Finishing last on September 21, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I’ve been going out with this girl for a while now, and I’ve been hearing rumors that she wants to break up with me. The main problem is that I’ve heard that reason is that she likes this loser who’s known as a “bad boy.” You know the type. Into drugs, sneaking out of the house, heavy drinking, doesn’t say much, doesn’t come to class much… my question is, why do girls always seem to go for the bad guy instead of the good guy?

— Joe

Dear Joe,

I’ve talked about the Nice Guy thing a lot before, cautioning everyone that the opposite of Nice Guy is not Mean Guy; it’s a nice guy who also acts like a boyfriend-guy who’s not “too nice” to ask you out. But about the bad boy thing, yeah, fair enough. For men, it’s the thrill of the chase; for women, it’s the thrill of the … car chase. If you wanna dig into the whole psychology of the phenom, there’s a mildly cheesy but quite informative book called — guess — Bad Boys that can give you some good answers. (If you want to retain any semblance of badness yourself, I’d get a friend to pick it up for you.) I will say this, though: most people assume that we go for the baddies (if/when we do) out of some sort of pathetic zero-self-esteem “Hurt me! Ignore me! You’re right, drugs are more interesting than I am!” impulse. Well, okay, yeah, that’s pretty on the mark. But sometimes, it’s also this misguided faux-noble mission to be the one to — claim to — find the diamond in the roughneck. Or sometimes, you seek out the bad boy to make you look good (though also, granted, dumb) by comparison.

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Studying vibeology on January 26, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I’m a 19-year-old guy who has never had a girlfriend. I admit, I’m a bit dorky. I’m a computer engineer at NJIT, plus I’m short (5′ 5″) and skinny (115 lbs.) and not good-looking. However, I’m a gentleman, caring, kind, decent amount of money, non-drinker, non-smoker, hard worker, and intelligent. Okay. I’m sure I sound like an even bigger loser now, but is there anything I can do to get girls to notice or maybe even like me? What exactly do girls look for in guys? Thanks.

— Leery

 
Dear Leery,

I AM NOT SAYING YOU’RE UNATTRACTIVE. But I’m not gonna lie to you: you are going to have a harder time with Step One (Being Noticed). Societal standards of beauty, yada yada yada. And women — just like men — do tend to notice looks first (except in cyber-encounters, in which case they notice…fonts). AND women — just like men — have been known to do dumb things just because of how they feel about how someone looks.

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