Nice guys are the new fuckboys

my totally unscientific (and very observational) take on the stealthy softbois.

In the age of over-fermented psychobabble and TikTok therapy jargon, let’s revisit a classic trope, this time with a twist: the “nice” guy, a fresh iteration of the fuckboy.

It’s easy to overlook their cracking veneer of charm and manufactured thoughtfulness, even when what’s underneath is more sinister. Like termites, quiet and persistent, fucking up your whole house before you even notice they’re there.

These are the men who, when you tell them your vacuum is on its last breath, will hop on Wirecutter and find the best one (by the way, it’s the Sebo Felix Premium). He’ll show up for dates—as long as you do all the planning and coordinating, because he’s sOooO busy with work/life that he’s incapable of planning a farmer’s market date on a Sunday afternoon.

Because this stuff can be hard to spot, let me tell y’all a little story about an old friend—Sarah—and a guy she dated, Ryan (names changed to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent).

They started seeing each other in summer 2023. Things seemed good…until they weren’t. By the next summer, every catch-up with Sarah turned into a familiar waltz: she’d share a new (and valid) gripe about Ryan—dodging the DTR talk, never initiating plans, only agreeing to things at the last minute because he was “too scatterbrained to plan,” despite planning being 90% of his actual job as an educator.

She’d ask for advice, and when I gently pointed out that this wasn’t normal or okay, she’d respond with something like, “Well, everyone liked him when I brought him to that gathering,” or, “At least he’s not a fuckboy.” And I’d remind her—being likable isn’t a relationship credential, and “not a fuckboy” isn’t a sturdy foundation to build anything on. But it never quite landed.

The last time we talked, she was frustrated—at him, sure, but also at herself. A year in, she still didn’t know where they stood. She finally asked if they were official. His response? “I’m with you, right?”

Yeah. I know.

I reminded her: wanting clarity isn’t clingy. A year is more than enough time to decide. She had every right to ask—and every right to walk away if he wouldn’t give her a straight answer.

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To dangle a carrot—narrowing and widening the space between clarity and confusion, hunger and satisfaction—for one’s self-serving needs is psychological abuse. And what makes it worse? The carrot was never real. Just a Tupac-style hologram. That intentional space between “maybe,” “not yet,” and “what are we” isn’t confusion—it’s control.

I know it’s uncomfortable to think of the guys we’ve dated as abusive, or to see ourselves as victims. But abuse isn’t always loud or obvious. Sometimes it’s subtle: a quiet erosion of your instincts, a pattern of manipulation dressed up as indecision. It’s when your gut says something’s off, but you silence it. Not because you’re naive, but because you’re hopeful.

And when we wait for abuse to look like a billboard—some big flashing “RED FLAG HERE!”—we miss the quieter ones. The ones just high enough to trip over.

As women, we’re trained to spot the obvious abuse signs (cue Mary J. Blige’s Whole Damn Year), but abuse isn’t always loud and clear. Sometimes, it’s more like Kevin Can Go F*ck Himself—so maddening you have to stop watching, because damn, that’s not how you want to unwind.

Nice guys rarely lay a hand on you or call you a bitch—that’d break their carefully crafted “good guy” ethos. They’re way more invested in being perceived as one of the “good ones” (hello, every season of Love is Blind) than actually being decent humans. After all, who wants to self-classify as a meanie beanie?

To be nuanced, let’s separate normal behavior from shady moves. If a guy calls or breaks up with you in person, that’s normal. Sure, it sucks—no one wants to be rejected—but life happens, and we all end up being the rejector or rejectee at some point. Not getting the outcome you want doesn’t make someone a gaslighter or fuckboy—just like breaking up with someone doesn’t make you a bad person.

But virtue exists on a spectrum. In the era of ghosting and downright bizarre behavior (if you’ve heard of those Am I Dating The Same Guy? Facebook groups, you know what I mean), basic respect and decency shouldn’t be considered heroic. It’s low-hanging fruit we shouldn’t heap praise on.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how important it is to choose the right friends for dating/relationship advice. After that last talk, our friendship degraded to the occasional holiday/birthday text, and methinks it’s because I was the only person in her life who challenged her to look at Ryan in a different light.

When Sarah told her best friend the same story, the response was familiar: “He’s a nice guy. He just needs more time. You’d regret leaving—there are way worse men out there.”

So she stayed. It’s been two years.

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This isn’t a finger-wag at Sarah—or any of the other Sarahs out there. As women, we’re socially conditioned to doubt our instincts, to keep giving without expecting anything back, to offer chance after chance—because dating is hard, and we’re told good men are “rare”.

In her very human hope to find her person, Sarah mistook the termites—the slow rot in an already-precarious foundation—and called it home.

And that’s the thing about the “nice guy.”

He doesn’t break the house down.
He lets it collapse while you’re still trying to decorate it.