No More Mr. Nice Guy! (9 page)

Chapter

Make Your Needs

A Priority

"I want you to know that I'm really uncomfortable with that thing we talked about last week."

Lars, an anxiety-filled executive, began his second session of counseling with this statement. Lars had come to see me on the encouragement of his wife. He reported being generally depressed and unhappy for as long as he could remember. In recent months he had found it difficult to sleep at night and was experiencing migraine headaches on a regular basis. Even though everything in his life seemed to be

"fine" — good job, nice home, family, etc. — he never seemed to be happy.

In his first counseling session, Lars revealed that he had constant fantasies of "chucking it all" and disappearing to somewhere else in the world. These thoughts made him feel guilty, so he kept them to himself.

In that session I asked Lars what he did for himself. He gave me a puzzled look. "What do you mean?"

he asked.

I repeated the question.

After a pause, he answered, "Not much, I guess."

For the rest of the session, I shared with him the importance of making his needs a priority and taking responsibility for finding ways to meet them. This discussion was met with both fear and resistance from Lars. The same hesitancy was repeated as he began his second counseling session.

"Which part of our discussion last week made you uncomfortable?" I asked.

"All of it," he responded. "That part about making my needs a priority really made me uptight."

I asked him what part about taking responsibility for his needs made him anxious.

"Everything," he responded. "That seems like that would make me selfish and self-centered."

"What's wrong with that?" I asked.

Lars looked at me with amazement. "What's wrong with that," he replied, "is that being selfish would make me too much like my old man. All he ever thought about was himself and the rest of us suffered as a result. I just couldn't do that. I couldn't be a self-centered S.O.B. like him. I've got a wife, kids, a job, a mortgage, and bills to pay. There's no room for me to start behaving like my father."

Low Maintenance Kinds Of Guys

Lars is a fairly typical Nice Guy when it comes to his needs. Nice Guys generally focus their attention on meeting everyone else's needs while trying to be "low maintenance" kinds of guys themselves. When I talk with them about making their needs a priority, their response is similar to that of Lars.

This ubiquitous pattern among Nice Guys is the result of childhood conditioning. When a child's needs are not met in a timely, healthy manner, the child may come to believe he is "bad" for having needs. He may also think that it is his needs that cause people to hurt him or abandon him. Typically Nice Guys respond to these inaccurate interpretations of their life events by developing a number of survival mechanisms.

● Trying to appear needless and wantless.

● Making it difficult for others to give to them.

● Using "covert contracts."

● Caretaking — focusing attention on other people's needs.

While creating an illusion of security in childhood, these survival mechanisms only increased the odds of their needs going unrecognized and unmet.

Trying To Appear Needless And Wantless Prevents Nice Guys From Getting Their
Needs Met

For Nice Guys, trying to become needless and wantless was a primary way of trying to cope with their childhood abandonment experiences. Since it was when they had the most needs that they felt the most abandoned, they believed it was their needs that drove people away.

These helpless little boys concluded that
if
they could eliminate or hide all of their needs,
then
no one would abandon them. They also convinced themselves that if they didn't have needs, it wouldn't hurt so bad when the needs weren't met. Not only did they learn early not to expect to get their needs met, but also that their very survival seemed to depend on appearing not to have needs.

This created an unsolvable bind: these helpless little boys could not totally repress their needs and stay alive, and they could not meet their needs on their own. The only logical solution was to try to appear to be needless and wantless while trying to get needs met in indirect and covert ways.

As a result of these childhood survival mechanisms, Nice Guys often believe it is a virtue to have few needs or wants. Beneath this facade of needlessness and wantlessness, all Nice Guys are actually extremely needy. Consequently, when they go about trying to get their needs met, Nice Guys are frequently indirect, unclear, manipulative, and controlling.

Making It Difficult For Others To Give To Them Prevents Nice Guys From Getting Their
Needs Met

In addition to using ineffective strategies to get their needs met,
Nice Guys are terrible receivers.
Since getting their needs met contradicts their childhood paradigms, Nice Guys are extremely uncomfortable when they actually do get what they want. Though most Nice Guys have a difficult time grasping this concept, they are terrified of getting what they really want and will go to extreme measures to make sure they don't. Nice Guys carry out this unconscious agenda by connecting with needy or unavailable people, operating from an unspoken agenda, being unclear and indirect, pushing people away, and sabotaging.

A good illustration of this dynamic is the way Nice Guys commonly try to get their sexual needs met.

Many of the Nice Guys I've worked with have expressed a heightened interest in sex, yet they frequently feel frustrated in their attempts to get these needs met. This is usually because their actions pretty much guarantee that they won't get what they believe they want.

Nice Guys have an uncanny knack of picking partners who, because of childhood sexual abuse or other negative experiences with sex, tend to have a difficult time being sexually expressive. When these partners do make themselves available to be sexual, it is not uncommon for Nice Guys to do something that further ensures that they don't get their needs met. The Nice Guy may respond by taking control rather than letting the sexual experience unfold. He may focus on his partner's sexual needs before she has a chance to pay attention to him. He might start a fight by making a comment about her weight or her past unavailability. All of these strategies pretty much ensure that the Nice Guy won't have to experience the fear, shame, or anxiety that might get triggered if he actually allowed someone to focus on his needs.

Breaking Free Activity #12

Do you believe it is OK for you to have needs? Do you believe people want to help you meet your
needs? Do you believe this world is a place of abundance?

Using
Covert
Contracts Prevents Nice Guys From Getting Their Needs Met
All Nice Guys are faced with a dilemma: How can they keep the fact that they have needs hidden, yet still create situations in which they have some hope of getting their needs met?

In order to accomplish this seemingly impossible goal, Nice Guys utilize
covert contracts
. These unconscious, unspoken agreements are the primary way that Nice Guys interact with the world around them. Almost everything a Nice Guy does represents some manifestation of a covert contract.

The Nice Guy's covert contract is simply this:

1) I will do this ______________ (fill in the blank) for you, so that
2) You will do this ______________ (fill in the blank) for me.

3) We will both act as if we have no awareness of this contract.

Most of us have had the experience of leaning over and whispering in our lover's ear, "I love you." We then wait expectantly for our beloved to respond with, "I love you too." This is an example of a covert contract in which a person
gives to get
. Giving "I love yous" to get "I love you toos" in return is the basic way Nice Guys go about trying to get all of their needs met. There is nothing wrong with asking your partner to tell you she loves you, but telling her "I love you" first to get an "I love you too" in return is indirect, unclear, and manipulative.

As a result of the conditioning they received in their family and society, Nice Guys believe
if
they are

"good,"
then
they should be loved, get their needs met, and have a problem-free life.

In reality, the primary paradigm of the Nice Guy Syndrome is nothing more than a big covert contract with life.

Breaking Free Activity #13

Identify at least one covert contract between you and a significant other. What do you give? What
do you expect in return? Share this information with the other person. Ask the person how it feels
to respond to an unclear agenda.

Caretaking Prevents Nice Guys

From Getting Their Needs Met

One of the most common ways Nice Guys use covert contracts to try to meet their needs is through caretaking. Nice Guys believe their caretaking is fundamentally loving and is one of the things that makes them good people. In reality, caretaking has nothing to do with being loving or good. Caretaking is an immature and indirect attempt to try to get one's needs met.

Caretaking always consists of two parts:

1) Focusing on another's problems, needs, or feelings in order to
2) Feel valuable, get one's own needs met, or to avoid dealing with one's own problems or feelings.

Reese, a graphic designer in his late twenties, is a good example of the extremes to which Nice Guys caretake in their intimate relationships. Reese, who is gay, lamented in one of his therapy sessions,

"Why can't I find a partner who gives as much back to me as I give to him?" He went on to describe how all of his boyfriends seemed to be takers and that he always did all of the giving.

Within a period of a year, Reese entered into three intense relationships. Each began wonderfully and seemed like the partnership he had been looking for. Each failed because of the same scenario: Reese picked men who needed rescuing or fixing.

The first boyfriend lived in Canada and had recently gotten off drugs. He came to live with Reese but never applied for a work visa and struggled to stay clean. Reese went out of his way to be supportive of his boyfriend with the hope that he would find a job and stay off drugs. Finally, Reese sent him home to get his life straightened out. Later, he found out from a mutual friend that the reason his boyfriend had never applied for a work visa was because he was HIV positive, something he failed to tell Reese.

The next boyfriend was of a different race from Reese and had never come to grips with his homosexuality. His parents and religion kept him in constant conflict. He was never able to commit to the relationship. Nevertheless, Reese went out of his way to be supportive and giving, all with the hopes that his boyfriend would eventually get things straightened out and become available to Reese.

The third boyfriend was in the military. He was living on base, some 40 miles from Reese's apartment and had no car. Reese had to take the initiative in getting together and would often shuttle his partner around. Because Reese made more money, he always paid when they went out. Reese frequently bought his boyfriend gifts and loaned him money. When this boyfriend got transferred to a different state, Reese quit his job, sold his car, and moved along with him, only to return in three months because his partner started running around on him.

During this 12-month period while Reese was so busy caretaking the needs and problems of his boyfriends, he gave up his job and alienated most of his friends and family. Reese's caretaking allowed him to stay oblivious to his own self-destructive behaviors while investing tremendous energy in trying to fix others. As is true for most Nice Guys, no matter how much he gave to others, Reese never felt like he got as much back in return.

Caring Vs. Caretaking

Though Nice Guys see everything they do for others as loving, caretaking has very little to do with caring. Here are the differences:

Caretaking

Caring

1) Gives to others what the giver needs to give.

1) Gives to others what the receiver needs.

2) Comes from a place of within emptiness within 2) Comes from a place of abundance the
the giver.

giver.

3) Always has unconscious strings attached.

3) Has no strings attached.

Nice Guys caretake for a number of reasons, none of them having anything to do with love. For them, even the most innocuous and subtle act often has some string attached. Nice Guys give in the ways they would like others to give to them. They give gifts, affection, back rubs, sex, surprises. They will encourage their partner to take a day off, buy a new outfit, go to the doctor, take a trip, quit a job, go back to school — yet would not give themselves permission to do any of the same things.

Breaking Free Activity #14

Identify two or three examples of your caretaking behavior. In order to stimulate awareness of
your caretaking, do one of the following for a period of one week:
1)
Go on a caretaking moratorium.
Because Nice Guys have a difficult time differentiating between
caring and caretaking, stop giving completely (except to young, dependent children). Tell people
what you are doing so they won't be confused. Observe your feelings and other people's reactions.

2)
Consciously try to caretake more than you already do.
As odd as this assignment may sound, it is
a very effective way to create awareness of your caretaking behavior. Pay attention to how you feel
and how other people react to you.

The Victim Triangle

Rather than helping Nice Guys meet their needs, covert contracts and caretaking only lead to frustration and resentment. When this frustration and resentment builds long enough, it often spills out in some not so pretty ways.
Giving to get
creates a cycle of craziness called the
victim triangle.
The victim triangle consists of three predictable sequences: