Men who live in or near major cities have an odd modern challenge when it comes to meeting women: they have to "play the game" to meet as many women as possible and then choose from a crowd of them. This is because on the dating scene, no one is truly honest with each other in the beginning, and one always tends to find plenty of broken people in their path to finding the right one; a product of our modern social constructs at work, in our neighborhoods, and especially on the internet.

This apparently holds true even for men who hold great disdain for the so-called "game":

Q: I am a 33-year-old male. It seems to me like a man has to play games to get a woman to like him. I consider myself a nice guy. I have no problems getting dates, but it seems that if I am myself around women, they always end up telling me I'm "too nice" and they usually end up sleeping with or dating one of my friends, who isn't a nice guy. Eventually, I decided to stop being nice, intentionally, and start acting kind of cocky and indifferent to women. All of a sudden, the women I dated would be crazy about me, and constantly calling or texting me. They couldn't get enough of me, and it would be fun for awhile, but eventually I would get serious with someone and I wouldn't be able to keep up the act any longer, so I would start being nice and they would lose interest and break up with me. My question is, why do so many women say they want a nice guy, but in reality they don't? Why do woman like jerks? I want so much to find one nice woman, who really wants a nice guy, and who would appreciate me, but I've been dating for 17 years and have yet to find one. Should I keep trying to be myself? It hasn't worked for me so far -- or should I be this cocky and arrogant jerk that women seem to go for?

After reading the whole letter, it's tough to actually believe this is truly a nice guy who just keeps striking out - just think George Sodini. Like Sodini, there are other issues at play here; it's very likely by "nice", the writer is referring to the fact that he blends in with the crowd, discusses topical issues of the day that he reads about on Yahoo!, and buys the right products as well as having a nice smile. A huge warning sign that his personality is constructed out of thin air, though, is that he's able to turn off "nice" and turn on "cocky and indifferent" at will, something that's completely ignored by the columnist:

NGDFL, are you dating women your own age? I’m pretty sure that most mature women prefer nice guys. Try to date women who are peers. Try to date women who you’d describe as nice.

I'm also wondering how you define nice. Nice can be a problem if it means passive. Nice can be bad if it means wishy-washy. It's important to be assertive in relationships. Not mean, but honest and real. People want to feel as though they’re getting to know the real you. That means bad moods and all. If you’re working hard to be sweet and polite all the time, you might seem “too nice,” as in lacking the layers of personality that most people look for in a partner.

The columnist is so shaken by the idea that modern women could be called out for being psychologically broken, that she starts right in with assumptions: you must be dating college chicks who just want to party; your definition of nice must be wrong if you're striking out for so long.

And one wonders why guys like Sodini exist? Both here are wrong: The metrosexual's definition of "nice" is likely an issue as it's probably closer to "bland and uninteresting" in reality, combined with the idea that part of some women still want a Marlboro-Man-esque cowboy to come sweep them off their feet. Since these truths are politically incorrect, career types trudge on into the battlefield of bars and matchmaking websites, becoming more cynical instead of less in the dating process.