Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Should I be nice to girls?

This question often crosses the mind of guys when they interact with girls. The scenario is so-and-so is pretty hot, I want to ask her out, if I'm nice to her, buy her drinks, then may be we can start chatting, etc. The answer is an unequivocal no. However, if I am a genuinely nice person and I come from a place that I don't need her to make me happy, then being nice to girls is okay... Again, the answer is a conditional yes. What do I mean by that?

Before I elaborate on the details on what to do, let's start with the frame, or the conditions by which we conduct ourselves. Nice guys often have been trampled and used by girls in the past and so in reaction, they tend to become assholish to get back at girls. This reactivity is not congruent with those guys and girls can see through that... and why let girls dictate how we behave?! Instead, the better frame would be that (1) we have choices with girls, (2) we are here to evaluate or we decide whether they are worthy to be with us, (3) they are chasing us and we lead.

With those guidelines in mind, then the answer is that we are nice to girls when we feel they deserve us. This begins with how we initiate our conversation with girls... Unless we have the attitude that we don't care how she might respond to us in the beginning, it's best not to compliment girls first. There are exceptions, however. Say I want to ask her something about fashion, I can start with, "Hey, you seem like you know about fashion..." and look her up & down in a non-creepy way. Now, I just complimented her AND I already subcommunicated to her that I also evaluated her, so I have a reason to talk with her.

Once that we have started talking with girls, we can role play... and to further re-inforce our frame that we are superior, leading, higher, and be the daddy figure that she is looking for, she is almost always subservient. Again, this requires finesse to do successfully... by being fun and playful which she knows on one hand that we are joking and on another, we subtly communicated to her that we are not there to please her but to evaluate her. I even explicitly say that I will give her a job performance review later because she has been working very hard for a promotion. There is a huge difference between evaluating vs. judging her.

This gets back to the common question of whether we can compliment girls, the answer is a conditional yes. We should praise them when we feel they deserve it. There are more subtleties of how this is done. For girls who are hot in the looks department, then focus on her intellect, i.e., some things that most people don't see. Again, it's okay to be a nice guy, not just any Joe Schmoe nice guy. For girls who aren't that good looking, then focus on some positive aspects of their look. This should be avoided in general unless you know what you are doing. The more vague, at least among straight guys, of the compliment, the better... nebulous things like outlook, energy, vibe, sexy... which guys usually don't talk about.

As for doing things just to be nice to girls, again, only when they deserve it. If she has been cool and fun, then it's ok to buy her drinks or even dinner, only if it was just appetizer, and, she has been a good conversationalist. The trick of being a playful evaluator is to be tricky, and be ready to throw her a curve ball now and then. There's more to being a conditional nice guy that I will elaborate on next time. Until next time, follow his advice...

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