It’s so weird 'cause here I’m thinking nice girls finish last. Every nice guy that I meet either has a girlfriend or is married. I think it goes both ways, girls can be attracted to bad boys and nice guys can be attracted to bad girls. It’s tough out there, but we have to be patient and let God bring whomever He wants us to be with into our lives. Adam didn’t go looking for Eve. God brought her to him in His own time. You’re not alone. There are plenty of nice girls out there looking for a genuinely nice guy.
that was nicely put.
I’ve been quietly lurking in this thread and here’s my thoughts…
I used to know a lot of “nice guys” who were just that - nice. And while I’m not proud of this fact, I found those guys were the ones that I could easily depend on for things I needed help with, so I found myself taking them for granted. Had they been more assertive I probably would’ve had more respect for them.
I’m not saying I behaved that way consciously - like, I didn’t wake up every morning and think, “how can I use ‘john’ today?”…but that’s what would end up happening. I would feel guilty about how I was behaving so I would do things to make up, to repay them - b/c that’s what I thought they wanted in return. Because I was away from my Christian faith during those years, those behaviors really just ended up hurting myself as well as them. I wasn’t ever refused, so it was just a nasty vicious cycle. It didn’t dawn on me until many years later how I was just making things worse. Because of my actions and immaturity, not to mention lack of practicing Christian values, I was perpetuating
their mindset of “nice guys finish last”. I wasn’t really ever their girlfriend. I was their friend w/occasional kickbacks.
I used to think I was the nice girl trying to land a “nice” man, and could never understand why that wasn’t happening. My standards weren’t nearly as high as some of my friends. For one, I had never really put physical attraction at the top of the list. In fact, my experience was that the guys I found really attractive were seriously lacking in the personality department, not to mention, some of them were just flat out jerks to the point of abusive sometimes. They didn’t want a girl like me, they wanted the bimbo that pole danced in the club, or worse, they wanted me to act like that girl.
What I liked most about what Teresa said here is that God gives us our mates (if that’s His will for our lives) in His time. Had I stayed that girl I was, I would’ve made a horrible wife. When I met my husband, I initally wanted nothing to do w/him. I was on total man-strike. I wanted to be by myself. Too many bad things had happend and I needed a refocusing period. Not to mention, I wasn’t initially attracted to him at all. About the only thing he did have was dark hair, so that was a plus…lol… but I had always dated bigger guys - 6 ft. plus. He was average in build, average in height (but still taller than me), he smoked and had really long hair & braces (& we were in our early 20’s). He also had a small common birth defect that had been surgically repaired, so it wasn’t that noticeable, but still there. Bottom line: normally not the guy that would make me look twice. To me, he was just another “nice” guy…or so I thought. In fact, the first time I went out with him it was just to be nice!
One of the only reasons I went, too, was that it wasn’t just us. We met mutual friends out to play pool. I figured we’d have nothing in common, I’d hang out w/my friends, and that would be it.
But little did I know at the time, God put him in my life for a reason, I just had to wait for the reason to show itself. I had to grow as a person and clean up my life. Even after about a year into our relationship, I was still waiting for whatever was wrong with him to surface. (not that I ever told him that!
)
We dated for 5 yrs before we got married. He was Catholic but not practicing when we met. Now we’re both raging Catholics
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When I look back on those years, I see my life with this “nice guy” as though it was a book. Everything happened for a reason and if anything were to have been different, I wouldn’t be sitting here married to him or have the beautiful children that we have.
He was more than just nice, though. He had a sense of who he was, where he was going, and what he wanted from life, and the best part was that he was able to handle all my crazy w/o ever walking out.
I even remember the first time I thought “I could marry this guy” b/c I knew on top of everything else, he would protect me. We were at a club and some wierd dude was sort of hassling me…following me around…stuff like that. As we left, this guy goes, “hey baby, you leav’n with him…” and he sort of grabbed my arm. In like this freakish flash of a second, my (now) husband, grabbed the guy by the collar, pushed him up against the wall and goes, “ENOUGH!” And as soon as he said it, he let him go, turned around and we walked away! I was like, “Aaah, no way that just happened!” I had never seen him like that before, and I’ve only seen him like that once since (longer story). But it wasn’t a Billy Bad-A** maneuver. It was just him being him. Being “nice” - protecting me. And now that I think about it, I guess he was last. The “last” guy I ever dated.
In God’s time people, in God’s time…
), though I don’t know about how otherwise satisfactory I would have been, possibly not so much after all. In fact, that’s kinda likely, but anyway.
