Since you seem reasonable I'll respond.
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I'm interested in hearing more about what you have to say. Which aspects do you see as being unaccountable?
Several let me find some quotes and break it down, some of them will be unrelated to unaccountability, some will.
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- he was quite fussy especially about keeping things clean and often had panic attacks
This isn't being unaccountable but just for the record this is something I relate to, although I had panic attacks because I had a heart surgery (and no longer have them). The clean/orderliness thing I also relate to and I've come to a realization about a few month ago after traveling to a slummy place and living there with a group of people (some friends, some people I didn't know) that I may be overly clean/orderly. I think that's a good trait because usually it means these people are conscientious about keeping things in place and order, but it can also carry over in a bad way and make people really kind of snobby. In other words I think its a useful skill to be able to deal with messes and not freak out when stuff doesn't work according to plan. This may have been a fault he had and didn't understand or fix because of his young age (I'm assuming you all where in a young relationship).
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1. he’d wake up early and spend a set amount of time on breakfast and makeup (yes, makeup)
This I find strange, being from a very macho place -- makeup on men is usually a huge shameful thing. But it kind of ties in with the mask stuff you are talking about -- he seems very image conscious and this I'd associate to the cleanliness and orderliness. He seems to want to over control his image and events around him and has panic attacks. I think this is a fault, and maybe he would feel better if he learned to occasionally just make the best out of a shitty situation. You know laugh at himself and not always have to spend so much time fixing himself up and freaking out about things.
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2. go to classes. if he was in a bad mood he’d wear a surgical mask. if he was in a worse mood he’d wear a surgical mask, a hat, and fake glasses to cover himself up. if he felt overwhelmed by schoolwork and the world he’d go AWOL, and he acquired the reputation of being “the guy who doesn’t go to class” as a result.
Same thing, I can relate skipping out on class. I did this a lot in university, and although I was a pretty bright student and when I worked on stuff my professors tended to like me and give me due credit, I would skip a lot and my university years where strained because of this, on paper I was seen as a really bad student. Anyways looking back I really wish I would have taken more opportunity to involve myself in class. In terms of your ex, it seems like he was still in a phase of being afraid of the world (having to wear a mask, panic attacks, going AWOL, and the like). This all doesn't have to do with accountability but if he was more accountable and acknowledged these faults I think he would have been able to better tear down his barriers and experience a better relationship with you.
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3. spend the rest of his afternoon studying at “place A” where he’d hang out with a group of people. I didn’t like this place too much because being in a group of strangers exposed me to the risk of being gossiped about behind my back which I hate. Besides it’s hard to concentrate on studying when you’re surrounded by people and getting interrupted by conversations, and I think in the end even though he appeared to be “working” a lot of the time, he wasn’t really focused.
Oh this is completely unrelated to your guy, but I relate to this: When I started to work a job post-university I set a resolve to not let myself get bogged down by office politics. Inevitably what happened is my lack of participation in them made everyone see me as untrustworthy, potentially guilty, not that innocent, and like I have an air of superiority -- this wasn't intended but I could sense it. What would really frustrate me was how the group would spend so much time talking about other people behind their back -- I basically realized if I upset the group, this would be me in another situation. One thing I've done recently to deal with this problem is instead of talking trash, I pay attention to what exactly annoys these people about the person, I agree with them that X behavior is unprofessional (versus bashing the person) and file it in my memory to not cross said person in X way -- then I don't worry about it further.
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I may not spend as much time working but when I do settle down to work I’m very intense and focused on the task and go through them a step by step, ticking off each step as I go. For projects I first break them down into stages and plot them out on a Gannt chart so I know how much time I have to work on each. Then I break them down into tasks which I sort in a todo list with tick boxes. His working style seemed more scattered and aimless -- not that I ever commented on it.
See this is one opportunity in a relationship that I think you could have helped him possibly. You could have supported him by using your organizational abilities, especially considering how orderly he sounded this would have been a great opportunity. The fact he's scattered and aimless in comparison to you makes me think xxxP > xxxJ in comparison to you.
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- was really sensitive to sounds and would often complain about living with other people who were "too dirty" "too loud"
Yep overly clean/orderly. Unfortunately I can relate and see lots of other people that can, but this is something I think is a flaw personally. After working in a cube for a bit and living in an apartment, I've had to quickly adjust my standards on such issues and learn to deal with stuff. Like I said he may have just been too young and not realized this (which is understandable), but the lack of accountability is what is keeping him stuck.
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- actually he had something to complain about almost everyone. I thought he was a bit too quick to condemn and criticize people, intolerant of others' flaws, and unwilling to understand things from the other person's POV and contemplate why someone might be that way. once I asked him whether classes were going to be cancelled or not and he was like "go look it up yourself geez I don't get why you people have to ask" (something along the lines of that) and I said "you should be a bit more considerate some people have never experienced a typhoon or not and don't know what to expect... blablabla" and he just replied "watever". he was always complaining about how other people were "inconsiderate" about stuff like creating a mess in the kitchen and disrupting others' sleep with loud sounds etc. etc. but I thought he was pretty inconsiderate too. I think we had a different definition of "consideration" (and I probably ended up being the most "inconsiderate" person that he'd ever met though he never explicitly said so).
I can relate to this. It's good you try to point these things out, but it can be tricky because saying something like "you should be a bit more considerate some people have never experienced...." could be taken as chastising him and asserting moral superiority versus him being able to see that you want to help him by relieving his stress with others by being more mindful of how his actions effect others. This ties in the overly clean/orderly/fussy aspect I've been mentioning... he needs things a certain way. It really reminds me of something xxxJ almost. ExxJ or IxxJ maybe. Then again I think xxxP types may even exhibit this but in a different way so its hard to say.
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also, he expected sympathy from others and said he liked sympathetic people but he himself was pretty unsympathetic and unforgiving of a lot of people, I think. a friend of mine thought he was "petty" and "narrow-minded" while another friend said "he has a difficult personality"
Yep overly clean/orderly/fussy/panicky/fearful. It's typical, I think he's just young and the moment he accepts accountability he'll probably improve. Still haven't got to the parts of unaccountability yet...
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- said he respected rational people who led a routine life.
Makes sense.... this may be xxTj-DS? or something?
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1. what made him stand out the most was his sense of fashion. He liked to wear blindingly bright, vivid clothes like neon yellow or pure blue to attract attention to himself and people would be like "whoa that's so bright" or "... is he gay?". once he bleached his hair orange/yellow and said it made him feel human again which was the weirdest thing ever. anyway he was always trying to get himself noticed one way or another: bursting into songs and dances in public, pacing around and humming around in the corridor, and other weird stuff. It was rather contradictory because on one hand he’d be so self-conscious that he’d avoid going into a place because “there’s too many people it feels like they’re all looking at me” and on the other hand he’d purposely wear bright colors and stand out like a peg. I don’t know but if you felt uncomfortable with people looking at you and judging you wouldn’t you try to make yourself unnoticeable by dressing down instead of doing the exact opposite and going over the top? But yeah that was him in a nutshell... did not make any sense.
I think maybe he did this as a result of him trying to define his identity, experimenting around with different looks to see what fits. He sounds young, so it may be part of him experimenting to see what fits.
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He was a good actor too, one time he was in a bad mood (again) and hadn’t done anything with his hair (probably didn’t put on makeup too) and when he was talking to the teacher he was making coughing sounds and talked with a hoarse voice and the teacher was like “oh I hope you get well soon” and I just wanted to roll my eyes because it was so obvious to me that he was acting sick. When I saw him later on in the evening he was perfectly OK (and back to his usual dressed up self again. no coughing and was even dancing) and I was like “you looked like shit today mum!”
This shows a lack of integrity and accountability, being deceptive. Although really I can understand because it's common for students to make up excuses to teachers. But they fact he's trying to act like a victim to receive benefits is somewhat troubling if that behavior carries over into other areas of life uninhibited.
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2. liked writing essays that “sound clever” and hated creative essays (which I liked). when I looked at one of his essays I was somewhat annoyed wanted to either edit the whole thing or rewrite it because it was riddled with grammatical errors and lacked structure and aim and he couldn’t organize his numbers properly. though I did like his ideas and found them quite insightful. later on he told me “oh I made some of the numbers and quotes up lol” and I was shocked “omg you what!??! I feel totally duped”
Yea once again making up numbers and quotes, seems to lack integrity and accountability, being deceptive. Which with the overly clean/orderly/picky aspect is a little dangerous.
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3. really bad at managing his money too... he liked to buy expensive brands and went broke a few times because he spent all his money during his bad moods. at first he took it well when I commented on his “atrocious spending philosophy” and was like “please do” when I joked “can I strangle you?” and added “you have to teach help me manage my money!” but I never got around to it because when he showed me his bank statement (because he’d ran out of money again) during a dinner that he’d cooked up for me, I was mortified by the uncontrolled spending and then he snapped in the middle of my commentary.
This is part of why I find it difficult to type him, he respects rational people and is really picky which points to xxxJ but his behavior is more in line with xxxP. It almost seems like he is seeking out that rationally and stability in his life but personally feels like things are a mess and is a bit afraid of disorder and chaos getting out of hand.
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because it was lots of fun and he’d provide me with what I needed -- but at the same time this only happened every once in a blue moon at his own discretion/whim.
Also not a good trend, having everything to be at his whim/discretion shows a lack of mindfulness of the other person and no give/take. Like I said he sounds young.
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I was often afraid to ask him for help with practical matters like cooking or tidying up my room or helping me carry my luggage (don’t know why) and when I did ask he wouldn’t lend it to me 9 out of 10 times.
Yep ties into lack of mindfulness of the other person. Self-Focused.
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What was most ridiculous was when I asked for help with my room since the mess was stressing me out and he said:
“well there’s no point since you will destroy it soon anyway. u should just let the mess grow and decrease naturally. go out there and have fun!”
While I was like “wtf does he think this is biology” and while I found it amusing it was also very disappointing.
Yea sounds young, I don't think he was personally trying to dodge helping you out but maybe thought he was being constructive by relieving your stress by suggesting doing something fun. Still likely this came from his own personality trait to avoid doing tedious stuff in order to have more fun. Something kind of seems Fe about this and maybe a lack of Se.
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More bitterly disappointing was the time when I had a fever and was so sick I couldn’t get up and buy food for myself and asked him for help. He just said he was busy.
That's unfortunate, once again a lack of mindfulness for other people.
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but at close emotional distance we brought out the worst, unsympathetic side in each other.
Hmmm yea its hard to say this is a result of conflictor relations or not, because this is rather typical in young relationships. A lot of the problems on his end are associated to:
- Low Accountability
- Overly Picky/Orderly/Fussy
- Lack of Mindfulness of Others
I think if he developed these, things may have been a better success. I usually associate this to being young (because children are usually so self-focused), also the entire thing sounds like a young relationship in terms how you describe things as being good and fun and light at times.
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“you hurt me I hurt you”.
Sounds like victim-victim relationships. But once again I think this is pretty typical in a young relationship... both sides are a little bit self-focused. I can't really give my opinions on what you could be doing wrong, but its fairly clear to me what he's screwing up.
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I always carried a grudge for some of the things he said/did but still I would look back to the fun times, so I was always the one trying to figure out what went wrong and trying to repair the relationship, and constantly apologizing for him for something that happened 1 month ago, 2 months ago, 3 months ago, 4 months ago... 2 years ago. Not that he seemed to care.
THIS IS WHERE IT SOUNDS LIKE A LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY. He should just learn to take the ego-hits if he actually cares about someone else.
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So yeah I was wondering what kind of relationship this is and whether I should run away from it before I sink into a swamp of negative emotions or just try to be more careful next time.
Unfortunately it sounds like running away from it was a good option, he may just have to learn the hard way and you have your life to live. On my end I think I learned a lot on what not to do from reading about it, although I'm not the best source for characterizing your relationship in terms of socionics -- where able I provided my thoughts on socionics.
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I thought he was unaccountable because he wouldn't apologize for things he said and did to me that I perceived to be sexual advances, and wouldn't even acknowledge them. He either nullified entire events or conversations entirely by saying "I don't remember that" or "you're just imagining things", or waved it off as "oh I say sexual stuff to all my friends you know me". Then he'd tell my friend that it was all just a misunderstanding on my part. And maybe it was, I don't know.
I don't know about the sexual stuff, that sounds like joking -- but I wasn't there to see. On the lack of apologizing... yes I agree whole-heartly that this is the problem. Basically if someone is important to you, you have to be able to take the occasional ego-hit and work with them -- its me and you not me and my.
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But the thing that hurt me the most was how he treated me like a stranger and said "you feel like a friend from the past life" when I was grieving over a dying relative who was very dear to me, and had no one else to share my feelings with. I thought "oh, so you've moved onto a new life and new people and now that you have no problems you don't need me as a friend anymore" and felt like a used toy that had been thrown away. Again he said he didn't remember himself saying this and I was angry because I just wanted him to say "I'm sorry".
Lol he may have meant that positively, like he trusted you so much he felt like your bond extended very far into the past. At any rate I've already given you my full breakdown of what I'm thinking as I'm reading it.
I think the guy is young and a little self-focused, hasn't really learned to love. You definitely shouldn't beat yourself up too much because what you gave him was probably better than nothing and leaving him may be what's needed for him to grow outside his self-focused world.