Are Good Guys Extinct?

The other day I was talking to one of my friends and she was telling me her viewpoints on guys and relationships. Listening to her, I was in disbelief of how her views had become so pessimistic but when I thought about it longer I did understand why. In her opinion, all guys are bad and that sometimes very rarely you can find someone who isn’t. I asked her how she explained the fact that I’ve been in a relationship and happy for almost four years with someone who she knows is a good guy. Her explanation was “ya’ll got together when you were younger though. It’s harder to find that now.”

As I dissected her argument, I realized that her viewpoints were all grounded in her experiences and things that she has witnessed, as with most people. I do agree with her that finding a good guy might be hard but I don’t think it’s as impossible as she was making it seem. I know plenty of genuine guys as well as plenty of people in happy relationships. At the same time, my friend who thought this way did so because of what she is surrounded by. She is surrounded by nothing but hood dudes and quite honestly that’s self explanatory. Guys that she has dealt with as well as a lot of her friends have been in this environment which I think more than contributes to their behavior. Maybe if she was surrounded by a more diverse group of men, her opinion wouldn’t be so one-sided and pessimistic. I just wonder how she can judge “all guys” when all she knows is the same guys. I told her that once she breaks out of that environment and starts to meet different groups of people she’ll reevaluate her views. She just kept shooting that down and saying that REAL good guys don’t exist because all the guys she met who told her they were different turned out to be the same. My reply to that is, nobody who really is “different” has to stress how different they are, they just are and that was her mistake in believing them. Her mentality on the extinction of good guys is comparable to looking at a rose bush. Just because one rose bush has more thorns than roses doesn’t mean that if you go to a different bush, there won’t be more roses than thorns because different environments result in different situations.

Although I’ve watched even as some of my other friends struggle through relationship problems, I refuse to believe her viewpoint that “good guys” are obsolete. As I explained to another one of my friends, a “good guy” can be defined as a genuine nice guy. He is somebody who isn’t trying to play around with people’s feelings, who’s overall intentions are good and honest and who doesn’t act as the typical guy. Good guys don’t wow you with their words, but they wow you with their actions. I see these guys as the Derwin Davis’s of the world (The Game) who are genuine at heart and although they may mess up because all humans are flawed, they stay true to their humility and honesty as well as their good intentions. Am I wrong for thinking this exists? I don’t think so because I think I’ve got it. I was listening to a song by Lyfe Jennings and he said “be the person you want to find. Don’t be a penny out here looking for a dime,” and I think that statement underlines what might be the problem for many in finding a “good guy.” This might not be the most original of topics. I’m pretty sure all the single women stuck idolizing sex in the city and becoming the characters that make up “he’s not that into you” have debated this forever. However, my friend’s attitude towards the whole subject just had me thinking. Granted we’re young, but I wonder if she thinks it’s going to get any better in the future. Instead of thinking there’s nothing out there because there isn’t on her beach, she needs to dig through the sand with her metal detector to find some treasure on a different island.