“I’m a Nice Guy. I’m one of the nicest guys you will ever meet.”

I was proud to make that statement about myself through much of my early adult life. I was a Nice Guy. I wanted to treat people well and I wanted to be liked. I couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t have a similar personal mantra.

While in my early 30’s, and in spite of my unwavering faith in this Nice Guy philosophy, my life was in crisis. One marriage had ended. The second one wasn’t going so well. My career dreams were stalled. I was frustrated, resentful, and confused. If you had talked to the people closest to me, they probably would have told you that I wasn’t so nice.

I decided to start working on my situation. I joined a men’s group and started working with a therapist. Honestly, my initial goal was to find out why the people around me weren’t responding so well to my Nice Guy philosophy, and then get them to change.

Within a short amount of time, I came to see that the problem was me. I had an agenda. I had no boundaries. I was indirect. I was passive-aggressive. I wasn’t honest. I wasn’t always so nice.

As I was making these discoveries about myself, I noticed that many of the married men with whom I worked in my practice as a marriage therapist were making the same statements about their partners that I had been making about mine.

I could finish their sentences for them.

Then, there were the single guys – the guys who either couldn’t get a date or who were deeply entrenched in the friend zone with the women they desired. They patiently waited, hoping the women they desired would quit lamenting over “jerks” and wake up to see what great men they – the Nice Guys – were. But they’d only hear things like, “You’re such a great guy. You’ll make some lucky woman very happy someday.”

Over time, I came to see that, like me, these passively pleasing men had road maps that unconsciously influenced every area of their lives. I came to realize that I wasn’t the only man who thought that if I was nice, people would like me and meet my needs without me having to ask and I would have a smooth, problem-free life.

In the early 90s, I started my first No More Mr. Nice Guy group for these men and we met every other week. I began writing down what I was discovering about the “Nice Guy Syndrome,” and gave the material to the men in my group. Both the men and their partners kept telling me, “You should write a book, and you should go on Oprah.”

Well, I never made it on Oprah, but I did write the book. Barnes & Noble and Running Press published it in 2003, and it has since been translated into several languages.

Since publishing No More Mr. Nice Guy, I have worked with thousands of men and women to help them get the love and sex they want. I have also been through a number of amazing life changes of my own.

I am committed to being my best self and living my best life. No More Mr. Nice Guy will show you how you can do the same.

– Dr. Robert Glover