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Updated 13 hours ago
re e ar Carolyn:
I'm going out with this guy for about five months. I live in the city, he lives in the suburbs. Since I live where there is more to do and I do not own a car, he usually goes to town to see me.
Since we are more comfortable with each other, he now arrives in my apartment and expresses a lot of inconvenience to the homeless to whom he has put his car, often for asking money aggressively or wandered on the road in a dangerous way.
His frustration borders on anger and really bothers me. I understand that harassment or dangerous driving situations can be very painful and frustrating, but his anger seems to be focused on the homeless population and I would not spend my time and energy being angry at a group of people as obviously less fortunate than me. . My boyfriend is very well off and has had a comfortable education of the middle class. I see it as a reflection of his values that he can not seem to feel any empathy for this group just because it causes a slight annoyance.
Lately, I just let him escape, because we all sometimes need it and also because it provoked intense debate when I protested. But I can not shake the discomfort I feel when he complains about this group.
How can I approach this without seeming to reject feelings of harassment or insecurity?
– Comfortable in town
If he's irritated by the panhandlers but not so much by a certain Bimmer who passes his tail for staying in the passing lane for a nanosecond for too long, then you might well have a classy idiot for a boyfriend.
But it's neither here nor there.
What is important:
– You question his character.
– But I learned not to do it aloud;
– Because his annoyance "borders on anger";
– And he rejects your questions with "intense arguments".
Do you see him?
The specific question could be just about anything. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that it also rages against the drivers of the Series 7, so it's not about empathy for the oppressed. You always have a dynamic where you have legitimate concerns – his right and his anger regular and postponed – that you choose not to talk because it makes you pay too much for speaking up.
It's at best a recipe for misery and at worst dangerous. He has become comfortable enough with you to start showing his true self, but you become less so, according to your own story of how you learned to hold yourself back, deliberately suppressing your discomfort. You can not say, "When you express yourself about panhandlers, I hear a lack of empathy and it bothers me.
You do not feel safe to say what you think about this man.
Game over. This is not the guy.
Even if your intuition regarding his deficit of economic empathy is false. I guess that's not the case, but it's neither here nor there.
Unless you can talk freely, and unless you like what you hear in return, he's not the guy.
Send an email to Carolyn at [email protected], follow her on Facebook at facebook.com/carolyn.hax or chat with her online every Friday at noon on washingtonpost.com.
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