The Mythical Nice Guy

I have become convinced that there really is no such thing as a "nice guy"--the emotionally crippled, the perennially passive, the socially awkward, the impressively f-ed up, maybe. But nice guys? No such thing.

Have you ever pondered the nice guys on TV? Take Ted Mosby for instance, the main character in the sitcom "How I Met Your Mother." Ted is a romantic. He believes in true love and finding The One. He's also kind of an a**hole. But that's just it. He's not an unrepentant womanizer like Barney, nor is he a one-woman man like Marshall (is the correct word here "whipped"?). He's alternately cowardly, lustful, chauvinistic and predatory, but because he's really just trying to find his soul mate, he's a nice guy.

Has a friend ever tried to set you up? When the date goes badly, they say, "Oh, but he's a nice guy." This can be translated roughly as: "Oh, but he's not a serial killer or a rapist." Never mind that he has an elbow fetish or the clap.

Why is there no equivalent nice girl? (Usually this just means she's unattractive.)

Nice guys are the necessary fictive counterpoint to the a**holes that women supposedly always go for. They are the guys who are not just trying to get into your pants. (Is it just me, or is the bar set pretty low?) The rationale goes: "I'm a nice guy, but women only like jerks. Therefore, I am single." I won't bother poking holes in that potato.

This nice guy myth wouldn't be quite so irritating if there did not seem to be practically a moral imperative to find, date and marry one. 

O nice guys. You are the stalker that won't take "no" for an answer--yet wouldn't hurt a fly. You are the guy that asks me out, then spends the entire date talking to the wall. You tell I'm beautiful, then call me a bitch for turning you down. You like me, but you act like you don't give a crap--'cause giving a crap would be too scary.

You would ask me out or listen when I say "I just want to be friends" or act like you care or treat me like, I dunno, another human being. But you're just too nice.

Stop it.