If you’re a girl, you’ve heard this phrase, or something along these lines, at some point in your life: “Girls say they ‘just want a nice guy,’ but they actually don’t. Girls just want a bad boy.” If you’re a guy, you’ve probably even said it a few times. Contrary to popular belief; however, we don’t. In fact, the term "bad" is probably the worst way to describe it. 

Being the biggest jerk in the room isn’t appealing to us, and acting like you’re better than everyone else only loses our interest quicker. It isn’t about acting like a big shot that we find attractive, it’s the sense of confidence in a guy. I find that those two things are highly confused these days. If a girl can pick up that you are comfortable with yourself whether you’re around other people or not, it really grabs our attention. 

Girls don’t care for a guy who is rude and disrespectful, even if it’s not directed at us; witnessing a guy being disrespectful is extremely uncomfortable for us as well. You don’t need to act like a baboon to get our attention. But on the same note, most girls don’t just want a “nice guy” either, though. Meaning girls want a guy who is not afraid to neither speak up, nor put her in her place when need be. Not in an abusive way, of course, but I would be lying if I said that girls did not have a tendency to overreact or get out of line about some things. When a guy will put his foot down about something, the dominance he portrays shows the girl that she can’t walk all over him. This is the type of masculinity girls find attractive, not just being an overall jerk. 

I think the idea that girls want a "bad boy" has become all too common. In reality, this isn’t what we want at all. Just because we don’t want someone who is going to agree with every single thing we say or do doesn’t mean we want a guy who will disregard our feelings completely. Sure, girls like to get their way a lot, but constantly having things go our way causes things to become too one sided. A relationship is about balance; it’s about give and take, and if there is too much of one or the other, someone is going to get bored. 

Girls want a guy who will keep them on their toes, not wondering when the next time they’re going to hear from them again. They want a guy who will tell them all of the things they do that he loves, and the stuff he doesn’t love. It’s not so black and white when it comes to what girls want, but I can tell you that we don’t want a “bad boy,” or “just a nice guy” for that matter, either.