Oh Jesus, this hits too close to home regarding my last (and hopefully final) roommate.
I lived with a guy for 13 months, who I intend on being the LAST roommate I ever need to have (unless you count a wife and kids as roommates). He showed so many signs you mentioned; he is nearly 40 years old, complained every single day to me that his $120,000 per year salary isn’t enough, even though I only made half that amount at the time and he knew it, and still complained to me that he is "poor" when he only has to pay $,1000/month in rent, lives with a roommate, and blows his money on bad habits. Needless to say, he is also awful with personal finances, spends all of his free time either sleeping or with his nose buried in his phone, CONSTANTLY complained to me about literally everything from politics to weather. He has ridiculously, unreasonably high dating standards, despite looking like an uglier version of Homer Simpson (needless to say, he has never been in a relationship). He would also do hypocritical things regularly, like accuse me of not keeping the place clean, then leave the place messy, not do his dishes and regularly "forget" to take out the recycling, despite contributing to 90% of our recycling waste, as mentioned below 🙄
(Side note, he was never the victor in any of the stories he told like you mentioned, but he always saw himself as the victim of a changing world. He also bragged about being a “boat rocker", but can’t handle it when someone rocks his boat right back).
What really got me was that he has a diet that not only primarily consisted of either fast food or horribly expensive meals that aren’t healthy to eat regularly, like loads of meat from Korean BBQ, but he would literally drink a CASE of diet coke every day (no, not a single can, but he would average 12 cans of coke per day, no exaggeration). Then, he would complain about being so fat, not having any energy all day, having diabetes, losing his memory, etc, while mocking me for "being bland and drinking water". And yet, every time I would call him out for his unhealthy habits, he would shoot back and say that diet coke isn’t unhealthy because it contains Aspirtaine and not sugar. Ok fine, maybe it’s not as awful as regular coke, but I am not a doctor and I can tell you that drinking roughly 12 diet cokes every single day for years on end is a quick path to heart attacks, cancer, and much worse diabetes. And yet, he has no intention of doing anything about it. He wants to keep living his self-destructive life as he does, and then complain to everyone within earshot of him about the side effects of his choices, as if he is a victim 🙄🤦♂️
The worst thing though, was his Borderline Personality Disorder, that I had no idea he had or what it was until I signed a 12 month lease with him. He would get angry and verbally abusive with me over the most trivial things, even to the point where I thought he would get violent with me (he didn’t, with me being an amateur MMA fighter and him being in the condition he is in, even he knows that would be a really bad idea). He would then get sheepish later but never really apologize, and seemed to just try to forget that any of it happened without realizing how much of a toll the psychological abuse took on me. I didn’t even feel like I could bring anything to his attention or have a difficult conversation with him without him reversing it back on me.
Once I moved out, I blocked him on LinkedIn, Facebook and his personal number once I knew there were no outstanding apartment bills I owed him. I am in a much better place now, thank God. But I can’t honestly say that the extra few hundred dollars I saved by living with him was worth it, since it came at such an expense to my mental health that I am still sifting through.
Anyway, thanks for sharing, and I just needed to vent. It’s comforting to know that I am not alone in my frustrations!
