abusive ex still wearing wedding ring

[adollopofthisandthat]

We're separated and going through divorce, but he's still wearing his wedding ring...

I know I need to get divorced, but I know I'll be sad when he no longer wears it. The headf*ck is huge.

Why is he doing this do you think?

Why is he doing this do you think?

Do not go down the why does he … rabbit hole. You need to work on disengaging so you can answer your question with, who cares.

OP you've answered your own question: he's working on your vulnerabilities.

It also allows him to tell anyone who'll listen that the marriage/ you mean/s everything to him and he has no idea why you can't work through a few challenges....

If you're still on the 'Why does he do this hurtful thing??' train, you're still allowing him to abuse you.

Most of the time, we don't know why people do things. If someone does a nice thing, we never say 'Why would he do that??' - we just accept that he's nice. If someone does a hurtful thing, we find it much harder to just accept that he's hurtful. We have to explain it, we have to make it make sense to us, we have to understand it. Except we don't. 'Why did he do this horrid thing?' 'Because he's unpleasant.' And that's the full story. You can make up a whole bunch of reasons. You can post on the internet and ask strangers for all the reasons they can think of, but they'll never make his abuse of you ok, because it is not ok.

Stop wasting your time. Every minute you spend trying to work him out could be a minute you spend working yourself out. Which do you think is a better use of your time? Learning to understand this unpleasant man you're leaving behind, or learning to understand yourself, your motivations, your goals, your challenges?

thanks everyone, the ring is just part of a heap of pressure he's putting on at the moment 🙄😡so your chorus of "don't even think about it" is very helpful!

Mine did this - his reason for still wearing it was if he took it off it wouldn't be truthful to his new relationship about his marital status...crazy behaviour, I just did as other have said, tried to put it out of mind. It's weird as hell

I agree with PP. Don't spend any time wondering why he does anything. For a start, you're divorcing him so he's no longer your problem. Plus, he's shown he's abusive and his reasons for doing things won't be understandable to a regular person. Plus, he's likely doing it to upset / atagonise / paint himself as the victim (all things that show you're doing the right thing leaving him). Finally, if he sees you care, he has some control over you. Pretend you haven't even noticed.

This.

Does it really matter?

Let him get on with it. He’s just trying to manipulate you with the old ‘my marriage is everything to me and I’m not giving up on it’ card. Fact is, if it did mean everything to him he wouldn’t have treated you badly. Let him try to screw with your brain, and know that he’s a pathetic lump of crap.