"If I hide my flaws and change my self to be what others want me to be, then I will get my needs met, be happy, and live a problem free life"
This belief comes out of childhood abandonment experiences. To someone who did not experience frequent forms of abandonment as a child and does not carry this type of belief, this line of thinking might seem illogical. However, if we look at it in terms of the psychological principles of childhood development, it starts to make a lot more sense.
A child's greatest fear is abandonment. Think about it - you can't really survive on your own if you're five or six years old. To be abandoned is pretty much the same as being left to die. That fear is also not limited to fear of physical abandonment, it also includes emotional abandonment and feeling like your feelings are unimportant or even undesirable. Since most children are aware of the fact that they're mostly helpless on their own, they rationalize any abandonment experience they have as being caused by their behavior. It's their fault. When they get yelled at, they believe that they're wrong because to say otherwise is to risk having their greatest fear (abandonment) come true.
As a result, any kind of behavior that carries the risk of abandonment are usually assigned the value judgment of "bad" by the child. Some children are abused when they speak up to authority, or if they do don't do well in school, or if they express their needs like wanting to talk about their day. Whatever those behaviors are, when those behaviors are shunned by people close to them over and over - especially their parents - they become viewed as flaws. At first, maybe one specific behavior is viewed as a flaw. But when a pattern emerges, an entire category of behaviors becomes viewed as flaws. For example, "asking for new toys is bad" evolves into "asking for things I like is bad" if similar expressions of need are met with rebuke. The child then believes that these flaws must be hidden or eliminated if they want to survive. That belief acts as an effective survival mechanism for young, helpless children. By believing that they're the ones who are wrong and need fixing, they're able to stay out of trouble with their parents and other adults who have tremendous power over them.
This belief also doesn't just magically disappear after puberty. For most men, it becomes a core, underlying, and subconscious belief that drives all of their behaviors as adult. The difference is that as an adult, it's no longer a survival mechanism. If anything, it's the opposite. A man that continues to operate under the belief system of a small, helpless and abandoned child still experiences the power differential of a child and his parent with most people he interacts with. For example, the man might not get what he ordered at a restaurant and rather than speaking up and calling over the waiter to have his order corrected, he decides to let it go because the idea of telling the waiter that he got his order wrong made him scared and anxious. In this scenario, even though the waiter actually has very little power over his survival, he fears the confrontation to the same degree as he would fear confrontation with an abusive mother or father.
There are two common outcomes due to this behavior, driven by a belief that took seed from a very young age:
1. The man does not get his needs met.
2. The man experiences helplessness and deep resentment.
In the scenario above, the man at the restaurant will sit there unsatisfied, eating something he did not order. He may also be muttering curses under his breath and vowing never to eat at the restaurant again, even though he's may no effort to speak to the staff about the mistake.
So does that mean that these children and men never express their needs and instead just keep quiet like the man in the restaurant? I mean, wouldn't that always be the case since their primary reaction is to suppress or eliminate these needs? No, of course not. Hiding a need doesn't cause it to disappear - especially if it's a very intense need. It's just hidden from other people.
This creates a dilemma. The strong needs don't disappear, yet the belief prevents the person from expressing it. So in situations where the person operating under this core belief has a very strong, unshakable need and experiences great fear and anxiety at the idea of openly expressing it, he usually takes one of two approaches:
1. He does nothing and keeps quiet and faces the same two outcomes as the man in the restaurant. He does not get what he wants and feels resentment.
2. He expresses their need indirectly.
If he does nothing, he doesn't really cause the world much harm. He's just silently fuming and doing nothing about it. The damage usually comes from the second approach - when rather than asking directly for what he needs from the world, he tries everything but ask directly for what he wants. In most cases, that means lying, cheating, or manipulating.
This is the reason why people in general - especially women - cannot stand "nice guys". Nice guys are fundamentally dishonest. They're not necessarily mean people - they're humans that are very afraid of being open about their thoughts and feelings. As a result, a lot of what they do has strings attached because there's almost always an ulterior motive. As a "nice guy", rather than asking you to share that delicious cheesecake you've got there with me, let me tell you how much I love cake. And maybe I'll also share some of my food with you in hopes that you'll get the hint.
For humans, intimacy cannot coexist with dishonesty. Honesty is essential. This shouldn't be a surprise. So when you learns that a guy is a "nice guy" because on more than one occasion he's tried to manipulate or lie in order to get what he wants from you, you no longer trust him. Not only that, but you will also likely experience repulsion because dishonesty is also a sign of fear. We do not respect cowards. Now if that's true generally speaking no matter what relationship we're talking about, then the manifestation of dishonest, cowardly behavior in very intimate relationships (usually between man and woman) must be the most destructive.
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