My (35F) BF of 2 1/2 yrs (36M) has started bullying his co-worker (20sM) and this is part of a gradual but drastic personality change. Is something wrong, or is this the real him coming out?

So, my boyfriend "Erik" works with a pretty close knit team of about 10 people. Mostly men. I think there's one woman and one of the supervisors might be a woman. They're repair type people so they travel around and so, have a group text if they need things throughout the day or need parts, have a question, that kind of thing.

A few months ago, a new guy named "Dan" started. Dan is considerably younger than the rest of the group. He's in his early 20s where the rest are mid 30s - 50s.

Dan has been getting on everyone's nerves. To be fair the guy (from the texts I've seen) is really insecure, attention seeking and irritating. He's nice enough, just really young and awkward. Like he'll post a picture of something he's working on and say "Omg this is pissing me off" and then..... nothing else. Not a technical question, a description of the problem, nothing. He wants someone to ask and to care.

People either ignore him or give him one word answers.

Lately Erik has started bullying Dan and seems almost proud of it. A couple examples. The program to submit mileage changed so they had to do it manually for a while. Erik sent a reminder to the group to fax it in. Dan replied "I already did". Erik then said "🍪 Since you seem to want to be special." And then sent me the screen shot.

I was like "Dude that was uncalled for. What do you even think he did wrong?" Erik said "HE'S TRYING TO SET HIMSELF APART AGAIN!!!! NO ONE ELSE REPLIED BUT HIM!!!!" So I said "It was still uncalled for. Ok he's irritating but he's still a person. Leave him alone. He did nothing wrong." Erik changed the subject.

A week or so later Dan was asking questions about how to do something. He's probably a bad fit for the job. He should already know how to do this. People were trying to help him but he just wasn't getting it. Erik texted REPLACE IT over and over about 15 times. Dan stopped replying.

Again I told Erik that was uncalled for. If he felt himself getting annoyed he should have just left the conversation. That Dan is AT LEAST 15 years younger than anyone else there, he has to KNOW he doesn't quite fit in, what he needs is someone to mentor him and reach out, he's just an awkward kid. I told Erik that I've been bullied at work in the past and his behavior was making me really uncomfortable, because if he didn't know me as a partner, would he bully me too? Does he think this behavior is ok?

Again Erik changed the subject.

This is just part of a larger pattern the last 6-8 months. It's been gradual but it's there. Erik started debating a mutual friend over a video game and it ended in a shouting match. I walked out because I just couldn't listen to it anymore. The friend was trying to calm the situation down but Erik had such a head of steam built up he just kept shouting.

He's also been WAY more critical of me lately. I was upset and crying one day because I just got overwhelmed. There was a serious maintenance issue at my apartment that was impacting my even being able to stay there for a few days. I had had a bad day at work, made some mistakes because I was tired and distracted and got yelled at. I kinda deserved it, I did make the mistakes and shouldn't have, but it was still upsetting. I was worried about one of my cats who had been vomiting and not eating much. My engine light came on. Just a garden variety pile of shit day where everything that could go wrong did, and I was already tired and not emotionally at my best to handle it.

Erik starts yelling at me about how I need to "change my perspective", somehow brings up my ex (honestly how tf did that even come up, I haven't had ANY contact with my ex in 3 years or maybe even more), started yelling about how I'm "hung up on logistics", I guess meaning the logistics of the things that went wrong, I needed to admit I had emotions invested in it, claimed I'd yelled at a counselor (I'd seen one a couple times a few months prior but they weren't a fit at all) when that NEVER happened. I had told Erik I nodded and uh-huh'd through 3 sessions but we just didn't mesh. There was NO yelling.

He basically started a shouting match because I was upset about a bad day.

Was I overly emotional? Yeah, probably. I was tired, hungry, overheated and living out of a backpack. I had a fucking bad day and my emotional baseline wasn't right. Because I am a human being.

I fail to see how screaming at me and berating me for feeling unwell emotionally was going to help.

There had been "lesser" instances of this as well the last few months. I'm no contact with my mother. She made a mess of her life and then tried to manipulate me into fixing it and I don't need that. I broke contact. I'm fine with it. It's not an issue to me. I didn't choose her. I don't want her in my life, she's toxic. Done.

Somehow she happened to get mentioned in a conversation and Erik jumped right in with how I should think for "a different perspective" and then got irritated when I said I'd made my peace with it. It's like he has to always be getting ahead of me lately and critiquing my thought process and starting fights about it. I don't even want to come to him with anything anymore.

This is not the man I knew. Not at all. We met through a shared hobby and he would always take the "underdogs" and new people under his wing.

Now he's a bully.

I used to be able to have a bad day or be a little irrational and he'd come over and have drinks with me and let me cry and fall asleep with me.

Now he screams and tells me I'm thinking and handling everything wrong.

I don't know this person. And it's not JUST me he's changed with.

Is something wrong with his mental or physical health? Should I talk to him about it? Or was he just a well concealed asshole all this time.

tl;dr Formerly sweet, supportive boyfriend who helped others has now become an overly critical, angry, delusional bully. Is this his true personality coming out or could it be something else? Should I leave or try to talk to him about it and if I talk to him, how, because I feel like challenging him in any way is going to set him off.

Submitted February 20, 2020 at 06:00PM by IsBFABully https://ift.tt/2v7nBsf