Chapter 7

Get The Love You Want:
Success Strategies For Intimate Relationships

«I’m a victim of her dysfunction.»

Karl, a successful businessman in his mid-thirties, began his first counseling session with the preceding analysis of his relationship with his wife Danita. Though over six-foot-two and professionally dressed in a dark suit and tie, Karl looked like a little boy sitting on the sofa in my office. Karl’s frustration and helplessness regarding his most intimate relationship was unmistakable.

As Karl continued to talk about his marriage, it became apparent that he was intimidated by his wife Danita. He claimed she was «angry all the time.» When talking about her he used adjectives like «relentless» and «steamroller.» Because of his fear of her anger, he lied to her and avoided interacting with her.

«In many ways,» Karl revealed, «Danita is just like my mother. There was just no pleasing Mom. I learned to just avoid her and tune her out when she was bitching. I got really good at lying and hiding what I didn’t want her to know about. I guess I’m still pretty good at that today.»

As Karl brought the discussion back to the present, he revealed, «Every other area of my life is great. If it wasn’t for Danita, my life would be perfect. I just don’t think she knows how to be happy.»

Intimate Strangers

In general, Nice Guys end up in my office for one of two reasons. Sometimes some hidden behavior —an affair, surfing for pornography on the Internet, smoking pot —has blown up in their face and created a crisis with their wife or girlfriend. More often, their call to a therapist is motivated by some problem or dissatisfaction in their most intimate relationship; their wife or girlfriend doesn’t want to have sex as often as they do, she is depressed, angry, unavailable, or unfaithful (or all of the above).

These men usually believe there is a simple answer to their problem. Some of them are sure everything will be OK if they can just stop doing that one thing that keeps making their wife or girlfriend so angry. The rest of them are convinced that if they can get their wife or girlfriend to change, then life will be great.

Intimate relationships are often an area of great frustration and bewilderment for Nice Guys.

Most Nice Guys profess a great desire for intimacy and happiness with their significant other.

Nevertheless, intimacy represents an enigmatic riddle for the majority of these men.

Here is what I have concluded after several years of observing countless Nice Guys: Even though Nice Guys often profess a deep desire to be intimately connected with another individual, their internalized toxic shame and childhood survival mechanisms make such connections difficult and problematic.

Why Nice Guys Struggle To Get The Love They Want

There are a number of reasons why Nice Guys have difficulty getting the love they want. These include:

• Their toxic shame.
• The dysfunctional relationships they co-create.
• Their patterns of enmeshment and avoidance.
• The familiar childhood relationship dynamics they recreate.
• Their unconscious need to remain monogamous to their mother.
• They are «bad enders».

Toxic Shame Prevents Nice Guys From Getting The Love They Want

Intimacy implies vulnerability. I define intimacy as «knowing the self, being known by another, and knowing another.» Intimacy requires two people who are willing to courageously look inward and make themselves totally visible to another. Internalized toxic shame makes this kind of exposure feel life-threatening for Nice Guys.

Intimacy, by its nature, would require the Nice Guy to look into the abyss of his most inner self and allow others to peer into these same places. It would require the Nice Guy to let someone get close enough to see into all the nooks and crannies of his soul. This terrifies Nice Guys, because being known means being found out. All Nice Guys have worked their entire lives to become what they believe others want them to be while trying to hide their perceived flaws. The demands of intimacy represent everything Nice Guys fear most.

Co-Creating Dysfunctional Relationships Prevents Nice Guys From Getting The Love They Want>

The Nice Guy’s ongoing attempt to hide his perceived badness makes intimacy a challenge. The moment Nice Guys enter a relationship they begin a balancing act. In relationships, a life-and-death struggle is played out to balance their fear of vulnerability with their fear of isolation. Vulnerability means someone may get too close to them and see how bad they are. Nice Guys are convinced that when others make this discovery, these people will hurt them, shame them, or leave them.

The alternative doesn’t seem any better. Isolating themselves from others recreates the abandonment experiences that were so terrifying in childhood.

In order to balance his fear of vulnerability and fear of abandonment, a Nice Guy needs help. He finds it in people who are equally wounded and also have difficulty with intimacy. Together they co-create relationships that simultaneously frustrate all parties while protecting them from their fear of being found out.

Even though it may look like many of the problems Nice Guys experience in relationships are caused by the baggage their wife or girlfriend brings with them, this is not the case. It is the relationship the Nice Guy and his wife or girlfriend co-create that is the problem.

It is true that Nice Guys often pick wives and girlfriends who appear to be projects, and indeed, they do at times pick some pretty messed up people. The fact that these partners may have challenges —they are single moms, they have financial problems, they are angry, addictive, depressed, overweight, non-sexual, or unable to be faithful— is precisely the reason Nice Guys invite these people into their lives. As long as attention is focused on the flaws of the partner, it is diverted away from the internalized toxic shame of the Nice Guy. This balancing act ensures that the Nice Guy’s closest relationship will most likely be his least intimate.

Patterns Of Enmeshment And Avoidance Prevent Nice Guys From Getting The Love They Want

This intimacy balancing act gets played out in two distinct ways for Nice Guys. The first is through becoming overly involved in an intimate relationship at the expense of one’s self and other outside interests. The second is through being emotionally unavailable to a primary partner while playing the Nice Guy role outside of the relationship. I call the first type of Nice Guy an enmesher and the second type an avoider.

The enmeshing Nice Guy makes his partner his emotional center. His world revolves around her. She is more important than his work, his buddies, his hobbies. He will do whatever it takes to make her happy.

He will give her gifts, try to fix her problems, and arrange his schedule to be with her. He will gladly sacrifice his wants and needs to win her love. He will even tolerate her bad moods, rage attacks, addictions, and emotional or sexual unavailability —all because he «loves her so much.»

I sometimes refer to enmeshing Nice Guys as table dogs. They are like little dogs who hover beneath the table just in case a scrap happens to fall their way. Enmeshing Nice Guys do this same hovering routine around their partner just in case she happens to drop him a scrap of sexual interest, a scrap of her time, a scrap of a good mood, or a scrap of her attention. Even though they are settling for the leftovers that fall from the table, enmeshing Nice Guys think they are getting something really good.

On the surface it may appear that the enmeshing Nice Guy desires, and is available for an intimate relationship, but this is an illusion. The Nice Guy’s pursuing and enmeshing behavior is an attempt to hook up an emotional hose to his partner. This hose is used to suck the life out of her and fill an empty place inside of him. The Nice Guy’s partner unconsciously picks up on this agenda and works like hell to make sure the Nice Guy can’t get close enough to hook up the hose. Consequently, the Nice Guy’s partner is often seen as the one preventing the closeness the Nice Guy desires.

The avoider can be a little tougher to get a handle on. The avoiding Nice Guy seems to put his job, hobby, parents, and everything else before his primary relationship. He may not seem like a Nice Guy to his partner at all because he is often nice to everyone else but her. He may volunteer to work on other people’s cars. He may spend weekends fixing his mother’s roof. He may work two or three jobs.

He may coach his children’s sports teams. Even though he may not follow his partner around and cater to her every whim, he still operates from a covert contract that since he is a Nice Guy, his partner should be available to him, even if he isn’t available to her.

Both patterns, enmeshing and avoiding, inhibit any real kind of intimacy from occurring. They may help the Nice Guy feel safe, but they won’t help him feel loved.

Breaking Free Activity #30

Are you an enmesher or an avoider in your present relationship? How would your partner see you? Does the pattern ever change? What roles have you played in past relationships?

Recreating Familiar Childhood Relationship Patterns Prevents Nice Guys From Getting The Love They Want

It is human nature to be attracted to what is familiar. Because of this reality, Nice Guys create adult relationships that mirror the dynamics of their dysfunctional childhood relationships. For example: If listening to his mother’s problems as a child gave a Nice Guy a sense of connection, he may grow up believing such behavior equals intimacy. In order to feel valuable and connected in his adult relationships, he will have to pick a partner who has her fair share of problems.

If he was trained to caretake and fix needy or dependent family members, the Nice Guy may find a way to do the same in his adult relationships.

If he believed he could only get his own needs met after he had met the needs of other more important people, the Nice Guy may sacrifice himself for the sake of his partner.

If he was abandoned in childhood, he may choose partners who are unavailable or unfaithful.

If he grew up with an angry, demeaning, or controlling parent, he may choose a partner with similar traits.

Occasionally, the person the Nice Guy chooses to help him recreate his childhood relationship patterns isn’t the way he unconsciously needs her to be when the relationship begins. If this is the case, he will often help her become what he needs. He may project upon her one or more traits of his parents. He may act as if she is a certain way, even when she isn’t. His unconscious dysfunctional needs may literally force his partner to respond in an equally dysfunctional way.

For example. As a child, I never knew what kind of mood my father would be in when I came into the house. More often than not, it wasn’t good. I learned to come home prepared for the worst. I later recreated the same pattern in my marriage. I projected my father’s unpredictable moods onto my wife and would frequently arrive home prepared for her to be angry. Even if she was in a good mood, my defensiveness often triggered some kind of confrontation between us. Thus Elizabeth came to look like my angry father and I perpetuated a familiar, though dysfunctional relationship dynamic.

Breaking Free Activity #31

We tend to be attracted to people who have some of the worst traits of both of our parents. Instead of blaming your partner for your unconscious choice, identify the ways in which she helps you recreate familiar relationship patterns from your childhood. Share this with your partner.

The Unconscious Need To Remain Monogamous To Mom Prevents Nice Guys From Getting The Love They Want

The tendency of Nice Guys to be monogamous to their mothers seriously inhibits having any kind of a genuinely intimate relationship with a partner in adulthood. Nice Guys are creative in finding ways to maintain this childhood bond. What all of these behaviors have in common is that they all effectively insure that the Nice Guy will not be able to bond in any significant way with any woman except his mother.

Breaking Free Activity #32

The following are a few of the ways Nice Guys unconsciously maintain a monogamous bond to their mothers. Look over the list. Note any of the behavior patterns that may serve to keep you monogamous to your mother. Share this information with a safe person.

• Over-involvement with work or hobbies.
• Creating relationships with people who need fixing.
• Addictions to drugs or alcohol.
• Sexual addictions to pornography, masturbation, fantasy, chat lines, or hookers.
• Affairs.
• Sexual dysfunction —lack of desire, inability to get or maintain an erection, or premature ejaculation.
• Forming relationships with women who are angry, sick, depressive, compulsive, addicted, unfaithful, or otherwise unavailable.
• Avoiding intercourse or taking vows of celibacy.

Being Bad Enders Prevents Nice Guys From Getting The Love They Want

Finally, Nice Guys have difficulty getting the love they want because they spend too much time trying to make bad relationships work. Basically, Nice Guys suffer from the age-old problem of looking for love in all the wrong places. If a Nice Guy spends all of his time stuck in a bad relationship, it pretty much guarantees he won’t find one that might work better.

When healthy individuals recognize that they have created a relationship that is not a good fit, or that a partner they have chosen lacks the basic qualities they desire, they move on. Not Nice Guys. Due to their conditioning, Nice Guys just keep trying harder to get a non-workable situation to work or get someone to be something they are not. This tendency frustrates everybody involved.

Even when Nice Guys do try to end a relationship, they are not very good at it. They frequently do it too late and in indirect, blaming, or deceitful ways. They typically have to do it several times before it sticks. I often joke that, on average, it takes Nice Guys about nine attempts to end a relationship.

(Unfortunately, this isn’t far from the truth).

Strategies For Building Successful Relationships

There are no perfect relationships. There are no perfect partners. Relationships by their very nature are chaotic, eventful, and challenging. The second part of this chapter is not a plan for finding a perfect partner or creating the perfect relationship. It is simply a strategy for doing what works. By adapting the points below and changing the way in which they live their lives, recovering Nice Guys will change the way they have relationships. Nice Guys can:

• Approve of themselves.
• Put themselves first.
• Reveal themselves to safe people.
• Eliminate covert contracts.
• Take responsibility for their own needs.
• Surrender.
• Dwell in reality.
• Express their feelings.
• Develop integrity.
• Set boundaries.
• Embrace their masculinity.

Previous chapters have included illustrations of what can happen to relationships when Nice Guys begin to make these life changes. Let’s examine a little more closely how applying a couple of these life strategies can help recovering Nice Guys get the love they want.

A Warning

If you are in a relationship, the program of recovery from the Nice Guy Syndrome presented in this book will seriously affect you and your partner. One of two things will happen:

1. Your present relationship will begin to grow and evolve in exciting and unpredictable ways.
2. Your present relationship will be sent to a long overdue grave.

Learning To Approve Of Themselves Helps Nice Guys Get The Love They Want

The essence of recovery from the Nice Guy Syndrome is the conscious decision to live one’s life just as one desires. I frequently encourage recovering Nice Guys to be just who they are, without reservation. I support them in deciding what is right for them and being that with all of their energy for the whole world to see. The people who like them just as they are will hang around. The people who don’t, won’t.

This is the only way to have a healthy relationship. No one really wants to believe that they have to be false or hide who they really are to get someone to love them or stay with them. Yet, this is a common dynamic in the intimate relationships Nice Guys create.

George is a good example of what can happen when a recovering Nice Guy decides to start pleasing himself and stop pleasing his partner. Throughout his relationship with his wife Susan, George’s primary goal was to make her happy. Over a period of five years George gave up hunting and fishing (two of his passions), quit hanging out with his friends, turned the control of his finances over to Susan, and supported her in quitting her job because she was unhappy at work. These changes occurred gradually.

All were an attempt on George’s part to please Susan.

Nevertheless, Susan was rarely happy. By the time George joined a No More Mr. Nice Guy! group, he felt helpless and resentful and was ready to leave his wife. George saw Susan as the cause of the frustration he was feeling. George spent the first few weeks in our group complaining about his wife.

Eventually, the group members began to confront George on his victim role and challenged him to do something different instead of blaming Susan.

It took a few more months, but George began to change. The most significant change was a conscious decision to quit trying to make Susan happy. He realized that his attempts to please her weren’t working and were causing him to feel resentful.

George began by setting aside one weekend a month to go hunting or fishing. When Susan tried several different methods to manipulate him or guilt him out of his decision, he held fast. Next, instead of handing his paycheck over to Susan to control, he began giving himself an allowance to spend how he wanted. This too drew resistance from his wife. Perhaps the most frightening step was when George set up a budget and told Susan that if she wanted more control over the income, she would have to go back to working full time.

Ironically, two things began to happen. George felt less like a victim and actually started having more positive feelings toward Susan. Second, Susan began taking charge of her own life and became less dependent on George. After about a year in group, George shared how much more content he was and how much his marriage had improved. He gave credit to the group members who supported him in finding the courage to start pleasing himself and stop trying to make Susan happy.

Breaking Free Activity #33

List some of the ways you try to please your partner. What changes would you make if you did not have to worry about making her happy?

Setting Boundaries Helps Nice Guys Get The Love They Want

The subject of boundaries was presented in Chapter Five. Nowhere is the issue of boundary setting more important for Nice Guys than in their most intimate relationships. By setting healthy boundaries with their partners, Nice Guys create situations in which both they and their partner can feel safe to be vulnerable and experience true intimacy.

I show Nice Guys, often with their partners watching, how to step up to their line and set boundaries. On more than one occasion, I have had the partner of a Nice Guy applaud during the demonstration. The Nice Guy will turn, slack-jawed, and say, «You mean you want me to stand up to you, dear?»

«Of course I do,» she will respond, «I don’t want to be married to someone I can walk all over.»

Then I warn him. «Your wife is telling you the truth. She doesn’t feel safe knowing she can push you around. She wants to know that you will stand up to her. That is how she will feel secure in the relationship. But, here’s the catch. She has to test to see if she can trust you. The first time you set a boundary with her she may react intensely. She will push against it. She will tell you that you are wrong for setting that boundary. She will do her best to find out if your boundary is for real.»

When a recovering Nice Guy sets boundaries with his partner, it makes her feel secure. In general, when women feel secure, they feel loved. She will also come to know that if her partner will stand up to her, he is also likely to stand up for her. Setting boundaries also creates respect. When a Nice Guy fails to set boundaries it communicates to his partner that he doesn’t really honor himself, so why should she?

To help Nice Guys decide if they need to set a boundary with a particular behavior, I have them apply the Second Date Rule. Using the second date rule, Nice Guys ask themselves, «If this behavior had occurred on the second date, would there have been a third?» This question helps them see if they have been putting up with something that they shouldn’t.

When trying to decide how to deal with a behavior they have deemed unacceptable, I encourage Nice Guys to apply the Healthy Male Rule. Following this rule of thumb, they simply ask themselves, «How would a healthy male handle this situation?» For some reason, just asking this question connects them with their intuitive wisdom and helps them access the power they need to respond appropriately.

Once the Nice Guy knows he can set a boundary any time he needs to, he can let people move toward him, get close, have feelings, be sexual, and so on. He can let these things happen because he is confident that at any point, if he begins to feel uncomfortable, he can say «stop,» «no,» or «slow down,» or can remove himself. He can do whatever he needs to do to take care of himself.

Breaking Free Activity #34

Are there any areas in your personal relationships in which you avoid setting appropriate boundaries? Do you:

• Tolerate intolerable behavior.
• Avoid dealing with a situation because it might cause conflict.
• Not ask for what you want.
• Sacrifice yourself to keep the peace.

If you applied the Second Date rule or the Healthy Male rule to these situations, how might you change your behavior?

Additional Strategies For Happy, Healthy Relationships

In addition to the program of recovery presented in previous chapters of No More Mr. Nice Guy!, there are a few additional strategies that will help Nice Guys get the love they want. These include:

• Focusing on their relationship, not their partner.
• Not reinforcing undesirable behaviors.
• Doing something different.

Focusing On Their Relationship, Not Their Partner Helps Nice Guys Get The Love They Want

Wounded people are attracted to wounded people. When Nice Guys enter a relationship, they frequently choose partners who look more dysfunctional than they do. This creates a dangerous illusion that one of them is sicker than the other. This is a distortion, because healthy people are not attracted to unhealthy people —and vice versa. I frequently tell couples that if you have one obviously wounded person in a relationship, you always have two. No exception.

When my wife Elizabeth and I first got together, we created a system in which she was identified as the broken one while I was designated the healthy one. These scripts worked well for both of us until she started going to counseling. One day, she came home from a therapy session and announced that she had discovered that I was just as messed up as she was. Because I couldn’t entertain the idea that I was «messed up,» I responded, «No, you are really finding out that you are just as healthy as I am.»

The relationship system we had created together allowed both of us to play familiar, yet dysfunctional roles. Unfortunately, it also prevented any kind of real intimacy until Elizabeth began to challenge the status quo. I’ve listened to countless Nice Guys who have formed relationships like the one Elizabeth and I initially created. These men have the belief that they are victims to their «sick» partner’s dysfunction. This illusion keeps everyone involved stuck in repetitive, ineffective patterns.

By focusing on their relationship instead of their partner, recovering Nice Guys are able to use their partner to get in touch with their childhood experiences of abandonment, neglect, abuse, and smothering.

They can use this information to better understand why they have created the kind of relationship system they have. This process enables them to make changes that allow them to get what they want in their intimate relationships.

Instead of saying «if she would just…», the recovering Nice Guy has to ask,

«Why did I need to co-create this relationship?»

«How does this relationship let me play familiar roles?»

«How does this relationship let me meet unconscious needs?»

«Why did I invite this person into my life?»

When the recovering Nice Guy begins asking these kinds of questions, he can begin to see his significant other as a partner in healing. This not only shifts how he views his partner, but also allows him to address childhood issues that prevent him from having a truly intimate relationship.

In the beginning of this chapter, we met Karl —whose wife Danita seemed as hard to please as his cold, critical mother. Karl never knew when his mom might get angry, criticize, or shame him. In adulthood, Karl co-created a similar dynamic with Danita. When she got angry, Karl would use all of his childhood survival mechanisms, like avoidance and withdrawal, to try to cope. Karl would accuse Danita of «being angry all the time» and would walk on eggshells to avoid upsetting her. Karl would tell himself, «I don’t deserve this.» He would then retreat and create escape scenarios in his head.

The relationship began to shift when Karl came to see Danita as a «gift» whom he invited into his life to help him clean out his old issues around his fear of angry and critical people. As Karl made this shift several things began to happen. He began to have grief for what he went through as a child. He began standing up to Danita rather than avoiding and withdrawing. As he came to see Danita’s anger as a result of her own childhood wounding, Danita began to look less and less angry to him. As his view of his wife began to shift, Karl began to feel more loving toward Danita and their relationship began to show marked improvement.

Breaking Free Activity #35

The next time you find yourself feeling frustrated, resentful, or rageful at your partner, ask yourself these questions:

«Why have I invited this person into my life?»

«What do I need to learn from this situation?»

«How would my view of this situation change if I saw it as a gift?»

Not Reinforcing Undesirable Behaviors Helps Nice Guys Get The Love They Want

A couple of years ago we bought a Weimaraner puppy. We decided that if we were going to have a big dog in the house, we should take him to obedience school. One of the first lessons we learned was that we were the ones who needed obedience training. Most dogs that behave badly, we found out, have been conditioned to do so by ignorant or inconsistent owners.

In many ways, humans aren’t much different from pets. People often behave the way they have been trained to behave. For example, if a person gives his dog a treat when he pisses on the carpet, the dog will keep pissing on the carpet. The same is true for humans. If the Nice Guy reinforces his partner’s undesirable behaviors, she will keep behaving in undesirable ways.

Here is the irony for Nice Guys: Nice Guys like the idea of a smooth and problem-free relationship.

Typically, if their partner is unhappy, depressed, angry, or having a problem, they will jump right in and try and fix it or make it better. They believe that by doing so, they will make the problem go away and everything will quickly get back to normal. Unfortunately, this is like giving a dog a treat for pissing on the carpet. Every time a Nice Guy responds to or pays attention to a behavior he would like to eliminate, he is actually reinforcing that very behavior. This reinforcement increases the likelihood that that behavior will occur again. For example, Joe’s wife frequently came home from work in a silent rage over some problem she experienced with a co-worker. It bothered Joe when his wife was in this mood. In an attempt to relieve his anxiety, he would ask his wife what was wrong. After a little coaxing, she would spend the next couple of hours venting to Joe about how mistreated she was at work. Joe would listen and offer helpful suggestions, hoping that by doing so, she would get over her mood.

In his attempt for short-term anxiety relief, Joe had actually helped create a long-term problem. Every time he asked his wife what was wrong, listened for hours, and offered advice, he was actually reinforcing a behavior pattern he found undesirable.

In dog obedience school we learned that if you want an undesirable behavior to go away, you stop paying attention to it. The same is true in relationships.

Like many Nice Guys, Joe felt like a victim to his wife’s behavior. He was oblivious to the fact that he was responsible for perpetuating a behavior he found undesirable. When the men in his No More Mr.

Nice Guy! group pointed this fact out to him, he decided to try something different.

The next time his wife came home in a silent, withdrawn mood, he didn’t say anything. He ate dinner in silence and then went out to the garage. Even though he felt intense anxiety, he resisted his impulses to try to «fix» his wife. As he lay awake in bed that night, the deafening silence kept him awake for hours.

The next morning, the silence continued. Joe was afraid this behavior might go on forever. In an attempt to relieve his anxiety, he tried making a little small talk. His wife responded with one-word answers and left for work.

That evening, it seemed as if a miracle had occurred. Joe’s wife came home from work in a good mood and asked Joe if he wanted to go for a walk. While walking she told him how she had resolved the previous day’s problem. Joe revealed to his wife how uncomfortable it had made him to not try to fix her problem the previous evening. She responded by telling Joe that she didn’t want him to try to fix her problems and that she liked it better that he had given her some space to work it out on her own.

Doing Something Different When Beginning A New Relationship Helps Nice Guys Get The Love They Want

For Nice Guys who see a relationship come to an end, or for the ones who are presently single, I encourage them to take a different approach when beginning new relationships. Relationships are messy and there is no way to eliminate the bumps and potholes, but we don’t have to make them any more difficult than they already are. This is one area where I strongly encourage Nice Guys to do something different. That is, enter relationships with a healthy agenda, rather than an unconscious, dysfunctional one.

Doing something different means choosing a different kind of partner. A fixer-upper may be a fun challenge when it comes to restoring a car, but it’s a terrible way to choose a partner. Nice Guys have a tendency, due to their own insecurities, to pick partners who seem like they need a little polishing.

Because they don’t know why a healthy or independent person would want them, they settle for a diamond in the rough. They tend to pick partners who have had troubled childhoods, are sexual abuse survivors, have had a string of bad relationships, are depressed, are having money problems, are overweight, or are struggling single moms. Then they go to work operating from a covert contract —fixing, caretaking, and pleasing —all with the hope that she will turn out to be a polished gem.

Unfortunately, this strategy rarely works.

When recovering Nice Guys create relationships with people who don’t need fixing, they improve their odds of finding the love they want. This doesn’t mean searching for the perfect partner, just one who is already taking responsibility for her own life. Over time, the members of my No More Mr. Nice Guy! groups have come up with a number of traits to consciously look for when creating new relationships.

These traits include (in no particular order):

• Passion.
• Integrity.
• Happiness.
• Intelligence.
• Sexual assertiveness.
• Financial responsibility.
• Commitment to personal growth.

Nice Guys who are already in a relationship may find it unsettling if their current partner doesn’t fare well by this list (especially if it is the Nice Guy doing the evaluating). That doesn’t mean they need to jump out of the relationship and go looking for greener pastures. Instead, I encourage these men to first begin addressing their own behaviors and look at why they needed to create the kind of relationship they have with their present partner.

Finding a new partner won’t be the solution if the Nice Guy still needs the same kind of relationship. I have found that when recovering Nice Guys begin dealing with their own dysfunctional patterns, their relationships also begin changing. At times these changes cause them to reevaluate their desire to get out. Sometimes they confirm it is time for a change.

Nice Guys have a strong tendency to try to do everything «right.» This list isn’t meant as a magic formula. There are no perfect people and no perfect relationships. But by consciously looking for the traits listed above in a prospective partner, Nice Guys can save themselves a lot of grief and improve their chances of actually finding what they are looking for.

Doing something different also means refraining from being sexual in new relationships. Nice Guys must give themselves a chance to accurately evaluate the traits listed above by staying out of bed with a person until they really get to know her. Once the sex begins in relationships, the learning stops. Sex creates such a powerful bond that it is difficult to accurately evaluate the appropriateness of a new relationship. Nice Guys may often be aware of various traits or behaviors they find unacceptable in a new partner, but if they are already having sex, it is difficult to address these issues and even tougher to end the relationship.

Embrace The Challenge

Recovering Nice Guys can have fulfilling, intimate relationships. Life is a challenge and so are relationships. As they implement the recovery strategies presented in this book, recovering Nice Guys put themselves in the position to embrace these challenges and get the love they want.