It was a quiet evening. I was at home, drinking tea and googling the news that Japanese scientists had captured live footage of a giant squid for the first time. Giant squid may be, well, giant, but they are elusive – making this a very exciting development.

I am somewhat… obsessed with marine life. Did you know that there are thousands of creatures roaming the depths that we know next to nothing about. And some of the ones whose acquaintance we have made, are pretty freaky – including giant squid (monsters!) and non carbon-based life forms (aliens!).
Oi, giant squid? Isn’t this the sex column? What the hell are you going on about, Ms. Sexton?
Yes, yes, I know, but bear with me. There I was reading about these wonderful sea creatures, when just a hop, click and a link brought me to an article about a very different sort of creature indeed – the so-called “Nice Guys of OkCupid.” It was a move that totally ruined my day.
Nice Guys of OkCupid is a Tumblr site (since removed) cataloguing men who claim to be good guys in their online dating profiles on the dating site OKCupid – only to damn themselves with their
own words.
The ‘nice guys’ admit, amongst other things, to enjoying racist jokes; that they would film sex without a partner’s consent; that they would take advantage of a drunk woman; and spout a whole lotta homophobia into the bargain.
What women could resist that sort of combination? Most of us it seems – and boy, are these guys bitter about it.
Wrapped in amongst complaints about getting stuck in the “friend zone… never the bone zone”, there is lots of straight-up, in-your-face lady-hating on show. Take, for example, this little gem: “I was raised to be a good boy and treat women with respect… most women these days are just bitches, sluts or a combo of the two which is pathetic.”
Then there was one chap who characterised himself as “a pretty decent guy”, who posted: “I spend a lot of time thinking about… why women are so superficial and disgusting.”
To be fair, I am pretty sure you could do the same thing with women’s online dating profiles and find a whole slew of ladies with delusions concerning their own charms. After all, no one gender has exclusive rights over feelings of entitlement, vanity and general assholery. A friend of mine once went on an internet date that lasted all of 15 minutes because the woman he’d hooked up with decided she was, in her own words, “too good” for him. What a sweetheart!
Ugh! The whole thing was making me depressed – the glorious giant squid news notwithstanding – because it reminded me of a man who we’ll call Peter.
Peter was my friend, or at least that’s what I thought. I was between relationships when, one evening, we met up to go to the cinema and, afterwards, headed to the pub. It was here, amongst the spilt beer, that Peter declared he wanted something more.
Now, pubs may not be the most romantic of settings but had we been watching a magnificent sunset or walking along a pristine beach I would have said the same thing, which was something like: “Oh, er… I… um… I’m sorry. That wasn’t, um, what I had… eh, assumed.”
Rejecting someone’s advances is often awkward – and doubly so if it is a friend. I really didn’t want Peter to be hurt or upset. As it turned out, he was neither. He was fucking pissed off, so he was.
I can’t remember the exact details of the conversation that followed, because by the time I stormed out I was seething with rage myself. One thing however is crystal clear in my mind. The term “owe” was used.
What it essentially boiled down to was this: since Peter had been nice to me, and hung out with me without expecting anything while I was dating someone else, now that I was single, I owed him sex.
Ha! I don’t think so.
I stomped all the way from Dame St. to Portobello Bridge in a fury. Despite the lateness of the hour and the general messiness of a Dublin weekend, people leapt out of my way as if I was Moses parting a drunken sea. Presumably the instinct for self-preservation cut through the miasma of booze, warning people to give me a wide berth.
Of course there is nothing at all wrong with deciding that you’d like to move a friendship onto a more intimate footing. I imagine that most of us have felt this way about a friend at some time or another. It’s the way a lot of long-term relationships start. And, if that’s your inkling, it’s probably a good idea to make your feelings known, as long as you accept that they may not be reciprocated.
A friendship can survive unrequited sexual or romantic interest. Loads do. If you’ve said your piece and been shot down, the best thing to do is forget about it and move on – while still remaining friends. Sure, it may be uncomfortable at first, but everyone will get over it given time.
Peter of course wasn’t very nice. Genuinely nice people don’t try and bully you into sex or think that
gestures of friendship ought to be repaid on the flat of your back, with your legs akimbo.
There seems to be some weird, skewed logic in contemporary culture regarding men, women and the impact of being nice. On the one hand, there is the assumption that being nice to a woman ought to earn you enough brownie points for sex. The converse of this is the downright bizarre belief that if a man is kind, respectful and generally a good guy in his approach to the opposite sex, women will ‘friend zone’ him, forever barring him from magical vajayjay land (and therefore that the prospect of sex is increased
by being arrogant, selfish and a bit of
a bollocks).
Not so. Never in the history of the world has a woman thought to herself: “That John, he is a bit of alright. Smart, sexy and funny too. What a pity he respects my feelings and values my opinion – he’s too damn nice. I’ll have to friend zone him.”
It just doesn’t happen. Ever. If you’ve landed in the friend zone, it’s because you were never a contender in the first place. Women do not go around twirling our imaginary moustaches – muahaha – and laughing about our evil conspiracy to deny men sex and make them suffer. If we are not having sex with you it’s because we don’t want to have sex with you. And that may be because we think of you as a friend or because we’d prefer someone else – or because the chemistry isn’t there.
There is no need to feel bad about this because it is not a reflection on you. Besides which, it happens to women as well, all the time. And of course, things can change. Just don’t assume that they will – or that there are any rights or entitlements involved either way.
As a spotty teenage girl, I learnt that being nice to a guy will not in itself make him fancy you, fall for you or fuck you. Not being nice may certainly make a man who has acquiesced in any or all of the above change his mind and wave you goodbye. But no matter how sweet you are – even if you bake cookies, remember his birthday and spend hours listening to him bitch about his life – a man may still prefer the blonde from the coffee shop, or worse still, your
best friend.
Do you know how many times I’ve liked a man but he’s preferred my friend? Quite a few – I have lovely friends. Or how about the times I’ve been overlooked because the man I wanted preferred a bitchy demanding harridan? Twice – and it was the same guy on both occasions too. Obviously he was a glutton for punishment.
Do you know what I did when I fell in love with a friend who didn’t feel the same way? I accepted it. What I didn’t do was take to an online dating site complaining that I had been a “true friend” but hell, now “all I want you to do is bleed like I have.”
Niceness entitles you to niceness in return, and nothing more. It should, of course, be the baseline of all of our interactions with other human beings. The cashier at my local corner shop is nice; my chemist is unfailingly polite; and my latte guy always has a smile and some chat.
I never felt obliged to give anyone a blowjob in gratitude; and never felt I was due some quality orgasms in return for my manners either. Nobody owes you sex. Suck it up, get over it and rent a copy of The Blue Planet. Seriously, those freaky fish will cheer you up. I promise.