This explains the poor luck of “nice guys,” but if Yvain knows the acquaintances in question to be actual nice guys, then it resolves nothing.
When people think about “Nice guys who can’t get a date,” they tend to recall self proclaimed nice guys publicly railing against the unfairness, rather than thinking of all the legitimately nice people they know, and thinking if they’ve ever known them to go on dates. This doesn’t mean that “nice guys” actually outnumber genuinely nice dateless guys.
Privileging “women secretly want jerks” as a hypothesis seems rather absurd given the evidence presented.
“Yvain says he has nice but dateless friends” is incredibly easy to explain without assuming “women only date jerks”. For one, it’s entirely possible that Yvain isn’t a very good judge of character here, or is falling victim to the “Halo effect” (they are, after all, his friends).
Amongst other things, I get the impression that he’s male, and I’d wager none of these nice friends has attempted to start a relationship with him, so he presumably doesn’t have a ton of direct experience with their methods, with the experiences of a female dealing with relationships, etc..
(Obvious disclaimer: I don’t know Yvain, or his friends. It’s entirely possible they’re genuinely nice! :))
This explains the poor luck of “nice guys,” but if Yvain knows the acquaintances in question to be actual nice guys, then it resolves nothing.
When people think about “Nice guys who can’t get a date,” they tend to recall self proclaimed nice guys publicly railing against the unfairness, rather than thinking of all the legitimately nice people they know, and thinking if they’ve ever known them to go on dates. This doesn’t mean that “nice guys” actually outnumber genuinely nice dateless guys.
Privileging “women secretly want jerks” as a hypothesis seems rather absurd given the evidence presented.
“Yvain says he has nice but dateless friends” is incredibly easy to explain without assuming “women only date jerks”. For one, it’s entirely possible that Yvain isn’t a very good judge of character here, or is falling victim to the “Halo effect” (they are, after all, his friends).
Amongst other things, I get the impression that he’s male, and I’d wager none of these nice friends has attempted to start a relationship with him, so he presumably doesn’t have a ton of direct experience with their methods, with the experiences of a female dealing with relationships, etc..
(Obvious disclaimer: I don’t know Yvain, or his friends. It’s entirely possible they’re genuinely nice! :))