Sometimes I feel like the world is a crazy, mixed up, backwards place. The ways things work have changed over the course of history. Instead of honest, brave men being elected President, we instead have smooth-talking, mendacious liars who wouldn’t understand the concept of a promise if it hit them repeatedly in the face running our country. Even in just the 25 years I’ve been alive, things have changed. As a child, I knew for a fact that girls liked boys who were nice to them and avoided the ones who were mean. It’s just the way it was. Today, however, the opposite seems to be true, which is what I’d like to talk about today.
There’s a very old saying that nice guys finish last. I don’t think I fully understood that saying until I was well into my dating career. I have my own version of that saying that may seem a bit facetious, but is more or less true. If dating is a race, then I believe that nice guys don’t finish last. Instead, nice guys get their kneecaps broken in the locker room by the head cheerleader before the race even starts. Colorful, no? I may have fully believed that saying when I came up with it, but I’m not sure how much I do now, but it’s still funny to say, if only to get people to question your sanity.
Several months ago my singles ward had a guest speaker come and talk to us about dating. (I think the Bishopric was trying to tell us something.) She handed out a list of the 20 things men don’t know about women and the 20 things women don’t know about men. Number 3 on the former list was “Women are turned off by men who are too nice.” The speaker elaborated on this by saying that men who are too nice are seen as weak, which is unattractive to women. Now, I’m sure that this statement isn’t true for every woman out there, but I’m also sure that the speaker wouldn’t have included it on the list without some sort of facts to back it up.
If you ask anyone who knows me decently well, they’ll tell you that I’m too nice. I’ve even had people tell me that me being too nice is going to be my ultimate downfall and will probably kill me eventually. I asked them how they figured I would die from it and they pointed out the fact that I care more about everybody else and their well being than I do for myself. I couldn’t argue with them, so I seceded from the argument.
So, what does a guy like me do to change something like that? I really don’t have it in me to be a mean person. I think I missed that firmware update. So what do I do? I’m sure there must be a way for me to continue being nice without seeming like a doormat to everybody and their dog. I’d like to be able to find a girl that is going to appreciate the fact that I’m a nice guy who actually cares about her feelings, her happiness and her well being. After reading that last sentence, I had to laugh, mostly at the world. Why would it be such a turn off to a girl to date a guy who cared about her that much? Has the world changed so much that kindness and affection are scoffed at while discourtesy and disrespect are lauded as admirable traits in a companion? Again, sometimes I feel like the world is a crazy, mixed up, backwards place.
What does everybody else think though? Girls; am I way off base in thinking that there’s no room left in the world for a genuinely nice guy? Have any of you dated a guy that was ‘too nice’? What exactly did they do to earn the label of ‘too nice’ and why was that a turn off? Guys; have you had any of the same struggles in dating? If you’ve been labeled as ‘too nice’, do you see yourself changing your habits any time soon? Let me know in the comments.
I feel like I’ve targeted girls too much in this post, so my next one will be aimed more at the male population.
