Corrections from boyfriend are not wanted by reader

Hi, Carolyn: I’d like your perspective on a certain behavior my new boyfriend is exhibiting that I find very irritating. I’m not even sure how to describe it, and I would like to have an intelligent conversation with him about it before the behavior becomes ingrained.

First scenario: A friend who was moving offered to give me some furniture, and I asked my boyfriend to come along with me to help. As we were working in her home, she was looking for a certain tool, and before I could even offer to help her, he admonished me in front of everyone there to help her out.

Second scenario: We were riding bikes and I accidentally veered into another biker’s lane. My boyfriend asked me to watch out. Then he said, “SORRY,” very loudly to the other biker, before I had a chance to say it myself, which I would have done.

I know these seem like little things, but I would’ve done the right thing without prompting, and need to be given the time and space to do so. Is he being annoyingly paternalistic? Am I being too sensitive? Am I making a big deal of nothing?

C.

This is not nothing, and you are not making a big enough deal of it. Yet.

He is treating you as if you’re his child or his pupil — and not only that, he’s putting on a performance of his superior virtue for bystanders. That’s either insufferable in its own right or insufferable with the promise of much worse to come.

Someone who does this to a supposed peer is certainly not guaranteed to be an abuser, but the behavior is consistent with early warnings of controlling tendencies.