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He chooses the person nearest to him. Parental abuse. Drug addiction (his own). A history of self-loathing that reaches back into his early childhood when he is yelled at continuously by his parents and his grandparents and his brothers and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts (and his brothers and sisters and his cousins and his aunts). Jeez, this guy is a pathetic schmuck, he thinks. Not his to judge, he thinks, but then, well, actually, now it is his to judge, isn't it? But hold on -- he watches the man's life unfold. There are a series of personal relationships: familial, professional, romantic. The familial: a submissive father and a domineering mother. The above mentioned verbal abuses. An aunt who loves him in more ways than one (eww...) and then berates him for smashing the mantel urn that contains her late husband's ashes. She says he has done so on purpose, and he agrees with her. Her dead husband is too much on her mind, the man thinks. Three's a crowd (double eww...) He plays for both teams. He has girlfriends and boyfriends. Some of the relationships have been serious, but all have ended at the point when he has become obsessive. He has scared off every one of his relationships by becoming, as they say, clingy.