The Peril of Love : Part I

The Nice-Guy-Finish-Last Conundrum

“I love her so much that I’ve given everything I had for her; be it financial resources or emotional needs, I have always, always been there for me through thick and thin, for the better and for worse, but did she ever reciprocate? No, she played me like a fool that heartless bitch!”

“Sigh, I knew it from the beginning that it wouldn’t happen between us. How can I be so naïve to believe that she is the one for me? How could I have thrown myself at her when I know I don’t stand a chance against such an angel? I am such a fool.”

Above are extractions from two different individuals who’s identity will be better left in anonymity. If you were to put them together in a social environment, say in a bar or a coffee house, you would find that they are the exact opposite of each other: one is aggressive, the other passive. This distinct difference in their approach with general matters in life results in a huge variance despite environmental similarities. However, they do share one common ground though, that is both are victim of unrequited love.

Unreciprocated love is well documented in literature and history, well sung out by Taylor Swift; well represented in popular television series like Friends, How I met your Mother, the Big Bang Theory et cetera. There are numerous directors who centralize the entire movie on this idea, like the very recent 500 Days of Summer. It wouldn’t be unfair to say, unreciprocated love is as popular as any mainstream media. If you own a Facebook account (who doesn’t?), it is extremely likely that at any given point of time you’ll have one or two friends posting something regarding this issue on their wall, lamenting at the cessation of progress with their object of desire.

So what went wrong?

1.

Human are creatures that require a consistent stream of gratification that is proportionate to expected effort. Let us assume that an employer hires John to sit in the office to do the accounts from eight to five everyday and promises John the reward of three thousand dollars a month. At the end of the first month, John gets exactly what he expect and returns home satisfied because the effort expended is matched by the promised prize. On the following month, John’s boss gave him a bonus increment and innocently promised John more bonuses if he continues to perform.

Note that, the innocent promise that John’s boss consciously or sub-consciously made, mirrors the bear riding tragedy which tells the tale of an Englishman who went hunting alone on a Sunday afternoon. During the hunt, the hunter slipped and fell down a ledge, incapacitating his right leg. A bear soon appears, and the hunter sees an opportunity in disguise. He skillfully tricks the bear into a free ride by a simple use of bait, a branch stick and some rope. By attaching the end of things together, he has now effectively turned the bear into his mindless transport, chasing after a reward that seems just one step away from reality. This creates a gap between what one is expected to receive and what is actually received and that gap is one bear claw away.

The uncertainty of the promise keeps the bear going because the reward looks to be just one step ahead, yet with every step it seems further away. Hours go by, the disillusionment sets in; the bear knows something is amiss. Eventually, the delay of gratification becomes too painful to withstand. Finally, when the bear realizes who was the pulling the string… let’s just say that the hunter was lucky enough to get out of it alive. The lesson here is that when you create a gap between actual reward and expected reward for motivational purposes, there is a risk of backlash if you withhold the reward for far too long.

After twenty years of no raise and bonuses, John hobbles into his boss’ office and gave his boss a piece of his mind before he quits-on a Monday morning, with a crippled right leg along with a few claw marks on his back.

The tale above is a simple example, but it has wide application in our society today, especially in the world of video games. The entire gaming industry is based on this concept of delayed gratification of rewards. Games like World of Warcraft, Everquest et cetera has millions of players on their knees by the delaying of in-game treasures to the point where players are on the verge of giving up for the search of the particular rare item, but persevere anyway thinking that the next treasure box will contain that precious reward.

So how does this factor into our nice guys?

2.

Most people fall in love in a similar fashion; boy meets girl, they exchange a look, and then grab a cup of coffee. It doesn’t take long for a lunch date, followed by dinner where dessert will include a slice of cake with two dessert spoon. What had started out as a platonic relationship soon matures into something deeper and carries more meaning. The beauty in all of this is that it all happens naturally, without any party consciously maintaining the buoyancy of the relationship. No doubt there would be heated debates and disagreements, and yes, sometimes it gets tiring, but at the end of the day, there was no effort needed or expended to start solving the differences. One of my favourite lines in How I met your mother is this: “relationships are hard but if you know that someone is worth it, if you love him or her, then it just ceases to be difficult.” Our focus will divert from what is difficult to what solves the problem, thus the beauty of love lies within the simplicity in what would be otherwise, complicated.

Where the norms are at, the nice guy differs in a way which is very subtle because they camouflage themselves as hopeless romantics. A nice guy will fall in love first, usually at first contact, claiming it to be love at first sight when in actual fact, it is just infatuation; but no, they are too poetic for that. Everything they describe of her has to be how enchanting her long silky brown hair sways from left to right when she walks, or how when she smiles the corner of her eyes crinkle up in such a way that exuberates experience with a pinch of sorrow along with…I’m going to stop here and pray to God you get my point.

3.

They would divert in courtship: type A will come at you with a certain degree of passiveness, wanting to be your friend first so they can slip into your life, becoming the soft shoulder you’re looking for when you fall out from the couple paradise and hopefully, one day they can make that transition to slipping into your pants. These guys will go through all the rainy days with you hoping that one day, you could wake up to realize that the guy you’ve been searching for all along, is right in front of you; effectively becoming your best friend and your lover.

Type B nice guy would be more polished in their approach, perhaps from their experience in being type A. These guys are the ones who know that sitting around waiting for that one chance is a long shot, prompting them to grab the bull by its horn…by glorifying the target. They are the kind of guys who would overdo things: spending lavishly on gifts irrespective to appropriateness of such gestures, sending you texts telling you how special and great you are, profusely expressing their lingering thought of you in their mind. To them, you’re like the a Goddess on the altar, and they worship you by bringing you tributes upon tributes, wishing that one day they would ascend to your stature, and sit next to you on the altar high above.

Note that, none of the nice guy above actually wants to get to know and love you for who you are. They are so infatuated with your outer appearance that they shape your image in their head with what they perceive your personality to be. If they do not know you long enough, they would fill up the entire unknown with characteristic that are derived from movies (Allison from the Notebook), romance novel (Jamie from A Walk to Remember) and so on. Soon, the nice guy would paint a perfect portrait of you, which explains why they would persist so hard in their pursuit of you despite being rejected over and over again. How could anyone let go something that amazing and complete?

4.

It wouldn’t take long for any self loving female to realize the situation that she is in, nor does it take that long for a nice guy to notice that his pursuit are to no avail. A gap between expected rewards against actual reward surfaces, the countdown begins; somewhere, a poor soul’s beautiful day shall be marred by the backlash of the discontented not-so-nice guy.

The whining would begin with how much effort expended in your name and was not responded in kind. He would complain about girls not knowing how to appreciate nice guys like him and how all girls prefer to be treated like crap by bad boys. He would also tell all his friends about the mistreatment he gets and you’ll end up with a vile reputation. The nice guy do not understand the saying, all is fair in love and war. They are hardwired to believe that if they did enough for you, you should automatically fall in love with them. It’s like they had obtained an ancient secret checklist of criteria to fulfill and by adhering to that, the object of desire would and should be in love with them. The idea of love thus becomes a one way street and nice guys are stuck at the giving side, mourning at the fact that they are not being given something in return when in reality, the “love” they give was never received nor was it even wanted in the first place.

Still feeling sorry for your friend who finished last?