He probably remembers any slight she may have done towards him and the alcohol amplifies it, meanwhile he rationalizes never paying her a compliment in years and shitting all over her any chance he gets in front of friends and family.
We may have a Destiny's wife situation on our hands. One partner consistently placating while the other gets off on insulting and blaming the first for all of the relationship's problems. Will Nick learn from their mistakes and not cross obvious boundaries?
No. That's what the Instagram girls are for. Filling his American Beauty desires so he won't "die." Pathetic.
I'm sure Kayla doesn't trust nick, this probably leads to a lot of other stuff we're only hearing Nicks "its so unfair" rationalizations about, like having to wake up early to drive the kids leading to him being cut off from drinking or having the nanny do the shopping or being forced to attend church groups or all the other bullshit tasks to keep him from having enough free time to fuck around and get drunk.
I had not considered before that Kayla might not want Nick to do trial streams because he would then have an excuse to drink the entire day. He was always passive aggressive, but literally screams at people with insults over imaginary or petty matters while drunk. It would be reasonable for her to fear it all being directed at her after a hard day of day drinking on livestream.
His interpretation of his "favorite movie" was by constraining yourself to conventional morality is to die. The only way to live is purely selfishly, without restrictions, without community, as a sort of highly sexed Übermensch. That fits artistically with what he expressed now regularly in the coom, balldo content. It's a fucked up mindset for a man with a wife and 5 kids. Even if Nick loves this concept, it probably should ideally remain a unexpressed fantasy. But its hard to have those as a drunk.
The more that I think on the pattern of events, the more that it begrudgingly makes sense.
Nick is stubborn, petty, and vindictive.
He has repressed fantasies either inspired by or related to American Beauty. His family and social circles are what kept him restrained, but chronic bitch syndrome kept him from fully understanding why he wasn't supposed to do those things.
Still, he was a fairly normal person for a while. Imperfect, but made concessions for his wife and loved ones (number of kids, house location, continuation with church). His petty nature meant that he remembered slights, but had enough wits to mostly forgive.
Then the streaming career started. Fame, money, and freedom. Most importantly, alcohol. That was his brand, after all. It increased over the years, with him drinking for toasts and superchat games. Now that he was monetarily self sufficient, he felt he didn't need those social ties that "stifled" him before, still never understanding why they did it other than "being prudes." Alcohol likely exasperating his impaired judgement.
This goes into even more speculative territory, but it's what I believe made his decline so rapid. He's stubborn and, was at least, smart. He probably hid the degree of his mental decline on purpose. Just like older people who hide their dementia until they physically can't anymore, so it appears like a sudden hitting of the wall when it was actually gradual. I bet that's also why he's so convinced that he was "always like this" before backtracking that he wasn't, but doesn't know what changed.
What changed was alcoholism that lowered his inhibitions, drove him to take more mentally handicapping substances, and combined brain damage. Unfortunately, Nicky can't recover from that.
Even more unfortunately, he didn't finish his American Beauty movie. There's still a young girl to bang, and not doing so will "kill" him.