“But I’m Such a Nice Guy!!!”

Every now and then I get a message from a dude from my past, who I was friends with, but never romantically interested in.

These messages all take on the same theme. First, they start out by asking how I’m doing. Then, they move on to dragging up the past. This dragging up the past usually includes a confession about some secret crush they harbored for years, but never had the ability to act on.

Then it turns accusatory. Along the lines of ‘I always wanted to tell you how much I liked you, but I knew you only dated assholes and I never thought you’d go for me.”

First, guys who do this, stop calling the dudes I used to date assholes. Yes, some of them were jerks, but many of them were perfectly nice guys with whom things just didn’t work out. These things happen and I don’t see the reason to pigeonhole them into the whole ‘asshole’ category. That category is reserved for actual assholes, like the guy who slapped me around or the asshole who’s behind on his child support.

Stop claiming that ‘girls only want assholes’ because we don’t go for your passive aggressive shtick. I’m so sorry that you spent years pretending to be my friend in some half-hearted attempt to get into my pants. Life must have been so incredibly rough for you…Seriously, those Boko Harem victims must have nothing on your pain.

You are not a nice guy. You’re just telling yourself you are because you feel like a failure. I know, because I’ve been in the same position.

A long time ago, I was crazy about this guy Dave. We went on a few dates but it never amounted to anything serious. Simply stated, Dave didn’t want children. I had one, so he shut any potential relationship we could have had down early on.

Initially, I was a bitch about it. I mean, I was perfect for him. Why couldn’t he ignore his own standards in order to make it work between us? We laughed at the same things and watched the same movies. We argued allot. He was one of the few people that could argue with me in a way that would actually shut me up. Let me tell you people, that is a rare quality for me to find in a man.

But we never really escaped the ‘friend zone’. Over time, I got mad at him. I was irritated with him because he didn’t want me. I started ignoring his phone calls and being a cunt to him.

Then, I remembered my friend Mark.

Mark was one of those guys that I had a ton in common with. We read the same books, watched the same movies and laughed at the same jokes. Despite the fact that Mark was an incredibly attractive Cuban guy, I was never sexually attracted to him. He just wasn’t my type. So when the inevitable came and Mark word vomited his feelings all over me, it made things weird. Mark got resentful because I didn’t feel the same way.

He disappeared from my life, despite the fact that we had a fantastic friendship. He threw that away because he couldn’t get into my pants, even though as he said , he was “such a nice guy”.

Then it occurred to me that Mark wasn’t really a nice guy.

He was a jerk who was only after me because he wanted to screw me. The fact that he wasn’t my type for a romantic relationship was enough of a problem to throw away 2 years of a good friendship. That made me feel utterly useless, like the only reason he laughed at my jokes was because he was trying to sleep with me. Like the only reason we ever hung out was because he wanted me to be a notch on his bed post. I felt used and hurt.

I thought we were friends, but we were only friends until Mark realized I wasn’t going to screw him, because my only apparent value to him was a sexual one.

Then I realized that I was doing the same thing to Dave. Dave was a good dude. We had fun together and he helped me through a lot of hard times. Was it really ok for me to cut him out of my life because he didn’t want to be romantically involved with me?

No, it wasn’t and I wasn’t being a nice girl. So I let that shit go and I accepted our friendship for what it was. A really good friendship. That is rare and there was no way that I was letting him out of my life over my own petty feelings.

To this day, me and Dave are still good friends. We don’t talk as much as we should; we both lead pretty busy lives, but he’s a good dude. He is one of the first people I contact when I’m having problems and he has helped me through more than a few rough patches.

He started seriously dating someone else, and I never even got jealous. By that time, I realized what he’d known all along. We weren’t really right for each other. He’s a type A conservative who has never smoked pot, hates kids and has an affinity for greyhound dogs.

I’m a type B liberal who loves kids, is secretary treasurer of a cannabis reform group and finds greyhounds creepy (their necks are just so skinny).

Once I was able to let of that romantic obsession I was feeling, I found true platonic love with Dave. I was able to be happy for his new relationships and tell him anything. I talked him through his depression and he talked me through a bipolar summer.

I would have never had that kind of friendship if I’d just decided to cut him out of my life simply because he didn’t want to fuck me.

Our relationship is good because we’re not friends with conditions. We’re not friends until one of us decides that ‘friends’ isn’t enough. Our relationship is good because we accept each other.

Boys, if you’re pissed because some chick that you’ve been passively aggressively seeing doesn’t want to take things to the next level, know this. She’s not the problem. You are.

You are the problem because apparently your entire relationship with that girl was based on manipulation. You weren’t being nice to her because you cared about her. You were being nice to her to see what you could get from her.

That isn’t nice and you are not ‘such a nice guy’. You are a manipulator and that is the polar opposite of being nice.

If you want to be friends with a girl, then do it. But if you’re only being friendly because you hope to get something out of her later, that’s not friendly. In fact, you’re kind of being a passive aggressive pussy.

Not everyone who you’re attracted to will be attracted back. That’s just a fact of life. But if you walk away from people because they don’t want to sleep with you, don’t want to date you, don’t want to have a relationship with you, you are limiting your own horizons. You are choosing your friends based on what they can do for you and not how you feel about them.

And you are not ‘such a nice guy.”