I found that entry very revealing and informative. Thank you for posting it!!
I'm no longer living with my XABF, but my current landlord/roommate has an extreme lack of communication skills that I actually find disturbing. Rather than communicate his needs when it comes to logistics around the house (cleaning duties, rent payment etc), he instead uses angry behavior and the leaving of "clues" that I and other renters are supposed to pick up on. Leaving the vacuum for someone to trip over so they know it's their turn to clean, taking away all the silverware in the house if they weren't organized properly in the drawer etc.
I have just accepted his behavior as that of a damaged person who wasn't raised to communicate in a verbal way without going completely nuclear and raging.
Recently I discovered he was entering my locked room when I would go out to turn off lights and things he felt should not be left on. I saw it as yet another "clue" I was supposed to read into so I stopped leaving anything on no matter how briefly I was out of my room and still the inspections continued. When confronted about it, he denied it all.
I finally saw no choice but to state my boundary firmly and directly, which I did. I cosidered it an invasion of privacy and do not like at all. He grunted acknowledgement and that was the last he spoke to me.
Since that time I have been treated like a walking plague. I have overheard some very choice conversation about me and my rampant bitchery. I am the enemy and deserve nothing but scorn and scowls.
I suppose as long as I am subservient and bending where the prevailing winds go, sniffing out the clues on how I'm supposed to behave, I am tolerable, but when I become an individual with needs and wants and with lines I won't allow to be crossed, I am a raving, irrational, stone cold B**tch with a capital B.
I admit I started to cave recently and actually felt like I had done something wrong and started to believe there was something wrong with me. Those old codependent feelings and inferiority complexes bubbling up. I had to give myself a good talking to that I had every reason to state a boundary. I did nothing wrong.
You've reminded me to stay strong! Thank you for that.
Alice