Things I've noticed since the divorce

[TheWestfoldFell]

1. My house (I managed to buy a little home) is much cleaner and tidier despite the ikea boxes

2. I spend a lot less money on groceries AND my work lunches come out of this

3. my kids are a lot more chatty and animated when they are with me (50/50)

4. he's a narc

Yay @Baffers100 delighted to hear Christmas will be different for you all this year. It's such a freeing feeling, so happy for you.

Hi @Husband3t
hope you’re ok! 🤗

i haven’t taken the plunge to say I want to leave yet but I’m planning to in the new year.
For now i’m lining up all the ducks 🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🤣

and I have started therapy. i’d really recommend seeing a therapist if you can. I got a place with a charity which is mostly funded and you just pay what you can. Women’s Aid got me the place. The waiting list was about 10 weeks but it would be impossible to overestimate how much it is helping me.

For now i’m just putting up with the 20-50 micro aggressions every single day and trying not to let it get me down

(right now i’m being sung at from the kitchen going ‘why’s there no fucking butter, what’s the fucking point, no fucking butter’ - I don’t know why he sings it. I think it’s his way of pretending it’s fine - even when he’s singing ‘she’s such a fucking moron’ which is a favourite of his)

Huge congratulations!
Take a moment to breathe
Your children have an amazing, strong mummy 💖

"(right now i’m being sung at from the kitchen going ‘why’s there no fucking butter, what’s the fucking point, no fucking butter’ - I don’t know why he sings it. I think it’s his way of pretending it’s fine - even when he’s singing ‘she’s such a fucking moron’ which is a favourite of his)"

You've got the patience of a saint @WingingItFTM .

I'd rub the fucker in butter and set him on fucking fire if it was me and there is not a judge in the land that wouldn't think I was totally justified and restrained in my actions.

For those still teetering on the edge or newly free then I can honestly say life is better on the other side. The longer I am away i wonder how the fuck i put up with it and things start to make sense that I previously thought were normal. I still second guess myself sometimes and still keeping it civil for the (adult) DSs.

Onwards and upwards!

No I am not ok

@WingingItFTM my H does things like that. Singing insults. Or saying things in a silly voice. It means I can't pull him up on his constant criticism as he'll say "oh I'm joking. Wow don't turn this a proper thing. I'm just being silly".

It's so draining

I planned to do it in 2024. I told him a few nights ago I wanted to split but he hasn't taken it seriously and even tried to have sex after I'd said it. Now it's an early 2025 plan. I'm telling my mum on Wed.

All I think about is DC. Constantly. But I can't live like this. Ill crack up.

Good luck in the new year. We got this

Hi can I please pm you please

If it helps those with younger kids, I didn't split until mine were already adults but if I had my time again I'd split sooner.

You don't realise how stressed and toxic an atmosphere you live in until you don't live in it anymore.

I think I spent a lot of DCs childhood angry and stressed, trying to do it all but getting little support, all the worst of being a single parent and all the worst of being married. I think I would have been a better parent if I wasn't also trying to be a wife at the same time. I'd certainly have been a nicer person.

Anyway, that's my tuppence worth. I'm sure there would have been different stresses, but I was already the breadwinner, the default parent, the person running the house etc so my feeling is that it would have been easier without having to also take someone else on board and into consideration while resenting their existence most of the time.

According to Ex, I'm nasty, greedy, selfish, have wasted his life and never praised him enough. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Hi I am still with my husband and we have got children

For all of you still going through it, hang in there and stay safe.

That she was more of a narc than I realised
life is a lot easier now and enjoy my time with the kids
she complained was never allowed to work but actually no one stopped her and now she has the free time to work when I have the kids guess what? She’s not working and finding excuses why and happily taking all the maintenance still and feeling quite entitled to it since she devoted her lives to kids for 10y. She was an average mother at the best and still is.

Be prepared for school uniforms to be unwashed or washed but still wet if your handover is a Sunday evening.

Source: thanks, Dad 🖕

@BigBoysDontCry that is really helpful and has made me feel less guilty for planning to leave in early '25. My kids are 3 and 5

You have described my position to a T. I am the breadwinner, I sort everything. I pay for 90% but apparently am terrible with money. He does nothing but has an opinion about everything. It's like I'm driving the car by myself but with a back seat driver shouting at me.

The kids are happy though. And that is the guilt. But I can't put on this brave face forever.

My H like yours will absolutely think I've ruined his life. I've tried to leave him several times but he will 100% say I just abandoned him when I leave. He's a child in a 45 year old body who just wants to complain and be taken care of forever and I just can't do it anymore

Thank you! This gave me a much needed laugh!

Yep - i get silly voices and accents too. He’ll bring in my child into it so he can say it’s all a game ‘pretend to brush mummy’s hair, she’s a cart horse’.

Give yourself as much time as you need. You’re not ‘failing’ by taking your time

I first spoke to a charity about 18 months ago. Back then I was convinced I was done. But I did nothing for 6 months. I couldn’t process what was happening.

In the last 12 months I have told my mum and my best friend. Various charities have put me in touch with solicitors etc. so I know where I stand. I’ve thought about housing and how childcare might work.

Best of luck
you deserve to be happy

thank you! This is really helpful

i’m not the breadwinner but I think I can make it work. I absolutely am the default parent so there will be really very little change there.

I know I will be a better, calmer, happier parent without him 😊

If you share the childcare 50/50 you don't have to pay maintenance. How old are your children?

oh god. i could just imagine the cart horse comment round here. i get 'look at mummy's silly new clothes, trying to be young' or recently lots of 'mummy has to work now kids, you know talking and typing rubbish and pretending to be busy'. all said in silly voices. so so funny. the shit he says about my work....

you're right. we do deserve to be happy. we do. and i think will only get harder as the kids get older. i've got boys and they're so young right now and they're v much attached to me- but i hate to think of them copying him one day.

i keep berating myself for not doing it earlier this year. or before that. it started in my first preganacy - started getting comments like 'ooooh get the violins out' as i had to rush to the loo to be sick.

it's a weird thing, being annoyed at myself for not doing it earlier, and then still not doing it now. my friend sent me this message "if you get on the wrong train, get off at the first stop you can. the longer you stay, the more the return trip will cost you". and i haven't got off at the first stop. not even the 20th stop. i'm still on it. it's madness.

What I love about this thread, and what makes it so different from the many MANY threads about the misery of being stuck in an unhappy marriage and trying to get out, is that it focuses on the calm to be found on the other side.

For me it's being able to shut the front door behind me and just have the silence. And the small, orderly sounds. Birds chirping, dishwasher whirring, cat snoring.

Yes totally agree.

I'm just doing some laundry and it smells lovely. Couldn't have anything scented before as "someone" was apparently allergic.

Don't beat yourself up about delaying, it took me years and even a years after we agreed to split. If you've been together a long time and built a life together and have kids etc it's takes getting your mind straight to say goodbye to the future you thought you had. You think you are doing the right thing keeping stability for your kids and that everyone has rough patches so it might be worth sticking it out.

Also you might be a bit brainwashed into thinking this is what it's meant to be like, it's not that bad, it's your fault and you can fix it etc etc. So you delay to wait and see.

My conclusion is now that I'm out and down the line is that he loved the idea of me and lusted a bit but I don't think he ever truly loved me. I know I loved him and he knew it.

We worked together as a team in the early years although there were bad times, overall I believe we could be happy. I know he has mental issues, but he doesn't agree and doesn't want treatment so that's that. It's sad, 30 years gone just like that but I know I'll be happier and despite everything, I hope he finds whatever it is he is looking for and deals with his paranoia.

@BigBoysDontCry was your ex suffering with his mental health throughout your marriage? were the DC adults by the time you left?

@Oppppppp In retrospect probably yes and probably before. He was in a long term relationship and living with someone when we met. He'd given up work and was about to embark on a new career/qualification and I'd been made redundant so we ended up in a team of temps. I think he'd given up the job due to the stress and then he broke up with his partner and then we got together soon after. So I think he's generally had issues and at one point said to me that when he was out on his motorbike he felt like just driving it into a wall, which was particularly nice to hear.

Many years later during a bad patch he blurted out that he was depressed, as if by telling me that we would just acknowledge it as a fact and move on but I said he needed to do something about it or we were finished. reluctantly he went on medication and we had a couple of years of stability and were pretty happy but he didn't want to stay on medication so weaned himself off and here we are.

DS2 thinks he's neurodivergent (amongst other things) but he doesn't see that. We probably all are, both DSs have diagnoses. But it's the paranoia and constant negativity that grinds me down. I agreed to sickness and in health but there is a limit. he can turn on the charm and function perfectly well as a caring, diligent staff member and to family but to myself and DSs he is an asket misery, overly critical about everything, destroying self esteem etc.

When we were splitting he said he was looking forward to looking after me in my old age. However, apart from the fact i'm 5 years younger, he wasn't looking after me then so I don't know when this sudden miracle was going to happen.

Anyway, I don't think he'll be long in finding someone else, he's never really been on his own. Objectively he is a decent looking guy and very fit and very personable but whatever it is he wants, I clearly didn't have.

Oh and yes, by the time we split both DSs were adults but I'm still in the "family" home. i bought him out. Eldest lives with me and younger is just finishing uni and will be home in the summer for a while so I kept the bigger house so that they have a roof over their head. He doesn't provide any financial support to them and so that's still on me.

Thanks @BigBoysDontCry for sharing. I have so many other questions but I'm aware this thread is for celebrating the freedom and peace for those women who have actually done it....not women like me who are still trapped in miserable marriages...MN is full of those threads as PP said.

Things I look forward to:

• Not listening to mind numbing tiktok clips from his phone every evening in bed while I'm trying to read or sleep
• Not having someone lecture me about DIY, money, bills, mortgages, schools while not doing anything himself on those things as finds it too "stressful"
• Not having to block it out when he tells me women make too much of a fuss about men like Gregg Wallace, Trump
• Not having to smile and says thanks when he sends a few hundred quid each month to cover a home and childcare montly bill that is £000s
• No longer visiting my MIL and nodding along to her telling me how wonderful he is
• Not listening to him burp disgustingly loudly and tell me it's his age and I'm a bitch for asking him not to (he's 45)
• Not having someone get annoyed in the mornings that I'm not getting the kids ready quickly enough while he slurps yoghurt and watches Good Morning Britain

That felt good!

My eldest got dressed for school this morning and was sad because the polo tops I grabbed for him didn't fit.
I told the useless STBXH he needs to sort the kids clothes out for once for school- I got for my daughter and he got for our son. Our son is small for his age so despite being nearly 9, 7-8 fits best. STBXH bought loads of 9-10 which just hangs off wee man, which made him sad because he knew his dad bought it, and if mum got it, it would fit and would have been tried on and swapped before summer term even started.

Makes me realise how little he has done that even the 'basics' like getting fitting school uniform seem to be a challenge to him.

I miss the kids loads, been crying a lot. School drop offs are hard but the time I have with them is brilliant and I am happier. The house here is tidier and calmer and I feel free. It's been such a drawn out process. I don't really have any friends so it's felt so lonely.