Admitted early drinking and driving as a teen with no regrets, same for going to strip clubs. At the same time, wouldn't dream of missing mass. Bothered me to write a thank you note to his mother when she sent me a blouse as a gift my post. The bothering started the day the package arrived. At the same time, gave me hints that he hated his mother.
'The perfect man', but too much too soon, professed eternal love, blah blah. Put me on a pedestal, told me his beliefs about me, which were all baloney. I was every shade of wonderful, I should do X and Y and Z career-wise, never mind what I had to say about my life.
Maybe this was just another way that we were poles apart and maybe he was genuinely trying to throw me in the deep end to be struck by terror on purpose, but he never worried about the important little details. I was sent off to do X or Y or Z task or errand lacking some basic piece of paperwork, like the LSAT, in London, without the all-important registration card that I needed to get in (it hadn't arrived in the post but he couldn't see why I wouldn't be fine without it), and the directions to Grey's Inn which I had to first find and then find the exam location there after getting into the city from my relatives' home in Carshalton at the crack of stupid o'clock one Saturday morning, my second time ever in London, having travelled from Dublin. I had never done an American style multiple choice test like the LSAT either, but my nervousness was like water off a duck's back to him. It simply didn't register. Arrived with my pencils and only my Irish passport for ID and had to argue to be allowed to sit the exam, alongside very hardboiled American students all of whom were bragging loudly about the fantastic law schools they were applying to, brandishing their registration cards and swigging diet coke at 7.30 am. Sending me to do the LSAT was a favour as I was going to be making something of my life.
Went berserk about his flatmates' messiness despite the fact that he was always the last one to join the merry band in all his digs and despite the fact that they had never sat down and worked out any house rules together. Maybe he assumed they were the same neatfreaks that he was, but a therapist suggested to me later that these displays of temper were done to show me a little of his true self and see my reaction. Couldn't live with people, it turned out, without hating them in a very short time. Initially all was sweetness and light and they were the best roomies in the universe. He had four addresses in three years.
Critical of my friends and our mutual friends behind their backs. Very dismissive about everything Irish whose merit didn't make sense to him immediately. Arrogant and superior attitude...
Thought misogyny and fattism were funny. Thought that No didn't necessarily mean No and that the essence of rape is not lack of consent, thought consent once given couldn't be changed.
Response to shock and trauma (bad news from back home in the US) was to isolate himself from me.