Women everywhere know what the term "nice guy" entails. Usually a bunch of "pity me" antics, a bit of stalking, and angry texts. These women have some great tales of men who were supposedly "nice guys." Keep reading for some laughs and facepalms.
Content has been edited for clarity.
“Are You Kidding Me?”
“We met on an online dating site and texted for a couple of weeks – I was working a lot at the time and was trying to fit him into my schedule. One night he calls me (which I found weird because we didn’t talk on the phone up to that point and I’m anti-social lmao) and I text him and say sorry, ‘I’m taking care of a sick friend, what’s up?’
We text back and forth and I end up saying, ‘Yeah I feel awful for getting him sick; that’s why I’m hosting and taking care of him.’ (I had had the flu the week before).
He flipped OUT. Called me all the names in the book. He went on for about fifteen-twenty texts accusing me of everything under the sun and saying, ‘How could you do this when I’ve been nothing but nice to you?’
Once he wore himself out I responded something to the effect of, ‘it was nice getting to know you but I’m going to pass on a date. Your reaction without asking questions is a huge red flag for me when we haven’t even met yet. Best of luck to you. And for the record, my friend is GAY, which I happily could have told you if you asked.’
I kid you not he texted me the next he texted me demanding a date. When I said, ‘Are you kidding?’
He said, ‘Go out with me so then you can say we’ve met.’
No thanks, bud.”
“Blocked Again”
“This guy lived in a different city so he insisted on an all-day date (lived about 50 minutes away). I said I’m not comfortable subscribing to eight-plus hours with someone I hadn’t met yet, but he kept insisting I had to make it worth his while to come through. At this point, I said I couldn’t see it going anywhere and it was putting me under pressure and that made me feel a little uncomfortable, that realistically, it may not work out so let’s just leave it.
So then he said he’s going to book a hotel and come through. I explained it was sweet but it was making me uncomfortable. So he said I can have the bed and he’ll be a gentleman and have the sofa…
I explained that he seems to have the wrong idea, ‘I’m not going to a hotel with him and I feel uncomfortable, I don’t want to meet.’
He continued to press, saying he is a nice guy, he won’t make me do anything if I don’t want to.
I said, ‘I don’t want to. I don’t want to go to a hotel. I don’t want to meet. It’s too much pressure, and for someone I’ve not met, I feel uneasy, thanks, good luck with your search.’
But apparently, I needed to give him a chance. He was willing to come all this way. I said no. He kept finding new things to message me. Used my phone number to add my snap chat and said he can see what street I’m on. At this point, I started feeling very uneasy. I didn’t know I had my location on. I blocked him. He messaged on something else so I said I got back with my ex. (I see my ex a lot, we are good friends, he was happy to help) so he started going on about my ex had his chance and blew it, he is a much nicer guy than my ex, he will treat me like a princess and worship me and my ex has blown it etc etc.
I told him, ‘This is my choice. Thanks and goodbye. Please don’t try to message me on anything else as it’s not appropriate and I’ve already blocked him on three things.’
Fast forward four months and I moved cities. I got an Instagram message. It was the nice guy saying he’s seen me on a dating app in this new city and even though we haven’t matched it must not have worked out with my ex. He was using Instagram and could see I’m near the station (Is that even a thing?!) And we should go on that date that I owe him.
Blocked again. Had a friend stay over that night.”
“Jeez”
“I was talking to my guy friend, Andrew, in the break room at work one day and another guy jumps in the conversation with a ‘Hey man, what’s up,’ to Andrew. I assumed they must be coworkers.
After that, he proceeded to stop by my office every night on his way out to make increasingly awkward small talk. I mentioned that I had a boyfriend (true), but he kept coming anyway looking for anything to talk about.
‘Hey, (pointing to the cartoon on the box of cereal on my desk), it looks like we’re both into anime!’ he said.
Nope, I’m just into generic Lucky Charms, dude. I tried to be friendly.
Then he escalated into things like, ‘Does your boyfriend come to take you out to lunch every week? No? You deserve someone who treats you better than that.’
He offered to build me a better desk. I decline and got a, ‘Jeez, I’m just trying to do something nice for you.’
I told him these conversations are making me uncomfortable and when I’m at work I’m working.
He gave me a, ‘Jeez, I was just saying hi on my way out.’
I closed my office door. He kept coming and knocking. I kept the door closed and waved him off. He gave me flowers for Valentine’s Day.
I went to my friend Andrew and asked him if he’d tell his coworker to stop. Turns out Andrew had only ever talked to him that one time in the break room. We looked him up in the company directory and the guy worked two floors below me, so I wasn’t on his way out. Eventually, I called corporate security and they had a talk with him and his boss. They deactivated his badge access to my floor.”
He Needs Help
“At first, I was sympathetic that this guy hadn’t really made any friends before we dated (starting at the end of our junior years of high school). I believed him when he talked about how people always bullied him wherever he went and no one wanted to make friends with him. He also loved the idea of dating someone who was going to be a counselor because he thought it was an admirable job.
Turns out he just wanted someone to be more of a therapist than a partner to him, and he would get upset if I didn’t walk on eggshells around him. Later on, he also started blaming me for not wanting to be intimate with him every day. I was getting frequent urinary tract infections (multiple a month at one point) and was physically unable to, but that wasn’t an excuse to him. He considered pleasing oneself almost as reprehensible as cheating on him, so when I wouldn’t be in the mood (every day) it would be my fault for touching myself (whether I had or not) and got to a point where I would just agree to get it over with and get him to leave me alone. He had a lot of weird ideas about doing the deed and how it could only be missionary with very little foreplay or aftercare, so the deed became this uncomfortable two-minute daily dissociation that I got through for a while because I thought that’s what I had to do for someone to love me.
I’ve since found a partner who values me and takes care of me back when I take care of him (although lately he’s been doing much more to support me). He is a gift that I am constantly grateful for.”
Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
“I went on about two dates with this guy. We had a good enough time that I went back to his place. He didn’t use protection, despite me explicitly stating that was a requirement and he had them sitting out. I didn’t notice until it was too late. Oh well, I got over it. I noticed that I wasn’t quite sure how much of what he said was true and how much were lies. Anyway, we started setting up a third date and I just had a terrible feeling. I always listen to them, but I couldn’t tell if it was about him or just the date so I tried to reschedule and told him I didn’t feel comfortable and that’s when he went off. ‘I bought groceries for this,’ he said, ‘Come over here right now,’
‘I hope you get AIDS and die.’
‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it.’
‘Can we make this work?’
‘I really like you’
‘Get over here now!’
And on and on and on. Finally, it stopped and I realized how much of a bullet I had dodged and how I really wasn’t safe in the first place. Then after two years of silence, he texted me out of the blue and then started going off again. Mostly to my fiancé who texted him asking him to stop or we would go to the police. Then he started making up weirder lies about how he was a federal agent and someone was coming to kill him and that he would assault me. Needless to say, we filed a police report (he had done similar text stalking before) and I filed a restraining order. Everything was through text, but better safe than sorry. That was our nightmare about a year ago. It’s over now, but wow that was rough for a bit.”
“Nice Guys. Never Again”
“Looks aren’t nearly as important to me as chemistry, so I went out with a self-professed nice guy just because I figured he’d be a good friend if nothing else. He convinced me he loved outdoor activities as much as I do, that he had experience paddling, hiking, and camping. Found out later that he hates the outdoors, is terrified of insects, and spends 90% of his time online.
I spent a year trying to convince him women are actually autonomous creatures capable of making decisions independently of men.
‘Women know their shirts are gaping open; it’s their subversive method of getting that type of attention without owning it.’
‘You joked about butt stuff because you really want to try it but are afraid I’ll judge you for asking for it.’
‘Women thrive on drama and tension; you are only speaking to him to get at me.’ (Him, being my boss at work)
I spent the second year angry about how he talked about women.
‘90% of prisoners are male because women lead them to commit crimes.’
‘Women cause wars, have you ever heard of Helen of Troy??’
‘Women don’t like nice guys, they’d rather waste time on bad guys and try to fix them.’
I spent the next few years perplexed as to why he actively hated outgoing, talkative men until I realized that I’d been taking care to avoid spending any time with outgoing, talkative men to avoid a sulking session.
By the end of year five, I realized I was utterly isolated. Realized I’d wasted five years of my life attempting to prove that women are as good as men, trustworthy and independent humans who have the same rights to happiness and success as men. I loved him, so figured for years that he’d been horribly wounded and mistreated and deserved to be loved for who he is.
Nope. He was just an insufferable tool who hated everyone and took out all his bitterness and disenfranchised rage on the one woman who tried to love him.
In year six I stumbled across his online ID, which he used to rant and rave against women and jocks. Also found his adult video online history, which consisted mainly of humiliation videos in which women were choked with adult items, cursed, peed on, and verbally berated.
And I kicked him out. Wasted nearly seven years of my life trying to love the meanness and bitterness out of a man who was uglier on the inside than he is on the outside.
Nice guys. Never again.”
Grow Up
“So I had a crush on this guy in high school, college comes around and he’s single and wanted to date me, awesome! It’s going great!
I took him to my college’s performance of Cinderella and he proceeded to draw faces on all my friends’ pictures who were in the cast brochure and showed it to me, so proud of his artwork.
‘I especially made Kevin (my old friends with benefits) DEAD,’ he said. Uhhhh okay, dude, that’s pretty immature and disrespectful, those are my friends.
My birthday came around. He got mad at my true life Mary Poppins of a Grandmother for buying me tickets to my favorite musical for my birthday because he said he was going to buy them for me. Well, he got even angrier at me when I decided not to take him. Why would I? He couldn’t even behave himself at a college production. What would make me think he’d behave at a professional level performance?
I broke up with him shortly after that, he spent a while online trying to convince my friends that he was cooler and they should hang out with him instead.
OH and his replacement gift for my birthday was a carton of smokes….and I had been trying to quit for about a month at that time.”
Red Flag Central
“He told me what a nice guy he was, and how things never worked out, but every girl he dated always told him how much of a nice guy he is.
We dated and he was angry all the time, would fly off the handle at nothing, and escalate almost everything into a yelling argument. He would not stop. And he told me that I was forcing him to act this way and he never was like this when he wasn’t dating me. Multiple times I ended up saying, ‘Then why are you with me if I’m so bad for you??’
Another thing I noticed…. he’d use my name a lot when trying to deny the things he said. Now I know this is a manipulation tactic. I broke it off once I learned about the term gaslighting. So much of those arguments just left me angry, and then after the gaslighting, confused. I spent a lot of time filtering everything I said and did as much as I could to not trigger him to freak out. Once you recognize you’re doing this, it’s 100% a red flag.
It was a very unpleasant time. I can’t explain how much it drives you insane to have someone not recognize or own up to the things they said.
He would say things like;
‘I never said that!’
‘You’re putting words in my mouth!’
‘YOU said that. I didn’t say that!’
It was to the point of feeling like I had to walk around with a tape recorder for every conversation. It ACTUALLY makes you question your own sanity. Because how could any sane person not remember something they themselves said??? Isn’t that the most fundamental part of your memory? So it makes you question, maybe you ARE remembering wrong, or interpreting wrong. It’s awful. Never again.
Now I can see the red flags and I’ve cut off one relationship at the start and avoided another. It’s just this feeling I get about someone now and I KNOW. I don’t even give it a chance. Never again.”
Too Nice
“I dated a guy once who I met online. Absolute gentleman. We went on several dates and eventually started getting to really know each other better. Which doesn’t usually happen for me in dating. I’m a full-time single mom and dating usually falls apart for one of two reasons. Either because of scheduling conflicts or they get impatient with my schedule and decide to just push for hanky panky as soon as they finally get some time with me. He’d pick me up for lunch while I was at work or take me to dinner if I could and only asked for a kiss when we left each other. He was always being extremely flexible, which I appreciated. He was in the middle of a divorce, so there was no rush.
I had always wondered what it would be like to date a guy who was a nice guy. I always thought the nice guy always finishes last was a mean anecdote. But oh man, I see why now.
He was so nice that he was a doormat. Which means he had no boundaries when trying to please others. He was still sharing a home with the woman he was divorcing. For their sons’ sake. But he was also doing everything. In terms of the house, their son, financially, etc. When I would press him for information regarding when their divorce might be final and he could move out, he would squirm in discomfort.
‘Well,’ he’d say, ‘I don’t want to upset her.’
While she’d go out with friends, partying, and finding herself again.
Eventually, all of our conversations turned into coaching sessions of how he could stand up to her and make her shoulder some responsibilities for finishing their divorce and selling their house.
I started to resent this and starting pushing more for him to do things for me, so he didn’t have time for her. At my insistence, he finally got his own place rather than waiting for their house to sell. I found myself being annoyed at how easily he’d call on his parents to take his son so he could do something with me. I consciously started being more demanding and I didn’t like how it felt to be this way.
I also decided I’d be leaving the state in a year or so.
So I had a talk with him and said that he needed to go find himself with his newfound ability to set some boundaries. And that I had started taking advantage of his kindness and he was allowing it. He said he’d do anything for me to stay and keep telling him what to do. I said I had two kids already and I’d like to be in a relationship with an adult who knows when to stand up for himself. But that I loved him for his kind heart. He thanked me for being honest and teaching him that he’s capable of being loved in a way that makes him feel like a good man. And that he’d be better in his next relationship.”
Lack Of Boundaries
“Met a ‘nice guy’ on my college campus. He found me online (I didn’t even think he knew my last name) and pretty much immediately put it out there that he was madly in love with me.
I said, ‘Thanks, that’s sweet, but I’m really not interested.’
He seemed to take it well at first, saying that he didn’t expect a relationship or anything, he just had to tell me how he felt. I was surprised by how healthy of a reaction he had had, so I absolutely did not object to a friendship with him. What ensued was over a year of psychological torture.
We were decent friends at first. He had a bad habit of bringing me unsolicited gifts, and he was extremely shy and awkward around me, but we had shared interests so we had a few good conversations. I slowly started becoming uncomfortable with the relationship as he started talking to me with increasing frequency and intensity. He subtly shamed me for not being enthused with all the gifts I didn’t ask for. He started obviously trying to make me feel bad for him any way he could.
I addressed this behavior and said it was unhealthy. I was concerned because he had said that he cared about me more than he cared about himself. I was afraid of how much energy he was putting into me, and how much he was allowing me to affect his life. He pretended to understand and promised to respect my boundaries. However, those were blatant lies. Everything came to a head when he brought food he had asked his sister to make for me to school and I was absent that same day. He sent me some long paragraphs about how much trouble he went to and how he had missed his bus trying to get this stuff to me and ran a long way. I had had enough. I went off on him. He had still been messaging me late at night and putting tons of pressure on me. I decided to cut off the friendship.
He went insane. He started sending people to apologize for him (yeah, seriously), lurking around me on campus, sending more unwanted gifts, etc. At this point, I was completely done with him. However, he continued to stalk me for the remainder of my time in college. He started attending dance classes I was in that he was not registered for. He did everything he could to be around me and raged at me for not wanting anything to do with him. He tried to shame me in my academic and social circles. Since he’s such a nerdy guy, nobody thought he could be so toxic. Only two of my teachers believed me. He would try to compliment me and when I ignored him I would get more snide comments. He stalked and harassed me for about eight months. It only stopped when I graduated and he had no way to contact me or find me.”
Not Even In The Same Book Let Alone The Same Page
“Back when I was single and had been at my current job for about a year, a coworker asked me out on a date. I didn’t know him very well, but he was always kind to people and seemed like a genuinely friendly guy. I decided to say yes, mostly because I had a good impression of him and I appreciated the fact that he had the guts to ask me out (he was pretty shy as well). However, I immediately made it clear that while I would like to hang out and get to know him better, that I was not wanting to get involved in a serious relationship anytime soon, and if he was looking for that then we should remain platonic. I had recently had a string of ill-fated relationships and was trying to focus on building my career and improving myself. I also knew from experience that it was extremely important to clearly communicate intentions at the beginning in order to avoid misunderstandings and future problems, especially since we worked together. He said that he completely understood and even that he felt the same way. He was adamant that taking things slowly was the best and that we would keep things casual. Awesome, totally on the same page.
Except we weren’t.
It soon became clear that he hadn’t been completely honest with me and was hoping for something serious. At first, I tried to brush it off, but he began to do things to not-so-subtle hint to other coworkers that I was his girlfriend after agreeing to remain confidential for the time being (less than a week after the first date) and talking about making plans for the summer, seven months in advance. The final straw was that while hanging out he and he unexpectedly needed to go pick up his sister, and ended up introducing me to his entire family without any warning after only one week. I felt completely ambushed and frustrated because I knew he had not been honest with me. That night, I ended it, saying that I knew that he was looking for something serious despite what he had said and that I was honest with him from the beginning and was not going to change my mind. I also told him that he had been pushing this to be something that was never agreed upon and that he put me into a very uncomfortable position. Finally, I said that I was sorry for hurting him, and I still thought he was a good guy, but that we couldn’t go forward being on completely different pages. It sucked and I felt like trash. He proceeded to cry and act completely confused as if he didn’t believe me at all when I told him my intentions. It was extremely frustrating because despite me being 100% honest the entire time, he acted like a puppy that had been kicked for weeks afterward and I was seen as a heartless wank by my coworkers. Over time, things blew over and we’re now on good terms again, but I know he has still not let go of wanting to be more, a year and a half later.”
