Avoiding the Pretty Packaging, Going for the Contents
We’ve all been there. Going for a guy who is great looking, but has no soul. It’s so tempting to have the opportunity to be seen with someone who looks like Noah Wyle, the hottie physician from E.R… or David Beckham, British soccer star. Unfortunately, the chances are most likely slim that men who look like they’ve stepped out of the pages of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog have the personality of John Cusack in Say Anything – to go along with it.
The chances are better that boys that beautiful will play us like a violin at the symphony. I hate to say it, but it seems like nice guys really do finish last. If we want guys to appreciate the quality women that we are, we must practice what we preach. What I’m trying to get at is… we need to stop pursuing the bad apples and start appreciating men with good hearts and clean intentions.
Don’t get me started on why I don’t date these guys, but I’ve been blessed to have some terrific male friends. But one of them is simply fantastic. He’s a Christian, intelligent, hilarious, fascinating, cultured, well-traveled, well-dressed, successful, sensitive, and cooks! This dude is THE ultimate package. One of my best friends. For the life of me, I don’t know why he doesn’t have a girlfriend. He did like a girl, and she would give him the “let’s be friends” runaround. In the meantime, she’d be hooking up with guys who could barely even spell their own name and weren’t even that attractive.
We wonder where the “decent guys” are, but in truth, we’re not doing ourselves any favors by constantly reaffirming the jerks, and rejecting the sweet prince charmings. No surprise that the good ones are hiding out, they have no self esteem. Sure, part of that rests on their laurels… but we have a responsibility to encourage good behavior.
On Sunday, my pastor had an interesting anecdote. It was about a teacher who was having trouble getting her students (I think 3rd graders or something) to stay in their seats. In a 20 minute period, kids were out of their seats 300 times or some exorbitant amount. Some experts told her to yell at the kids more to try and keep them under control. When she did that, kids got out of their seats even more in that period… about 500 times. So then the experts suggested that she compliment the students that actually stayed in their seats. This actually DID work. The point is, instead of bashing all the bad guys that exist in the world – we should be giving kudos to all the great ones we DO know.
The chances are better that boys that beautiful will play us like a violin at the symphony. I hate to say it, but it seems like nice guys really do finish last. If we want guys to appreciate the quality women that we are, we must practice what we preach. What I’m trying to get at is… we need to stop pursuing the bad apples and start appreciating men with good hearts and clean intentions.
Don’t get me started on why I don’t date these guys, but I’ve been blessed to have some terrific male friends. But one of them is simply fantastic. He’s a Christian, intelligent, hilarious, fascinating, cultured, well-traveled, well-dressed, successful, sensitive, and cooks! This dude is THE ultimate package. One of my best friends. For the life of me, I don’t know why he doesn’t have a girlfriend. He did like a girl, and she would give him the “let’s be friends” runaround. In the meantime, she’d be hooking up with guys who could barely even spell their own name and weren’t even that attractive.
We wonder where the “decent guys” are, but in truth, we’re not doing ourselves any favors by constantly reaffirming the jerks, and rejecting the sweet prince charmings. No surprise that the good ones are hiding out, they have no self esteem. Sure, part of that rests on their laurels… but we have a responsibility to encourage good behavior.
On Sunday, my pastor had an interesting anecdote. It was about a teacher who was having trouble getting her students (I think 3rd graders or something) to stay in their seats. In a 20 minute period, kids were out of their seats 300 times or some exorbitant amount. Some experts told her to yell at the kids more to try and keep them under control. When she did that, kids got out of their seats even more in that period… about 500 times. So then the experts suggested that she compliment the students that actually stayed in their seats. This actually DID work. The point is, instead of bashing all the bad guys that exist in the world – we should be giving kudos to all the great ones we DO know.
posted by Jennifer @ 12:48 AM
1 Comments:
At 10:47 AM, October 27, 2005,
Anonymous said…
Ah the ubiquitous nice guy. He conditions himself to embody the simpering bathetic idealized in countless romantic comedies in hope of acheiving the finis: happily ever after. Unfortunately for him, successful relationships with real-life women require archetypical male traits. Self-control, challenge, leadership...these qualities are magnetic to those plagued by the curse of Eve. It seems that good women are innately drawn towards these attributes, which church culture often fails to ameliorate. Humility is one thing, wimpiness another. As a result, a large number of young christian males lack the aura of male confidence that is attractive to women, despite deep cultivation of other virtues. So yes, encourage the good men to be MEN, but realize that such a change can only come from within the guy himself.
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