The time has come,' the Walrus said, 'To talk of many things'

I started thinking to myself today, why nice guys finish last… and it got me thinking about the saying “Nice Guys Finish Last” and where it came from.

So I turned to my friend Google and I came across a little something that really made my mind tick.

The following, I’m afraid to admit it, pretty much describe me… and it made me think long and hard about the last few months of my life, and more or less told me where I went wrong.

I have learnt so much from reading the following…. only wish I had read it a few months ago.

To those friends of mine that have been saying similar things to me…. yes, you were right. I only wished I had listened.

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Nice Guys Finish Last

How many times have you heard the phrase “nice guys finish last” ? You probably can’t even count how many times you’ve heard some frustrated guy say this. You might even say this yourself quite frequently. So, what is it about “Nice Guys” that cause their hearts to get stomped on by women and people in general? I’m going to help explain this as clearly as possible.

First, it is NOT the fact that a guy is “nice” that makes him unattractive to women. Being nice is a great personality trait and there’s nothing wrong with being a nice person. So many men are under the impression that they were “too nice” and that’s why they got stomped on and stepped over. Wrong !

No more Mr. Nice Guy

The first and most crucial mistake a guy can make is to lie to himself about the REAL reason that woman got scared off. Most of the time he is just too needy and attempts to build his entire existence and happiness around being with her. Guys…this is TOO MUCH pressure and feels suffocating. Men don’t like overly needy women and women don’t like overly needy men. So, how do you avoid turning into a clump of belly button lint stuck in some woman’s navel? Simple…do NOT build your life around her or anyone else, for that matter. Have your own interests and activities. Build a happy and healthy life for yourself so that when you do find a good woman she compliments the good life you already have rather than creates or completes your life. Every good and quality relationship includes time away from each other and room for each person to be an individual as well as part of a couple.

Nice Guy Syndrome

Another mistake so many nice guys make is to devote all of their time into doing things for other people to the point where they aren’t taking care of themselves. Learn to say no when you need or want to say it. It’s okay to put your own needs and wants ahead of doing things for others that they could do for themselves. If you don’t take care of yourself first you won’t be worth a damn to anyone else. How can you be there for that woman in your life if you don’t see to your own needs first? You can’t.

Love is a wonderful thing, and it’s a precious gift you can give to other people. However, most importantly, you MUST love yourself first. Until you can genuinely love yourself you can’t love another person in a healthy way. So many “nice guys” mistakenly believe that if they worship the ground a woman walks on and idolizes her that she will automatically return the same treatment towards him. These are what I like to call “Unrealistic Expectations”. More often than not, these kinds of expectations go unmet and lead to pain, frustration and sometimes anger. These expectations are nothing more than premeditated resentments. This isn’t healthy behavior and what it boils down to is a heavy dose of self inflicted suffering. Never set yourself up for this kind of disappointment. Treat yourself better than this.

Finally…if a man spends all of his time catering to the whims of others, how can he find the time to have a full and rich life? He can’t, and his life is spent helping others to make their lives more interesting while his life becomes more and more dull and boring. He has little energy left for his own adventures and excitement and his love life suffers as a result. Women don’t like boredom and stagnation.

The mistakes nice guys make are

1. Being too needy
2. Unrealistic Expectations/Premeditated Resentments
3. Idolizing a woman
4. Living for everyone else but himself and becoming dull
5. Making his happiness and existence too dependent on his relationships with others

If you recognize your own behavior in this list, you have probably blamed your “niceness” for hindering your relationships with women. Hopefully this article will help you to see and understand exactly where the problem is and what you need to do to fix it.

Here are a few things you can start doing right away to help you to stop making this mistakes with women.

1. Start saying “No” when you don’t want to do someone a favor. “Sorry, I can’t” is just as easy to say, and the world won’t stop turning if you say no.
2. Go spend some time with and on yourself…make your life exciting and interesting. Do things you enjoy just because you enjoy it. You deserve this! It’s YOUR life!
3. Don’t worship women. They are human, make mistakes and aren’t perfect. They are just like you for the most part, and are no better or worse than you are. Don’t treat them like they deserve more than you do. If you don’t respect yourself women won’t respect you either.
4. You “need” food and water. You “need” shelter. You don’t “need” any specific person to create your happiness and make you “somebody”. If you feel like you “need” someone else to be happy then your feelings towards that person are NOT healthy. It’s healthy to “want” someone to compliment who you ALREADY are, but NOT to “need” someone to define or complete you.

In conclusion … don’t lose the niceness, lose the neediness.

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….and then I found this, which unfortunately also bears a resemblance to me

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“We’ve all heard it, maybe most of us have even used it, and some of us live it everyday. Is it true, do Nice Guys finish last? When did being nice, becomes such a troublesome obstacle for so many people. Why does a positive trait, carry such a negative connotation?

Well first of all there has to be some kinda of medium to which we can grade niceness. There is big difference between doing nice things and being a nice guy. Having manners, and holding doors and volunteering are all nice things. Being a Nice Guy(from here on out NG), is more of mentality that affects your actions, and obviously the way you think. Not hitting on countless women, with vulgar come ons and distaste, bending over backwards for people, or accepting the short straw on purpose so that other won’t have to is being a NG.

See NGs aren’t aggressive. Maybe aggressive isn’t correct word here, let’s go with assertive. They don’t want to feel that they are being to pushy, to overbearing, to demanding. There in lies the problem. Not being assertive at times closes the door to many things. I’ve learn that sometimes you have to actively pursue the things you want. You have to be persistent. NG’s sometime have the mentality that things will fall in place because they are nice, a ying & yang way of thinking if you will. A bit of entitlement sometimes follows NG’s, they feel that since they are doing nice things, that nice things(the things they want) should be fall on them. This just isn’t the case. NG’s care to much about, not what people think about them, but what people think OF them. There’s a difference, a big difference. This traps NG’s into a state of actions and thinking where, they try to distant themselves from anything not considered nice.

Unfortunately for NG’s, sometimes woman take niceness for a sign of weakness. See women feel that niceness = abandon masculinity, which isnt always the case. I dont know what it is about women. Maybe it slightly stems from their natural feeling of wanting to be feel protected and safe. NG’s see so many great women with guys that to them, don’t treat them well. This causes much frustration for NG’s. NG’s don’t understand why a women would be with a guy that treats them bad, when they could have someone better, someone say… nice. “Treat’em like dirt they stick to you like mud.“ These words are very true. I’ve even had women explain to me that they see “over-niceness” as a sign of insecurity. Now it took me a few moments to understand this. Apparently NG’s are so nice, they must be insecure about themselves, and they attempt to make everyone else feel good, in order to compensation of how they feel about themselves. This blows my mind, I think that if someone is kind enough to take the effort to make you feel good, then that’s a sign that they feel pretty good about themselves, because apparently to me, that person isn’t dependent on having nice things done for them, or being showered with complements.

In the same vein, sometimes NG’s ruin potential relationships, hook-ups or whatever, because they exert to much niceness. After a while, women will begin to equate you to a friend, or a worst a brother. Or women will reject you because you are too nice, because she feels that you will be hurt in some kind of way of never being able to recover should things go bad, and that somehow hurting a nice guy is worst than hurting a jerk. See, the world is so backwards sometimes. The JERK has a better chance with a woman, simply because he’s equated to not having feelings worth hurting. She’s willing to take a risk with the JERK, she has nothing to lose, and she won’t regret hurting the JERK, as she would the NG. Being nice gets people attached to you to quickly, gets them caring about you to soon, to much. Once they do, they hold back and sometimes that’s works in the favor of a NG and sometimes it doesn’t. Being nice, will sometimes bring people to your aid when you need it the most. Yet sometimes it works the complete opposite way.

NG are often label as being push overs or punching bags. Many NG’s have a hard time saying NO. Again NG’s don’t want to be associated with anything negative connotations. They don’t want to feel that they are disappointing anyone. This is why in the work environment, NG’s get dump with the brunt of the work. They can’t say NO, and everyone depends on them to do the things they don’t want to do. Sometimes people will exploit your weakness, the very thing you regard your strength. People will have you bending over backwards if you aren’t careful.

So I why do I know so much about NG’s well, I used to be one, I’ve suffered the fate from much up above. I’ve learned a lot recently and its taking me a long time to see and grow. I won’t say I’m not a nice guy anymore, I’m just a nice guy with a bit of an edge now…

Nice guys may finish last, but we finish on top!!”

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So… now I’m begining to understand, and as I said earlier… a bit to late

But, I have learned from my mistakes and I shall move on being a better person for it…. but I will always be kicking myself!!!

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Alfred Lord Tennyson – 1850

~ by Marcus Wilson on October 1, 2008.

Posted in Life