No More Mr. Nice Guy: Why Nice Guys Can't Be Dominant Men

You've probably read "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Dr. Robert Glover. If you haven't, stop reading this and go get it right now. I'll wait.

https://a.co/d/15BXtzz - << Link to book here

It's one of those books that every man in the self-development space has on his shelf. It's the book that wakes most guys up to their patterns. The problem is, most men completely misunderstand what to do with that awakening.

They read the book and think: "I need to kill the Nice Guy and become an asshole."

Then they wonder why their D/s dynamic still feels like a performance. Why she still doesn't really surrender. Why they're still exhausted from trying to be Dominant.

Here's what most men miss: the Nice Guy patterns don't just poison relationships in general. They specifically destroy your ability to be an authentically Dominant man.

In this episode (listen on our podcast or watch on YouTube), I walk through the core lessons from Glover's book and show you exactly how each Nice Guy tendency works against real Dominance, and what integrated Dominance actually looks like.

Covert Contracts Are Poison

A covert contract is an unconscious agreement that the other person doesn't even know exists. It sounds like: "If I meet her needs, she'll meet mine." "If I dominate her well, she'll want sex." "If I create enough structure, she'll finally submit."

You're keeping score of all the things you're doing, expecting reciprocal behavior that you've never actually asked for. And when she doesn't hold up "her end" of this agreement she never made, you feel victimized. You feel resentful.

She's confused because she never agreed to anything.

How This Poisons Dominance

When you operate from covert contracts, your Dominance becomes transactional. There's no generosity in your leadership. You're doing this to get that. Maybe submission, maybe sex, maybe respect, maybe validation. You're not expressing authentic desire, you're running a strategy.

This creates a fundamentally weak foundation because everything about your Dominant frame is contingent on her response.

Here's what you need to understand: your woman can feel the hidden agenda. She might not be able to name it, but somatically, she knows something isn't right. You might be giving her structure, you might be giving her commands, you might be leading and taking charge. But if you're doing it because you think you're going to get something back from her that you haven't actually spoken up for, it breaks trust at a somatic level.

She can't surrender to your authentic power because she's navigating your unspoken expectations. She's stuck in her head trying to figure out what you really want instead of dropping into her body.

And when she doesn't respond "correctly," doesn't submit the way you expected, doesn't desire you sexually the way you hoped, doesn't respect you the way you think she should, you feel victimized. You feel resentful.

That's the opposite of powerful. That's the opposite of Dominant.

You've given her the power to determine whether you're a "good Dom" based on her response to your covert contract.

What Integrated Dominance Looks Like

You bring commands and structure from overflow and authentic desire, not from a strategy to get needs met. The Dominance itself IS the expression, not a means to an end.

You make your actual needs explicit and direct rather than hiding them in Dominant choreography. "I want to have sex with you tonight" instead of creating an elaborate scene hoping it leads to sex. "I need you to handle the logistics of our social calendar" instead of testing whether she'll "be a good submissive."

You can handle her no or her resistance without losing your center because you weren't secretly dependent on her saying yes. Your Dominance isn't contingent on her compliance.

This paradoxically makes you more trustworthy to surrender to because she knows you won't collapse if she pushes back.

Seeking Approval Keeps You Powerless

Nice Guys need others, especially women, to validate their worth. They're constantly scanning the environment to see if they're "doing it right." Their sense of self depends completely on others' responses and reactions.

This turns a man into a shapeshifter. You become whatever other people want you to be. There's no stable sense of self at all. Everything is a performance.

I can't tell you how many men come to me feeling like they're in trouble with their woman anytime they do something wrong. I can't tell you how long I struggled with this one. The feeling like if she's unhappy, I'm in trouble.

You're a grown fucking man. I'm a grown fucking man. Why do I feel in trouble if she's unhappy with me? Why do I need her to be happy with me in order for me to feel like I'm good?

How This Poisons Dominance

When you're seeking approval, you're performing "Dominant" (capital D, the role) rather than being Dominant (the authentic expression of your masculine desire). You're constantly adjusting your approach based on her reactions, which makes you reactive instead of generative.

She can feel that you're following her emotional weather rather than creating your own climate.

Your power is located outside of yourself in her approval, which means she actually has the power in the dynamic. If you need her to submit "correctly" to feel like a good Dom, she controls your sense of self. If you need her to respond with desire to your Dominance to feel powerful, you're not powerful. You're dependent.

The hypervigilance to her response, reading her constantly to see if you're "doing it right," prevents presence. You're not actually WITH her. You're monitoring her reaction to you. This creates a subtle but profound distance that prevents real intimacy and prevents her from fully relaxing into surrender because she can feel she's being watched and evaluated through your need for her approval.

What Integrated Dominance Looks Like

Your emotional state and sense of self-worth are internally generated, not dependent on her response to your Dominance. You can lead clearly even when she's resistant, upset, or withdrawn because your center isn't located in her approval.

This is what makes you safe to surrender to.

You bring your authentic desire without shapeshifting based on her initial reaction. If she pushes back or has a defensive response, you don't immediately adjust to manage her comfort. You stay with your desire and let her have her reaction, which actually gives her something real to orient to rather than a moving target.

You validate your own desires and decisions first, which paradoxically makes you more trustworthy. She doesn't have to manage your emotional state by responding "correctly." She can be honest about her experience because she knows you won't collapse or become resentful if she doesn't validate you.

This creates the safety for real surrender.

Your Needs Matter As Much As Anyone Else's

Nice Guys believe their needs are less important than others' needs. They learned in childhood: "Don't be selfish, think of others first." Then they make themselves martyrs and resent others for not reciprocating.

Making yourself a priority feels selfish because of childhood conditioning. But meeting your own needs first isn't selfish. It's taking responsibility.

You cannot genuinely give to others when you're depleted and resentful.

Nice Guys confuse caretaking (which builds resentment) with caring (which is generous). Caretaking comes from emptiness. Caring comes from fullness.

How This Poisons Dominance

When you prioritize her needs, her comfort, her experience over your own authentic desire, you're not actually leading. You're following. You've made her the center and yourself the satellite, which completely inverts the polarity of the dynamic.

She can't surrender UP to someone who's already positioned himself below her needs.

The resentment that builds from self-abandonment poisons the dynamic. You start keeping score, noticing when she's "not being a good submissive" or "not appreciating your leadership," which is just the Nice Guy pattern dressed up in D/s language. The structure becomes a weapon for your unspoken resentment rather than a container for her surrender.

You become a caretaker instead of a leader. You're managing her emotions, anticipating her needs, making sure she's comfortable. This sounds like good Dominance, but it's actually codependence.

Real Dominance includes care, but from a place of fullness and choice, not depletion and obligation. When you abandon your needs to meet hers, she loses respect (even if unconsciously) because she can feel you're not respecting yourself.

What Integrated Dominance Looks Like

Your desires are given equal weight to her experience. Not more (which would be selfish tyranny), not less (which is Nice Guy with a flogger). You bring what you authentically want and you genuinely care about her experience, and you hold both simultaneously.

This is the integrated position.

You lead from overflow, not depletion. When you take care of your own needs first (sleep, food, creative expression, male friendships, alone time, sexual satisfaction), you have something real to give. Your Dominance becomes generous because it's not coming from "I'm doing this so you'll give me what I need." It's coming from fullness.

You can be affected by her needs and care deeply about her experience without making her needs more important than your authentic desire. This is the nuance. You don't become selfish and ignore her, but you also don't abandon yourself to manage her comfort.

You hold your ground while genuinely considering her, which creates the tension that makes surrender possible.

You Can't Control Others, Only Take Responsibility for Yourself

Nice Guys try to manage and control others' emotions and reactions. They do this by being "good" and avoiding anything that might upset others. But this is actually a way of avoiding their own uncomfortable feelings.

If you can keep everyone else happy, you don't have to feel your own anxiety, your own fear, your own shame.

Real power comes from self-possession: managing your own emotional state. You cannot make anyone feel anything. You can't change someone else's emotional experience. They choose their response.

How This Poisons Dominance

You use structure and control to manage HER emotions rather than to express your authentic desire or create a container for growth. This is Nice Guy behavior disguised as Dominance.

You're keeping her "happy" or "stable" or "in a good submissive space" because if she's upset or resistant, YOU feel uncomfortable. You're not leading. You're managing to avoid your own discomfort.

I worked with a couple once where the Dominant was insistent that there were emotions his submissive was not allowed to feel because they weren't "valid" to him. If she was having an emotional experience based on something from her past, but she was feeling it in response to him, those were "invalid emotions" she was expected to let go.

Boy, did they both have a lot of resentment toward each other.

He was trying to use structure to control and manage her emotions because he couldn't handle it when she got upset about something from her past. He didn't want anything to do with it. He couldn't handle it. So he tried to create control structures as the Dominant, using the dynamic to crush her down to a level he could handle.

That is not Dominance. That's control, manipulation, and fear.

You can't dominate somebody when you're afraid of their authentic experience.

True power is self-possession, not control of her. If you need her to stay in a certain emotional state for you to feel okay, she has all of your power. If her moods dictate your approach, you're living reactively. You're not generating leadership. You're following her.

The dynamic is being led by her emotional state, not by you.

What Integrated Dominance Looks Like

You manage your own emotional state regardless of her response. She can be upset, resistant, closed down, triggered, and you remain centered. You don't need to fix her feelings or change her state to feel okay yourself.

This self-possession is what makes you safe to surrender to because she knows her emotions won't destabilize you.

You bring structure and leadership to create a container, not to control her experience within it. You set the boundaries and direction, and you let her have whatever reaction she has to those boundaries. If she pushes back, that's information, not a problem to fix.

You take full responsibility for your own feelings (your discomfort with her resistance, your anxiety when she's upset, your fear that you're not "doing it right") instead of trying to manage her into a state that makes you comfortable.

This means you might bring a decision or desire that triggers her defensive response, and you hold your ground through your own discomfort rather than backing off to regulate yourself through her compliance.

Hiding Yourself Prevents Real Intimacy

Nice Guys compartmentalize their lives. They show different faces to different people. They hide anything they think might bring disapproval: desires, needs, sexuality, anger.

They present a carefully curated version of themselves.

This performance keeps them safe from rejection but also from connection. Real intimacy requires being fully seen, including the "unacceptable" parts.

Vulnerability (letting yourself be seen) is terrifying because it risks rejection. But it's also the only path to genuine love and connection.

Here's the real giveaway: guys living in Nice Guy behaviors often have secret lives. Secret browser tabs. Hidden apps folders on their iPhones. Three different browsers on their phones.

And I'm going to say it right here: guys, if you have anything in the hidden apps folder on your iPhone, clean that shit up right now.

Women, is there a reason your man has three browsers on his phone?

How This Poisons Dominance

You hide behind the "Dominant" role rather than being a full human who happens to lead. You only show the strong, certain, in-control parts and hide the uncertain, needy, affected parts.

This makes you an archetype instead of a person. She can't actually surrender to an archetype. She needs to surrender to a real human.

The compartmentalization creates distance that prevents true intimacy. You show Dominance in the bedroom but hide your needs in daily life. You're strong in structure but won't let her see your vulnerability.

This partial presentation might look like power, but it's actually the Nice Guy pattern: hiding anything that might bring disapproval.

She can feel when you're performing rather than being real, and it prevents her deepest surrender. Real surrender requires trust, and trust requires knowing the whole person. If you're hiding your humanity to maintain the "Dominant" image, she can never fully relax because she knows there are parts of you she's not allowed to see or affect.

What Integrated Dominance Looks Like

You can be powerful AND vulnerable, leading AND needy, Dominant AND affected by her. You don't hide your humanity to maintain the role. You let her see your uncertainty, your fears, your needs, your tenderness, and you remain the leader through all of it.

This integration is what creates real trustworthiness.

You bring your full self, including the parts that feel "un-Dominant." You can express when you're affected by her, when you need something from her, when you're uncertain about a decision. This doesn't diminish your leadership. It makes it real.

She can surrender more deeply because she's surrendering to an actual person, not a performance.

The vulnerability creates intimacy that makes the power exchange meaningful. When you let yourself be fully seen and you still maintain your leadership, that's true strength. When you can be needy and still hold the container, that's integration.

The depth of intimacy is proportional to how much of yourself you're willing to reveal while still taking responsibility for the direction of the relationship.

Integration with Masculine Energy and Male Community

Many Nice Guys grew up without strong, healthy male role models. They learned how to be men from women: mothers, teachers, female partners.

Women taught them to be safe, not powerful, because that's what felt comfortable for the women.

Nice Guys are often disconnected from male friendships and male energy. They make women their emotional center, which is unfair to both.

Male community provides mirror, challenge, and permission to be fully masculine. Learning from men who are living authentically (not performing) is essential.

I didn't have a single male caretaker, teacher, or leader in my school life until seventh grade. By that time, I was 13 years old. Think about that. No other real men around.

We learn how to be men from women and what women want from us. And those women didn't have a lot of strong, healthy men around either. So what are they asking you to be? What makes them feel comfortable in a world where they don't feel safe around strong masculinity.

Masculinity probably felt very harsh and abusive to them. And that's who you learned from.

How This Poisons Dominance

You learned Dominance from female fantasies (porn, erotica, submissive women's desires) rather than from authentic masculine expression. This means you're performing what you think women want rather than expressing what you actually desire.

This is still Nice Guy behavior, just in leather.

Without male friendships and mentorship, you have no mirror outside of her response. She becomes your only source of feedback on whether you're "being Dominant correctly," which gives her all the power and puts unfair pressure on her to validate your masculine expression.

You make her your emotional center, which inverts the polarity. She becomes responsible for your emotional regulation, your sense of self-worth, your feeling of being a man.

This is codependence disguised as D/s.

What Integrated Dominance Looks Like

You have a masculine center that exists independent of her. Male friendships, mentors, brotherhood, practices that connect you to your own masculine energy. When you're grounded in this, your Dominance becomes an expression of who you are rather than a performance for her approval.

She can feel the difference.

You learn from men who are actually living this, not from female fantasies about what Dominance should look like. This gives you permission to bring your authentic masculine desire rather than choreographing what you think she wants.

The authenticity is what creates real polarity.

You bring masculine energy that challenges and leads her rather than managing her comfort. When you're connected to healthy masculine community, you remember that your job isn't to be safe and comfortable. It's to be real and powerful.

This serves her growth more than caretaking ever could.

Stop Performing and Start Being Direct

Nice Guys manipulate through indirect communication and behavior. They hint, hope, imply, and expect others to read their minds.

Direct requests feel dangerous: "If I ask directly and she says no, then what?"

But indirect manipulation is actually more disrespectful than direct honesty. Letting people say no is part of treating them as autonomous adults.

Directness builds respect even when the answer is no. Manipulation destroys trust.

How This Poisons Dominance

You choreograph elaborate Dominant scenarios hoping they lead to sex, submission, or connection rather than directly stating your desire. This is manipulation dressed up as leadership.

She can feel the hidden agenda, which prevents real surrender. You're not leading clearly. You're hoping she'll intuit what you actually want.

Commands become indirect hints about what you need rather than direct expressions of what you want. "Go put on something sexy" when what you mean is "I want to have sex with you tonight." "I think you should handle the household management" when what you mean is "I need you to take that responsibility so I can focus on other things."

The indirectness makes everything murky.

You avoid bringing desires that might get a no because rejection feels devastating. This means you only bring "safe" Dominance that you're pretty sure she'll agree to, which keeps the dynamic shallow and prevents real growth.

She never gets to actually choose surrender because you've already filtered out anything she might resist.

What Integrated Dominance Looks Like

You state your desires directly and let her respond however she responds. "I want to have sex with you tonight" not elaborate seduction hoping for sex. "I've decided we're doing X" not hints and tests to see if she'll comply.

The clarity itself is a gift because she knows exactly where you stand and what you want.

You can tolerate her no without collapsing, which paradoxically makes your yes more valuable. When she knows you can handle her resistance, her submission becomes meaningful rather than obligatory. She's choosing you, not managing you.

This is the foundation of real power exchange.

You bring desires even when they might trigger her defensive response (controlled detonation). You don't avoid conflict or hard conversations to keep things comfortable. You lead through the discomfort because growth happens at the edge, not in the safe zone.

Your willingness to be direct even when it's uncomfortable is what makes you trustworthy to follow.

The Path Forward: Integration, Not Destruction

Here's what most men get wrong about "No More Mr. Nice Guy": they think they need to kill the Nice Guy and become an asshole.

That's just another performance. Another way to seek approval, just different approval: "Am I alpha enough now?"

It creates an inner war where one part of you is trying to destroy another part. The Nice Guy goes underground and runs covert operations. You end up performing "not Nice Guy," which is exhausting.

The Nice Guy feels weak because he's been in hiding, performing, seeking approval. We want to kill him because we're ashamed of his neediness and fear.

But he's weak because he's been disowned, not because he IS weakness.

The Nice Guy has heart. He cares about his woman's experience and wellbeing. He wants to be a good man, a good partner. He's willing to work on himself (that's why he read the book in the first place). The desire to please comes from love. It's just twisted by shame and fear.

His empathy and emotional awareness are gifts, not weaknesses.

The path isn't destruction. It's integration.

You keep the heart and sensitivity while dropping the covert contracts. You keep the attunement and care while dropping the approval-seeking. You stop making covert contracts and start expressing desires directly. You use your sensitivity consciously rather than letting it use you unconsciously.

Your attunement becomes a Dominant superpower when it's not entangled with seeking approval.

The goal isn't to stop caring. It's to care from overflow rather than depletion.

A Note for the Women

The most powerful thing for me in integrating these lessons wasn't just understanding them intellectually. It was when Dawn stopped tolerating my Nice Guy patterns.

When she stopped tolerating my neediness, my need for validation. When she called me out on it. When she told me that making her responsible for making me feel good wasn't her job. When she showed me I needed to stand up for myself in my own life.

When she spoke up for herself. When she used her voice. When the ways I was showing up were making her uncomfortable.

It allowed me, when I was willing to be challenged, to look inward at myself and turn these from lessons I knew in my head into ways I actually lived differently.

So women: don't be afraid to use your voice. Don't be afraid to speak up. Don't be afraid to ruin the moment or blow up what might feel like the whole relationship.

You have to. If you don't, you're both going to stay stuck in the same patterns where you're meeting in the middle but only interacting from places of avoidance.

Take the Next Step

If you're ready to move from performing Dominance to actually being a Dominant man, I created Becoming a Dominant Man specifically for this work.

It's a 12-step framework that takes you from Nice Guy patterns to integrated Dominance. You get lifetime access to our weekly men's calls every Wednesday morning where you'll be surrounded by dozens of other men working to integrate this same way of living into their lives.

You need male community. You need other men who are actually living this, not performing it. You need mirror, challenge, and permission to be fully yourself.

Listen to the full episode here or watch on YouTube.

And if you haven't read "No More Mr. Nice Guy" yet, go read it. Then read it again. This time, read it through the lens of what it means to be a Dominant man, not just what it means to stop being nice.

The relationship you want is on the other side of your integration.