Dear Karen:

The information you shared helps me come up with possibilities as to explain his cruel and rude behavior toward you. These are only possibilities:

1. According to the Muslim religion, which he “expressed that he would someday soon become serious about” – unless it changed, and I don’t think it changed- premarital sex is a huge sin and virgin women are the only option for a devout Muslim man if marriage is to be considered. Women who are not virgins are of little value. In that case, he may have treated you badly because .. you are not a virgin, not marriage material, according to his religion.

2. Even though he spoke fondly of his mother who  was stern with him and about his father who was “very strict” with him and beat him up, it doesn’t mean he wasn’t angry with them. A child gets automatically angry when beaten. No matter the age- we get beaten-> we get angry, immediately.

So he was angry with either one of his parents, or both. He doesn’t feel the anger at them anymore (the fact that they both died helps in not feeling angry at them), but the anger is still there and he expressed it against you.

Also, I am guessing his father beat the other siblings. In families where beating by the parents is practiced, siblings turn against siblings, beating them  up. Him being the baby of the family means that maybe his older siblings, or a few of them, beat him as well.

– do you know why his parents and two siblings died early?

anita

Dear Karen:

Very often adult children who were beaten up by parents excuse the parents, expressing nothing but appreciation and admiration to the parents, but the anger they experienced while being beaten (and while being mistreated otherwise by parents), doesn’t go away. It stays and gets expressed at people they don’t admire as much.

Coming to think about it, when he came back Wed night, he did seem fearful, from your description. It is as if he was afraid that you will beat him up or punish him somehow. He was afraid of you following him to his car and threatened you about what he might do if you did follow him.

Likely he was a beaten child, not only by his father, but maybe by his mother and by a few of  his older siblings. This means lots of anger in him.

How did he behave with other people, co workers and such- was he people-pleasing, worrying about not making them angry- did you notice?

anita

Dear Karen:

Reads like his behavior with you was consistent with his behavior with others: “he would immediately block them on his phone for various length of times”-similar to his temporary silent treatments of you, “Sometimes he would forgive and invite them back into his life and other times those relationships would never recover”. I suppose he .. forgave you repeatedly but maybe not this time.

“He could not tolerate others seeing him in anything but a positive light”- he told you Wed that you had a strange look on your face when you asked him how his evening was, I suppose he saw in your face a negative criticism of him and he reacted like he usually does- blocked you, but this time, maybe permanently, aid by the fact that he is seeing another woman.

Back to his childhood home, I am guessing he did experience there lack of respect. Clearly when he was beaten, he was disrespected. Maybe he was disrespected there in other ways, maybe in many ways. Fast forward, he is alert and watches for any real or imagined sign of disrespect and automatically reacts.

anita