Laura

Laura was a small girl with small girl energy. A shrew. Painfully nice. Being so unrelentingly nice and pleasant and accommodating can seem endearing at first until you turn that stone over and uncover the complete lack of self-esteem that affords someone these qualities.

I used to be nice. Too nice to pursue what I wanted if it meant inconveniencing anyone in any way at all because I needed everyone to like me because I was insecure. I was absolutely miserable. 

I think I eventually realized that nobody’s keeping score in this world and there’s probably no prize at the end for being the nicest, most like-able guy who has ever lived. 

And that it’s okay to make people feel uncomfortable. We’re not supposed to be comfortable all the time. A lot of people, especially female people, actually like it when you make them kind of uncomfortable -- it makes them feel alive. 

Anyways, Laura was not near realizing this. She always agreed with me when I spoke of things like this, but that’s because she always agreed with me regardless, because she was nice. In her bones, her actions, where real beliefs are exposed, she never broke free of that cloying, squeamish inferiority complex which was ingrained so deeply into the drivers' seat of her personality.

In MY bones, I could read all this in the first couple weeks of knowing her. But after finally escaping the needy, combative, judgmental beast my last lover had become, I was more than happy to settle with a girl who was just nice. 

I never wrote it down because I didn’t want to believe it, but I think I knew within the first month that it wasn’t going to work. I was good to her and she was good to me, but nothing about the situation excited me.

It’s the same way that, in sports, playing against someone who is good is way more fun than playing with someone you’re much better than. The noob cannot surprise you. You can predict everything that they’re going to do. There’s no suspense, no tension, unless you deliberately create it. There’s no challenge. I hate to be the kind of guy who "plays games" in relationships like this but I need somebody who can negotiate.