The Mandate focuses on topics that men don’t like to talk about. It’s written by Olympic Medalist and frequent Men’s Health contributor Jason Rogers. If you were forwarded this email, subscribe below.
Whenever I receive a text from a friend that reads, “how r u,” an audible groan escapes my lips. Of course, it’s nice to know someone is thinking about me and wants news about my well-being. But the message also feels like homework because it puts the onus on me to search the near history of my life, map it against our communication gaps, and formulate an update into words.
I call this outreach archetype the Lazy Greeter. But a handful of other communication styles also spike my blood pressure or, at the very least, leave me feeling conflicted. The Setup Artist writes, “hey,” hoping you’ll respond quickly so they can ask for a favor. Around the holidays, the Blanket Texter sends “wishing you well” or “thinking of you,” words they have probably copy-pasted to dozens of friends. The Opaque Inviter says, “wyd tonight?” but offers no details, forcing you to emotionally commit to plans without knowing what they have in mind. The Terse Texter writes “yes” and “no” in response to questions as if they are being legally deposed. The No Contexter writes nothing and sends a random meme.
I could just ignore these kinds of messages. However, a non-response leaves me with a sense of existential discomfort, as if I've left a pot boiling on a stove in my brain. So, unless you are trying to phish my banking details, there is a high probability that I will respond to your text. Moreover, a sender’s lackluster communication effort can also trigger a kind of frustration that will leave me preoccupied for hours. Because I invest a lot of time, energy, and care in the way that I communicate, I get upset when I don’t receive the same behavior in return.
Realizing this cast light on a darker aspect of my personality that is uncomfortable to admit. No matter how nice I am on the surface, I am often keeping score. Let’s say my friend flakes last minute on our dinner plans. A prototypical Jason response would be “No worries, I get it!” because it conveys a kind of benign equanimity. However, secretly, I’m pissed. This sort of performative kindness is the central focus of the book No More Mr. Nice Guy, written in the early aughts by Dr. Robert Glover, a marriage and family therapist. Dr. Glover defines the core problem thusly:
“The Nice Guy Syndrome represents a belief that if Nice Guys are ‘good,’ they will be loved, get their needs met, and live a problem-free life. When this life strategy fails to produce the desired results — as it often does — Nice Guys usually just try harder, doing more of the same. Due to the sense of helplessness and resentment this pattern inevitably produces, Nice Guys are often anything but nice.”
To overcome this unhelpful paradigm, Dr. Glover encourages men to be more authentic with people who can validate a truer version of themselves. This is wise (albeit generic) advice; however, it took me a long time to read those words because, until recently, I largely ignored the book. I previously lumped it into the same genre as some of the videos I see on Youtube like, “How To Kill Your Inner Nice Guy” and “From Nice Guy To Alpha Male.” To me, it was just aggro-masculinity stuff laundered back into the language of self-help. But when I finally picked up Dr. Glover’s book, I discovered that it primarily focuses on taking responsibility for your own needs. To get out of the nice guy trap, he says, a man must remove unhealthy attachments to other people’s expectations. He must place more value on his own opinion of himself.
Still, I take issue with the book’s title, “No More Mr. Nice Guy.” I know it’s meant to be provocative, to convey a bit of masculine edge. But the primary idea that it implants in a man’s mind is a perversion of Dr. Glover’s actual advice. On a semantic and tonal level, it suggests that he must reinvent himself as someone who is the opposite of nice to earn attention, love, and respect.
Beneath this ideological tilt lies a core theme — power dynamics — with which men have long been obsessed. Ten years ago, I read The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene and remember thinking, “this is everything!” However, today, I understand that, while I could strategically deploy colder qualities to get what I want, it would be at the expense of emotional connection or others' well-being. At the end of the day, the puppetmaster sits above his stage, and the only company he has is himself.
Nevertheless, being well-adjusted doesn’t mean flitting through life in a state of neutered benevolence. People can be jerks. And unfortunately, I have learned that jerks only become jerkier if I let them. So there are instances when I have had to force myself to say, “I’m not ok with this” or “Thank you, but no.” Choosing the right moments to do that is essentially a function of intent and good faith. I try to ask myself: Am I trying to enforce my (or someone else’s) boundaries, or am I trying to impose unnecessary control?
But there’s also a thorny question that undergirds all of this. How much of my perspective on this topic is shaped by a privileged upbringing? If I had grown up with conflict all around me, could I be so avoidant, so exacting about the ideal circumstances under which to allow myself to engage? Certainly not. Still, those principles are helpful, at least to me. A few years ago, I got a tattoo on my right bicep that says "NICE" to draw more attention to the moments when I say “yes” to things that don't serve me or allow relationships to become imbalanced due to my desire for praise. I still want niceness to be my default mode, but I need to be able to override it. I need niceness to be a choice, not the only way.
Of course, 99% of the time, the people who text me aren’t behaving like jerks. So, you are probably wondering, how does this translate to texting? Essentially, I’m trying to shift my behavior in this forum to learn to tolerate more discomfort. What drives my sometimes unnecessary responsiveness and effusive communication style is the worry that I might be letting someone down if I don’t behave in a certain way. More specifically, the person on the other end might like me a little less if I don’t respond the exact way they want.
Currently, I’m working hard to meet the sender where they are. For example, a healthier reaction to the lazy “how r u?” text is to respond with the same level of effort because it forces me to trust that they'll follow up if they want a meaningful exchange. Similarly, I am trying to avoid confrontations, even innocuous ones, over text. Like everyone on the planet, I sometimes slip into a passive-aggressive tone, which only perpetuates my uncertainty about the impact I’m having on the other person. I recently caught myself doing that with a friend, decided to acknowledge it overtly, and then asked if we could hop on the phone.
I’m also trying to become more comfortable with ambiguous gaps in communication. I’ve noticed that when I’m the one to bail on a friend, I allow myself to fall into a state of emotional limbo until I receive a response that absolves me of my (mostly unmerited) guilt. Yes, that’s right, I expect others to send the same “No worries!” message that I send even when I’m steamed. In accepting the silence that often follows a cancellation or a declined invite, I’m allowing for the correct framing of that moment: a minor letdown, not the erosion of a relationship between friends.
The last and most crucial scenario concerns the kind of messages asking me for something I don’t want to give. Generally, I’ve responded in a way that is polite but fundamentally a misdirection (“I’m so busy, maybe next month?”). Of course, if the request is earnest and I value the relationship, I owe it to the other person to answer honestly. But there are some messages, even from friends, that are a bit inconsiderate, transactional, or weird. Those are the messages that I now choose to ignore because there is personal power in occasionally managing no one else’s feelings but my own. I don’t know if that makes me any less of a nice guy, but it has made me a bit more at ease while practicing an important skill: the ability to disappoint.
I hate that we have to overthink this stuff. Like our devices are continually sending out signals and the ping back needs to be “translated”. In real life it’s manageable, but the digital device opens us up to the world and before we know it, we’re spending a huge amount of time trying to interpret what our digital actions (and the consequences of those actions) say about us. Or maybe some of us just overthink? Exhausting 😂 Sometimes I wish I could live in a cave 😉 Thank you for the prompt - I’m reflecting on this today 🙏
The phrase "No More Mr. Nice Guy" has been kicking around a lot longer than Alice Cooper's song. From the OED:
Mr Nice Guy n. a pleasant, amicable, benign person; originally and frequently in no more Mr Nice Guy.
1957 Look 16 Apr. 127/2 A writer did an article about him [sc. Perry Como], and called him ‘Mr. Nice Guy’, and the name stuck.
1965 Newsweek 26 July 62/1 (title) No more Mr. Nice Guy.
1974 Audubon Jan. 97/1 It is a tribute to Russell Errol Train's considerable self-restrain that he did not wince visibly when he was introduced last fall to the National Press Club as ‘Mr. Nice Guy’.