How to Fall in Love With a Nice Person

For some reason, men love cruel women and women love jerks, but for those who want to grow old happily with someone sweet and nurturing, this unhealthy pattern must stop. And once you've mastered the trick of finding nice people sexy, you're halfway there.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Love a cad and you'll spend your nights crying on your pillow. Love a nice guy and you will have someone to bring home to Mom and Dad this Thanksgiving.Love a witch and your self-esteem will plummet; you will second-guess everything you do if you marry a nitpicker. But a nurturing, self-assured, positive and responsive woman will make you feel like a king.

2. Turn your negative thinking off. If you have a 15-year history of dating Miss Wrongs-- the kind that were so wrong your garage was permanently destroyed, your credit ruined, your left pinky bashed and your mother sent to an insane asylum (well, that's pushing it)--you have to believe you are about to turn things around.Turn the mental channel to "Positive." On this channel, only nice women and men will filter through the noise that is your self-doubt.

3. Look beyond the surface.That doesn't mean you are expected to love someone who is hideous looking, but sometimes physical attraction can grow. Confidence in oneself is infinitely more appealing than the insecure gorgeous type who is constantly questioning, "Do these jeans make my rear-end look big?" and so forth.Look so deeply beyond the surface that you ask questions about their life purpose, their goals, their childhood, their secret longings. Don't ask these right upfront, of course, but after a couple months of dating probe beneath the surface. You may find a sparkling gem who's so in tune with you that you wonder where she's been all your life.Even if she is five or 15 pounds heavier than your ideal or he is unemployed, living at home and a college dropout: Do not run away right away if you sense there is a spark. While all of these qualities could be deal-breakers, one mustn't have such a strict set of rules for finding a mate if she wants to enjoy lasting happiness.

4. Ask yourself if you could live without them. If the answer is an easy yes, then by all means, walk away. But if this is the one person who really "gets" you, you don't want to lose that. A supermodel for a night will be someone you'd forget in a year (unless she's deep, smart and also a soulmate), whereas the plain jane teaching assistant at your daughter's school could be the love of your life.

5. Project kindness.If you yourself are nice you should attract nice people. Sounds simple enough, but few of us are always nice. That's an impossible task, but the attempt to be kind should be tantamount in your everyday life. For example, don't just pick up lunch for yourself–ask your office mates if they'd also like something; rub your mother's back when she looks tired; send an extra $20 to your niece "just because."A kind person deserves to have real love sent her way. If you embody the very qualities you seek in a person, you can find that person of your dreams.

Tips & Warnings

• Be nice yourself in order to find someone nice--sounds trite, but it's so true.
• Don't fall for excessive flattery, especially effusive praise that is heaped at us right off the bat. That means the other person wants something from us: sex, money, validation of sexual prowess and so forth. Either that, or the person is so insecure herself that she needs to make instant friends or boyfriends. You do not want that.
• Don't run away from someone just because you don't want to sleep with them on the first date. Allow physical chemistry time to grow. If you still don't want to kiss them by date three, you're right: you should just be friends, if they want that.

Resources

• Movie in which real love wins over superficial attraction