A Story About a Nice Guy

Not so long ago, I met a Very, Very Nice Guy™ online. He wrote me Nice letters. He left me Nice comments. He was even Nice when I apologised for not having the time for new friendships. I told him that, as guilty as I felt, I wouldn’t be responding to his messages. He was a Very Nice Guy™, so he told me that was just fine. He understood.

He really, really did.

As I write this months later, I’m looking at a list of Very Nice Guy™ emails as long as a five-year-old’s Christmas list. He politely explained that it would be really Nice™ if we could be friends. He found me interesting, and he found it sad that we couldn’t speak. He politely explained that I hadn’t replied to his polite comment, and he found that sad as well. A 400-word essay came next. If I didn’t want to befriend him, he wrote, he would respect my wishes. He was a Nice Guy, he told me, but it was frustrating that he couldn’t connect with me. Still, he totally understood that I didn’t care about him (his words, not mine) and he hated the fact that he was a stranger to me.

The next day, he left five nice comments on one of my 400-comment threads because I hadn’t responded the first time. Nice People didn’t simply ignore those who showed interest in them, he said. My unwillingness to engage with him had cost me my Nice Cred, so now he knew I wasn’t a nice person like him.

My Very Nice Guy circled that drain for three months. Ultimately, I blocked him, so the man who totally respected my unwillingness to engage with him wrote to one of my friends to ask if I was still on the site. Had I blocked him?

These days you’ll catch him in comment threads railing against mean folk who refuse his friendship.

He’s still convinced that he’s a Nice Guy.

Now, I happen to be an expert on nice guys (small letters). I have about 150 of them on my friends list. They play Go with me on Sundays. They offer to send me thumb drives stuffed with games. They take me on holidays and point out my spelling mistakes when I don’t make them. (I never ever make mistakes, jussoyouknow)

During my long absences, my nice guy friends respect my distance. When they were just internet strangers, none of them pushed me for my time. They treated my boundaries as law, and that’s exactly why I retired those boundaries.

Your average Nice Guy™ (capital letters) is not capable of respect. He thinks he can buy friendship with niceness. Do you know who sees niceness as an expense? Someone who isn’t naturally nice. Someone who sees respect as a price you pay to get what you want. Someone gives nothing unless it has the power to manipulate.

I’m pretty sure my Very, Very Nice Guy still thinks he’s a very nice guy. He just wants to be friends, and he will stomp and scream (nicely) until he gets exactly that.