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11 Reasons Why An Unloved Nice Gal Picks the Wrong Guy

– No More Nice Gal Client

I’m getting more and more emails from late in life Nice Gals who are opting to be single. Worn out from the drama they’re committing to their careers and personal development, since they no longer trust they can find happiness with a good, loving and emotionally present man. They report meeting men who are at worst narcissistic, emotionally unavailable, non-committal, controlling, or abusive, and at best uninteresting. They’re wondering where all the nice guys have gone.

Our Love Map is Learned in Childhood

In childhood, we either get the message we’re cared for and special- or that we don’t matter. If our mother was alert, attuned and responsive to our needs, we feel loved, safe and secure. But if our mother was absent or ignored meeting our needs, we learn that people can’t be trusted and that we’re on our own. A child who grows up not being actively loved and cared for will stop seeking comfort and shut down emotionally to survive the trauma of neglect and abandonment. She’ll adopt an avoidant love-style in relationships as a form of self-protection.

When a mother is sometimes responsive and sometimes not, the child often develops an anxious and insecure attachment style as an adult. She may actively seek close connections but will be plagued with fears of loss or rejection that often play out as suspiciousness, possessiveness, neediness or excessive demands for reassurance or attention.

As Dorothy Law Nolte put it, “Children learn what they live.” The goal then is to understand how the past has affected your relationships so you can reclaim your self-worth, break the cycle and heal.

1. The Nice Gal is Drawn to the Familiar

Wayne Dyer in speaking of the law of attraction said, “You don’t attract what you want. You attract what you are.”

Everyone unconsciously gravitates to situations, relationships, and people that mirror their earliest experiences regardless of whether those experiences were safe or not. This spells bad news for Nice Gals who will play out the drama of trying to win mom or dad’s love, acceptance, and attention with future partners. Nice Gals who grow up in an unsafe world where caregivers could not be trusted or relied on, seek a partner who re-creates familiar feelings of fear, rejection, and uncertainty. No matter how much a Nice Gal desires to be seen and cared for, this pattern repeats until the trauma is upended.

*If a man feels familiar like you’ve dated him before, or he reminds you of mom or dad, or you feel a love at first site infatuation, slow down and test the relationship. This may be your first clue this isn’t true love, but a repeat of unhealthy relationship patterns.

2. The Nice Gal is Vulnerable to Love Bombing

Love bombing is a technique used by Narcissists, players and domestic abusers to get you to drop your guard and trust. Behind the mask, their intent is to exploit and abuse you. Nice Gals are particularly vulnerable to love bombing because of their deep yearning for attention and belonging. Mistaking romantic attention for genuine love, they get caught up in the powerful emotions that come from being validated and adored by a man. The intense all-in fulfillment of their desires can be quite alluring and addictive, even if our brain is screaming this is too good to be true. It is!

TIP: Watch out for men who go-all-in too fast, sweeping you up in a romantic frenzy, monopolizing your time and staying in close proximity. All this is a red flag! Date a man who is willing to take it slow and know the real you. Men who aim to exploit, sell the fantasy while distracting you from the price tag. Don’t get hooked.

3. The Nice Gal Mistakes Drama for Passion

Dr. Craig Malkin writes in his book, Rethinking Narcissism: “Romantic uncertainty often turns us on.” When a Nice Gal learns in childhood that love has to be earned, fought for, and sought after, her adult relationships mirror her childhood attempts to secure love from an absent, inattentive, or rejecting parent.

Her association of ‘Love’ is an entangled mix of intense feelings of fear, anger, and pain that get confused for passion.    By choosing a rejecting, inattentive, critical, or violent man she replays these familiar, yet unhealthy emotional arousal states in the hope this time will be different. There is a longing for healthy love between equals but a mistrust of personal worth and value that drives the unconscious to replay old unhealed wounds.

Clear signs of being attracted to love drama include:

• Big highs and deep lows
• Anxious arousal coupled with confusion
• Conflicting emotions of attraction and disgust
• Feelings of elation followed by shame
• Pain is linked with pleasure

Recognition of a man who feels like mom or dad is actually an attachment to the uncertainty and longing he provokes or stimulates. This kind of passion is urgent and hungry because there is a desperate attempt to heal the pain of the past with this “love”. This is why this kind of man is physically and emotionally stimulating, while nice guys seem boring.

In truth, it is not the man you desire to belong to, but a recognition of the unworthiness and pain you desire freedom from.

*If you are spending all your time trying to figure him out and make the relationship go your way, you’re dating a man who you cannot rely on to care for you. Lean back or step.

4. The Nice Gal is Blind to Neglect and Mistreatment

It seems counter-intuitive, but if a Nice Gal is a victim of childhood abuse, or was expected to meet high demands of performance or perfectionism to secure parental approval, she may not even be aware that she is being controlled, put down or has lost sight with her own wants and needs. Familiarity causes people to normalize events no matter how traumatic or persistently damaging, to the point that we neither recognize nor register it in our awareness. This makes Nice Gals particularly vulnerable to abuse and manipulation.

WARNING: Abuse or exploitation to any degree or in any form is completely unacceptable and a reason to leave. If your partner is putting you down, making threats, dismissing your opinion or feelings, or being physically violent in any way, get support to develop an exit plan so you can leave safely.

5. The Nice Gal is Quick to Blame Herself

In typical co-dependent fashion, the Nice Gal is an over-responsible people-pleaser who all too readily accepts the blame in life circumstances. She has a learned habit of self-criticism, attributing bad outcomes and failures as a result of believed character flaws. Rather than seeing her partner’s share of the responsibility, she shoulders all the failure and blame, pushing her to try harder to improve the relationship and fix the problems within him.

WARNING: If you’re doing all the giving and all the “let’s make this work” heavy lifting while he demands more and dishes out blame- you need to stop all pleasing behaviors, take a step back and ask if your needs are being met. No matter how hard you try- you cannot fix him and you cannot make him love you.

6. The Nice Gal Isn’t Trusting her Intuition or Perceptions

Daughters of controlling, combative, competitive or highly narcissist mothers are so frequently blamed, criticized, and gas-lighted these children begin to doubt reality and their perceptions.

They endure the crazy-making tactic of having their feelings and thoughts regularly invalidated and dismissed as unimportant until they can no longer distinguish between what is real and what isn’t.

The mother twists and distorts their perceptions in order to control, coerce, and manipulate the child for their own exploitative ends. This leaves the child with no real sense of self outside the approval and direction of another.

Growing up with no sustainable self-worth, Nice Gals trust too easily, and all too often attract predatory partners who want to use them as sources of narcissist supply to devalue and abuse.

TEST THIS! I teach my clients to test a man’s capacity for empathy by seeing if he knows how to comfort you and validate your feelings. Try sharing a small frustration, fear or hurt from your life on a date. Nothing too loaded but something you feel comfortable being a little vulnerable and open about. Notice how he responds. Does he sympathize, try to comfort or encourage you? Or does he minimize, skip over, or invalidate how you feel? If you see a failure to empathize at the beginning, this will only get worse over-time. Consider yourself forewarned.

7. The Nice Gal is searching for “The One” to Fill the Emptiness

The Nice Gal doesn’t see the source of her neediness and emptiness can never be filled by securing the love of a man. Until the pattern of the past is healed, she’ll continue to attract an unhealthy match that compliments her co-dependent way of relating.

An essential step for the Nice Gal is to acknowledge the wounds of childhood and grieve what she was never given. Reclaiming her true self-begins with telling her story; and then, re-framing inaccurate beliefs, conclusions, or interpretations of being bad, ugly, unlovable, alone, dirty, or wrong. Only then can the Nice Gal build healthy ways of relating to men from a position of self-worth.

8. The Nice Gal Lacks Healthy Relationship Role Models

A big part of the Nice Gal healing journey is discovering what a healthy connection between two-equal partners looks like. She must learn how to:

• Self-soothe and self-care
• Voice her needs
• Erect strong boundaries to protect her self-esteem
• Develop discernment regarding people’s behaviors and intentions to avoid mistreatment

TIP: Find a mentor couple, whether real or fictional, known or unknown that represents your ideal relationship. Don’t overlook their flaws (we all have them), instead see how their strengths and skill sets help them to communicate and relate to each other in loving and supportive ways. Practice what they emulate, as their best.

9. The Nice Gal doesn’t know what Good Love Looks or Feels like

The biggest thing that keeps a Nice Gal single or in an unhappy relationship is that she doesn’t know good love from bad love. Growing up with conditional love accompanied by heavy doses of guilt, neglect, shame, and fear produces Nice Gals who associate love with pain.

If a Nice Gal grows up believing she has to please others to be accepted, she’ll be committed to people pleasing to avoid rejection, no matter the personal cost. If an NG learned to achieve to be ‘worthwhile’, she’ll strive to be good enough. If an NG believes that love makes you vulnerable and often hurts, she’ll inadvertently tolerate bad treatment from a partner.

Nice Gal recovery means detaching personal worth from external sources of validation: feeling esteemed and good enough outside of achievements, status, or the opinions of others.

TIP: Work with a qualified coach or therapist to support you to develop a secure sense of self-worth. This will make you invulnerable to criticism and more open to love.

10. The Nice Gal is Afraid to be Alone

Lacking strong source of maternal love, unloved daughters often feel a sense of isolation long after childhood has ended. Having been denied validation and support from key caregivers, they still look to ‘others’ to feel good about themselves. Being alone can trigger the same faulty messages she received in childhood, whether spoken or implied, of being unlovable, unworthy and lacking. Yet, it is precisely these beliefs which set up a Nice Gal to enter into relationships that reflect these old falsehoods about herself.

*Breaking the habit of attracting the past requires revising the unconscious beliefs that were created to cope with the pain of rejection and neglect experienced. It takes some time and skilled professional to trace back, acknowledge and re-frame personal pain, but it is worth it! Note: If the pain of childhood occurred in isolation, self-helping DYI style won’t work. Healing requires that you experience non-judgmental, loving connection.

11. The Nice Gal Lives on Hope

Hope is not a strategy, but it can help weather the rough patches of disappointment. However, when a Nice Gal puts all her trust and hope in someone else who isn’t demonstrating the care, honesty, commitment or real love she needs, she sets herself up for failure. She hopes she’ll be loved and supported, but instead endures further abandonment, rejection or betrayal. My invitation for every Nice Gal is to place HOPE in her inherent worth and in her ability to heal. Hope in a loving universe or God who wants her good, happiness, and fulfillment, and looks at her adoringly with complete delight and love.

EXERCISE: Look at a picture of yourself when you were a young girl or child. Notice how trusting, open, delightful and innocent that younger self is and pour out the love you can’t help but feel for this beautiful child. Let yourself send the love and care she needs and let it embrace you both now.

Nice Gals aren’t doomed to settle for less or repeat the pain or mistakes of the past if they dedicate themselves to healing the false assumptions around their worth and lovability.

One thing I know to be true is that no matter what is that every Nice Gal is good enough and worth loving.