shortened to NiceGuy™.)

I found myself thinking about the much discussed “Nice Guy” phenomenon. “Nice Guys” often cloak their misogyny behind a facade of sensitivity. “Nice Guys” often talk garrulously about gender issues, and often establish their bona fides by bemoaning the way in which “other guys” treat women. About every ten minutes, a Nice Guy will drop an “But I’m not like other men!” into the conversation. The Nice Guy becomes less nice when he realizes that despite all he obviously has to offer, women are remarkably uninterested in dating or sleeping with him. Nice Guys often lose their temper when rejected, launching into embittered, “slut-bashing” diatribes about how foolish women are for choosing “bad boys” (or traditional men). Most Nice Guys alternate between stunningly low self-esteem and staggering hubris, secretly believing that their “sensitivity” makes them the answer to every maiden’s prayer. A great many feminist women have their share of “Nice Guy” stories, and if you spend much time in the feminist blogosphere, you’ll read your share of ‘em.

Read the quote in context here.

The emphasis in the quote is Schwyzer’s and not mine but I would have emphasized it as well because the same thing has been bugging me. I’ve been wrestling with an idea that the disconnect between what others see as entitlement and men see as worthiness, where “worthiness” is something men must earn, with the added fallacy that what is earned is therefore deserved. With the added, added absurdity that we then get royally ticked off and call women “gatekeepers” when they don’t agree with our non-negotiated-with-them-anyway self-assessments.

For instance if I were to slay a dragon it might make me feel pretty good, and might even gratify the damsel enormously, but doing so in no way “earns” me a kiss or anything else. However we sort of indoctrinate ourselves to set such terms of our quest for worthiness and then ask women to judge and reward our worthiness under those terms. The problem being that outside of very specific student/teacher, athlete/coach, and maybe employee/employer relationships worthiness and judgment aren’t relevant and are probably as inappropriate in a romantic relationship as attempting romance between student and teacher. (For this reason, by the way, slaying a dragon doesn’t even earn me a kiss if she agrees to kiss me in advance! It’s still a transaction, an exchange of totally different things: in this case some sort of favor for some sort of sex.)

It’s early days yet, and maybe it won’t pan out, but I’m pretty sure that “worthiness” is to men as the beauty myth is to women — dangled as the key to acceptance but past a very low threshold not really relevant on the other party’s part. (Would another makeover really get you the man of one’s dreams? If you don’t click is it really because you’re not physically beautiful enough? And is lack of a house or a fancier income really why one can’t ask a woman out yet. If she says no is it really because I need a newer BMW? No, no, no, and no.)

Anyway while I’m still digesting I’m pretty sure “worthiness” is ultimately inauthentic and therefore our efforts to seek or, for that matter, judge worthiness are a soul-sapping distraction that we as men would need to overcome even if it didn’t cause horrific resentment/entitlement issues between men and women.