Why Nice Guys Finish Last – Finale

Going out on dates with EA was cool. I liked that he was always well behaved, showing me that he was nothin less than a gentleman. He held all of the doors, he paid for the dates, he didn’t mind driving and he always checked up on me throughout the day, even when he was busy. Everything was going so well. It was until the weekend of Valentines Day that I started feeling like our chemistry wasn’t as strong as he believed it was. The pressure that he was applying was cool but here I was feeling like it was a little too much pressure. I wanted things to feel more natural and less forced…

The Valentines Date

“You ready for tomorrow? I just can’t wait to see the look on your face when we get there.” That was how our conversation started on Friday night. Edible Arrangement was so ecstatic about Saturday that he probably didn’t even sleep. He wanted to give me a wakeup call and everything. “Yes, I’m excited, I’ve been still trying to figure out why we couldn’t go the last time…because the ground was wet”, I said with a snicker in my voice. Whatever it was, I knew he had put a lot of thought into it and so that alone had me excited. I offered to drive on this date because he drove the last two dates we went on. We were up good and early Saturday. I mean we had to be at this place by 11am. He wanted to leave at 10am just to be on time. EA couldn’t tell me how far we had to go so, I had to go with whatever he said. And for once, I was actually on time for something lol.

I picked him up at 10am as agreed and we headed towards an area that seemed like Columbia. It was far as hell. I mean this Shell gas station didn’t even have UTZ salt & vinegar chips for sale, type of far. We were chillen though, I had on my Hood RiCH playlist the whole way. He was geeked when Boosie came on. “I’m gon have to get some of these songs up off you“, he said. Every girl knows that feeling when a dude think you have good taste in music. We’re usually the ones Shazaming and stealing songs from them discreetly lol.

I remember us driving through an area that was super rural. It was little white wooden fences around the yards of houses, and it appeared as though people took care of their grass. There was no type of city life where we were headed. I kept thinking of where we could’ve possibly been going. Then it came to me, “we’re going horseback riding!”, I blurted out. I was cheesing because I knew I was right. If you follow me on ig, you know what that cheese looks like.

He was laughing because he knew that I knew that I had it figured out. And I was excited. He laughed the rest of the ride there pretty much. I can’t lie though I got a little nervous because again, it was something I had not done before. In fact, neither one of us had done it before. I liked that he thought outside of the box. EA strikes again. As soon as we pulled into the driveway of where the horseback riding was taking place, EA started cracking jokes. “You see that one right there, I’m gonna get that horse right there, the black and white one. He looks like a G like me”, he said. “You gonna get that white one right there and he look slow”, he continued. “Now watch you get the slowest horse since you’re talking about me”, I said with a laugh in my voice.

When we finally parked at the stable, it was animals everywhere. We were on a real farm lol. It was chickens, goats and cats just walking around minding their business. Those animals were so free-willed that they didn’t budge when I tried to park my car. It was tight. We got our helmets and were then waiting to be matched with our horses. Low and behold, Edible Arrangement’s horse was named Grits. Grits was white and beige and total opposite of the horse he wanted. He looked like he was over the whole tour before we even got started. Grits coat was so beige that it looked like he was balding. That’s how light the color of his coat was. Now my horse on the other hand, her name was Cinnamon. And Cinnamon was sooo cute. She was brown, well you know like cinnamon. She had a black mane with white on her feet. I was pressed to have a brown horse because black lives matter. I know it has nothin to do with this story, but I just thought that I should mention that small detail. There was a couple there doing the horseback riding with us. It was cool that it became a group thing although we didn’t know the other people.

This date was actually the funniest one we had been on by far. Grits was an aggressive horse; I mean just rude lol! The tour guides gave us instructions on how to navigate our horses and let me tell you, Grits just wasn’t having it. From the moment we started the tour he did not want to be bothered. He didn’t listen to Edible Arrangements at all and when the tour guides were having us line up for the tour, Grits low key went smack at one of the other horses that was chilling off to the side, WHILE EA was still on him. Man, I was dying laughing because Grits was just a trip. While we were touring through the woods, he was the slowest one. He took his precious time on the trial. The funniest part of the tour was when we had to learn how to make the horses jog. Edible Arrangements tried to play big, but I knew he was scared as hell lol. The couple on the tour with us seemed like the pros but me and EA, man we were truly doing bad as a unit lol. The guy with the couple, I’ll call him John, was in the front of our line. I was second, Boo was third who was the girlfriend of John and then there was Edible Arrangements and Grits. EA and Grits were sooo far behind us because Grits was taking his time, we had to stop several times for them to catch up. They never did. I promise the tour guide instructor lady spent majority of the tour yelling for EA and Grits to “come on” and “speed up”. You see here’s the thing, EA was well mannered, but he was low key hood, af. All I could hear was him yelling, “Man Grits what the f*ck is you doin!” and “Man Grits go head with that bullsh*t”, as we continued the trial. I couldn’t believe Grits was really going like that. I cannot stress enough that I was laughing the entire time lol. Even John and Boo was laughing with me. Our tour guide was irritated though, and I felt bad lol. Edible Arrangements must’ve imagined that being romantic, but it turned out to be freakin hilarious. I loved it.

After we left from horseback riding, we went out to eat. Here’s where the hood in EA really kicks in. We decided to go to PF Chang’s because he had never eaten there before. We had a moment where he was trying to order some stuff off the menu and even though he knew how to pronounce it, he did not know what he was ordering. I found it funny, but I can’t lie, I was a little thrown off. And I tried not to be embarrassed about it. I honestly never figured out if I was embarrassed lol. Anyways, we enjoyed our lunch but like our other dates we didn’t talk much. He spent most of the time watching a YouTube video about this guy who mocks people by asking them a thousand sarcastic questions and then yelling “amazing” after they responded lol. He wanted me to find it funny and I just didn’t, it felt awkward lol. Well, in exchange for the wonderful gifts and dates that he had taken me on, I decided I wanted to treat him to something in return. After we ate lunch, we decided to walk around Columbia mall. We ended up in Nordys (Nordstrom’s) because I wanted to buy EA some cologne to show my appreciation for everything that he had been doing. It wasn’t overdoing it and it wasn’t something too minimal either. Now the catch to this is: as a woman, I loveeee when a man smells good, it doesn’t even have to be in a sexual way. I wanted to want to be around EA more, so I figured that if I bought him something that he liked and that also smelled good, we’d both be happy. I don’t know, I was trying to be on some aroma therapy type shit. Needless to say, he absolutely adored the cologne and he had the biggest smile on his face. I felt good about it too. Mission accomplished. We continued walking through the mall and started to walk by a jewelry store. I noticed EA began to slow up and so I did too. “Hold on for a second, I want to look at something”, he said. Now Edible Arrangements had mentioned to me how one of his best friends was looking to propose to his wife, so I was assuming that this was the ordeal of the whole gazing at the ring thing. “You looking for stuff to help your best friend?”, I asked. “Naw, I might need one of these real soon and I need to be ready”, he responded. Now I’m going to be honest. I ain’t know what to think in this moment. Like what? I wanted to call up my gang so quick for a family meeting! Bad assumption? Maybe. But I felt a lil thrown off with that. All I could think was, this… is… a lot. Could it have been a lack of my maturity in the moment? I’m not sure. But I promise I did not think for a split second that that moment was something to feel smitten about. I just wanted things to feel more natural.

Even after that though, here I was again having a moment where I felt like something was being forced.  That something was probably the connection…

Now I’m stuck. Sorting through my thoughts. I saw all of the things that I liked in Edible Arrangements and plus, I had already told my gang and my girls’ bout him, so I wanted to be somethin. I kept thinking to myself, he’s doing everything a girl would want him to, do I like him? What do I like about him? Is what I like about him enough to continue seeing him?

Again, I liked everything he did for me, but I wanted to like him for more than what he could do. I wanted to enjoy his company when we weren’t doing anything at all. So, in response to what happened to Edible Arrangements I will say this:

 

 

Nice guys finish last because they focus on trying to make so much of a good impression that they compromise themselves. Think about it. There was no time in my experience with Edible Arrangements did I feel that I was taking his kindness for granted. Everything that he offered to me was to show me that he was a real man and that he could afford a lifestyle that he assumed I was living. He was doing it all to be kind, to win me. There were plenty times where he complained about his finances, but he never let me turn down a date. He just did, because he thought that was what I wanted and because he felt that I deserved that. To say no to the things he was offering was offensive to him. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated that he thought that highly of me however, it would have been nice to see him put himself first. If you’ve read the first segment of Why Nice Guys Finish Last, we were still in the process of getting to know one another and to see him putting me first so early on was much of a turnoff. It sounds crazy because why wouldn’t a female want a man who puts her first? It’s because he would be expecting the same thing from me and I wasn’t there with him yet. Remember our initial conversation, neither of us were looking for anything serious. If he was looking for something serious, then the pressure would have made sense. One thing about life is that everything comes with a price, whether you pay now or later.

Say No to Being a Yes Man

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had a share of guys who were superrr nice. I mean they literally had no mean bone in their body. But in the words of my cuz Big E, every dude has to have some coldness to him. I wish they understood that it’s okay to say no, I can’t this time, I’m unable to do this but I can do that, and even maybe next time. It’s more about the guy sticking up for himself, standing up for himself and protecting himself. Can’t speak for all females but nobody wants to date a pushover or someone who just doesn’t speak up. There’s a lot of us who’d like a guy to stand firm on what he believes in. It doesn’t make you less of a man or the bad guy if what we want is more than what you can offer. Some of us need someone who can take control of a situation. I look at it in the sense of this: you tell an unappreciative person yes so much that the first no wouldn’t even get taken seriously. If you’re a yes man all the time, how would we be encouraging and promoting growth amongst each other?

There’s significance in the statement I just made. See, there’s a lot of guys who have this Edible Arrangements mentality, literally lol, and want to spoil a lady right out of the gate. They don’t even know if the lady is into them as much as he’s into her just yet. I know a lot of people who feel that if you and the person you’re dating aren’t on the same page then you should cut them back. Edible Arrangements will never understand that I did him the favor by doing just that. Imagine if I had wrote this months down the line mentioning how I continued to see him despite not knowing how I really felt about him, I’d be labeled a gold digger and a user likely because I lead him on to believe I was interested in him. The guys that I’ve come across have never looked at me making a decision like that as me doing what was best for them, they sometimes only look at all the work that they’ve put in trying to make that big impression, nothing more. To them the work was for nothing and to them, they just took a L. Fellas that L ain’t always a L, it gives you the time and space to actually go after the person who’d be just as into you, as you are to them. Worry less about whether yall will vibe and be the vibe! To really connect with a person, all you need is some bomb ass conversation, mark my words.

Talk the Talk

I think one of the key components, however, is mainly about knowing how to have a conversation. You see, conversation for some and me personally, is the heart of the friendship/relationship. Edible Arrangements took me on the BEST dates. In one day, he managed to take me to get some authentic homemade juices, surprised me with brunch at Soho and to Autobahn go kart racing. Another date we went to the movies, horseback riding and to lunch. Never have I experienced hours’ worth of fun filled activities in one day with a guy before. It was so amazing to experience it but no matter how many dates we went on in one day, I found myself longing for the simplicity of a conversation. A lot of yall lack the key component to locking a girl in when you first meet her and that is mental stimulation.

A man who thinks providing for a woman is strictly financial, doesn’t know how to provide at all.

In shorter words: a lot of yall think that all you need to do is look good and have money in order to make a chic like you. Take her on a lot of dates and spoil her: that’s what every female wants. WRONG AF. I blame tv and movies for that. While that may be halfway true, there are some chicks around who are just infatuated with an intellectual conversation. That is simply just engaging in the exchange of deep dialogue. Some of yall bore the f*ck out of us with the wyd and how was your day texts every day. Even some of the good morning texts become annoying after a while. Again, this is me personally, yes it could be a person letting you know they’re thinking about you but, everyday gets to be too repetitive in my opinion. I literally was talking (conversing because I hate saying I “talk” to someone) to this one dude for maybe 4 to 5 months. He deadass texted me: good morning, wyd, what’s for lunch, how was your day, and what’s for dinner every single day at the same damn time. Imagine how irritating that can be and I’m not even exaggerating. What starts out seeming sweet and thoughtful quickly becomes redundant and boring. Even if you attempt to try something different, reverting to the same boring texts is like…death lol. I remember I was the one doing the pursing one time back in like 2015. I texted this guy good morning and how are you every morning, thinking I was doing something cute. That was until one day, I texted him good morning and he responded: good morning, fine, before I could even ask how are you. I immediately got the hint, that shit is boring lol. I don’t know about other females, but it definitely makes me think you’d just be a boring person in general. DO your best, to never let a female be able to know what you’re going to say before you say it. Yes, we do have to meet yall halfway with the conversation, I get that. However, take the initiative to learn what those her triggers are, even if it’s about food. By triggers I mean look for the things that makes her spark when y’all are conversing. Does she love history? You figured out her favorite tv show? Whatever! You figure out those triggers and build off them. You may not be as interested sometimes and that’s alright, you’re still human. A lot of times we don’t be interested in a lot of things ourselves but if the conversation is cool, we’d be willing to engage and learn. Deep conversations will take you a lot further than what you may think. Need help with some topics to discuss? Use social media! My friends and I are always talking about things we see on the internet, funny, sad and wild. We debate and we laugh. You can always recycle topics you find and just converse. Be open and free to share your opinions. You’d be surprised at how much you can learn about a person and how their mind works by discussing random topics amongst one another. The whole purpose is to just engage, enjoy the dialogue and get to know each other. It doesn’t even require you to think about it too much, just keep it simple and discuss the things you like as an individual. That requires nothing but to genuinely and authentically be yourself.

Be Yourself

Fellas, have you ever been so engulfed in a female that you did everything in your power to get her to like you? Felt like a job didn’t it? I’ve come across some guys that have tried to play the role as the perfect guy for me as if I myself am perfect. I can’t speak for all females, but like I’ve always told my brothers: you must unapologetically be you and make positive adjustments where necessary. It feels really awkward when someone is trying too hard or just trying to be someone that they’re not. We can tell when this is happening. Again, not speaking for us all but I feel like we’d prefer someone who has their own opinions, their own taste in things, their own interest and someone who can think for themselves. It’s fun meeting someone new and being introduced to their world. It’s even fun to debate certain things, in a friendly way of course. That fun is snatched away though, when the other person is persistent in agreeing with everything we say. Whether or not I’ve always agreed or liked the same things as the guy I was in the process of getting to know, if I liked him, I liked him. We did not always share the same interest, plus I’d likely be more interested in his values and his ideas about respect, black culture and other subjects. If I didn’t vibe well with them or lost interest, it would be what it was. Any female that really wanna fuck with you will do so regardless of what you into and what you may have going on in your personal life. I have it understood now that men are naturally hunters and they are first attracted to any woman that looks good to them. That’s fine. But when getting to know someone beyond the surface from my personal experiences, I’ve noticed that some guys will attempt at getting to know me however, they’re solely just trying to date me based on my appearance. “I’ve never talked to a girl with locs before”, they’d say. It’s not to say I don’t appreciate being attractive, but my looks are not my best traits. Therefore, to me for them to focus on my appearance made them naive as hell. Some of yall need to stop what you doing and go back and read Never Trust A Big Butt & A Smile. I’m not saying go out here and disrespect any female that you find interest in. Some of yall will interpret all of what I am saying to say that females just want to deal with “bad guys” or men who dog them out. I am definitely not saying either one or I’d never encourage that either. I just believe that there is a such thing in trying to be the perfect guy for a female who may not be deserving of everything that you have to offer. You must know what you’re dealing with and falling for a female because of her appearance alone will walk you straight to a danger zone. Some of us wanna be a super girlfriend and help a dude out when he down, believe it or not. But that comes from knowing a person situation and seeing that he’s trying to change things, not waiting for someone to change things for him. Some of us want to be spoiled and showered with attention and/or gifts. Some of us are down to earth and would be happy with a bouquet of buffalo wings. You have to truly get to know the female you are pursuing and use what you know as ammo, feed off that energy. Remember, it’s natural for men to pursue, so when you’re going after a female you have to make sure that energy that you’re putting out is reciprocated. Period. When you find the match, stay patient! Pace yourself while on the journey of getting to know her. In the words of Nip, it’s a marathon not a sprint. 

Stay In Your Lane

Running your sprint may make you a little anxious. You may low key be feeling her a lot and worried about if it’s too soon. So now you get to trippin. Too many times I have heard guys tell me that they don’t chase females and that they know that I got a lot of n*ggas. Let me just take the time out to express how incredibly annoying that is lol. It’s pretty much an automatic turnoff. How do you get the female you want if you’re constantly worrying about what she’s doing as a SINGLE female? If she’s attractive, there’s a possibility of other friends. Possibility because there are some of us who are content with being alone. Saying that to say it don’t mean that the ladies who do have male friends are going out with all of them for a free meal. We appreciate the thought don’t get me wrong, but nobody tells yall to offer to take us out to eat every chance you get so quit that analogy. It simply means that she is exercising her right to date who she wants. What would her having male friends outside of you have to do with you? Your sprint has to include you staying in your lane. To keep bringing up the fact that you don’t do chasing and whether she deals with other males could come off as being insecure. Sure, we all have things we are insecure about, but females just as well as males like someone who is confident in who they are. If you go at a female that you’re interested in and you worried about how you’d look chasing her, just stay away from her bro. You may not be the type for her. You’d be saving yourself from your own stress lol. To elaborate, I’ve always kept the thought of two things about myself: 1. what comes easy isn’t worth having and 2. if it were easy to get me, then everybody would be able to say they had me. You can’t see no competition when you going after a lady you want. You just literally have to know what you’re dealing with because some of us have deal breakers, you should have some too. Don’t look at her Instagram page and make any assumptions about who you think she is because who she presents herself to be is just what she wants the world to see. The same way you probably manage your social media accounts is the same way she’s managing hers. I had a group of male friends tell me they’d never go at a female who on Instagram appears to have her life together because it looks like she travels all the time and appear to have money. Yeah, some of us do got a bag of our own but that don’t completely mean she’s out of your league. Don’t do yourself a disservice just because of what you see. And this can go either way meaning you see a fine ass female and in pursuit of her because of how she looks, you assume is perfect; the same applies with what you see on these networking sites. Nobody ever knows what anybody is going through on the other sides of our phones. Realistically speaking we all want to look sweet, attractive and like we got it going on. But let’s be real, ain’t nobody really doin bad on social media. Therefore, I always stress how important it is to get to know people beyond the surface.

Nice Guys vs Bad Guys

It was important to me to really home in on this subject this time around. I’ve met all kinds of guys and no matter the age, size, complexion and occupation, they’ve all had everything above in common. I’ve met some guys with whom I shared a great connection with yet sabotaged the friendship before it could grow into something deep; all because they got focused or distracted in other words, by the wrong thing. This isn’t to say that all the things that I’ve mentioned only applies to males, it certainly applies to us females as well. But everyone has been asking me for weeks, what happened to Edible Arrangements? The truth is, I slowed walked it, he didn’t. His actions did not exactly add up to not looking for anything serious. I did find interest in EA though, because he stood for what he believed in. He was caring and he always made sure I was okay. He was a hard-worker and he loved his daughter. We had fun together but on all our dates, I still felt like I was by myself sometimes. If he had been able to just simply converse with me and connect with me on a deeper level, he would’ve made it. One time we went out to eat, I tried to initiate conversation about something, and he was unable to make the connection. It was in that very moment that I felt like my belief about no chemistry was true. I found myself wanting to be with my gang because, we’re always talking about trending topics. He just couldn’t do it. I would’ve been good on all the dates if our time spent involved the simplicity of engaging in conversation. That’s important to me. That was also said upfront. And that’s what I mean about getting to know the female that you’re pursing. Edible Arrangements had saw me two times from July 2018 to January 2019, when he first sent me that edible arrangement (lol). Could he had been that mesmerized by my appearance? I don’t truly know. But if he had been paying attention, he would have known that all the dates would not have amounted up to those conversations I desired to have.

With all that being said, I don’t know if I believe in the good guy/bad guy theory. Bad guys to me have that title for two reasons: they into some shit and they seem to be fun. The fun in reality is just a thrill to us. Every street dude is not one who will dog you out or disrespect you. Every “nice guy” isn’t the same person throughout the entire relationship. I personally think every guy is a nice guy until his first real heartbreak. If he gets hurt enough, he becomes a savage. Just my opinion. Every man will soften up or in other words, go sweet on a female that they’re really interested in. Being nice to a girl alone just isn’t enough to bag her though, just keep that in mind. Men are men, simple. Some have different attitudes and motives than others. At the end of the day, all men have animalistic instincts, it just depends on their discipline. Nobody can debate this to me. Whether you’re in the streets or working a solid 9 to 5, if you like NBA 2K or if you spend all your time watching anime, you’ve likely been on both sides of the spectrum of either being pursued or doing the pursuing. On either side, before you start cashing into a person, get to know them first. Make sure you’ll see a return on that investment.

Before I duck off on yall, I’m going to leave on the note that sometimes fellas, it’s not yall. It’s us. And I’m just being real. There’s a lot of us that are broken and can’t even see how our behavior is a factor for why things don’ work out. You can get into the finale of Never Trust A Big Butt & A Smile if you’d like to read about how I f*cked up a good thing before. I’ve been told about myself before and I’ll just say that I am far from perfect. I’d love to go into more detail about some of my toxic behaviors but yall got some homework to do first. See yall in a few weeks.