He says, "No worries!"
But his stomach drops when she takes longer than 30 minutes to reply.
He smiles, nods, asks her questions, tells her she's amazing, offers to help with her move, and stays "chill."
Then he goes home and replays every micro-expression like he's doing forensic analysis for the FBI.
This is the part people miss about the Nice Guy. It's not that he's nice, it's that he's scared. And he's learned to hide that fear behind a persona that looks like kindness, selflessness, going with the flow, and service.
Dr. Robert Glover's book No More Mr. Nice Guy has been a gateway for a lot of men. It puts language to a pattern that feels painfully familiar: approval-seeking, conflict avoidance, indirectness, resentment, covert contracts, and the "I'm fine" lie.
In my coaching work, I keep seeing the same underlying engines show up again and again. Similar stories. Similar childhoods. Similar types of Nice Guys.
The same four patterns.
If you want to stop living as a performance, you don't start by trying to be "more alpha." You start by seeing what's actually running your system.
Here are the four repeating patterns I see most often.
Toxic Shame: The Hidden Fuel
Let's get specific, because people throw the word "shame" around, sometimes confusing it with guilt or the healthy kind of shame. The shame I'm referring to is specifically called "toxic shame."
Healthy shame is typically "I violated my values," guilt is usually "I did something wrong," and toxic shame is "I am something wrong."
Guilt and healthy shame can motivate repair. Toxic shame tends to motivate hiding, people-pleasing, or attacking yourself in the hopes that if you berate yourself enough times, you'll never feel that way again.
In Nice Guy land, toxic shame often shows up as:
- Being terrified of being seen as needy, messy, selfish, sexual, angry, jealous, or "too much" — then expressing these traits subconsciously.
- Equating boundaries with being a "bad person" or a disappointment.
- Trying to earn love through usefulness.
- Saying "yes" when your whole body is screaming "no."
- Doing "nice" things that aren't free (they come with a price tag).
Toxic shame loves the dark. It thrives in secrecy and ambiguity, so the Nice Guy tries to stay morally clean at all times. No conflict. No hard truth. No direct wants. No "Hey, I'm attracted to you." No "That doesn't work for me." No "I'm hurt."
Because deep down, the fear isn't "she'll dislike this."
The fear is, "I'll disappoint her, which will mean that I'm a disappointment. I failed to make her happy just like I failed to make my parents happy."
"It will mean that I'm a failure, which is what I believe anyway."
Toxic shame doesn't just make you feel bad; it makes you manage perception.
It turns your relationships into PR.
And it keeps you stuck because it convinces you the solution is to become flawless, not honest.
Ironically, all of this hiding and repressing turns Nice Guys into very not-nice guys, in the sense that their repressed selves come out sideways in the form of passive-aggressive behavior and walls of resentment.
The Self-Limiting Identity: "This is who I am."
A lot of men come to me with a label that sounds like a confession:
- "I'm a Nice Guy."
- "I'm anxious."
- "I'm needy."
- "I'm broken."
- "I'm a failure."
- "I'm not the kind of guy women want."
- "Nothing I do seems to work."
They come to me holding onto their identity like they have no other option.
Here's the tricky part: the identity is painful, but it's also familiar. And familiar can feel like safety.
There's research on something called self-verification: we tend to seek confirmation of who we believe we are, even when that belief is negative, because it gives our world coherence.
Another phrase for this behavior is "confirmation bias."
If your identity is "I'm the guy who gets rejected," your brain will highlight evidence of rejection and ignore or dismiss evidence of acceptance. Not because you're broken, but because your system is trying to stay consistent.
Nice Guys are also conflict-avoidant.
If you interpret struggle as proof that you're defective, you'll avoid the very behaviors that would change your life: directness, boundaries, sexual leadership, asking for what you want, tolerating uncertainty, tolerating someone's disappointment, tolerating your own anger and expressing it cleanly.
And then you call that avoidance "who you are." You label yourself as un-changeable. Permanently defective and unlovable.
The Nice Guy identity becomes a cage with an uncomfortable but familiar mattress.
Consciously, you might say things like, "Women tell me they want a good guy, yet when I give them what they want, they walk all over me or reject me!"
"They put me in the friend zone!"
Ok, what do you do with the women who don't put you in the friend zone? Do you accept the fact that they like you? Or do you find ways to reject them?
Nice Guys are the ones saying that "no woman wants them," because they act in ways that turn women off and any woman who wants them gets rejected.
They seek unavailable or disinterested women because they're both safe and identity-confirming.
This identity keeps you from doing the one thing that would terrify your nervous system but set you free: acting like a man who believes he's worthy of being wanted.
Fear of Being Left: Rejection Running the Show
This is the one most guys will admit to if they're being real.
They don't say "abandonment fear."
They say:
- "I just don't want to mess it up."
- "I don't want to scare her off."
- "I don't want to look desperate."
- "I don't want to be that guy."
Translation: "If she leaves, I don't know if I'll survive the feeling."
Adult attachment research describes two broad dimensions that show up in romantic relationships: anxiety (fear of rejection/abandonment) and avoidance (discomfort with closeness and dependence). You don't need to memorize the theory to see it in real life.
When anxiety is high, a man's nervous system treats ambiguity as danger.
A delayed text becomes a threat.
A neutral facial expression becomes a threat.
A "Maybe" becomes a threat.
A small shift in tone becomes a threat.
So he starts doing threat management instead of relationship.
Threat management looks like:
- Over-explaining.
- Reassurance-seeking masked as "showing that you care."
- Trying to read her mind.
- Subtly auditioning for the role of "boyfriend" before she's even met the real you.
- Staying in contact too much, or disappearing and calling it "space."
- Performing chillness while internally spiraling.
Here's the brutal irony: the more you try to prevent abandonment, the less you show up as someone worth staying with.
Not because you're unlovable — because you're not present.
Your attention isn't on her. It's on your internal threat dashboard.
And when you live in that state long enough, you don't just fear rejection — you become addicted to avoiding it at any cost, including the cost of your truth.
Nice Guys live in scarcity, and think that if this woman doesn't want him, none of them will.
Again — identity confirmation, and the reinforcement of the belief that he's unworthy of being desired.
Addiction to Anxiety: The Ultimate Paradox
This is the one that doesn't get talked about enough.
A lot of Nice Guys don't just have anxiety. They rely on anxiety.
Anxiety becomes their stimulant. Their compass. Their pseudo-intuition.
Their "feeling of being in love."
If they're worried, they feel like they're doing something — or with someone "worth it."
If they're calm, they feel exposed, weird, wrong, uncomfortable, or with the wrong person. If they're anxious, it sends the signal that they're in familiar territory and in the right lane.
That's positive reinforcement in plain English: you do a behavior, your discomfort drops for a moment, so you do the behavior again.
Over time, you don't just worry about the relationship. You worry as a way to return to baseline.
You keep the nervous system on high alert because it feels safer than the discomfort of not having anything to worry about.
This is why Nice Guys say things like, "I don't know why I can't just relax and enjoy it."
Because your system has confused relaxation with letting your guard down, where you risk being seen or exposed. You risk venturing into unfamiliar territory, and risk being in a real relationship.
Anxiety is also a powerful mask for hidden emotions.
If you relax, you might feel:
- Grief.
- Loneliness.
- Anger.
- Desire.
- Longing.
- The toxic shame voice/inner critic.
- The old abandonment pain.
So instead, you worry.
You think.
You analyze.
You rehearse.
You catastrophize.
You plan your next line.
You hide the truth.
Anxiety becomes your drug.
And just like any drug, it has a cost.
You lose your spontaneity, your polarity, your playfulness, your sexual presence, and your ability to trust yourself.
The paradox, however, is that this heightened state of arousal is the very state that makes Nice Guys feel alive. Not because it's healthy, but because it's familiar.
And familiarity, even if detrimental to all that we might want for ourselves, feels better than the fear of the unknown; the fear of a different path.
Anxiety becomes the stimulated state that keeps Nice Guys traveling down the same dark alley because they know what to expect.
Anxiety is what self-fulfilling prophecies eat for breakfast.
Conclusion
Toxic shame says, "Don't let them see you," so you build a self-limiting identity: "I'm just not the guy that women/employers/people want."
Then attachment fear says, "If you act wrong, they'll leave." So you use anxiety as a coping strategy: "Stay alert. Stay ready. Don't relax."
And because you're living in a performance, you inevitably feel resentment, emptiness, collapse, and the same patterns on repeat.
Then toxic shame swoops back in and says, "See? You're defective."
If you've read No More Mr. Nice Guy, you already know that Nice Guys are consummate abandoners of Self, and that the opposite of crazy is still crazy.
Therefore, this isn't about becoming an asshole. It's about becoming integrated.
When you're integrated, the parts of the past that you've abandoned, hated, and tried to bury, are given what they need: to be seen, felt, understood, and forgiven.
When you're integrated, you begin to tell the truth sooner and feel emotions without turning into a brick wall, and recognize that care-taking is not the same as presence.
You let uncertainty exist without sprinting to control it.
You let a woman have her own reactions without it meaning you're unsafe.
And yes, it's about learning to tolerate the moment where you want to do the Nice Guy behavior and choosing a different path instead.