I thought nice men were undateable – I was wrong

A new study has confirmed what many of us have long suspected: the nicer a man is, the less likely he is to get laid.

- ALEXANDRA JONES

Researchers looked at how personality traits correlate with relationship status across nearly 4,000 people in Australia, Denmark and Sweden. The men who scored highest on agreeableness - basically a mark of how nice they were - were statistically the least likely to have a partner.

Obviously, the temptation is to assume that women (and the study focused on hetero relationships) are all secretly looking for a bit of a bastard, but that's not what the research is saying - and, irrespective of the particular pitch and tenor of someone's daddy issues, I think you'd struggle to find a woman who is actively looking for a cruel man.

What the research seems to imply, though, is that “niceness” has the romantic appeal of a council tax reminder letter - useful, perhaps, but not exactly the stuff of fantasy.

Which does make sense, in a way. Nice equates to bland - describing someone as “nice” carries the same energy as saying a meal is “fine”; it's technically positive but spiritually damning. All of which is quite depressing when you consider the fact that, when “nice” is broken down into its constituent parts - empathy, cooperativeness and patience - finding a nice, “agreeable” partner is basically the Holy Grail. I should know: I found one.

But not before many, many years of dating the other kind. It wasn't that I didn't want someone nice - it was just that, on a list of desirable traits, “nice” came slightly below “has reliable wifi”. Of course he should be nice, I would think, but first he should be funny, exciting, outgoing...

In those days, I gravitated towards charming, gregarious types with big egos. The study authors found that extroversion counted as a significant advantage for men - outgoing, confident males were much more likely to be in relationships (extroverted women, on the other hand, saw no such advantage - a reminder that society still prefers its women passive).