tl;dr: Nice guys suck at dating because they believe in a particular set of morals that makes dating more difficult and sleeping around very difficult.

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One of the most persistant bluepill myths is that niceness is good for your romantic success; it has basically been around since female-penned romance became a thing; the feminist idea that the (genuinelyTM ) nice guy is basically a foil to the toxic masculine patriarch is just the most recent iteration.

Yet when it comes to actual romantic success, nice guys fall reliably shorter than douchebags. There are a lot of cop outs for the lack of the romantic success nice guys bemoan - the most ubiquitous is the "(entitled) fake nice guy"-accusation; related to this is the idea that "nice guys are just less attractive". Apart from the fact that what separates the "nice guy" from the "nice guyTM " is oftentimes merely the fact that the former knows his place while the latter doesn't (a "nice guy" who gets a sub-par girlfriend and doesn't react overtly poorly to being friendzoned is genuine vs. the "nice guyTM " who isn't willing to date down and thinks friendzoning sucks) and little beyond that, these explanations place the blame solely on some shortcoming from the guy.

Another explanation is the assumption is that "being nice" is inherently sexually unattractive because it signals a lack of competitiveness. Or, to quote from the House MD episode "No More Mr Nice Guy":

HOUSE: This guy wasn't pandering, he wasn't vanilla nice, he was nice without any aspiration for personal gain. I'm thinking genetic defect.

KUTNER: Niceness is a defect?

HOUSE: Three cavemen, see a stranger running towards them with a spear. One fights, one flees, one smiles and invites him over for fondue. That last guy didn't last long enough to procreate.

Niceness being unattractive because it's "beta" is also an interesting take on it, but it still falls short because it omits one very fundamental problem: Nice guys are simply worse when it comes to dating because their niceness (either directly or indirectly) makes them worse at dating and not because of some other mostly unrelated trait that hamstrings their dating endeavors.

Try to think of a genuinely nice guy. I am not talking about an okay guy, but someone who is truly and sincerely kind-hearted. Then think of an asshole. Now let's see which traits that guy is more likely to have and how they impact his dating game; especially when compared to a person who doesn't have them (i.e. a person who can generally be described as "not nice"). You might also want to take a look at my thread that shamelessly promotes selfishness as a means to achieve abundance mentality.

  • Who is more likely to see other people mostly as a means to an end, the asshole or the nice person? As a consequence, who is more likely to be okay with sleeping with women and then discard them, the asshole or the nice person? This one is pretty simple: nice guys are simply more likely to let opportunities go to waste because they have lofty notions about sex, intimacy and romance and insist on taking the high road, while the asshole neither puts intimacy on such a pedestal nor bothers too much about using other people - and they're also more likely to walk away if they don't get what they desired.
  • Who is more likely to lie and cheat, the asshole or the nice person? This is so simple it's almost funny it's rarely mentioned (it's also tied to the first bullet point). Oftentimes, getting into bed with someone requires an awful amount of unjustified bragging and outright lying, and sometimes involves cheating ("this is why I am a total badass", "of course I love you", "yes, you are the prettiest girl I've ever known", "no, you aren't not good enough for me, I am just not in the mood for a relationship" etc.). The truth is that if you want to truly maximize your opportunities to get your dick wet with different women, lying is practically mandatory - simply the mere fact of someone wanting to sleep with women who are good enough to have sex with, but not good enough to date permanently (but who actually want to be more than a simple lay for him) already necessitates this.
  • Who is more likely to not obsess over how his actions could affect others, the asshole or the nice person? This is a key quality. The person who is poor when it comes to empathizing is also better at simply dismissing how his actions could impact others. He doesn't dwell on how others could see him, and as a consequence isn't burdened by self-doubts. He's also less likely to be overtly respectful of boundaries and more likely to tease and provoke a negative reaction, which ironically makes him more attractive if he's doing it right.
  • Who is more likely to not let people walk over him, an asshole or a nice person? Again, this is a likelihood. Nice guys want to be well liked. Some nice people are willing to put a foot down and risk alienation, others... not so much. Compared to them douchebags are simply far less likely to play along.
  • Who is more gullible and willing to see the best in others, the asshole or the nice guy? This is the side effect of the propensity for lying. Nice/honest people are simply more willing to assume the best from others and believe them when they try to present themselves favorably, while assholes are more likely to ascribe ulterior motives to others or project their own maliciousness and duplicity onto them. Which in turn serves them well when it comes to gauging the veracity of popular female statements like "looks don't matter that much" and "I only want a guy who cares about me" etc. It also makes it easier to not really give a shit about other people if you think they're assholes anyway.

Now as a consequence, this leads to the following questions:

  • Under these circumstances, who is more likely to have had a considerable experiences with women, the asshole or the nice person? This is the logical solution of all the stuff above: everything else being equal , the asshole will get laid far more than the nice guy simply because he's better at playing others and at capitalizing on his opportunities.
  • Who is more likely to be confident and decisive around women, the one who slept around or the one who didn't? And this is the consequence of this. The guy who has slept around loads of times is not only a lot better when it comes to getting into bed with even more women, he also knows far better how to push their buttons and he's far more confident around them (abundance mentality ftw).

EDIT: Because quite a bunch of you seemed to have missed my point - this is less about women being put off by you behaving nicely (though this factors into it). This is about niceness (and the decisions you make because you're nice) in itself being detrimental to your dating life.

Lessons learned: doing "the right thing" comes at a cost.