By Mr. Newman
A few weeks ago, I overheard some of my newspaper students chatting about a guy, and one of them said, “He’s too nice.” I asked what she meant, and for ten minutes we talked about what high school students are looking for in a significant other.
I had flashbacks to high school, where I do believe I fell into the “too nice” category. Yes, I had a girlfriend my senior year who appreciated my niceness, my sense of humor, and my passable voice when I was inexplicably cast as the lead in the spring musical.
But my memories of college dating (which go back over thirty years now) are primarily defined by giving flowers too soon or not waiting long enough to call after the first date. At the time, I thought that those kinds of romantic gestures would be appreciated. Perhaps I had seen “Say Anything” too many times. I was never going to be a game player, but perhaps I needed to be a little more chill. Then again, while I would have sworn to you I wanted to be in a committed relationship, evidence suggested I was actually attracted to people who didn’t want that, because I wasn’t ready for one.
Because here’s the key data point: I met the woman I’ve been married to for thirty years when I was a junior in college. She wanted to date me. She would have been happy to receive flowers and phone calls. But maybe she was “too nice.” Maybe I was actually more complicated than I thought I was. And so we remained friends for a year before I finally got my act together.
Based on the conversation with my students and my personal recollections, I decided to add two questions to the Valentine’s Day survey:
1) What are you looking for in a boyfriend/girlfriend in high school?
2) What do you think you’ll want in a husband/wife/long-term partner?
Responses fell into a 1-5 range, where 1 is a “Complicated, Madness-Provoking Person Who Will Keep You On Your Toes” and 5 is a “A Truly Nice, Uncomplicated, Stable Person.”
The results are not surprising: in high school, most students seek greater unpredictability, but when they think about the future, they want to marry someone more stable.
There’s quite a shift from 3s and 4s on question 1 to 4s and 5s on question 2. About 12 students, who said they’re attracted to a 1 or a 2–in other words, a real piece of work–know they’ll be seeking calmer waters as they get older and are ready for, to borrow from the dog rescue vernacular, their forever person.
I figured I’d chat with some students to learn more about this “too nice” issue, as well as some faculty who can reflect on how they’ve evolved since high school.
Junior Valeria Benitez was at the epicenter of the “Too Nice” conversation that day. She said she likes people with an edge. Her good friend Bridget Valls (11) chimed in, noting that Valeria likes “bad boys.” She wants someone “who will ignore her…who will playfight. He’s mean and sarcastic like Rodrick from Diary of a Wimpy Kid. That’s her type,” Bridget said.
As if to confirm the point, Valeria said the last guy she fell in love with “stole my wifi box. He ripped out the cords.” She did not seem to hold this against him, perhaps because he plays lacrosse. “A guy I’m into has to play football, lacrosse, or baseball. No water polo or soccer,” she said.
When I asked her if she was dating anyone now, she said no. “I was talking to someone,” she said, “but he was too nice, so I ghosted him.”
Paradoxically, while she doesn’t want a guy texting her “to ask how my day was,” she said she always responds to people’s texts. She believes she would be a good girlfriend, and should she get to date one of those magical laxbros, she “would go to his lacrosse games.”
She was fully aware of the contradiction here: “I’m more into golden retriever-black cat energy. And he would be the black cat.”
Senior Khylan Woodson has also, historically, been attracted to people “who keep me on my toes.” He finds that more interesting. And he knows that a person interested in him would also have to be ready for “a little bit of a ride.”
But apparently, he’s changed some over his high school years. “I used to be more of a wild person,” he told me, “and I’ve started to settle down.” Case in point: he’s “talking” to someone right now, who he described as “more chill.” He actually finds that quite surprising. “I typically like people that don’t just settle instantly. The one I’m talking to is a healthy mix of both,” he said.
The “mix” of stability and unpredictability can be hard to calibrate in a relationship. Senior Gunner Jones told me he likes a “little bit crazier and more complicated,” but he acknowledged it can be annoying to be the person in the relationship with someone like that. “The fun is more fun, but the bad is worse,” he said. “You get hooked on how good the good is.”
Not everyone is looking to navigate these challenges. Sophomore Ella Harvey said friends and family are more important to her right now than any potential relationship. “Sometimes I think it would be so fun to have a boyfriend,” she said. “But other times it weirds me out.”
If she were dating someone, she wouldn’t want them to be complicated. She’d be happy to be the focus of their attention. “I want them to be engaged with me, not on their phones all the time,” she said. And she’s too busy for mind games. “If they can’t respond to texts, how are they going to respond to anything else?” she wondered.
Like Ella, junior Maiya Tomlin leans toward other priorities besides dating. “It’s not ideal right now because I’m too busy and I’m not consistent enough for someone else,” she said. But this is a feature of her life rather than a bug. She told me she loves change and hates routine, and she doesn’t want someone else’s routines to bore her. “Go on some sidequests with your friends and come back with stories,” she offered as advice to potential boyfriends. “Or go on sidequests with me.”
She knows she might be a little tough for a guy looking for predictability. She said she takes forever to respond to texts. “It bothers a lot of my friends,” she said, “so it would potentially bother a boyfriend.”
All of these charmingly self-aware students acknowledged that their priorities might shift as they get older.
Gunner said he wants to marry someone “who is locked in.” Khylan doesn’t even have to look that far ahead to know he doesn’t want to be with someone who’s high-maintenance. “The wild side was more enticing when I was younger,” he said, “but I’ve started to want to settle down more.” For example, the person he’s talking to now is going to the same college, and “we both think we’re going to keep going.”
Valeria, who seemed unperturbed by a dude stealing her Wi-Fi router, admitted she will one day want a more stable guy who answers his texts and is nicer. But for now, “I want the suspense,” she said. Only black cats need apply.
Ella Harvey anticipated desiring balance. “He can go golf on the weekends,” she said. “But at the end of the day, he should be home with me and our dog and kids.” She knows it won’t be easy, perfect, and “heavenly” all the time, but it’s essential to her that her partner is “present.” Before settling down with her big family, canines, and golf clubs, she’s looking forward to traveling with her partner in their mid-20s.
Maiya also wants time to explore the world and figure herself out. She’s a huge Sex and the City fan, and her dream after watching the show is “graduating from college and running around New York and becoming my own person and meeting a ton of people and making good friends and then after all of my shenanigans potentially settle down.” What attributes must he have? “Tall, funny, smart,” she said.
But as if to prove how far off all that is, Maiya talked about Carrie Bradshaw, the central character of Sex and the City, and the two main objects of her affection: Aidan Shaw, the stable, attractive, furniture-making nice guy, and Mr. Big, the elusive, complicated financier. Maiya said that Aidan was cute at first and then got boring. “I understood Carrie,” she said, “Unfortunately, I would be drawn to someone like Mr. Big.”
All of this is hypothetical for the students, so I spoke with three faculty members for whom long-term relationships and marriage are very real. I wanted to know what they were like in high school, who they were drawn to, and how that may have evolved as they became adults.
Director of Attendance Ms. Gilmore said that when she attended high school here at Lovett (she was my advisee, BTW, from 2003-7), it was all about looks for her. She leaned toward liking people who were more stable. “I was not looking to fix anyone or ride the crazy train,” she said.
While she admitted she wasn’t the best version of herself, she said she was always kind, noting that she was voted homecoming queen.
Dean Howell was looking for someone who was a lot of fun and funny in high school. Also smart and super laid back. He smirked, saying he was always wondering, “Where is the girl version of me?” He described his high school self as “age appropriate.” He was a class clown and could be a little annoying sometimes. Still, while he joked around a lot, he said he was ultimately a “pretty innocent guy.”
And the youngest of the bunch, English teacher Mr. Nascimento, said his high school self was interested in someone on the “nicer side of things.” In ninth grade, he dated someone on the wilder side, who wanted to skip class and go out to eat. “Every once in a while I’d go,” he said. “But I was academically focused.”
That relationship ended when he went to boarding school the next year.
It was in boarding school that he got to live out his Love and Basketball movie fantasy. From the first time he saw her dribbling a basketball on the way to the gym, there were sparks. “She was very kind,” he said. “We were always in the gym.”
But he wasn’t quite ready for a serious relationship. He’d repeated a grade in elementary school, and entered boarding school as a ninth grader, so he was two years older than all of the other boys. He had the height, muscles, and maturity that went along with that. “I was popular with the upperclassmen,” he said, with sincere humility.
While he was trying to keep his romantic options open, he also noted that he was raised by his grandmother, who taught him to understand how social power can lead you to mess things up. So he said he would “fall under the category of being too nice.”
Niceness (and presumably height, muscles, and maturity) paid off when he finally started dating the basketball player at the end of freshman year, and they stayed together until graduation, when they broke up.
In college, he followed a fairly similar pattern. He met someone early on. She played softball, and he played basketball. However, because he’d just been in a long relationship, he wasn’t sure he wanted another one; he didn’t want to wonder “What if?” He once again drew on his grandmother’s advice and was honest with her about that. So they didn’t date in college.
“She was patient,” he said.
There turned out to be great wisdom, however unintentional, in this patience. Because during those college years, they were good friends, establishing “an emotional relationship” which became the foundation for what they would later share.
Six months after college graduation, they finally committed to each other. “It took her getting a boyfriend [for me] to decide, ‘Uh, I’m not gonna let that one go,’” he said.
It took some time for all of the adults I spoke with to find themselves and their romantic footing.
“At the ripe age of 25, I had sworn off dating,” Ms. Gilmore said. Dating apps were on the rise, and it was really stressing her out. She had gone out with a handful of guys and said she had a tall order to fill: a kind, hardworking person. She found that in the man she’s been married to for eight years. (“It also helps that my husband is a smoke show,” she said, grinning.)
It was the relationship itself that carried her forward and enabled her to grow as an individual and as part of a couple. “My relationship helped round me out from my 25-year-old self,” she said.
Mr. Howell and his wife Jheanelle started dating at 23. He said he’d evolved from wanting the female version of himself to almost the exact opposite.
“She keeps me on my toes,” he said. “There’s a healthy degree of anxiety.” She offers what he described as “constructive criticism of me and everything, but it’s felt most poignantly with myself.”
Like Ms. Gilmore, Mr. Howell has discovered a lot about himself as a partner by being one. For example, having lived far apart from each other early in the relationship, he “learned the importance of communication.”
And I suppose that’s really all anyone can ask of a partner, no matter how old we are: a basic level of openness, a willingness to learn. We might care about height and humor, about football skills and financial prowess, but the survey data and interviews suggest that, while we might not be ready for a serious relationship in high school, when we are, we want a certain amount of stability. That doesn’t mean there isn’t always room for surprise, for the unexpected, for growth and change, for a little wildness. But a basic level of kindness, of “niceness,” is necessary to make all of it–the good AND the bad–work.
Still, I do have to confirm something Ms. Gilmore said. It is indeed an added benefit when you believe your partner is a “smokeshow.”
