No More Mr. Nice Guy is a self-help book by Dr. Robert A. Glover. He describes what he calls the "Nice guy Syndrome," a condition in men who appear to be always nice and avoid conflict at all costs.
Glover's premise is that nice guys have been conditioned by their childhoods and by society to believe that they will be successful only if they make everyone happy and never cause any problems for others. However, this desire for approval results in self-loathing. In other words, nice guys want approval, but don't think they deserve it. This creates internal frustration, since nice guys never try to obtain what they want in life. In addition, the nice guy's desire to obtain approval from everyone (especially women), causes him to actually behave in very un-nice ways. This includes dishonesty (about themselves) and passive-aggressive behavior ("being unavailable, forgetting, being late, not following through...").
Dr. Glover's prescription involves getting nice guys to recognize that their needs and desires are important, and that to make others happy they must first learn to make themselves happy. One of the primary ways advised in the book to remedy this is for nice guys to learn to embrace and develop their masculine traits, instead of fearing and suppressing them.
Famous quotes containing the words nice and/or guy:
“Ellie: A soul is a very expensive thing to keep: much more so than a motor car. Shotover: Is it? How much does your soul eat? Ellie: Oh, a lot. It eats music and pictures and books and mountains and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people to be with.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“You know how you smoke out a sniper? You send a guy out in the open, and you see if he gets shot. They thought that one up at West Point.”
—Samuel Fuller, U.S. screenwriter. Zab (Robert Carradine)