This is part of an ongoing series. Start with Part 1.
I don't know exactly when I changed my mind.
I just know that I did.
Somewhere between saying no and early June, I had talked myself into it. Not because he wore me down or made some grand argument. Just because I was naive enough to believe I was going to marry this man. And if he was going to be my husband, what did it matter if he moved in a little early?
That's the thing about being in love for the first time. The rules you made for yourself start to feel negotiable.
I was excited. I let myself imagine it — coming home to someone, building something, this being the beginning of the life I'd wanted.
He'd mentioned being allergic to cats. I bought him allergy medication before he even moved in. Turns out he wasn't allergic at all — just hadn't been around cats much. After a few weeks he wasn't even taking the meds.
He liked my older cat. She was fifteen, slow-moving, calm, unbothered by most things. She'd let him pet her and he was gentle with her.
The younger one was a different story.
He'd play with her — rough, the way someone plays who doesn't really know cats — and then get genuinely angry when she scratched him. Like she owed him a different response. Over time I started noticing she'd run when he got home. Not every time. But enough that I noticed. She'd hear the door and disappear.
He never did anything obvious. Nothing I could point to.
But she knew something I was still trying not to know.
We agreed he'd pay prorated rent upfront. He gave me $100 and said he was waiting on his VA check for the rest.
From the very first week, getting money from him was like pulling teeth.
And from the very first week, the criticism started.
The laundry came first. I washed one load and when he realized I dried a certain par of pants, he told me I'd done it wrong — they weren't supposed to go in the dryer. I pointed out they were synthetic, not cotton. They don't shrink. He insisted anyway, said he'd just do his own laundry from now on.
Fine.
A few days later I heard him yelling that all his clothes had spots. I came to look. Bleach spots — unmistakable, scattered across colored fabric.
I asked if he'd added bleach to a colored load.
He said yes. He always does that.
Then he argued with me about it. Then it became my washing machine's fault. He'd had a front loader at his old place, he said, as if my perfectly functional stacked washer dryer had somehow reached into his laundry and poured bleach on his clothes.
Cooking was its own thing. He'd hover while I made bacon, watching, waiting, and then say — oh, you actually know how to do it right — like he'd been expecting me to fail and was mildly disappointed I hadn't. He used metal utensils on my non-stick pans. When I said something about it, he told me an old roommate had gotten mad at him for the same thing. Had called him stupid about it. He laughed telling the story.
I said I didn't like it either — metal scratches the coating, releases chemicals into the food.
He kept using metal on my pans.
Half the time I cooked something and he'd take one bite and say it was disgusting. Not in a joking way. Just flatly. Like a verdict.
He'd yell at me about shoes — no shoes in the apartment, a rule I already had — while walking around in his full work boots. He demanded I wash the sheets a day after I'd already washed them. He'd tell me how to shower.
He told me how to shower. We took showers together every day — which sounds intimate until you realize it meant he had opinions about that too. He used my expensie shampoo, my body wash, my skincare. All of it. And when it ran out he'd replace it with bar soap. Refused to replace it with the same thing.
I had bought this man allergy medication he didn't need. I had gotten new vacuum filters. I had cleaned the hell out of my apartment.
Within days of moving in he was telling me nothing I did was good enough.
I filed it away. Told myself he was adjusting.
It didn't settle.
Part 7 — The Unraveling, coming next.
If you've ever watched someone make themselves at home in your space and then tell you your space wasn't good enough — you are not alone.
The goal was never comfort. The goal was control.