Do Nice Guys Finish Last?

So, as all my readers know, my mother periodically saves me articles from the "other" paper.  Here was one I found particularly of interest:

Apparently, in a previous column (this is what I've gathered from what I read), a man, "Greg", wrote in expressing his frustration that....wait for it....Nice Guys Finish Last!  Hrumph!  He apparently is a self-described "5" out of 10 with a great sense of humor, and, of course, is nice, yet he keeps striking out with the women he pursues.  It must mean, of course, that women just don't like nice guys.  (Insert blogger's eye roll here.)  

  

In this column, both women and men wrote in with advice in response.  There was a general consensus amongst women and a general consensus amongst men, but not between the groups.

Women claimed that this, indeed, in not true.  Greg's issue is that he is going after the wrong women.   He is a 5, perhaps he is going after 8s and 9s...maybe he'd have much better luck in the 4-6 range?  Maybe the problem isn't women, but rather, the kind of women he's attracted to.  Maybe if he's nice but average looking and he really wants to be in a relationship he should look for a nice but average looking girl?

The men had quite a different take - yep, women like nice men when they need someone to drive them somewhere, listen to them, or fix their sink.  Nice guys are great when a woman needs to complain about the jerk they are sleeping with.  However, when it comes to someone to date/sleep with, women want the hot bad boy.  A twice-divorced fifty-something man wrote something to the extent that when women say they want a nice guy, they really are saying 'we want a really really good-looking nice guy'.  

Obviously, I find these men's views of women and what we want to be rather ill-contrived and almost humorous.  However, I could see men finding a lot of flaws in the women's views on the subject - we don't date someone just because they are fair match-up on the looks scale nor is someone simply being equally appealing as ourselves a good argument to date that person.  

I raise a question to "Greg" - what exactly is he looking for in a girl?  We will all say that it's important that we are 'attracted' to our mate - how much this involves actual physical attractiveness varies from individual to individual.  If he expects to lean on his 'niceness' to generate attraction - is he attracted to niceness?   What exactly IS he attracted to?  (Or, what are these other guys attracted to if they are being used for favors by these women they pursue?  I wouldn't call that the work of 'nice girls'.)   These men who complain women don't like nice men - do they like nice women?

So, here is my advice to Greg all of the nice yet romantically frustrated people of the world:  if you are a person whose greatest, and rather noble, selling point is that you are nice - perhaps this isn't an opposites attract kind of deal.  Maybe you should look for someone who, first and foremost,  possesses the same quality.  I can't help believing that he's not quite doing this at the moment, and maybe if he does, it will generate considerably less frustration.