I was sick of dating “bad boys” and dudes from the not-so-smart category. I wanted to date an intellectual, a nice guy.

Instead, I got Mr. Deceptive.

Mr. Deceptive was definitely smart, but he wasn’t as nice as he made himself out to be. He was a Nice Guy Poser.

I think the first time I realized this was when I saw him interacting with a florist he used pretty regularly. (Yes, he sent flowers to people often enough to be a regular at a florist! And no, that doesn’t make him the dream boyfriend you’d think it would.)

During this particular visit, Mr. Deceptive wanted to arrange to send flowers to a colleague’s wife’s funeral.

“How much do you want to spend? ” the florist asked as he started to show Mr. Deceptive the flowers he recommended.

“Oh, about $50 or $60,” Mr. Deceptive answered.

Even I, who admittedly knows nothing about funeral flower arrangements, thought that seemed a bit low. Turned out I was right. The florist hesitated and looked at Mr. Deceptive quite hard. “May I suggest you send a live plant to the person’s house, instead?” he asked carefully. Read More »

M was a friend of my roommate’s boyfriend and I started dating him after he saw my picture and decided he wanted to get to know me. He lived in NYC and I lived in Boston, but he was determined to take me out.

Normally I wouldn’t bother getting into the long distance thing, but he was super tall, extremely intelligent, and not bad looking, so I figured I’d give him a chance. Plus, he was super nice. Like he would drop everything when I called, take me anywhere I wanted to go, kind of nice. What girl doesn’t want that, right? I was just getting out of a relationship with a guy I loved but who didn’t drop everything at the drop of a hat for me, so I figured this would be refreshing. M came to Boston one weekend and took me to dinner.

Right away my roommate told me her boyfriend didn’t want us dating. “She’ll end up hurting him,” he had told her. Me, hurt a guy? I’m not exactly known as a super-b*tch when it comes to dating, so I really didn’t foresee myself hurting anyone.

After another perfectly nice date, M came to visit again, also known as our third date. My friends arrived at my apartment, anxious to meet him. M wasn’t there when they arrived; he was out trying to find a restaurant that served chicken pot pie. See, I had this craving, so I told him I wanted one, and he was off on a mission. After a bit, he ran back into my apartment breathless and defeated. “I couldn’t find one anywhere,” he told me. But I wanted one badly. “Did you try Z’s?” my friend asked. “They have them there.” “Really?” he replied eagerly. And he was out the door again. Fifteen minutes later and I had my chicken pot pie in hand. Read More »

If I had a dollar for every time I heard a girl complain about how they always date the bad guy and are not attracted to nice guys, I would be a freakin millionaire by now. It’s the typical college girl dilemma: Do you go for the mysterious and enticing bad boy who will most likely break your heart or stick with the comfortable sweet guy who is more of a good friend and absolutely adores your every move?

In my dating experience, I have gone back and forth. After getting my heart broken by the asshole frat guy, I opted for a more conservative wholesome dude. The only problem was that I had to force myself to be attracted to the latter and eventually gave up on that after a few months. I have now settled somewhere in the middle with my current bf. Or at least I’ll keep telling myself that.

Regardless, I do think that nice guys tend to get the short end of the deal; I stumbled upon a website recently with many entertaining reasons why women tend to prefer bad guys, from a woman’s point of view.

Here are a few of my personal favorites from the list that I found funny and actually somewhat true:

“Nice guys feel so undeserving of ‘awesome you’ that they make you feel that you have, most assuredly, picked a real loser.” Read More »