My Cards on the Table
I’ve not been entirely honest with you. I wanted this weeks podcast to be about this, because a lovely woman called Cherry asked me about this and I have personal experience with it. But every time I’ve practised it I end up crying. I don’t normally practise a podcast, because they are unscripted. I practised because I knew I would end up crying. And I cry every time. So the podcast this week will be about another topic.
I left my husband for another guy. I’m sure none of this surprises you. I had my complaints about my husband, we all do, but as soon as I started airing them with the friend group of the time, they were amplified by them. Telling me I deserved better, I can do better, you’ve all got friends that have done this. They think they are helping, but they are making it worse. They are telling us what they think we want to hear.
And I’ve done it myself.
Then the guy I was talking to on the side, promised better, and that was it, a real nice guy was let go of, and I was ruthless with it. Then a year later, my husband was gone off the Earth before I could even apologise for what I did. That is why I still wear my wedding ring. I talk to my wedding ring every day. I don’t have those friends any more. Once I got with the new guy, they all vanished. They did their damage and disappeared.
Therapy didn’t work. Didn’t even come close.
I did my majors in psychology after that. I did it because I wanted to cure myself of the guilt and understand it better. Yes, I did it to free myself, but all it did was made me understand. Me and the other guy split up. It had no chance of working. I still feel the guilt of my husband everyday. The other guy just made me angry. It’s why I dislike men (along with every failure after). He knew what he was doing to my marriage, and I let him. After that, I was celibate for two years.
Getting back on subject
When a nice guy implodes, there’s signs. Ones I ignored.
Men are fantastic at hiding their true feelings. Not all of them. The loud ones will call you a bitch in a group chat and get it out of their system like a bad kebab. It is the nice ones you want to watch.
This does not work the same if he dumped you. If he left, he already spent his resentment on the way out. He may be sad. He may be relieved. He may be both. Hate is optional.
If you dumped him, or worse, left him for someone else, a lot of them hate you. Not cinematic hate. Not a film score. A quiet, tidy bitterness that sits behind the smile and the still friends act. He would rather look evolved than look dumped. So he performs peace. Behind it is a ledger.
Open hate is cleaner. You can block it. The nice ones do not give you that courtesy. Here are ten signs the softness is a costume.
The Signs
He became your pal in under a week
Grief needs a minute. A decent man who is hurt will go quiet, get ugly, get drunk with his mate, or send one raw message he regrets. That is human. What is not human is the overnight diplomat. If he is offering friendship before the toothbrush is dry, that is not maturity. That is a man keeping a seat in your life so he can watch it.
Access is not closure. Access is a viewing gallery. He gets the weather. He gets to see if you are struggling. He gets to be the good one in the story he tells himself at 1am. You dumped me and I was still kind. Look at me. Look at you.
The rush is the tell. Real friendship after a romance is slow and a bit awkward. It has gaps. It does not arrive like customer service. If he is available, pleasant, and strangely unbothered in week one, he is bothered. He has just chosen a strategy instead of a feeling. The strategy is proximity.
Watch what the friendship costs you. If you leave a chat with him and feel smaller, it is not a pal. It is a man sitting in the doorway of a house he does not live in, smiling, hoping you trip.
He is very interested in how you are, and specifically how he is
The check-in sounds kind. How have you been. I was just thinking of you. Hope you are okay. Then, casual as anything, you seeing anyone. He will bury it under concern so you feel cruel for noticing the shape of it.
He does not want your wellbeing. He wants the weather report on his replacement. Are you happier. Are you thinner. Are you posting. Has the new one met your friends. He is not asking if you ate. He is asking if the plot still features him as the one who got away.
If you say you are fine, he looks cheated. Fine was not the answer he came for. Fine means the punishment did not arrive. Fine means his pain did not become your personality. He needed a bit of wreckage to prove the relationship was real. Your ordinary Tuesday steals that from him.
You will feel it in the pause after you answer. The little dead air. The follow-up that is too specific. The way he remembers the new man’s name when he pretends he does not. Curiosity that precise is not care. It is inventory.
The new man has a nickname already
He will not say his name like a person. It will be that guy. Him. Your little project. The rebound. Some poor bloke. A joke that is not a joke. He is shrinking the other man so he can still fit in the story as the one who was real.
This is not banter. Banter lands on both of you. This only lands on the life you built after him. He needs the new one to be a downgrade or a phase. If the new one is decent, kind, employed, and not a cartoon, his whole narrative wobbles. So he makes him a cartoon.
Listen to the tone. Light, almost fond, and mean underneath. He will say he wants you to be happy and then describe your happiness like a poor decision you will outgrow. That is hate with manners.
If there is no new man yet, he will nickname the idea of one. Whoever it is. The next one. He is already writing the review. You are not a person who left. You are a woman who will collect men until she learns. The nickname is how he stays the victim without saying the word.
He is generous with advice and stingy with warmth
Suddenly he is a relationship coach. He hopes you are happy, followed by a paragraph about what you always got wrong. You never listened. You were always on your phone. You wanted too much. You did not want enough. He has become an expert in you now that he no longer has to live with the findings.
That is not care. That is a sermon with your name on it. Warmth would sound like I miss you and I am angry and I need space. Advice sounds like I am fine and also here is a dossier. He cannot hold the door and a grudge at the same time, so he calls the grudge wisdom.
Notice the timing. The lecture arrives when you are doing better, not when you are a mess. Messy you confirms he was important. Better you needs correcting. He will frame it as honesty because you two always told each other the truth. You did not. You told each other the truth until the truth was that you were done. He did not like that chapter, so he wrote a sequel where he is the narrator.
If you take the advice, he gets to stay useful. If you reject it, he gets to say you still cannot hear him. Either way he wins the scene. That is the point of the sermon.
Mutual friends have become a news desk
You should still have mutual friends, if not, if he was violent, abusive or a cheat, then you’re friends will have acted appropriately. But we are talking about the nice ones here, so mutual friends are guaranteed. He does not ask you. He asks them. Is she okay. Is she with him. Did she look happy on Saturday. Did she mention me. Then he acts surprised when you know he asked. If he wanted peace he would stop collecting intelligence. He wants a feed.
This is how nice hate works in a friendship group. He never says anything ugly to your face. He just turns people you love into correspondents. They think they are helping. They think he is wounded and needs crumbs. He is not after crumbs. He is after a map.
You will hear it in the odd question from a mate. Have you spoken to him. He seems really good actually. He was asking after you, so sweet. Sweet is doing a lot of work there. Sweet is how resentment borrows a clean shirt.
The decent thing after a dump is a smaller circle for a while. Fewer updates. Less theatre. If he is everywhere you are not, still smiling, still curious, he has not let go. He has changed departments. He used to be your boyfriend. Now he is your coverage.
The jokes have a little bone in them
Banter was your thing. Now every gag has a hook. You always did move on quick. Some of us have standards. Remember when you said forever, that aged well. He will laugh first so you have to laugh too. If you flinch, you are the sensitive one. That is the point.
Humour is the safest place to put a knife because everyone can see the handle and nobody has to admit the blade. He gets deniability. You get the cut. If you name it, he says calm down, it was a joke, you used to be fun.
Used to be fun is doing the same job as the nickname. It makes you the problem for noticing. Hate that has to stay polite learns to speak in punchlines. Watch the room. If his mate laughs too hard, they have been workshopping you. If nobody laughs, he will say you ruined the vibe. Either way the target was you.
A man who is simply sad can be clumsy. A man who hates you and wants to look nice will be precise. The joke will hit the exact thing you are raw about. Timing like that is not an accident. It is a grudge that learned stand-up.
He is thriving in a way that needs an audience
Gym. New hair. A girl on his story who is definitely not a girl, just a mate, under a sunset. A caption about peace. A song lyric that is obviously homework. Fine if it is for him. Hate if the camera is aimed at your side of the glass.
Moving on is quiet. You notice it months later because he has a life that does not orbit your name. A campaign is loud in the places you still look. He wants you to see the glow-up and feel the comparison. He wants the new girl to be content, not company. He wants your friends to say he looks well, with the little twist of you should see him now.
There is nothing wrong with a haircut after heartbreak. There is something wrong with a rebrand that only makes sense if you are in the comments. If his healing needs a witness, it is not healing. It is a rebuttal.
And if he is thriving only in public and still texting you in private at odd hours, that is not growth. That is two stories at once. One for the grid. One for the wound. You are meant to live in the second one and clap for the first.
He kept the key, the hoodie, the chat, the calendar invite
Sentiment keeps a T-shirt in a drawer and feels a bit sick when it finds it. Resentment keeps a way back in. If he will not return the practical stuff and will not use it either, he is holding a prop. The still friends persona needs souvenirs. Otherwise the bit collapses.
A key is not nostalgia. A key is access. An old calendar invite that still pings is not forgetfulness after the third month. A chat he never opens and never deletes is a shrine with notifications. He is keeping a version of you that still belongs to him on paper.
Ask for your things once, clearly. A man who is just sad will make it awkward and then do it. A man who is angry will stall, joke, say he will bring it when he sees you, then never arrange the seeing. The stuff becomes a reason to stay in contact. Contact is the prize.
You do not have to do a forensic sweep of his flat. You have to notice whether the leftovers are comfort or leverage. Comfort hurts him too. Leverage only works if you keep asking.
He cannot stand you being ordinary and fine
Sad you he can handle. Sad you confirms he mattered. Fine you is an insult. If your small good news makes him tight in the jaw, if your new job or your holiday or your Tuesday gets a dry congratulations, he is not rooting for you. He is waiting for the plot to punish you.
This one is easy to miss because it looks like distance. He is not shouting. He is just never quite pleased. Your promotion is cool. Your trip looks nice. Your new flat is a lot. There is always a draft in the sentence. He cannot let the good thing sit in the room without putting a coat on it.
Hate, when it is polite, feeds on your weather. If you are struggling, he can be noble. If you are okay, he has no role. So okay becomes a problem. You will start shrinking your news around him without meaning to. That shrinking is the cost. You are managing his resentment so the friendship stays pretty.
A person who cares can be jealous and still want you well. A person who hates you needs you slightly worse. Not ruined. Just not glowing. Glowing without him is the unforgivable bit.
The niceness only works when you are a little bit sorry
Be slightly guilty and he is lovely. Be settled and he goes cold. That is the tell. The friendship is conditional on you carrying the breakup like a debt. The second you put it down, the smile slips. There he is.
You will clock it in the body. Apologise for timing, for tone, for the fact that you met someone, and he softens. Warm voice. Old jokes. The man you liked. Stand in the choice you made, without the extra shame tax, and he becomes efficient. Short texts. Dull eyes. A politeness that feels like a closed shop.
That is not a friend having a bad day. That is a man who accepted the role of the bigger person on the condition that you keep playing the villain in a small way. He does not need you destroyed. He needs you a bit indebted. Indebted you is still his.
None of this means you were wrong to leave. Leaving a man who was not right for you is not a crime against his ego, even if his ego filed it as one. You do not owe him a performance of regret so he can bear the fact you chose out.
What you owe yourself is pattern recognition. If the friendship costs you more than it gives, it is not friendship. It is a man standing in the doorway of a house he does not live in, smiling, and hoping you trip.
The Finding
So this is my wheelhouse, and I have done many of an article about setting up an ex with someone you know. Except, now we going into how you decide who with, because if this man genuinely nice, he’s going to explode at some point, you need someone capable of dampening the fuse.
We need to redirect it. It may not show itself for years, but when it goes, it’s going to go hard.
My version was different, mine was a mistake by me, so it’s unlikely he’ll do what mine did, but he’ll do something.
But given that yours was deliberate dump, and it’s what you think was the right thing to do even today, and if this nice guy fits any five of the above, you are going to select a person, then go back to my other articles and make it right in your head, sit with it, and learn how to set up, because it is vital.
Why does it need to be a mutual?
This is the clever part. Obviously if he’s moved on, none of this applies. But if he’s hanging loose, or out nailing women in hatred out of fear of commitment — this isn’t healing, it’s called masking. And it’s making things worse, making him more unhinged, and you can see it. You feel it every time you speak. Detachment, to you, everyone, everything. Quieter. A little worrying.
Random hook ups are a very crap band aid, which is why I don’t do them. Sometimes a blowout is great, but he’s not blowing out, he’s blowing up. A mutual is someone that he knows is safe, and someone he has onboard given trust for. If not fully, there will be that history there as a cushion, and a nice guy won’t mess her around because he knows you and all your other friends will be watching closely.
Just do some good old match making. You need to think back, all those functions and parties, what friend or colleague did you have that you noticed some ‘harmless flirting” going on. Flirting that you ignored, or thought was silly.
That shit was real, but there was loyalty there, loyalty they no longer need. You go, you do your thing.
Talk to her first, tell her you saw the flirting, then big him up, and it’s likely nothing she hasn’t heard a million times before. Replace everything you told her at the end with all the correct things, all those great things you once loved. All those things you once proudly boasted.
Then, you send him just one message. Her name.
You’re looking for the first line reaction you get. If it’s positive, it’s going to work. If it’s negative, you find someone else. That first message will be more honest because you’re not just flat out asking him if he has a thing for her. If you do that, he’ll hide it. You’re looking for a nice subtle message back. A message that shows no bitterness.
If it’s nice, you give her the green light.
Then, let her go get it.
Then step back.
Why?
Release!
We are defusing a ticking time bomb.
Once he finds someone, that takes it from you, and releases any hate he has. He lets go, he moves on, and treats another person the way you you were treated once, and you step out of the gun barrel. It’s a very tough pill to swallow, but I’ve seen it work many times. As I’ve said before, a couple that owes you a life debt is quite the thing to have in your pocket. If he’s that nice, your friend will be happy. If she’s nice, he’ll be happy. You’ve not set her up with an asshole. He’s not with some bitch that’s going to cause you problems. In fact, you have even more common ground.
It will, if anything, it put things right.
