DEAR ABBY: I’m 55 and own my home. “Randall,” 53, lives with me and pays me rent. We used to be a couple, but COVID caused too much togetherness. He’s in the spare bedroom now. My house is cheaper for him than anywhere else he could go. I was trying to be nice.
The problem is, he talks down to me. I want to have the interior of the house professionally painted, and he insists we should paint it ourselves. “It’ll be fun!” We were testing paint samples on the wall and disagreed over which shade of white to choose. He tells me I should “defer to him” and ends up swearing, and when I ask him to stop, he says I’m overreacting. This is why we are not a couple.
