My two ex-husbands were both really awful to live with in very different ways -- one was avoidant and while we never fought, he lied all the time, hid things from me, had a porn habit that got in the way of our life in the bedroom, relied upon me to make every household decision, all the money, etc.
The other one was incredibly emotionally abusive, a stormcloud that fell over my life and destroyed it, separated me from my family/friends, couldn't hold a job, deliberately provoked PTSD flashbacks, raged at me until I cried at least twice a week while I was trying to work an extremely demanding job that required me to work full-time from home (and was our sole source of income), self-injured and threatened suicide when he didn't get his way in arguments, demanded repeatedly that I make myself sexually available to other men while he watched (no, I didn't do this!), insisted on sex acts I didn't want, and who would bang his head into walls or tables any time I complained about his behavior, even if I couched the complaint in the kindest possible terms and tried very hard to avoid his self-destructive wrath.
I met my third husband while still married to my second husband. At the time when I met him, I knew I needed to get out of my marriage already -- my second husband had recently entered a state of full-blown, diagnosed psychosis, and this was not the first time this had happened. At first, I thought now-DH was my "rebound." It took us about six months to figure out that our relationship went a lot deeper than that, and we moved in together once I told my second husband to go to hell (and then my second husband raped me when he came over to give me the last of my personal possessions ... and my now-DH had to pick up the pieces of my shattered psyche afterward).
Now-DH and I have been together 4 years and have a 9 month old son, who is our world. He does more for our child than I'd have dreamed possible (I'm the breadwinner, but by choice this time!), we have a fantastic and frequent sex life, we can talk issues and arguments out like adults, we have long and deep intellectual conversations and make each other laugh. He writes me poems, I sing him songs. We moved to the part of the country where we always wanted to live.
Today, when we both woke up at 4 AM from baby crying and couldn't get back to sleep even once the baby fell asleep again, we lay cuddling and talking softly and having a very nice time until it was time to get up for work. He picks me up from the transit station nearest to our rural home when I return from work, and if I've complained about my day being difficult, there'll be flowers or chocolates or a favorite beverage waiting for me in the car, as often as not.
Our lives are not always wine and roses: we have argued about money off and on for years (though have recently made a good bit of headway on those issues), there were issues with expectations regarding monogamy early on when we both thought it was a rebound, and then for a stretch of the middle of our relationship, I was frustrated beyond belief that I felt like he wouldn't engage with me intellectually in the way I wanted him to (even though I'm a very intelligent person and so is he).
The biggest thing that separates him from husbands past: he has never told me I'm wrong for worrying, and he's always been willing to talk it out, as long as it takes, to ensure that we can come to a position on issues that makes us both feel satisfied -- not taken advantage of. The fact that we feel better after an argument than before is what makes it so our relationship has improved continuously over time. We're one of those lucky couples whose relationship bonded closer over our baby, rather than having the baby split us apart or turn us into roommates.