To all the happy couples on this campus: Would you please keep it to yourselves? It seems as though a person can hardly be on campus these days without walking past a guy and his girl either holding hands, embracing or practically making out right there in the middle of traffic. Get over yourselves, or get a room.

There are those of us in this world, believe it or not, who are still single males or females. We don’t need to be reminded several times a day of just what we’re missing, because generally we’re hard enough on ourselves as it is.

In the words of American poet e.e. cummings, “Unlove’s the heavenless hell and homeless home . lovers alone wear sunlight.” Those of you who are “attached” probably don’t understand that, but those of us who have chronic issues with the opposite sex understand it all too well.

To all the eligible women out there: We’re called nice guys. We’re not scary, dangerous or weird, and, generally, we’re a lot more respectable than that guy you have your eye on. We’ll do anything for you – probably before you ask – and, generally speaking, understand something you haven’t quite grasped yet: that your ex was a prick.

Why, then, are we nice guys still single? I posit a theory, albeit a possibly controversial one: Men are not, contrary to popular belief, the shallower sex. True, there are those within our gender – liars, cheaters, manwhores – who give us a bad name, but then that’s probably why we’re called “nice” guys. On the whole, we nice guys are none of the above – we like to open doors, we love to buy flowers, we’ll give you a ride whenever you ask, drive across the state to see you for a night, and go to Wal-Mart with you, even when you need tampons – and we’re still single.

Maybe it’s the glasses. Maybe it’s the total inability to use a comb properly – or the fact that we use a comb at all. At least we can groom ourselves and don’t wear that 24-hour-a-day bedhead that seems to be all the rage. Maybe we’re just shy, or our social skills just suck.

One thing that really bothers us nice guys is when the girls we like seem to torture us. If you don’t like us, don’t dress so that we notice. If you’d dress like a nun, we’d get the point, but miniskirts just spark interest. Don’t advertise if you don’t want the business.

So we’re not as hot as those other guys. So we can’t play basketball, don’t have a million-dollar smile, and our biceps are the size of some guys’ wrists. We also won’t cheat on you, we won’t ignore you, and we’ll commit the anniversaries and birthdays to memory like Christmas and the Fourth of July. Perhaps we’re a bit old fashioned; perhaps we just see things through a different lens. But we’re still single, and your lying, cheating, obnoxious, self-centered ex-boyfriend has girls lined up waiting for him, simply because of his looks – you’ve got to be kidding.

A very wise man, who was probably a nice guy himself, once said, “Nice guys finish last.” What a true statement! We strive to be all the things that women supposedly want: nice, charming, funny, romantic, caring – and yet we, as a demographic, are almost totally ignored, often in favor of other guys who are near-precise opposites.

Granted, every now and then the proverbial planets align and things work out for a nice guy and some cute girl, and for those instances we are rightly thankful. It makes the rest of us think there’s some glimmer of hope in the midst of this romantic morass.

To quote the great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche:

“Ah women. They make the highs higher, and the lows more frequent.”

– Ryan Frederick is a senior in management from Orient.