If you show a cocaine addict - who’s been clean for 20 years - a picture of white powder, the pleasure centres in his brain will explode into activity. Even after decades, his brain is still like, “Wooooo fuck yeah! Cocaine is awesome! I want some right now!!!”

During a conflict with my wife the other day, I noticed a little pattern that I've relapsed into, demonstrating this effect in my own Nice Guy way.

What happens is I get into some sort of confrontation at a very minor level, where I suggest an idea or put out something I want, and the other person resists.

And because this is about a topic I care very little about, and I'm really kind of busy and tired at the moment, I don't keep battling. I just go “Ah fuck it, I don't care enough anyway, you win”.

Now any one of these incidents observed at all by themselves would look like nothing. You’d think, “Fair enough, yeah pick your battles. There's no point in dealing with it. You don't even care that much about it.”

But what I failed to notice, what I overlooked, was there's been quite a few of them lately, and when you look at them all together it looks pretty big.

This is how Nice Guy Syndrome works. It takes a mile one inch at a time.

What I failed to notice was the accumulation of all these “small” instances of giving up the fight is a broader slip into people pleasing.

Us Nice Guys are never totally cured. We must treat this syndrome the same way a cocaine addict treats white powder: we’re always at risk.

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