When You Need to Be The Bad Guy
By: Ryan Fan
Tags: Spirituality, Relationships, Lifestyle, Self, Ideas

When You Need to Be The Bad Guy

It’s time to stop feeling sorry about it.

From chase4concept on Shutterstock

More and more, I’ve had to flat out tell people something I’ve hated telling people: no. As an editor, I can’t accept everything that comes my way. I can’t give feedback to each post that comes my way. As a teacher, I have to tell kids no all the time, like when a student asks to be on the phone during instruction or whether we can do something fun in class later.

I’m not a stickler to my plans, and I consider myself pretty flexible, but I wasn’t always comfortable being the bad guy. I need to be more comfortable being the bad guy, but it’s difficult given my people-pleaser tendencies. I have no idea what it will be like once I become a parent, but I’m sure I’ll need to be the bad guy all the time.

It’s just something I’m still getting used to as someone who doesn’t enjoy saying no and has long sought to be accommodating and compromising towards other people. Reading Travis W. Schermer’s piece in The Good Men Project about how he learned to be the bad guy after breaking up with his girlfriend perhaps reframes the whole concept of being the “bad guy” to me. It’s putting my own needs first rather than always trying to make other people happy.

After his breakup, he started to embrace both his shadow self as well as his accommodating self. In Schermer’s own words:

“I need to both be open to other perspectives AND assert that I am right. I need to both encourage others to share their ideas AND reserve space to share my own. I need to both support others in meeting their needs AND take what I want. I need to be both warmly empathic AND coolly detached. I need to be both the good guy parts AND the bad guy parts. In doing so I can both care for others AND care for myself.”

In learning to be the bad guy, he wasn’t compromising that he was still a mental health counselor and someone who supported others in their needs. I learned to need to have been the bad guy myself in the classroom and as someone who has had to flat out say no or not respond to someone bombarding me with e-mails. I used to feel worse about it, but putting boundaries for myself and making sure I’m in my best shape to help others means putting myself first.

I know I’m the villain in some people’s stories — that isn’t something I can change. But being the bad guy has become necessary, the more I’ve gotten older. The days I was always friendly, kind, sensitive, and a good listener aren’t over. I’m still, a lot of the times, that person.

However, there are times where I’ve had to show anger to let a kid know something in the classroom was not acceptable. In the digital world of writing and editing, I learned that telling someone a firm no is a lot better than leaving them hanging for a while. Of course, I do both, but I’m learning to say no more often.

I learned very quickly that letting people know the world doesn’t have consequences backfires on you very quickly — especially when dealing with children. I conveyed my first year of teaching that I wouldn’t be firm on consequences because I wanted to be nice and sensitive. The reality was that sure; I could have been always friendly and sensitive had I been their friends. But I wasn’t their friends. I was their teacher.

I’ve had to say no when they’ve asked to go to the bathroom when they’ve asked twice in a single class period. I’ve had to assign seats early in the school year, and I should have been firmer on it. I’ve had to take away their incentives and call their parents when they did something wrong.

The fact remains that I wish I did these things before and wasn’t so sorry about it. I’m getting better at it, but classroom management was a constant nightmare during my first year and something I learned a lot about going into my second year.

Being the bad guy sometimes doesn’t mean I’m a terrible person. That’s something I have to accept. Even if it makes me the bad person temporarily, so what? You’ll always be the villain of someone else’s story. It doesn’t mean you should deceive yourself and say it’s okay, but this is life — it’s messy, complicated, and often pretty unfortunate.

Placing my validation in God’s eyes rather than in the validation of others has helped me be more comfortable being a bad guy. As Paul says in Ephesians 6:7, it’s essential to live with “service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man.” It’s essential not to seek out always being the bad guy — only when it’s necessary, and you have to look out for your own needs.

It’s time that I realized my limits, capacities, and places I have to say no. Yes, I’m becoming more of a bad guy sometimes, and it’s time to stop feeling sorry about it.