nice guy

plural nice guys

1. euphemisticidiomaticAn inoffensive adult male who desires romantic companionship but who is too bland and uninspiring to be attractive.

   2005 September 18, "Dirty D.", Lost Romanticism and the Manwhore, DiaryLand, at uberfrau.diaryland.com Nice guys are historically the grail of dating. […] As both Nora and I reminisced and compared how we were treated by the manwhore and by the nice guy, the manwhore always won out.

   2 more examples

   1999, The 'Nice Guy' Syndrome, Self-Help Informational Resources, The Counseling Center for Human Development, The University of South Florida https://web.archive.org/web/19991013184527/http://usfweb.usf.edu/counsel/self-hlp/niceguy.htm The nice guy, they say, finishes last. But in romantic relationships, the nice guy often isn't even in the running. […] The nice guy may have expressed an interest in dating you…. The nice guy is the person who you trust and feel comfortable with, but don't see as "fun" or "challenging" or really all that "interesting," other than as a friend, of course.

   "My frustrations were pretty typical Nice Guy relationship issues," he says. "Not feeling appreciated, not feeling sexually desired by my wife. I didn't feel like...I received as much as I gave."

   2002 May 3, Cecelia Goodnow, “What's wrong with being a nice guy? Plenty, according to a local therapist”, in Seattle Post-Intelligencer

2. InternetderogatorysarcasticA man who pretends to be kind and polite with the goal of attracting women, often becoming hostile and misogynistic when their advances are rebuffed; someone affected by nice guy syndrome.

   Plenty of men will treat women kindly, but Nice Guys like to think that behaving kindly earns them a gold star. It doesn't.

   2016 March 12, Suzannah Weiss, “5 Signs Of Nice Guy Syndrome”, in Bustle, archived from the original on 25 Jan 2018

3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see nice, guy.

   Michael may seem a bit rough around the edges, but he really is a nice guy.