One quiet night, I was browsing the ‘watch instantly’ movies on Netflix when I came across a movie titled Strictly Sexual. After looking through another couple of pages, I decided it would probably fit my mood best. Two well-to-do career women in Los Angeles propose to two construction workers they met at a bar that the men stay in the tent next to the pool. In exchange, they provide sex to the women whenever they want it.
Their first night there, the women invite the two guys in for dinner. The conversation becomes tense when one of the men says the reason they don’t have girlfriends is because women are morons. They always dump men who are too nice to them.
A few days after watching the movie, I was walking with a good friend of mine and explaining to her that I was considering writing about issues having to do with sexuality. “Oh,” she says, “you really have to write about men who are always complaining that women don’t want nice guys.”
Wow, I thought, how interesting she would say that so soon after the movie I had just seen. Even more interesting was what she said next; men who usually claim to be the nice guy aren’t that nice. Weird, since the character in the movie who complains about women dumping nice guys was the biggest asshole of all. In one scene, he tells his girlfriend he can solve all the problems she is paying her therapist to help her with in three little words; eat less food. She immediately dumps his ass and he presumably continues to wonder why women dump “nice” guys. Maybe my friend had a point. Admittedly, men proclaiming to be nice guys automatically invoke a certain level of distrust.
A few nights later, my roommates and I got happily intoxicated and returned to our home to have a dance party and smoke hookah. Two of our upstairs male neighbors came downstairs to join us. While we haven’t spent much time with these two guys, they seem to be very nice and a lot of fun to hang out with. Towards the end of the night, the conversation once again turned toward nice guys (and girls, too).
One of them related a story about a female coworker. The woman was moving to Argentina, so they went out drinking to celebrate her departure. He bought all her drinks, spending quite a bit of money, without any romantic intentions toward her. Simply a gesture of friendship. Later that morning, he bought everybody breakfast.
He then told us that he was a very nice guy but as nice as he was, his friend was even nicer. His friend had recently been dumped. He was a nice guy because he always walked her down to her car and opened the door for her. She was not a nice girl because she dumped him for a guy she had just met at a questionable bar (questionable as a source for any lasting romance, but then again maybe she wasn’t looking for a lasting romance).
I do not mean to sound critical of these men or to minimize their pain and frustration. My experiences with both of them suggest that they are nice people and potential friends. I have nothing bad to say about them personally. But as I reflect on the examples they used to define their nice behavior, it sounds like what they think of as nice I would define as chivalry. Paying for things and opening doors aren’t necessarily bad (or good, considering the perspectives of those striving for equality), but they don’t really make you a nice guy either.
I suppose if I were to be honest with myself I would say my initial reaction to a guy who didn’t hold doors or pay for things might be that he is an asshole. Would I have the same reaction towards a woman? Maybe. But what if a person didn’t hold the door for you but was always there to support you through the good and the bad? It would seem that the door was a superficial, unreliable symbol.
As I reflect on my own dating past, there are definitely some assholes. But few of them seem to be all bad. The biggest asshole of them all was a man I will call Gringito here. Our relationship began as a booty call. Then our respective lives dealt us some shitty blows within a couple of weeks and we increasingly began to lean on each other. We dated for about three months.
During that time he would yell at me in public, ignore me, disappear overnight and just generally be mean. He treated everyone that way. But he made efforts. Pulling little knick-knacks out of his pockets, saying they made him think of me. He was the first man to ever make me breakfast in bed. His efforts weren’t consistent or very big, but they were meaningful to me.
Every single human being we ever come across is flawed. Our flaws are one of the things that makes us interesting. I curse a lot, I sleep in way too much, I drink quite a bit, among various other things. But I’m also compassionate and I try to make sure everybody is happy. I think one of the reasons I date “assholes” is because I feel more relaxed and able to be myself with man who is as flawed as I am. I would find it difficult to tolerate a tobacco chewer, but the tobacco chewer might feel the same way about my loud burps (although tobacco chewing is much grosser than burping). Dating and interacting with other people, especially people we are not yet well acquainted with is about figuring out which flaws we can each tolerate.