Dating : Dear Mr. Nice Guy, Thank you.

My dating history is nothing to write home about. I had this type that my mom would describe as “a project.” I wanted to be able to fix you and give you everything I thought you needed to thrive. I wanted to hold you down but never hold you back. I wanted to make you into the man I wanted you to be. Most of these projects can be added to my book of failures, each a lesson of its own, from the man above, to teach me that you cannot mold people into being what you want. Your real soulmate won’t need to be changed. That is when you are going to find your person.

A couple of years pass and I am a few years older, I wish I could say wiser, but no. There was always that one boy who was always the bridesmaid and never the bride. Like the shirt that you try on almost every Friday night and yet it never wins to see the events of the evening, he always came in second. He sat next to me in Spanish, never had a girlfriend, and he was the epitome of everything the typical, egotistical teenage girl I was, would decide to just friend-zone. He was what your friends, your teachers, and even your grandma called “the nice guy.” This meant he was a safe option. See, the current, now much older, wiser me, knows that when it comes to falling in love, there is no such thing as safe. NO such thing.

Three years pass and I have fallen l head over heels in love with that once friend-zoned boy from my Spanish class. He became my world and I wanted nothing else but to be with him forever. The fairytale that I tried to create in one of my many projects was finally my reality. I had my life together, or so I thought. I would never have to go on an awkward first date again or join Tinder. I was going to have one hell of a life. Two gorgeous houses, maybe one close to the city and one in the middle of nowhere. My kids would be legacies to an Ivy League education and I would have three dogs and a garden and all those other things you see on HGTV like picket fences and Sunday’s in a hundred blankets and sleepy kids and cartoons. But when it came down to me or a frat boy lifestyle, all it took was a quick little text message to ended my happily ever after. Just like that, it was the nice guy who broke my heart.

After that, getting back into the game wasn’t easy. I graduated from college thinking that I could maybe find my soulmate while grabbing coffee before work or in a crowded bar somewhere on a Saturday night in the city. I had a little bit of positivity left in me to think that the nice guy still existed. I still believed that I could have it all. The picket fence, cartoons on Sundays, and lots of dogs were still in the back of my mind. I landed an amazing job in my field of study, moved to the city with my best friend, and most of my acne cleared up. Life was good. And then it all began again; “so there’s this guy . . .”

I went straight back to the hair of the dog and went for the “safe” option, the next nice guy. At first, I picked just about any other date or chore or event over going out with him. Somehow, I let my guard down and let him come walking in. I didn’t see any of it coming. One minute, I was excited about our potential, cute good morning texts, and inside jokes, and the next minute, I was left heartbroken on Christmas eve, when he never showed up to my grandparent’s house and later told me that he had a nightmare about getting married and it terrified him. Fast forward a few years later, I let him back into my life and the charm continued with usual nice guy things like sleeping with my roommate and then pretending like because he did not have emotions, no one could have feelings about the consequences of his actions.

My point of those stories isn’t to reprimand the decisions of two boys I crossed paths with in my past that weren’t the prince charming of my story. As rude as this line is about to sound, someone’s trash is another person’s treasurer. Simply put, I wasn’t the one. To me, that is all there is it.

So, to the nice guys I mentioned above, I hope you find the girl that forever can say you are her nice guy. I hope you think of me and I hope our time together changed you for the better for her. The relationships I had with you two have given me valuable lessons about what I want out of the man I may marry one day. I still believe that you both will make somebody happy someday, but it will not be me. Sometimes things are just meant to stay in the past.