The Eight Stages of ‘Nice Guy’

Turns Out, He Wasn’t Such a Nice Guy, After All

Have you ever watched someone transform from one type of person to another in mere minutes or sometimes even moments? Watching a catastrophic male-meltdown is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. Of course, it’s always predictable also. One need to look no further than the R. Kelly and Gayle King interview and to observe Kelly’s now internationally known meltdown to see the Male Meltdown at work. It’s a dangerous and repulsive thing to see, when it happens in front of us, and it’s simultaneously weird and hard not to laugh when we’re the target of such tangents. But somewhere in between meeting and ending up R. Kelly staring down the barrel of dozens of years in prison lies a string of red flags that can be paid attention to that can help us spot such disastrous ‘nice guys’ from a mile away. Those series of moments start with the first interaction, which, let’s face it, in today’s world usually means online…this also means that there is an abundance of men out there who don’t feel confident speaking to women in person and thus feel like they can channel their wannabe Don Juan from a safe distance where the impacts of rejection are supposed to be lessened — they aren’t.

Two back-to-back compliments that take on an extra friendly tone are the moment we take notice and our interests are piqued. Ah-ha! Another ‘nice guy’ is about to crash and burn. And thus, we look on. Aroused, we turn to watch the chaos unfold, be it on Twitter or Facebook or elsewhere online, cyberspace being a place that leaves us with no shortage of instances of the ‘nice guy’ meltdown. While it’s predictable, the thing that always strikes us when we observe it is how much pent-up anger a lot of people are walking around with. If you don’t have that much anger, it just seems baffling that people can live that way, and it’s a little alarming that there are people out there so quick-tempered and ready to strike.

Quick disclosure, of course I’m not talking about all men just some men.

We all know the routine, it starts off as a pretend-friendly interaction until the facade quickly unravels and falls apart exposing the authentic dark underbelly of what amounts to basically an attempt at using manipulation to buy sex with fraudulent niceness. Tactics are employed, the women spot the signs and don’t respond, the men become increasingly frustrated when it turns out that women aren’t these machines walking around designed specifically to please them, as if all it took to reduce a woman’s willpower down to zero and own her entirely was three or four compliments without so much as a reciprocal glance. It’s not like women don’t hear, oh, I don’t know, six thousand disingenuous compliments per day.

Successive insincere compliments. That’s the trick. Women love it. If only someone had thought of that before…

Honestly, I empathize with these men because most of us have been through at least the first two stages plenty of times in our lives. What we haven’t done was launch into a tirade of aggression, however. But I’ve certainly been there where I was struggling to find how to express my attraction for a woman, especially before I learned my way in the world and how to socialize effectively.

My goal is to highlight this behavior that’s both a constant and nuisance in our culture and hopefully the guys out there can read this and learn what not to do. This is a how-to guide for men all over to learn the toxic behaviors that make women cringe so we can know what to avoid and spare ourselves the awkward situations where everyone else is avoiding us.

While this may be uncomfortable for some men, we can’t improve ourselves and grow past our hang-ups until we understand the psychology behind our thoughts. I think this might offer some insight into the inner experience of the Man Meltdown.

The Stages of Grief

I’m sure by now that most of us know the acronym DABDA, shorthand for the five stages of grief we experience when dealing with death and dying, be that our own death and dying or grieving a loved one. DABDA was first modelled by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 publication titled On Death and Dying.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance are the stages that most, if not all human beings are said to go through when coming to grips with mortality. The ‘nice guy’ meltdown tends to follow the same trajectory. There are steps that occur as it’s happening, each phase transitioning into the next. Like the DABDA model, the ‘nice guy’ meltdown doesn’t always transpire in order, but the order given is most likely. Much like the DABDA model, the stages are as follows:

The Icebreaker The First Compliment The Second Compliment “Are you there?” “Look, I’m trying to talk to you…” “Fine, you’re ugly anyway…” We Should Get Together “F*ck you, slut.”

Stage 1: The Icebreaker

The icebreaker is the opening and when it takes place online or in text format, there are always way too many exclamation marks. It sounds like someone’s trying as hard as they can to use their text to perceptively shift their voice 3 octaves higher (to make themselves sound more nice, of course), it’s the same kind of code switching they’d do in real-life (which is also obnoxious, let’s face it, nobody likes to be buttered up). It might start with something simple like, “Hey,” said a thousand times with no response, but once one of these dudes get talking it’s way too emphatic to not be low-key misconstrued as someone who’s manipulative as hell.

“Jennifer! Oh my God! You’re so funny!” -insert six laughing emojis and two hearts-

For the record, the use of excessive emojis all the time (or only when they talk to women who they’re attracted to) is the hallmark tell-tale of the pseudo-nice guy. I’m convinced it’s a subconscious effort to try to make himself — and his intentions — appear non-sexual, and thus less threatening. Exclamation marks just top it off with a sweet ole’ fashioned ‘nice guy’ cherry. Just like in real life when it becomes obvious that someone is into you because they’re laughing at everything you say, but let’s be real, here, you aren’t that funny. When I was single and dating, I swore never to use exclamation marks because it was just far too persistent for me to even want to be mixed in with those guys accidentally.

The icebreaker is mostly recognizable because the magnitude of the response never matches what was said or done to elicit the response. She says she wants ice cream; he replies that she’s the funniest, bestest, most amazing woman alive because she wants to eat ice cream, it’s simply weird. It’s as if the guy is falling in love with a thumbnail and some text in real time — but in hyper speed.

Stage 2: The First Compliment

No response? I see. Time to change tactics, here. Guess I’ll just help myself and raise the stakes a bit. Because there’s nothing that I can say (that you ignored the first time) that can’t be said again, just slightly differently.

“You know, I must say, I really like your dress. You’re such a pretty girl. I mean it in a friendly way, of course.”

Ah, he chose to start small, stick with the compliments that aren’t technically romantic or sexual in nature, but of course it was clearly about appearance on not something else. The game plan is clear, here, the old Trojan Horse strategy, use disarming terms and explicitly state your filled with jolly old good intensions that would never be romantic in any way. The goal of this guy is to corner you and get you alone before he unveils the trap which, instead of few hundred soldiers climbing out of a horse, it’s a lone guy who thinks you owe him sex and he’s going to get really, really pissed off if you don’t give it to him. You’ll also notice the superficiality of it all.

Fake nice guys will almost never compliment a woman on her achievements, her intellect, or other intangible things — to them, she’s an object, an object of both his gaze and desire, he wants her, to possess her, he desires her as nothing more than an inanimate body for his purposes. His compliments reflect this.

Stage 3: The Second Compliment

Now he’s getting frustrated. Don’t you see, he just paid you a compliment, he exposed himself to risk, he made himself vulnerable, how dare you not reply!? Never mind the fact that you might be at work or clutching a crying infant in your arms or a million other things that people do every single day, he demands your full attention and if you don’t respond in under a minute, he’ll compliment again. We’re pushing a couple minutes and he’s already slung three statements and is starting to get impatient. The mask is about to slip.

Stage 4: “Are You There?”

Uh oh. He’s exposed himself; he’s become vulnerable, he’s made himself a little too available for comfort and now he’s starting to question his own choices leading up to this point. Trust me guys, you don’t want to end up here, this is where you first might realize that, at least perceptively, you screwed up. But here’s where all the weirdness begins to come in. Here’s where it’s the guy who convinces himself that he’s screwed up royally and that he needs to remedy the situation. He’s panicking, he’s thinking of her laughing at his messages in his own head, he’s uncertain of what to do next, suspended in the purgatory between acceptance and rejection. It’s a miserable place for this guy to be.

I urge every man out there who feels like they might need it, who suffers from nagging, plaguing thoughts, to get those situated. Mental health is no joke and we should be in tip top shape before we embark on taking on life partners.

Stage 5: “I’m Just Trying to Talk to You”

Now he’s starting to take the exchange personally. An exchange with a woman who, for whatever reason, is not responding to his momentary self-imposed crisis that’s brewing inside of his head. Listen, I’m all about the idea that people with problems need love, too, but some shit can just be plain dangerous, and it is stage 5 when a man reveals his manipulative intentions.

“Look, I’m just trying to talk to you,” conveys so much, it conveys a demand that women are there to service the man and his ego, a demand that women are supposed to automatically be attracted to him after a mere few compliments, with a complete disregard for her feelings or any reciprocation.

Someone who loses their cool this quickly is dangerous to be around. If they don’t violently explode and get their temperamental mess all over everyone else, they’ll still create problematic situations for you to fix and clean up going forward, leaving chaos and destruction in their wake everywhere they go. All of this, of course, until they get their problems solved.

Stage 6: “Fine, You’re Ugly Anyways…”

Ah, he couldn’t get her with honey, so he tried to vinegar, I see. This is little more than a prod to try to get a rise out of you. Men, we need to stop doing this. At this point, he feels deeply rejected and any response is certainly no response (what kind of weird logic is that?).

The point is to provoke. I hope that my male counterparts can begin to do what’s long overdue in holding our guy friends accountable for this kind of behavior. I know, I know, it happens when we’re not around, but guys tend to brag about instances like these or other misogynistic things that we can call them on and try to reinforce the idea that it ain’t cute.

Stage 7: “We Should Get Together Sometime…”

A quick note that there’ll often be another flip-flop of an interlude between these two, “I was just joking.” Yeah, sure you were. Just like Trump was ‘just joking’ when he asked Russia to hack Hillary’s emails! Of you believe that I’ve got a beautiful piece of beachfront property in Arizona to sell you. Here’s where he tries to recover his dignity, “But yeah, we should get together sometime…” Never mind the fact that he just fucking insulted you, he now wants to save face and pretend like he didn’t just lose his temper. Now he’s suddenly back to being “chill” and would likely tell you, “I’m like, one of the chillest people, even,” which is apparently true, but only right after he sates his desire to avenge himself of the self-anointed victimhood of not having everyone wait on him immediately, at his beckoning call. Then comes the final cardinal flop.

Stage 8: “Fuck You, Slut…”

At this point, he’s given up. He’s loading his crap cannon and he’s ready to fire and hit you with everything he’s got. Theorizing as to the psychological mechanisms going on in the backdrop, it’s likely that he is experiencing deep hurt simply because you haven’t answered him. This is why I alluded to R. Kelly earlier, it’s the same behavior throughout with most men, they can’t stand not to be in control (they especially can’t stand not to be in control of women) and they’re primed to explode whenever their fragile feelings are gently brushed by a little bit of soft cat hair.

“Fuck you then,” he says as he wishes you a prompt, gory, bloody, screaming, gurgling death. Perhaps he might inform you that he hopes you get an STD being a “whore” or a “slut” and that way, he can feel big after being made feel so small over the simple fact that he couldn’t just wait a while for you to get back to him. And then he wonders why he’s alone.

The truth is this kind of guy has severe problems. I tend to be more liberal and think that even people with problems deserve love, but I also think that they need to make a choice and work on themselves before they get there. We have trained professionals for just this reason (I’d suggest looking into local mental health professionals, many of whom are provided free by almost all counties I’ve been in, in the United States, The United Way hotline can help also, for further resources just dial 211 from any phone), so if you feel that wound up all the time, I think it’s time you get some help. Trust me, life gets a lot better once you do.

The Healthy Alternative: Authenticity

What is the healthy alternative to games and gimmicks, to being pseudo and fraudulent? Honestly, guys, this stuff hurts us as much as it hurts women, it leaves us broken, tattered, and confused that we don’t know who we really are or like we’re unaccepted by the world, some of the most painful feelings ever. The alternative to all of this is for us to just be ourselves. I know, it’s cliché, but it’s a cliché that’s also a truism, that people like authentic people. I think where inauthentic people succeed is usually the rare instances where they have some redeeming quality that aligns just right with the person they’re interested in and rubs them the right way by chance, but times like these are exceedingly rare. No matter who you are, you’ll go far in this world if you’re authentic. So why aren’t more people just their authentic selves? Why is it so hard for us to listen to the advice that we should ‘just be ourselves’?

Because it doesn’t always work. In fact, most of the time it doesn’t work because authentic people are a threat to people out there who might want to manipulate us. Their tactics aren’t going to work. In this world, you’re either authentic or you’re putting on a show and while shows might be entertaining for a while, they get old. We can only watch the same episode of the same show so many times before it becomes slightly nauseating.

Authentic people aren’t afraid to be themselves. They don’t have to be only tough guys or just ‘nice guys,’ authentic people allow themselves to be human and by doing so they allow themselves the flexibility to be all these things at various times. That’s what it is to be human, to be able to be the different layers of yourself and to be an authentic human is to be able to do this in front of others. Vulnerability is essential and most people can detect whether others are capable or willing to be vulnerable.

Women don’t want ‘nice guys’ or ‘bad boys’ they just want guys, in my experience. Real people, human beings who don’t go out of their way to mask who they are and what they’re about. All the rest of it, the games, the acts, all of it pretends that there’s some magic button out there that can kick on attraction, a formula that’s more powerful than good old fashion chemistry. I think not.

Thank you for reading. If you made it this far, I think you might enjoy this.

*Footnote: NOT ALL MEN!