no. i wasn't a "nice guy". that's not even close to the reality of things.

example: i insisted that we split the bill, at all times. that's not "nice guy" bullshit. it's actually strictly and brutally enforced egalitarianism.

in fact, i never bought her anything, and i would have been offended by the suggestion that i should have, as though i could have bought her affections or should have wanted to. fuck that...

in reality, i was actually female-identifying for the bulk of the relationship. i spent a lot of energy into trying to make a girl-on-girl dynamic functional. that's what i wanted out of the situation, and has a lot to do with why i was less reactive to her escapades with other men than i could have or should have been. in the long run, i wasn't going to be her boyfriend or her husband - i was going to be her girlfriend or her wife. if she was going to insist on being bisexual, i'd have to get used to that.

in fact, a lot of the guys she fucked around with - including my friends - were into the "nice guy" schtick far more than i ever was. they were the ones with steady jobs and cars and traditional concepts of things and stuff. i was usually unemployed. and, if you want to get into the freudian bullshit, you'll note that i was actually the badass tranny anarchist she went back to over and over again - until i ultimately rejected her. they were offering emotional support for all the conflicts we were constantly in - and we fought. hard.

the scenario was complicated, and i had my own prerogatives. it was a long time ago, and doesn't really matter (although this will eventually come out in the alter-reality, years from now). but, just, don't get it into your head that i was playing the nice guy and got fucked over by it - that's not even close to the reality of it, or even close to what happened when i walked away from it, in the end. we were explosive and dangerous and dysfunctional, and everything that happened was a corollary of that.

remember this point as it will reassert itself in the alter-reality repeatedly: a big part of the dynamics of things is that she had a very strong maternal drive (she ended up with two kids and a daycare job) and i wanted nothing to do with that. and, she told me she wanted kids, but i thought she meant after she graduated university and got a head start on a career, not, like tomorrow. we could talk about that later, right? but, she wanted to talk about it right the fuck now.

if i actually was playing the role of the nice guy, i'd have probably impregnated her like she wanted, and we'd probably have stayed together for years longer than we did. i may have even settled her down. i didn't want that...

....and years later, when all doubt had passed, when all rationalizations had ceased, she eventually resented me so much for not wanting that that she couldn't even talk to me anymore.

the actual role i was playing was the feisty egalitarian lesbian feminist femme punk, and i could be a fucking bitch about it when i got pissed off, too.