A thread to moan on until I’m rid of exP

[UnimaginativeUsername]

(Ex)P and I are separating but we have to live together until we sell this house (due to finances). So I thought I’d start a thread to help me get through the next few months.

Email sent.

He’s not going to be pleased now that I’ve pointed out that:
a) he only transferred the money for the mortgage and core bills into the shared bills account.
b) he didn’t transfer money for the additional things he said he’d pay for to compensate for the fact that I pay the childcare with vouchers from my salary.
c) he hasn’t paid the dinner money at all, despite saying he would.
d) there are about £250 of additional expenses for DS2 (fees for clubs and activities that come in less regularly than monthly) that I’ve paid and he hasn’t come tributed to.
e) he used the bills account to pay for him taking DS2 to a ninja warrior course and to get lunch rather than his money.
f) he’s been eating my food and not buying his own.

So maybe he isn’t going to be as flush as he thought he was.

Also, I have always had my salary paid into the joint bills account. All the bills come out when I’m paid. He’s paid 5 days later so I had to ensure that my last salary payment was still paid into the joint account or we wouldn’t have been able to pay the bills at all. So I am definitely the one that ends up paying anything extra.

Next month my salary is going into my own account and I’ll transfer the money to the joint account. But I have to make sure I leave enough in there to cover the entirety of the bills because ex isn’t willing to transfer his money until he is paid. So it’s me that’s ending up short while he’s feeling flush.

And this is why DS2 needs to know do he cannot keep pulling this shit on you...

Yes. I am going to broach that with ex this weekend. He will not be at all happy that I want to tell DS2.

I’ve actually worded my email to lead into that discussion. Because the only want to solve the food issue is to tell DS2, as I’m not willing to be ex’s cook and housekeeper.

God he sounds like a prick! Hopefully you get the house so you can stop tiptoeing around this great big manbaby!

I think your son has probably figured out that something's up. It might be better just to tell him now as he will know. It's probably stressing him out living in that atmosphere, it might help him to know its not forever.

Me too.

He’s obviously read the email but is pretending he hasn’t. He went out in the car but it needs petrol, so he pointedly said that he’s use the shared account because ‘there is extra money in there because the energy bill was lower than I’d budgeted for’.

Hmmm
You mean YOUR car that you've just paid out for...

I think as much as you don't want too you are going have to take control of this situation.

Tell stbxh as of NOW you will not be cooking, washing and cleaning for him, HE will not eat any food you have bought to feed you and dc's.

He will not be using your car nor will he be using the joint account to pay for anything other then house hold bills.

And you will be honest with DC that once the house has been sold you and dc will be moving to a new home with just you, dc1 and dc2 and dad will have his own house. As it stands now your ex is using the fact that you don't want to rock the boat to his advantage and continue to abuse the situation.

Yes. Although technically it’s still our car. But it will be mine, which is why I’m paying the bills.

You are both, of course, right.

I’m at the beach with DS2. He’s digging a huge hole because that’s what children like to do. He’s going to have a swim in a bit because his tolerance of North Sea water is much higher than mine.

UU, this all sounds very familiar to me. My XH worked away from home during the week, but during the early stages of our divorce he would come back to the marital home most weekends to see DD. I was always having to nag him for food money, then one weekend he turned up with masses of laundry (think, three loads) and proceeded to start using the washing machine. I pointed out that he'd refused to continue paying for the electricity, and I was damned if I was paying the electricity bill myself so that he could do his washing . XH was astonished at this and stropped off. He didn't do it again, though.

I wonder what goes through their heads. I guess he basically thought you’d taken on the responsibilities of his mother, so bringing you his washing was the thing to do.

Ex has said he will ‘sort’ the money situation. But no details as to what that means.

Google grey rock technique

After 15 years of verbal abuse, gaslighting, manipulation and so on I’d had enough and started divorce proceedings.

Unfortunately we have to live together until the house is sold for a good enough price to provide 2 small houses so our boys have somewhere to stay in uni holidays.

I have tried to ignore him completely, leaving the room when he comes in, not speaking unless I have to, not engaging in any conversation unless it is about the house sale but he still tries all the techniques that have worked so well for him for years.

Telling me I am doing something I’m not, twisting reality, reversing the abuse and so on. I’m so sick of it but he does it at even the slightest opportunity.

Today I asked him if he was going to cut the grass (so immediately gave him an opening). He said only if you tell me, you know you control me and I don’t dare do anything without your permission.

I have always worked and done 90% of the housework and garden. He hasn’t worked in 5 years because of ‘anxiety and depression’. So anxious and depressed that he plays golf every weekend, goes fishing and jetsking, owns 2 cars including a sports car and a caravan he keeps ‘because he needs a bolt hole when I get too aggressive’.

He comes out with complete nonsense like my mother hated men and wanted me to marry just so that I could make my husbands life a misery. I know it’s crazy. I know it’s manipulative. I’ve given up defending myself and trying to prove a negative. I just want him to stop the craziness. It can still distress me, still confuse me, even as I can see what he is doing.

I’ve tried just saying stop now, I’m not listening to this madness, but then I’m just ‘being agressive’ and it risks tipping into the usual arguments. I simply can’t listen any more to him telling me what I am. I know what I am and I won’t be defined by him any longer. It’s driving me mad and I just need some advice on what I can say to just stop him.

Staying silent has been the best thing so far as it keeps the door closed, but sometimes I have no choice. Is there anything I can say that tells him the game is up and I’m not falling for it any more? Anything to let him know I can see through it all? Anything to make him realise I know how he operates and just bloody stop it!

Just had a wry smile at your post, bird. Your stbx's comments about cutting the grass are so like my stbxh it's uncanny!

Don't react. Just ignore or murmur something noncommittal and wander off. Do NOT let him see that he has upset you or affected you in any way.

you know you control me and I don’t dare do anything without your permission.

but then I’m just ‘being aggressive

Oh that sounds so familiar. Ex is always accusing me of being ‘so aggressive’. Anything other than complete submission is ‘aggression’ in his opinion.

He is taking DS2 swimming. He’s put on ‘nice’ clothes to do so. The swimming pool is near the train station that DS1 spotted him getting on with Mandy at. So I think he’s going to drop DS2, spend an hour at hers and then pick him back up. He’ll almost certainly lie to DS2 and say he has to visit his colleague that lives nearby. I had been wondering why he was so surprised at how good DS’s swimming is - but that’s because he hasn’t been sitting in the pool waiting like I have been.

Although I actually speak to the other parents while I’m there, unlike him. Because he only talks to people he thinks can help him achieve his aims. So he doesn’t speak to other parents at school (in fact, he looks down on most of them as ‘the wrong kind of people’ - more fool him, as most of them are lovely, if a bit skint) and clearly thinks the other parents at swimming aren’t worth speaking to either. When I first met him, a couple of my friends who knew him a bit previously described him as arrogant. I didn’t see it at the time, but they were totally right.

@birdonawire1 How long do you think you’ll have to live like that?

Could you sell up anyway and just make do with whatever you get?

cambionome. I’m doing my best to do that. I don’t cook for him, wash his clothes or anything else, but the grass needs cutting unfortunately. We need the house to look nice to sell.

He also said he ‘walks on eggshells all the time around me’.

I think abusive men have a script they are all sent telling them how best to scramble the brains of the women the are with and to wrong foot them every time. My STBX has an incredible talent for it.

I think you’re right @birdonawire1. I get the bollocks about his he ‘walks on eggshells’ around me too. But he really, really doesn’t. Whereas I do have to walk on eggshells around him.

It’s like he’s been to some sort of course to be taught this shit!

unimaginitive. It’s going to take a while to sell. The housing market is quite flat where I live and we both need the maximum price to get a smaller property with at least 3 rooms. I’m resigned to it but just need a few good comebacks to counteract the mind fog he is so good at creating

In the days when I used to answer back and try to reason with him he would be shouting at me and as I tried to get my point across and speaking a little louder, he would scream at me that I was shouting at him. Completely oblivious he was shouting at me of course, and guess what? I’d feel bad because I was raising my voice! He only needed to find a sliver of truth in his accusations to back up his version of events and because that sliver was there, of course he was right. Certainly in his mind and half in mine. Totally messed with my mind, which is why it’s so much easier not to speak at all.

I hope you get a buyer soon. It’s all so crap, isn’t it? I’m not planning to move for many years after this. I hate selling and buying houses! (But I hate living with ex more).

The market here is ok. Well not exactly here (and I was very clear with ex when we moved here that it would not be easy to sell a nearly newbuild house, however spacious and lovely) but 5 mins away where we used to live and I want to go back to. Things are definitely moving there.

We’ve had 3 viewings. 3! None this weekend at all. That said, of the 3 viewings we’ve had 2 offers and the other people said like to offer but couldn’t until their house sold. So people who would consider a nearly new build do like it, but they’re not as numerous as people who like Victorian terraces or 30s semis.

Shame the offers have been for less than we paid. It turns out the first people were actually affected by the junior doctors thing - so he had a job offer in this city and then was told he didn’t. Let’s hope the other guy comes up a bit and the vendor of the house I like accepts my offer.

And he has a genius for shifting the truth.

I ‘pushed him out of our bedroom’

No, I asked him to sleep in the spare room on the 3 nights he came back in the early hours from the pub drunk making sure he woke me up so that I could feel jealous that he was having such a good time and had plenty of friends, aka drinking buddies.

He said that if I felt like that he would sleep there all the time (thinking he was punishing me). I felt like all my christmases had come at once!

We’ve had several offers but below the asking price. I hate selling too.

He sounds really dreadful. Probably worse than ex (but I’m not that great at judging how bad ex is - it’s all but boiling in gradually heated water with exes like ours!).

Definitely don’t speak to him!

He’s probably being so awful because he’s realises that you’ll be better off without him.

UU I hope you’ll be taking 2 bagels from his supply to replace the ones he took from yours