Finding Mr. Nice Guy When You’re Attracted to Mr. Wrong

Are you obsessed with a lover who spends steamy nights unearthing your passion but won’t give you the time of daylight? Are you unnerved by a sultry, sizzling vamp who wouldn’t skip a nail appointment to bring you chicken soup when you’re ill?

Dump him or her and look for someone nice.

That’s the advice of Judy Kuriansky, author of “How to Love a Nice Guy.”

A nice person, according to Kuriansky, is honest, reliable, nurturing, thoughtful and kind.

Sounds like someone we can count on. So why don’t we fall in love with those kind of people?

Kuriansky believes that many of us say we want someone wonderful but deep down don’t believe we’re deserving. “In my private practice and in my lectures all over the country, I see men and women who are afraid to give themselves the love they truly need,” says the New York University psychology professor.

The madonna/prostitute syndrome--espoused by C. G. Jung--is the belief by some men that an exalted woman cannot double as an earthy lover. These men believe that naughty girls make good lovers and nice girls make good wives; thus, they can only feel total sexual freedom if they believe that their lover is tainted.

It is not only men who are trapped in the distorted paradigm, according to Kuriansky. “Many women are caught in the father confessor/Don Juan syndrome. We become convinced that the sexual, sensual part of us can only be satisfied by one type of man and the emotional or spiritual side only by another,” she explains.

The worst effect of that faulty thinking, she says, is the inability to allow a partner to be the source of both love and sex. “We may permit a man to be either nurturing and fatherly or an erotic stud,” she says.

The plain truth, Kuriansky holds, is that most people who are convinced that they just haven’t met the person who could be both mate and lover have not allowed someone to be both. “Many men and women are capable of much more than you may think,” she says.

To find ways to learn to be attracted to nice men and women, Kuriansky says, learn to respond to new cues. “It’s not easy, especially when you’ve established a pattern of being attracted to people who won’t give you what you need, but it can be corrected,” she insists.

It is important to demystify the role a dream lover plays in your life, Kuriansky says: “Dream lovers are usually disappointing because no actual human being can live up to that complete fantasy, but fantasies are often so powerful that we end up falling for the icons over and over again.”