David McElroy

I just found out that an ex-girlfriend got married — and I’m jealous.

I haven’t spoken with her for a long time. Several years after we split, we reconciled enough to at least be “Facebook friends” for awhile. Then she told me she missed me and wanted to start talking on the phone again. But I said, “No.” Not long after that, she blocked me.

I hadn’t thought about her in a long time. We still have a mutual friend on Facebook and something about her came up there. (I’m not posting on Facebook these days, but I still have to log on every now and then to make changes regarding this page.)

Since I could see her account, she must’ve eventually unblocked me. But then I noticed she had a new last name. And there she was — still as strikingly beautiful as ever — standing in wedding photos with a new man.

I felt a stab of jealousy. Maybe envy is a better word. It’s hard to name it. And it’s even harder to explain it.

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I’m as nice to people as their behavior will allow me to be. But I’m not a “nice guy.”

All my life, I’ve heard men complain that women don’t like them because they’re too nice. In a few rare cases, this is even true. In my early 20s, I dated a woman a few times and things didn’t work out. Her best friend told me the woman was so accustomed to being abused by men that she didn’t know how to accept the decent way in which I treated her.

But in most of the cases when I hear this, I quietly judge things to be very different. These guys might think they’re “nice,” but I can think of better words.

Weak. Uninteresting. Subservient. Even loser.

I have this on my mind lately because of a situation I’ve watched play out involving a man and a woman. The guy is “nice.” The woman is strong-willed and aggressive. She’s the sort who you would see as a winner in all that she does.

He’s crazy about her. She really wants a good relationship with him. He meets a lot of her objective criteria. But she can’t get past something she has trouble putting her finger on.

He’s weak. He’s a “nice guy.” He’s a loser.

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I wrote over the weekend about the folly of making lists of goals that you’re never willing to actually pursue. The comic strip Pearls Before Swine — which I consider one of the most brilliant and insightful pieces of art today — ran something Monday morning that paired perfectly with that. (See the complete strip here.) Goals are great. Some of our goals are really worth chasing. But we need a sense of priorities — and if we don’t have the love we need, all of our goals are useless, even if we achieve every one of them.