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 them to hear.  

This is a difficult issue for many of us. Because we can get things from others if we tell them what they want to hear.  We can get a lot of validation and gratification at very little immediate cost if we withhold our true position on issues that are big and small.  The problem with this is that for your partner to desire you, to really want to create intimacy and have the kind of desire for you that we all really want, we have to be willing to disappoint them and suffer rejection from them.  

What do I mean?  If we just go along with our partner on everything they ever want and we never disagree with them and we never tell them what we really want, especially if the thing we want is directly contrary to the thing they want, they will not trust us and they will likely get sick of us.  Have you ever had a friend who was so hard up for friendship that they never had an idea of their own, they just wanted to follow you around and do whatever you wanted to do?  Are you that friend?  It’s fun for a while because that person is easy to get along with, but eventually, you get tired of them and they become a bother because they don’t bring anything to the relationship.  They are like water in a cup, they just take whatever shape you are and that doesn’t push you or contribute.  It’s boring.  

I’m sure you’ve also had friends who push you and make you think and help you grow. But sometimes they believe differently than you do, and you tolerate that because they contribute to your life in meaningful ways.  

It’s easier to do that with your friends than it is to do it with your spouse.  

But being able to disappoint your spouse, in meaningful ways and for well-considered beliefs is more important than you might think.  

You have heard me talk about this before on the podcast, but I don’t like having pets very much.  I tolerate it, but if it were up to me we wouldn’t have pets.  Darcy likes them and she got them.  She was willing to disappoint me because she has a sincerely held desire to have cats.  

Now there are limits and you have to feel these out and work through them.  It isn’t one of those things where you go and create disappointments because you stop being overly nice and you decide to become mean or intransigent and unwilling to compromise.  It is a process of feeling your way through it.  Being solid in the person you are, while being willing to choose closeness with your partner. 

One thing that I did that changed the dynamic of our sexual relationship was I stopped saying yes to duty sex or servicing sex.  That was something that was really difficult and disappointing for both Darcy and me.  

You might think that it wouldn’t be difficult for Darcy but it really was.  One reason that it was difficult was that she could no longer utilize sex as a way to control me.  That’s right, I said, Darcy would sometimes use sex to get me to do things that she wanted done.  So, when I would say no to sex meant to service or manage me, even when it was sincerely offered, it was disappointing for Darcy because it took a tool out of her toolbox.  It also required her to reflect more earnestly on how and why she wanted to engage intimately and sexually.  

For my part, it was disappointing because I realized that she didn’t really want me, she only wanted to control me and help me control myself.  But, if you have a pornography struggle, you know that your partner can’t control you.  And, significantly, she can’t help you control yourself.  

Being willing to disappoint your partner by being open about what you really want is a muscle that, if exercised regularly, will become one of your most powerful allies in creating real intimacy and desire in your partner.  

When I stopped saying yes to sex from a servicing frame, which always felt wrong, I started to show and say what I really wanted.  I started to become willing to wait for Darcy’s desire to come up and for her to choose me, not just service me.  

There were disappointed moments for both of us on that journey.  In the beginning, Darcy didn't believe me when I would say, “If you're not into it, I’d rather do it another time.”

In the years since I started doing that, Darcy’s desire for me has become a driver of our intimacy in ways that make me so happy.   

To be clear, this is different than the immature position that we often see in pop culture and movies where playing hard to get will eventually reel your partner in until they are doing everything you want.  That is just the Mean Guy version of the same manipulative tactics.   Getting your partner to do what you want by ignoring them, pushing them away, and making them work for your attention is just as manipulative as covert contracts.  In both cases, your partner will tire of the games and want to distance themselves from you eventually. 

The second way that we can begin eliminating covert contracts also has to do with making yourself more desirable, but by letting go of the outcomes. 

Letting go of the outcomes means choosing closeness with your spouse and not needing them to respond in a certain or specific way.  

The interesting thing about this is that you might end up doing the same things, like washing the dishes, cleaning the house, and putting the kids to bed.  All things that might have been done previously to lift burdens from our partner’s life in an effort to obligate a specific response in the bedroom.  Now, however, you do them without seeking that specific response or expecting to be rewarded for your efforts.  You do them because you are a partner with your spouse, you want them done, or you have committed to doing them.  

Being able to let go of the outcomes is about changing the meaning behind your actions, possibly more than it may be about changing your specific actions.  

What you do is important.  Why you do it is key.  

Back and foot rubs are a good example of this in my life.  If I wanted sex, I would make sure that I gave Darcy foot rubs in the morning and back rubs in the evening.  It was essential to our sex life and it was kind of a currency. It meant that if I did enough foot or back rubs that I would get sex. So, I would, resentfully many times, massage her working up enough credit to get what I wanted.  

While I still rub Darcy’s feet and back, I do it less often and only when I want to because I want to. The why of my actions has stopped being about getting rewarded and is now, in this area at least, only about my desire to give to her. 

In coming at it from a place where I’m not working toward a specific outcome, I place myself in a position to be desired for who I am, not what I do for others.  My actions come from a place of self-validated choice to choose my partner rather than seeking for her to validate me and service my wants. 

It’s subtle and, just like in working through covert contracts from a position of being more desirable, we’ll need to work through it and feel our way.  

A good question to ask yourself is, “What am I trying to get out of doing this?” If the answer is anything other than the satisfaction of doing it because I want to or I choose to, then you might want to take a step back, reevaluate, and maybe choose not to do it, or choose to do it but know that you’ll need to work through the emotions and difficulty of eliminating any expectation from your spouse to validate you for doing it.