He might (might) have avoided douchbag territory if he had only anonymously gifted donations to her bank account, and there were absolutely, positively no strings attached.
But as described, I don’t believe for a second he wasn’t trying to manipulate her. Her apartment “just happens” to be near his. Instead of actually establishing a scholarship endowment (which would be trivial for a lawyer with millions of dollars), the “scholarship” appears and disappears with her college term. He didn’t even have the balls to collect her art honestly. He’s keeping her in his sphere of influence so he can charm his way into her pants under the guise of being friends. Friends do not approach friendships with ulterior motives. He’s also keeping her ignorant of his ulterior motives and robbing her of autonomy.
He is so, SO clearly inserting kindness coins in order to receive sex. It’s entitled and narcissistic as all hell. As well as deceitful.
BTW, I have, personally, had the misfortune to run across toxic narcissists who work in social justice or other service jobs (like social work). It only take a little while to realize that their “do-gooder” image is ONLY an image, the image they chose to prove to the world how completely awesome and better-than-you they are. So it’s not exactly uncommon.
Of course you will, because you only come into these threads to shit on his hypotheticals. At least I can understand what Lamia is doing, since she(?)'s actually trying to answer the hypothetical. You only post in these threads to say that hypotheticals are stupid.
And, yeah, Edward is bad no matter what. He’s acting just like his Twilight namesake, secretly arranging for shit.
That said, she should take it, and she can always divorce him later and get money from him, like first wife did.
Apropos of nothing but when I was in college, I usually had about 2 grand in unapplied for scholarships every year because I’d suitably impressed a professor of one of my classes the previous term and they nominated me for it. At least, that’s what I was told by the financial aid office when I questioned them appearing on my tuition bill. If someone was intending to entice me into sleeping with them, they did a terrible job of it.
This is the question I had, was the length of time. Your run-of-the-mill toxic narcissist just doesn’t have the patience to wait three years; they live in dog years so we’re talking more than 20 years for your average Joe. That’s a long time to keep up the facade with her.
Yes, he wanted to have a relationship with her. I don’t think he was simply after the sex, that’s far too long and too much effort for even the craziest person around. He wanted a relationship, but was it to fuck with her mind or to really help her?
The question is if he’s the absolutely off-the-charts nuts where she should leave town, change her name and disappear or is he terribly misguided but otherwise harmless. The degree of effort and planning means that there’s no in between, he can’t be just a little evil.
Is he the master manipulator, a completely controlling demon or is he a well-meaning fool?
People without Lily’s background should have a better sense after three years of friendship, but the problem is that Lily most likely doesn’t have the right psychological tools for discernment.
This is why I think that Lily’s best bet is to get a good therapist and put the relationship on hold for a while, at the very minimum, if not forever.
A fair question. Urbanredneck, feel free to address the hypothetical in the OP, but there’s absolutely no reason for you to be in this thread accusing people of “knowing things” and trying to dig into someone’s work life here. Knock it off.
“Edward, surprisingly, seemed perfectly willing to be platonic. What had drawn his attention to Lily was a painting of hers on display at the coffee house; he’d been coming their for months but never been anything but polite to her until the day he asked her who had painted “Eurydice Fades,” and when she said it was her, suddenly got very interested. He bought the painting on the spot, and over time they became close friends.”
I think Ed makes a great patron of the arts, but a creepy human being. All of a sudden I am being reminded of the movie Foxcatcher, that did not end well.
While I agree that Edward is a creep who needs at least a metaphorical beatdown*, I don’t think he was angling for sex; the time scale is too long, and as I wrote upthread, a guy like him would have too many other options. I think he’s is a special kind of nice-guy-cum-asshole. He has a hero complex. He sees Lily as needing rescue and as being less competent than he, and thinks that his supposed greater competence and obviously greater resources entitle him to make decisions for her.
But again, he doesn’t seem motivated by libido here. I don’t claim my interpretation is privileged because I wrote the hypo, but it seems to me that his wish to be her rescuer would preclude him angling for sex on any conscious level, and perhaps to avoid it on a preconscious one. You can’t be Galahad if you’re angling to fuck Guinevere, and you can’t be Lancelot without also realizing you’re a jackass. But you can be Galahad and a jackass without realizing it.
This hypo, incidentally, is sort-of-based on a story I wrote many years back. It was told from Proto-Edward’s point of view, and he was more clearly a douche in it, and he did in fact get such a smack in the face – from a Greek goddess, who, surprisingly, was not Athena.
I don’t think Ed is an evil guy, just massively misguided. He thought he was doing what was best for Lily, but in general as an adult, you should let other adults make their own decisions.
He could have set up some scholarship and strongly encouraged her to apply for it. He could have bought a bunch of her paintings, and held a show and invited other rich friends to come see her work and get her name out there. He could have gotten a deal for an apartment with a great price, and then told her how he got the deal because he knows various people and let her choose if she’d like to live there or not. Instead of letting her choose what she wanted to do, he manipulated her by letting her have these great opportunities that it would be really hard to pass up. It doesn’t sound like he was manipulating her to get her into bed or otherwise for his own purposes other than to be a hero, but he was still manipulating her.
I don’t think he realized how devastating it would be to her. I do a lot of acrylic paintings, thought it is not my regular job and I definitely don’t make much money from it. I would be thrilled if I met a rich benefactor who was a huge fan and bought lots of my paintings. I would also be thrilled if I started selling lots of my paintings to lots of different people. But I would be devastated if I had thought lots of people liked my work, but it only turned out to be one buyer. And since the one buyer was doing it through secret methods, I would have to assume he was doing it for nefarious purposes, because why wouldn’t he just buy them under his own name?
Also, I’ve never tried to go to art school, but I think it would be devastating to find out about that as well. Lily knows that the money came from Ed, she would probably start to question a lot about her schooling. Was she good enough to get in on her own? Did the professors give her the grades she deserved or were they not honest because of the super rich benefactor? Did everyone know about the fake scholarship except for her? Were the people who were giving seemingly honest feedback to her on her art talking about her and laughing at her behind her back because of it? Even if Ed did absolutely nothing else other than provide the money, all these questions are going to continually bother Lily.
There is a big difference between someone choosing to be a kept partner, and finding out that you’ve basically been tricked into becoming that.
I agree. It’s very possible that Lily might just stop painting altogether, because she’d be questioning everything. And Edward isn’t evil, just super privileged, and used to being right.
If he’s as bad as you say he is, isn’t she becoming complicit by accepting his money, especially if the end game is to end up with a piece of the action for herself?
She needs to read him the riot act, and send packing to take his money back to his mansion and never speak to her again, while she collapses on the bed crying. Then he needs to send his driver away and walk the 5 miles back to his penthouse apartment in the pouring rain, where collapses soaked and alone on a chair in the drawing room and stares at the first little painting he bought. Realizing that without her there is nothing for him here he should decide to give up the law and dedicate his life to treating rare tropical diseases in the heart of Africa, call his agent and books passage on the next flight to the Congo.
Meanwhile back in her apartment her cat should knock over a book that contains the first letter he ever wrote her in which expressed his admiration of her as a brilliant, talented, and compassionate a young woman. Making her realize that she loved him even when she didn’t know that he was doing these things for her, and now that she knows how much he tried to help her she loves him all the more. She should then to his apartment only to be told that he has already left to lose himself amid a simultaneous a particularly virulent epidemic of Ebola, Dengue Fever and Cholera. She should use a carefully painted miniature of a unicorn that she carries with her to bribe the taxi driver (whose daughter has a thing for unicorns) so that he will break all known traffic laws in a mad rush to the airport. Vaulting through security and pursued by dozens of TSA Officers she can catch him just before he enters the jetway, holding him in a passionate embrace, and after a lengthy sorting out with the Department of Homeland security (off camera), they can now go off to get married in Central Park.
