My Mister (2018)

Honestly, I couldn't help but notice how YH constantly accused DH of faults she was far guiltier of herself.
DH would come home after work to handle house chores and tidy the apartment before she returned, often after grocery shopping. YH was rarely home, and when she was, she would retreat to her studio, leaving him afraid to even watch TV in case it disturbed her. So, because he didn’t want to stay in an empty house, DH met up with his brothers and friends. This dynamic was something YH herself acknowledged, claiming this was a vicious cycle that led them to see each other less and less, though notably this admission came only after she unilaterally gaslighted DH, despite both knowing of her affair, and he pointed out that it’s not as if she was around much either.

YH was often absent as well, I would maybe even say just as much, if not more, than DH. I got the impression that sometimes it was for days, and even involved her coming back after he was asleep. You didn’t see him complaining and gaslighting her about this, the way she did to him. Even when she was at home, she was cooped up in her office. She even missed her own niece's wedding to spend time with her lover, yet DH defended her against his brother's (unfortunately correct) suspicions, insisting he trusted her implicitly. He was clearly hurt that she didn’t even bother to call, which stands in contrast to his routine of calling home after work to check what she needed.

YH's dismissal of her niece as family and skipping the wedding to meet her lover felt shocking, especially considering how the girl's mother supported YH and treated her son like family. Similarly, DH's mother helped raise their child so YH could focus on her career, yet YH was convinced DH should not view his own mother as part of his family. Imagine telling JA that her grandmother was not family. JA's bond with her grandmother mirrored DH's with his mother, both rooted in shared survival after parental loss.

Now, I must admit that I think that the main issue here was DH and YH wanting different things. Notably, he never tried to hide his values, she pretended to go along with it while planning to get into DH’s good graces so that he would distance himself from family and friends, which in my mind seems kind of a love-bombing situation (idealization/devaluation/discard cycle, transactional view of favors, etc. with the expectation that your partner would allow you to manipulate them into changing their core values in return… compare that with DH’s brother paying for JA’s grandma’s funeral without asking or expecting anything in return).

Bottom line, DH accepted YH for how she was, knew that her career was important to her and accepted her absences, which he had to justify them in front of his family, in a way that YH simply didn’t reciprocate when it came to DH’s actions and what was important to him, i.e. his family. I mean, given how she viewed this all as a competition, one could just imagine the abuse she would have put him through had he dared to miss an important family event, due to his job (“do you care about your career more than me?”, etc.).

More than wanting to spend time with DH, YH seemed primarily concerned with preventing him from spending time with others he cared about, driven by jealousy. While these aren’t mutually exclusive, I think that it’s pretty easy to see from her actions where the emphasis lie. She had no problem ignoring DH when she came home and retreating to her office, not to mention her frequent absences (especially toward the end, when she was meeting up with her lover). Even then, she continued to gaslight DH and question his commitment, showcasing a staggering double standard.
If this was not the case, I would say that we would see different behavior from her. While DH admitted to feeling abandoned, he accepted what mattered to YH (her career) and wanted to support her without treating their relationship as a competition. YH, on the other hand, did not reciprocate. Her actions reflected not the desire to spend time together but a determination to control DH and isolate him from others he cared about.

As another example, when DH, despite them both knowing of her betrayal, offered a compromise, YH rejected it without suggesting an alternative, and in general not once did she express a desire to adjust her own schedule to spend more time together (nor did DH ask her to when he suggested meeting her half way, only talking about his own schedule). She showed no empathy for DH’s need for space, even when they both knew of her betrayal, at a time when he had to physically turn away from their apartment when he saw her car outside. All along, her only “solution” involved DH’s complete surrender: cutting himself off from his family and friends, including his elderly mother, whom they had moved closer to support.
DH, feeling lonely in an empty house, sought solace in the company of family and friends. YH, however, seemed to prefer that he remain alone, even in her absence, if it meant he wasn’t with those he loved. She was indifferent to his suffering so long as it prevented him from connecting with others. Her behavior revealed a possessive and controlling view of love, treating it as a competition rather than a partnership.

YH refused to accept what mattered to DH (his family) the way he supported what mattered to her (her career). She saw love as a competition, rather than acknowledging that there are different types, from friendship to familial to romantic love: it’s not as if her love for their child diminished her love for her husband, for example. Her possessiveness was shown also in her behavior with her lover in the first episode, where she attacked him for not constantly calling her, even at the risk of exposing their affair, questioning his commitment in a controlling pattern eerily similar to her dynamic with DH, suggesting to me that her new relationship was likely to end as her marriage did, and probably much earlier (not that he would have married her, anyway, as it turned out).

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