My resentment has gone. If there's something undone, it was my choice to not do it, and my problem to sort out. I cannot put a price on this pure freedom of never again waiting years for someone to pretend to care enough to sort it. Be it DIY, paperwork, household jobs, listening to family, trying to make any sort of improvement.. That massive human roadblock is now out of our way, with all his accompanying bullshit excuses to fail constantly, all gone too. Feels amazing.
The children have friends over more often, they talk more, they use more of the house. This made me so sad, I hadn't realised how they'd curtailed themselves to avoid his overbearing, boring presence. The pets are more chilled. I noticed he never ever greeted the dog, which is just so alien, even "non doggy" people generally acknowledge a happy dog wagging and wanting a pat when they see them?! What a loser.
No more inane conversation just for the sake of it. I do NOT miss hearing the droning monologue about people I don't know, and the minutiae of their lives, while he couldn't even remember the basics about us 🙄 much less feign interest in what any of us had to say. It's so dispiriting to have everything you mention forgotten on purpose. It crushes the self esteem. So glad the kids don't have to endure it any more.
The constant background coughing, spluttering, sniffing, swearing, quiet chuntering because he can't communicate directly. Boiling constant full kettles of water and not using it, leaving every light on, leaving toilet seat up, not changing toilet rolls or opening the window after stinking the house out 😠It is SO GOOD to be free. I stopped doing his laundry well before the split and I don't miss dumping out his wet stinking abandoned washing from the machine, to do my own 🫠Did I say it's good to be free already?! It's good to be free 😅
Not having to be on high alert as to his nonverbal cues of anger or shitty mood. Not having to placate a man who can't manage his own feelings as an adult. Priceless.
Not having to deal with toxic and fist-bitingly boring miserable and tight inlaws. Not having to feel embarrassed in company by his lack of self awareness and boring awful tales (which never graduated from things that happened twenty years ago being repeated endlessly- stories about "the gang", not a single one for them is still in touch with him and yet the nostalgia continues to bore on and on to any audience). Bring able to have my friends over to my house and he's not here spoiling it.
A weird one but I no longer have to smile or apologise to any women he almost bulldozed through on the street... His lack of awareness of these woman having to flit around him was too much to bear (yes I did tell him, constantly)
I can plan things for me and the kids. Things we are really interested in. We can geek out together about it all without him openly mocking and judging it, or trying to ruin it for us. I can go to music events and dance now, without him there openly laughing at me for being bad at it. I can go on holiday without him 100% purposefully setting out to ruin everything. Never again will I compromise for a rude abrupt ungrateful pig regarding holidays, never again will my kids endure his utter disinterest (and jealousy) in their travels and the fun they had.
Speaking of jealousy, that. No more of it. He's jealous of people with better cars, houses, lives. All whilst actively shunning any route to get that for himself. I'm happy with my lot and it's so freeing to lose that background aura of constant dissatisfaction.
Also, smaller things like he used to moan every single week if asked to pick up more bread and milk, saying he contributed "so much" "around thirty quid a week!" But since he's gone, we never need top ups. Because it was him who was fucking eating and drinking all the extras, and trying to blame the kids 🙄 in fact, bills in general. He somehow made out he was the breadwinner, but I pay for everything. I am better off financially without him leeching off us, which has truly blown my mind. I was most definitely paying the lions share, and for what?
This is such a cathartic thread!!