For starters, a guy who gives his girlfriend a huge lavish gift to prove he’s not pressuring her into sex?
[QUOTE=Freudian Slit]
For starters, a guy who gives his girlfriend a huge lavish gift to prove he’s not pressuring her into sex?
[/QUOTE]
Sorry, but I take that at face value. He clearly has money, flatlined does not and is in some need. The guy is in a position to help her at virtually no cost to himself, and goes to some trouble to make it clear that it is not quid pro quo by ensuring that she’s not even staying on the same floor as he is.
It’s not like she can just pick up the second story of the house and go off with it. The gift is a place for her to stay, and food for her to eat. It’s a big deal for flatlined, but the cost to the guy is not all that great. He clearly has a big enough house that he can easily put her up, and enough money that he can afford a full time housekeeper even though he was living alone. Yeah, he said that the second floor was “hers.” But, again, she can’t just walk away with it. It’s hers in name only; the house still belongs to him.
If he bought her a luxury car, that would be creepy and inappropriate.
Dude, what kind of boyfriend has to let his girlfriend know she’s not obligated to sleep with him? What a bizarre disclaimer to make. Of course she’s not, but shouldn’t she want to, and isn’t that part of a normal healthy relationship? That’s the whole point of having a boyfriend; I can go to museums with my friends. “Honey, I love you and would marry you in a heartbeat – but you are under no obligation to touch my penis.” What kind of dysfunctional creep show is this?
And then she has a conversation with him about it? “Honey, I’m conflicted about sucking your cock. Here’s a thread I wrote about it.” How does this not sound crazy to you?
It’s not entirely clear to me if he’s her actual boyfriend or just some lonely dude in search of companionship, and if it’s been made clear in other threads, I missed it. If he’s just some desperately lonely widower willing to throw cash around for human company, somehow that is slightly less creepy. “Hey, I’m lonely. Here’s some money so you’ll hang out with me, and you don’t even have to touch my penis – that is, unless you want to.” Creepy, sure, but less so than if they were pretending to be a real couple.
Okay, so he’s not “I hope you have 911 on speed dial” creepy, but he is “dirty old man who looks up people’s skirts on escalators” creepy.
Hey! I don’t mock *your *internet crushes!
I’ll be the PRACTICAL one and ask: does he have kids? What do they have to say?
Do YOU want kids? How does he feel about that?
Kids are Life’s Monkeywrench. They jam up EVERYTHING. The answers to those two questions will determine the ultimate fate of the relationship. If he has grown kids providing a Greek chorus of pissing and moaning in the background, it will wear on him. If you want kids and he doesn’t, you’ll feel resentful. On the other hand, if HE wants kids and you don’t, you’ll REALLY feel resentful.
~VOW
That, and in the other thread, she made it sound as if they had no relationship at all but were feeling each other out. And then she’s talking about him giving her a floor of his house but marriage is on the table. And I can’t get over the housekeeper thing. I feel like I’m reading a combination of Rebecca fanfic and a bad harlequin romance.
I believe that he’s more the “middle aged guy who hangs around in the coffeehouse dropping pencils in front of co-eds so he can get a glimpse of cleavage” creepy, but you make a good point about mirrors; if the o.p. finds oddly placed mirrors or fiber optic cables lying about, she should probably re-evaluate her plans to reenact key scenes from the seminal 'Eighties movie Flashdance.
I have no Internet crushes. I feel that my true creepism can only be properly conveyed via an analog medium. And anyway, that restraining order is almost expired.
Stranger
Sure, relationships with huge wealth and age differences can work out.
But this particular one doesn’t seem to be.
The whole “he gave me the second floor of my house so I wouldn’t feel obligated to have sex with him thing” is bizarre. It is not a sign of a healthy relationship at all. When you are at the early stages of a good relationship, generally you mutually can’t keep your hands off of each other. At that stage in a relationship, the whole concept of “sex as obligation” shouldn’t ever come up. You guys are dating, presumably because you find each other sexually attractive. How does obligation fit into that? Good relationships don’t get that weird that quickly.
Likewise, with the house. Don’t you think it’s kind of weird that this is you living in “his” house? My mom’s boyfriend moved in with her. His boomerang son took over the den, he turned the sun room into a man-cave, and the whole place is an overstuffed and joyful melange of his stuff and her stuff (and my stuff and son’s stuff). It is her house in title, but it is “their” house in practice. She doesn’t keep him confined to some special wing, painfully aware that he is living in “her” house.
Of course, they did not always have this level of intimacy. It takes time to build the kind of bond where you set out to live a life together in a real “what’s mine is yours” way. That’s why, before then, they didn’t live together. In the early stages of a relationship, you should probably have your own house. THAT is what keeps these things from getting weird. Vast income differences don’t really mean much when you are meeting for dinner and sleepovers. Nor do they mean much when you are in a deeply committed relationship. When it gets weird is when you are in something that is not quite either one of these things.
What’s up with telling you where you can and cannot work? If he was a fry cook, would you let him tell you what your acceptable career path from the very beginning of the relationship? If you were an heiress and he an idle artist, would you let him tell you that you can’t get a job the moment you guys move in together? I don’t think you would. So in that sense, his money really does matter and he is buying some of your choice away from you.
You have a right to live in your own place if you want to. He has no right to demand that you live in his house on his terms. If you are truly living together in the way that couples live together, you don’t need to ask his permission to do things like speak to the housekeeper. You have the right to refuse gifts that make you uncomfortable. Y
I’m going to call what I see. I think you know quite well that you are being asked to enter a “kept woman” situation. You have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it’s certainly an easy life path that is right out there in front of you, and if you can get over the nagging doubt then it could be a very comfortable one. On the other hand, you are uncomfortable at being nearly fully dependent on someone and not having any real control of your life (when your floor gets vacuumed, what job you do…everything) for the duration of the relationship.
You also happen to love the guy, which doesn’t really change the fact the facts above. You can be a kept woman as well as having strong feelings for the guy. You can love a guy and be in all kinds of fucked up relationships with him. Love does not mean you are lovers.
Bill is not a creepazoid. I’m old enough to feel eyes slithering over my body. Back when we first met, the thing that impressed me was that Bill always looked at my face or at my hands while I was showing him documents.
I’m really sorry that I brought this thread up again, but I felt that I had to defend him.
I have my own house and I have a job to go home to. Bill is careful to never try to control me, I know that he won’t come back to the Dope because he respects my privacy. I’m certainly not going to show him this thread again, he would be very upset to think that I’ve given people the wrong impression of him.
There is not only the age thing going on, there is the distance and me being a small town girl living in the middle of the desert and him living in a thriving city. Bill thinks he lives in a quiet place, but when he helps me hobble out to sit outside, the background noise is terrible distracting. To me, you city folks probably wouldn’t even notice it.
There are no stars in Houston. Somehow, I find that very ironic.
I will be returning to my home, and my mortgage and job in 10 days.
I can’t have kids. Bill is old. Kids are not on the table.
And maybe I’m just scared that I’ll give my heart to someone who will die before I’m ready. I don’t know. I posted my question on a message board for input. I will make my own choices.
(still grumbly that people would think that such a leve headed person as me would hook up with a creapazoid…but gets over it.)
Is his last name Gates?
Oh and Stranger? That Peter Pan guy was famous on the nets a few years back. We had threads on him here IIRC.
Show him this thread.
I know. I just never pass up the chance to give MeanOldLady a hard time.
Stranger
flatlined, I’d encourage you to keep in mind that you can give Bill things that money can’t buy. There’s a slight income disparity between my girlfriend and I. Whenever she says she feels bad she doesn’t have the money to buy me a birthday gift, I tell her that I appreciate it more if she cooks me a nice meal. To me, it’s the intangible things that matter most.
Best of luck for a happy future!
Bri2k
That’s the thing, isn’t it Bri2k?
Good relationships aren’t about equality; they’re about balance.
I like how everything you say to try to de-creepify the situation weirds me out even more. “He doesn’t even leer that much and takes great pains not to be controlling.” That’s almost as strange as proving your relationship is normal by showing him a thread you created about how conflicted you feel about blowing him. But hey, whatever makes the sun shine for you. Feel free to ignore me, as I seriously do not know anything, particularly about relationships.
To be fair to Stranger, I actually have been stalking that guy’s page for seven years. He is just dreamy.
This…fills out some blank pages in the portfolio I’ve been keeping on you.
(was that creepy?)
Err, depends on what’s in the portfolio. :dubious:
She’s not mean, she’s not old, and she’s no lady. 
And she likes Gin.
Well, he’s…something. But I don’t know that I’d call it “dreamy”, except in the sense of the kind of dreams I slam a flunitrazepam followed by a double pour of Maker’s Mark to forget.
Back to the topic at hand, I have to concur with the general sentiment of “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Setting aside all of the particulars of the described relationship that are outside of the norm of a healthy relationship, the reflexive defense of the o.p. combined in conjunction to her appareent misgivings suggests some serious internal conflict concealed by an unwillingness to confront her own fears.
But hey, twisted relationships and uneven emotional power struggles are the basis for every Chekov play. And Richard Nixon used to drive his later wife on dates with other men, and look how he turned out! President of the United effing States, and Hero of the Pumpkin Patch!
Stranger
Hobble, now?
He broke her legs so she can’t escape. No, no, I make ha-ha!
UB, that’s pretty much all anyone needs to know about me. I prefer Whiskey to Gin, but I’ll gladly accept either. I’m accepting Xmas gifts. <wink, nudge>