Nice guys finish last," or so the age-old cliché tells us. As a woman, I am apt to quickly dismiss that statement with a, "Please, I always date nice guys." But if I were to honestly examine my encounters with the opposite sex, I would have to surrender to the truth of that statement.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do good girls fall for bad guys?
As a female, I would like nothing more than to blame the guys. The good guys are just too few and too far between. Besides, the good girls far outnumber the good guys. But after a brief lunch with three of my best guy friends at Duke--who I would, by the way, consider incredibly nice guys--I realized that just can't be the case.
The 10 minutes I spent in the Blue Express with these guys may have raised more questions in my mind than the biology lecture that followed (that's an impressively large number). The conversation started simply enough, when one of them jokingly asked if I had any ideas for my Thursday column and suggested 750 words explaining why girls should date him. Though this was a tempting offer, I instead rattled off the ideas that had been streaming through my head during the past two weeks.
Apparently my mistake was commenting that I didn't really like any of these ideas enough to write about them. That was their cue to pull out their figurative soap boxes and read me the riot act. They asked a time-old question, but somehow it hit home this day. "Why is it that it would take an ad in the paper to find a girl who wants to date a good guy?" asked one. "Don't girls realize that the guys that they nonchalantly hook up with are just using them?" another chimed in.
Since this conversation, I have done some thinking, and I have three answers for those of you good guys out there who are asking the same questions.
(1) Girls want adventure. Bad boys offer a risk and spontaneity that most of the nice guys out there don't quite grasp. This is why most of the nice guys I know end up as nothing more than friends. Girls need the dichotomy of risking it all on a date with a guy while still knowing that in the end he will be there to save her.
(2) Girls want to be wanted. As John and Stasi Eldredge claim in their New York Times Bestseller Captivating, "When we are young, we want to be precious to someone-especially Daddy. As we grow older, the desire matures into a longing to be pursued, desired, wanted as a woman." Because bad guys tend to be risk takers, they also tend to put themselves out there. The good guys of the world invest their hearts in a girl when they fall for her, and thus have much more to lose if their pursuit ends in rejection. The bad boy changes girls more than most college students change their sheets. Pursuing a girl is just part of the fun, and without an invested emotion, the bad boy can risk rejection without a second thought.
(3) Girls want an emotional connection. At first glance, this seems like something the good guy would be able to easily supply. The problem is that the bad boys convince us (or we convince ourselves) that hooking up will bring this. Time and time again we realize that this isn't true, yet we consistently fall back on it. This most likely stems from our desire to be desired. We tell ourselves that it is better to be wanted for one night than not wanted at all.
But beyond all of these reasons, I believe that it is our preconceptions of nice guys that prevent us from dating them. Sure, some of the nice guys out there are nerdy. Sure, some of them are unattractive. And sure, some of them are meant to be nothing more than friends. The problem with stereotypes, though, is that they are seldom completely true. There are nice guys out there who are daring, pursuing and willing to establish meaningful connections. Perhaps we female Dukies should reconsider our words the next time we share Diet Cokes and girl talk as we explain, "He was so nice, but I just don't think there's anything there."
Sarah Hostetter is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every other Thursday.
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