Or is he - moving costs after relationship end.

[DietCokeAddict19]

Ex has lived with me, rent free but paying half the bills, for 5 years. In that time he’s been able to rent out his own place to the tune of £1800 a month which he has been putting in savings.

So we’ve split up, and he has moved out and back into his own place. He lives 3 hours away, so with various trips and van hire, it’s cost him £220.

In the process of sorting out finances and our joint account etc, and he has asked me to pay half of his moving costs.

I’ve told him he’s being completely unreasonable - it’s not my problem that he lives 3 hours away and needed to hire a van.

From a guy who earns at least 4 times my salary, he’s just being a CF, right?

Thank you

I'd send him an itemised bill for his rent, utilities, laundry and taking up your air for the time he was living with you. Just to show you are splitting all costs 50/50
Cocklodger indeed!

Ive blocked all his email addresses, his phone number and the WhatsApp and Facebook and I’ve deleted instagram.

I do feel guilty about what if he needs to contact me in an emergency or somebody dies or something but I just need some peace.

Having a quick sob in the kitchen before I have to pull myself together and collect the kids.

I do feel guilty about what if he needs to contact me in an emergency or somebody dies or something but I just need some peace.

Not. Your. Responsibility. You're free now

What emergency could there possibly be where an Ex needs to be notified immediately? Police knocking on the door or snail mail are still options.

Who do you know where he has direct contact with that person but you don't?

Stop overthinking it. He has shown how nasty and self centred he is.

Have a hug (or two) from me ❤

@DietCokeAddict19 Well done for blocking. I wish you'd kept "his" half of the joint account to give you and the kids an extra special xmas after all his mind fu**ery, but hey, he's gone now. Don't think he won't dream up some fantastic ways of getting in touch when he wants to. Time to focus on you for now. Start thinking about what you want your life to look like in the next few years and think about steps you can take to get there.

He still made a net profit from living with you, having his mortgage paid for him, while you lost a whole bunch of allowances.

There is no emergency where an ex, with no kids in common, needs to be in touch with you. Other than to mess with your head. The layby location shot and the poor sleepless nights feeling hard done by say it all really.

I've explained to the kids what has happened and suggested (strongly) that I would prefer them not to be in contact with someone who has been unkind to me and chosen not to make contact with them since he left a month ago. I've also let them know that he might try to contact them now he can't contact me.

DS2 isn't bothered to talk to him again (which is the real surprise, I thought when we split up that he would be really upset as he had been close to ex). DS1 is being savvy and decided not to take any action until ex has signed of some of his DofE stuff!

I've asked work for the day off tomorrow. I don't feel like my brain is working properly at the moment and I can't give work my all (which I need to when I'm there).

@Userwithallthenumbers yes even with everything, all his "additional outgoings" of trips, petrol money etc he still made a profit from living here and I made a loss. Whatever. It's done now. If he still can't see that and still thinks that it's fair (or, from his email, he clearly thinks that it's unfair that he paid so much more than me!) then it absolutely cements that I made the right choice in ending it.

Well done OP. I hope you start to feel less broken soon and can move on from him. He isn't worth your time or your thoughts.

Wishing you a lovely Christmas 🎄

Even if all that was true, he lived rent free while having his mortgage paid by someone else for all these years. Where else would you be able to do this. It’s still profit as he should have had those costs.

Thank you. Thanks for all of your wise words and support. I hope you have a lovely Christmas too :)

Yes, precisely. He still benefitted financially from living with me whilst I lost all my tax credits etc. Well, I hope he is very happy not having to deal with any more of my perceived unfairness!

Why would he be paying for utilities and council tax on a flat that a tenant was living in?

Being asked for half of the credit on your electricity/gas (particularly as it's such a small amount) would make me unable to speak for a month.

What an utter dickwad. His mortgage paydown is still profit for him, although he doesn't classify it as such.

I was thinking this too. Doesn't make sense because tenants usually are responsible for paying all their own bills.

I don’t know. It’s was £1800 a month for a 2 bed flat so maybe that included bills?

But in his head, he paid his fair share of the COMBINED expenses, so the fact that he was a) getting his mortgage paid separately b) impacting you because your lost your benefits etc is irrelevant.

I always say on threads where it's about two people moving in - you BOTH need to be better off financially, with roughly equal benefits. So, sure, he paid for things and that's great. But he was substantially better off - not having to pay his mortgage, earning a small "profit", reduced costs as he was sharing bills with you etc. And you were no better off as any savings from him paying for things was offset by the losses you made.

Honestly, There's no arguing with him even though I'm sure you just want to shout, "When you moved in here you were getting your mortgage paid AND your overall costs were lower than before you moved in while my costs stayed the same/ went up/only dropped very slightly". But what's the point. He will never see it.

Oh absolutely @NotLactoseFree I'm not going to bother responding at all. He won’t agree and it just prolongs the contact/conflict. In my last message to him I said I hoped he was glad he’d had the opportunity to say his piece, and I had nothing left to say to him. It’s true. It sounds as though me even bringing it up has left him reflecting on it (even if he eventually concluded that I was wrong). So I’ve still achieved something by challenging his narrative that he has about himself. I don’t think he is nearly as fair as he wants to believe he is, but it’s so fundamental to him that he won’t be shaken from that view even if the evidence is staring him in the face.

Oh Dietcoke I feel for you! I believe my (fortunately now!) XH is a covert narcissist. They suck you in. They have a way of speaking with such authority that you also believe they are right! I know some earliest posts have questioned why you put up with it and it shows they don’t understand the level of manipulation. You don’t see it until you’re out of it. I wrote a list of all the shit my XH out me through. I got to about 50 before I stopped!
You’ve absolutely done the right thing stepping back and blocking him and it sounds like your kids unearned better than you could have imagined. Did you know you can press and hold a WhatsApp to read it in full without showing it as read? Helpful! It sounds like when you split he felt lost. A narcissist without supply is lost indeed! He will find someone quickly. XH met his new supply the day after he moved out!
I highly recommend Caroline Strawson on social media. She’s an expert on narcissism and has lots of great resources on recovery. Here’s a link to her video on covert narcissism:
https://fb.watch/oO1H8isgXl/ on Facebook you might find helpful.
well done for getting this far..just keep going!

I don't know why I feel worse with this relationship ending than I did when my marriage ended. I'm absolutely knackered - I slept on the sofa yesterday afternoon which is most unlike me, and tempted to do the same today. He hasn't succeeded in contacting me (he has blocked on everything) but I still wake up every morning feeling anxious in case he has.

I think when my marriage ended it felt like a clean break as I moved out of the house and got to start again somewhere else. This time I have to live in the house that we lived in together, and I'm finding that hard.

I think the constant anxiety is partly because your worldviews are so different. In a "normal" break up, there are probably arguments and disagreements, lots of tears etc. But intrinsically both parties have the same broad view of things. eg, she might end it as she feels unsupported, unloved, he doesn't do enough around the house etc. He will see the relationship as being ended because she "thought" he didn't do enough, didn't support her, didn't do enough around the house. He might not agree with her thoughts/opinions, but there is an intrinsic agreement about what ended the relationship.

With the sort of disordered thinking you're dealing with, you will never get to that point because you could say the sky is blue and he would tell you, confidentially, that it's green.

At the same time, part of you wants him to acknowledge the pain he caused you and the unfairness of things, but he won't.

And this, I suspect, is where a lot of the anxiety comes from. Part of you is still believing him and worrying that he's thinking you're bad/mean/unfiar/unkind. Intellectually you know you're not, BUT you want him to acknowledge that he also had a part to play here.

But he won't. I'm sorry. So the sooner you can accept that and expect NOTHING from him, the better for all involved.

I agree with @NotLactoseFree , you have been wanting, and waiting, for some kind of acknowledgement from him. But he has consistently been "me me me" so you never will. Take a deep breath, shake your hair, and accept that he's not going to contact you (unless its a me me me one).

Yes I agree with the worry that he is thinking I'm bad/mean/unfair/unkind. I find that very hard to sit with that anyone would think that of me.

I suppose the anxiety is around what if he does manage to contact me. It's all around feeling unsafe, and all of the "what if..." scenarios. I don't feel physically in danger, but because he has shifted so much from this charming man to someone who is blaming me for everything, I feel like I don't know him at all and therefore can't predict what he will do, which makes me feel very wary.

In one of his messages before I blocked him he mentioned that he is going to be in my city this weekend en route to seeing his family for Christmas. He has a lot of friends that live nearby, so I feel anxious about going out in case I see him. I feel trapped in my own home, even though I know that it's only my own fear that's putting me here.

I had a dream about him last night. He was taking all his remaining stuff out of my garage. (I keep finding things of his, there is a pile of stuff I don’t know what to do with).

Wish my brain would give me a break.