Dear M:

When bad things happen to us, better learn what happened so that we can make better choices in the future. Let’s see what you shared about this man earlier this month, in your first thread: “I met a guy. He was persistent, kind, a wonderful listener and fun to be around”.

Here are the events with him that were less than wonderful and fun:

1. He asked you to pick him up from work, a 15 mile drive and you agreed. Then your brother called, asking for a 50 miles ride from the airport. You called your boyfriend back and told him that you will be giving your brother a ride, asking him if he will manage without you, and he assured you that he will. But later on, he told you that he felt like a second option.

2. Your mother invited family, including him, to her place for New Years Eve. You agreed but when you found out that she was tipsy, maybe drunk, you told your boyfriend that you don’t want to go to her place, and suggested you go to another place, your brother’s girlfriend’s home. His reaction: “(he) insinuated I was bluffing.. uncooperative and angry.. irate”, later he told you that “he was tired of (your) bs”, told you to “leave him alone” and hung up the phone on you repeatedly.

3. He called you at 6 pm. You were cooking with family at the time and told him that you will call him back when you were done baking rolls. An hour later, “he called back quite upset”. You apologized.

My input at this point: he told you the truth this one time: when he “apologized for directing his anger at (you)”. He knew he has an anger problem, that he is often angry at people for no good reason. But it didn’t keep him from directing his anger at you again and again.

His anger has to do with his early experience as a child, way before he met you. Someone really did treat him as a second option and he was hurt and angry about it. But you didn’t treat him like a second option. You treated him well.

He expected too much from you, expecting that you will reject your brother’s need for a ride from the airport where it is way more difficult and expensive to get home than it is from a place of work;  he expected you to inconvenience yourself and spend time with your mother, just so to please him; he expected you to answer his calls at all times or call him back right away.

Interesting, isn’t it, that you didn’t ask him for a ride, that you didn’t expect him to provide you with a place to spend NYE. He demanded from you, you demanded nothing from him.

He made demands and felt entitled to make those demands from you, and when he didn’t receive exactly what he demanded, he felt enraged and directed his anger at you unjustly.

But you didn’t feel his anger was unfair or unjust. You apologized to him, feeling guilty. You wrote: “I realized how toxic I had become… I hurt him”. No, he was toxic to you and he hurt you. Not the other way around.

At one point you noticed yourself that he was demanding: “I found his behavior on the phone to be demanding”. You also wrote regarding conflicts that you “want to talk about the conflict right then whereas he may avoid it and become bitter or salty later on”, which fits with his behavior when he was angry with you but “immediately followed by pulling away and saying ‘it’s cool’ or ‘it’s straight'”- he gets angry; he partly knows that his anger is unreasonable, so he pulls away, but his anger catches up with him later on.

A few weeks later (this thread), while he was angry with you (“My bf and I were not on good terms two weeks ago”), a friend of yours needed to move on short notice, so you reached out to your angry boyfriend who is a mover. He quoted you $3,200, (which is 3 times more than what you later found out others movers would charge). He then asked you extra for boxes he will be using for the moving job, you sent him $150 but you later found out that the boxes you bought were..  free to him. So basically, your angry boyfriend lied to you and stole $150 from you. When you confronted him with the boxes issue,  he “called threatening me.. claimed I tried to get him fired.. and hung up”. You then “begged for my money back but he still has been uncooperative”.

You wrote: “he actually was gonna overcharge my friend 3 (times) what senior competitive companies charge.. The new moving company said if they were me, they’d run far away from someone quoting a figure like that”.

I say: better you run away from someone like that, this now ex boyfriend. My goodness! He is one of these people who feel entitled to cheat and steal because they are so angry. Your friend did nothing to him, and yet he felt entitled to steal more than $2000 from her (an attempt that didn’t come to fruition because he didn’t do the move for her). You treated him kindly and he felt entitled to steal $150 from you.

I think that you didn’t fully understand that he was all along unreasonably demanding of you, that he has a significant anger problem, that he is passive aggressive.. all because you felt guilty and toxic while in reality,  it was him who was in the wrong repeatedly, culminating in attempting to swindle your friend and actually swindling you.

Better look at your core belief that you are guilty, a core belief that blinded you to his anger problem, unreasonable demands, feeing entitle, passive aggressive behavior, and unethical and illegal business and personal practices aka stealing from innocent people.

One more thing: if he happens to return the $150 to you, it doesn’t mean that he didn’t indeed intend to swindle you and your friend. It likely means  that he has a … bigger swindle in mind.

anita