Well, let's take a couple different things as examples. There's the Disney Beast. Completely selfish and spoiled, needs a girl to break the curse, and basically kidnaps a girl to try and un-curse himself. Of course he's completely awkward to try and make him likable, but ultimately he's kinda on the creepy side, if you think about it a while.

Other example, Tenchi from the old OVA series. He's kind of a brat but good at heart, but he doesn't have any real designs he's trying to fill out... he just steps up to protect the girls even though they give him headaches sometimes.

Then there's some others, I think. I've heard of one where the guy is considered a demon, so girls are sent to his private island as sacrifices of sorts. They build a city or something and live lives... probably should read it someday. Anyway, he's on the not-selfish side, since he's not the one who forced the girls into anything.

Then another where a guy was obsessed with ideal body parts, and was crazy protective of anyone with even one ideal part. He's more on the selfish side since he's basically hording the girls for his own libido, I guess.

I think I've heard of one where a guy needed to marry someone for some reason, and there was a contest for it... I can't tell you much about it, so can't say which side it fits on.

tl;dr: The more stake the guy has into getting the girl other than the girl themselves, the less people are going to admire his efforts.