Is my (soon to be ex) BF within his rights to destroy my property?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been with my boyfriend on and off for about a year. We broke up for a few months but ended up getting back together earlier this summer when he supposedly had a change of heart and suddenly decided he couldn’t live without me. I was very hesitant to get back together but frankly gave in because he begged and made me feel very guilty about “breaking his heart” if I didn’t.

I stopped seeing the sweet, wonderful guy I was dating while we’re on our (supposed to be permanent) “break” to get back together with him and now I think about him everyday and wonder why I did it…

The reason we broke up in the first place is because quite frankly, I’m not enough of a perfectionist for him and he was making me cry me ALL THE TIME over not being good enough for him.

He’s a very type-A personality, who always has to be right. He likes everything done a very specific way and allows no margin for error. If I screw up, (i.e. not closing the shower curtain after I’m done, not loading the dishwasher exactly the way HE likes it, or I lose his socks in the laundry) he will berate me for it until I’m in tears. Sometimes, he makes me feel like a horrible, stupid person and if I beg him to stop yelling at me he just gets more angry until I finally crack and break down.

He’s 30 with an Ivy League education and a high-paying job, and I’m a 22 year old female student/intern who’s still getting her life together. He constantly uses this to hold over my head to make himself seem in-charge and more powerful than me and I hate to say it…but it works.

I ask him if he wants a girlfriend or a subordinate he said if I was “better” he wouldn’t have to treat me like a subordinate.

Today, like many days in the past months, I tried to leave him. He started criticizing and at yelling at me in front of a neighbor when I couldn’t get the malfunctioning lock in his apartment to work to let him back in. I was mortified because he lives in a nice building on the Upper West Side of NYC and I have to see his neighbors often.

When I was finally able to get it to work and let him back in, we were furious with one another. He was mad at me for locking the broken lock and I was mad at him for yelling at me and kind of putting me down to his neighbor whom we hardly know. I told him he was acting like an abusive person and it was making him very unlikable and I don’t want see him for a while.

I started gathering my things from around his apartment but couldn’t possibly get it all in one trip. He said that if I can’t get it in one trip that he’ll throw the rest down the garbage shoot for “breaking his heart” (there goes that f*cking line again.)

I told him that he wasn’t within his rights to do that but he said that he could and there could be no repercussions if he did and he would get a friend to help him destroy my property. I say that if he does that I’ll get the police involved and he said that they’ll have no evidence by the time they got to his place… :/

We ended up making up temporarily (unbeknownst to him) but mostly I did it because he threatened my property and I’m trying to buy time to think of a smart “out” in meantime.

If for some reason, I couldn’t get every item I own from him in one trip would be in his rights to throw my things away? I have a number of clothes items I keep at his house that are expensive and important to me because I’m on a budget right now.

PLEASE someone help me deal with this situation, this man is making me so unhappy and I want to escape him but I need to do it the smart way with as little damage to myself and property as possible. :(