Becoming More Desirable

One of the books that I have often recommended to my clients is a work by Dr. Robert Glover. His book, No More Mr. Nice Guy is a guide to men who have struggled to get what they want in “love, sex, and life”. I’d like to share one of the key concepts from this book and a caution as you begin to integrate the ideas the book offers you. First, what is a “Nice Guy” or as Dr. Glover nice guy syndrome? It is essentially this. Nice guys are men who, at the expense of their own happiness and from a position of hiding real and important parts about themselves seek the approval of others. They do this at work, they do this in their church callings, and they do this in their personal lives, particularly as part of their marriages. What this looks like is often saying, “yes” to things that they are not fully on board for, in an effort to gain the approval of those around them. Their boss, those they attend church with, and especially their spouses. This may not sound problematic, as being a person who serves in their community is often a well-regarded thing. But this overwhelming need to seek the approval of others at the expense of one’s own honestly held position can create a problem called covert contracts. Covert contracts are actions that we take in order to obligate others to take actions that validate us without their consent. An example of this might look like a spouse doing all the right things around the house, doing the dishes, cleaning up the house, getting the kids to bed and so on, in order to get their partner to have no possible excuse to not have sex with them. At it’s core, a covert contract is a manipulation of those around you, in particular our spouses, into giving you validation through things like sex in a quid pro quo that the other party is not fully agreed to. For some of you listening to this, you might be saying, “Well, how else am I supposed to get my partner to have sex with me, she always has some reason why not to, unless I maneuver her into feeling like she has to.” When we create these covert obligations, in the long run, we end up alienating our partners, and get less of the things we want, including intimacy and sex. We are essentially manipulating our partners for coerced validation at the expense of self-validation and their desire for us. What I find here is that many men feel like getting some sex, even bad, servicing-based sex, is better than no sex. What we fail to see, from that perspective is, that the servicing sex that we end up getting isn’t fulfilling, but we can control, to some degree, when we get it. That control is the thing that you and your partner will eventually push back against and may create damage to your relationship that is difficult to reconcile in the long run. By the way, both men and women do this. My mom once told me that if she wanted something from my dad, she would have sex with him and then ask him about whatever she wanted. He was much more likely to give in to her position if she did that. So, how do we stop creating covert contracts? I’m going to give you two things that you can do. Part of the process of leaving behind covert contracts is letting go of the outcome. The other part is becoming more desirable. Let’s start with being more desirable. Most of us, if we take a few moments to examine our lives, can see a number of things that we would like to change or improve about ourselves. Those of us who engage or have engaged in covert contracts are often, fundamentally dishonest about what is real and truly going on for us internally. Meaning, we don’t really tell our partner what is true, we often tell them what we think we want