The Wife Upstairs

Adam’s relationship with Victoria is predicated on manipulation that gradually escalated into psychological abuse, as he cut her off from her community, undermined her self-esteem, and robbed her of agency. While everything seemed too good to be true to Victoria after their first few dates, things shifted intensely after she moved in with Adam. Adam used money as a means of control, demanding that they split all their groceries and toiletry items and berating Victoria for using his toothpaste: “So in a nutshell, you’re not capable of respecting my things. Even though I’m letting you live in my apartment rent-free” (164). Adam made sure to maintain strict ownership of the apartment in order to make Victoria feel like a guest and limit her agency in the place she called her home. However, after the initial fight over toothpaste, which gave Victoria doubts about the relationship, Adam appeared to change for a time, with Victoria noting, “He even bought a new toothpaste and he said it was for the two of us. We’re finally sharing toothpaste! It’s like the fear of losing me turned him into a different person” (201). This pattern, with incidents of abuse followed by periods of apparent reform, is characteristic of abusive relationships. Adam pretended to be different in order to keep Victoria in his life, but his manipulative behavior had already seeped into Victoria’s subconscious.

When Adam asked to talk to Victoria after one of her emergency-room shifts, her reaction was emotionally visceral: “I immediately got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I must have done something wrong” (214). Before even knowing what the problem was, she immediately assumed that she was to blame, illustrating the degree to which she had internalized Adam's abuse by this point. His controlling behavior became so extreme that he cut Victoria off from money by withholding her credit card after she asked to take a class, insisting that she “only wanted to take the class to meet men” (271). His jealousy and need for control had the effect of isolating Victoria from any community that might have helped her.

Adam’s jealous delusions are a key aspect of his character and a form of projection: Despite his own infidelity, he constantly suspected Victoria of cheating on him, displaying the paranoia of which he accused Victoria. He even gaslit her into thinking that she imagined him being in Irina’s room in the middle of the night, with Victoria writing, “One minute ago, I had been a hundred percent certain about what I heard. But now I was doubting myself. He looked so earnest. Maybe I really did dream it all. It’s certainly possible. Because nobody is that good a liar, are they?” (286). Adam’s manipulative character makes him a clear antagonist in both Victoria’s storyline and Sylvia’s, even though in both storylines, he initially appears to be a romantic option. Throughout the entirety of the text, he manipulates Victoria and eventually Sylvia in an attempt to make reality adhere to his desired outcomes.