Why Good Is Good Enough

It’s interesting. I’ve just recently realized something that I think is very important, something that I hadn’t realized was influencing me so much until now. I’m glad it occurred to me, because I think it has changed my life.

Until now, I hadn’t realized that I didn’t believe that being a good person was good enough to be successful in the dating world. This is something that may seem so elemental to some people, but for me, since I had social difficulties as a child, it wasn’t obvious. Looking back, I think that my difficulties led me to believe that some of the other people, who had advantages that I didn’t have at the time, disliked me because of the fact that I didn’t have those advantages. Now, twenty years later, I’m still operating with those handicaps. Tragic.

I realize now that I truly believed, on some level, that a good person is not attractive to a prospective partner unless they are also pretty, or smart, or successful, or any other of the “accepted” shorthands for good-looking in our society. I believed that the dating world operated based on who was more “attractive,” meaning who met more of the qualifications for those shorthands of privilege. As bizarre as it sounds, I believed that a good person who did not meet those qualifications would not be attractive to many people at all.

In point of fact, I believed that good people were not seen as desirable at all – as friends, lovers or even coworkers – unless they had some other “status symbol” trait. I didn’t think that being good counted for much. I now see that this was a direct result of my adolescence, when I was morally more upright than all of the people who surrounded me, yet suffered from the most ostracization, rejection and humiliation.

I now understand that, while status symbols may get you attention, just being yourself will get you all the dates you need and deserve. Being a good person is a great aphrodisiac, both for you and for the prospective partners who are just the right fit. You don’t need all the bells and whistles to be successful in the dating world, so long as you understand that being successful in the dating world doesn’t mean having a date every Friday night, or even every month. All you need to do is shine your own unique starry light out into the world, and be your best you. That will be so attractive to the men you were meant to be with.

In the end, there are only going to be probably three or four guys, maybe six or seven, max (for those of us who get ridiculously lucky), who we really get serious about before we marry, if we do. For some of us, it’s 1 or 2 over the course of our entire lifetimes. For some of us, we’re serial daters until we’re 70. But my point is that for most of us, there will only be a few guys who really touch our hearts. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time for the trophy boyfriend who is there only to hang out with on Friday and Saturday nights and have perfunctory sex with afterwards. I did at one point. But I got bored. I prefer my own company now. And, frankly, I could REALLY do without the perfunctory sex. I require a little more from my sex life now. ;)

Being a good person is enough. It’s enough to fulfill you as a person and make you very attractive to the people you were meant to be with. That’s enough for me. :)