6 Telling Signs You’re Dating An A$$hole In Disguise

An asshole in disguise is the worst kind of boyfriend (if you can even call him that) – at least with a guy who’s got a reputation for being an asshole, you know to expect a bumpy road. An asshole in disguise will leave you with nothing but confusion and a smack in the face from your good friend stupidity and his nagging partner in crime, hindsight, wondering how you even let it get that far.

1. It takes him ~3 hours to reply to a text.

Always. (If he replies at all.) With the new age of read receipts and seen notifications, there’s no hiding when he’s most definitely seen and subsequently ignored your text message. And has been online since. Granted, there are many situations where one can’t reply to a text immediately, but a “hey, I’m busy right now – get back to you later?” would be duly appreciated if your message was time-sensitive.

But if he does eventually reply, there’s no hint of apology (even if it’s 24 hours later), and he will continue the conversation as per normal. You will put your anger and frustration aside and go with it, because he’s “a nice guy” and was “probably busy with something really important”.

2. When you do finally get him in your company (after he showed up late, of course), he’s always on his phone.

For someone who is always on their phone, why can’t you reply to a goddamn text?! You try not to get too mad about it and try to enjoy whatever pleasant and fun activity you’ve picked out together.

3. His words don’t match up with his actions.

He might’ve “had his eye on you for a while,” and you might have been “the best thing to happen to him in a long time,” but yes he did kiss a random girl on his bro-trip but because it was “just a kiss” that “didn’t mean anything”, he didn’t have the decency to tell you. But he still really, really, really likes you. He says.

4. “I hope you don’t think I’m an asshole” is accompanied with every supposed apology.

It’s surprisingly sincere, and makes you believe that he really is sorry and forces you to think about how nice and great and not-assholey he was when you first met.

5. He doesn’t want to tell anyone about you.

The less people know, the more he can get away with. There’s a difference between privacy, and suspicious secrecy. He’s the “you can’t even tell your best friend about this” type. He’ll come up some entirely plausible scape goat excuse about just getting out of a relationship, or not wanting to hurt someone, and say that if it weren’t for that little obstacle he’d want to tell the world about how great you are.

6. He routinely calls himself a “nice guy.”

Or “not an asshole,” especially when referring to asshole-type behaviour. He’s going to have lunch with his ex next week because he’s a “nice guy”. He’s not going to become one of your “asshole ex-boyfriends.” He says it enough that you believe him.

In reality, he didn’t become one of the “asshole ex-boyfriends,” but rather THE asshole ex-boyfriend. Everything that he may have done to toy with your feelings was cloaked with a seemingly genuine justification, but they were just really good excuses. The emotional toll he took on you was just exemplified by the fact that you really, truly believed he was a nice guy. And you can’t help but blame yourself for not noticing it sooner.