For as long as I can remember, I’ve been what one would consider a nice guy. I’ve tried to treat any woman I’ve met with a great deal of respect, as an equal. I’ve never abused my girlfriends. I don’t insult them on a day to day basis. With one exception, I don’t cheat on my significant other. Beyond that lack of detrimental behavior, I’m also known to call on a regular basis, express my feeling and what’s on my mind, and show a great deal of affection. I’m also quite renowned for my prowess in other areas.

But I’ve found that none of that really matters. Women still don’t seem to want a lasting relationship with me. This whole concept baffled me, and to some extent still does. Why is that no matter how much a woman insists she’s looking for a man who will respect her and treat her as an equal she runs away from those very conditions? A friend of mine put forth the idea that people are so used to having something or someone to blame for their problems that when their excuses are taken away they run away. That still makes no sense to me, but I think I got the gist of what he was trying to say. They like being broken. If I were to come in and be a perfect individual, they just wouldn’t be able to handle it. Functional relationship—better find the dysfunction, and quick!

I’m not sure I agree wholeheartedly with what he was saying, though the idea has some merit. But I have learned one thing, reinforced to me tonight by multiple friends and acquaintances…Nice guys finish last.

You see, I was told this evening that I was too nice. I should go out and flirt with other girls, be a bit of an asshole, don’t pay so much attention to the girl I’m interested in. I scoffed. I mean, who in their right mind would choose to play such games? I am interested in this one girl. I don’t want the rest of them. So I am told to ignore her, not call her, make her jealous, all to get her attention? That really makes no sense, unless you come to realize that is just the way women are.

First off, let me say this is not meant to deride women in any way. I adore the female gender, and feel much more comfortable in their company. I think they are just as capable of making intelligent decisions, capable leaders and workers, and are just as swayed towards good and evil as men. However, when I encounter such idiocy as I’ve witnessed tonight and for most of my life, I can’t help but think rationality comes at a great effort to many.

In college, I had several very close female friends. We spent many wonderful days and nights in each others company, and I got to see the world from a decidedly female perspective. One of the things that came out in our many sessions was that I was too nice. They told me that one day we’d end up making a movie about it and we’d call it, "Nice Guys Finish Last." You see, they’d known for a while that no woman really wants a man who will treat her with respect, kindness, or sensitivity. Those qualities are perfect for a friend, and perhaps this is why so many women are drawn to gay men, they having gained a heightened degree of sensitivity by virtue of their sexuality and social status. But women, according to my friends, want a guy who will be the asshole, who will make them get jealous, who will make them work for his attention. In some ways, I can understand the desire to achieve a goal. Most rewards are in fact more thoroughly relished when the effort involved was greater. But I don’t believe relationships should be this way. It should be about finding someone you connect with, with who you share common interests, feelings, or about someone who makes you insanely happy anytime they are near. There shouldn’t be this elaborate game, filled with rules only the lucky few completely understand. I should be able to go up to a girl I’m interested in and have her feelings for me decided on the factors mentioned above, and not by the method in which I approached her or pursued her for months on end.

I read a magazine excerpt from the 50’s, from Good Housekeeping I believe. It was a guide on how to be a good wife. A world where the woman was decidedly inferior in social status to the man. She deferred to him in all cases, and saw to his needs. Yet, strangely enough, many of those couples married so long ago stayed together. In a day and age where divorce and infidelity are common place, those stayed together…why? It could be that they are just so used to each other, that they don’t see the point of ending things. Or it could be that the woman is happy in her place. It’s a scary thought to me. I can’t imagine anyone being happy as a lesser. But still, it happens. So maybe women aren’t happy being equals. Maybe they need to be lessers. And for those who aren’t beaten down, treated as inferiors, or otherwise abused, those others take the role of the dominant individual. Not happy to be equals, still, they run the relationship, make the decisions, control the important aspects of the couples lives. So maybe its not possible for any pair to treat each other as individuals. Does there have to be this binary relationship in which one partner rules with an iron fist over the other? All my life, I’ve chosen to belief this was not the case, taught by the media and my peers that, no, this was not the way it should be, that we could all live as equals.

But circumstance or sociology dictates otherwise. The most attention I ever received was from a girl I rarely called. The most pursued I’ve ever been was when I was chasing after that girl’s friend. My female friends tell me constant stories about how their boyfriend pays them no attention, about how he never puts any effort into making her feel special. Yet they stick with them, they refuse to stop. But I will guarantee you that if a girl was in a relationship with a man for a while and everything was running smoothly, she’d find some reason not to enjoy her life. And it all makes me sick. I may gain a reputation for tilting at windmills, but there is so much about the society we’ve built that is such a huge lie. Sensitivity is a wash. You may feel good about yourself, but you’ll find yourself stepped on and alone more times than you can care to remember. Courteousness…good for letting someone in your lane, but you’ll always find that person reaching their destination before you do. As for me, as I told my friends tonight, its just not worth it. Maybe I’ll be alone. Maybe I’ll never find that that someone who likes how I treat them, but its better than playing their games.

We spend our youth relatively carefree. Most of us that is. Many children go through traumatic experiences which adversely affect us in the future, often in ways that aren’t easily perceivable for years to come. For those of us with the relatively uneventful childhoods, we mature, we learn, we have fun. For the others, I can only hope the scars of the past can truly be healed.

As we become teenagers, we experience the undeniable attraction to the opposite sex. Now days, its quite common to experience the attraction to the same sex, but I’m not touching that topic with a ten foot pole ™. Not yet at least. About the time the average teenager learns to drive, the not-so-wonderful world of dating opens up to them. We get to "go steady" or just run around with whatever guy/girl we happen to find that one special thing in common with.

But is that really the way it happens? Does the average teenager date now? Chances are, while you were in high school, you met someone in one of your classes. You talked with them every day for a while, and eventually you became boyfriend and girlfriend. Many guys, and a good amount of girls, didn’t even experience this very often. The popular kids almost always had a boyfriend or girlfriend at their side, the unpopular ones too. Others, the outcasts, the freaks even—and I’m not ashamed to use that word because I’m a freak, and take pride in being a freak now—they didn’t have a steady supply of suitors or suitorettes waiting for their company.

So you see, we have two opposites, the ones who always had someone there for them, and the ones who never had anyone there for them. The result is the same though, believe it or not, but the path taken is quite different, and shapes the individual involved quite differently.

In the case of the girl who has a serious boyfriend, one she may be deeply in love with, she never has to deal with being alone, or experiencing that loneliness the rest of the world feels when they hit the teenage years and on. She’s always got her true love by her side, her personality is a reflection of him, melded with that of her childhood persona. If she should happen to be left with a broken heart, it gets quickly covered up by the many other guys vying for her company or the prestige associated with being her boyfriend. I believe this greatly hinders her growth as an individual, and is true for both men and women, though the symptoms and side effects of such behavior manifest themselves in different ways for the sexes. This will be discussed in more depth later.

In the case of the outsider boy, he may be unattractive, lacking in desirable qualities, or just extremely shy. There are no girls waiting in line to be his date to the movies every weekend. He may be an extremely friendly and likeable person, or mean bastard, but chances are he’d make a more suitable boyfriend than half of the guys the girl mentioned above has dated. This is a situation I’ve thought about a lot as I was growing up. Why does it occur? Maybe one day I’ll figure it out. The boy spends his time with his mostly male friends and doesn’t learn how to interact with the opposite sex. The result is that he’s thrown into the dating pool much later in life and has a lot of catching up to do. The mistakes made will take him well into his later life, through a series of failed relationships, or perhaps through a single heart-wrenching epic relationship in which he finds himself alone again in his early 30s or 40s.

What do these two cases have in common? They both failed to develop certain aspects of themselves earlier on in life, and thus, bring their relative inexperience into the dating pool in their late 20s and early 30s, perhaps much later. I’ll re-examine again the cases above.

A girl, we’ll call her Nancy, is crazy about guys. She’s been in a relationship since the time she hit puberty, with one boy or another. She doesn’t really know what it means to independent. When her last boyfriend dumps her, for once in her life, there’s no one around to date. She experiences loneliness and it scares her to death. She jumps at the next guy who walks into her life, clinging to him for all she’s worth. At first, things are wonderful between the two. He treats her like a princess, and they spend all their time together. She gets all the attention she could want and is always calling him on the phone. The two are happy together. The guy screws up though, maybe he’s like the boy mentioned above, or maybe he’s just a dick. For whatever reason, he mistreats her, very badly in Nancy’s case. But she has no one to run to, no back up boyfriend. So she stays in an unfulfilling and emotionally damaging relationship. The repercussions of this are felt for many many years to come. She eventually leaves the guy, and meets a new guy.

This next guy Nancy goes out with is completely different from the previous. He’s the perfect catch, he’s sensitive, caring, understanding, and an all around good guy. They fall head over heels in love. Unfortunately, Nancy grows uncomfortable. Having realized one day that she’s spent her whole life in relationships, and she doesn’t even know who she is. She questions the boyfriend constantly, doubting his feelings, and ultimately, grows tired of his attention. She tells him, "I think we should see other people." She wants to be independent, to figure things out, to figure out what she wants in life. The boyfriend’s heart is broken, and all the time invested into the relationship suddenly seems a waste.

In the case of the boy, Mark, he finally comes out of his shell. His moving away to college has allowed him to get a new image. He’s much more confident in himself, and meets lots of new girls. He dates a few, but mostly, he just ends up having sex with them. Because Mark missed out on the joys of sex earlier in his life, and he possessed no moral or religious code that kept him on this road of chastity, he becomes like a starving man at a buffet. He disregards the feelings and emotions of the girls he meets in lieu of wild sex. For a while things are fine, because all the women he meets are looking for the same thing. Of course, Mark is willing to show off the right side of his personality, say the right things, to get the girls in bed. Mark really loves sex, and who can blame him? He’s got a lot of catching up to do. So he meets this really cool chick, we’ll call her Jen, and they flirt constantly. This girl knows all the right things to say, and steals his heart. But she’s just a bit of a tease, and every time things start to move towards something more, she disappears. So Mark goes about his business, meeting yet another girl, Gretchen. The two of them hit it off, Mark realizes that this girl is amazing, unlike most of the girls he’s been seeing, she reminds him a lot of how he used to be. They have so much in common, one things leads to another, and they find themselves in bed. Jen is still hanging around though, and he can’t bring himself to be with just one woman, not when he had been single for so long. Wonderful, sensitive, Gretchen is too hurt, and walks out of his life for good. Jen disappears again, this time for good, just another tease.

So why did Mark give up such a great chance? Why did Nancy for that matter? For the same reasons really. They didn’t know what they wanted. They didn’t know the things that would make them happy. They just thought they did. The worst part in both scenarios, was that they are true stories. In both situations, the individuals involved, in fact, all parties, regretted what took place. Gretchen would have been the perfect wife for Mark, if he’d have just stuck with her. Nancy would have found her last boyfriend to be everything she could have needed or wanted in a man, but she gave it up, to go "find herself."

I’m not trying to say that people shouldn’t leave their significant others to fulfill their goals to make themselves a better person. Not at all. Its truly sad that things like that have to happen, especially when, given a real chance, the people involved could have lived happily together for many many years, perhaps forever. But these are my observations of the effects of how we go about having relationships.

Perhaps, you do have a high school sweetheart, and you do get married and live happily ever after. Its rare these days, but it happens. But for the most part, its all too common for girls and guys to throw themselves into things, passionate to be sure, but forgetting to figure out just who THEY are. They develop a sort of co-dependence, resulting in infidelity and heartbreak and what seems to be, just years of wasted time. Or the boy or girl who finds the physical side of their newfound relationships so appealing, that they take all they can see, without checking to see if what they’ve found might just be the one for them.

Or in a very personal case, those who marry young, especially the women, who grow to resent the lost freedom. Children born into families where the parents find it necessary to seek out new partners on a monthly basis. Wives who at 35 decide its time to end things with her husband and start dating again. Its never easy on anyone involved. If only they’d learned earlier on, just what they want. I just find it very sad.