‘Nice Guys Aren’t Nice’ - Follow-up

Words by Annabel Fedcesin follow-up to ‘Nice Guys Aren’t Nice’ in

Elle Dit 2021

Here I am, writing this piece again. I can’t fucking believe I have to do this. But we’re in this place. We’re talking about this.

These past 6 months as I’ve been navigating the ins and outs of work, uni, friendships, my relationship, an internship and trying desperately to find a place to live outside of home for a reasonable price, I have been bombarded with people getting too comfortable and familiar with me. I don’t know what it is about me feeling confident in my body and my skin that suddenly pulls all the arsehats out of the cracks.

I struggle with autism and my biggest issue is trying to understand people’s intentions towards me. In essence, I assume you either want to be my friend or hate me. There’s no inkling of ‘maybe they want to date you’. It’s just not something that occurs to me. So, when I meet new people and go ‘hell yeah, a new friend’ in my head, it doesn’t trigger anything else but a friendship expectation. Now let’s look at the most recent event. A nice guy asks to sit with me in class. Who am I to turn down the offer of a study partner? He sits, we chat. Now all of a sudden, he’s asking what I’m doing after class? What I’m doing on the weekend? Maybe he just wants a friend, he did say that already when he mentioned to me that he has no friends at uni. No harm, right?

‘I’m bussing up to the Hills to have dinner with my partner’s parents.’ I glow, self-absorbed and feeling the love for my boyfriend and his family.

‘Oh,’ his face falls, ‘you’re engaged?’

‘Oh god no! That’s just my self-preserving way of maintaining my bisexuality in my relationship with a straight man!’ I chimed, assuming it was a funny joke that everyone would understand, while also being somewhat truthful. His face lights up again. So I continue the conversation. ‘How about you?’

with after class. I don’t have time for it. I’m so busy. I’m only looking for casual stuff.’

What?! Did I miss something here or am I going insane? How did it go from what are you doing after class to how invested are you in starting a relationship?

The class goes on, and maybe I should have distanced myself, but I thought, hey, English isn’t his first language, maybe he didn’t quite get that his comment wasn’t a socially acceptable segway. So, we keep chatting. He’s friendly, he wants to study together, and go to the beach, workout. Lots of proposed hang outs. But before all that, we connected on social media because he said, once again, that he had no friends in Adelaide and wanted to have someone he could contact about uni work. So, I made a mistake. A dumb, pathetic, optimistic mistake. I gave him my phone number so he could text me about class. And the rest of the class is fine. No issues. Some weird moments but I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Tick, tock, tick, tock. I’m on a bus to my partner’s parent’s house and this dude starts texting me. He starts with a photo he took of me in class together. Which creeped me right out! Next, he texts me calling me a ‘cutie’. Again. I mistake this for language issues and go ‘aha thanks’ and hope he gets that I’m not giving him a compliment back, so therefore I’m not flirting and hence only view this as a friendship. But he keeps going. So, I just stopped responding. No time to be nice if he won’t get the picture.

He texts me the next morning. This is not on. I leave him on seen. This did not end the man’s interest. At work I received calls and texts that I continued to let go unanswered until I outright blocked the man. The next time I saw him at a lecture, he still tried to talk to me! How many times do I have to make it obvious I don’t want to talk to you without being a bitch? Once again, that god forbidden word! And maybe I made some mistakes in this encounter, but I honestly just thought he wanted a friend and he seemed nice enough for me to want that friendship. But my being nice seems to have been taken by him as a reason to begin a hunt. I don’t want to date you, sir! I’m already in a very happy relationship. I don’t care if you’re some sort of ‘body builder’, or as you told me the ‘10th strongest man in India’. I don’t feel attraction to anyone but my partner! I don’t know how else to tell you that without actively being an arse! I really hate living with the knowledge that somewhere someone is upset with me. But must men always impede on my status quo to do this shit?

And now I’m left in a very uncertain place. Can I comfortably attend class knowing he’s there? I already changed class days to get away from him. Is blocking him going to cause him to retaliate more? I’m terrified of the day that someone flips out and I end up as just another case of ‘well she led him on’, as so many people like to argue when women have been mistreated. I’m so sorry to the women that do experience the horrors of interest that are not returned to the sender. And while I have experienced a minor version of this, I still can’t imagine how hard it would be to go through that at the extremes many women face. Do we ever really know how anyone will react? Can I go back to making friends without fear, knowing encounters like these can crop up?