Am I the Bad Guy?
When women choose bad men over their good girlfriends.
He’s obnoxious, sweaty, has bad hygiene, is mean to servers, is a thousand years old, a cheater, liar, unemployed with a secret baby, plays video games all night, disappears for days, is missing lots of teeth, can’t get it up, chews with his mouth wide open, DJ, addict, fuck boy and married. And he’s ugly. And your best friend is obsessed.
We’ve all done it. Dated a loser. Or two. Hopefully you’ve grown out of it. Got some standards. Learned to be alone, to be picky. To not settle for the first guy who comes sniffing around showing you some crusty, moldy old crumbs of attention.
So, what does she see in him? Or, more likely, what is she not seeing, having been blinded by dickmatization. Classic. You delicately mention some of his inadequacies, whatever they may be, using non confrontational language, maybe in the form of a question so she can self reflect.
Maybe you carefully relay the story of something you witnessed. The time he spoke down to, or embarrassed her. The comment he made about your ass when he was blackout drunk. Right before he pissed himself. She defends him. To the ends of the earth. And suddenly, you’re the one getting clipped. You’re the bad guy.
When I was single (chronically so, because I refused to settle) this was always me, the one getting ditched. Longstanding weekly dinner plans evaporated, weekend walks and co-working sessions disintegrated. The three times a day phone calls faded and I felt the absence like glaring best-friend shaped black holes punched in my stomach.
Now that I have a boyfriend, I’ve done it too. Replaced hours of girl stuff, like voice-noting back and forth, for time with my guy, who I have an intimacy with that cannot be matched. I understand both sides.
But my boyfriend is awesome. I have no complaints and I waited years, passing on every opportunity to settle for mediocrity or worse, before entering into actual domestic bliss. And in those years I watched so many women more than settle and slip away into their new lives that had been swallowed up by these dude whales. Suddenly, the only conversations we ever had were about their relationship dramas and problems. So many problems. Is it supposed to be that difficult?
Sometimes, I was lucky enough to be invited around. Third wheeling, my favorite. In these situations I got to experience their new men for myself and with my very own eyes I saw:
An adult man in skinny jeans rolling around in happy baby position on the floor after a beautiful meal cooked by a good friend in her gorgeous home that she owned.
The son of a billionaire who, at the end of the meal, waited for us to toss in our credit cards. Me and his girlfriend.
A severely unemployed man telling my friend she looks like a farm animal.
A man reeking of weed, who brought his gun to dinner and whipped it out to be funny.
Another who pulled out the board game he created on pieces of construction paper taped together because he was too cheap to buy poster board, and spent the next two hours explaining how to play. It never made any sense.
A man who got wasted at dinner, mocked his girlfriend and blatantly stared at me the entire night.
I could go on, but you know the stories, you’ve experienced them too. And while all of this feels terrible to both be privy to and to know your friend has not only accepted but embraced this so fully she allows it inside of her literal body—for me it cuts extra deep because it happened with my mom. My mom ditched me for a bad man.
