There are so many great guys out there, but every woman knows that there's a specific breed of dude who will insist he's super "nice", only for it to become apparent that he's not. He usually shows his true colors after you tell him you're not interested, at which point he might call you names, stalk you, or in some cases, threaten to kill you.
Here, exasperated women share their exhausting, creepy, or straight up terrifying experience with a supposed "Nice Guy".
(Comments have been edited for clarity)
I Tried Telling My Managers About Him
“I had a male friend I worked with. I started a new job and he already worked there. He never stopped talking. Nonstop. Trying to get a word in edgewise was impossible. It wasn’t conversation so much as being talked at. This went on for years.
He got fired. I still worked there. Since it was a retail store, he would come in when he knew my shift started every day. He followed me around for hours while I tried to work. Talking on and on.
I told my managers but they just said he’s a customer now so there was nothing they could do about it. So this went on for literal years. Mind you, I was actually engaged the entire time. He knew this.
I dumped my fiance for unrelated reasons. The dude jumped at the chance. He tried asking me out every day he came in.
I eventually got another boyfriend, not the stalker guy. But he didn’t give up. The dude was relentless.
Finally, he actually got me written up. My boss said I was talking too much on the clock. I was livid.”
He Started Talking About How He Could Kill Me
“A couple of years ago, I was single and in a new town where I was struggling to meet people, so I got Tinder. I met a Nice Guy, who genuinely seemed decent at first. He had a sweet dog, he did chores for his elderly grandma, had a regular job, etc.
We talked for about two weeks on Tinder before going out for ice cream. He knew the girl working at the ice cream shop and boasted to her about how he was on a date. It was a little awkward, but I brushed it off and gave him the benefit of the doubt. We decided to go for a walk in a large park in our city. We headed down a steep hill that would be an awful climb back up. His sister called and he happily answered the phone so that he could tell her about his new GIRLFRIEND. I interrupted to correct him and he tried to get me to speak to her and meet her. I refused and corrected him again, telling him that I am not his girlfriend.
After his phone call, he got quiet. We were still walking in the large park, near a river, and he said that he could just kill me right then and there. That I wouldn’t be able to fight back and that no one would be able to find my body. I was completely shaken up – this guy was threatening to murder me?! I told him that my roommate and family knew his name, phone number, and were tracking my location on their phones (thankfully all true). I started the long uphill hike back to my car. Nice Guy was close behind, telling me how ungrateful I was and asking why I didn’t like him. I was going as quickly as I could without outright running, and I could feel his eyes boring into my backside the entire time. I finally got to my car, told him to never contact me again, and left.
A few days later, I posted on my Snapchat at 3 am. I had blocked Nice Guy on social media but forgot about Snapchat. He realized this and sent me about 100 messages in 10 minutes that alternated between pleading me to talk to him and rage that I was ignoring him. Suddenly I was blinded by bright lights shining in my window. I looked outside and there was a truck parked on the apartment lawn so that its brights were pointed in my window. It was him. Nice Guy. Angry. Demanding. Pathetic. Terrifying. Luckily, this also bothered my next door neighbor who came outside to throw things at the truck which quickly made Nice Guy leave.
The dude threatened to kill me on our first date after I corrected him about not being in a relationship! He followed me home and found out where I live! I moved just in case. I have seen him a couple of times since then when he has yelled at me from his truck as he drives past. Absolutely crazy. Just no.”
I Didn’t Even Want Him To Pay For Me
“I forgot my wallet while standing in line at a coffee shop. I ordered and realized after the fact that my wallet was missing, so I said I’ll just zip out to my car and pay when I get back. I was just parked right outside. This guy behind me in line said he’d pay for my drink and I tried insisting that I would just go get my wallet, but he pulled out cash and paid before I could really do anything.
I thanked him and chatted while waiting for my drink. I was on my way somewhere, so as I was leaving, he left as well and asked if he could have my number. I was honest and said I was on my way to see my boyfriend. This guy just absolutely snapped. He grabbed my coffee, threw it across the street, and told me I’d been leading him on and I was a horrible person. Then he stormed off.
So I went to my car, got my wallet, and bought myself a new coffee. The owner saw the whole thing and told me the psycho was now banned from the cafe. Apparently, he’d pulled similar stunts with other women and this was the last straw.”
He Told Me He Had To Marry Someone Like Me
“I met this guy online who offered to help me learn his native language. Every day I would send him journal entries and he would correct them for me. I offered to help him as well but he said just chatting with me in English helped enough.
A few weeks into this, he says he is going to visit the city that I live in and says we should meet. I tell him I’d rather we didn’t because I have a boyfriend (which I had already mentioned many times) and I think he might be looking for a date. He insists that he only wants to meet as friends, but I tell him I am busy anyway.
Then suddenly he calls me saying he has arrived and has brought some American chips for me (I had mentioned before that I really missed American chips). I agree to meet him for coffee, to find that he had bought me TONS of gifts, including bottles of expensive drinks and fancy glasses. I politely reject the gifts but he insists that I must take them because his arms are sore from carrying them. I quickly have coffee with him, during which he tells me he must marry a white girl because the girls in his country are all shallow, and he wants his children to be powerful and being half white would make them more powerful. I am a white girl. I make an excuse to leave because I am extremely uncomfortable.
I text him to tell him that I don’t think we should be friends anymore because I think he is looking for more than friendship and it makes me uncomfortable. He immediately threatens to hurt my family members, of whom he has the names of on Facebook. He also reminds me that he knows where I go to school. Terrified, I block him on all platforms. Four years later and he still makes attempts to contact me via his mom and brother’s cell numbers.”
He Wouldn’t Stop Bombarding Me With Questions
“I went on a date with a guy I’d met online who turned out to be a Nice Guy.
We had a perfectly pleasant coffee together but I just didn’t fancy him. When I got home, he texted me to say he had a nice time and asked if I wanted to do it again. I used the classic, ‘I had a nice time but I didn’t feel a spark between us’ line.
He would not accept this at all. ‘What do you mean? What does the spark feel like? What would I need to change to get the spark with you? How can you tell you don’t like me after just one date? I want another chance. Can you explain exactly why you don’t like me? Is it because of how I look? Is it an age thing? I’m only one year younger.’
Despite my messaging back as helpfully as I could, he kept going on about not understanding why I wasn’t attracted to him. I didn’t want to pick out random things to say, like ‘I didn’t like this or that about you,’ because it wouldn’t have been true.
His messages turned into things like, ‘You’re being stuck up. Such a jerk. Just meet me again and you’ll see. Can’t believe you’re treating me like this. I’m so nice. ANSWER!’
Eventually, I just had to tell him his whining wasn’t exactly helping him become more attractive to me, then I blocked him. No means no! I’m not going to fall in love with you and I shouldn’t need to come up with a list of reasons why.”
His “Nice” Gesture Was Totally Fake
“He picked me up and took me to the beach to get me out of my head so I wouldn’t have to be alone with myself after my friend killed themselves. But I turned away to stare out at the ocean and he came up behind me and started grinding on me. I told him to stop and that I wanted to go home as this was just making my mood worse now. We got to my house and he got out for a hug goodbye. Immediately, he pulled my face up to his and tried to full-on make out with me. Thanks for ruining a kind gesture with the assumption of getting laid while I was grieving a friend’s death.”
We Were Told Not To Be Alone With Him
“A self-proclaimed ‘Nice Guy’ asked me out in high school. We had never spoken once or even sat next to each other (we shared one class, but he was on the other side of the room). He asked me out, and I said I wasn’t allowed to date. He kept persisting and telling me that we could sneak around. I told him I was not interested in dating him or anybody else and that I just wanted to focus on school. He flipped my desk over and told me I was a terrible person and I should have said ‘yes’ because he’d treat me so well. You know, because he was so nice he just flipped my desk over for saying ‘no’ to him.
He drove past my house for a while. I think he followed my school bus in his car. The drive-bys continued for a few weeks. And hang up calls. Finally he left me alone for about a month. He stalked two other girls after me, and pulled a knife on one. Her dad was the sheriff. Police found a few knives and a hit list in his locker with dozens of girls’ names on it and I was #3. He went away for a while, but came back toward the end of the year (I don’t know how this was even allowed, but it was over 20 years ago). The school told us girls to avoid being alone in the halls and to avoid him. That was it. I was going home sick one day between classes and was getting my things from my locker and he popped out of nowhere and asked me if I was sick. I said I was and to please leave me alone, and he said, ‘Good, I hope you die!’ and slammed my locker door on me. The tiny, elderly school secretary heard him and came to my rescue and chased him off. After that he was booted from our shared class, but allowed to finish the school year.”
She Had To Block His Number After He Wouldn’t Leave Her Alone
“This guy I had in my chemistry class was obsessed with me for some reason. We had hardly spoken other than me asking him some questions about an experiment, but one day he brought me flowers. I said it was very sweet of him but that I had a boyfriend. That wasn’t a lie. Well, the semester came to a close and he sent me a final text of, ‘If you’re ever stressed, I could give you a massage if you’d like ;)’ and I was like, what the heck dude.
But I ended up just replying, ‘Uh…no thanks’ and hoped I’d never have to see him again. Lo and behold, he was in my ecology class the next semester. His obsession was absolutely lit aflame and he, without me ever leading him on as far as I knew, told me how he was so depressed and had tried to kill himself so many times and how the thought of me kept him from wanting to die and I was like, if I block his number and he kills himself, is it my fault?
I tried the best I could to convince him that he was worth something and tried to help him with his depression, because I felt like that was the humane thing to do. But eventually, I just realized that I’m not responsible for him and had to block his number. If he did kill himself, he had pre-existing issues that had nothing to do with me.
Before I blocked his number, he just kept sending these messages about how I saved him and how he cares about me and that he loves me. It made me so sick because he knew I HAD A BOYFRIEND. This freaking guy knew it. But despite me asking him to please stop saying that stuff to me, he wouldn’t. He said, ‘Too bad, it’s the way I feel.’ That’s the phrase that really sealed the deal that this guy wasn’t actually nice. He was just a manipulative loser.”
We’d Met For Five Minutes And He Was Obsessed With Me For Months
“So I met this guy briefly in the line for a cafe near my university or something. We talked for maybe 5-10 minutes, enough to introduce ourselves, etc. When I got home, he’d added me on Facebook. Pretty normal stuff.
Except then he started asking me out, and I wasn’t interested.
Over the course of the next few months, he had set up many dates for us to go on and expected me to show up despite the fact that:
1) I hadn’t responded, and 2) he told me literally 30 minutes before the suggested meeting time. He’d buy me little gifts too, like my ‘favorite’ fudge or flowers even though I’d never mentioned anything about either of them. He’d then get mad that I wouldn’t show up for our ‘dates’ and sent me pictures of ‘what I could have had.’
Then he started stalking my Facebook profile and hurling abuse at me because I had wished one of my male friends a happy birthday. And further down the line, he had gotten it in his head that I wouldn’t date him because he’s ‘poor’ – never mind the fact that I didn’t know this, nor the fact that I’d stopped replying to him because of all the verbal abuse. He carried on stalking my profile and told me I should be dating a friend of mine because he’s ‘rich, loaded, and chosen’ and because I’m clearly a ‘gold digging floozy.’
The last straw for me came when he invited me over for dinner at his house. Alone!? After I’d met him for a whole five minutes about six months ago, and he’d been freaking out on me ever since?! After I declined, he called me ungrateful for not appreciating his thoughtfulness.
He carried on to talk about how we could have been great together, and how he’s the most ‘loving and caring guy I’d ever meet,’ and that he made the millionaire he dated once very happy, and that could have been me.
The next message I got from him was about the fact that he had gone to the pub, drank too much in order to ‘forget about me,’ and had woken up with blood all over his hands and all the mirrors in his apartment smashed, and that it was all my fault. I blocked him then.
A couple of months later, he was kicked out of the university for making death threats in the library and attempting to hold the whole floor hostage. So yes, I dodged a massive bullet there.”
He Had Been Asking When I Worked
“I had a guy stalk me at the store where I worked. I work alone, too, which made the whole thing creepier. He’d come in occasionally and stay there for an HOUR. Even if someone else would come in, he’d just drift around the store until they left, then resume talking to me. I was like, 22 at the time and he was easily in his late 30s.
One time, I came into the shop and my coworker asked if I knew this dude. I was like uh, no, why?
‘Because he comes in every day and asks when you work.’
Dear. God.
So, next time the guy came in, he asked me out on a date. I said sorry, no, I have a boyfriend. Then he went on a thirty-minute rant about how women hate him, how he’s recently divorced, lonely, etc. He kept trying to guilt trip me as if I should feel bad that I was in a happy, committed relationship.
Yikes.”
She Was Shocked By All The Messages He’d Left While She Was At Her Hair Appointment
“I matched with a guy on Tinder right before a hair appointment. We sent maybe two messages back and forth before I went inside. My appointment took about an hour, and what do I see when I check my phone after leaving? THIRTY messages from this guy. Apparently when I took more than two minutes to message him back, I was ‘ghosting’ him, so he went on an endless tirade asking me what went wrong, what did he do; telling me that the least I could do is message him back and tell him I’m a shallow jerk who is no longer interested; that all women are terrible and only like bad guys, etc. It was honestly alarming as heck. So I messaged him back, told him that I was in a hair appointment, that he was a psycho, and that I was no longer interested. He texted me back, apologized, and tried to convince me for the next three weeks to give him another chance. Eventually, he threatened to show up at my school if I didn’t respond, so I had to block him.”
She Felt Trapped By Him In That Small Parking Lot
“I worked at a certain theme park in Florida a few years ago. I went to one of the parks with a friend, and stopped at a restaurant to grab a quick bite to eat. One of the servers was super cute and seemed really nice, so we exchanged numbers. He asked if I wanted to go to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal, and I said yes.
Fast forward to a few days later. I meet him at his apartment to hang out. I park my car and tell him that I’m outside, and he comes out to see me. I roll my window down, and he leans on the window ledge with his arms. He tells me he’s super excited to go to Halloween Horror Nights and I’m like, ‘Yeah me too!’
Then this guy tells me that he had dinner with his parents the night before, and told them that I was ‘the one.’ I kinda laughed it off and he leaned into my car even more and told me ‘since we were dating’ I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone but him. I wasn’t allowed to see my parents or my siblings, or any of my friends, especially if it was a guy. I honestly thought he was going to hurt me. I was in the middle of a parking lot alone with him, and he was preventing me from moving my car and leaving. There was no one else around and I was genuinely afraid. He started throwing around some slurs and complaining about how he got kicked out of his last apartment because he had ‘said some violent things and got reported to security.’
I made up some excuse like, ‘I need you to hold my ticket for me so I don’t lose it’ and left. As soon as I got home, I texted him and told him I wasn’t comfortable seeing him again. He blew up, calling me a horrible names for ‘leading him on’.
I blocked his number and fortunately never saw him again at the parks. I laugh about it now, but it was probably one of the scariest moments of my life.”
My Manager Told Him Not To Come In The Store Anymore
“When I was working retail, there was a man I helped in store. Normal stuff. I was friendly and polite and smiled because I was paid to do that as part of my job and thought nothing of it.
He came in two hours later and asked me out. I declined, because I was A) not interested in him and B) already in a relationship with someone.
He started in on the, ‘but I’m so nice. I’d treat you better. If we were together you would never have to work,’ spiel. I declined again. He told me he wasn’t going to give up. And he did not give up.
He came in every day with gifts I didn’t accept, leaving me notes, constantly following me around while I was working. My manager had to get involved and ask him to not come in the store anymore. At that point, he started spending all day sitting outside the coffee shop opposite my workplace. Then I started seeing him tracking me home.
I didn’t want him knowing where I lived so I started going different directions home and getting picked up by my now-husband or his big friends. My stalker hung around for three months until my biggest friend and my now-husband told him to leave me alone. No violence, but they were bigger than him and I do think it scared him.
I did try reporting it, but the police said they couldn’t do anything.”
Hearing He Was Doing That Made My Skin Crawl
“I once knew a guy through some mutual friends. I’d probably known him for close to 10 years, but only as someone I sometimes ran into at parties and stuff. We’d had several conversations over the years but were definitely acquaintances, not friends.
One evening, I got a phone call from him, saying that his car had broken down near my house and could he come and visit while waiting for someone to look at his car? Sure, no worries. He arrived and had a coffee and a chat. Then he just wouldn’t leave. I dropped so many hints and then eventually he left at around 2 am. The following day I got a flood of text messages from this guy. At least 40. They were disturbing and read like he thought we were actually in a relationship or something. This went on for quite some time, and eventually I think he accepted that we were not in a relationship and started trying to convince me that we should be, he’s such a nice guy, he would take such good care of me, blah blah blah. I said that if he was such a nice person, he’d respect my wishes and leave me alone. Cue full psycho. My phone started pinging literally all day with abusive messages.
At the time a friend of mine worked near where I lived, and would usually arrive at work just before I left for work. We were chatting one night and he asked me if I’d been seeing the guy who’d been sending me messages all day. I explained no, but he’s been sending me hundreds of insane messages. Then I asked my friend if the guy had been saying anything about me. He answered no, he hasn’t said anything, but he had just thought since the guy’s car had been parked outside of my house every morning, I must have been seeing him. My skin crawled. It turned out that he’d been sleeping outside of my house for about a month. It was so creepy to realize that while he was flooding my phone with text messages, he was sitting outside my house the entire time. I spoke to the police and eventually, it all settled down. I still get the occasional message from him on various platforms that I haven’t thought to block him on. But the real kicker is that a few years later another friend of mine had a guy harassing her that she had met on a dating app. She showed me the messages, then showed me his profile picture…it was the same guy.”