gonna chime in in agreement with everyone else here. frankly I don't think it matters that he has the capacity to be a great boyfriend; if he hurts you as much as he has (and I do not think your simply stating his behavior is painting an inaccurately negative picture of him), the relationship is bad for you and you should avoid being close with him. yes, that includes close friendship or friendship-with-sexual-elements type deals. man, this has totally happened to me, and I'm gonna tell you: the instant I saw somebody acting angry or uncomfortable around me for no reason that I could tell, I asked, like @budgie said. and regardless of how I thought they should've actually reacted to what I said, I apologized, because it hurt them. like, a friend got upset at me for saying bad things about their abusive mom, and I apologized, sincerely, for saying those things that had caused them pain. I think that's how somebody with good intentions, and especially somebody in a healthy romantic relationship, should act. but he has had clear cues that you have been hurt by things he has said, and he has does things unambiguously designed to cause you pain (like calling you names), and he hasn't apologized. at best, like @budgie said, he is spectacularly ignorant of your feelings when he's upset with you, which may not be his fault necessarily but is still very, very unhealthy for you. at worst, he doesn't care about your feelings unless they're convenient to him, which, as I have said before, I honestly think is the more likely explanation, given his otherwise manipulative behavior. but either way, he's not a good person for you to be around. holy fucking shit this is so many levels of not okay. okay, this? is a huge red flag. enormous. enormously fucked up. he not only didn't care about his ex-boyfriend's feelings, he wanted to hurt him so much that he suicide-baited him. like. man, I gotta say, this is "unambiguously abusive run don't walk" territory.
@esotericPrognosticator but he DID a few times ask if i was mad and i lied and said no. that's not his fault. maybe he doesn't care. if he pretends he does, what's the difference really? .....the thing with his other boyfriend is a thing that i will admit terrifies me. not just that incident, but the way he behaved towards him and talked about him when they were still together. it always made me nervous and scared.
If he pretends to care without really caring, you'll know the difference. Especially when his affection cuts in an out depending on his mood. You might tell yourself it's okay if he doesn't really love you, as long as he pretends to, but that doesn't last and you will be hurt more in the long run.
So... Do you think he was abusing his other boyfriend? EDIT: Okay, maybe this comes off as a dumb question, because I know I do, but it matters what you think. IDK. I don't know if I'm helping, but I'm trying to.
If he's just pretending to care it means he'll revert to hurtful behaviour once he's had enough of pretending. It means he's not actually going to change. The thing about his ex is frankly terrifying, and I have no reason to believe he won't do something similar to you if you don't play by his rules. And again, yeah, everyone gets upset by different things and I'm not expecting him to be a mind reader . But if he was angry and hurt by a situation and can't extrapolate that the same situation might make you angry and hurt, that's a really bad sign. If I had a fight with my so, and later he said he wasn't mad/upset by it, I would still apologize. Plus, you have DPD and he knows it! Of course you're going to say you're not mad, because you don't want to hurt (and anger?) him by saying so. I don't even know anyone with DPD and that's obvious to me, so frankly he has no excuses.
regarding his ex: i don't know if i would consider him abusive towards him, it was just that the way he spoke of him sort of hit me in an area i have a lot of fear over. he would constantly complain about him being too clingy, or about him not being able to take care of himself very well, or call him stupid for things like forgetting to pack something when he came to his house. he would also call me while the other bf was there and tell me things like "oh, great, (name) is sobbing in the corner again because i'm ignoring him, ugh." i couldn't help but imagine him talking about me like that, and that was what terrified me. i may try to talk to him about feeling hurt and see if he will apologize? he's been in a very good mood so i can probably do that without upsetting him too much, i hope.
He literally sent his ex a bottle of bleach and told him to kill himself. That is completely unambiguously abusive. ... I have no idea why you would believe him when he said you couldn't be too clingy when he called you and mocked his boyfriend who was in the same room for crying because he felt ignored. Like, I would honestly bet $10 that he's spoken of you like that.
i will concede the bleach thing was abusive, but that was after the relationship ended. i'm saying i'm not sure that he was abusive while the relationship was still a thing. oh, i know he's spoken of me like that, especially after breakup, but i don't know if he did earlier in the relationship. he was already upset with other bf by then, but was consistently kind to me.
if he did that AFTER the relationship, I have no doubt he was doing similar stuff before, since otherwise that seems like a pretty huge leap in behavior.
So you think he wasn't abusive during the relationship, but then suddenly flipped to suicide baiting?
well, he was kind and loving to me and then suddenly flipped to ignoring me and yelling at me and telling me to shut up? i wouldn't consider that kind of change so impossible.
Talking about other bf in front of him is abusive. And shit like suicide baiting doesn't come out of the blue. People are rarely abusive from the get-go. The way you describe how he acted with you and ex, it sounds like he starts off sweet and enjoys playing the knight in shining armour, but then gets tired of you being too clingy, pushes you away and makes you feel bad for things he knew about when he started dating you. Then he finds someone else, the excitement of a new relationship kicks in, and the cycle starts all over again. And if he was talking about ex like that while they were still together, again,I guarantee he was talking about you like that before your break up. That's what we mean when we say there's a difference between acting like he cares and actually caring. I have no doubt he was initially nice and sweet with his other exes too.
Flipping so suddenly and so dramatically like that isn't common unless there was something really extreme to cause it. Otherwise, it's like budgie says: what you're seeing is his true nature.
Also, was the boyfriend he sent bleach to the one he broke up with this past week, or another one? His behaviour is unacceptable regardless, but I'm curious.
yes, it's the same boyfriend. so...is the implication i'm hearing here that he never cared at all? because i have a hard time swallowing that. he was just as clingy as me early in the relationship and expressed severe distress if i was gone for an hour. there was a sudden shift in his entire personality.
I think he cared as long as he didn't have to be there for you too much or give you the same sort of attention and validation as he got from you. Could be he's the sort to be in love with the idea of being in love, and like what's been said already, he likes the excitement of a new relationship. The newness wears off and with it, his affection.
Yeah. The main thing we're trying to say here is he doesn't want an equal relationship, he wants a relationship centered on him and his needs without considering your own needs and desires. Your needs - needing close contact, talking every day, etc - were validated by him only so long as they matched up with his own needs, and when you step over his imaginary unwritten line or his desires shift he takes it out on you or his ex-boyfriend without bothering to talk to you about it. Is that... accurate?
but he gave me tons of attention and validation and comfort at the beginning of the relationship. he was there for me all the time, and then suddenly wasn't. .....i guess it's possible like @Ruevian said, he's in love with being in love? but i don't understand why he'd get bored so soon; i was/am still completely in awe of him and we were supposed to meet in july, that's exciting, why would he get bored? @Petra i don't know if it's accurate because i can't read his mind, i don't know why he does things, and i think we've established i am not a reliable source for analyzing his character.
Yeah. Okay. And I can't read his mind either so, here's a better question that might help you. Do you trust him not to treat you badly? Like, regardless of the reasons.
