The question you're asking, then, isn't "Why don't girls like nice guys?" but rather "Why do people stay in shitty abusive/hateful/car-crash relationships?"

People often stay in situations they THINK they deserve,though.

And people (myself included) tend to have recurring patterns over and over and over, in an almost supernatural panoply of similar relationships until, I believe, we recognize that WE are the recurring element, and in some way create or call this pattern to us.

Personally, I find getting square with the original, archetypal moment that set the pattern to be wonderfully useful in breaking such cycles.

People, in general, are crazy. This is probably her way.

Can it not also be asked: Why do guys not like nice women? I presume that there are many average but good personality women who complain because, to their mind,  guys see only the drop dead gorgeous Cynthia(or whatever the bombshells name is) as potential date partner and leave average Jane(etc) out in the cold despite the fact that Cynthia is a manipulative bitch.

Why don't we hear that many women complaining, on forums such as this, about how they are nice and guys just want the hot bitches? Is it just the places I frequent?

I used to be a "Nice Guy".

It sucked.

Now I'm myself. I don't need to be a nice, neat, insecure little syncophant who seeks the approval of all women everywhere. I realized the reason that I wasn't in a realtionship was because I didn't meet an new people, and that any woman who bemoaned the fact that "guys weren't interested in her" or "he's a jerk, but I keep going back to him," wasn't clever enough to know what they really wanted in a realtionship. THey may eventually learn, but until such time as they do, they're not going to be dating me, so why should I care?

I agree with Revolution here. There's 6 billion people in this world. There's at least 3 billion who swing your way. Quit pining over someone who hasn't got a clue and find someone else. There are pleanty of people out there WITHOUT personailty problems. Keep bitching and you become the one with the personality problem, and beleive me, that ain't attractive.

Most women like guys who treat them right, but you have to be independently confident. You also can't let her have her way all the time. You have to give her challenges without being too much of an ass or she'll lose interest. Even if you're head-over-heels about a girl, you need to be careful about how you show it if you want her to feel the same.

Moved to Sex and stickied.  All further Nice Guy^TM threads and conversations will be deposited here.  This will stay at the top of the forum to let Nice Guys^TM have a place to whine about How Unfair The World Is.

Personally Nice Guys^TM get under my skin.  The only type of guy you ever hear talking about being nice to girls are these Nice Guy^TM, Gallihad-on-a-white-horse, I-will-save-you, emotastic wastes of space.  You don't talk about being nice to a girl.  You certainly don't whine about it on the internet.  You just are nice to a girl.  You treat her with respect and like a human.  If she says something stupid, you tell her she's said something stupid.  If she tells a bad joke, you mock her.  If she says something you disagree with, you argue with her.  You don't bend to her every whim and bring her flowers and chocolates and all that other crap.  Also, as with others, this is coming from the mouth (well, fingers) of a mostly-reformed Nice Guy^TM.

That being said, I don't think the initial situation described in this thread is necessarily an issue with Nice Guys.  It's more of an issue of "Why do women stay in abusive relationships?" as mentioned earlier.  I think the Nice Guy^TM thread was overdue, though and should probably have been anticipated.  It's here now.  Have at it!

*Puts out black clothes, clove cigarettes, poetry books and puts on some stereotypical emo music*

Edit to Add:  To an outsider I just realized this might look like a lot of rant/venom coming out of nowhere over this topic.  Thing is, we've had this topic before.  Not here, but at the previous board most of us came from.  On that forum it seemed that at least once a month or so someone would come up with this topic and we'd all rehash the same arguments over and over.  After a while the thread was stickied at the top of the Sex (SLI - sex, love, intimacy) forum.  We hadn't done that again here because up until recently we didn't have any new members.  Goodness knows the old memebers have talked this subject to death.

It's not that we (as a community) think Nice Guys^TM are unhelpable or lesser people, we just get a bit worn out on the subject I imagine.  We have all the backstory on it.  New people don't and as such we might not come across in the best light.  I think this is probably a thread that needs to stay around, just realize where the advice from older members is coming from.  We've been talking about this stuff for years.

I'll go even further than Lonecoon. There are just under 300 million people in the US. Some large percentage of those people are members of the sex or sexes that you might be interested, and some large percentage of those prefer your sex, or at least enjoy socializing with your sex. The likelyhood is that somewhere in that morass of human flesh is someone who would be willing to spend the rest of their life with you, let alone rub fun bits together with you.

If you haven't found someone who's willing to do that, it doesn't make you a nice person. It means that you haven't found someone who's interested in doing that with you. If that's the case, change your venue. Or change you.

Women like who they like. If you haven't met one who likes you in the way that you would like them to, then you need to either find a woman who likes you the way you are, or you need to change yourself in a way that makes you more attractive to a woman that you are in turn interested in.

As for your friend,from what you describe, it sounds like she's bought into a collection of the things that women are taught by our society, for will or nill. She's decided that she's got to "stand by her man" or that it's better to be with someone who abuses her than to be alone, or that he's not really abusing her, he's just correcting her errant behavior. And that's not your problem. At least not directly. There is nothing that you can do to get her to change. She has to be the one to come to grips with all of that, and decide that she wants to change. You can't do it for her, though you can support her while she does come to grips with that. But you can't make that decision for her.

But don't generalize her issues into "women don't like nice guys".

How do you boost a friend's self confidence and make her feel better about herself, then? Yeah, I know it probably takes time.
Someone here asked me why I care. Well, that's pretty obvious isn't it? Because she's a friend. And no, I'm not interested in her. I'm not single at the moment, either.
I'm new here so I had no idea how many times you guys have discussed this before. So I was a bit overwhelmed with the "oh, no, we're so sick of it" response. I just asked because I genuinly care. Perhaps someone can provide me with a list of topics that had been discussed many times?