I've been chewed up and spat out (LONG)

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Please bear with me, I'm kind of in shock here..

My ex-best friend and I started running online businesses together about 3 years ago. Things were GREAT at first. The two of us ran a advertising website with a third guy. I did the programming and administrative stuff; the other 2 guys handled the marketing. Both my work and the money I made were far more rewarding than I had ever anticipated, and things were just perfect. However we took a blow when the third guy ended up stealing the websites and disappearing, leaving us without any recourse.

After that, my friend and I started a new website, and I got another job to support me while we were building it. It was quite a blow, but things were looking up again! Once our new website began to become a success, the company I worked for said that they didn't like me working full-time for 2 different businesses. I wasn't sneaky about it, nor did I inappropriately work on my stuff on their hours or anything like that. They just thought I should dedicate myself to one business or the other and asked me to pick. I stuck with my friend--I would much rather run our own business together with someone I trusted rather than stay at that company.

I moved halfway across the country for this guy, so we could work together in the same town. That's when things changed for the worse--he was no longer my partner--he was my boss. He lost interest in the site, and bossed me around rather than working with me as before. If I complained he said I was being "insubordinate" and threatened to withhold my pay, etc. He said that I am not to question him. Even innocent questions like "what are your long-term plans for this project I'm working on now?" were met with angry rants and threats because he thought I was questioning his decisions, when in reality I was just curious.

Over the past couple months, things got even worse. He started antagonizing me; trying to get a rise out of me. He'd do things like IM me constantly with 10 different requests (all of which had to be done RIGHT NOW!), knowing that I can't multitask well and knowing it would upset me. He started saying I was incompetent, lazy, didn't care about our business--all while I was staying up for 2 days straight trying to finish all the tasks he put in front of me. If I went to bed at a reasonable hour (as in, 2-3am), he said I was lazy. If I pulled an all-nighter and went to bed at 10 in the morning then slept the following day, he said I was too undisciplined to stay on a reasonable schedule and treated my work like a video game rather than a real job. I dealt with this abuse EVERY SINGLE DAY--and the moment I'd say something showing even the slightest hint that I was getting upset, he'd say "see! it's all your fault, you have an attitude problem!"

He started docking my pay if I'd protest any of this or defend myself in any way. Yesterday, the worst happened. I was working on one of our new websites--I've been putting 60+ hours per week into developing it over the past month or so, and it has a lot of VERY innovative and advanced features that I'm really proud of. We had last talked 2 hours ago and things were fine--then he suddenly IM'd me, claiming there were several broken links on one page and accusing me of being too incompetent and lazy to see them. I checked every single link; there were no broken links--there were a few links to incomplete pages but they were still valid links, and I explained this. He said "that's it..I can't work with you, you're too stupid.. take a vacation or something", said that if I harassed him he'd call the cops, and signed out.

This afternoon, I find that all of our websites and their associated servers are down. From what I can gather from calling the hosting company, he asked them to lock everything down and change the passwords. Why they've been down all day, I have no idea. In addition to our businesses there are a few sites that only pay him (which I've worked on for FREE for the past 3 years as a favor to him), and those are down too..So I'm not really sure what the deal is.

After this I got suspicious and started looking on freelance job posting sites. Sure enough, today on one there's a new listing asking for a programmer to replace his "ex-programmer" (me--he hasn't told me this yet though) and I know it's him because it's the correct city, and he named two of our websites to give examples of the "complex nature of the programming talents that went into these sites", in his words (yet I'm sooooo incompetent). Too bad for him that they're down right now, though.

I turned my whole life around for this guy and our business ventures--I've done free work on sites that don't pay me, I helped him remodel his house as a friend, I've put in obscene hours trying to make him happy, I've dealt with his terrible control-freak attitude that developed after I moved here, and now he just feels like finding someone else, probably hoping to save money or see if he can find anyone that is even more of a doormat than I was (if that's possible).

What sickens me the most is that I'm sure if he finds someone else, he'll be wonderfully accomodating and generous, just as he was with me at first--he has a very charming, personable facade. Then once he establishes control, it'll no doubt turn out the same. I can't believe I've put up with his crap for so long, only for this.

I don't even know how to react yet, I'm in shock right now. Even if he doesn't find someone now (which isn't likely, given the complexity of the work involved and the money he's offering), he clearly showed his intentions and is no longer trustworthy. The site requires registration to see the postings, so I don't think he intended to just scare me or anything like that. I guess it's time to plan on moving back home or something. I dunno. What little faith I had left in humanity (which he improved at the beginning) has been obliterated. I don't know what else to say..

That sucks. (Typical aspie understatement)
I know this just happened so you might still be in shock, but you might want to call a lawyer. It doesn't seem like he should be able to get away with treating you this way.
It sounds like you've gone through hell but you seem to be handling it pretty well.

Contacting an attorney sounds like a very smart thing to do. From what you've described, I'm not sure you have recourse, but it's worth a shot.

It sounds like you got hit with a typical aspie situation: you did constructive, kind things and expected him to reciprocate. Only very high-toned, extremely ethical NTs can do that. It's very rare. What's far more likely is that, the more you give, the more they take. The more you let them push, the harder they will push. He didn't respect you because you kept trying to work with him. You did rational, reasonable things, and it drove the guy nuts. He was waiting for you to argue, fight, push back at him, and explode on his a$$ about the abuse. Instead, you took it. And here's the thing:

NTs hate nobody more than somebody who lets them push him around. You'd think they love people they can control, but they don't. They despise them. Why? Because a person who allows an NT to push him around is allowing the NT to do a bad thing, a fundamentally WRONG thing, and deep down, the NT knows it. The NT is becoming a worse person, and the person being pushed around is the one allowing it to happen. Do you see? Mess up, isn't it?

Good luck with that. I wish you the best in seeing it for what it is, and in so doing, making lemonade and moving on. Give him a legal kick in the nads if you can. He'll thank you for it deep down.

Wow. Talk about a startup gone bad. I know what the standard advice would be in a situation like this... in the future, make sure every aspect of a startup is under signed contract - your pay, your hours, the type of work you'll be doing, etc. But I don't think that's the whole answer here. I don't know if you still doubt it, but you did far more than you were expected to, even taking into consideration typical startup conditions - long hours, uncertainty, etc.

It's more a question of how to stop it from happening, and I don't mean in terms of contracts, but like GroovyDruid says, figuring out what should and shouldn't be taken. It's one thing to know you were royally screwed over and another to figure out how it happened well enough to recognize it coming next time. I don't think this is really the time for talk about how "NT's ought to be ethical". The fact is that in business situations every person will attempt to act in their own self-interest. Ideally their rational self-interest, but sadly very few people are rational. So instead, better to be prepared for irrationality.