In my house, I'm the guy who pays the power bill. My roommates each give me their portion but my name's the one on the bill. I know I shouldn't have let that happen but found my roommates before I found the red pill. Well now the semester's ending. One of my roommates has been raising the heat to 75 degrees. I kept turning it back down to 50 since it's spring and we don't need the heat but he likes it warm.

There's nothing I can do to stop this. I argued with him but he ignored me. The guy's a true scumbag and either couldn't see how I wouldn't want to pay for heat or was just pretending not to. I turned the heat down whenever I could but I'm not always home and there's not much I can do if he's going to turn it up. Rather than get pissed off, I spend more frugally to adapt to the situation without wasting energy. We also made a deal where he'd switch the heating bill to his name. He's not a rich guy though so I didn't know what his plan was to pay for the power.

Lo and behold, his plan is to be a scumbag. He tries to use the bill to leverage me into cleaning and doing chores. He won't switch it unless I do his shit. After all, it's my name on the bill. Before the red pill, I would have been emasculated but I'm not letting that happen. I may not be able to force him to do anything, including put the name on the bill but he can't make me keep my name on it either so I call the company and take my name off the bill and let my roommates know the amount due.

He starts giving me all the bullshit in the world about how it's not his job to pay it. "Why do you care if my name's not on the bill if you'll get you're money?" He tried to leverage the fact that I'm not giving him chores or supplicating him into paying me. He wants the receipts of all the bills ever paid or else he's not paying. He wants a whole lot of shit because he's not paying for the heat.

Again, preTRP I would have bought into it and tried to reason with him to pay it but I don't do that anymore. You can't reason with a scumbag anymore than you can reason with a woman. You look weak and he'd just talk over me and dismiss the issues. Instead of having the discussion I tell him one sentence which is that if I don't have the money when he gets home today, I'm taking him to court.

He tries to reason with me about how I won't have a case without giving him the receipts of all paid bills, hold up "my end of the deal", and show XYZ. I know better than to ask him which statute he's citing or get into this with him. My threat was a real one, not a bluff. My relative's a lawyer and I'd rather talk to them about my situation and what each of us can do. Without going into detail, his options are to either pay me or pay my lodging and travel too. I'll edit the post tonight and see if he magically finds the money.

Moral of the story: At all moments, you can do nothing other than control your actions. Don't try to huff and puff just think "What can I do right now to fix my situation?" A good answer to that question will always be an action that you can 100% carry out without any consent from someone who doesn't have your interests at heart. Had I tried his game, it would have been emasculating and I'd have to do a bunch of shit that I don't want to do. Instead, I took control of the situation by managing my person and figuring out how I can fix the situation, rather than expecting him to fix it for me.

Edit: So he just had some kind of financial miracle or something. Got my money.