Responses
Totally agree with you. Toxic is the best adjective to describe this character. Blackmail, bribery, tons of unwanted gifts; I think that is called "Stalking," which is apparently perfectly alright, as long as the stalker is sexy and rich. For a one-night-stand playboy, he also has all of the endearing qualities of the incel.
My other grip is the brother. His attitude seems to be, "Sell yourself to this a**hole for my sake, since I completely f***ed up the finances of our company that I won't let anyone else touch." Having a sister myself, I think he should be thrown into a shark tank with a string of pork chops around his neck.
I mean, he just seems like another guy who can’t stand to be told no by a girl he wants so he tries to wear her down until she accepts him. (Tbh this is my most disliked type of ML because it’s too close of a parallel to toxic guys I’ve encountered: guys that think women owe them affection just because they want her)
She rejected him multiple times with a solid reason, like not being able to get over her husband and he tells her that she’s just not able to get over a “childish first love”? Also him saying that her only remembering good things about her husband is unnatural, but I feel like if someone really lost their true love, it would be realistic to mostly remember the good over the bad in hindsight (also they were technically still in the honeymoon phase). Also dude, you’ve never been married or in love so how would you even know whether that’s normal or not? Like for 97% of the story he doesn’t know anything about her dead husband but he constantly tries to talk shit about a dead guy he doesn’t know a thing about just to have sex with a woman = trash personally.
He’s not the worst ML I’ve encountered in these stories by any means, but he constantly demeans this woman’s feelings just because he wants her to hurry up and get over her ex so he can f*** her. Like she DOESN’T OWE YOU ANYTHING. Then they tried to casually defame the character of the dead husband in a couple pages to somehow justify this toxic behavior by the ML. So if her husband had been a good guy which justified her being unable to move on, then we can agree that’s he toxic?
Um. No.