The True Value of Being a Nice Person…

by Miss Anon

I figured this out when my boyfriend broke up with me. He was my first love and I was devastated.

At first, I couldn’t understand why he broke up with me. He said all these things about how I was so mean to him, and I genuinely didn’t understand what he was talking about (it’s not like I was deliberately mean, just overly critical and sometimes insensitive).

He compared me to some of his female friends who he claimed were much “nicer” to him. At the time, I reasoned that they were nicer to him because they wanted to date him, but weren’t attractive or intelligent enough to be attractive to him. I literally thought, on a subconscious level, that he should be with me because I was a good catch. I was prettier and smarter than most other girls he could have been dating.

After the break-up, I did some serious soul-searching (at the risk of sounding cliched). But more importantly, I met someone who on paper was the Man of My Dreams. He was in law school, and he was attractive, smart, and fun. He had been raised with a strong religious background (like me) and shared many of my spiritual beliefs.

The night I met him, I was in a daze of adoration, but I felt like something was off about him. The next morning (with a bit more mental clarity), I realized what was wrong. We had spent the entire night talking about him. I knew everything about him and he knew nothing about me.

The only times I had talked about myself were to deflect his obnoxious bragging. Meanwhile, I was desperately missing my ex, who is an exceptional listener and most of the time, an incredibly helpful, agreeable person.

I realized that day that a person’s value as a mate does not depend on their talents and natural qualities like beauty or intelligence or success. Those qualities are desirable in a mate, but they aren’t the type of things that make you want that person to be a part of your life.

People are looking for someone who makes their life better and more enjoyable, who makes them feel better about themselves and not worse. In short, they are looking for someone nice.

Everyone wants a friend, family member, or significant other who makes them feel valuable and important, who supports them and compliments them when they need it the most. You can be the most successful person in every other area of your life, but if you don’t fulfill that basic need of kindness for the people who are closest to you, then you are not valuable to them.

Niceness is never a weakness. It takes a lot of fortitude to be nice even when you don’t feel like it. Nice people are trustworthy and dependable, and those are always strengths, unless you happen to be fighting them to the death…