“You’re such a nice guy. Any girl would be lucky to have you.” If you’re a man who’s heard these words before a rejection, you know the frustration they bring. The “nice guy” phenomenon—where genuinely kind, respectful men struggle in dating while seemingly less considerate men succeed—has puzzled and frustrated countless men.
In a revealing discussion on Kim Sean’s podcast, clinical psychologist Dr. Orion Taraban explains the psychological mechanisms behind this pattern (watch the full conversation here). The answer lies not in women preferring “bad boys,” but in understanding how childhood attachment patterns, familiarity, and unconscious psychological algorithms shape adult attraction. This article explores why being “nice” isn’t enough—and what actually creates attraction.
The Nice Guy Problem: What Women Say vs. What They Do
Dr. Taraban identifies a fundamental disconnect that confuses many men: “Women like it, but they don’t fuck it. They don’t marry it. They don’t enter into relationships with it.”
This creates a painful paradox for men who were raised to believe that kindness, respect, and emotional availability were the keys to romantic success. These men often:
- Put women’s needs before their own
- Are always available and accommodating
- Avoid conflict and never challenge women
- Seek approval and validation constantly
- Place women on pedestals
Yet despite doing “everything right” according to conventional advice, they consistently end up in the friend zone or watching women choose less attentive partners.
Research published in Evolutionary Psychology found that while women report valuing kindness and agreeableness in long-term partners, these traits alone don’t predict sexual attraction or relationship formation. The disconnect between stated preferences and actual behavior is real and measurable.
The Mother’s Influence: Why Nice Guys Are Created
Dr. Taraban offers a compelling explanation for where “nice guys” come from, rooted in family dynamics and childhood development. When boys are raised primarily by single mothers or in households where the father is emotionally distant, something significant happens:
Triangulation and Emotional Incest
In families where the marital relationship isn’t strong, mothers sometimes form their primary emotional bond with their sons rather than their husbands. Dr. Taraban explains: “The mother ends up getting into a more intimate emotional relationship with the son than with the husband.”
This creates what family therapists call “triangulation”—where the son fills an emotional role that should be occupied by the partner. While not sexual, this dynamic is sometimes termed “emotional incest” because it crosses appropriate parent-child boundaries.
The Mother’s Blueprint for Masculinity
Here’s where it gets interesting: “The mother will tend to raise the son in a way that she wished her husband would behave.” She teaches him:
- “You should always buy girls flowers”
- “Be sweet and sensitive”
- “Always put women’s needs first”
- “Nice boys respect women”
The problem? As Dr. Taraban points out: “She didn’t marry that man. She didn’t fuck that man. She didn’t reproduce with that man.”
Despite wishing her husband behaved differently, she was attracted to and chose a man who was “kind of aloof and kind of distant and she couldn’t truly possess emotionally.” So she’s training her son to display traits she consciously wishes for but isn’t actually attracted to.
The Asian Parenting Example
In the podcast conversation, Sean shares his own experience with Asian parenting patterns, noting that “a lot of parents just worked, came back home, they didn’t really spend time with their kids.” This emotional unavailability from both parents, combined with high achievement pressure (“an A-minus isn’t good enough”), creates a specific dynamic.
Men raised in these environments often become attracted to emotionally avoidant women because that pattern feels familiar. As Sean describes, it “felt familiar, you know, dating girls that were also very avoidant.”
Research on attachment theory, pioneered by psychologist John Bowlby and later expanded by Mary Ainsworth, confirms that early caregiver relationships create “internal working models” that shape adult romantic relationships.
The Love Algorithm: How Childhood Creates Attraction Templates
Dr. Taraban introduces a powerful concept: we all develop unconscious “love algorithms” based on observing our parents’ relationship. As he explains: “Imagine training an AI model on just one example.”
The Single Data Set Problem
Just as AI requires vast amounts of data to be adaptive and intelligent, children form their understanding of relationships from a very limited sample—primarily their parents. Dr. Taraban notes:
“You’re not going to judge it. It’s like a machine. The AI can’t judge whether it’s getting good data or bad data or right or wrong. It’s just like, ‘this is reality.'”
This programming happens during a “sensitive period” before children are consciously aware, creating deep patterns that feel like fundamental truth rather than learned behavior. These patterns include:
- How men and women behave
- What love looks and feels like
- How conflict is handled (or avoided)
- What level of emotional expression is normal
- What constitutes a “good” partner
Why Familiarity Trumps Happiness
In a quote Dr. Taraban references from The School of Life’s Alain de Botton: “When we enter the marketplace of dating, we think we’re out to find partners that will make us happy, but we’re not. We’re out to find partners who will make us feel familiar.”
This explains why people consistently reject partners who “look great on paper.” When someone says “there’s no chemistry,” what they often mean unconsciously is: “I’ve detected a person who will not be able to make me suffer in the way I need to suffer in order to feel that love is real.”
As de Botton concludes: “We’re not on a quest to be happy. We’re on a quest to suffer in a way that feels familiar.”
Research in attachment theory supports this. A study published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people with anxious attachment styles are more attracted to partners who are inconsistently available, recreating the uncertainty they experienced with caregivers.
Freud’s Theory of Reenactment
Dr. Taraban draws on Freudian psychology to explain another layer: people unconsciously seek to recreate and “solve” childhood relationship problems in their adult relationships.
The Unconscious Hope
According to this framework, we find partners who remind us of our opposite-sex parent because we want to “work out a different outcome than the one that we experienced in the past.”
The logic is intuitive: “They can’t go back and solve the problems that they experienced when they were kids. It’s in the past, it’s completely untouchable. But if I can recreate the problem here and then solve it, it’s almost like I can get some sort of emotional closure.”
The Tragic Flaw
The tragedy lies in this reality: “People don’t have practice solving the problem. They’ve never seen the problem solved. They only have practice experiencing and creating the problem.”
If your parents had an approach-avoidance dynamic where one was clingy and the other distant, you might recreate that dynamic—but lack any blueprint for resolving it. You’re skilled at creating the problem but clueless about fixing it.
This is why therapy can be transformative. As Dr. Taraban explains, the therapeutic relationship provides “a training ground for the successful resolution of that problem in their lives” because the therapist helps the patient become consciously aware and develop new responses.
Why “Nice” Doesn’t Equal “Attractive”
Understanding these dynamics clarifies why niceness alone doesn’t create attraction:
1. Niceness Is Expected, Not Attractive
Being kind, respectful, and considerate should be baseline behavior—the minimum requirement, not a distinguishing feature. Research shows that while these traits are necessary, they’re not sufficient for attraction.
Women need to feel that a man’s kindness comes from strength and choice, not weakness and fear of disapproval. There’s a massive difference between:
- Authentic kindness: “I’m secure enough to be generous”
- Nice guy behavior: “I’m afraid you won’t like me if I’m not constantly pleasing you”
2. The Pedestal Problem
Dr. Taraban explains that when men insist on being the “adorer” who worships the woman, they create an unattractive dynamic: “If the man insists ‘I want to be the adorer, I want to love you,’ then that pushes the woman up here. It’s like putting the woman on a pedestal.”
This deprives her of emotional content because she’s being loved but not experiencing the excitement of pursuing someone she desires. As he notes: “Generally, they tend to not stay with those men or date them at all. They get bored.”
Worse, the man is “basically insisting that the woman mate and date down” by positioning himself as lower value. This violates women’s hypergamous instinct—the preference to date men of equal or higher status.
3. Challenge and Uncertainty Create Chemistry
The “nice guy” removes all challenge and uncertainty from the equation. Women know exactly how he feels, that he’s completely available, and that he’ll never push back. This predictability kills attraction.
As discussed earlier regarding scarcity and desire, Dr. Taraban notes that “people are happier living in hope of one day getting what they want than the satisfaction of actually having it.” The nice guy offers complete certainty—and certainty is boring.
The Balance of Attraction: Adorer vs. Adored
Dr. Taraban introduces a framework that helps explain relationship dynamics: in every relationship, someone likes the other person more (the “adorer”) and someone is liked more (the “adored”).
The Adorer Position
The adorer experiences maximum emotional content:
- Anxiety when waiting for texts
- Excitement when finally connecting
- The thrill of “walking on air” after successful dates
- Incredible sex fueled by desire
Both men and women naturally want this position because “that’s where the feeling is.” This explains complaints about “no spark” or “no chemistry”—code for “I’m not the adorer, so I’m not feeling much.”
The Adored Position
The adored person has less emotional intensity but more power and control. They decide “when the relationship happens, where, on what terms”—the relationship’s structure and frame.
Dr. Taraban explains: “It always feels like some form of settling when you’re the adored, because who does the adored adore? That person is even higher than him or her.”
Why Women Should Be the Adorer
Dr. Taraban argues that men should generally be the adored in relationships, particularly because “it might be novel or interesting for a woman to be placed on a pedestal for a while… but generally, they tend to not stay with those men.”
More critically: “It’s more important for the women because I do think that women are more likely to leave sooner in the absence of that emotional content.”
Men might stay in relationships out of duty or commitment even without intense feelings, but women generally won’t. If she’s unhappy or “fallen out of love” for long enough, “she’s probably going to start looking for the door.”
This isn’t about manipulation—it’s about understanding that sustainable attraction often requires women to feel that wonderful mixture of desire, uncertainty, and the thrill of pursuit.
Can Nice Guys Change? Dr. Taraban’s Personal Journey
Importantly, Dr. Taraban shares his own transformation, offering hope that these patterns aren’t permanent:
His Dating Pattern
In his twenties, he found himself attracted to “roller coasters”—emotionally chaotic women, often actresses. He could identify these women instantly: “I could walk into a room of a hundred strangers and I could just look at a woman across the room and say, ‘Oh, she’s the one.'”
This created a painful cycle:
- Date chaotic woman because she felt exciting and familiar
- Eventually find it “too crazy” and break up
- Date “a nice girl, a healthy girl, a stable girl”
- Become “bored to tears” within months
- Return to another “dumpster fire or roller coaster”
The Transformation
Through years of therapy and inner work, something shifted: “Over time my attraction began to authentically change.” He emphasizes “authentically”—he didn’t force himself to like stable women; his genuine preferences evolved.
Now, when chaotic women appear, there’s “this dark echo, but it’s like no thank you. It’s almost like being in recovery for a drug.”
Crucially, he questions whether this would have happened “just as a function of time, like if I had just done nothing.” His conclusion: “I think I really had to take the time to examine this and understand it and heal it as best I could.”
Sean’s Similar Experience
Sean echoes this journey, noting his attraction to avoidant women and how understanding these patterns changed his “initial trigger.” Now when he encounters that dynamic: “Ah, this is too much work for me… This is not going to work for me.”
Practical Steps for Nice Guys
If you recognize yourself in this pattern, here are research-backed strategies:
1. Understand Your Attachment Style
Take an attachment style assessment to identify whether you’re anxiously attached, avoidantly attached, or fearfully attached. Understanding your pattern is the first step to changing it.
Resources like the book Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller provide practical frameworks for identifying and working with attachment patterns.
2. Examine Your Childhood Template
Honestly assess:
- What was your parents’ relationship like?
- How did your mother and father interact?
- What did you learn about how men and women should behave?
- Who were you closest to emotionally?
Journaling about these questions or working with a therapist can reveal unconscious patterns.
3. Notice Your Attraction Patterns
Pay attention to who you’re consistently attracted to:
- Do you pursue emotionally unavailable women?
- Are you attracted to chaos and drama?
- Do stable, healthy women bore you?
- Do you lose interest once someone shows consistent interest?
Awareness precedes change.
4. Develop Healthy Boundaries
Nice guys often lack boundaries. Practice:
- Saying no when you don’t want to do something
- Expressing disagreement respectfully
- Having your own opinions and preferences
- Not sacrificing your needs to please others
- Walking away from people who disrespect you
5. Build Authentic Confidence
Work on developing genuine self-worth through:
- Achievement in areas you care about
- Physical fitness and capability
- Skill development and mastery
- Healthy male friendships
- Purpose beyond romantic relationships
6. Consider Therapy
If childhood patterns are deeply ingrained, professional help accelerates change. Look for therapists trained in:
- Attachment theory
- Psychodynamic approaches
- Schema therapy
- EMDR for trauma processing
The Difference Between Nice and Attractive
The goal isn’t to become an asshole—it’s to understand that attraction requires more than niceness:
Nice guys offer:
- Constant availability
- No challenge or uncertainty
- Pedestalization
- People-pleasing
- Weak boundaries
Attractive men offer:
- Selective availability
- Appropriate challenge
- Mutual respect without worship
- Authentic expression
- Strong boundaries
As Dr. Taraban’s journey shows, you can be kind, respectful, and emotionally healthy while still creating attraction. The key is healing the underlying patterns that drive people-pleasing behavior.
Conclusion
The “nice guy finishes last” phenomenon isn’t about women preferring jerks—it’s about unconscious psychological patterns formed in childhood that shape adult attraction. As Dr. Taraban explains in his conversation on Kim Sean’s podcast (full episode here), being nice is necessary but not sufficient for attraction.
The good news? These patterns can change through awareness, inner work, and sometimes therapy. Both Dr. Taraban and Sean describe transforming their attraction patterns by understanding and healing childhood wounds.
For nice guys struggling in dating, the path forward isn’t becoming less kind—it’s becoming more whole. Develop genuine confidence, establish healthy boundaries, maintain your own life and interests, and let kindness flow from strength rather than fear. When you stop seeking validation through pleasing others and start living authentically, attraction follows naturally.
References
- Dating Doctor On What Women Really Want & The NEW Dating Rules To Attract Women. Kim Sean’s Podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqXM3fmeYcs
- Jensen-Campbell, L. A., Graziano, W. G., & West, S. G. (1995). Dominance, prosocial orientation, and female preferences: Do nice guys really finish last? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(3), 427-440.
- Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.
- Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. Lawrence Erlbaum.
- Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511-524.
- Eastwick, P. W., & Finkel, E. J. (2008). Sex differences in mate preferences revisited: Do people know what they initially desire in a romantic partner? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(2), 245-264.
- Zayas, V., & Shoda, Y. (2005). Do automatic reactions elicited by thoughts of romantic partner, mother, and self relate to adult romantic attachment? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(8), 1011-1025.
- Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and Family Therapy. Harvard University Press.
- Levine, A., & Heller, R. (2010). Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love. TarcherPerigee.
- Young, J. E., Klosko, J. S., & Weishaar, M. E. (2003). Schema Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide. Guilford Press.
- Glasser, W. (2000). Reality Therapy in Action. HarperCollins.
- Johnson, S. M. (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown and Company.