Great Guys Won’t Tell You They’re Great

This is one red flag I kept missing

He said he couldn’t stand toxic masculinity.

I was frankly a little surprised he used those words. I was relieved, too. I had just started talking to him and I was trying to figure out what kind of guy he was.

I thought that comment revealed something about his personality. My mistake was thinking it was a good sign.

I wanted to meet people online and I posted an ad to an online forum. That’s how I met Mike.

I hadn’t tried to meet anyone in 15 years, and what I discovered is that most guys in their 30s have about as much game as the teenagers who used to hit on me at parties.

As soon as my post went up, I had to sift through private message after private message of guys just saying “Hey” (or the puzzlingly frequent “Heyy”).

The rest were mostly cheesy pickup lines, messages that gave me a weird vibe, or guys getting real pervy real fast.

Mike’s message stood out. It was long. It was funny. I could tell he actually read through my whole ad and didn’t just look at my photo.

And even though he wasn’t exactly my type, he didn’t look half bad.

I wrote back to him and we started exchanging lengthy emails.

His comment about toxic masculinity wasn’t the only thing that put me at ease. He also bitched about his macho coworkers and how he couldn’t stand alpha male bullshit.

He said he grew up the only boy in a house with two mothers and lots of sisters, so he got women and couldn’t stand men who disrespect them.

It seemed like every email included some mention about how well he treated women.

That’s why it caught me off guard when his emails started taking an aggressive tone.

The first time it happened was when he told me he was into bondage. He asked if I was, too. (I’m a sex blogger, so that’s the kind of getting-to-know-you questions I get.) I joked that I haven’t been okay with someone tying me up since I read Gerald’s Game.

He began his reply with “Calm your tits.” From there, he went on what I can only describe as a tirade about how I was ignorant about BDSM.

I know my joke wasn’t the funniest, but it didn’t seem to warrant a very lengthy paragraph made up of sentences that were simultaneously aggressive and defensive.

I took that one on the chin. I thought maybe I just hit a nerve or something.

If that was the case, then this guy is pretty much all nerve, because he found more opportunities to go off like that. We were only a few emails in and he was already making it a habit of talking down to me and insulting my intelligence.

His aggressive comments were enough of a red flag for me. I pulled away from him.

Looking back on it now, though, I realize that his first red flag wasn’t when he disrespected me. It was when he kept claiming to be a respectful person.

Where Have All the Good Guys Gone?

Mike wasn’t an outlier. It seemed like every guy I tried to get to know would turn pretty quickly.

I went into all of this expecting to encounter plenty of men who are trash. But why were so many of them complete assholes?

And why didn’t I see it right away?

The ones who were too cocky or condescending up front, I dismissed right away. The ones that got through were those who seemed great at first but then quickly revealed that they weren’t.

One guy I got to know for a while paid a lot of lip service to consent. He would talk about placing a lot of weight on a woman’s comfort and how “no means no” isn’t enough because no one should proceed unless they got a firm yes.

But I soon discovered he had a funny way of trying to push my boundaries. I would establish clear and firm limits. I would tell him the things that made me uncomfortable or the sort of things that would make me feel violated. And yet he brought them up again, and again, and again.

He still insisted that consent was the bedrock of all his interactions. He just had a tendency to “forget” where my boundaries were.

And there was another guy who would get downright pissed off about men who manipulate women or toy with their emotions. That sounded good to me — I can’t stand those men, either.

Then he started going hot and cold on me. When he wanted something out of me, we would talk endlessly and he’d tell me that he felt a real connection between us. But when he wasn’t looking for something, he’d just disappear or brush me off.

Whenever I tried to address it with him, he would try to gaslight me to make it seem like I was just making it all up.

Time and time again, it seemed like anyone I ended up talking to would repeat that pattern of seeming really great and then slowly revealing their true colors.

I couldn’t stop wondering what was up with all this. Were men worse than I remembered? Did I just have a really unlucky streak? Was I doing something to attract this type of guy?

How I Became a Jerk Magnet

Eventually, I realized what the problem was. I kept missing a red flag these guys were waving.

Actually, I wasn’t missing it. I was drawn to it.

I had a lot of apprehension about meeting new people. I have a history of emotional abuse and my anxiety can get triggered pretty easily. So, I didn’t want to take any risks. If I was going to let people into my life, they would have to be people who made me feel safe.

I wanted someone I could trust quickly so that we could use that as a basis for building some kind of bond.

I didn’t have much to go on other than a few messages and some user profiles. So, I looked for clues that I was dealing with someone who was kind, respectful, and woke.

And I followed the most obvious clue. I responded to the guys who would say (or strongly imply) that they are kind, respectful, and woke.

That was the mistake I kept making.

I realized it when I tried to think of the good guys I know or have known. I tried to figure out what they had in common and what made them different than the jerks who seemed to gravitate toward me.

All those good guys had one thing in common: they never made a big deal about being decent people.

And when I thought about the narcissistic, abusive, and manipulative people I’ve known, they also had something in common: they always wanted to make sure everyone knew (or rather, thought) they were decent people.

I opened myself up to men who said they were great guys because that made me feel safe. In reality, all that boasting and humble bragging was a sign that I should stay away from them.

How to Spot a Great Guy

After those experiences, I had to take a big step back and recalibrate my assumptions. I clearly wasn’t doing a great job of identifying who the great guys were, so I needed a new way of assessing the people I met.

I don’t have an exhaustive checklist or anything, but there are a few characteristics I’ve started to notice.

Great guys don’t spend a lot of time boasting about their character. They don’t look for opportunities to talk about what great men they are.

They just talk about whatever comes up in the conversation. They don’t try to steer it back to how great they are or how progressive and respectful they are compared to other men.

Great guys just act decent and treat that kind of conduct as their default. They don’t care about getting recognition for basic things like respecting consent.

Great guys make you feel safe, not uneasy. If you keep having a nagging feeling about someone but can’t quite place it, it might be that your instincts are about ten steps ahead of your reason. Don’t ignore your gut.

When you’re interacting with a great guy, you don’t have to constantly excuse their behavior. I experienced a lot of cognitive dissonance when I was dealing with jerks like the ones I talked about earlier in this article. They would constantly do or say things that challenged my initial impression of them. I would think “It’s so weird that he said that sketchy-sounding thing because he hates manipulative people.” Then I’d find myself dealing with the dissonance by coming up with an excuse to explain away their sketchy behavior. Until, of course, it became too egregious or frequent to excuse.

But mostly, I’m just staying away from guys who keep finding ways to tell me how great they are. Great guys don’t need to constantly remind you of how great they are because you’ll be able to see it for yourself.

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