Reason No.142

I’ve always thought of him as a really nice guy, and I’ve told him so on several occasions. I never even got that intuitive sense that his acquiescence and amiability might be an act. Until I saw how he treats his wife.

It started one recent afternoon, when he and a female coworker sat side by side, commiserating loudly about the stubbornness of their significant others. He was annoyed at his wife’s refusal to agree with him about or take his word for anything, citing instances in which he stated some fact and she countered with nonsense. I tried not to listen as the exchange escalated, but his volume increased as he piled on increasingly more personal and mortifying anecdotes to prove the extent of his spouse’s illogical stubbornness. His coworker egged him on, nodding and sympathizing. The situation culminated with his dialing home on speaker phone, gesturing to his neighbor to keep silent. He baited his wife by dangling in front of her the rough side of an unfinished argument. She bit, immediately and irrationally insisting he was wrong, proving him triumphantly right. He grinned broadly at his listener, as if to say, “See? What did I tell you? Total idiot!” He gloated, victorious in his exposure of her flaws to his rapt audience. It made me nauseous.

This afternoon, the Mrs. accompanied him to the office after lunch, sitting comfortably as his desk as the two of them and the aforementioned coworker chatted. The coworker, I guess, sees no problem with first eviscerating then befriending her (this, however, I already knew first-hand), and listened intently as the couple begin to bicker yet again. The argument, a public and heated one about money, ended as quickly as it began, but not before I had to listen to 15 minutes of him belittling her both in tone and in word.

He told me twice that outside of work he’s a real asshole. He used those words exactly, grinning frankly as I protested, unable to reconcile his gentle demeanor with such a claim. I guess I forgot that when someone tells you they’re a jerk, you’re supposed to believe them.