Honorable men(tion).
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 8 comments link this post::I'm always glad I can call her a friend; with writing like her most recent blog post, I am more than just glad, but grateful. I felt a weird kind of "yes, exactly!" and kinship and Jane Austen-y and maybe just a little less a loser.::
What about the honorable men? Girl Friday asks in her post (which you should read in full).
After reading it more than once, a particular paragraph stuck in my mind:
We mistake clever, sensitive men for honorable ones. We even fall into the trap of believing that nice, "red-blooded" American boys are honorable. Niceness should not be the standard. When we set the bar higher, we're derided.
I had never made that connection before, the one about mere niceness. Every woman is just out looking for a "nice guy", and every friend who's trying to play matchmaker is describing the potentials as a "nice guy."
Nice guy?
Women are derided and blamed and fed excuses for wanting, hoping for, and expecting more than niceness; wanting honorable, instead.*
Many times, over the years after something went sour in the peculiar non-event, not-many-know, reveal-little-to-anyone personal brand of concealment I specialize in, I would find myself saying to a close friend who asked for details (and probably said it with a lot of guilt and confusion to myself just as much): "...but he is a nice guy, despite all of this. He's a nice guy. Don't say anything bad about him. He's a nice guy. He means well. He's just too busy. But he's a nice guy."
That niceness is a trap. It leaves a woman feeling like she must really be awful for such a nice guy to still be considered, to still seem, nice, while she somehow feels like a truck ran over her heart.
All that nonsense about women preferring bad guys and nice guys finishing last? It's the wrong argument. Straw man. Red herring. Sour grapes. Whatever you want to call it.
Niceness should not be the standard.
I got to know a nice guy, last year. The year ended like the Hindenburg (read any post here from 2007 to get your fill). And this? He still is a very nice guy.
So. What.
*In many of the "relationship" posts on this blog, you'll find comments with far too many guys saying "yeah, but you women are this, this and this so what can you expect from us men?" Then it gets into the usual arguing back and forth of how women want too much or too little, or do this or that, or are somehow responsible (either passively or actively) for the behavior of men. Far from anything honorable. And it never occurred to me until now why that response rather repulsed me and seemed weasel-y, and why it annoyed me to have to wade in and debate and say, "oh, you're probably right, women should do this so men would do this." Many of these fellows seemed nice, so what could I say? They must be right. It never occurred to me to expect men to be honorable, and to be men. But it does now.
Labels: links, relationships
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 5/13/2008 11:59:00 PM
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8 Comments:
Nice is really not bad.
It may not be “enough”.
It surely shouldn’t be the Grail of a relationship.
But it beats hell out of the alternative.
There are plenty of people who will steal you blind, take real and tangible advantage of you and suck you dry before sauntering off into the sunset while whistling a merry tune. Nice doesn’t do that.
I’m curious though about the concept of honorable and how it’s somehow so much superior than nice. Can you share what it is that makes a person honorable?
By 
David, at
14/5/08 08:35
You're right, David. Nice isn't bad. (Your example's a pretty good one. And if that happened to you, then there's a neck out there that I'd like to wring!)
Here are a few quick ways honorable is superior to nice (but that is basically what my whole post was about.)
Honorable means having guts. It's sticking your neck out there. Nice is playing safe because that's the way the game is played, and boy howdy, does Nice know how to play it.
Honorable is making tough decisions and doing something about them (being honest and up front). Nice avoids conflict.
Honorable shows deference to a woman. Nice knows that a woman might offended and errs on the side of caution.
Honorable knows a good thing when he sees it. Nice might know it, but he just can't be bothered to do anything about it.
Should I go on?
By girlfriday, at
14/5/08 10:07
Like you say, nice isn't bad. Probably better than the alternative. But it isn't enough.
Nice can still be "nice" while not doing the honorable thing. A nice guy can still be nice while being weak and not taking action. A nice guy can still be nice while never letting a woman know for sure if he's into her or not, and letting her, as Girl Friday said perfectly, end up filled with self-doubt and unsure as to if there is or isn't something going on.
I really can't think of any better way to put it than Girl Friday did in her post, either in contrast, or, at the very least, what honorable might look like.
Look at some of the old posts I wrote...an honorable man doesn't leave a person hanging in silence, feed out excuses of being too busy right now, show interest when it's convenient and life slows down -- all of those things I was writing about. An honorable person would stick with it or end it and not leave a person hanging on, unsure of if there is or isn't something between the two.
Nice is nice, but not necessarily honorable. Nice isn't bad. But it isn't enough. The requirements of being nice are not the same as doing the hard, honorable thing and niceness leaves plenty of room for all the things Girl Friday mentioned.
I know.
Nice guys aren't mean or purposefully cruel. I have no interest in "bad" guys. I liked nice guys.
Past tense, however.
It really helps me to see the difference here, where I hadn't made the connection before. I just thought I was rotten and a bad person if things didn't work out with a "nice" guy ("if he's nice, and it went sour, I guess I'm bad"). Because of GF's post, however, I am starting to not think that now.
Which is good an helpful to me.
Maybe nice guys do finish last. It's their own fault. Perhaps honorable ones aren't mentioned because they aren't even bogged down in that equation.
And for the record, since I know how some of these conversations go (which I alluded to in my end note): yes, women should be honorable in a female way, accordingly.
I think I am. I didn't deserve any of this other stuff. I was in no way exceptional (in a negative way) in my behavior. I'm not cruel or flippant about people. I was supportive and attentive and caring and put time into it even when I'm busy myself, and I didn't get much returned back beyond sporadic interest, silence, being taken for granted, haphazard attention, stern lectures or weak excuses on how busy life was, etc.
By Julie R. Neidlinger, at
14/5/08 10:11
Does honorable include being nice automatically? I know many very honorable men who you may not consider nice. They will tell you the truth and deal with you directly and honorably but may not always be nice.
I have been told about myself that I am kind but not nice. I accept that. Sometimes kindness means acting in a way that might be interpreted as mean spirited. Not Nice.
They don't have to be mutually exclusive but sometimes are.
If I were to narrow down a man who is honorable, he is:
True to his word, if he says it, he does it
Tells the truth even if it hurts sometimes
Is transparent but not wimpy
Able to take rejection but doesn't put himself in a place where he leans into the punch
Is careful about not sending wrong signals (this is a big one with me)
I think the issue with rejection is tied up in a man's fragile self worth. Women do not understand this dynamic at all. They think men should just receive rejection without feeling pain. The same sense of loss that both Julie and Girl Friday have by being just left to hang is exactly what men feel all the time after rejection.
There is no good way to deal with this.
In meeting other people, a woman thinks she is looking for love but she is looking for a man she can honor and respect. Men like their fathers many times.
A man thinks he is supposed to honor and respect the woman he is interested in, when he is in fact looking for a woman he can give his life to, support, encourage, love. Forever.
This asymmetrical relationship causes all kinds of problems. It's not even at all.
A woman can love a man but she doesn't have to, a man can honor and respect a woman but he has to LOVE her.
An accepting smile, not flirty, a pleasant word, a question of interest in what the man is up to, a positive outlook on life and most important not beauty but I care about myself enough to try is very attractive.
I have watched with interest the actress Marissa Jaret Winokur on Dancing with the Stars. The character she plays in Hairspray is intentionally overweight and unattractive in many ways.
But as I watched her week to week, her positive attitude, her smile, her passion became contagious such that when she was voted off last night I was sad. She made being who she is look good.
If as a man I were to meet a woman like that and was “In the market” I have a sense she would let me know if I had a chance before forcing me into an uncomfortable and potentially devastating rejection.
A man before he decides to put himself in that place has already gone pretty far down the road in caring about, even putting himself out there emotionally, such that when he actually takes the plunge to ask her out her rejection is not of a date, it's a rejection of HIM as a person.
This is a dynamic that may never be reconciled. I know that it's not understood.
By Gene Redlin, at
14/5/08 10:39
I expected you to join the conversation, Gene, since you always do in these kinds of topics (ha).
No one -- man or woman -- likes rejection. We're all fragile in that area. To be rejected is the ultimate statement on self-worth if a person is allowing outsiders to determine that for him or her (which most of us do periodically, even if we are aware of the dangers of letting someone else do that to us).
I don't know why you would say that women should expect men to experience rejection without pain, because I never thought that at all. Men reject women in their own ways (as described in the GF post, my post, and some of the comments above), so I don't know why the rejection yoke is always tossed on women for blame. Rejecting others lightly is not reserved for any particular sex, but is instead reserved for jerks and dishonorable men and women.
This fear of rejection is the same hang-up in the guyville/chickville post's comments: back and forth, "you women make it too hard" and "can't you men just take a chance."
It gets old.
It was after reading all the fellows on there (and in emails to me) claiming it was too much to expect a guy to take a chance on rejection (which, in my book, is wimpy), that I altered my own personal standards (outlined in that very post!) and made it very safe and easy for someone to understand -- in plain, clear English -- that I was interested in him.
And still, I get this.
I'm starting to think that that new "make it easier for the guy" policy does nothing but encourage that wimpy, easy behavior. I think it's time I revert back to what I previously believed to be necessary. It demanded some tough and risky actions from the man, but it's not as if it wouldn't be worth it, that I wouldn't/didn't do the things Gene described as being necessary for the fellow.
I think all that crap about fear of rejection is a cop-out, a smoke screen, and mere argument-fodder for nice guys who just can't get it together to be honorable men even when a woman does all the work for them. Which, by the way, diminishes the woman in areas of worth, feeling loved, honored, etc. No honorable man would do that to a woman.
But, back to the idea of rejection and women taking it lightly when doling it out to men -- exceptions, yes, but -- no one expects any other human to take rejection without pain unless they are some kind of brute.
And speaking of that...I do want to say that saying "honorable isn't the same as nice" does not mean "honorable allows brutish behavior." I'd think that would be a given, just by the basic definition of honorable and brutish, but I can envision where the conversation would go to something like:
"Honorable men tell it like it is and women don't like it and don't really want that." Or some similar extrapolation, which seems to allow someone carte blanch to be a jerk and disguise it as being non-wimpy, honest and honorable.
Honorable isn't wimpy. It is honest. It has the word "honor" in it, which leads me to believe an honorable person is one who is honored by his or her own behavior, and shows honor on other human beings through that behavior. Being a tactless, brutish, boor is not honorable.
I just wanted to delineate that.
By Julie R. Neidlinger, at
14/5/08 11:12
Ms. Friday,
I confess to having read your original post only after I responded at Julie's.
I believe we share mostly common ground here.
For myself, honorable means being honest and truthful. It means trustworthiness. It means giving careful consideration of matters of importance. And whenever possible, it means being kindly. (As an aside, I have discovered that what I had thought was "nice" was really "kindly". At least according to Websters.)
There is more I'd like to say about the whole rejection thingy but somehow I'm just not finding the right words and I want neight to offend nor give the wrong impression so I guess I'll just have to leave it for later.
By David, at
14/5/08 14:04
Kinda makes ya long for the days of arranged marriages, doesn't it.
None of the courtship and crap.
Seemed to work for our ancestors ok. Marrying for love is a relatively new phenomena.
By Gene Redlin, at
14/5/08 17:09
Having lots of women friends I can share some experiences I've had. For instance, I have been friendly and maybe even "nice" to some women that have wanted to take the friendship to the next level. Wanting to keep the friendship platonic has gotten me into trouble then, accused of being a tease, or conceited, and once even called a bastard!
By 
robbiewobbles, at
16/5/08 07:39
