Let’s start with a popular scenario:
There’s a guy that is feeling a girl. He wants to “get to know” the girl, as you guys say. The girl gives him the time of day, and he treats her with great respect. Only issue? The girl doesn’t want to be in a relationship of any sort with him. So he gives her all this attention just to find out this information, now he’s typing on a black screen on Snapchat “Forever single. Nice guys always finish last.”
This “nice guy” narrative has always seemed problematic to me. I’m here to quickly show why calling yourself “a nice guy” doesn’t help your case.
To get another perspective, I pulled this up from the Urban Dictionary. Whoever Didget98 is, whom made this post on June 2, 2013, thank you sweetie, hope you’re doing well.
Nice Guy
A nice guy is either one of two types:
The first being a guy who is genuinely kind and caring. He is polite to everyone regardless of sex, age or race. He has no ulterior motive, i.e. he is not nice to get a reward, he behaves as such because it’s HUMAN DECENY. (I had to go in and capitalize this, don’t mind me).
The second kind of nice guy is the one who has ulterior motives. He believes that because he behaves in a certain way the world owes him for his actions. He doesn’t make it clear what he desires from the beginning and becomes angry when he doesn’t get what he wants.
In my experience, I’ve had guys have try to make me feel guilty for not giving them a chance. They’ll mention how I ‘always go for bad guys’ by pulling up receipts of guys I was involved with in the past, or even use my insecurities against me. One time, a guy said he “would’ve dated me if my teeth were straight”. This was the same guy that wanted me for two years even though I consistently rejected him and he cried every time he saw me with a guy that wasn’t him. Very bold of him.
Once I had a really good guy friend that also claimed to be a ‘good guy”. He ended up not being a very good friend after all because he wanted to do relationship-like things…..but as friends. Wanna know his justification for his sexual advances? Here they were:
“You trust me, right? If you trust me, you’d let me do this”
“I took you out to eat, the least you can do is give me a kiss”
“Wouldn’t you want to lose your virginity to someone you trust?”
“I’m such a good friend, so it shouldn’t be a big deal.”
Full disclosure, nothing ever happened between us because even though I was younger and easily influenced, I knew that friendships weren’t supposed to be transactional no matter how much you love and care about that person.
Quite simply, being nice to someone doesn’t secure their romantic interest in you. Being romantic with someone doesn’t secure their romantic interest in you. Not even intimacy will secure their romantic interest in you. No one owes you their number, or a date, or time in their schedule to chill with you, or any sexual act, no matter what you do for them. If you think they do, that shows how entitled you are. The universe owes you nothing for doing what you’re supposed to do.
So now we get to the gray area called “leading people on”.
Are you leading “the nice guy” on if you “take too long” to let him down gently?
No matter who you are in the relationship, you’ve gotta be upfront about how you feel. It’s not fair to the other person to keep them in the dark. Even if you’re confused about how you feel, let the other person know what you’re confused about so that they can make the decision to continue this potential relationship or not.
However, I think everyone has the right to be confused about what they want. My target audience of this blog are young adults, and we still have so much learning to do about the world and ourselves. Sis, don’t let that guy make you feel like you lead him on if you genuinely didn’t know how to continue. Important decisions take time and introspection. You may know exactly what you value and want from a partner, but it can take one person to completely change everything you thought you knew. It’s okay to take time to think the outcomes through, but be transparent with the other person and remember that they don’t have to wait for you if they don’t want to. And if they don’t wait, y’all were probably set to fail anyway.
In summary, if she doesn’t give you a chance, there’s another girl out there who will. If he ghosts you, don’t dwell on him because he obviously isn’t worried about you. Always treat others the way you’d want to be treated, and always ask for critiques to treat them better. But remember, especially to all of the “nice guys” out there, you don’t deserve a reward for doing what you are supposed to do.
Carpe Diem – Seize the Day!
Manyi.