I could never quite understood the proverb that 'nice guy finish last'
It has bothered me for years, and recently I have realized that 'being nice' is usually not understood quite well
See 'nice people' are usually influenceable, and they default to being nice, instead of setting up proper boundaries, that's a fact
Let's just have a scenario to illustrate what I'm trying to demonstrate;
There is Peter and he is a nice person, and there is Julia (a single mother) she is a bit intrusive and using her charm to get what she wants from men, and so Julia goes to Peter's place every day - they are friends, and she ask Peter for various items, food, money and sometime for services like repair, and sometime car rides etc ... Peter is playing nice, because unconsciously he thinks that someday Julia will return favors - but she never do that. And at some point, Peter is getting very angry and feels miserable afterward because Julia then acts surprised and cut all contact with him.
A person with proper boundaries will have set the social contract first, establishing proper relationship between Julia and Peter, she asks for money, saying it will be for a couple of weeks, Peter agrees but then after 2 weeks passes - he wants his money back.
In the second scenario Peter does not play nice - he asked for his due and this action will prevent Julia to go any further - setting proper boundaries, would prevent the situation to perdure, and surprisingly maybe would have shown Julia that if she wanted to set a valid friendship she might actually give something back from time to time.
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