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Gordon_Sims
Guest
Back in college I blamed a lot of my problems, particularly when it came to romance, on my widely-acknowledged niceness. Then again, a very large percentage of the girls I knew who didn’t fall into the friend category could most easily be described as psychotic, self-destructive, evil or a combination of the three. I’d go into more detail but even the milder examples I could give would really stretch the bounds of credibility. Suffice to say that there truly are plenty of women out there who seem intent on finding the worst excuse for a guy available and have no problem using and abusing anyone who doesn’t fall into that category. I spent a lot of years wondering if I wouldn’t be better off being one of “those guys.” I had a friend who felt the same and decided that if being a jerk was going to get him some action, he could be the biggest louse on the planet. I’d like to say it didn’t work out for him. On the contrary, he couldn’t beat them off with a stick after that, even though it meant that his new reputation prevented him from finding anyone decent.I’ve never met a genuinely good, honest guy who ever blamed a single problem, much less lack of romance, on his own self-professed “niceness”.
That being said, to the OP, one of the things that my female friends and, later, my wife really appreciated was the fact that I made it clear I had no interest in premarital sex. We could hang out and they felt comfortable with me because there was no tension or expectations. It was similar when my wife and I started dating. She was extremely relieved to know there wasn’t the sort of pressure there that every other guy put on her, including her guy friends who assumed that giving her a ride home, buying her a soda at McDonald’s or holding a door open for her entitled them to some sort of sexual favor (and, no, it didn’t stop–even from some who I considered friends at the time–after we started dating). Although I spent a lot of years doubting whether my allegedly prudish views would allow me to ever be able to manage a decent relationship, let alone a lasting one, I believe the end results were far more positive than if I’d behaved even slightly more like some of the other guys I knew.