I’ve always taken pride in the fact that I’m lovely. Let me explain.

The first thing to acknowledge is that it’s not always seen as socially acceptable to be nice to yourself. To me, when I say that I’m lovely, it’s a shortcut to saying that I go out of my way to practice empathy and to be nice to the people around me.

People who are lovely cultivate positive emotions like bibliophiles collect books. You can spot someone who’s lovely because they’ll display emotions and behavior like the following:

• They’ll be kind to people and display empathy
• They’ll have strong active listening skills
• They’ll be respectful of other people and other cultures
• They’re generally positive people who are grateful for the good things in their life
• They’re generous with their time and money
• They’re optimistic about the future
• They’re authentic and true to themselves
• They display patience and humility
• They’re open-minded towards other cultures and viewpoints
• They offer encouragement and thrive as part of a team
• They’re honest, caring and selfless

Now, it might sound as though you can’t go wrong in relationships if you’re a lovely person, but that’s not always the case. Lovely people can still face some of these issues:

• Sometimes you’re just not a good fit

If you’ve spent any amount of time in the dating scene, you’ve probably met more than your fair share of people that you’re just not a good fit with.

You can both be lovely people but still have different expectations about what you want from your relationship.

• Life is unpredictable

Even if everything else is going right in life, there are still factors that are impossible for us to predict.

For example, who could have predicted the COVID-19 pandemic? These unpredictable factors can ruin a relationship before it ever begins.

• Communication isn’t easy

There are times where you can be super lovely but still find it difficult to communicate with people.

For example, you and your partner might both be lovely people, but if one only speaks English and the other only speaks Japanese, you’re still going to struggle.

I’ve watched enough romantic comedies and read enough books to know that being lovely is often seen as a guaranteed way to “get the girl”. The problem is that real life is very different.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Nice guys finish last.” I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but I do think that nice guys are missing an important part of the picture.

Dealing with rejection

Rejection is a natural part of life, and if you want to find yourself in the relationship of your dreams, you’re going to have to deal with rejection along the way.

And facing rejection taught me that resilience isn’t always about being sweet.

When we’re dating, we can’t afford to focus so heavily on being lovely to people that we forget about ourselves. Sometimes, we need to be selfish. Otherwise, we’ll end up being taken for granted.

And you can bet your bottom dollar that other people will be doing the same, which is why we end up dealing with rejection in the first place.

Everyone has moments of vulnerability, but those of us who take pride in our loveliness are more vulnerable than others. It’s surprisingly easy for good people to be treated badly.

Let’s take a look at a few reasons why resilience isn’t always about being sweet

• Resilience requires emotional toughness

If you want to face and overcome rejection, you’ll need to come to terms with disappointment and frustration. It can often be difficult to cope with complicated emotions like these, and sweetness will be less helpful to you than having a solid grip on your emotions.

• Resilience requires you to process criticism

A lot of lovely people struggle with criticism because they’re so nice that other people are unwilling to criticize them. The problem is that if we want to be resilient, we need to listen to any criticism that people send our way and to find ways to learn from it.

• Resilience requires you to be comfortable with discomfort

Just because you’re lovely, it doesn’t mean that you’re ready to deal with discomfort. Resilience requires you to be able to deliberately put yourself into uncomfortable situations so that you can tackle adversity head-on.

• Resilience is about realism

Lovely people often look at the world through rose-tinted glasses. This has its advantages, but if you want to be resilient then you need to look at things more realistically. You can’t always make it through life on loveliness alone.

• Resiliency requires coping mechanisms

If you’ve focused on being lovely throughout your life, you might not have developed the coping mechanisms that are required to maintain resiliency. These can often include mechanisms that aren’t necessarily the loveliest.

As you can see, loveliness and resiliency aren’t natural bedfellows, although with a little bit of effort, it’s easy enough to get the two of them to work hand-in-hand. You can become more resilient without sacrificing your loveliness, you just might need to face some heartbreak along the way.

Conclusion

In the end, I’ve learned that no one is immune to heartbreak, whether they’re lovely or not.

All we can do is to focus on being the best version of ourselves that we can be. That way, at least we can look at ourselves in the mirror.

We also need to learn to move on from heartbreak and rejection, especially when that comes in the form of a rejection. I’ve seen far too many friends yo-yo in and out of the same relationship when it’s clear that it’s no good for any of them.

For me, I found Annabel Acton’s eight-step program to be super useful. It’s designed to help people to reshape the pain and rejection from a breakup into opportunities for happiness and personal growth. It’s also completely free!

Above all, never lose your loveliness. Like I said, being lovely won’t make you immune to heartbreak, but it will at least make sure that you’re a decent person.

Decent people attract other decent people, it’s just that there can be one or two false starts along the way. Don’t let those false starts drag you down or change the lovely person that you are. It’ll all be worthwhile in the end.