The Nice Caring Guy!

by Felix-Abrahams Obi

He’s the dream of every young, naïve and inexperienced girl who has not yet experienced a heart break. Even the more sophisticated, experienced and mature ones still end up with him now and then. There is just this irresistible aura around him for he’s got the right courtesies and social manners. He’s ever well dressed and spots that re-assuring and disarming smile that ladies like so much. Mind you, he’s not the smooth-talking and boisterous playboy that leaves so many troubled and battered hearts in his wake. He doesn’t boast about his good looks, nor gloats about his achievements and possessions. He’s not the classic name-dropper. He’s not and never would be in a hurry to shoot his game. He’s innately trained to act the way he does. He’s the nice and caring guy; the dream of every woman.

Ask any young girl why she is in love with her boyfriend. The usual answers would include:
“He’s nice and caring!”
“He buys me gifts, brings me cards all the time”
“He takes me out to buy me stuff”
“He’s such a romantic guy”
“And he loves me for real!”

Check her out in a couple of months afterwards and her story would have gone sour and awry. He’d dumped her or rather, never wanted to go all the way with her again. He just wanted to be a nice friend and never promised her any commitment though they’d shared the most intimate of experiences together. He walked away without a care in this world.. Now he’s shifted his attention to another unsuspecting girl! Hear out what Bimbo shared with me recently. She’s such a beautiful and lovely girl that makes eyes roll whenever she enters the midst of guys. Though partly a true-life story, I have muddled up the details and names to see if I could hide the identities of the dramatis personae involved.

Bimbo entered Unilag in her late teens. She never had dreamt of having a boyfriend because of her born-again Christian background. She was an active ‘fellowship sister’ and had the trappings of one who’d rebuff the entreaties of guys. She was scared of the campus playboys especially the handsome and tall ones. Those that had the best rhymes and knew how to tell girls what they liked to hear. Pure lies or over-bloated truths that tickled a lady’s fancies. She was tough and they couldn’t get her during the “October rush” hour!She never gave them chance to ‘toast’ her and the conservative ‘fellowship brothers’ were too reticent to ask her out for a date, save those guys in the “yuppie fellowships” that abound in our campuses.

Bimbo’s room mates (Chinwe and Bimpe), though born again were more outgoing and received male visitors regularly. Guys enjoyed their company a lot, and they were quite generous as they’d not hesitate to share their food whenever their male friends’ Bayo, Chike and Emeka visited. They hung out regularly with the guys and attended most of the concerts and shows, but Bimbo was the indoor kind of girl. Though she went out often with them, she preferred staying indoors and kept her self busy, reading her books, and also her Bible. One of the guys, Chike, visited them regularly like Bayo and Emeka, but he was not the type that talked much. He would smile or chuckle each time the loud and noisy Bayo doled out his rib-cracking jokes. The girls liked Bayo so much, while Emeka stole the show for his witty remarks and obvious intelligence. All that could be said of Chike was that, ‘he’s just quiet and nice”.

Bimbo took ill along the line, and couldn’t join the group in their usual outings. It was one of those minor illnesses that lasted for about a week. She would stay back all alone in the room when her room mates were out for fellowship in the evenings or hanging out with friends. It was during this period that Chike’s value to her was burnished and appreciated. He would visit each time her room mates were away and she treasured those moments. It was as though he intuitively knew whenever they’d left Bimbo all alone in the room. He would run the minutest errand for her. He would help her buy her medication from the pharmacy, got her meals at the café and sat beside her in her ‘time of need’.

With time, Bimbo began to treasure his company so much and looked forward to his visits. Those lonely moments with Chike to her were more treasured than the company of her room mates. No sooner, her emotions got a hold of her heart. She began to have a crush on him which she couldn’t suppress easily. They would hold hands each time she escorted him out of her hostel. Before parting, he would look deep into her eyes and give her a gentle and tender squeeze with his hands. He was stirring something in her being which she had held under check before every other guy in campus or at home. She was just emotionally- helpless before Chike, and he was glad with turn of events. She never saw the need to share her transformation with her room mates who remarked that
“Bimbo has so much changed!” She had fallen in love but denied the obvious signs!

Chike came one of those evenings when she was all alone. She had sent him a text that she was all alone in the room. Unlike when she voraciously read novels during times of aloneness, Chike’s company had replaced the place of novels in her life. He talked tenderly to her, and made her feel ‘loved’ for the very first time. He became her reading partner and would escort her from the classrooms back to the hostel at night. Each time they parted and in the cover of darkness, he would look deep into her eyes before giving her an “innocent peck” or just a hand squeeze! Before long, Bimbo lost her senses and began to dream about Chike, night and day. She had fallen in love with a guy who had never asked her out. She had concluded in her heart that they’re already in a relationship for he’s been ‘nice and caring’ to her!

When the scales fell off her eyes, Chike had made a mess of her Christian ideals. She had given away her innocence and naivety just before the visits stopped and the flow of gifts ebbed. She was devastated and lived with the horror of that experience through out her stay on campus. Chike however, moved on with life and never showed any remorse. How else would a lady pay back for all the unsolicited kindness to her! He left many other girls heartbroken in his wake long before he graduated from campus. Yet he still remained that “nice and caring” guy that everyone knew him to have always been. He fitted that utopian ideal which has helped to nurture and deploy that trait of being ‘nice and caring’ to every girl that his radar falls on. When he’s done with each of his victims, they end up realizing that he was not really ‘nice and caring’ after all. He had only served to tease their fantasies and nothing more. He ended up hurting them when they lowered their guards at the onslaught of his ‘nice and caring’ but emotionally- lethal arsenal. But are all nice and caring guys dangerous after all?

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4 comments

blessing April 2, 2008 - 10:36 pm

If the Lord had not been on my side , Let Isreal say, If the Lord had not been on my side, when men attacked me, when their anger flared against me, they would have swallowed me alive. ps 124

If not for the gracious hand of God on my side this could have been me. but praise be to God who has not let me been torn by their teeth.

peace and many blessings

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halal3k@yahoo.com March 26, 2007 - 4:40 am

Wasco! I started off also as a nice and caring guy and never did know it's not only playboys that hurt women. That they easily become emotionally atached to nice guys even when you aint thinking of a relationship. Life is all about growth and development and it doesn't matter if we so much got it all wrong in the past. What's more important is what we're doing in the present and how we're resolving not to repeat the past mistakes of misjudgments in the future. It's only God that can heal the wounds of the past…and he responds with forgiveness when we show contrition…and you've my brother!

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nuggetzman March 23, 2007 - 8:53 am

LOVE NO BE BY FORCE

Hi,

Have this friend who is in fairly similar stuff like this but her story is that d 'nice and caring guy' is showing another lady, a mutual friend, same affection. He can’t seem to make up his mind. he has asked neither of them out but is very nice to both, regular calls, small gifts, use of affectionate words, momentary loving eye contact, disarming smile, extra attention, hugs and touches that linger fleetingly……not to the extreme though, that is without the sexual innuendo but certainly stirring affection for him. I call it the 'wrong vibes'. It can be harmless but terribly misleading as my friend is now in love and only prayer and fasting can deliver her. Sisters must beware of these foxes, subtle and almost imperceptible. So the key is to take up the

attitude of a corrupt policeman; ask d bros 'wetin u carry?' i.e. 'what do u want from me???!!!!! 'Ngwannu.

………………

Anoda response to the above is that women take things far too seriously, not leaving room that they could be wrong. A guy shows a woman affection, he may be really feeling it; then again, he may be a habitual flirt. Or, he does feel it, but there are three or more other women that he is genuinely also feeling it for. He’s not a playboy, he’s just human. It all sounds so romantic doesn’t it? He saw you across the room and fell head over heels, and just knew that you would be the mother of his children. Com’on girlfriend, if you are over 25, shouldn’t you have got over this Cinderella fantasy by now?

Dating is tricky, meeting a man we could most probably like is even worse; so what do we do, plunge ourselves into the sea? If you are a working single woman, chances are you meet different ‘potentials’ every other week. And if you are very attractive, you would probably have more than one interested man in a lucky week. Are we to helplessly go to these dates with wedding bells ringing in our heads? Will any of these first dates result to a second one? Most won’t. A few will, but then that’s it. A week or more later, one of those dates might call you up ‘just to say hi’ but not make mention of ‘so, what are you doing this weekend/later this evening?” If you happen to like the fellow, I can assure you, that won’t be your most favorite telephone conversation, because now he has got you worrying ‘is he going to ask me out or what!”

So, with all these uncertainties and, hide & seek game we have to play before we finally enter into a rewarding relationship, a lady has to be careful and try to read the man she is dealing with, and not just move with the clouds in her head. I’ve meet a man who flirted with me in a way I could have sworn he was really feeling me but, as I myself am quite a guru in the flirting business, I decided to be careful and watch how things progress. I enjoyed the attention, tried real hard to take it for what it was – an intelligent conversation with a man I was attracted to, but I kept my fingers crossed. Sooner than later, I discovered he simply enjoyed flirting and didn’t particularly take it to heart; thus, I relaxed and flirted with him too, knowing there was no stake there.

Yesterday I called a friend of mine to tell her I wanted to introduce her to a guy friend of mine. To play it safe, I warned her that he was not exactly looking for a girlfriend but just wanted to meet her as I’d done a good job at advertising her. Guess what my friend said? 'What’s in it for me then?’ Christ! Imagine if all women went around expecting every man who smiled at us to have ready, a ring tugged away somewhere! Wouldn’t that be way too much burden? For starters, we can't marry every one. And frankly, I hate to think every man wanted to marry me because then I’d have to be brutal at turning a lot of them down.

My point is: yes, some men lie – a lot in fact – but most times, it's the woman that won't open her eyes to see things as it really is. She unwisely hands over the responsibility of her happiness to another human being instead of being in charge of her emotions. I see a man I love; two things could happen, he may love me too, or he may not, but does it help matters if I went about calling him an asshole because he called me on the first day and never returned my calls afterwards?

The truth is different people have different needs, and no one person can meet all those needs for every person. What am I saying? While man A will think you are fantastic, man B might think you are too loud. But, does that make you a bad person, or devalue you as a woman? HELL NO! Does it make man B a bad person? NO, girl. It just says ‘better luck next time’. By FRD

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wasco March 23, 2007 - 1:13 am

Wow,you just told my story.I pray everyday that may the good lord pardon me of all my sins.This article is my story,i lived my college days like Chike did and i know i hurt alot of innocent girls.If only i could turn back d hands of time i will do things differently.

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