When I was young and foolish, I got to know this lass and we ended up moving in together.
Things were strained after it became obvious she was quite spoiled and used to getting her own way by whinging, passive-aggression and manipulation, and I was rational, emotionally detached and treated these tactics with tolerant incomprehension; as a result, we annoyed the shit out of each other.

The major source of friction at first was the difference between our work patterns - she was a secretary at a law firm and worked 9-5 Monday-Friday, and I was a lab technician in a paint factory and did continental shifts (7am-7pm two days, 7pm-7am two nights, then four days off). So she'd whinge for waking her up when I got up for work at 5.30am, whinge when I went to straight to bed after coming in from a night shift still smelling of solvents, and throw a strop and sulk for several days when I calmly pointed out this was because she was usually in the shower when I got home, usually spent a very long time in there, and had previously point-blank refused to consider taking a shower a bit earlier and let me have a turn in reasonable time if my lingering eau de petrochemicals was really such a problem.

Besides these small niggles, there were more snarky queries like "why can't you get a proper job?", "why can't you be here every weekend?", "[her friend's] fiance James has a job in sales and they're going to Barbados on their honeymoon, why don't you go into sales?" and so on. She fancied herself as a social climber, you see. Another silent sulk resulted when I pointed out I wasn't a natural salesman, my job was paying most of the rent and I had better prospects in my line of work than I would have done if I'd jacked it in and become an office skivvy.

It was all a bit tiresome, and sometimes unintentionally funny, but it ended in ugly scenes when I found out she'd been shagging one of the solicitors at her workplace, confronted her with the evidence and kicked her out. As revenge she claimed I'd been physically abusive and managed to do a lot of damage to my reputation, career and sanity, thanks in no small part to some mysterious legal assistance. But now the dust has cleared I live on my own several towns away, lead a gainfully employed yet mostly carefree life and the only source of irritation is my own bad habits. Hooray for independence!
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Thu 4 Aug 2011, 23:16, Reply)