When nice guys DESERVE to finish last.

Picture this: you are watching a sitcom. As you follow the story, you come across the main charactes, who embody stereotypes and archetypes that you have probably already noticed in other sitcoms.

Among these, there is always the dichotomy between the man who cannot commit to a long-term relationship and cannot go beyond a one-night stand, thus breaking the heart of the unlucky women who fall for these tricks, and the romantic man in search for the love of his life, who is probably crushing on another main female character but is either unaware or too shy to confess.

Now, if you're attracted to men, you might find yourself wondering who you would choose among them. At least, that is what I often do, even if I do not necessarily find the characters attractive.

From my superficial description of these two types of men, you might think that you would choose the romantic man. However, if you dive deep enough into the storyline and its implication, you will almost certainly reconsider your choice, and I will tell you why.

Before I go on, it is important to note that such a dichotomy is usually nuanced: the committment-phobic guy is not always an asshole, and the romantic guy might not be openly romantic and can be easily replaced by a nerdy character. So the dynamics are obviously not the exact same in every sitcom, but there are still recurring patterns, which I will be focusing on.

The first sign that you will notice is that, even though these two men are polar opposites, they are best friends. Now, in certain sitcoms this might not be an issue because the "fuckboy" is just a bit annoying and childish, but relatively harmless. In other sitcoms, however, this might look like the self-titled "good" guy is breaking out of character a little.

This is the case for sitcoms like How I met your mother. While Barney - the textbook fuckboy - shows improvements during the series, in the very beginning of the series he does not really seem like a good man. On the other hand, Ted seems more like husband material, but if he is such a good and respectful man, then why does he associate with a guy like Barney?

Mind you, I know that Barney often gets called out on his wrongdoings by his friends, but if I hypothetically met them one night, I wouldn't see this nuance, I would just see them hanging out together and that would be enough for me to think that Ted was pulling a "nice guy" facade.

Which leads us to another important pattern: you don't know where the worst part is going to come. As you continue watching your series, you might notice that the supposedly "nice" guy starts doing some convoluted and shady things to get what he wants.

I first noticed it while watching Two and a half men. In one episode in particular, there was Charlie doing his one night stands as usual, while the good, victimized father Alan was busy spying into his ex wife's house using his son's webcam.

The point here is: the worst thing that could happen if you were with Charlie would be being ghosted or dumped. You cry, you get back on your feet, and move on. But where is the limit with Alan? What can we consider the worst case scenario? We would not know until after he has already done some weird stuff. In real life, with a real-life Alan, this could result in some gruesome situations and you would not even see that coming because he has been depicted as such a poor, misunderstood man until that very moment.

Another important pattern to notice is this: before finally getting to date the female main character that he has a crush on, the nice guy treats his other dates very questionably.

Take Ross from Friends as an example. Aside from Rachel, he dated other women, and he treated some of them fairly terribly because of his jealousy, which led to a lot of problems in his relationships. If you witnessed such a behavior in a supposedly nice and sweet man, would it not raise some concerns to you? Sure, it has not happened to you, but what guarantees that it will not once you start dating each other? Nothing, exactly.

The bottom line is that there were no nice guys in these series in the first place. The outwardly "bad" guy is definitely not the ideal type, but the guy that is supposed to be nice often turns out to be even worse not only because of his actions, but because you don't see them coming. If those series were horror movies, the serial killers would 100% be these nice guys.

We would not even need to change the genre to see their true colors, we would just need to remove the outwardly bad or immature guy and we would get a series like The Big Bang Theory, where it is clear that the nerdy misunderstood protagonists are not good men at all. Sure, sometimes they have to face some external "rivals", but most of the time it is just the four of them, ready to show the world how terrible they are.

Have you ever thought about this? Have you ever watched these series? Tell me your opinion in the comments!