When the chaos isn't loud: the nice guy, the covert narcissist, and how toxic relationships heat up one degree at a time. Gina on gaslighting, being made to feel crazy, quiet control, and the real questions that tell you whether you're actually safe — or just less obviously in danger than last time.

This podcast reflects personal experiences and opinions and is not therapy or professional advice.

Music: "Do It Anyway" by Scarlett Solo, used under license.

Okay, so after we lovingly blamed our fathers, their fathers, and basically our entire bloodline, I think it only makes sense to talk about what happens when you finally decide you are done with all of that nonsense. Because at some point, enough is enough. After enough bad decisions, enough drama, enough emotionally unstable men with hot bods, or maybe not so hot bods, and terrible life choices, one day you wake up and think, "You know what?

I'm done." And if you're not there yet, enjoy that high. I did. But if you wanna find real love one day, you gotta just put that fuckboy crack pipe down This is your host, Gina Sullivan, telling you to say no to

drugs. But also, I want to welcome you back to my show and your new favorite part of the day, Daddy Tissues.

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I'm done dating men who love confrontation, love to beat everyone up, sell drugs, do drugs, like to go to jail, rob old ladies, metaphorically or literally, who knows anymore? Or somehow always ends up being the main character in every room, every problem, and every

single one of those police reports. Some of you probably think that sounds a little far-fetched, but if you know, you know.

Some of these men are not just men They are weather events. They walk into your life, and suddenly you need at least three emergency contacts, a ride home, and someone to hold your fucking earrings. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Eventually, you're going to make a different choice. You are going to be smart and mature.

You're going to date the normal, everyday Joe, the man your friends and family all approve of. And you're gonna think, "Hell yeah, look at me healing and shit. Look at me making better choices. Look at me not being attracted to the goddamn

Jerry Springer Show anymore." But anyways, this episode is not me sitting here trying to publicly destroy anyone I've ever dated, had children with, married, divorced, loved, hated, cried over, stalked online, blocked, unblocked, or considered pushing into traffic.

I am not here to say every man from my past is evil. I actually believe most people deep down are good, or at least they started that way. Somewhere underneath the ego, the trauma, the bad coping skills, the mommy issues, the daddy issues, the emotional handicaps, and whatever else their childhood generously donated to the situation, I do believe most people have good in them.

And also, let's be fair. I picked them, so I'm not gonna sit here like I was kidnapped by every relationship I ever had. I had a pattern. I had a picker, and apparently my picker was built by unresolved trauma, low self-worth, Catholic guilt, and a desire to be

chosen by the hardest man in the room to love.

Adorable. Very efficient. So this episode is not about shitting on any of my exes or about shitting on anyone specifically. This is about the pattern. This is about the lesson because the more men you date, the more you learn. Like anything, practice is key. And honestly, if only someone had given me this education before I started dating, I could have saved myself about 20 years, several nervous breakdowns, lots of time and money on therapy, and probably a lot of mascara.

So you're welcome. Daddy Tissues University is now in session Here's the thing. When you grow up attracted to chaos, you think the solution is to obviously pick someone who looks less chaotic, right? That makes sense. If the old guy was openly

disrespectful, pick polite. If the old guy was unstable, pick someone steady.

That all seems very logical, and sometimes it is. Sometimes the nice guy really is nice. Sometimes calm really is healthy. Sometimes peace really is peace. And God bless those men, truly. We love them. We need more of them. Somebody please water them and keep them safe. But sometimes what looks like peace is not peace.

Sometimes it's just a quieter kind of control. Sometimes it is passive. Sometimes it is dismissive. Sometimes it is a man who never screams, never throws things, never looks like the obvious villain, but somehow you still end up feeling unheard, lonely, and crazy. When a man is obnoxious, punching things, --- for tackling your --, a carton of eggs missing from the refrigerator because you decided to get even, or at minimum some form of public

embarrassment that makes it clear as day, everybody can see it.

You have evidence. You have witnesses. You have a little community consensus that, yes, this man is a problem. But when the nice guy hurts you, it's harder to explain. So let's picture this. You find the so-called perfect man, and then there's you, you with the baggage, you with all the stories. You're the one that all the things seem to happen to.

You're the one people might roll their eyes at and say, "Oh God, this girl. Here we go." Maybe they don't actually say that. Maybe that's just, like, your insecurity doing a TED Talk in your head, but you feel as though that's what's happening. Who knows? But you were just, like, the messy one, and then

this kind, handsome, socially acceptable man comes along, and everyone acts like he saved you.

Like, thank God, that poor girl finally got rescued. The girl who had a baby so young, that struggling single mom who was barely hanging on, which now looking back, I know I totally had my shit together. Actually, I was killing it. The girl with the crazy baby daddy, the girl with the trauma and the drama finally got chosen.

Everyone loves that story, and for a long time, you believe that story too. I mean, you got it all, right? Why the hell are you so sad? You think, "He's good. Maybe I'm the problem." Because if everyone thinks he's wonderful and he's not doing anything obviously terrible in front of them, then what are you supposed to

say?

He makes me feel like I'm always too much. He doesn't respect me, but I know it might look like he does. He can make you look unstable just by staying calm. You're crying, he's calm. You're yelling, he's calm. You're begging to be heard, he's calm. You're losing your fucking mind, he's calm. And suddenly, the room decides you're the problem because people confuse calm with kind.

They confuse quiet with innocent. They confuse charm with character, and they confuse your reaction with the cause. Because no one sees all the times you're at home screaming for mercy, just trying to be heard for once. It's like you're trapped in this soundproof glass box, and this man is watching you through the glass saying,

"So do you wanna order pizza for tonight" That is the part that makes women feel crazy.

You're not exploding because you're dramatic. You're exploding because you've been dismissed, minimized, mocked, ignored, and emotionally poked at until your nervous system finally throws a chair. And then he points at the chair. "See? Look at you. This is why I can't talk to you. This is why nobody takes you seriously."

And you're standing there thinking, "Wait, how did we get here?" That's how it happens. The conversation becomes about how you reacted and not what he did. The issue becomes your yelling, not his disrespect. The problem becomes your emotions, not his behavior. And if he's charming enough, people believe him, even you sometimes.

They don't see the private version. They don't see the

tiny cuts. They don't see the eye rolls, the jokes, the little humiliations, the way he makes you feel dumb in front of people, the way he acts like your pain is an inconvenience, the way he rewrites the story so he is always reasonable and you are always unstable.

That's the covert narcissist. Sometimes he's the man everyone loves. Yeah. And you become the woman trying to explain a wound that nobody can see. There's this old story about a frog in boiling water If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it jumps out immediately because it knows it's in danger.

But if you put that same frog into warm water and slowly turn up the heat, it stays there. It does not realize the water is getting hotter until it's too late. Now, whether or not that is scientifically

true is not the point. The point is, emotionally, that is exactly how toxic relationships work. Nobody walks into a relationship and says, "I would love to slowly lose my confidence, question my reality, shrink myself, and become addicted to someone's approval."

Nobody's out there manifesting nervous system damage. It doesn't happen all at once. It starts small. One comment, one insult disguised as a joke, one cold shoulder, one night where they disappear and somehow you end up apologizing, one boundary you let slide because you didn't wanna fight, one time you accept less than you deserve because you're trying to be understanding, and then the water gets a little hotter.

Now you're explaining basic respect. Now you're begging for reassurance. Now you're scared to bring things up because you don't know which version of them you're gonna get. Now you're

watching their mood before you decide what kind of mood you are allowed to be in. And the craziest part is you do not always realize you are being emotionally worn down while it's happening.

Because if someone treated you terribly on day one, you would leave. But when it happens slowly, you adjust. You start calling disrespect communication issues. You start calling emotional neglect, "He's just stressed." You start calling control, "He just loves me so much." You start calling crumbs effort. And one day you wake up and you do not even recognize yourself.

You are not the confident woman you were. You're not laughing the same. You're not dressing the same. You are not trusting yourself the same. You are not even thinking clearly anymore because your whole nervous system is built around surviving the temperature of someone else's mood. That is the boiling frog.

Emotional abuse does not

always look like screaming and obvious cruelty. Sometimes it looks like confusion. Sometimes it looks like walking on eggshells. Sometimes it looks like constantly trying to get back the good version of someone. Sometimes it looks like saying, "But when it's good, it's so good." And that has kept women in emotional boiling water for generations.

That is not love. That is intermittent relief. That is the high you feel when the person hurting you suddenly gives you a break from the pain they caused you. So if you are listening to this and you're thinking, "How did I get here?" That's how. One degree at a time. And the way out is not judging yourself for not seeing it sooner.

The way out is realizing, "Oh my God,

this water is fucking hot," and then getting out before you spend one more year convincing yourself it's normal. Fuck no. That is not how this works. A man does not have to scream at you to disrespect you. A man does not have to cheat on you to make you feel unwanted. A man does not have to hit you to make you feel unsafe.

Sometimes it is the small things repeated over and over. The way he listens just enough to respond, but not enough to understand. The way he makes your needs feel inconvenient. The way he makes you feel like your pain is annoying. The way he tells you whatever you wanna hear so he can shut you the fuck up, but does not really mean what he says.

The way he is loved by everyone else while you are quietly starving inside the relationship. That kind of loneliness is its own kind of damage, and it's harder to name because there may not be one huge obvious thing. It might just be

years of little things, and the little things turn into a big thing that breaks you It just happens so slowly that you do not realize it is happening, like the boiling frog, the poor little boiling frog.

Now, here is where I have to be honest. This is not always because a man is a monster. Sometimes he's just emotionally limited. Sometimes he learned his own patterns that he does not understand himself. Sometimes he grew up in a house where women were just there to take care of children and clean the house.

Sometimes he never learned how to sit with discomfort. Sometimes he grew up in a family where everyone avoided confrontation altogether Sometimes he thinks being a good man means going to work, not cheating, not hitting anyone, and keeping up with the bills. And listen, those things matter, they do,

but they are not the whole job.

A relationship is not healthy just because nobody got arrested. No. In fact, people may even see you as the villain, saying things like, "What is wrong with her? Why would she ever leave such an amazing man?" But do they know the truth? No. And honestly, who gives a fuck? And who are they to judge? No one knows what's going on behind those closed doors.

Sometimes the lesson is not he was evil. Sometimes the lesson is I chose familiar again, just in a quieter package. And then another one bites the dust. This is what I want women to understand. Changing the type of man does not automatically mean changing the pattern. And because it looks different, we think we healed, but our body still knows.

Your body knows when you are not being heard.

Your body knows when you are shrinking. Your body knows when you are pretending. Your body knows when you are begging for crumbs and calling it love. And eventually, your body starts screaming. Anxiety, depression, rage, numbness, exhaustion, resentment. You start becoming someone you do not recognize.

And then when you finally react, everybody wants to talk about your reaction, not what created it, not the years you spent swallowing it. Your breakdown, not what broke you. That is why women have to learn to trust themselves before they explode. Because by the time you explode, people will use the explosion as evidence that you were the problem all along.

So what is the takeaway? The takeaway is not never date a nice guy. Please do not go out there and say, "Gina Sullivan told you to only date men with ankle

monitors and motorcycles." However, I'm not saying not to. This is what I'm saying. Kind is good. Stable is good. We want those things. We need those things.

The question is, do I feel safe being fully myself with him? Do I feel heard? Do I feel respected? Really respected. Can I bring up a problem without being punished for having feelings? Does he care when I'm hurt, even if he does not agree with me? Can he take accountability? Can he apologize without turning himself into the victim every time?

Does he protect my peace, or does he just benefit from me keeping it? That's the difference. A healthy man does not have to be perfect. God help us, nobody is But a healthy man should be able to care about your experience. He should not need you to collapse before he believes you are hurting. He should not make you scream before he hears you.

He should not

make you compete with his ego. And if you keep finding yourself in relationships where you have to become louder and louder just to be heard, maybe the issue is not that you're being too loud. Maybe the issue is that you're with someone committed to not listening And this is where we have to look at ourselves too.

Because yes, maybe he had issues. Maybe they all had issues. Welcome to Earth. But why did I choose him? Why did this version of love feel normal to me? Why did I ignore my body when it was telling me something was off? Those are not questions to shame ourselves. Those are questions to free ourselves.

Because once you understand that you are not just picking men, you are picking familiar emotional environments, everything starts to shift. You stop asking, "Why do I always date assholes?" And you start asking, "What kind of love did I learn to survive?" That is the question.

What kind of love did I learn to endure?

Because that might be the exact kind of love you keep recreating. And once you see it, you can stop calling it fate. You can stop calling it chemistry. You can stop calling it bad luck. You can start calling it what it is, a pattern. And patterns can be broken, not overnight, not because you listen to one podcast episode and suddenly became a healed goddess with boundaries and a meal plan, but slowly by noticing, by noticing the truth, by not picking the man who looks good on paper if your soul feels lonely beside him.

So here is your daddy tissues homework. And yes, I'm giving out homework now. Apparently, this microphone I have here also came with delusions of educational authority. Think about the men you have chosen and ask yourself, "Did I choose him because he was

right for me or because he looked like the kind of man I was supposed to choose?"

And here is the big one. Was he actually safe or was he just less obviously dangerous than the last one? Because there is a difference, a very big difference. And if you realize that you have been choosing the same wound in different flavors, yeah, me too. It hurts like hell. But it also means you are awake now.

And once you are awake, you can make a different choice. You can choose yourself before you choose the next man. And honestly, that might be the first healthy relationship some of us will ever have, the one we finally build with ourselves. So let's grab those daddy tissues, girls. Let's learn to love ourselves, depend on ourselves, trust

ourselves, and make ourselves happy because we can't depend on men for our happiness.

We create our own happiness. Till next time.

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