boyfriend has a mean streak

Posted On 25 Oct 2020

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But it still doesn’t change what happened, and my bottom line is still “NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE.”, “a casual slap to the face does not bode well you know?”. My disastrous first boyfriend had parents with this dynamic twenty years on. You are not demanding they stop being ill or feel shitty.” Actually, you are… or at least you may be. Jabbing his finger in the air, he told me how unsympathetic my resident was and how rude the staff at the front desk had been. When that happens, you will get exhausted and burnt out and it will be bad for you (please read as “I got exhausted, burnt out, and it was bad for me.” And ultimately the person I was trying to help). With that in mind, I straight up told him when he crossed the line with me one day (we were having a brunch discussion on some trivial intellectual topic and he got so intense about his point of view that he was angry and hostile and looking at me like I was an idiot). “Why is he doing this?” doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that he has problems. There are 2 things that you could do.

Is the line I’ve been looking for for a very long time. I was also recently reminded of his mean streak, in regards to casual mean comments and tendency to strike out hurtfully at others when hurting or in misplaced jest/humour. I even used the “you’re being mean, please stop” test, complete with “here is why it’s mean, I will give you a logical explanation in excruciating detail because you demanded it,” and it resulted in 1. no apology 2. doubling down 3. explanations about why he was right and I was wrong to feel hurt 4. continuation of the behavior. So, I feel…if I can’t handle a friend/s coming to me, how can I become a counsellor? Unlike strangers we have no vested interest in, who we can label jerks for teeny tiny transgressions with a supermarket trolley. It made me cry afterwards when I realized how much I had been missing and needing just that.

If someone is treating you badly, and you make them aware of the problem and ask them to stop, and they keep going with what they were doing before? It involved a lot of yelling. That’s just sickening.

He's not violent and I don't believe he ever would be, but this doesn't make it any easier for her to cope with the emotional bullying. This. Mean is a choice. And it always will be. The whys can be important, but they don’t really matter until after the apology is made cleanly. That worked okay for a while but kept landing me in the middle of burned bridges. Oh, that’s totally true.

1 decade ago. But the Wishful thinking fairy (what an amazing concept btw) rears its soulful head and whispers bittersweet “whatifs” every now and again. That she should understand that the meanness comes from insecurity. He also jokingly suggested I put down my ancient but beloved cat so I could get a new fluffy kitten. Happy to snark about anyone in my life giving me shit. personally i wouldnt accept it, but thats just me. Gah, the “love tap” notion. !~*~ and the ensuing fight is so bad that one of you finally dumps the other, you are going to feel very, very, very angry at him, and also stupid and ashamed of yourself for putting up with this shit (not that it’s your fault, but if you’ve internalized a fraction of the It’s Our Responsibility To Keep Ourselves Safe crap that most women have internalized, you will feel like it is), for a very long time.

I am projecting pretty hard right now but I’d bet that if this guy is anything like the guys I dated at university he doesn’t see the whole you either. If he wants to hang this on depression and make you out to be a bad person, run away like he is a rabid werebadger intent on eating your face. SHE was the one who really suffered, because she was the one having to leave behind all the awsome friends she had made abroad, and “getting to terms” with the fact that she had to move out of her old flatshare. There was a possibility that he was nonverbally expressing the love and affection he felt but didn’t say, because some people are like that, and you would have been safe trusting him; and there was a possibility that he was a jerk. Who would?

Thanks for saying this (and pretty much everything above) staranise. As a professional counselor, you don’t counsel your friends. For a second, I thought, “Well, what if these letters are an artificial construct, like Plato’s dialogues? That was awful. I had a friend (emphasis on past tense here) who pulled that sort of thing.

Everyone ever should read “Mistakes were Made (But not by Me)” it provides SO much insight into human behavior. We do dark humour like nobody’s business. Recently we’ve made some new friends who recognize that his physical disability is in fact a disability and blaming him for needing help ISN’T helpful. Basically, you don’t *need* That Guy for your romantic/pants life to be what you want it to be. Please, LW, listen to all animated .gifs. In my case it took years to stop making excuses for her and blaming myself, to the point where it basically utterly sabotaged any dating life I otherwise might have had in my university years (when it really is important, and frankly should be easier than at any other period in your life). It always seems to be males too – the only female character I’ve ever seen with that character type is Kara Thrace (Starbuck) on Battlestar Galactica 2.0. One day, you’ll look back on this, and you’ll be telling someone else that it’s not your fault, and that it gets better. Nope is right. I discovered how to see red flag behaviour.

“I’m sorry, it’s because of (issues).” I probably was this person once, except most people who knew me at the time hated me anyways, so I never got a chance to emotionally manipulate people. But sometimes that is just how we learn, it is part of growing and becoming the person we will be. Who ballroom danced. Willing to accept my ‘flaws’ (funny how I didn’t even realise they were flaws til he pointed them out). Your boyfriend might not be an unredeemable jerk, but it’s also possible that he is. There are mean people who get depressed. Is there anything which seems to trigger them? My honest advice is to run far, far away from Mean Guy even if that means abandoning Sexy Guy and Sad Guy to his Sad, Sexy Darth Vader fate.
For myself, even when I took the advice late and did a fair amount of ‘learning for myself’, I can’t imagine what would have happened had I not gotten it at all. Like Hyde they run unchecked and rampant. And some people are friends and love each other and still say appalling shit about each other. I’ve mostly been able to avoid Gaston types without falling into the trap of the Beast types (probably for unrelated reasons, though) so I guess I should just be thankful I was able to absorb something positive from it and not be harmed. She left him and her phoned me to tell me that he thought she must be clinically depressed and could I help him get her to see a doctor! So I hope that you can take good advice and walk away. “This person is strikes out hurtfully, using harsh comments and mean humour. Turns out that he was a gaslighting abuser who messed me up for years afterwards. Just another point to add to the excellent ones made already...the thing that scared me far more than being on my own was the thought of my ds growing up to be the same as my ex ....growing up to think that it was ok to treat people (and, most likely, especially women?) We don’t fight much (yet, I’m sure). On one side of it, the no-standing-for-nonsense reaction is entirely appropriate. We have to own our own behavior, in full. Totally untreated, life-ruining, terrifyingly-linked-to-finances, barely-leaving-bed-to-pee depression. The issue is I can’t seem to integrate these three aspects of him in my head.