Things I won't miss about exh this Christmas

[Wilhamenawonka]

I've been a little down this week thinking about Christmas on my own with the kids. Very what's point about it all.

Then i remembered how he used to go round the house looking for his presents like a little kid before confessing with a sad face.
Uuugh. It makes my fanny shrivel just thinking about it.
Add to that all the wife work and lack of thought from him every year and it suddenly doesn't look too bad.

Anyone else got a good tale of freedom?

This will be my fourth Christmas since leaving.

The main thing I celebrate is that I know mealtimes won't be a battleground. No one will refuse to eat because there is an invisible smear on a fork or glass or mark on a plate. No one will sulk and glower their way through the meal because, just for a change, we are not eating curry or pie.

If relatives come to visit, there won't be toddler tantrums and teenage sulking in the bedroom.

People will smile and say thank you for presents even if they don't like them if the giver is there.

I enjoy Christmas now for the first time in a long time because it is just me, my girls, our traditions and whoever we choose to invite. No drama, just laughs and cuddles.

I love this thread! I’m with Cheggars, jealous as hell but planning my escape in 2018......next Christmas will be my best ever!

What I won’t miss......the constant negativity and moaning, the drinking to excess and being a total abusive twat when pissed, the having to control what “we” watch on tv, then moaning about it, the drunken piggish farting and belching and blaming my cooking, the saying “I like Christmas when we don’t see anyone”, him being an emotionally abusive cunt. Roll on Christmas 2018!

@Slingsanderrors - are you married to Jim Royle?!!!!

Good luck with the separation....keep thinking on that dream Christmas 🎄

I love this thread! It's like the 'what don't you miss about your ex' thread of a few months ago, but a Christmas Special:

Thoughtless presents, obviously bought in a blind panic. Or: just being handed some money and told to go and buy my own presents. Yes, it was the fairytale romance I'd dreamed of as a little girl.

His horrible mother

Rows over what to buy said horrible mother, with him offering to 'top up' whatever I'd bought her, because he judged it to be too cheap, despite the fact she never got me anything more than an unwrapped bottle of shower gel (every year, for five years).

mickhucknallspinkpancakes

I might be 😬

Sitting in his parents house ALL day until about 10pm waiting to leave, listening to them bicker and argue all day, watching all 3 of them sleep all afternoon. All the while knowing my family would be playing games, laughing etc and that my own home was 5 minutes away with a fridge full of wine. Knowing that if I dared suggest Xmas elsewhere it would cause WW3. I hated every second of it. 3rd Xmas out of it

Every year followed the same pattern.
Mid November to Mid December "don't spend too much"

Mid December to 24th
"Why haven't you got the dc much"

Morning of 24th (specially timed for max effect)

"Did you have to buy so much?"
This would continue until mid January with lots of comments about "reining in" my spending.
He ruined Christmas every bloody year with his miserableness.

Oh and the Christmas Eve "special" sex. shudder

This thread is making me laugh. Sorry to bring in a negative, but does anyone have any positive tales of Christmases when your DC are with their dad? I'm dreading that.

Qumquat-
Last Christmas I had the DC for the morning then had lunch at his with them (don't ask!). Did the washing up and sloped off home and had a bloody lovely evening. Opened the presents I'd bought myself (satin pjs, DVD box set etc) and ate cheese and crackers whilst watching grown up tv and drinking bubbly. I had thought I would miss them terribly but tbh that part of Christmas is never fun is it? it's all sulking and tantrums and over tired behaviour (although that was mainly exh )

@qumquat - yes this year im going to fly home and spend Christmas with my sons gay goddaddy and all his mates.

Champagne, M&S food (whatever we like), Christmas jammies and endless episodes of Ru Paul's Drag Race! I can't wait.

Then shopping, buy myself....trying everything on in Cos and not giving a shit!

It's good to try and have a mix, family Christmas then a grown up one!

By myself, although I will buy for myself too

Oh the presents, how could i forget the crap presents!
Last year I got a book about bats and a device that tells you when bats are in the garden. I quite like bats, but I can see them, don’t need a “device”.prick

Sitting in an over heated house with his family all bitching about other family members. Horrible guests who were drunk and sick and sweaty trying to kiss me whilst sliding greasily down my face doing so.

His mother deciding whether to act like I had done something unspeakable so I would have to pacify her. Listening to them criticising my failure to send one of their distant, horrible relatives a Christmas card or something similar. Watching their large dog lick the plates and drink tea out of cups then pee on the floor.

I didn't get rid of my dh, but I got rid of them. I haven't been there for Christmas for 25 years.

My poor dh is trying to avoid any contact this year and turns up unannounced so he can fake surprise when they are not in and claim he has in fact made the effort.

I don't miss him yelling at me in the car on the way home about how women control men so much!! His brother married a woman my ex does not like, so he goads her and she gets angry; therefore all women control their husbands. I don't miss it at all.

This will be only the third Christmas I have spent not in a relationship since I was 13.

I’m looking forward to putting myself first for once, all Christmas too! My kids are coming back Christmas Day evening.

Last Christmas I spent a really uncomfortable day trailing around after abusive ex while he visited his family and friends (after me asking if I could, just once, spend some time with him) and making grateful noises re his gifts which were utter shit; slippers that were 3 sizes too small, a box of chocolates (I don’t like chocolate he does) and some really shit white wine (I drink rose, prosecco or red wine) all from poundstretcher (total of £8, he left the prices on)....

Almost 4 years I was with him and in that four years, out of all the birthdays, christmases and valentines, even my graduation, he bought me one red rose, a four pack of crabbies, half a sex toy for use on him and that shit from poundstretcher...

I bought him numerous small things, clothes, an Xbox, a pedigree dog, wrote him poems etc etc etc... I also always paid for him for every meal or trip away and often paid for his gas/electricity/petrol when he ran short (pretty much every month). I paid his deposit and first month’s rent when he moved into his flat too (because he kept writing off cars and buying new bangers that he again wrote off).

For context I am a LP carer for my disabled DD and am completely dependent on benefits, he earns £26k per year and for 3/4 years he was living with his parents and only paying nominal rent.

What I will not miss is;

• having to be financially responsible for another adult

• his constant obsessive pestering for sex ALL THE TIME

• spending an hour and a half cleaning his flat every time I visited because he never did

• always being the last priority

• always doing what he wanted

• wank stains in my bed

• him lying in the bath for fucking hours shouting down at me to bring him food and drinks

Oh it's pure heaven now.

I don't miss his hideous family and the headache inducing family parties where MIL would do all she could to whip the DC into a shouty chaotic frenzy.

Having to do all the fucking work including all the present buying.

His pathetic strops when I told him he would have to write his own familys cards.

The shit presents I got - toilet seat was a high point

Him falling asleep within five minutes of eating Christmas Dinner and snoring his head off but refusing to go upstairs to bed.

Half a sex toy?

What was it?

Ha ha ha ha ha!

A prostate stimulating device that he picked out after dragging me out of work early for a ‘surprise you will love’ (for my birthday). It was the sex shop round the corner from work, I was really 🙄😩 sex again and thought if I didn’t really bother pretending to like anything he would just give up.

It didn’t work, he picked something, took it to the till and then was (as he FREQUENTLY was ALL.THE.FECKING.TIME) “financially embarrassed” and so I insisted he pay what he could (half) to get the whole thing over and done with....

I do not miss at all the obligatory xmas eve conversation where he said 'Why did you buy so much? It's awful. They only need a couple of presents'. I would cry because I hadn't bought a lot and I don't know how anyone could be stingy with their own children when they can afford not to. Plus loads of other stuff. I miss nothing. Cheers to everyone who is equally well-rid. Poms poms and cheers for everyone who is planning and hoping to leave

I was fucking lucky to get half TBH... he was always ‘financially embarrassed’ or asking to ‘borrow’ money he never paid back...

I spent about £10k over four years essentially on entertaining him and for the final year keeping him in his flat.

And when I say ‘dragging me out of work’ I mean he texted incessantly asking when I was done, I was in with clients and not looking at my phone...

Eventually with no response he came to work and sat in the waiting room pestering the receptionist until I left.

I cross posted with your half share in a prostate stimulating sex toy there @Offred

ExDP rather than ExDH but here goes...

I spent Christmas with my parents; he with his. Christmas Day night I gave him a call to catch up and he took issue with the fact I had watched the 'wrong' TV shows (back in the day where you just had to choose between what was on BBC and ITV). He'd been looking forward to discussing everything he'd watched. He proceeded to stonewall me, whilst still on the call, with me literally begging him to tell me what I'd done so wrong, until I gave up and cried myself to sleep.

Vile man. Good riddance. Big hugs to everybody who's got rid :)

Ha ha ha!

I’m not even remotely embarrassed about the half sex toy...

It’s him that should be embarrassed, but I’m pretty sure he isn’t....

After all the above plus him actually being in love with someone else for two years and lying about it, finding out he smoked weed and had done all the relationship and lied about it, him being an aggressive angry nasty person all the fecking time (reducing me to tears with his trash talking during air-fucking-hockey is just one of many examples), his obsession with his parents but total exploitation of them etc etc etc on and on....

About 6 months before I left him (with assistance from the fecking police) he said “I’m a really great boyfriend” with no sense of fucking irony....

I had to care for HIS dog during the puppy year too because he had decided that I had only got the dog to manipulate him into spending time with me (no I wanted him to take the fucking dog with him).

I went away to one conference and he was supposed to look after the dog at my house. I came home to find out he just hadn’t bothered and said he thought someone else would do it (how?! No-one was Home because I was away).

Another time I was away he did come to look after the dog but I came home to find ‘wank’ stains in my bed and his OW’s jacket in my front room...