Also, just to put your experience alongside SIL's experience with a man like this.
but there’s a very performative side to him that I’m struggling with. He’s 40 yet still very attached to a sort of DJ-scene identity, always telling stories and dropping names, and it feels like he hasn’t really outgrown that phase.
Played the guitar, casually, and went to a few raves and quite liked doing a little DJ'ing at home - to hear him speak, he was completely in with whatever the hot DJ/music scene was at the time.
feel like if I don't respond completely enthralled, I'm then having to manage his sulks and stony silences, but it's exhausting.
If SIL wasn't 100% engaged in whatever he was doing/thinking/texting, he'd sulk and complain about how she's "clearly not interested in his life".
I also need occasional downtime just to reset. He sees that as me not prioritising him, whereas I see it as basic survival.
She was working and studying and paying 80% of their bills (he'd managed to convince her to let him move in with her very early) and yet he truly and deeply resented if she needed time to study, LOATHED if she went to the gym and had complete meltdowns if she went to see a friend because she wasn't "prioritising him". At one point, her entirel social life consisted of her friends travelling to see her in her lunch break.... the only time she was allowed to see them.
He sometimes makes comments that are supposed to be “jokes” but feel like pressure. Last week, he suggested he should come over “just for a blow job” and then saying “can delete if inappropriate.” It's like he's testing the water but and wanting to hedge his bets based on my response.
He had no sense of humour or even an ability to pretend but he did this in a different way. eg, "jokes" about how she's "lucky" he doesn't insist she irons his shirts or that other women would be so grateful that he'd cooked a meal when she came home from work (he was home, not working, all day. And the meal was food she hated).
He’s questioned me about going to bed early, once calling me a liar, and if I say I need space he often sulks or gives me the silent treatment. After a meal recently when I said I was heading home as I was tired, he got stroppy and went cold with me.
If she didn't greet him enthusiastically enough when coming home, he'd sulk. If she was 30 minutes late home from a drink with a friend becuase of train delays, he'd accuse her of lying. If she didn't want to stay up late to watch a show they'd been watching together, even though she had work the next day, he'd sulk.
There was also a big argument when I mentioned (in context of talking about shit bands) that I’d slept with someone over 20 years ago who said he was from XXXX shit band. He had a huge strop and made us leave the taxi. Yet he constantly talks about his own past and his stories are fair game. It feels like a double standard.
Pretty classic. YOu're supposed to be pure. He hated that SIL had previous boyfriends. HATED it.
He'll pay for things then remind me later "I'm really kind, I've paid for XYZ" like he's holding it against me. It feels like pressure all the time.
He never had money but if he so much as made her a cup of tea......
I’ve suggested therapy, because I think he’s actually quite insecure and it could help him, but he won’t consider it.
No, because personalities like this, just like pre-teens, truly think they are in the right and if anything, they believe YOU should go to therapy because you're clearly a cold, unkind person.
I feel like he doesn’t really value the reality of my life — that I parent alone, work hard, and need downtime sometimes.
No, he doesn't because his entire world view is that he is at the centre and everything you do should be about him.
End it now otherwise you'll find yourself in 10 years where my SIL is - a single parent, with no support, years of abuse means she's lost all sense of herself and what is normal in relationships and, to boot, she's in huge debt because of the endless ways she's spent money to try and compensate for his shittiness.