But is it really true that bad boys get more girls?
I mean, REALLY?
I know the nice guy feels like he’s constantly at a disadvantage but have people actually studied this and determined that indeed the bad boy is getting the girls?
I, personally, am not at all attracted to the ‘bad boys’. The easy confidence, pretty but false words and swagger just don’t do it for me. I prefer honesty, awkwardness (honesty usually leads to awkwardness) and kindness. Am I the minority female or…? is this stereotype very untrue?
Please allow me to quibble just a bit. I think a lot of this depends on what one means by “bad boys”. If they’re narcissistic sociopaths, it’s thumbs down all the way, or ought to be.
But there are guys with “the easy confidence, pretty but false words and swagger”, who may be “bad boys” in a way, but are not really “bad”…or at least I hope that can be accepted, because I would certainly have been (and was) counted in that number by some when I was younger, and particularly by the “nice guys” with whom women could be “comfortable”.
I double, triple and quadruple-timed girls, which would, to many, have made me a “rat”, but I didn’t mistreat them except to the extent that I was “in my own game”, not theirs. In short, I was always, always, always “looking for the one”, and you can’t do that without knowing them. All relationships are risky. They, I am sure, were also “looking for the one”, but oftentimes with less focus on the goal than I had.
And, yes, I was impressed by looks, though i was far more a “face man” than I was a “body man”. A truly beautiful face excuses many a body flaw.
It probably isn’t a stretch to say that if I had not been a “bad boy”, I would never have met or married my wife. We were at a party. In my accustomed manner, I was “hustling” the young ladies there. My wife took it upon herself to critique and shoot down my swaggering ways and fail safe “lines”, and I wasn’t even targeting her. She was just nearby. At a point, I took her aside and asked her not to do what she was doing. She proposed that she would do that if I would stop being full of it around the other women. Ultimately we mutually agreed that I would always be honest around her and she could always be honest with me if she wished. We finally agreed to be each other’s “confidant”. And we really were.
Was she, is she, an “alpha female”? Well, I don’t know. She’s kind of subtle, but she won’t take anything off anybody. She’s very competent in her profession and directs others, both male and female.
Was I impressed by her looks? Yes, indeed. She looks for all the world like Sophia Loren, and still makes my breath catch. (Google Sophia all you guys who are too young to remember her, and ask yourselves whether you could put up with her even if she could be witchy.)
Would I have married her if she didn’t have her looks? Yes I would have, because of the following.
After our “pact”, which was really just a truce, we both dated others, but ultimately how can you really top “confidant”, no matter who you find and no matter what you do? We kept drifting back together; sometimes just to talk about things in our lives. Sometimes to have an “adventure” of some kind. Eventually, it was just obvious to both of us that we loved each other and would marry. And yes, I would certainly not attempt to dominate her. But neither did I want to dominate her. I admired her. I think she admired me, but in a different way. She’s far more rational and measured than I am, and smarter too. In what I guess most would think of as a role reversal, I’m the intuitive one. She “pencils out” life smoothly and rationally. I grab it by the ears and hang on without being too sure what I have hold of or where it’s going.
Was she a “bad girl”. Well, she was (and is) one of the biggest smart alecks I have ever known. She can be as aggressive as a tigress and her tongue can be as sharp as a stiletto. But she can be kinder than a saint. Was she chaste before we met? I don’t know. Never asked. Didn’t care, and it’s irrelevant anyway.
So what’s the “moral of the story” here? Well, it seems to me that some folks, both male and female, really can be thoroughgoing jerks. But just because someone seems “alpha” or, to the world IS “alpha”, it doesn’t mean they cannot be a person of inestimable value. But all relationships have to be a good “fit”, and there can be huge differences in who fits with whom. I guess I would have to say that I got a little bored with girls that didn’t seem capable of strong self-assertion, and I sympathized but didn’t like being with ones who were truly submissive. But I sure didn’t like one who seemed truly selfish deep inside. Truth is, I needed the lady who is now my wife. Still do. She’s my “civilizing principle”, both negatively and positively. And, yes, I think she needs me too. I’m the “Hun” she persuaded to get off his horse. And for her, I was glad to do it.
Are my wife and I both “alpha”. I don’t know, because I’m not real sure what an “alpha” person is. But there are those who would think so. There are those who would think not. But I know a lot of people who others would think of as absolutely “alpha”, and you can’t know the core of such a person just by looking at their outward ways.
But, Nickybr, you might be a woman for whom George Bailey is a better “fit” than Rhett Butler. And that’s okay. Nothing wrong with that. Trust that intuition, okay?
