Thank you so much for being there for me throughout my tumultuous breakup with the department.

I'm just so glad I finally left.

You're such a good co worker anytime And I will just go ahead and give you this.

What's this?

Oh, this is an itemized invoice for the hours of emotional labor.

It just says a relationship, whoops, that's a mistake.

Your total do is a relationship and sex.

If you need to split up the payments for any reason, I'll go ahead and take a 45 minute cuddle session up front.

I'm not gonna be in a relationship with you.

We're friends.

I have worked at this friendship for three years.

I've given you my company with blood, sweat and tears hours and hours and hours of overtime and for what my friendship, nothing.

Your friendship is worthless to me.

But surprise, surprise nice guy behavior is not exclusive to men.

It's a mindset peppered across the spectrum of gender and one that I think is pretty vilified.

I mean rightly so it can be pretty shitty right?

But um, today I would actually like to take a deeper and perhaps more compassionate look and not only the variety pack of collectible nice guys and the subtle behaviors they enact, but why in essence it's their core wounds telling them that they're not enough.

That's making them act real shitty.

So the stereotypical and media saturated nice guy often suffers from a flawed logic that involuntary decency is their only character flaw.

They think that merely because they're not horrible people who abuse their partners, numerous prospects should flock to them.

They think by simply refraining from doing something terrible is this great sacrifice when in reality that's like the bare minimum of human decency.

So so in short they're entitled calculated and you guessed it manipulative.

But I think this is the most sinister and extreme portrayal of a nice guy.

Like yes, they exist.

But this is a one dimensional explanation that leaves no room for understanding why the hell these people act this way.

Now the reason I want to take a look at nice guys through this lens is because one of my male friends is in an abusive marriage and in really looking at the dynamics between him and his wife and talking this over with my therapist, I realized that he suffers from being a nice guy, but that this definition of like nice guy syndrome was foreign to me because when I think of a nice guy, I don't think of someone who has trouble setting boundaries.

This is my private space.

Your private space when I think of a nice guy, I don't think of someone who feels like he desperately has to control the way he's perceived in relationships bomb I will be whoever you want me to be and win you over so that I can be the knight in shining armor, I want to be and I definitely don't think of someone who unconsciously chooses volatile partners who treat them like doormats because they're willing to tolerate abuse for approval.

Hello ladies, I worship the ground you walk, I guess I am the ground you walk on.

So a worship being beneath your plea.

But do you also think of someone who grew up with an emotionally volatile parent who lacked boundaries of someone who doesn't think that they're enough of someone who cleans up the emotional messes of their abusive partner.

So nice guys get a bad rap for feeling entitled to sex, but that entitlement comes from a belief that a romantic relationship is the only possible source of happiness in their lives.

They interpret their own value through a lens of sexual desirability, which as a woman in living in society I relate to and they see friendship as failure and when I look at nice guys through this new lens and instead of feeling like angry and upset about them, like I normally do, I actually feel really sad for them because nice guys like myself, like the way I used to think they think they have to earn love that if they just do enough and if they show up in these very specific ways, maybe they can gain love instead of intrinsically feeling like they're lovable because of who they are.

They strive so hard to earn it.

And yes, you know, sometimes this motivation shows up in really disingenuous and shitty ways, but I would argue that nice guys finish last only when it comes to their own emotional needs, self love and beliefs about what they deserve and may all you nice guys wander into a therapy office week after week, hell your core wounds and then go back out into the world whole and finally, a little food for thought.

If you have a pattern of dating, nice guys, why are you attracted to an imbalanced power dynamic?

Are you going to be emotionally available for a partner who can set boundaries?

And maybe just maybe are you identifying with someone's core wound of not being enough and trauma bonding like hell with them.

I'm anna Kana, thank you to the patrons for supporting today's video as always, thank you guys.

And of course thank you to the best nice guy.

There is Daddy squarespace for sponsoring today's episode.

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