Divorce was not what I wanted (though my ex thinks that for years I wanted the house - which he always refused to have in my name as well as his - to be all mine, and that divorce was my way of achieving that 
, but after years of my marriage being very difficult, I jumped over the cliff, and the whole process was as traumatic as I thought it was going to be.
The reasons, as stated on the petition, were that ex showed me no care, physical affection or any interest in me, that he was prone to overreacting to small things and then not speaking to me for weeks, and that he had always refused to put my name on the family home or give me any kind of feeling of security - even hiding a property he had bought for a whole year. It was worded in more detail.
And it was all true. Ex had a short temper and could be very unpleasant. If my response was too much for his ego to cope with, he would then not speak to me for weeks. Using silence as punishment. During that time I would live my life feeling awful, with an awful gnawing pain in the pit of my stomach, able to think of nothing else. Eventually, after weeks and weeks of this, I would send him an email asking him to stop his silence, and he would slowly come out of it. There was never any talking about what had happened. We were only able to talk about the very superficial, because my attempts to do otherwise were always met with defensively being blamed / shouted down.
He had completely lost interest in sex and this had been going on for years. It would be me who always initiated it - maybe every six weeks, but this felt soul destroying. In the year before the episode which ended our marriage for good, we slept together 3 times. Worse than this was the complete lack of affection - never being touched. Lying in bed next to someone who never put their arm around you. Or if I put my arm around him, would lie there completely unresponsive.
And with regards to all big financial decisions, they were all made by him. Though I owned half a small with a relative of mine, the family home was completely in his name, and he refused point blank to have my name on the deeds as well - which would have given me a sense of security. He refused to discuss having a will or life insurance. He had other properties, also in his name, and any choice to invest money in them was only made by him. On one occasion he hid the acquisition of a retail property from me for almost a year until I found out. Because our relationship had been very difficult that year, and I guess he thought he would not have to share an asset that I didn’t know about.
He had a nice side to him, but also a very critical and blaming one, and there was a walking on eggshells element to our relationship - especially at weekends, when he would shower affection on the kids and exclude me completely.
There were things I could have done differently in the relationship, but ex’s behaviour was the one which made any kind of communication and resolution of problems impossible.
Ex first completely ignored and also ridiculed my attempts at talking about splitting up and going to mediation to make it easier. When he realised that I was serious, because he received the petition and I had also made an application to the court for financial remedy (he had in the interim sold a property, and refused to answer any of my solicitor’s questions about it, so she advised me to do this), he tried to manipulate me into not going ahead. That was hard, because part of me would have jumped back into his bed - but I didn’t trust that his niceness would last, and within it he was still managing to say some awful / very manipulative things.
So the divorce process went ahead, and ex reverted to type, on several occasions being extremely unpleasant and aggressively shouting at me / calling me all the names under the sun - in front of one of my dds on two occasions 😡.
We lived in the same house for about 9 or 10 months while it was all going ahead, mostly in complete silence, but it was very stressful. Most of the previous year we had also been completely estranged, following a really nasty outburst of ex’s. So we are now coming up to almost two years of not having spoken at all.
After it became clear that the divorce process was going ahead, ex got into something with somebody almost immediately and I could hear him on the phone for hours, very late at night. He would have showers and go out - bought new clothes and underwear . This was really upsetting as we were still living together, and it happened almost immediately. I don’t know if they are still together and ex is honest about nothing.
He moved out in April, and our settlement came into effect a few months after. It is fair, but he is resentful. He has chosen to invest some money in a project, and consequently has somewhere to live which is fine in the interim, but not suitable for the dc, and in any case they don’t want to go there.
So he comes to my house every Saturday morning and cooks for the kids - and probably spends about 5 or 6 hours here. I normally go out to facilitate this.
Recently however, I have started a new job which is really full on, and I can’t go out every weekend any more. So last weekend I decided I would stay upstairs and do stuff there. Except that it was depressing and I did nothing. I then heard him ask my lodger/friend if she wanted some of the food he had made - all kind of giggly and kind. She said no (as she was about to go out with me for coffee), but I was upset.
It seems that being ignored in my own home was quite a prevalent feature of my marriage, and yet here I am, still being ignored in my home, and what’s worse, sort of hiding while he is here 
.
We still do not talk at all - and in fact ex is still being unpleasant about various money related and other matters.
So I emailed him to say that it is okay for him to come over and cook for the dc while I am at work during the week, but at the weekend could he please take them out instead of seeing them here (he does sometimes ask them out, but they don’t always go because they are at the monosyllabic stay in their room stage).
Is this a reasonable thing to have asked?
What do I do if he ignores this and comes over anyway?
What’s more I am nervous now as it was his birthday this week, and he is going to take the dc to eat out this weekend. I am worried that he is going to ask my lodger/friend to come as well.
Added to all of this, I also find myself missing him - or the parts of his personality which I like. I texted him Happy Birthday, but I don’t know why the fuck I did that, as he didn’t answer.
It’s all one big mess, and to be honest I can only see more of the same kind of weird purgatory ahead. One where I feel disliked and the satanic figure who dared to instigate the divorce. He seems to think that I was easily persuaded by my solicitor.
I just don’t know when all of this is going to end. And I have been taken aback by the missing him. I have suddenly realised that I am lonely. The loneliness during my marriage, and my current loneliness both having maximum effect now.
So I imagine these scenarios where we eventually start talking again, but our communication is a lot better.
What am I supposed to do about all of this? If I could jump ship and live far away, I would, but I can’t.