Ask a Dude: The Badass
Ava asks: Why do some guys try to act so hard and treat girls like shit then beg and cry when the girl finally leaves them and make promises they aren’t going to keep?
Well Ava, I have seen and heard much of this breed of man. We shall call him the “Bad Ass.” Their behavior could be simply disregarded as the result of not having a strong male role model in their lives. Hence they don’t know how to treat a woman properly and act like a bitch. But I believe it deserves a much better explanation.
The “Bad Ass” puts up a huge front because they are not comfortable in their own skin. Eventually in their transformation to a man they don’t develop in substance but become all front, like a child in a Ninja Turtle costume.
Highly insecure and with well disguised self esteem issues the Bad Ass feels that he has little control of his life. When a woman steps into the picture, who still obviously have their own lessons to learn, and who condones the “Bad Ass” behavior, the guy now has some sort of control in his life. It gives him the instinctual feeling of dominance that for reasons of his own has been lacking in his psyche.
In reality, there aren’t really aren’t too many Bad Ass’s out there, there are plenty of bad men, and yes they will treat women like shit because they treat everyone like shit.
When the girl finally gets sick of it all and dumps the “badass” his fragile ego shatters. That sense of control, of power are gone and he has been rejected. A real bad ass may try to talk, might apologize, but in reality shrug his shoulders because he knows you were right and you did actually annoy him as much as he said.
This “bad ass” is much more sensitive to rejection and will become the whimpering child that he is inside. He feels like a baby whose mother ripped the bottle straight out of his mouth. He will make promises and apologies that mean little because the girl was a sucker for that shit once already so why not again? He wants you for that sense of control, of manliness, so he’s not going to go about making changes once he has you again because that would mean that your in control, and he already feels like a dog with out his balls. The “bad ass” usually ends up with the girls who have even lower self-esteem. The ones that fear or feel they don’t deserve real connections or love. Both these people come together because they are scared in general, and scared of really putting themselves out there and therefore leaving open the possibility of really getting hurt.
Emotionally immature, slightly retarded, what ever you would like to call it. The bad ass is just a guy who is having a bumpier drive on the way to being a man. Hopefully he will learn, but that’s not going to happen any faster if there’s a girl out there willing to do a disservice to herself and nurse that bullshit ego.
Hmm.. can’t say I’ve personally encountered the bad ass.. I have come into contact with a lot of SMOOTH and ‘sweet’ guys who turn INTO jerks, but not the other way around so much.
MEN ARE PIGS
August 20, 2009 at 12:26 pm
This is very insightful. I enjoyed reading this. Rock on Greg.
October 22, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Personally I reckon quite a few of those nice-guys-turning-into-jerks can be directly traced to the way nice sweet women continually bitch to them about how shit their abusive loser boyfriends treat them whilst claiming they ‘really want a nice guy’, before crawling back to said loser boyfriends like a whipped dog and leaving said ‘nice guys’ feeling hollow and discarded – you know, like any used condom.
Eventually – provided they don’t kill themselves from sheer unadultered loneliness first – the ‘nice guys’ put the discrepancy between words and actions together (i.e. basing their beliefs on actual reality), and 2+2 stops equalling 5 and becomes 4 instead…i.e. if chicks continually choose jerks and you want a chick, become a jerk. The real kicker, though, and why so many of them become jerks with such utter abandon, is that it works…
Just an educated guess you understand.
April 2, 2010 at 9:42 am
Not just a guess my friend, but truth. Though those who go to the dark side, and most have at one time or another, aren’t the same as the “bad ass’s” discussed. Maybe it’s their whining that got her back or the way he smacks her around in bed, but yep, many many man will act the villian because it is often more successful. Maybe the woman doesn’t want to be tied died down so subconsiously goes for things she knows that will end or a chick with family issues that needs turbulance in her life. She can’t be with a nice guy because it’s too calm.
When it comes down to it, girls who go that way, tend to be a little off. The guys who turn bad i believe don’t get twisted like those above, they know their being dicks, and aware of the possible outcomes. They are learning that you can’t kiss their ass and put up with unreasonable shit. And they will try, they all try to see what your made of. Seems most guys have to develop that balance. You can’t be a nice guy, and you shouldn’t be a dick. Knowing when to keep your self respect, when to make yourself the number one priority and still treat the woman good.
That perspective you put up I am sure most of us can relate to.
April 2, 2010 at 10:27 am
Interesting blog you got here dude. Forgive the long response but this is a pet-topic of mine and it’s quite hard getting an honest take on it all.
Yeah, you’re right…I was lying about the educated guess bit, ‘cos I’m one of ‘Nayah’s nice-guys-turned-jerks myself. I call it the Jose Principle (the principle is literally “Why work if you aren’t getting paid for it”) after the guy who finally hammered the point home back in the day after bullying his girlfriend into scoring pot off me. That was hilarious, I’ve never seen someone ignore their partner physically yanking on their arm and plaintively begging to go home for a solid half-hour before, or calling Muslims ‘Muzzos’ while their fairly devout Muslim girlfriend is standing right next to them. So yeah, quite the eye-opening experience, really.
And, no, they’re not the same at all – said Jose is a ‘bad ass’ as described above, as his girlfriend will doubtless attest if asked fir the full story of why her nice sweet caring friend G is an unrepentent asshole these days…whereas as a conscious jerk I can’t really be bothered with the effort to temporarily patch things up when there are so many new fields to till, Biblically speaking. Plus there’s the whole ‘I have a sense of dignity and self-worth’ thing to consider…
I’d also point out that most chicks who go in for assholes usually have pretty hefty daddy-issues and/or fathers who treat their mothers like crap too – it frequently seems to be as simple as “I-don’t-want-a-man-like-my-father-so-I’ll-choose-someone-just-like-him”…pretty much your basic Electra Complex at work. It makes sense when you consider we form most of our understanding of human sex/gender relationships at a pretty young age and they’re based pretty heavily on our formative years, where our folks are the main role models we have. It’s less ‘I want to sleep with Daddy’ than ‘real men act like Daddy’, though it’s rarely consciously acknowledged by the women in question and is usually (if not plausibly) denied when it’s pointed out to them that they’re repeating the pattern here.
The only points I would disagree with you and go with Nayah on is that if they get pushed too far and too often, said ‘nice guys’ can actually become jerks as opposed to it being an act – any condom breaks if you reuse it too many times after all – and that they can get very twisted indeed, just in a less pathetic/more proactive way.
I, for example, spent a lot of my CELTA trying to get the rest of my class to run away with me and become pirates (no grammar needed you see) and hitting on a 54-year-old Chrstian divorcee from Tamil Nadu by telling her highly inappropriate jokes and various true stories emphasizing how irresponsible, cynical, and nihilistic I am/was. Things like running over bonfires for party tricks, jumping off buildings, nearly getting shot by crazy bikers, that sort of thing. To my surprise (I was just flirting with her for a laugh) she was seriously considering it, too, until she found out I was younger than her youngest daughter…so that went nowhere
. Fortunately, however, at the end of the CELTA I went and hung out with my queer-feminist, multimillion-dollar heiress ex-boss. After laughing about/boasting to her about spending an expensive intensive English training course basically sexually harassing a pentagenarian Indian Christian woman for my own personal amusement, my feminist ex-boss and close friend of 5 years suddenly notices, and I quote: “You’re all masculine!”, with the end result that I’m now one of two living men I know who have slept with a multi-million-dollar heiress.
Given that having recently started living by the Jose principle had enabled me to hook up with a crazily hot nationally successful German fire-twirler/trained nurse/skimpy barmaid just a few months previously, thus ending 8 miserable years of perpetual ‘just friendship’, I’d say twisted G is pretty deeply ingrained and here to stay, hey.
And that’s without the more recent ‘Wow, you’re an arsehole! When I’m rich, we should get married’ offers etc etc.
April 3, 2010 at 4:33 am
Don’t mind the long response at all especially if it’s entertaining. It’s also great to hear from that angle. I would imaging sometimes throwing out that machismo vibe but it just ain’t in me. Blame it on laziness or the guilt complex that can come with an Irish Catholic upbringing but I became another species of ass. The honest asshole. Want honesty, want equality? That also means I refuse to kiss some strange girls ass or refrain from cutting them down when they say something dumb. I’ll fully admit to them that I don’t know what I am thinking or know where whatever is going but can say that I don’t prey on something without being reasonably sure I’m going to eat it. This is not a highly successful method as far a numbers go. It just is what I personally have to go with considering that I am allergic to drama and deathly afraid of STD’s and unwanted pregnancies. It seems you set up yourself with some game friend and it does not seem like you’re being scummy with it. More power to you. With that said, I totally want to find a rich heiress now.
April 5, 2010 at 1:40 am
oh, yeah, and I agree men can be changed into assholes. Hell I am one of them. I used to be sweet as a puppy, had the gender on a pedestal. Now, they have to earn everything, suppose that could just be the transition from boy to man, but when one allows a girl to make them a bitch they either man up and become an asshole to an extent or hold on to some insane notion of romance and remain a bitch. I’ve done my share of time as both for sure. I also like to say to the girl complaining about why where are no nice guys. “There were, but you are too old, it’s over. Your gender spends the ages of 18-22 destroying those men. By 25-26 there are non left, you killed them all. Reap the seeds you so ladies.” It’s usually after their first divorce where they are financially stable do they want to get all romantic. They want to risk the adventure, go with the poor artist or struggling entrepreneur. By then those guys if still around, not rich and dating 20 year olds are still gonna be like….mmmmm no. They have no attachments, often in better shape and still can pick up a 20 something why in hell should they pick up you’re baggage. It is a sweet irony.
April 5, 2010 at 5:05 am