Fun with #OkCupid: A dude in the OKC corral (Being Nice versus Being Good)
<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Kenny. We e-met through OKC and although we've never gone out on a date, he was inspired by my documentation of my online search for love, that he wanted to come on board and provide male insight into OKC. So here you go ... and now we're here ... HIT IT KENNY!!</editorsnote>
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @casetines
Being Nice vs Being Good
I love that song that goes, “What a man, what a man, what a man, what a mighty nice man. HE’S A MIGHTY MIGHTY NICE MAN!”
You know the one I’m talking about? How about that Tom Cruise movie, “A Few Nice Men”? That was a good one. Or the musical, “You’re a Nice Man, Charlie Brown”, you know that one? No?! What do you mean? All classics!
Ooohhhhhh… that’s right. My bad.
I’ve recently been thinking a lot about the dating implications that come with confusing “good” and “nice.” A girl that loves a guy will say that “he’s a good man” but a girl that wants to break up with a guy will say “you’re a really nice guy.” The two words seem to imply similar characteristics, but when it comes down to it, they are really quite different.
A nice man will always tell you that you look beautiful.
A good man will tell you the truth.
A nice man will always get the door for you.
A good man will tell you that you fought for equality.
A nice man will always say “Yes”
A good man will want to make the right decision.
If you break up with a nice man, or tell him you’re uninterested, he’ll nod his head and say “Okay, okay, I understand. Thank you so much for the opportunity!”
A good man will tell you how he really feels.
Not all of these qualities are mutually exclusive. You can have the qualities of a good man and a nice man. (I guess that’s what people call “a keeper”) but I feel that most people will fall into either being good or being nice or just straight-up being a dick.
Reflections on my past reveal that I’ve got the dreaded “nice guy” label.
I hate hurting people’s feelings, perhaps a trait that was developed after years of having my own feelings hurt. I want people to like me, so I make the extra effort to be nice to them and treat them with respect. I want to get along with everyone and I fear the idea of people thinking bad things about me. For all of these reasons, I am a nice person. However, being nice is barely enough to get a girl interested, if not being a total turnoff.
Women may tell you that they like it when a guy is nice, but everything in my experience tells me that being nice is a sign of weakness to people. I have to ask myself the same question that the poet Christina Aguilera once posed; “What a girl wants”? Okay, maybe I turned into a question, but still I wish to find the answer to what it is that a girl wants.
Of course, I do not know the answer to this. Perhaps nobody has an answer, because researchers (actual scientists!) have spent years trying to find the answer to that. Sure, there are countless theories and every girl will tell you what they look for in a man, but if it was as simple as giving a list and saying “Be this,” then men would certainly know what women want and women would not hesitate to give the list out.
What’s more important is finding the innate desires. Tapping into the psyche and figuring out exactly what subconscious desires women have when looking for a man.
I’m going to spitball some.
Confidence
If we were playing the Fued, this would be the number one answer and Steve Harvey would tell you to go stand with your family.
Women want a man with confidence because if you don’t believe in yourself, then why should anybody else? No girl wants to be with a guy that thinks he doesn’t deserve to be with that girl. If you constantly exude the feeling of “you’re better than me” then eventually the other person will say “You’re right.”
Confidence isn’t about believing that your shit is an odorless mass of waste, it’s about believing in yourself as a valuable person. As the D.E.N.N.I.S. system tells us, you have to Demonstrate Value.
You’re not exactly a car salesman of yourself, because a salesman wants to make a sale. You don’t give a shit if the person buys or not, because you know that your product is so good that you’ll have a bidding war on your hands. Nice guys aren’t associated with confidence because nice guys actually feel like they’re being phony about themselves, and not honest.
Women want confidence, and of this there is no doubt.
Safety, Security, Bravenessity
If you’ve ever tapped a girl on the shoulder at a bar and had her immediately flip you over and put you in a half nelson, then you know that girl’s aren’t weak. The further that Americans separate from “traditional values” in this current era of dating and marriage, the more common it is for women and men to be independent.
Women can often fend for themselves. Men have learned to clean up after themselves. We aren’t really living in the same age that humans lived in for so long and we’ve learned to take care of ourselves.
Still, that doesn’t mean that it’s not nice to feel like you’ve got someone that’s going to punch a guy in the throat if he calls you the C-word.
I believe that women still want a guy that’s going to be a knight in shining armor, and they didn’t give nice guys armor. They told them to go clean up the pig shit because they knew that the nice guy would say yes.
Honesty
You’d be surprised how far honesty goes, even if you’re being honest about something that’s bad.
Personally, I put honesty above all else when in any kind of a relationship whether it’s business, personal, or romantic. You might have something you want to tell me, and that doesn’t mean that I want you to constantly tell me bad news (that’s where being a “good person” comes in) but when you lie to me you’ve broken the one bond that I that I thought I could always count on.
I think people sense that there’s something fishy about a person that’s too nice. It always seemed like there was something untrustworthy about Martha Stewart. A good person should tell you the truth, whereas a nice person will tell you want you want to hear.
Just Trying
For most of my life I never had much confidence in myself, but when I lost 150 pounds I was an entirely new man and I found out a horrible truth in life: I should have been trying this whole time.
I would not approach a girl and just start talking to her when I was overweight. “What could she see in me?” was the sad monologue that went on in my head. But when I lost the weight and then hit the dating scene after my first long relationship, I found out that just saying “Hi” to a girl went an incredibly long way.
The thing is, I’ve always been an outgoing person. When I was a sophomore in high school, I ran for class vice president and did a rap song in front of the entire school for my “vote for me” speech and I won in a landslide because people respond positively to that kind of confidence and complete lack of embarrassment.
I sung End of the Road in front of my entire company and won an iPad, and I am a terrible singer! But all I knew was that I was going to have fun up there and people loved it.
When I have applied that same quality to meeting people (just people in general, not even necessarily girls) you’ll see an amazing response and the only foolishness you’ll feel is “Why didn’t I do this earlier?” When I was fat, I thought that my looks would hold me back, but then when I got the confidence to “Just Try” I found that girls far more attractive than me were still responding positively to my efforts simply because I put in any effort at all.
I honestly don’t know if this has anything to do with being nice or being good, but often the nice guy in me would say “Oh, let her be by herself or have a good time with her friends” and not want to be a bother. The reality is that everyone wants to feel wanted, desired, or just feel like other people know they exist.
And if you’re not going to try, at least try to try.
I’ve spent my whole life looking for answers about dating (when I was born, I asked the doctor what girls look for in a baby) and I’m still looking for more answers today. But with each passing experience, I’ve gained more and more knowledge, and I’ve learned just as much from failures (if not more) as I have successes.
One of my failures perhaps is that I haven’t demonstrated to women that I am a good man, as well as being a nice man. I don’t think I’ll ever not be nice. That doesn’t mean that I can’t be: Confident, Brave, or Honest, because I know that I already am all of those things. I just have to find a way to demonstrate my value to people of the opposite sex.
As long as I continue trying, then eventually I’ll find that girl that knows she wants a mighty, mighty nice man… who is also good.
#thatisall
and don't forget to check out his blog!! <----- good shit!