As a 27 year old ForeverAlone virgin, I tend to do a lot of introspection about “where it all went wrong” and lately I’ve been thinking about the roots of my “Nice Guy” behavior. I’ve been critical of the recently popular perspective that Nice Guys are actually evil patriarchal monsters because as a former Nice Guy myself, I recognize how much of my behavior was actually rooted in the feminist beliefs I took away from years of conditioning at school and from TV.
Being subject to so much propaganda from so many angles and for so many years makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly when my views on gender and relationships began to crystalize around the Nice Guy paradigm. However, after a lot of thinking I believe that I’ve recalled my earliest formative memory that influenced my understanding of how to be a desirable man.
My parents divorced when I was three years old or thereabouts and my mom took primary custody of me. Mom soon started dating my future step dad, “Barry”. Barry was conspicuously chivalrous. I noticed that whenever we drove anywhere together my mom would just sit there in her seat after we had parked and she wouldn’t exit the vehicle until Barry opened the door for her.
One day after we got back from an outing and Barry had left, I asked her why she always waited for Barry to open the door for her. I told her I knew she didn’t need help getting in and out of the car because we went places together all the time without Barry and I could see that she got in and out of the vehicle just fine on those days.
Mom agreed that she was perfectly capable of getting in and out of the vehicle herself. She said that she waited for Barry to open the door for her to give him an opportunity to be a gentleman. Mom explained that being a gentleman made Barry a catch and that when I got old enough to be interested in girls that’s how I should try to win a girl’s heart as well.
This was the foundation upon which the rest of my feminist indoctrination would be laid. Sitcoms, talk shows, history classes, opinionated teachers, PSAs about sexual harassment, and more would all reinforce the idea that America was a horrible, scary place for women. Naturally America’s downtrodden female underclass would seek out one of the rare nice, unopressive feminist boys as respite from the otherwise all-encompassing and ever-menacing patriarchy.
This worked about as well as you’d expect. Despite being the nicest and most chivalrous of Nice Guys, I never managed to get a girlfriend or even single date during high school. Or college either for that matter. I was eventually further enlightened about how catastrophically ineffecive it is to try to woo women with respect, chivalry, and the rejection of traditional “oppressive” gender roles by feminist bloggers confusingly similar to the women who convinced me that this same approach was both a good idea and a moral obligation in the first place.
I started to resent my mother when I recognized the role she played in initiating the process of “betafying” me that sabotaged my nascent love life. Nevertheless, I tried to suppress these negative feelings and look at things from her perspective. After leaving her tumultuous marriage to my tempermental father, I could see why she would want a kindly, chivalrous gentleman who would take in a single mother.
That comforted me until I understood the logical implications of what I was thinking. When my mother gave me advice, she didn’t give me advice that would help me, she gave advice that would help herself by proxy- encouraging me to be the kind of guy who would appeal to and accept a single mother. But for a young man seeking his own first formative romantic experiences and to start his own family, being “stuck” with a woman who’s “been there done that” and has the proof to show for it in tow is actually the nightmare scenario.
Could my mom have sabotaged my future love life on purpose to condition me into a provider role for a hypothetical single mother I might encounter one day? I dismissed the thought as ridiculous. Yes, mom gave me advice suited for fulfilling her own needs rather than my own, but there was no reason to assume any kind of malice or exploitative intent. If there were, there would be signs of it after the fact. For example, if mom had raised me with the intention of me taking in a single mother, she might explicitly encourage me to pursue single mothers for a relationship or something.
At first, I couldn’t remember a single sign that my mom intended me to grow up into a single mother’s provider figure, which was a huge relief. But further reflection brought to mind a dimly remembered conversation or two from about five years ago. These exchanges were so hazily recalled that I’m not sure exactly how either went down or even if they were separate events, but I remember the basic and that the fact that they happened.
The summer after my fourth year of college something interesting happened. A girl I had a crush on, Laura, came on to me rather aggressively while I was visiting my aunt during a family road trip. Unfortunately for both of us, “had a crush on” was the key word. This girl was my aunt’s neighbor and I saw her about once a year when I was a little kid. I was in love with her as much as an elementary schooler could be. She had a crush on me, too
My aunt lived out of state so making the long trips became harder and harder when my mom started having children with my step dad. After fifth grade visits became so infrequent that I did not see Laura until after I graduated high school. Laura made some poor choices in the intervening years. By the time she came on to me she had become the proud mother of several morbidly obese toddlers.
It was heartbreaking to see my childhood sweetheart with her life in that condition, but I had no interest in being a dad to someone else’s kids at the age of 21, much less kids that were so poorly reared. I was certain enough of this conviction to maintain in the face of one of the few times in my life a woman had openly expressed interest in me as a potential partner.
My mother had been witness to my exchange with Laura and when we got back to mom’s place, she asked me why I wasn’t interested in dating her. I said it was because she had kids. Mom tried to convince me that having kids shouldn’t rule her out as a potential partner. I was insistant in my lack of interest, which angered mom. She insinuated that I was ungrateful and hypocritical because when she was a single mother my step dad took us in. She then implied that I had an obligation to “pay it forward” by taking in a single mother myself!
I associate this memory with another briefer and even hazier memory. I’m not quite sure if the exchange occurred with this conversation, or not, but I think it may have happened on another family vacation, probably the year after. Mom asked me why I didn’t have a girlfriend. I tried to put a cheerful face on the situation, but I didn’t lie. I simplysaid that it was because I didn’t know anyone who wanted me. Mom suggested that I could easily get a girlfriend if I went after single mothers.
With these recollections I had to admit that my emerging suspicions were correct. My own mother wanted to see my love life end up in the ultimate “crash and burn” scenario; me stuck raising another man’s kids with a wife who’s already “had her fun”. My own mother raised me with the intent to shape me into a provider cuckold because that’s the kind of man who would have been most beneficial to her when she was in that situation. She even explicitly connected this desire to her own experiences following the divorce. Just like I had ascertained from my recollections of the first “advice” she gave me regarding relationships.
My own needs or wants or goals were immaterial to how she taught me to approach relationships, only those she thought belonged to a proxy for her own self. My mom raised me prioritizing the wellbeing of a hypothetical single mother I might meet one day over the wellbeing of myself; her own immediate and present flesh and blood.
TLDR: Mom divorced Dad when I was a ittle kid then remarried chivalrous nice guy. She taught me that to get a girl I must be chivalrous nice guy like Step Dad. Advice leads to complete romantic/sexual failure through entire adolescence and early 20s. Then Mom pesters me to consider relationships with single mothers. TFW your own mother raised you on self-serving lies meant to condition you into a provider for single moms like she was instead of caring about your own romantic desires.





https://www.reddit.com/r/ForeverAlone/duplicates/31pzfu/i_think_i_was_raised_to_be_a_beta_male_cuckold/