My Boyfriend Asked Me to Stop Shedding in his Immaculate Apartment
By: Anne Shark
Tags: Feminism, Boundaries, Relationships, Love, Dating

My Boyfriend Asked Me to Stop Shedding in his Immaculate Apartment

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Saying my boyfriend G was a neat freak is an understatement. His place looked like a catalog — the living room with its carefully folded afghan on one couch cushion, the kitchen counter with nary a crumb, and the bed always made, sheets tucked into tight hospital corners.

I enjoyed being a guest at his impeccable place — it felt like staying at a fancy hotel. That was, until his requests to “please not do that” became too much to deal with…

First, it was “Please don’t put your shoes on the furniture.”

That was reasonable. I had mistaken the chair (which he’d placed all alone, directly next to the front door) for a surface on which to rest my foot while tying my shoes.

But no, he explained. It was there to sit on, and then you could bend down to tie your laces.

Okay — that made sense. So I sat on the chair when I arrived to untie my laces, and then again I sat on it before I left, to tie them back up again.

Then it was, “Please don’t put your purse on the furniture,” and, “Don’t put the grocery bags on the counter.”

No biggie. I was in love, and love is about compromise. So my purse stayed on the floor, as did the grocery bags.

Once, before going to see him, I mentioned I was on my period.

I was feeling him out for his attitude around period sex, assuming maybe it wasn’t his thing, but figuring he’d appreciate knowing ahead of time.

Nope, I was wrong. He was all for period sex… but did I mind bringing a towel to protect the sheets?

Seriously? I texted back.

I wasn’t so much offended about his desire to protect his sheets as I was about his unwillingness to sacrifice his own towel to the cause.

You’ve seen my towels, he replied. They’re white.

We had a discussion about that after I arrived, and he apologized for offending me. I could tell his eccentricities were controlling him as much as they were me, so I was patient and did my best to not take it too personally.

But out of respect for his white towels, I was extra careful to not let any blood get on them as I was drying myself from my shower.

I failed, however, to consider the fact that blood might fall out of my body.

— and indeed, a single drop fell from my bleeding uterus and onto his bath mat.

And in case you’re wondering, yes, the bath mat was also white.

Frantically, I wadded up some toilet paper and dabbed at the scarlet drop, soaking most of it up into the tissue. What was left was a barely-visible reddish dot that I imagined would come out in the wash and, if not, could be hidden simply by flipping the mat to the other side.

To him, however, this was not an option.

Later that evening, I thought maybe he was having some tummy trouble when he disappeared for twenty minutes in the middle of a movie we were watching together.

But upon my visit to the bathroom later on, I was able to deduce that he had spent that time washing the bathmat, as it was now hanging over the shower curtain rod to dry.

The red flags went into full alert when he made his final request.

In the same manner and tone he’d used to ask me to not place my shoes on the chair or purse on the couch, he calmly asked if I could try to not let my hair fall around the apartment.

“Maybe you could just gather it and then throw it into the trash later on,” he suggested.

This was the first time I was truly shocked by a request.

“Really?” I asked, processing the shame I felt rising for having hair — which was followed quickly with anger at him for causing me to feel shame for having hair.

“It’s getting wrapped in the vacuum cleaner,” he explained, appearing quite confident that his request was nothing short of reasonable.

Seeing my face, he must have picked up that I did not find this request reasonable, so, with his voice rising a few decibels, he added, “I had to cut it out with scissors!”

“Yeah…” I explained slowly. “That’s what you do. You use scissors.”

I had to forgive him for his ignorance. I waited for him to thank me for the new knowledge I’d just given him, but instead he asked, his voice another few decibels up:

“So do you want to come cut the hair out of my vacuum each week?”

That was the first time I didn’t agree with his request — and it was the last request he made of me.

The hair request wasn’t the only factor contributing to our breakup, but it certainly added to the tension that built up until the fight we finally got into. I’d tiptoed around him for a half a year, telling myself it was his place and that he had the right to request I do things his way. But it made me feel more and more self-conscious and cautious. I finally exploded.

And he dumped me immediately.

In hindsight, I should have spoken up and defended my needs sooner, rather than wait until the pressure built up so much. Perhaps I should have been the one to say, “This isn’t working for me,” instead of trying so hard to make it work.

In any case, in losing my cool I was expressing I’d had enough. I would no longer be watching my every move, every drop of my blood, and every hair that fell from my head for this man.