Nice Guys Finish Last?
‘Nice guys finish last…’
… is a phrase that has confused me for a good long while. I try to be a good person and live a good life; I say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, I open doors for men and women alike and believe that being polite is an essential part of showing respect to others.
This is something that has been engrained in me since I was a child. My parents had pretty traditional parenting values and also by spending a great deal of my childhood with my granddad, who introduced me to films of the 1930s and 40s, I was exposed from a young age to a way of life that was all but gone in modern society.
Now at 29, I see kids not giving up their seats to the elderly on buses and people parking in disabled spaces just so they can save a few steps to the shop – I even witnessed a mother and child park in a disabled bay and upon being confronted by my dad who has Multiple Sclerosis, replied “being a parent is like being disabled, I can’t do the things that I used to be able to do.” I despair to think that, if good manners cost nothing, how morally poor an individual has to be to not take up that kind of value.
Nice Guy = Walk-over, Bad Boy = Exciting? Pssh!
There appears to be a rising preconception that a nice guy is a negative thing, that being nice means that you are also a push-over, that has zero back-bone, especially when it comes to women. Guys are told on a semi regular basis that girls want a ‘bad boy’ with an ‘edge’ and the ‘treat them mean, keep them keen’ method is a much more exciting relationship model. Now, each to their own and if that floats your boat, fine, but that kind of sweeping generalisation only serves to neglect the percentage of self-confident nice guys that are pushed in alongside the wet-blankets. Maybe I’m old fashioned, and from this post it already seems I am probably heading that way, but if a bloke wants to treat a woman well, buy her flowers, surprise her with romantic gestures (this is a whole new kettle of fish for another post at another time) and support her through high and low; is that lesser to someone who is just a bit ‘dangerous’?
Being nice isn’t too bad…
With that being said, do I ever regret not trying to be more edgy? No. Do I wish that I could just walk through a door and not let the person coming the other way through first? No. If I tried to be something I’m not, I wouldn’t have such great friends, a gorgeous wife and an amazing son.
So, at the end of the day, being nice isn’t too bad.
yummymummyb
I must be getting old too! I definitely appreciate having a husband who treats me wonderfully, is in awe of our little boy & isn’t off gallavanting or getting up to no good behind my back. Never mind the bad lads, I’d much rather my husband be a gentleman & will be raising George accordingly!
Kate Bevan
This reminds me of something my first boyfriend at uni who is still a dear friend today told me. When he was about 15 his friends mother told him and her son ‘you aren’t the kind of boy girls want now but in 15 years they will all be queuing up to marry you’. I’ve never understood what kind of thing that is to say to a person or what kind of comment it is on men )or indeed women) but always makes me strangely sad when I think of it.