So I've (26M) never had a good relationship with my moms boyfriend. He has always been touchy, selfish, dramatic, brooding, and lazy. Literally any amount of disagreement between my mom and I is intolerable to him. He jumped out of a moving car in response to some minor bickering for example. He has accomplished such feats of emotional intelligence as telling me (in reference to my mom) that I don't know what it's like for someone I love to get cancer. Attempts at talking things out results in getting talked AT, with a frenzied hurry towards "resolution", so he can ignore me for days again.
Notably, a frequent source of conflict has been his cat. We have 4 older cats, he has one young, large, and aggressive cat. It immediately began to ambush and attempt to maul every single one of our cats. My mom, being extremely timid and conflict avoidant, refused for literally years (for fear of upsetting her boyfriend) to single out the cat and separate it from the others. Literally discussing anything we disagree on with him even approaching the house is banned. Her body tenses, her jaw clenches, and she hisses to STOP it. She is horrified for him to hear anything besides perfection. As a result, it became a very frequent occurrence to hear yowling and have to sprint downstairs to break it up. Most often, this burden fell on me.
Well, one day, it got bad. My oldest, fattest and loveliest kitty was screaming bloody murder, defenseless. His nasty cat was latched on and attempting to utterly tear her apart. Well, it was my mom's bf and I in the room. After a solid 10 seconds of this oaf casually bumbling about ineffectually, I lightly but firmly swatted his cat off of mine. It worked. And I immediately tended to my wounded baby. Well, he just about lost his mind. The guy accused me of being a damned animal abuser. I would later find out that this delusional man went on to tell my mom that I made a closed fist and that the cat got literal AIRTIME. My guess is that this might be a contributing factor to the camera.
Fast forward a few months. I recently moved out, but moved back in for financial reasons (poor grad student). Almost instantly, the guy installed cameras. My mom assured me (and believed herself) that it's just for security purposes, and that he'd never spy on me. That she was uncomfortable about the audio too but that he would never breach my privacy. This is important to me, as I have a LDR girlfriend that I frequently Skype with.
Here is the inspiration for the post: So I'm not proud, but on one recent occasion, my girlfriend asked about the camera. To which I replied, "Oh, here it is! Hi you nosy bastard!". It was an ink tracer. If he kept to his word and didn't spy, no problemo. I didn't think much of it. I later negotiated with my mom to have the camera taken down. Initially he just turned it off, but apparently couldn't be trusted as he turned it on to spy while she was crying over something. That was the last straw and it got unplugged and taken down once and for all. End of story? Nope!
Tonight, he reviewed the footage, and revealed to my mom what I had done. He was upset I didn't trust him to not to use the camera for anything besides security. That I painted him in a bad light. My mom flipped a shit and now blames me. I feel disgusted and violated that he listened into my conversations. I personally don't know how much he listened to. My suspicion is my mom is naive and he has listened to far more than just that little snippet. I refuse to apologize.
My question is. I'm worried about my mom. And my girlfriend is visiting tomorrow. It seems my mom will always be delusional about this man changing, and his benign intentions. My mom has consistently told me that I'm the one who "needs to be right". Who won't just drop it, and who needs to just "keep the peace". I know now that I made a HUGE mistake moving back here. Do I try to talk to the guy one on one? Do I try to reason with my mom? Or do I give up and declare my family's (just my mom and I) future overcoming of this baggage to be fucked?
TLDR: Mom's bf installed cameras. Listened to a private conversation. Got butthurt. Mom blames me. I'm feeling violated and gas lit. Help?
Submitted September 20, 2019 at 08:47PM by BananaPigeonWasTaken https://ift.tt/30bB4xr
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