Ok, so it's taken me awhile, (much longer, I admit, than it really ought to have!) to get to this point, but I realize I am DONE with muckraker..
Not a wishy-washy done, but a-- omifucking gawed, what could I ever have seen in him-- DONE.
Done, stick a fork in him, done.
Done, call the mortuary, done.
Done, (like I wish my final paper was,) DONE
SO FUCKING DONE!
What got me to this point (especially when even yesterday I was still kinda on the fence about him?)
There was a group dinner and then a formal this evening, which was very fun. Muckraker was there, but he was his usual sketchy self, and on top of that he was really quite rude-- interrupting his conversation with me whenever someone more interesting stopped by to chat. (yes, it's fine to include someone new in a conversation. It's fucking RUDE to turn your back on the person you were talking to and exclude them from the new conversation you're now having with someone who came up to join in the conversation!)
You'd think that would be enough for me to say, I'm done with this... but no... I stuck around for more conversation. As Muckraker saw this complete asshole walk by Muckraker asked me what I thought about him. Did I find him attractive?
Um. Hell to the NO. That dude is sketchy as as an etch-a-sketch and probably carrying a fair number of STDs as yet undiagnosed by modern medicine.
We then watched as a girl chased after the asshole... and we both knew those two had been hooking up for a time.
So Muckraker starts talking about how women always go for assholes and smooth talkers and what idiots women are... (I know, I know, right? At that point I was like- Wait. Am I being punked? You're talking about me, right? And my infatuation with you? And yes, apparently I'm an idiot.)
And then... the part where I almost laughed in his face... he starts talking about how much he hates those asshole guys because "Nice Guys®" (like him) never get the girl.
Ding ding ding ding ding! The bells are ringing! The lights are dawning! Muckraker identifies himself as a "Nice Guy®."
Freakin' A!
I get it now!
I understand!
Eureka!
The clouds have parted, the light is shining through!
If only he'd identified himself as a "Nice Guy®" at the beginning I would have known to stay miles, and miles, and miles away! All this time I was thinking he was a nice guy. You know, a guy who is actually nice. Not a "Nice Guy®"
So, What's the difference between a nice guy and a "Nice Guy®"?
Well, I'll let Divalion tell you, since she did such a great job of it:
There are two kinds of nice guys in the world. Or, perhaps more accurately, there is a spectrum of niceguyishness.
At one end, are the guys who are just pure and simple good guys, decent people, humanly flawed perhaps but nonetheless likable *and* lovable, caring and smart, who have a lot to offer. Ironically, these guys often do not realize just how wonderful they are and how much they are valued by the people around them, and sometimes they even suffer crippling shyness/low self-esteem. I am fortunate to know, and have known, and to be related to, an unusually high number of guys towards this end of the spectrum.
At the other end are the guys who identify as "nice guys", often quite loudly and defensively, and who believe themselves to be underappreciated martyrs; usually they don't understand why they never get the girl and have at least once in their lives bitterly uttered the phrase "Nice guys finish last" usually in reference to a female who isn't dating them. It is this latter group I shall be addressing.
They tend to befriend women in order to date them. Nice Guys don't usually just ask a woman out and at least make a pretext of friendship to use as a springboard. This is where they can get confused with actual nice guys, who tend to also befriend women before dating them, but the difference is that the genuine nice guy appreciates women as human beings and enters into friendships mostly for their own sake rather than working them as an angle. The Nice Guy, on the other hand, sees women mostly in sexual terms (although he will deny it or call it "romantic terms") but doesn't have a lot of success with the direct approach, so instead he puts on a charming, harmless face in order to befriend women with the expectation that she will reward his niceness and friendship with sex. It can be a subtle difference, but there are clues-- the Nice Guy tends to come on pretty strong as a friend, and often makes "joking" sexual comments that can be dismissed as not intended seriously if the woman doesn't respond to the come-on implied in it. He will hang his belief that you would make great friends on the smallest of compatibilities-- for example a shared interest in a band, which he makes an awful lot of hay out of. He may talk a lot about how victimized he's been by cruel ex-girlfriends in a ploy for sympathy.
...Most Nice Guys only fall for a fairly limited range of "hot" chicks. It's because women are all about the status for them, and they are out to prove something to the world. Some of them will deliberately only go after women who are fairly unattainable, if their martyr complex needs some care and feeding.
Nice Guys don't actually care what a woman wants, which is one of the keys to identifying a Nice Guy vs. a nice guy, and which runs directly counter to their most deeply held beliefs about themselves. They think that they are great, caring, compassionate partners; usually, they just want a captive audience. They don't have much respect for what her desires and preferences are unless they are for him, because if she wants something different than him, it is attributed to her dysfunction and desire to be treated badly by an asshole. They may spend some time with pick-up books and things that tell them how to get chicks, but they tend to follow the letter of the law and not the spirit. That's why he'll serenade you on a subway platform even though he knows you don't like to call attention to yourself, and then be hurt that you were uncomfortable and embarrassed by the display. He likes to make a big show out of being romantic and considerate, especially when others are watching, but he will still forget to pick up his socks even if you've told him you'd rather have a clean floor than roses delivered to your office.
The absolute key difference between a nice guy and a Nice Guy is that the nice guy truly likes and respects women and doesn't feel entitled to the attentions of any woman. The Nice Guy pretends to be that, but secretly he has decided that all women suck (usually for the sins of a couple of them), and he doesn't really care about anything so much as propping up his limp ego.
There are a lot of Nice Guys out there, and they are incredibly insidious, because on the surface they SEEM so sweet, so misunderstood, so very different from the boorish asshole who cheated on you or told you that those pants do, indeed, make your ass look fat. But in the end, they turn out to be using their "niceness" as an excuse to hide behind, much like medieval aristocracy used cloying perfumes to cover up the ass-stank of their unwashed bodies.
Thank you, Divalion, thank you. I'll leave you with one last word from her... Because this should be obvious, but somehow it's not.
I have some news for you, Nice Guys of the world. "Nice" isn't as much of a selling point as you'd think. In fact, for most women, it's like expecting that your new car will come with wheels attached.
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