u/EnduringFulfillment

Hi.

TL;DR: Ex boyfriend and current "friend" turned nasty several days into my surgery recovery.

I became estranged from most of my family when I came out as trans at 30. My at the time boyfriend broke up with me then, and we got back together a few months afterwards after he ghosted me for that time period. Since then, he'd overall been supportive in my transition but had several points that he "didn't agree with" which in hindsight are huge red flags tbh. We ended up breaking up (I broke up with him) and remaining close friends for the last couple years. His housing situation was unstable and I opened my home to him to stay rent free multiple times for periods of weeks to months.

I had top surgery on August 12 (yay!) and the deal worked out several months in advance was he was going to stay to help me during the month or recovery period. I became concerned a few days before surgery that he'd decided to stop taking his prescribed medication for anxiety/depression, and expressed this concern that I was going to be relying on him soon and he basically told me to not worry about it.

Despite me asking that he please sleep in the private larg bedroom I have for him, he basically sleeps, eats and lives on my couch in my living room. 2 days before surgery, I'd asked him if he could please sleep in the bedroom i have for him so I could spend time on my couch/in my living room, and this resulted in him giving me the silent treatment, going to bed and locking the door without saying anything to me which was very unusual. I barely slept that night because I was worried he'd leave in the night and screw me over for my surgery date. He acted like nothing happened the next day.

The surgery date came and went uneventfully, although notably I cooked dinner that night when obviously that's something he should've been doing. Since then he's spent most of his time sleeping 12+ hours on my couch and I've been doing almost everything on my own.

Surgery recovery is going well but obviously I have limited mobility. Yesterday, I had a plate of food and a coffee and was going outside to sit with my dog. I have an indoor only cat who loves to try to dart out the door and so I am careful to keep the doors closed. I needed a couple more things before I went outside, but my friend held open the door (blocking some items that I needed behind the door in the process) and told me "You need to go past me". I said calmly "please close the door" a couple of times and he repeated himself. I looked over my shoulder and saw my silly little cat coming so I said more urgently "X, close the door" and he deadpan repeated himself. The cat was getting closer to the open door and I said "X, close the freaking door!" and he just repeated himself again. I was able to move the cat away from the door gently with my foot and stepped past him and slammed the door, spilling my coffee in the process. He took off out the house swearing, leaving me to clean up my spilt coffee. He didn't say a word to me when he got back and proceeded to sleep on my couch for 16+ hours.

This morning, I asked him to grab me a few things from the store and he insisted I come with him despite me not being comfortable going in public as I haven't been able to shower for 5 days. The drive is less than 5 minutes. I waited in the car. We didn't really speak.

I am a vet and have been pulling strings with my boss for the last month to get special accommodation to do a dental at the animal shelter I work at for his cat, as it has significant dental disease. I told him the date, which was shortly after my recovery and planned in advance. He told me he wouldn't be here that long. I asked him why and he said that he would be leaving because of me. He would not elaborate why. I asked if we were still friends and he said yes, but still won't tell me why he is leaving during my planned recovery period and before I can get the dental done for his animal as we had planned. He said he was planning on leaving this week or next "depending on me", making it sound like I've been awful to him whereas in reality I have been consistently polite, friendly and trying to minimize the help I've asked for.

I told him that I want him to leave ASAP today. I am not putting up with that BS in my house. I would rather recover from surgery by myself and save myself the stress of his emotional blackmail and silent treatments, feeling like I need to tip toe around him as well as him actively endangering my cat.

I'm going to tell him that we're not friends anymore once he is in the car leaving. He's not welcome in my life anymore after this betrayal.

If you read all of this, thank you for your time. I'm pissed off at myself that I trusted him but glad I have recognized now that I cannot.

My working theory is that he can't get over his transphobia now that I've had top surgery and is letting his disdain through that he'd been previously (mostly) masking. I'm positive going off his prescribed medication has not helped. The worst part of this for me is that my dog loves him and I hate not being able to explain to her what's happened.

About 7 months ago I posted here for a sanity check after an exchange with my emotionally immature (and possibly narcissistic) mother. TL;DR is that she was putting the onus on me for "repairing relations" with my family after 2 of my brothers cut me off when I came out as trans at 30 years old (at the time they hadn't spoken to me in 2 years, still haven't). You lovely folks helped reassure me that I wasn't misinterpreting how crappy her messages to me were.

For months, I have been trying to build the mental fortitude to reply to her but I just haven't had it. I've written many letters to her and not sent them as an exercise. Every exchange with her feels like a new betrayal (transphobia and excusing and agreeing with my brothers who have stopped talking to me) and I've become extremely avoidant because of it. I have her muted but not blocked on messenger and today I opened the app and saw that she has sent me 45 messages since that last message. 45. If I wasn't avoidant enough before, boy howdy I sure am now!

I still have this silly idea in my head of a healing fantasty. That I can find the right words to say and suddenly she'll understand me. I know that's stupid. The idea of never talking to her again is hard for me but as it stands now I really, really don't want to talk to her.

I appreciate your time in reading this.

Thank you for listing to my Ted Talk /s