Stop Feeling Guilty: It’s Okay for the Nice Ones to Finish Last

When I had my heart crushed into a million pieces, my ego took a major crumbling too.

Honestly, I just couldn’t understand or come to terms with why he wouldn’t want to live happily ever after with me.

I treated him better than I did my prized possessions. I supported him perpetually through chaotic and stressful days at his high-intensity job. I walked across the city in a damn snowstorm just to see him on more than one occasion. And I loved the hell out of him. I would have done anything for him at the time in my life; my love was both as passionate as a scandalous fiery love affair, and as unconditional as a mother would love her son.

And he knew it.

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I was so good for him, I remember thinking, especially with the plastic, shallow women with questionable intentions that seemed to be lurking in the shadows with their claws out. I would be selfless to him and love him so much more than that, I thought.

Here’s the thing: for one reason or another, he just wasn’t into me anymore at the time. It’s really that simple. It didn’t matter that I treated him well, that I didn’t take advantage of him the way others had in the past, or that his parents liked me. It didn’t matter that I sent a poem I’d stayed up half the night to write, or a tear-stained card with every blank piece of real estate filled with tiny handwriting proclaiming that I would wait for him and that I would do anything for this man.

It was actually pretty pathetic, now that I think about it.

Either way, I was the “nice” one in this situation (I’m not always). And, though we ended up reuniting years later, it didn’t work out for me at the time.

Anyway, fast-forward to this past holiday season. Naturally, I got a little reflective of the year a few weeks back. I thought about the good, the bad, and the ugly that characterized my personal life and that of a few of my girlfriends in 2015. In what some would call “progress,” 2015 seemed to be the year of “Mr. Nice Guy.” This is opposed to “Mr. Impossible-to-Tame-Bad-Boy,” “Mr. Grass-is-Always-Greener,” or Mr. “Catch-Me-if-You-Can.”

No, with 2015, came a handful of super nice guys; gentlemen by nature, if you will.

You know, the type who always begin a text message with “Hey Beautiful,” who ask how your day was and actually give a shit. The type who send you flowers and open car doors; the family man, and the type who – even after a couple of dates – puts your needs and wants before his. The type of respectable man who wears his un-jaded heart on his perfectly clean sleeve.

“A nice guy!” your girlfriends and female family members typically exclaim when you tell them about this type. “Finally! This is exactly what you need.” They’ll tell you he sounds amazing and lean down to smell the fresh flowers he bought you. They’ll tell you not to screw it up, that this one’s a winner. They’ll remind you that this is what you’ve always wanted, for someone to treat you like the queen you are. They’ll tell you how great of a dad he will make.

And it’s usually all true: you, your mom, and your best friend can all agree that he’s a gem.

Of course, I’ve seen the reverse happen with some of my guy friends when they finally meet the “nice normal type” who would – on very pretty stationary paper – make a great wife.

The problem is, however, being “nice,” “supportive,” or “safe” doesn’t mean someone else is going to fall in love with you on those merits alone.

It doesn’t matter how nice of a person someone is, or how well he or she treat you. If there’s no connection or chemistry, there’s no connection or chemistry – and there’s no forcing that. “Just because he’s super nice, I am supposed to automatically feel a connection with the guy?” I asked my mom at one point during the year, when I told her I needed to end a short-lived relationship with one of the nice guys (to which she replied, “I just don’t want you to look back later with regrets,” as though I’d be lamenting the decision decades from now in some lonely nursing home).

But seriously, am I’m supposed to bust down my walls and blissfully leap into someone’s arms, then skip down the aisle for him just because he’s nice? Great, he’s a decent human; that’s just one side of him. Locking someone down just because they’re “nice” is the same thing, in my opinion, as dating someone just because they’re rich or super attractive. In both cases, you’ll find yourself with that sick, impossible-to-ignore feeling in the bottom of your gut that you don’t have that organic connection with the other person, no matter how hard you try to force it.

Just because he or she is nice doesn’t mean they’ll stimulate you intellectually, emotionally, or physically. It doesn’t mean they’ll offer that healthy sense of challenge that’s so essential in modern day dating. It doesn’t mean they’ll share the same tastes or twisted sense of humour as you.

And if they don’t, then you’re only wasting both of your time in a relationship.

The nice guy or girl is undoubtedly refreshing, and is the ultimate end goal for many of us, as long as all the other ingredients are there. Otherwise, letting them go may be the only way the both of you can finish first in your romantic future.

And there’s nothing wrong with that (trust me, it worked for me).

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