Episode #21： No More Mr. Nice Guy With Dr. Robert Glover
Episode Stats
Summary
Dr. Robert A. Glover is a psychotherapist with a PhD in marriage and family therapy, and he says he's a recovering nice guy himself. He's spent thousands of hours helping other men recover from the Nice Guy Syndrome.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another episode of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Now, we've all heard the phrase, nice guys finish last, right?
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Why do men whose female friends tell him that he'd be a great catch for some gal
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Or why is it the guy that never rocks the boat at work and is pretty much Mr. Reliable
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Well, our guest today has written a book about this topic,
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and he's the author of the book, No More Mr. Nice Guy.
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Dr. Glover is a psychotherapist with a PhD in marriage and family therapy,
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and he says he's a recovering nice guy himself and has spent thousands of hours
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helping other men recover from the nice guy syndrome.
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Well, Dr. Glover, tell us, who is Mr. Nice Guy?
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Well, fundamentally, the nice guy doesn't believe he is okay just as he is.
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Now, this might not even be a conscious thought process.
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But for many, it's much more of an unconscious process of thinking that in order to be liked
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and loved and get their needs met, they have to find a way to become what they think other
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That's probably one of the most fundamental ways to look at it is that they're people pleasers.
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They have difficulty making decisions, making their needs a priority.
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They tend to believe they have to give to other people first before their needs can get met.
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And, you know, I guess maybe in common vernacular, we might say that, you know, he's the wimp,
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the doormat, the spineless guy that wants to make everybody happy, but yet lets everybody
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Now, that's probably the extreme caricature of a nice guy.
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And nice guys fall everywhere in between seeking approval versus being total doormats.
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And you talk in your book that, I thought it was really interesting, that nice guys really
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They have some kind of ulterior motives sometimes.
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Probably the two issues for nice guys is one is that they're not that nice, and two, trying
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to make everybody else happy does not make them happy.
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So there's two fundamental flaws in the paradigm of the nice guy.
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But that part about not being so nice, there's a few reasons for that.
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One of the first ones, if you are trying to please people, you are always going to be
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I tell the men I work with, there's only one way to be in integrity.
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And that is to ask yourself what feels right, what seems right to you, and then do it.
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And if you're trying to seek other people's approval, you never either ask yourself what
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feels like the right thing, or if you do ask yourself, if you think it might upset somebody
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or they may not like it or they may be mad at you about it, you won't do it.
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So nice guys are, as long as you're trying to please anybody else, you're not going to
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Now, I don't know if you've ever been in a relationship with somebody that you couldn't
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trust, you couldn't depend on their word, that something might be bothering them or
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on their mind and they never told you or you found out later, or as with a lot of nice
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guys, it comes out in indirect, passive-aggressive ways when you're not expecting it, which is
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another reason why nice guys fundamentally aren't nice is because of their passive-aggressiveness.
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You talked about how, and I've seen this with a lot of, you know, not just men but a lot
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of people, but a lot of times with the nice guys that they're keeping score, a score that
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That's a great way to put it, Brett, and I see that a lot in relationship especially,
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and I tell couples I work with, anytime you put a scoreboard up in your living room, the
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But that's especially true with nice guys, and that scorekeeping often leads to what I
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call a victim puke, and that is you kind of keep things in, keep things in, keep things
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in, either all the things you believe you've done for other people that haven't been reciprocated
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or all the things you keep in that other people you perceive have done to you and you feel
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like a victim, and sooner or later that stuff is going to come out in not so very nice ways.
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I mean, is this a recent phenomenon, or has it been with us for a while?
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You know, I suspect there have always been milquetoast kind of guys and hen-pecked kind
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I really believe it has really come to be much more prominent now for I think at least
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One is that at least the men I work with, I see a lot more men growing up in homes where
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they were not connected to their fathers, either because dad was absent, he was gone,
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he worked too much, or the boy was trying to be different from his father.
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Either dad was angry, philandering, alcoholic, treated mom badly.
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So I see a lot of young men that have grown up, and I'm in that category as well, trying
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to please my mother, trying to get approval from women, not feeling real connected to my
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And I think a real core part of that is the dominance of young men having to please women
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Whereas maybe 100, 150 years ago, young men would have spent a lot of time with their
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dads or uncles or cousins or grandfathers, and not been trying to be different from their
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And if you add to that, if you consider the typical school system, I'll often ask the men
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I work with how many male teachers they had between kindergarten and junior high.
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And the average is about 1 to 1.5 over, you know, all the guys I've asked.
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So if you think about it, even getting from third grade to fourth grade, not only meant
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you learning how to do your reading, writing, and arithmetic, but usually even how to please
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And what I found is that when men start trying to figure women out and start trying to figure
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out how to make women happy, not only do they not make the women happy, as I've heard
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countless times from countless women, but the men become passive, indirect, pleasing, and
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is, again, passive-aggressive, and not particularly available to the woman they're actually trying
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So how do these nice guy traits, the nice guy syndrome, how does it get in the way of
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You know, I found with most nice guys, it tends to affect most areas of their life.
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Occasionally, I'll talk with a guy that'll say, well, yeah, at work, I'm not a nice guy.
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But I found with most nice guys, because of their emotional roadmap, their emotional paradigm
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of life, it really is, in most areas, trying to seek external validation through getting
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It's in avoiding conflict, not having anybody upset or angry at them.
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It's through what I call covert contracts, where they give to get, where they give to
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other people, hoping to get something in return.
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And usually, for nice guys, what they're hoping to get in return is praise and validation and
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But in almost all ways, when it comes to getting their needs met, they're typically giving to
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other people, hoping that other people then will give back to them without them having
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So if you look at it, if you have a person who's seeking external validation, trying
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to please everybody he meets, not being fully honest and transparent, not letting people
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know what he thinks or wants or what's on his mind or what's bothering him, if he avoids
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conflict, if he's always trying to make sure everybody's happy and nobody's upset at him,
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if he can't make his own needs a priority, if he can't be honest, if he can't face his
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fears and his challenges, his anxiety is ruling him, take that whole package right there
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and it usually is going to affect every area of his life.
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And I found that the core areas where I tend to work with nice guys the most is around women
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and relationships, around sexuality and around work and career and around having passion and
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So those are usually the biggest areas that I see get manifested, where nice guys tend to
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be frustrated in those areas, but because they assume that the roadmap they're following
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of trying to be a good man, get everybody's approval, avoid rocking the boat, because they
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think that's a legitimate roadmap to take them where they want to go.
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When they get frustrated, they don't know what else to do, but just try harder doing more
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It's like, you know, say somebody gives you a map of Cleveland and plops you down in
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Seattle and says, you know, find your way to, you know, the courthouse.
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And if you believe that map should help you find a way to navigate a way to the courthouse,
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But if you think that map is accurate, you're just going to keep trying harder, getting more
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They're following a roadmap they believe should take them where they want to go, but the roadmap
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is completely inaccurate, outdated, and just totally flawed, but they just keep trying
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So Dr. Glover, a lot of men might be hearing this right now and might be thinking, you know,
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What can these men do to shed the nice guy syndrome?
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That's a great question, and of course, there's not a single simple answer to that.
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Now, typically when I talk with people about nice guy syndrome, whether I'm talking with
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guys or talking with women that are curious about what I teach men, the question often
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is, well, are you saying I should become a jerk?
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You know, should I become an asshole and just start not caring what anybody thinks?
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And this is a typical black and white thinking that maybe most humans fall prey to, but especially
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Nice guys tend to see everything in black and white.
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Now, the other thing that I'll hear is not only the question, well, do you have to become
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I'll often hear nice guys say something like, well, you know, I realize that being, you
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know, a passive pleaser isn't working to get what I want, and I realize I don't want
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to become a jerk or be like my father, so I want to find a happy balance somewhere between
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And what I often tell men is that I don't know where the tipping point is between two
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So actually what I teach men is how to understand what I call a third model of masculinity.
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I look at both the asshole jerk and the pleasingly passive nice guy as what I call first order
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They're both just trying to manage their anxiety by controlling the people in situations
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The asshole jerk tends to do it with threat and strength and bravado, whereas a passive
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nice guy tries to manage people in situations with subtlety and indirectness.
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But they're both still trying to do the same thing.
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So what I teach men fundamentally is where they have to begin is recognizing where their
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roadmap is not working and begin to look at a different model to where they become a
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And this second order man begins by living in integrity.
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And a real core issue I found with the guys that work with them is that they have to learn
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to soothe their anxiety, because nice guy syndrome is fundamentally an anxiety-based disorder.
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Everything they do is trying to keep their anxiety in bay.
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Well, if you're out there living a life, if you're challenging yourself, if you're putting
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yourself in new situations, if you're dealing with people in conflictual situations, you're
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The key is not either intimidating people to get them to change or manipulating them.
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The key is learning to hold on to yourself, and you soothe your anxiety from the inside.
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So that is probably one of the most core fundamental issues that I work with recovering nice guys
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around, is how to learn to soothe their anxiety so that they can lean into things that frighten
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And I imagine, though, that, say, there's a nice guy in a relationship who starts doing
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this type of thing, who starts kind of setting boundaries for himself and not completely trying
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There's going to be some pushback that their partner might not like this.
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I mean, could this end relationships that a nice guy might have?
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Because, as I said, my background and my doctorate is in marriage and family therapy.
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I tend to look at the systems that people co-create with each other.
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So I look at every relationship, say between two adults that are in an intimate relationship.
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Those two people have unconsciously co-created a system that works for both of them at some
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That system is co-created by both people, usually to let them use the relationship technology
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skills they learned when they were three years old in their family of origin.
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So oftentimes, for example, if you have a person who one of his strongest relationship skills
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is being a fixer and problem solver, what kind of person will he have to attract to himself
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He's going to have to attract somebody that has problems that need fixing.
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And that person probably has spent all of their life being perceived as a problem that needs
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And so when they get with a nice guy, it feels normal to them, too.
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Now, what I've found in talking, people say, well, for example, how do women react to
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Or has there been a backlash against you teaching men to be not nice?
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And you know, the truth is, I've got stacks, probably a foot high of emails at home that
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I've printed out of email I've got from men and women all over the world in response to
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And in that stack of email, I think I have two emails from women that were critical of
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And it was obvious they hadn't even read the book.
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They like that I'm teaching men to be honest, to have integrity, to tell them what's on their
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mind, to be transparent, to set the tone and take the lead in a loving, integrated way in
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their relationship and not burden the woman with having to make all the decisions.
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They hate it when you ask, what do you want to do tonight?
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We think we're giving them the choice and the option.
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They feel burdened when we men say, what do you want to do tonight?
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They want us to show up and say, hey, put on your dancing shoes.
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Now, they can always say, no, I don't feel like it, which is fine, but at least show up
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So what I found is that when men start doing what I teach them to do, in general, their
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Now, yes, it can cause their partner anxiety as well.
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And that's one of the beauties of relationship that turns it into what I call a personal growth
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machine, that if one person challenges themselves and grows and holds on to themselves and soothes
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their anxiety, and their other person feels anxiety because of it, but if their partner
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holds on to themselves and continues the path, that person then gets to hold on to themselves
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And together, the relationship helps both people grow.
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Now, will it break apart some relationships if a man starts showing up, being honest, asking
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for what he wants, setting boundaries, not tolerating bad behavior?
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And if any of your listeners want to find out more about my books or online classes, they
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can just check out nomoremisterniceguy.com and get all the information there.
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Dr. Glover is the author of the book No More Mr. Nice Guy.
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And to find out more information about his book, check out nomoremisterniceguy.com.
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That wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness podcast at