Nice guy? Yes. Finishing last? No.

Been reading a lot of blogs lately dealing with nice guys finishing last, etc. "Why is it?" people ask. Well, speaking as a nice guy, I see three factors in this perception.

First, The Darwin Excuse: Bad guys do what it takes to win. . This is the most commonly cited reason. It's a no-brainer; the guy who puts with the fewest limits on his behavior has the most options to get ahead.

Second (I hear this one talked about once in awhile), nice guys are often passive. Many equate "niceness" with "selflessness", which has some merit. Some. ( I would argue "empathy" is the more important characteristic, though there may be some connection between that and selflessness.) Many, "nice guys", however, seem to extrapolate from this that they should have as little will of their own as possible. The result of such thinking is a person with no sense of self, and no confidence in his own opinions and desires.

But I think there's another important and much less-discussed factor. It comes of nice guys letting others set the win conditions. Then, should they fail to achieve the results that the bad guys did, they think they are losers, because they ignore what they have achieved -- usually, the things that were more important to them.

Take me. I could make a lot more money if I had put my oldest in kindergarten and her sister in daycare and worked a full-time job. I'd have a bunch more stuff, a bigger bank account, I'd have time to go out to a bar more often and more time to blog. Hell, if I'd put off having kids entirely, I could have worked full time the last 6 years and saved up quite a wad by now -- and still has a bunch of stuff and taken some trips to Iceland, or whatever. Could have gotten my degree in Massage Therapy and started loosening muscles for a living. Maybe by now I'd be enjoying a no-strings sexual relationship with that 20-year-old hand model. But I'm not.

So have I come in last?

No. I don't want that. I mean, I someone handed most of that to me, I'd smile and say a hearty "Thanks!". But given the choice, what I have is the result I want. That's why I did it this way. Disregarding genuine mistakes, of course, but that's nothing to do with being nice or not.

This doesn't, by the way, mean that those who choose differently than I did are not nice people; I'm not trying to say that my way is better, just better for me. Some people do not particularly want have kids, or to work from home, or whatever. These people then typically go out and accomplish what they want more, which often (though of course not always) involves making more money, or having more time to pursue leisure, artistic or entrepreneurial dreams.

That's my point. Because, meanwhile, people who do the things necessary to achieve different things (the life they prefer) often look upon the former groups' achievements as things they "sacrificed" -- when the fact is, they were simply second-best, and therefore rejected.

It's the problem with "The American Dream"; We're all told what we "should" want, so when we "fail" we feel bad, even when we didn't really want it.