No More Mr. Nice Guy - by Robert Glover
ISBN: 0762415339Date read: 2020-07-10
How strongly I recommend it: 8/10
(See my list of 360+ books, for more.)
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Nice guys need to read this book about love and sex.
my notes
Give to get: “I will do __ for you, so that you will do __ for me.”
Giving “I love yous” to get “I love you toos” in return.
This is indirect, unclear, and manipulative.
When you give to get, you get frustrated or resentful as a result of giving so much while seemingly getting so little in return.
When this frustration and resentment builds up long enough, it spills out in passive-aggressive behavior like withdrawing.
Don’t interpret a woman’s approval as the ultimate validation of your worth.
If you see sex as acceptance, and believe a woman must be in a good mood before she will have sex, you won’t do anything that might upset her.
You respond to the moods and desires of women you don’t even plan on having sex with.
Seeking women’s approval gives women the power to set the tone of the relationship.
If you did not care what anyone thought of you, how would you live your life differently?
Are you scared of getting what you really want?
Be a good receiver.
Be clear about your agenda.
Be clear and direct.
Beware your tendency to sabotage or push people away.
Stop caretaking.
Hard to differentiate between caring and caretaking, so occasionally stop giving completely (except to young, dependent children).
Put yourself first and making your needs a priority.
Don’t focus on the other person, “You are making me mad.”
Instead, take responsibility for what you are feeling: “I am feeling angry.”
Begin feeling statements with “I”, rather than “you.”
“Confused” about what to do?
Paralyzed?
You’re not confused but afraid.
If mistakes you made as a child had huge consequences, you believe the same to be true now.
List your fears then know about each: No matter what happens, you can handle it.
New found mantra: “I can handle it.”
Face present day fears with this.
“I can handle it. No matter what happens, I will handle it.”
Avoidance: “I didn’t lie, I just didn’t tell everything.”
Notice what you least want others to know, what you least want to reveal.
These are the things you most need to tell.
Choose one area in which you have been out of integrity.
Identify your fear that keeps you from telling the truth or doing the right thing.
Then go and tell the truth or make the situation right.
You can handle it.
You need boundaries in all areas of life.
Don’t believe if you step backward, the other person will quit pushing, and then everything will be smooth.
Stop back-pedaling, giving in, and keeping the peace, or you teach the people around you that you will accept having your boundaries violated.
You believed that by repressing the darker side of your masculine energy you would win the approval of women.
You lost your sexual assertiveness, competitiveness, creativity, ego, thirst for experience, boisterousness, exhibitionism, and power.
Women do not want a man who tries to please them - they want a man who knows how to please himself.
Connecting with men involves doing guy things with guys.
When you get your emotional needs met with men, you become less dependent, needy, manipulative and resentful in your relationships with women.
With men, you don’t feel like you have to please, placate, lie, caretake or sacrifice like you believed you had to with women.
Teach your son what it means to be male.
This includes how to handle his aggression, how to handle his libido, how to relate to women, how to bond with a man, and how to embrace his own masculinity.
Let him see me set boundaries, ask for what I want clearly and directly, work hard, create, produce, have male friends, and make my own needs a priority.
Intimacy is knowing your self, being known by another, and knowing another.
Intimacy is courageously looking inward and making yourself totally visible to another.
Wimps are like little dogs who hover beneath the table just in case a scrap happens to fall their way.
Hovering around their partner just in case she happens to drop him a scrap of sexual interest, a scrap of her time, a scrap of a good mood, or a scrap of her attention.
They are settling for the leftovers.
If you stand up to her, you are also likely to stand up for her.
Setting boundaries creates respect.
If this behavior had occurred on the second date, would there have been a third?
This question helps you see if you have been putting up with something that you shouldn’t.
Why have I invited this person into my life?
What do I need to learn from this situation?
Lesson from dog training:
If you want an undesirable behavior to go away, stop paying attention to it.
Don’t perpetuate a behavior you find undesirable.
Stay out of bed with a person until you really get to know her.
Once the sex begins in relationships, the learning stops.
Sex creates such a powerful bond that it is difficult to accurately evaluate the appropriateness of a new relationship.
Wimps have shame and fear about being sexual and about being sexual beings. They avoid vaginas.
While in the hot tub, she sat on Alan’s lap and they kissed passionately. Even though he was very aroused, he turned down her offer to go up to her room because he didn’t want to “jeopardize their working relationship.”
He believed women thought sex was bad and he was convinced that if he was too direct in letting them know he wanted to have sex, they would think he was bad.
Alan would always find some good reason to not follow through.
When you set out to be a great lover, you are actually creating a recipe for boring sex.
Sex that focuses on trying to please the other guarantees a routine, do-what-worked-last-time kind of experience.
Trying to be a great lover insures that you will not have many passionate, reciprocal, spontaneous, serendipitous, or intimate sexual experiences.
Teenage boys who have no clue of what it will take to get a girl to like them.
It is at this point that they decide that maybe by being “nice,” they will stand out from the other guys and might gain the approval.
Women may be initially drawn to a pleasing demeanor, but over time they find it difficult to get excited about having sex.
Wimp sex: he moves up behind her in bed and begins to rub her back. As he massages her shoulders he momentarily tunes out his resentment over her sexual unavailability. As he slowly moves his hands down to rub her buttocks, he also tunes out that her body is totally unreceptive to his touch. He hopes that by moving slowly and not alarming her by being too overtly sexual, she will get in the mood. This approach has occasionally worked in the past. By the time he lightly strokes one of her breasts, he is totally unaware of anything going on inside of his own body. By now, he is focused on her arousal and trying to anticipate how to stimulate her just enough to get her in the mood without doing too much to make her angry. Finally, because she hasn’t rebuffed his advances, he rolls her over and for the next twenty minutes focuses all of his attention on her arousal until she has an orgasm. Since he is disconnected from his own physical arousal, he has a difficult time climaxing himself. To help himself along, he fantasizes about the young secretary at work. When he finally has an orgasm, he immediately shifts his focus back to his wife to check in on her emotional state. Later, as he rolls over and goes to sleep, he feels empty and resentful.
Healthy masturbation doesn’t use trances or fantasy.
It is about learning to pay attention to what feels good.
Accept sole responsibility for your sexual pleasure and expression.
When a person fantasizes while being sexual he is purposefully and actively leaving his body.
Fantasizing kills your sex life.
Fantasizing during sex is like thinking about a Big Mac while eating a gourmet meal.
Experience your sexuality without any goals or agendas (such as having an orgasm).
Good sex consists of two people taking full responsibility for meeting their own needs. It has no goal. It is free of agendas and expectations.
Rather than being a performance, it is an unfolding of sexual energy.
It’s two people revealing themselves in the most intimate and vulnerable of ways.
Good sex occurs when two people focus on their own pleasure, passion, and arousal, and stay connected to those same things in their partner.
All of these dynamics allow good sex to unfold in unpredictable, spontaneous, and memorable ways.
Let go of the concept of being a great lover.
Practice being clear and direct.
Tell her when you are angry at her.
Let her know when you aren’t in the mood to listen to her talk about her problems.
Enjoy being able to have sexual energy with someone, without it always having to end up in intercourse.
Self-respect, courage, and integrity look good on a man.