The Unattainable

Sorry I’ve had such a long absence. I will do my best not to make a habit of it, but this post has been trying to write. It's been hard to write about this topic because I feel I have problems with it myself. But I am open to a new way of thinking, and I hope you will be to.

There are no perfect humans. It’s a sad but true fact. The only perfect being to have walked this earth was Christ and, as much as we may wish it could be so, none of us can actually date him.

Ladies, I hope that by now you are feeling a little more lifted up than usual from reading this blog. My goal has been to make you all feel like the queens and princess you really are and to help you demand the kind of respect you deserve from the men that you date. I think we should all have an expectation to be treated well and we deserve a man who is going to live up to our expectations, but I’m afraid of nurturing the other end of the spectrum. What happens when women expect too much?

One of my favorite sayings is “shoot for the moon, because even if you miss, you’ll still land among the stars.” I believe in setting sometimes-unattainable goals. When I was a little girl I wanted to be the first woman president, or a dolphin trainer at SeaWorld, or a world famous pop star. The sky was the limit. But I also believe that there are some things in which seeking the unattainable is setting yourself up for misery. Dating is one of those things.

I worry that we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. I worry when we make these lists of the characteristics that we want in our “perfect” man (not referring to the list I asked you to make earlier ladies, that’s a good list). I worry that we are so focused on finding someone “perfect” that we overlook a lot of really wonderful guys. If you have the time, I’d love for you to read this note written by a friend of mine. I think it highlights very well what I’m trying to say, only from a guy’s point of view (disclaimer: this note contains some questionable language. If you’re easily offended then I recommend not reading it.) http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=31441371986

If you read the note you’ll see that there are so many guys out there who feel like they are getting the short end of the stick in their dating lives too. I would like to take a quote from the note I referenced earlier to perhaps shed some light on how some guys feel about what I call the Nice Guy Complex, “Many of them [women] claim they just want to date a nice guy, but when presented with such a specimen, they say irrational, confusing things such as “oh, he’s too nice to date” or “he would be a good boyfriend but he’s not for me” or “he already puts up with so much from me, I couldn’t possibly ask him out!” or the most frustrating of all: “no, it would ruin our friendship.” Yet, they continue to lament the lack of datable men in the world, and they expect their too-nice-to-date male friends to sympathize and apologize for the men that are jerks.”

How many of you have ever experienced this particular scenario? Show of hands? Probably a lot of you. I know I have had my fair share of “nice guys”, those guys who you absolutely adore but you just can’t see things working out romantically. It’s true, sometimes there just isn’t a spark, I understand that completely. But I also believe there is a whole range of wonderful guys out there who may be getting overlooked. There are guys out there who may not, at first glance, appear “perfect” but if you can take the time to look past the surface and see many of these guys for what they really are you may come to find that perfection isn’t exactly what you thought it was.

What I want you to get out of this ladies is hopefully a new appreciation for the “nice guy” standing right in front of you, or sitting right across from you, or knocking on your door begging to be let in. I know that if we can open our minds to a new way of thinking we may just find ourselves unexplainably happy with the guy we never noticed before. I love this note, so I’m going to quote it one last time, “There are definitely many girls who grow out of [The Nice Guy] train of thought and realize they should be dating the nice guys, not taking them for granted.” Ladies, this should be us! Hopefully, someday it will be. And hopefully it’ll be someday soon.