"At night, too, she puzzled the mystery of her desperate need of kindness. As other girls prayed for handsomeness in a lover, or for wealth or for power, or for poetry, she had prayed fervently: let him be kind." Anais Nin, A Spy in the House of Love
She shook her head from side to side. "No more bad boys for me," she said. "I want a nice guy." Knowing a bit of her history, I certainly agreed she didn't need any more bad boys. But a nice guy? I don't know. I thought about the stereotypes we seem to have in American culture, with all men seemingly being lumped into one of two camps. Bad boys vs nice guys; that endless debate.
It is said that nice guys finish last. I think we have come to view nice guys as boring and wishy washy. Men who don't know what they want, or who are too timid to say. Men who are a little too eager to please, a little too concerned about offending.
It has to be tough sometimes to be a man in today's world, where it's not as simple as it was for guys of my dad's generation. Not that those men had easy lives, but what society demanded of them and what women expected of them was certainly more defined.
How about a third option? A kind man. I crave kindness in all my relationships. Kindness is a powerful motivator for me. Be kind to me and I will go to the ends of the earth for you. Be kind to me, and I will give you my trust because you deserve it, because you would never set out to harm me. Be kind to me, and I will respect your strength, because kind people are some of the strongest people.
Anyone can be nice. Even abusive people are nice sometimes, or they would have an acute shortage of victims. Part of the very cunning cycle of abuse is first the abuse, whether physical, emotional or verbal, happens. Then the abuser is nice. Usually just nice enough to keep you from walking out the door. Until the abuse happens again, and on and on it goes in painful circles.
No one has to be mean to be direct, to stand up for himself, to ask for what he wants or needs, to disagree, to draw and enforce boundaries. All of these can and should be done with kindness. Sometimes nice just feels patronizing or even manipulative. But kindness? It feels different, or at least it does to me. As Nin so eloquently put it, I have a desperate need of kindness.
A bad boy. A nice guy. A kind man. I choose Door Number Three.
Susan
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I was brought up a nice guy. In some ways I could have been the type specimen for the whole species. Not knowing what I wanted? Check. Too afraid to say what I knew I wanted? Check. Pride mixed with a low valuation of my own worth? A secret belief that anybody good enough for me to admire was a better person than me—particularly if female? Check and check.
ReplyDeleteNice guys are often very kind, but kindness that doesn't rise from personal power is thin gruel.
Absolutely nice guys are often very kind. Thank you for a man's perspective on this, Kevan. And you have inspired a new post with your "thin gruel." Thank you. And thank you.
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