The 3 Worst Things You Don’t Miss
Today’s Friday Challenge is back by popular demand — Three Worst (or Douchiest) Things You Don’t Miss.
I updated from douche to worst, as generally speaking only straight men are douchebags and FWs come in all flavors.
The column was originally Mr. CL’s idea. We were knee-deep in a move, going through decades worth of stuff, and having a lot of “WTF did I see in that assemblage of old cell phone cables?” moments.
So, in the spirit of Taking Out the Trash, what are the three WORST, douchiest, most awful non-infidelity-related things you won’t or don’t miss about your ex?
Sure, we can all say “the hooker habit” or the gaslighting. I’m talking about the little things that make your douche the douchiest of douches. That sets him or her apart from the pack.
- Draped his pants over a chair the minute he walked in the door.
- Asked for help shaving his back hair.
- Ate a copious amount of discount frozen pizzas.
When you love, you overlook. No one’s perfect, of course. But divorce liberates you from their revolting lace doily decorating whims and Franklin Mint commemorative plates.
What’s not to miss?
TGIF!
Shower nose-blowing.
I’ll stop there. Of course there is MORE.
And really the smell of him. Something about his body chemistry started to reek. It wasn’t always like this. Over the last 5-10yrs it was bad. Made the wet dogs smell lovely.
Yes the shower nose blowing drove me insane! The untrimmed nose hairs, the sound of him eating although I honestly think I have that thing where the sound of eating makes you crazy. Also his idea of foreplay was grabbing my breasts or crotch when he walked by me doing just about anything, like the dinner dishes.
I thought I had the only douchebag who blew his nose in the shower and then left it for me to clean up.
And he swore to the heavens he never did that. We were the only two living in the house, and *I* wasn’t doing it.
Ditto on shower nose blowing
I forgot about the shower nose-blowing! So glad I don’t have to deal with it any more.
I’ve just logged on and my first thought (before I saw your comment), was snot on the shower walls!!!!
And YES to the smell – he smelled like stale oily skin.
I always thought of the smell as cheater stink. I am glad I sold the marital home that I got in the settlement because to me the stink was always there.
yes, this.., stale oily skin. Hated it especially on our sheets and pillow cases. I’d ask him to please not lay on top of the comforter.
I know what you mean. His scent changed to something intolerable once he started cheating. I couldn’t stand to be near him.
Supposedly our mictobiome changes rapidly to match our families – it would make sense that new “encounters” would change it to match that new person’s bacteria. Maybe that’s what causes the change in smell?
A cheesy or rotting smell can be an STD. A stale, musty smell can be tinea or “ringworm” fungal infections of skin or scalp which are communicable and can be contracted from bang partners, dirty sheets, etc. Cheaters also seem to binge drink more so, as mentioned earlier, the smell could be liver disease.
When the topic of baddies and scent comes up, I am reminded of Debbie Harry’s suspected close call with Ted Bundy
https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/30/debbie-harry-claims-survived-ted-bundy-getting-car-smelt-incredibly-bad-9743128/amp/
Evil stinks in my unscientific opinion.
OMG the gross odor from FW seemed to linger on the toilet seat. Where he sat for an hour every morning . Hated it.
Mine had a weird smell the whole time I knew him. I felt bad that I thought that; now I think it was probably a sign of something underlying not right. After we separated I collected him and the kids from the airport once and he sat in backseat of my car. The smell was overpowering. I realise now, having gone through the high levels of stress myself post D Day, the night sweats etc, and having an awful smell in my bedroom some mornings after I’d sweated a bucket load that he was probably secreting something from stress or fear the whole time I’d known him.
I’ve never smelt it on anyone else.
I am just jumping in here to add (so that it shows up early in the queue) that it wouldn’t hurt for y’all to look up the first one of these, dated March 11, 2016. (Over 700 comments.) The similarities are spooky! (More than spooky, TBH.)
Stress sweat from morally vacant apocrine glands is differant and STINKS:
“Why does stress sweat smell different?
Your body contains anywhere from 2 to 4 million sweat glands, the majority of which are eccrine glands. Eccrine glands cover most of your body, but they’re found in larger numbers on your palms, soles, forehead, and armpits.
When your body temperature rises from physical activity or hot surroundings, your autonomic nervous system signals your eccrine glands to release sweat. This sweat is mostly made of water, with a small amount of salt and lipids mixed in. The sweat cools your skin and helps bring your temperature down.
Then there are the other sweat glands: apocrine glands. Apocrine glands are larger and produce the majority of stress-related sweat.
They’re found in parts of your body with higher numbers of hair follicles, such as your genital area and armpits. Your underarms secrete approximately 30 times more sweat when you’re under stress than when at rest.
Sweat from your apocrine glands tends to be thicker and richer in proteins and lipids. The fats and nutrients in this type of sweat combine with the bacteria that live on your skin, resulting in body odor. https://www.healthline.com/health/stress-sweat#odor
And:
Two types of sweat
1. Regular sweat. When the body is hot, sweat is released by the eccrine sweat glands, which open onto the surface of the skin and cover most of the body. This sweat is made up of water, salt and potassium, and sits on the top of the skin. When this moisture evaporates, the body cools down.
Stress sweat. When the body is reacting to an emotion, like anxiety, stress or excitement, sweat is released from the apocrine glands. These glands produce a milkier sweat comprised of fatty acids and proteins. The apocrine glands are found near dense pockets of hair follicles under the arms, around the groin and on the scalp. While this type of sweat is initially odorless, it doesn’t evaporate as quickly and can develop an odor when it combines with bacteria on the skin.
https://www.piedmont.org/living-better/the-difference-between-regular-sweat-and-stress-sweat#:~:text=When%20the%20body%20is%20reacting,groin%20and%20on%20the%20scalp.
I JUST realized this. Ex FW had CONSTANT stains on BRAND NEW undershirts AND Dress shirts. It was gross. Now I realize WHY. Because he was a moraless psychopath, he DID constantly ‘worry; that I WAS CHEATING / WOULD LEAVE.’ Projection. Of guilt, and armpit odor.
Do Not. Miss.
Mine also developed a weird smell…like super bad yeast or something. So strange.
What is with the smell? I’m seeing so many posts about FWs and their odors and didn’t realize how common it is:
1. FW has something like an acid coming from his body… If he didn’t shower a lot, he would smell sour. And whatever it was, turned his white undershirts orange… especially where there was heavy sweat. It was abhorrent. I thought it was his deodorant at first but then realized it was him. And his mother expected me to treat all of his shirts with vinegar to get the stains out… because she had to do that for his dad.
Loudest snoring in the world — shook the house. And crazy night terrors that I would need to carefully wake him from. Oh good times
Big guy (6’5”) with zero self awareness. He ran into me all the time. He broke everything in the house… Sat down too hard on couches and busted them… broke the seat on his car… Dropped plates and smashed glasses regularly. Like literally all the time.
3+ Boring in every way. He was a dud in bed and had no libido and hated to be touched. It was not sexy ever. (Imagine my trauma when he cheated on me — like wtf??). He was like dragging an anchor to get him to go anywhere or do anything… and even with friends he mostly chose to sit in silence or literally walk away from people and read a book – for real. Many pointed this out to me after he left.
3++ filthy in the house. He boarded empty boxes and stored them — every box from anything we bought especially large electronics. Made a mess of the bathrooms and kitchen and didn’t clean up. Crumbs everywhere attracting bugs. Clogging the toilet DAILY.
3+++ he never defended me in any way. His parents — especially his mom — would say and do terrible things. There was antisemitism from his family (I’m Jewish) and he would just stare off and let me take it.
My therapist promised me that one day I’d be THANKFUL he left. She was right.
Mine saved empty boxes too!! Wow
Michelle, my ex was one of those guys that developed a huge rock-hard belly that he used as a battering ram, shoving people out of his way. It was horribly embarrassing seeing him leave a trail of aghast victims in his wake. I would either apologize for him or pretend I didn’t know him.
Good grief. That’s…awful. Just awful.
Michelle, I think we were married to the same guy, or I married his twin.
Ex had such oily skin that would leave a putrid odor on our sheets and pillow cases. If he hadn’t showered you could feel a film of oil on his body.
Never defended me especially when it involved his parents. He’d stand there not saying a word.
Boring no libido, hated to be touched, never cuddled, hugging him was like hugging a tree. He never initiated going anywhere. If we were visiting friends he’d sit and not say much. or watch from a distance. When I’d ask why he wasn’t social he’d tell me he had nothing in common with these people. He’d usually be watching me. When we’d get home he’d list the things he thought I did wrong socially, laughed too loud, talked too much, ask how much I had to drink, I shouldn’t have said something, I sang karaoke one night and when we got home he asked how much I ha to drink. I had nothing to drink, he insisted I did. Couldn’t have fun and be myself without his critique.
He was the loudest snorer, he shook the house with his snoring. it was torture.
One night terror he had he me by the neck…he didn’t have them often but I wondered if they would become more frequent because his Mother had them quite often.
The orange on his to shirts and underarms of all shirts. He always told me never to buy him white shirts beside t shirts. It surprised me when he suddenly started buying his own clothes. Something he never did. It surprised me more when he bought white work out clothes. Later I found out why.., his AP wore all white.. I should have known.
OMG I sang karaoke with one of my exes ONE time and he got mad at me after because (get this) I sang better than him.
Because. I sang better. Than him.
My ex said he had always refused to take dance lessons with me because he was afraid the instructor would tell him something I had ALSO told him, and that would make me RIGHT. So he wouldn’t go for nearly 20 years out of fear that it would appear I was RIGHT about something.🤯
That’s funny, I think ex was jealous of me because people were paying attention to me and not him.
He was weird that way. He always had to win when we played board games. Even when he played board games with out 5 year old son. It would take the fu out of playing. I also remember when going somewhere and meeting new people he’d be jealous if they talked with me more than they did with him. When he did decide to be social he’d make sure he was the center of attention. he was another personality, funny, friendly, personable, tell funny stories, people loved listening to his stories. Something I noticed with ex is when we were around people his vocabulary changed. He’d use words that are less common when having a conversation with the average population.. It didn’t occur to me until later, that he used that vocabulary to make others feel inferior. and for him to feel superior. He didn’t use the same vocabulary when he was with me. He’d sound like a hick behind closed doors. Thought it was strange that he could change his personality and vocabulary depending on who he was around or trying to impress. A chameleon. I don’t know if I ever knew who he was. Actually, maybe I do, it’s the evil, petty, vindictive, cruel person he became towards the end.
The combination of sleep apnea + odor + orange sweat (hyperbilirubinemia from liver disease) + night terrors and “suspension of REM sleep paralysis” + impaired empathy (inability to recognize or relate to other’s emotions) could add up to Parkinsonism. All of those symptoms have been observed in association with the condition. Speculation about the causes of Parkinson’s are all over the map but toxic exposure, certain drugs and medications, alcohol-induced liver cirrhosis and hepatitis B and C reportedly increase risk. Some recent research warns that a long history of sleepwalking and distressing dreams (which, combined, can lead to acting out violent nightmares) can often predict later development of Parkinson’s. https://parkinsonsnewstoday.com/news/sleepwalkers-greater-risk-parkinsons-men-sleep-disorder/
Hell of a Chump,
Interesting, ex’s Mother had Parkinsons. Ex favored his Mother, same facial features and body type. She also had lots of night terrors that increased as she got older. I thought they might have been sue by trauma in her childhood.
My FWs grandfather died of Parkinson’s and from what I observed and heard had a similar psychological profile to fw ~ seemed like an innocent little old man but was struck off as a lawyer for stealing client money.
His family and fw covered up though as the story was “the rules changed, all the lawyers were doing the same thing around that time” ~ but for some mysterious reason he (and I just discovered) his brother/partner were the only two struck off that year?
FWs narc mother grew up living in a succession of new houses in a prestigious suburb, went on cruises overseas when most people were lucky to have a flushing toilet (1950s), all funded by her mothers inherited wealth and fathers successful law firm stealing from people.
Anyway I digress….
“when we’d get home he’d list the things he thought I did wrong socially…”
Yes, to all of that ! Except he didn’t just list them, he’d scream into my face, and shove me hard against a door handle.
Well that sucks. Mine did that, too. Even better, he’d scream at me all the way to a social outing about NOT doing all the things he thought I did wrong socially in the past. I’d arrive trying to fight back years, and he’d be happy, charming and the life of the party.
O.M.G. What a rectal orifice. (And for anyone who understands Yiddish: paskudnyak.)
P.S. “Paskudnyak” does mean mean “rectal orifice”. It is lower, more like “reprehensible”. (Like “no-one-will-come-to-his-funeral” reprehensible.)
Wow — too close to home! Brit, one of the night terrors FW had pressed his arm hard into my abdomen right at my diaphragm. I woke up because I couldn’t breathe… I couldn’t even scream out. In a panic I started pounding on him with my fists because I couldn’t force his arm off me. He woke and started screaming at me while I gasped for air.
Mine hit me once “in his sleep.” Smacked me right in the face while we were lying in bed. Not a pleasant way to wake up. He claimed he had no memory of it. I remember being worried about a sleep disorder. I look back now and think he probably just did it because he felt like it. It was while I was pregnant.
He did this to me about 5 times in 28 years.
Chromihidrosis or “colored sweat” is harmless and can relate to ethnicity. One of my teen sons has slightly yellow sweat which only shows up on white garments over time. But my son always smells like flowers. Since you mentioned strong BO, it could be pseudochromihidrosis which relates to infection. Then there’s orange sweat from high bilirubin or jaundice from liver disease. The latter can definitely come with body odor and foul breath.
Hell of a Chump — FW’s sweat was putrid. Yellowish would be fine. FW’s underarms would get more orange and harden the t-shirt and even get holes in it. It wouldn’t take many wearings to get them that way. I would try to wash them but had little luck getting enough of the stains out. I often would just throw the shirts out and buy new ones a lot. If I didn’t, he’d wear them with the holes and hard orange stains. I never saw such a thing in my life. But apparently his dad was the same. And his smell was equally foul — maybe even worse.
FW showered regularly and was aware of it. He sometimes would shower again at night to manage it. I think it was mostly genetic and probably one of the things you mentioned, but maybe an extreme version.
My teen son’s slightly yellow sweat prompted a lot of sleuthing by me and my kids’ pediatrician so I learned more than I wanted to. I read that orange sweat relates mostly to hyperbilirubinemia as opposed to “yellow” (or blue or green– weird) sweat related to chromihydrosis but there have been rarer reports of orange sweat from the latter. The more common cause of orange sweat would be elevated bilirubin. Did your ex-FW take a lot of OTC or scrip medications (there are dozens which cause liver damage), abuse alcohol and/or consume a lot of soda and synthetic junk food? Did he have Hep C? Elevated bilirubin, if it’s not related to liver disease or infection, might also be caused by genetic conditions like Gilbert’s syndrome. The condition hemochromatosis– which can be genetic or worsened or caused by alcohol abuse– can apparently lead to a bronze-colored build-up in sweat glands. I’m not sure if the latter can cause staining.
I don’t know what meds he was taking except for GERD. But I do now he was like that before any meds. And he wasn’t a big drinker as far I knew. I never thought to investigate it because he seemed fine with it (I asked his mom and she didn’t think it was any big deal). I was busy enough taking care of making sure he went to a doctor, dentist and fixing all kinds of health things he never bothered with. But now AP can live with it or try to help him. Meh
For sure if my fw could have done it he would have had me take his head to the dentist or hairdresser
Interesting. I’ve learned a lot!!
Sounds like a big toddler!
He was exactly that — an oversized toddler
Good riddance!
How he would just take off and leave me in the dust if he thought a bus or train was coming/completely ignore me when I was talking to him if he was looking for a bus.
If we were walking somewhere, he would CONSTANTLY be looking over his shoulder or staring behind him. At one point I got fed up and said “I’M TALKING TO YOU.” He stopped and said he was looking for the bus. I told him if he wanted to wait for one we could stand at the actual bus stop, but if we are actually walking he can stop staring over his shoulder when I’m trying to have a conversation. …god that was irritating.
But it was worse when we were getting on a train. If he just heard one coming, he would just tear off up the stairs or down a platform and leave me behind. Regardless of if it was even the right train. He didn’t even bother to check. He’d just run off. One time he did that and he actually did get on the wrong train. Without me. I yelled after him it was the wrong damn train. He got off in time and yeah I was mad. But it got worse when he actually started second guessing me. Was I sure it was the wrong train? What if it was the right one and we just missed it?
I said “we?” You completely took off and left me behind. AGAIN. But in any case, it was in fact, the wrong train you tore off to. We were going to pick something up from MY JOB. He was second guessing me on which train I took to the place I had been working for almost a year.
…god I do NOT miss that.
Best Regards did the walking-ahead thing, too, all the time but especially when he was angry with me. He’d leave me 12 paces behind like a servant.
He would also “dead fish handhold” me: I would try to hold his hand, but he wouldn’t hold mine back–so it was like holding onto a dead fish. Or like he had forgotten I was there….
Once, a couple of years before he left me, we were walking on a trail, and a rattlesnake slid out in front of him. I grabbed his arm before he could step on it, and he swore at me for scaring him. So I pointed to the rattlesnake slithering into the weeds like 2 feet away, and he snapped, “I wasn’t going to step on it!” and stormed away from me up the trail. I remember looking at his back as I shuffled along after him yet once again, humiliated, thinking: There is something very wrong with this relationship. I should have left him right then–would have saved so much stress and pain and heartbreak.
It seems like a little thing , doesn’t it, and yet it’s really not. It’s the mask slipping. No rattlesnakes involved , but very early in the relationship we were walking up Ben Nevis. He was way ahead (of course), and I called to him to stop because I wanted to take a picture, and have a rest. I remember so clearly how he whipped around with a look of utter rage on his face.
Like you, I shuffled behind. Unlike you, I thought it was my fault. But like you, I wish I’d had the sense then to realise what it meant, and end it. 24 years later … 🙄😱🤮
I also blamed myself,I thought it had to me that was making him behave the way he did. If I’d try and talk to him about something or ask why he was always angry he’d say, “I get along with everyone but you, so it’s you”. I’d be confused but it never occur to me, he didn’t treat other people the way he did me.
To outsiders he’s a great guy behind closed doors he was rude, disrespectful, vindictive and cruel.
Yes 😭 yes 😭 yes 😭
Mine pulled that walking-ahead shit, too. I don’t get it. And it wasn’t just with me. It was with the kids, too.
He would just walk (or, let’s say “stomp”) away. Guess he was angry. Who the hell knows? Totally childish and shitty behavior. Of course, the kids were annoyed/perplexed/hurt. We’d call him on it. He would never apologize or, better yet, change his ways.
God, I don’t miss that behavior.
Mine also did this….would walk ahead of me and our five kids when they were little, and people would stare because it was so rude/weird.
Same here along with the rage driving. My kids would beg me to drive the entire way on long road trips. One more thing I had to do because he wasn’t able to be normal.
RedKD,
I was in DC recently and saw a father do this to his wife and two kids. In that moment, it all came back to me. That kind of behavior is messed up and abusive.
Ex did this to me during a Fourth of July parade. I had asked ex if he would get me a bottle of water they were handing out. Ex said no and kept walking. A young man with his baby stepped in front of ex and and handed him a water bottle and said, give this to your wife.
When it takes a stranger intervening on your behalf, to notice that the fuck wit is being dismissive, denigrating and abusive, that’s when you know it’s time to get the hell out.
We were on vacation in London, and fuck wit started a fight with me, and to keep the peace and only to keep the peace, I apologized to him and asked if there was anything that I could do so that we could have a good day. His reply was too very loudly. Tell me after stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.“Yeah. You can get down on your knees and give me a blow job right here!“ A very nice younger man who had been having a beer at an outside pub venue immediately got up and came over to me and asked me if I needed any help or legal assistance. Tears were welling up in my eyes and the fuck wit aggressively went up to him and said no she doesn’t need any help get away. That’s the moment where I should have said yes please help me get the police I’m being abused.
A woman once intervened when my EX was being verbally abusive in public, I suspect he thought he could get away with it as no men were within earshot. I wish I could go back in time and let her know that her willingness to see and call out his behavior was one of the flashing lights that finally helped me decide I needed to divorce. I had been normalizing his abuse for so long, that I had trouble admitting it was really there. Stepping up and speaking out is important even if the abuse victim doesn’t seem to grasp the helping hand being offered in the moment.
A woman once came over and told FW to stop when he was yelling at me and I was crying. And I TOLD HER TO LEAVE US ALONE and DEFENDED HIM. Jeez I was in deep. Thinking back, I appreciate what she tried to do, and wish I’d understood just what was happening to me.
Dear God. That’s unbelievably vile. 😡😡. Thank God you’re away from that. 💝Xx
In a big survey in the UK, something like 50% of men expressed attitudes about heterosexual relationships that are consistent with coercive control patterns. So I think it’s a HUGE problem.
Yes, mine too. He’d walk ahead in the supermarket, the street, once we were in New York, at the 911 Memorial, and he just walked off, and totally disappeared for * two hours*. I was panicking, because he had the hotel room key, and all the money, and how was I going to get back ? Then he just appeared, and got angry with me because I was upset at his behaviour. Fucker.
Rage driving.
Screaming tantrums over nothing, usually because I hadn’t done some household task he thought I should have done.
Furious with me for buying books, but happily spent loads on his wretched fishing equipment.
Lots more I’m sure, but I don’t remember them all, am I on the road to meh ?😁
But thank God I don’t have to put up with any if that shit, anymore .
Rage driving and unsafe driving– particularly when the driver gets angry if passengers complain about feeling unsafe– were some of the red flags listed repeatedly on a reddit thread about cheaters/abusers.
…and yelling at me in the car so loudly that everyone around our car could hear and looked at him ((shaking their heads in disgust).
Wow – this is exactly what my ex did too!
Mine too
Mine was a rage driver, too. Ugh!🚩
So many of these FWs are so alike.
My worst experience with feeling unsafe while experiencing his rage driving was while 41 weeks pregnant and headed to the hospital. He was angry to be going because I wasn’t “really in labor” – this was true, I wasn’t in labor but I had to go in anyway. He was mean and drove more recklessly the more I complained or tensed up. Interesting the abusive shit which I never took seriously at the time!
Yup. Driving too fast, slamming on the brakes, goosing the gas; all to antagonize
Add yelling racial slurs at other drivers, because he knew I ahbor racism (like all normal people)
Mine would walk ahead too. Or just leave restaurants without telling anyone. We’d think he was going to the bathroom, but he’d be outside. His dad did it too. His mother and sister thought it was funny. I thought it was rude.
He’d also just look at someone else, usually a pretty woman across the room, while I was talking to him. Didn’t even pretend to be listening after the first year together or so.
He was super weird about design details. Every corner had the be straight. He couldn’t stand any matching patterns or layered textures. When we got a new quartzite countertop, he literally spent a day with the stonecutter figuring out which directions the swirls should go in. Think single guy home with a tv, ugly couch, and beige, only a family home with kids and whatever style/color I could convince him to keep. Our house never felt like home until he moved out and I could make it cozy.
I’m so glad he left. At this point I wonder why exactly I cried for 2 years?
He would do things like that too. He’d say he was going to the bathroom, but 10, 20, 30 minutes later he’s nowhere to be found. I would have to go looking for him and he had run into a friend or something and spent the next 30 minutes talking to them. Or he struck up a conversation with a stranger and stood talking to them the whole time. And this wasn’t at restaurants, this was EVERYWHERE. He left me in the car for 25 minutes once because he ran into someone. He was supposed to just go into the building, grab a paper, and come back out because we had somewhere to be. I finally had to go in and get him.
The most infuriating time, and this was close to the point where I asked for a divorce, was when he left me sitting at the HR Block for 45 minutes. Me and the preparer had started the process of doing our taxes, but then we reached a point where we couldn’t go any further without his signature in person. He had been late already by the time I got there, and I kept texting him telling him he needed to get there because his in person signature is required. I didn’t understand why he was late to begin with because we had the appointment scheduled for a week and he knew when and where it was. By the time he actually showed up he was a total of 45 minutes late, and had left me sitting there with the tax preparer unable to do anything for about 30 minutes. What was he doing?
He stopped into a dental office because they had a “Now Hiring” sign in the window looking for a dental assistant. He has no training in dental science whatsoever. He spent that time trying to convince them to hire him (spoilers, he did not get the job.) I was so angry at him after we left.
Which brings me to the next thing I do NOT miss: His constant job hunting. It NEVER ENDED. Even when he had a job, he would still be looking for a different one. He would hold down a position for maybe two months total before he was hopping to a new one. One-two months there, then the next one. He just would not. stay. at. a. job. He didn’t have any reason to be constantly changing jobs all the time. He just …did. And he would be constantly asking me to look at his resume. Over and over again. Constant job changing meant he was constantly changing up his resume. One day I had enough and told him to review his own damn resume he’s an adult he can do it himself. I was really just tired of the never-ending job hunts. And yes, he would be applying for jobs for which he had no qualifications…like dental assistant.
When we would go somewhere he’d be sitting on the couch waiting for me and our son. We wold walk out to his truck, put our seatbelts on and he’s say, I forgot something.., then he’d go back inside the house making us wait for him for at least 10 minutes. He’d come back with his comb.
I have a habit of falling asleep in the car after a long day. I would fight falling asleep when he would drive home from being out all day. He’d be furious with me if I fell asleep on the way home. It didn’t matter how late it was.
When we went out for the day I’d bring water bottles for us to drink. We would keep our empty water bottles in the truck until we got home. He’d inspect his truck to make sure we didn’t leave anything behind. If he’d find an empty water bottle he’d throw it at us and go into a rage. I can laugh now but at the time it wasn’t funny. Now that I think about it and I’m wiser I should have held him accountable. It’s bad when you don’t want to confront them about their unacceptable behavior to avoid another rage or I knew he wouldn’t care what I said. I had no leverage.
FW was always walking ahead of me and kids too, but more oblivious than angry. When we bought a house I had to tell him, when someone else is home and you are leaving randomly to go to the store it’s nice to just tell them so they are not looking for you. He did get better about that.
Rage driving – he was always a fast/somewhat aggressive driver with his sports car, but only after the cheating (that I know about – suspected monkey branching) started was it clearly rage driving. I had said something about it twice on a trip and the third time I just waited until a rest stop, got out with the kids, and said we’re not getting back in unless I drive.
OMG Rage driving! FW would get in scary confrontations on the highway all the time because he was so aggressive.
Yes! rage driving. I forgot to put that on yesterday’s list. He was like a lunatic on the freeway.
Mine was angry because I went to the bathroom too much on a road trip from Florida to Baltimore. I stopped every couple of hours. He grabbed the keys, got behind the wheel and for three hours was rage driving on I-95 in a monsoon and Richmond, DC and Baltimore rush hour traffic. I was terrified. The whole time he was screaming at me and calling me names because “everyone knows you only stop when you need to put gas in the car.”
Then there were the times he’d get behind someone and tailgate them while flashing lights and honking the horn. One time he did this at 11pm and followed some woman when she kept turning to get away from him. Finally she stopped and he jumped out of the car and ran to her car and pounded on the window and screamed at her because she cut him off. She had out of state plates, and was probably just lost.
That kind of shit is why I carry a gun. I am not going to be murdered by one of these psychos.
Yes! Driving 90 down a freeway while screaming at me….
Mine would occasionally rage at my daughters in the car and drive like a maniac with us all crying in the car. After dday when I told people about it everyone was like OMG that is so abusive!
My ex was a hoarder. Our basement was full. As was our bedroom the rest of it I made sure he did not
Hoard. The other thing is his endless sitting around doing nothing. I am so busy and I love it. Lastly we moved into a brand new house in 2003 he would not paint the white walls or let me hang pictures! I have so awesome cool art and it is everywhere in my apt!!!
I actually hear this from friends a lot about their exes. Just not doing anything. Sitting around. Never wanting to go anywhere or try anything new.
I get itchy when I can’t get out and do things. Me and my boyfriend love having adventures. We’re get outta the house type of people.
Oh my gosh….this sounds like my first FW too. The hoarding!!!!! The not doing anything around the house!!!!! Ugh😵💫🫠. So glad to be away from that energy vampire.
FW #1) would take off his clothes from the moment he walked in the door and literally leave a trail throughout the house….boot there, sock, here, belt on the dinning room table, sweaty shirt on the kitchen counter, another random sock hanging on a door knob….every single day. The absolute suck part of it was he would change sometimes 3-4x a day so his shit would literally be thrown all over the house randomly. It was absolutely exhausting!
FW#2) chewed his nails down making them bleed while telling everyone how amazing he was. When I finally figured out he was chewing his nails because he was so insecure around other people I started fucking with his head because by that time I was getting fed up with his abuse.
FW#3) his obsession with social media and posting Jesus devotionals first thing every morning but never acted like a Christian.
Mine would just leave his clothes in piles all over the place. He had this habit in the mornings. When he was looking for clothes for the day, he would take EVERYTHING out of the drawer, once he found what he wanted, he would leave everything on the floor and leave the drawers open. I hated that. We had several arguments over it. He did the same thing with the kitchen cabinets. He’d leave them all open. Sometimes I would come home from work or class, and the apartment would be absolutely destroyed. with all the cabinets and drawers open and clothes all over the floor. And guess who had to clean it up because he often wasn’t home…
Mine did the same, when he was looking for something, he would purposely pull everything out and leave it around the house to punish me because he couldn’t find what he was looking for.
He wouldn’t help me toilet train our new puppy even though he was home all day and I was working at the hospital during the pandemic. I had to hire a dog walker to take our puppy out. In the end I got grass patches delivered to the house and put them in the bathroom so she could go when she wanted. My stbx wanted baby gates to block her from barking at the door and to help separate her from areas of the house she shouldn’t go. I made 3. My stbx would break them on purpose to punish me. I would fix them and he would break them again. One day I came home and the city had given us a fine for our puppy barking. He put her on the balcony and let her bark for hours. One of the neighbors complained. One night when he was drunk he peed on her cage while she was in it. I remember waking up in the morning and finding her smelly. I had to wash her, the cage and all her blankets. I asked him why he did it. He said he was teaching her a lesson. I told him he was being cruel and the only lesson she learned was that he was mean.
He also used to walk in font of me. I remember being on our honeymoon and I wanted to take a picture of something and he wouldn’t stop and let me take the picture, he kept walking. I remember thinking it was the weirdest thing.
When we were at parties. He would drink too much and start insulting my friends weight, dresses, my dead parents (he told the last dinner party we were at that my dad cheated on my mom, I remember thinking it was so mean to say, my dad was an amazing father and had never cheated on my mom. Now I know he said it because he was cheating on me and trying to justify his behavior. Like everyone does it.)
Oh my gosh!!!! Mine did the same….not only did he strew his cloth everywhere as soon as he got home but he would also take everything out of drawers and cabinets leaving them in piles. It was awful bc I too had to clean it up as he would just leave and be gone for hours/days/weeks. I remember I stopped washing his clothes because he would never put them away. He literally lived out of garbage bags! He had a traveling job and would take the clothes he wanted in bags, wear them dirty, go to his parents house to have them do the wash, and then put them in garbage bags. He also refused to clean up his mess. One year I made it a point to not clean up his messes because he would obnoxiously destroy the house in a matter of minutes and then leave for weeks…..the house was a disaster for 9 out of 12 months of the year. He finally cleaned up his crap when we had a party and he wanted it to look good for our friends. From that day on, I would constantly have random out of the blue parties to force him to clean up.
He didn’t like people coming round. Only time he would. Clear up in the living room was at Christmas so we could eat off the table. But all his post and general junk just ended up in the bedroom, with all the problems that caused. Or sometimes in the garage. He would winge and whine about having to clear up his stuff, if he found something under the piles that was mine whether or not it was me who had left it how the mess was mine. How unjust that once a year he had to clear all his stuff up. Christmas is so much nicer
I would do all the washing, if I hung stuff up all the stuff would come.down as he just pulled on the shirt or whatever, so all the clean stuff was in a pile. If he went away he would never put the stuff away afterwards, just left it in the living room. Then next time another bag full of stuff. I quite get leaving say toiletries and stuff in the bag, maybe a spare charger, a drink bottle, that sort of thing, but keep it upstairs out of the way and use the same bag each time if it’s for the same sort of trip
He would be the one going out with friends at their houses rather than having them over to ours. And usually it was people I had tried to make friends with myself (I was very isolated in this marriage because every time I tried to make a new friend, ex would swoop in, kinda elbow me out, and then the next thing I knew, he was friends with them on social media, texting them, and they were inviting him out not me. Or they just assumed he’d bring me. It was so hard to just make friends of my own because of him.)
So when he was nowhere to be found when I came home, usually it was because he was either not home from whatever job he had at the time, or he was out with more people.
The worst was when he said he would do the dishes. Usually when he said that, he would leave them sitting for so long I would get fed up and end up doing it (same with cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming the apartment…taking out the trash…) and this time I was thinking “Okay, let’s see how long it will take him to do it.” Spoiler: He never did.
By the time I was at the fed up point again, almost every single piece of dishware we had was used. I had to wash the dishes in THE BATHTUB because that’s how much there was.
Random sock hanging on door knob 😂 Brilliant made me lol
Doing dumb shit all the time but pretending it was normal, or could happen to anyone (and dont even start me on his mother gloating about how smart her idiot son was).
Example: during his time pretending to be a farmer on his family property, he was vaccinating sheep but missed a ewe and jabbed himself in the leg. His leg went septic but he was too stupid to go the hospital until the infection started rapidly travelling up his leg. On the plus side he is now vaccinated against foot rot (but unfortunately not dick rot and the brain succumbed some years back)
I’m getting flashbacks about that dumb shit but pretending it was normal reading this. And taking crazy stupid risks while arguing they were hardly risky. Little did I realize at the time the degree to which he was taking risks…
Ross Rosenberg has a video about reverse gaslighting – making out being dysfunctional and crazy is normal and there’s “nothing to see here”
He’s lucky he’s not dead because vaccination and antibiotic doses meant for livestock animals can be lethal to humans. That’s no joke. He could have lost his leg or gone into cardiac arrest. That stuff is NOT meant for the human body.
Kara he is the idiot with nine lives. That was one of many close calls.
My mum called him Frank Spencer until it turned out he wasnt really a bumbling fool but a devious pathological liar who used his “silly old duffer” image as a mask.
Now she hates him.
I am sure he is also stupid, but he has also learnt to use it to have control and avoid responsibility (CLs he ate a rat “schadenfreude-and-the-fw-whisperer” post was the one that resonated most with me)
He could have bumbled his way to an early grave with that one.
I had one of those too Weedfree. He seemed like such an affable but clumsy idiot
We all loved him at the time and overcompensated for him. It was just a way of avoiding responsibility and make his life easier
He managed to hold down a high powered job though and be an expert liar
This article called “The Myth of the Male Bumbler”
https://theweek.com/articles/737056/myth-male-bumbler
This is fascinating Battletempered! So chilling
I used to get ‘I don’t recall or I don’t remember saying that’
I used to joke about his politician’s answers. I’m not laughing now
I’m naturally a bit ditzy, so have to work really hard not to be and to be more organised. His behaviour suited him very well though
“he is now vaccinated against foot rot”. 🤣😂🤣👏👏👏
Oh my god that’s hilarious!
Complaining about the way I ironed his t-shirts!
Accusing me of what he was actually up to and
My personal favourite……telling his work colleagues I was a Can Can dancer 🤪🤪🤪
Did he think he was Toulouse-Lautrec in a previous life?
Ha! He was not one to let the truth stand in the way of him big noting himself.
You work at the Moulin Rouge in Paris ?! 🤣🤣💃🏻🤸♀️
You ironed his t-shirts? Oh my goodness! He’ll have a hard time replacing you!
…A can can dancer…
Jesus he could have at least made the lie believable.
A can can dancer?? If you didn’t frequently wear ruffled petticoats, buttoned boots or have the habit of flipping the back of your skirt up in public, that takes the cake for weird FW lies.
He also told a patient I had breast cancer to stop her from outing his affair to me.. 😳
#3… I…. what??? Do you live in the 1850’s Wild West? 🤣
Being the mother of his 2 children and problem solving all the bombs he dropped was not impressive enough for him. Lying that I was an exotic dancer in Paris was more his style – I absolutely kid you not!
You ironed his t- shirts for him!!!!!!
One of the many things I thought meant being a good wife – I am happy to have resigned from all of them!!!
I don’t even own an iron any more!
I don’t miss
1. His Magic card playing. He took it so seriously and it seemed more like the hobby of a 12 year old boy than a grown ass man
2. How he made himself lunch on the weekends but didn’t ask if I wanted anything. He would make himself a big fat sandwich and eat it in front of me and our child. Of course, I cooked dinner every single night for us all
3. How he couldn’t get his ass out of bed. He and I could never commute into work together because he was always late. On the weekends he’d sleep until like 11am. He missed our child’s sporting events and complained because I didn’t haul his butt out of bed for him 🙄
He would go to garage fridge to get a cold seltzer and not ask if anyone else wanted one…
It was WONDERFUL when I was no longer responsible for getting his drunken ass out of bed for work!!! Several alarms, yelling at him to get up, having the kids go wake him up and then phoning when I got to work and STILL it was my fault he missed so much work. Try not staggering home drunk every night at 2am AH!!!
He ate garbage. I used to be a really good cook and always made my ex and my kids healthy, whole and delicious food. He wood eat it but always said, I would be just as happy with frozen pizza and some bagged salad. Early in our relationship I would make him lunch but he NEVER took it with him. Just left it in the fridge. He ate cookies for breakfast as he ran out the door and almost never ate breakfast with me. AND at dinner he would gobble down his food and leave the table instead of spending some time talking to his family. He never helped me clean up after dinner Looking back I can see that he was an uncivilized animal! Of course in public he was gracious and charming.
God that pissed me off about leaving the dinner table. Mine used to eat slowly when he felt like it, making everyone wait for him, or he’d gobble everything down and leave us there while he cleaned up so he could listen to his football podcasts with his headphones on
Oh, so many to choose from…. 1.Skid marks on the sheets would be my #1! Would drag his dirty, obviously poorly wiped ass across the bed when he got up and that was a regular result! 2.Dropping his dirty clothes onto the floor right beside the dirty clothes hamper. 3. Tracked his mud caked work boots all over the house despite my asking to please not do that. Nope, built a beautiful new home 18 months before he left, traipsed mud all over. 4. Threw his empty Bud Light Cans all over the property wherever he went. I picked up 3 contractor bags full when he left and I sold the house. Now building my own amazing new house in which he will never step foot!
#goodriddance
Jeepers! Skid marks on the sheets!!??!! 🤮🤮🤮 This makes me never want to live with a man again!
My serial cheater ex also left his dirty clothes next to the laundry hamper. I told him on many occasions to put them in the hamper be he never did. This went on for 20 years.
He always talked exclusively about the women in his life — his ex (I was his second wife), his old flames from his 20’s, his colleagues, even his physical therapist. I didn’t like it, but it didn’t seem that alarming until I found out about his secret sexual life. After we divorced, he told me that his therapist suggested he make more male friends! And later I found out that a man not having any close male friends can be a sign of “sex addiction.” However, before I knew all that, I do remember feeling annoyed during our dinners out — I remember thinking, isn’t there something else he could talk about??
I have an ex who had no new friends from the time he was in elementary school on. Same set of friends. Whole life. Nobody new. At the time I thought it was sweet he was still friends with people from his childhood.
Now I’ve realized it’s possible he has no new friends because he’s an asshole. If you go through your whole life and stick with literally the same people and make NO new friends or acquaintances, there is something about you that new people don’t like being around.
My ex is the same, his only friends are from childhood. My sister is also like this. I used to be jealous of them in a way, it must be nice to have such a core group of friends for so long. I now realize it’s a sign of dysfunction. Those people tolerate them because of shared history. Nobody else wants to.
Yes! FW has no real friends. He’s had 3 “friends” since middle school but we rarely saw the two female friends. The male friend (a minister) knew about the cheating. He managed to go to USC, be in the famous marching band, and never make a single friend from college. His two female friends chose me in the separation.
I don’t miss his constant blabbering whenever we were with friends–he was always right, always knew everything. It was embarrassing.
I don’t miss his vacations rages. For some reason he needed to blow a gasket on vacation, or holidays.
I don’t miss his flirting with other women (mostly younger who he made uncomfortable) and trying to be sexy guy at events, or getting so drunk he made a fool of himself.
“He was always right, always knew everything”.
Oh yeah. I remember him telling his nephew, who had a career in IT, that what he was telling me about the Cloud, was all wrong.
And we were at a ceilidh, and he was telling the caller he was wrong about the dance steps. 🙄😂
Sorry, but I had to laugh about telling the caller at the ceilidh that he’d got the dance steps wrong!!!!
😂🙄😂
I was always befuddled that my ex-FW pick a huge fight before every holiday and vacation. After D-day I realized it was because his extra-curricular activities would be curtailed during those times.
That makes so much sense.
Wow Dirty Water that’s familiar. My ex was completely disengaged when we were on family holidays. Casting back I now think it’s because he was bored and lonely with only me. It could’ve been nice intimate time. But no, he was distant and grumpy.
Always right…he saved that for me…he acted sort-of appropriately humble in groups but alone he would literally declare “I AM ALWAYS RIGHT” like he was the king of a kingdom of 2 people.
Vacation rage…every damn trip. The last trip we took before he died, we had a family destination but I refused to travel with him and got my own rental car. The first panic attack I ever had was leaving the house in the minivan with kids in back and him driving…the Rage Clock started the minute the trip started. He was insufferable
Why do they like to ruin vacations? I don’t understand.
My ex did this, and I don’t understand why. On vacations he would typically act out on the last day or two. When I could get him to talk about it, he would tell me that he was simply upset that the vacation was almost over and he’d have to go back to work. I validated his feelings (“yep, sucks when vacations end”) but argued that we should try to not let the worry of returning to work ruin the last day or two. Where’s the sense in that?
His rage took the form of sulking, stomping, and subtle or not-so-subtle insults. It sucked.
I don’t miss that at all.
I’m late to this party and the ex did much of what everyone else has complained of. The oily, sheet-staining sweat – ugh. The walking ahead (I used to hide in London doorways to see how long it would take him to notice I wasn’t trailing behind him, which was such a crazy situation to be in). He always created an issue about something on holiday. Then, when he was leaving me, and before I discovered the affair, he said ‘our holidays weren’t that great either’. It was a deliberately cruel comment because he knew that I valued our holidays highly. They were in the main amazing e.g. the Galápagos Islands. ExgfOW was ‘there’ throughout our 26 years together, rather like ‘Queen Camilla’. He therefore had to damage the holiday memories to keep the predator happy, so that he could tell her that he hadn’t enjoyed himself. And to hurt me. He really is a pathetic coward.
Actions of a two year old brat.
I have an ex who had to be always right too. At the time I was getting my first bachelors, which was in political science. He would argue with me about every political thing happening in the news. Everything. And any time I would try to say something he would cut me off and tell me I’m just trying to sound smart and I don’t know what I’m talking about.
..arguing with him wasn’t actually arguing. It was more like him talking over me or yelling and cutting off my sentences before I could finish them and telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about.
I was also a poli sci major and klootzak did the same thing, trying to string me in to talk politics and then tried to act like he knew everything. He is a legend in his own mind.
Just three is difficult, but let’s go. In no particular order.
His best friend. Truly, the best thing about my divorce is never ever having to see that douche again. I liked most of his friends just fine but OMG do I hate this guy’s guts!
Eating frozen pizza three times a week (nothing against frozen pizza. Just not all the time!)
Having the kitchen full of used Amazon boxes that he never ever took out.
I do miss that he cleaned the bathroom, although by the end of the relationship I was having to ask every time.
His older brother. I hated that man with a vengeance. He was a grifter, a con artist. He always had a side hustle going on. He lived in a different European country. One side hustle was collecting Russian women from the airport and driving them to hotels to ‘spend time’ with men from the Emirates. The ex thought it was funny. I thought it was disgusting and said so. I told the ex that his brother was pimping. Silence, crickets! The whole family of very middle class English people looked up to and admired this brother, to the point of hero worship. And there I was, on the outside looking in, not being able to see how they could not see what was going on. That family took unconditional love to a whole new level, except in relation to me. I can see how, having my conscience in their midst, made them feel ‘uncomfortable’, another one of my flaws.
Klootzak’s only close male friend I am aware of is a snobby alcoholic. I won’t miss him one single bit. He was the type of person who would ask you what kind of wine you like while hosting you at his home and when you tell him, he tells you why your taste in wine is terrible. (In my case, I like new world wines from Australia, US, New Zealand and he thinks anything not European is trash.) Worst host ever and a human I will not miss.
Eeww yep I forgot about the best mate/drinking buddy/broke ass sponger who never paid his bills!
*Toilet messes & sounds (apologies to those eating breakfast right now)
*Dangerous/reckless driving
*Skin/nail picking
I could go on…
It was too gross, but since you mentioned skin picking-
He would dreamily pick scabs and then eat them. I wonder sometimes, how someone can be so un-self aware that others are in the room?
The other two, would be sleeping all the time, on the couch, with a blanket over his head. And buying things. Old cars, BIG speakers, shoes, so many shoes!
Do not miss any of that!!
The toilet messes and sounds are my #1, too. Coupled with his defensiveness about it and turning it back around on me. The problem is that I don’t go enough and thus don’t understand that 4x daily dramatic events are the way. Apparently he’s now into pegging…have at it, ladies!
That’s probably why he had so many bathroom issues. My ex had so many issues with pooping and he’d poop blood all the time. I used to feel so sorry for him. I remember one time going to the doctor with him about his “anal fissures” and the doctor said, “You have to let it heal…” and my ex exploded, “What am I supposed to do?! Stop taking shits?!”
I felt so bad for him. I bought so many fiber supplements, stool softeners, the best toilet paper, a squatty potty, etc. That doctor knew he was getting fucked in the ass too much and that’s what the problem was. I wish he could’ve clued my dumb ass in.
Speaking of toilets and turning it around on you…
After the umpteenth time asking him to clean up his urine splashes, he told me, a woman, that I was responsible for the puddles on the floor.
😂😂🧻🧽🫧
Now that I think about it, his ignorance of basic female anatomy explains a LOT. 😂😂
Arseface was meticulously clean and well groomed but at times his breath absolutely stank to high heaven. A really unusual horrible smell.
I now like to entertain the fanciful belief that it was the stench of evil wafting upwards from the depths of his foul soul.
Ugh same with the stinky breath. But my ex was not meticulously clean like yours. He did not routinely brush his teeth at night. I had to remind him often and he complained that I had to remind him. I didn’t get it.
AND he did not wash his hands after using the bathroom. He would flush and walk out. And he’s a doctor. DISGUSTING. That enough should have made me leave decades ago.
Towards the end of our marriage, my ex would get up in the middle of the night, take a really loud and disgusting shit that would wake me up, then come back to bed without washing his hands and attempt to touch me sexually. And he would get angry and pouty when I would scramble away from him and demand he go wash his hands.
FW had just had a crap and of course didn’t wash his hands. THEN he went to put Bonjela (soothing cream) on our teething baby’s sore gums. I snatched that kid up so quick FW’s head did a 360°!
I agree not washing your hands after going to the loo is disgusting, and I normally always do, but once I woke up in the middle of the night, went downstairs to the loo, didn’t wash my hands, (don’t remember why, still half asleep?) came back up, and fuckwit threw a screaming tantrum because I hadn’t washed my hands. Yes, I know I should have. How did he know ? Because apparently he was listening to see if I did. Surely that isn’t normal ?
Most likely the ONE extremely rare occasion he could actually say it to you!
Yep. Mine was a doctor too. An obs/gynae consultant with a harem of women on the go concurrently. No condoms. And he’d worked in an STD clinic as part of his early training. WT actual F.
Agreed. I think FW’s putrid breath was evidence that he was rotting from the inside out.
He could only ever talk about work. So shallow.
I had the same problem with my ex who was constantly on job hunts even when he had a job. (I posted about it on another comment. Constant, never ending job searching. He’d never stay at a job longer than two months. For no reason. He just never stopped job searching.)
Since his job searching never ended, so did his talk about jobs and work. One moment that sticks in my mind was when I tried to talk about something I like, and he told me he didn’t want to hear about that, talk about it for 5 minutes then talk about something else. Which of course had to be his damn job searching…
My XW was like this too. She had no interest in anything else – not food, books, movies, art, hobbies, sports, current events, politics – nothing. Never played a sport in her life. Never played a musical instrument. Didn’t read a newspaper. Only read one book a year, when she was at the beach (while I was looking after the kids). Didn’t vote in an election for 20 years. I didn’t understand this because she’s from Italy and I thought that the things she knew about that I didn’t were evidence of some deeper engagement with culture, politics and arts; I was totally wrong, and it was just banalities that anyone growing up there knew from just being alive. And yes, I managed to find and marry the only Italian woman who doesn’t care about food and can’t cook.
Eventually I couldn’t talk about her work enough to satisfy her (I’m only a PhD biophysicist whereas she’s a PhD astrophysicist) so she had to have an affair with a work colleague.
Involuntary, I think this just goes to show that no matter how much education you have or learning that you have stuffed into your brain that it doesn’t necessarily mean you are deep emotionally or have any substantive character. They are shallow for sure.
I have a Venetian friend, a computer scientist, who can’t boil water. But she’s politically sophisticated, reads everything and has integrity to spare. I figure her lack of cooking skills relates to some “you can’t have it all” principle where she’s so good at so many things that something had to be sacrificed. I suspect most of narcissists’ bandwidth is used up by self involvement and self gratification. If you could open their skulls like music boxes, all you’d hear is an ear-splitting “MEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!”
I know the “can’t boil water” is hyperbole, but…
I did all the cooking, but about 10 years ago I had a work commitment so I asked my then-wife to make dinner for the kids. She put on water to boil for pasta, but the water boiled over and put out the gas fire so by the time I got home the entire house smelled like gas. I never asked her to cook again.
I am sure she could cook if she wanted to because she can do pretty sophisticated chemistry. Weaponized incompetence isn’t only for men.
SO narcissistic….EX FW did the same thing
His constant throat clearing and I do mean CONSTANT.
The throat clearing. The CONSTANT hacking and snorting. Sweet fancy Moses in a wicker basket. How many times did I plead with him to take allergy meds??? He usually replied, “I’ve got a hair in my throat.” Huh?
OMG, I forgot about his sinus problems. Thank god, as it was a horribly disgusting and extremely noisy event, all day, every day.
The throat clearing. The CONSTANT hacking and snorting. Sweet fancy Moses in a wicker basket. How many times did I plead with him to take allergy meds??? He usually replied, “I’ve got a hair in my throat.” Huh?
Hard to pick just three – sadly. 1. Road rage and general rage issues. When he got in “a mood” I would just gather up the kids and leave him to himself. Periodically, he’d get mad and ask why I wasn’t helping him (because he’d usually tweak out trying to fix something that was broken) – I’d tell him flat out – I have no desire to be around you when you get like this. Change your attitude and I’d be happy to hold the bottom of the ladder / tools for you. 2. The farting/burping, talking about poop etc. It was like he never grew out of being a 3rd grade boy. 3. Every night, coming home from work, spending 40 min on the toilet, eating enough snack foods to equate more than a full meal, eating the dinner I made while he was on the toilet and binging on chips, then listening to him complain about how fat he is and no one is attracted him.
Bye bye, omg I’m so glad you’re out. Huge disgusting baby man!
In no order of preference
1. Dribbling constantly when sleeping, due to poor dental hygiene, that I had to buy new pillows every few months because of the staining. It was also on the mattress on his side. 🤢 the new mattress I bought after Dday (2015) still perfect btw.
2. Having to ask daily if he’d brushed his teeth because of his breath.
3. Having to take annual leave to go to the dentist with him as he was scared.
3. Having to ask him to wash his feet at bedtime. The smell was throat catching sometimes.
4. Having to sort out his financial messes repeatedly as I did all the adulting
5. Him going for a poo the minute he came in from work leaving the door open so the smell permeated the house
6. Him having no opinion at all in major decisions. Drove me mad.
Oops. More than three but felt great getting a few out lol.
What is it with these guys and their obsession with their poos. Or maybe it is just a few of them.
Even when I was madly in love, it weirded me out that he put so much time into his poos. I have always been a get your business done and move on kind of gal.
They’re overripe 2-year-olds. Mine actually called me in once to admire his work.
Violet—oh my god!!!!!!!
Apparently it is very common for FWs (who as we all know share the same FW playbook) to spend tons of time in the bathroom pretending to “poop” while in actuality they are watching endless hours of porn.
Oh, yes, the bathroom time. With Snakeface, it was baths after work that lasted for two hours. He’d take his laptop. I knew it was most likely to watch porn, though he could have been spending Facetime with Tuberculosis. Or some twisted combination of both.
Forgot a couple
7. Smoking indoors even though I didn’t smoke and we had kids
8. Throwing cigarette packets anywhere he happened to be, even in drawers, on top of kitchen cupboards, out buildings I was still finding them for years after he’d gone.
9. Cigarette butts everywhere including the guttering from when he flicked them out of bedroom windows.
That was cathartic 😂
I do not miss him smoking in the bedroom. Burning holes in my comforters. And the smell of cigarettes.
Leaving me alone 4 to 5 nights a week. Keeping all his money to himself while I struggled. Had to pay bills with credit cards. Then he used that against me. His loud chewing. I could go on and on.
Ewe, the chewing ! Just remembered that. And eating with his mouth open. Ugh.
Yep, mouth open and loud smacking noises. One time we were having dinner and I couldn’t take it any more so I started doing the same. Smack, smack, smack, slurp. He looked at me like I’d just landed from Mars and then he started eating quietly – so he could do it, he just chose not to!
Walking ahead of me anywhere we went and complaining I was too slow-even after our daughter was born and I was carrying her. Then acting fakely chivalrous in front of others. Underwear skid marks. I stopped doing his copious amount of laundry so it would pile up for WEEKS, stinking and even molding! Driving way too fast and carelessly, resulting in regular tickets. Dissing women regularly but only spending time with female friends. Gulping down food so fast he would finish before I even sat down to serve myself. Writing lewd and lecherous things in every single card I got for birthdays, etc. Always stroking himself while driving! Calling me by the wrong name regularly (married 30 years). Making fun of me loving to read and garden. Tuning out so completely during TV he didn’t realize I’d been gone for two hours. Storming out and disappearing during or after an argument. Hurting our pets when he didn’t think anyone was watching. Mentioning he had sex dreams about his sister. Masturbating to the point of serious skin infection. Being obsessive compulsive about loading the dishwasher or direction of light switches.
How I don’t miss him!!!
Isn’t anyone else flabbergasted by “always stroking himself while driving” ?!?!
Is this a common thing?
Unless you mean stroking his chin while deep in thought.
But I’m guessing “no”.
Battletempered, no, it was not his chin. He was stroking, and I think he was always hoping to have a high bus pull up next to him so they could see what he was doing. I do believe that he was a sex pervert, who was going to get arrested eventually for exposing himself
My sister saw someone doing that when she was on a bus, and looking up at her, he was notorious apparently for doing it. Eventually he got into a fatal accident.
Hurting your pets?!? 😡😡 Fuck. Isn’t that one of the signs of a psychopath ? Thank God you’re out of that.
Yes Chumpnomore6, it is one of the signs of a psychopath, and he had more than a few. I remember some years into our marriage when he admitted to liking to set fires when he was a teenager and then he would watch to see when it got to a certain blaze height, then would rush in and put it out and act like the hero. He admitted that once one got out of control and burned an entire shed and could have spread to homes and hurt people, but he seemed gleeful when he was telling the story, and that combined with the pet harming made me realize that he had some severe mental disturbances
Yikes, you truly are Fuckwit free! A lot sounds similar to my X! So vulgar around people, eating dinner super fast, then pouting to leave the table where the family was still eating, making fun of me reading or gardening.
It boils down to deep selfishness, I think.
Well now they can focus on their royal selves, and leave us be!
Yes I am fuckwit free! They are textbook similar and there’s no end to the disturbing creepiness of that.
I’m reading everyone’s comments and nodding my head. “Yep, that habit. Yes, that, too.”
There are too many and it’s so hard to narrow it down to three, so I’ll just say THANK GOD I DON’T HAVE TO DEAL WITH ANY OF IT ANYMORE! 🙂
She concluded EVERY serious discussion about family finances with: “Well, when I win the lottery, we won’t have any problems.” And passing it off EVERY time with: “My God, I’m only joking.” (Translation: She hates making the hard choices that adults have to make sometimes; she’d rather focus on the fantasy of it all magically going away someday.)
The endless rounds of “I don’t care, whatever you want to do” followed by constant complaining about the results . . . especially when traveling. (Translation: She’d rather voice her dissatisfaction with my decisions than risk making any of her own.)
Her knee-jerk “it’s not my fault” attitude about everything and everyone. She once pulled out into the path of an oncoming 18-wheeler and barely slammed on the breaks in time (after my screaming), immediately shouted: “THAT’S NOT MY FAULT!!!”, and went silent for the rest of the trip.
What do these have in common? A DNA-level need to avoid consequences. And entitlement.
I think your ex wife and my ex husband might be soul mates. That’s so, so familiar.
Klootzak is a rage driver, endlessly trying to scare me. I recall him following another vehicle too closely in a tunnel. It’s a long tunnel and for whatever reason, drivers start slowing down and tapping their brakes as they exit instead of maintaining speed. This tunnel in the area is one we go through probably twice a month so it is KNOWN that that is what will happen. A normal person wouldn’t tailgate and not have an issue. But klootzak was so close to the car in front of us. And of course, the car in front of us slammed on the brakes and klootzak had to brake hard and narrowly missed rear ending the car in front of us. I calmly said, “Maybe if you didn’t follow so closely….” and he immediately screamed “THAT WAS NOT MY FAULT!” Of course, klootzak, nothing is EVER your fault! 😂
The last Xmas before we separated we were driving along a highway when, out of nowhere, a deer came galloping across a paddock and was clearly headed for the road. It was absolutely bizarre as we don’t have native deer on our island State. I yelled out to FW , ho was oblivious, “Watch out you’re about to run over Santa’s reindeer!”. It was a near miss.
“What do these have in common? A DNA-level need to avoid consequences. And entitlement.”
Yup.
My ex behaved in a similar way.
In addition, when I would help him by, say, pointing out the oncoming 18 wheeler, he would swerve but then say something to the effect the my warning wasn’t necessary. He would have swerved anyway, which might have been true, but it happened all the time. I could tell he would pause a second and come up with a reason that whatever help I gave wasn’t really necessary. He was basically saying: “I would have done that.
Or it would have been ok if I hadn’t done that.”
It was weird, and I’m really struggling to explain it here. I guess he was simply trying to dismiss me and/or my help.
“I would have done that. Or it would have been ok if I hadn’t done that” is just another riff on the Narcissist’s prayer:
That didn’t happen.
And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
And if it is, that’s not my fault.
And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
All those
This is fun! Cheating notwithstanding, I don’t miss…
He would fill a cereal brim to the top with Honey Nut cherrios and then after adding milk, tap the top of the cereal with the spoon so each one got wet… tap, tap, tap…
He would sit on the couch and pick sock fuzz from between his toes and flick it onto the carpet (or the general vicinity of it).
He would sit on the beach for hours reading a book while I kept an eye on my young step children, kept everyone fed with snacks and sandwiches, kept everyone in sunblock, and made sure our infant son was safe… for maybe 2 15 minute intervals he’d grab a boogie board, the kids would clamor around him and he’d play in the water with them.
Like all of us… I could go on. But mostly, it was just his cheating that I hated.
Ex would eat a mixing bowl size bowl full of Honey Nut Cheerios every morning. He’d buy huge boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios at Costco.
To add to my pervious list:
If I was talking with friends, telling a story about something that happened he’d interrupt and correct me, for example, I’d say we had to wait 40 minutes before we were seated, he’d say, no, no, it was 30 minutes.
Ex preferred liked being involved in women’s conversations, when we’d pick up our son from elementary school there would be a group of Mom’s standing sound talking and separate group of Dad’s talking. Ex would join the women’s group and ignore the other Dads. I
He was like a middle school boy when it came to potty humor. He notoriously brought up passing gas and bowl movements with every conversation. It didn’t matter who we were talking to or what the subject was he’d somehow bring it up in conversation.
Ex was in the military for a short time. Ex would purposely wear a shirt or baseball hat with a military symbol so people would ask if he was in the military, and say “thank you for your service” then he’d go into his fake modesty act, gee, golly, gosh…hoping they’d continue the conversation and ask what he did in the military so he could tell them he’s a pilot.
Fraudster could whistle well. He competed multiple times in the world championships and lost, and he was a very bad loser. That didn’t stop him from claiming he was a world champion whistler. He said I’d forgotten or wasn’t there when he won. He’d whistle whenever we were walking–through a store, down the street, whatever–and if anyone looked at him, he’d pounce and start talking about whistling. Meanwhile, he’d stiffen one hand like a karate chop, and jab me in the back until I said, “He’s a world champion whistler.” That was his cue for faux modesty while he talked about how great he was. He told newspaper reporters about his supposed championship, and put it on all his flyers for his music gigs. This continued until after D-Day, when he told the marriage counselor that he was a TWO-TIME world champion. I asked when THAT happened, and he was furious I questioned him in front of the counselor. . That prompted me to look up the list of world champions, and he wasn’t on it.
Fraudster also pretended that his first name was Italian (his last name was Italian), and would sometimes speak to people in a fake Italian accent. He tried to pull that on a street musician. He was shocked when the man answered in a flood of Italian, and had to back off, saying he spoke only a little Italian, but still saying it in Italian in the same fake Italian accent. Hilarious.
Then there was the time when the head of a Veterans Medical group was introducing him as a doctor. When I started to correct him, Fraudster whispered that I shouldn’t correct it, because it would embarrass the other man. I later learned he lied to the group about being both an MD (he had a bachelors degree in a non-medical field) and a veteran.
I don’t miss having him spew a stream of lies and expecting me to stay silent.
Oh, and a bonus fourth habit: Whenever we ate out, with family or even with another couple or group of people, he was constantly scanning the restaurant for familiar faces. If he found one, he went to their table and stood there, trying to schmooze and impress them. He got in the way of waiters, other diners, and even the people he was trying to impress. He once stood so long with a group of upper managers who were clearly on a business lunch that all their food arrived and they were all waiting to eat while he yammered on, oblivious. Meanwhile, he ignored whoever he came to eat with, sometimes for an entire meal. Incredibly rude.
GoodFriend, I’m crying laughing! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The karate chop in the back, OMG
Like you’re a puppet!
Hope you see this. Yes, like I was a puppet, or one of those automated fortune teller machines. Or, I suppose, like kicking a vending machine to get it to start.
Well I guess you could say he did one thing well- lying! Hope he gets caught in public some day.
My X would also lie happily, to my face. I knew, and he knew, he was lying. He just didn’t care.
I do mot miss-
Receiving the silent treatment
Being in debt
Never receiving kind words or encouragement
The constant chaos
Being lied to
The cruelty
The fear
Constantly feeling the need to appease
Adulting for another adult
My beautiful, peaceful freedom from all that is an incredible relief.
Oh and I don’t miss cooking nightly for someone who would regularly (at least fortnightly) pretend they’d found a hair in their food. The expressions of horror, blame, disgust etc.
For any newbie chumps this trick is about making sure the chump cooking appliance continues to cook the cheater roast meat, gravy, roast potatoes and three veg every night (insert cheater’s favourite, likely complicated choice of food) but making sure they undermine the chump and keep the chump off balance.
Cheater wanted my good food to keep on coming so they never criticised the food itself but they just wanted to make me feel wretched and fearful and bad about myself by pretending that they’d found yet another hair in it….
Took me literally years after they left to work out that it was make believe. You know what? Law of averages? I never got a mouthful of hair in my food, how come it happened to them all the time but not to me? That it didn’t seem to happen to our (rare) guests?….I was a properly boiled frog.
I used to be so upset and apologetic when they yet again found a dreaded hair in their lovingly prepared meal. Guess they liked seeing my distress. Sick. I think they liked tricking me too and probably at the same time despised me for not understanding their “game”.
FREEDOM.
I’ll add, never feeling like I was quite good enough. I was striving for an approval that I’d never receive. I didn’t realize I was being abused and how bad it had become. I accepted his abuse as normal.
Oh Brit. That’s me as well. 🥴xx
Ooh, that’s the first I’ve seen someone else point that out about food. Yes, they do that. I’m a pretty good baker. Any time I baked anything he would say it was so, so good but then claim he got a big clump of baking soda or powder in a bite.
Every. Fucking. Time.
It never happened to me or anyone else. Our last thanksgiving I made gingerbread cookies which everyone raved about. Oh, but my poor ex. He got the one with a big clump of baking soda in it. I wasn’t having it anymore. How the fuck did you get the cookie with all the baking soda in it but they all baked perfectly? If it was all in a clump in one cookie, they wouldn’t have baked properly.
Cut to a couple weeks before the divorce and I made a quick bread. He took a slice and oh no! A big clump of baking soda! Ew! So gross!
I said calmly, “There’s no baking soda or baking powder in that bread you fucking liar.”
He starts defending himself, “Well, I got a clump of something that tasted bad! I’m the victim here! It’s my fault I got a mouthful of an unmixed ingredient?”
Un fucking real
KP I wonder if your ex had some sort of persecution complex – like extreme paranoia that you were trying to poison him, albeit with baking soda. Years ago I was assisting a client, who was also a convicted pedophile, try to get his driver’s licence back. He was uploading his dashcam onto youtube showing all the bad drivers around town. If you looked carefully, he was positioning himself so that the other driver had to avoid colliding with him, not always successfully, but on the face of it he looked like the victim of the other person’s bad driving. He had his licence taken off him for being in a disproportionate number of accidents compared to the general population (I think there was a secondary purpose to this in that he had been driving buses that sometimes had families with children on them, so it disrupted his ability to access children in that way). Someone within Department Transport who was familiar with the victim mentality of a narcissistic pedophile obviously knew what was going on (or was working in collaboration with police), because back then when I was naive to these people, I thought the whole thing seemed a bit unfair. Nothing would surprise me anymore.
I grew up with huge food issues because my mother (clusterB) fancied herself quite the cook and (I now realize) never wanted to be challenged in that area. She never taught me anything in the kitchen then criticized/humiliated any efforts on my part to learn and she literally refused to make foods I liked then harassed me for not eating the crazy shit she cooked and demanded compliments for – it was awful.
Cheater seized upon this particular clusterfuck of dysfunction I grew up with and made it worse. Perhaps the worst example was one Thanksgiving when he redirected me to stop working in the kitchen and help him/ do something else over and over and over …he kept it up all day until just before dinner time, he said “kids, are all going to McDonalds” then looked me in the face and with cold, steely precision said “I cant wait to go into work on Monday and tell everyone that me and the kids had to go to McDonalds for Thanksgiving because you wouldn’t cook. ”
Back then, I saw each moment of cruelty individually and I did not allow my mind to go to the place where I would admit to myself that they were not random quirks but rather a pattern of abuse to intentionally inflict pain on me.
I hope he chokes on a hairball.
Sorry, more than three, got a bit carried away! 🤣
I had to think because it was so long ago.
I do remember the way he would flip his towel after a shower to dry his lower parts. He would also sit on the toilet forever with the door wide open. It was a small one bath house. He really enjoyed his BMs.
The weirdest was that he ate macaroni with butter and salt pretty much every night of his life. No matter what else was available.
I had forgotten about the door wide open for bowel movements. Also for peeing. Over forty years of it. I was relieved, no pun intended, when it changed. Thought he finally got some manners. Didn’t realize it was because he was texting online Schmoopie(s) and looking at porn.
There are many things I don’t miss! Sorry I came up with my top 5!
1. The loud snoring
2. The constant TV on
3. Going to bed early w/o a word to me. He complained that I go to bed too late and I couldn’t talk to him in bed because sleep was sacred. Meanwhile I was trying to get everything done-household/children responsibilities and be ready for work the next day. While he did next to nothing to help because he was relaxing in front of the tv. I would realize he was no longer downstairs but the tv was still on and he would be asleep in bed! Why he couldn’t turn the tv off or say goodnight is beyond me.
4. I don’t miss the shower snots or him picking his nose and leaving his boogers on things.
5. He wasn’t a hoarder but pretty close. I would try to get rid of furniture and he would find a place for it in the garage or basement. I would try to declutter and he would buy more stuff from yard sales. It has taken me several years to get rid of his junk and I’m still working on it. It has been nice to be able to park my car in the garage!
One of the biggest gifts I gave myself was a full size dumpster in the driveway for two weeks. I threw all of his hoarded junk in it – collected during 30 years of “marriage.” I put some of my stuff on top so he wasn’t aware his stuff was gone until after the dumpster was picked up.
Here’s your theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfpiCAYJmFY
He would pester me for sex at the most inappropriate times, claiming it was “hot”, but I actually think he got off thinking he embarrassed me.
He would sly stare at other women, pretending he was doing it low key but in an obvious way that I would see him.
He would sometimes turn & walk away from me as I walked up to him & others in a group.
It just now clicked that all three of his worst douchiest things are of him wanting to humiliate me.
Oh, so many things. Another one for the smell. Even the kids complain about it.
We never walk anywhere together, he’s always 8 feet ahead not looking back. This continued with little kids when they were toddlers, he did the same with them. Even in airports and outside camping near water. I never let him take them anywhere because of this.
Always yelling at the kids every time they sneeze or cough or talk with their mouths full, but constantly spraying his own germs everywhere and literally yelling at them with food in his mouth.
Called everything in the house clutter no matter how often the kids or I use it and regularly threatened to trash our belongings, but saved every tiny scrap of wood or broken electronic because “it might be useful some day”
He treated my parents like garbage and barely spoke to them, but yelled at me because his parents thought I didn’t like them even though I was kind and respectful every minute of every awful interaction we ever had.
So many things.
He would also walk in front of me – so dismissive.
Yes, when affair started.
Also don’t miss sarcasm, and taking non urgent calls and having a big convo. in the middle of ours.
My Cheater also did that and I found it so dismissive. My now-husband lags behind like a toddler looking at pebbles. I often find myself ahead of him. As a specific act of love, I force myself to stop or circle back to rejoin him. It is really easy to forget but I dont want him to look back and remember seeing the back of my head 10 steps in front of him.
Mine liked to take things I told her in confidence and turn them into stories when she was holding court at dinner parties. If someone’s attention wandered in the slightest, she would call them by name and rope them back in. And every story was dramatized and embellished, truth be damned. At first it seemed harmless.
Mine would do this too. I remember towards the end of the marriage my sister posted a picture of us (unflattering for me) with a bitchy comment on it on social media. I ignored it but mentioned to him that it was bitchy and I was just going to ignore her and pretend I didn’t see it.
The next time she came over she mentioned something about the picture. I said I hadn’t seen it. He starts grinning like an idiot and saying “Yes you did! You saw it!” and laughing and grinning. I sat there stone faced and said “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He repeated this several times and I would not give in and eventually I asked him if he was feeling ok mentally because he wasn’t making any sense. His smile faded and he left the room.
Later he was like, “I shouldn’t have said that.” I just ignored him because what is there even to say? He spent 20 years humiliating me every chance he got. Looking back now I realize just how much I stopped taking his shit the last six months because I was getting healthy. No wonder he got so angry and demanded a divorce. I was fucking done and I wouldn’t engage with him anymore.
At one point in my marriage I was so depressed I had trouble getting up and going to things. So I started to go to therapy. My husband accompanied me to my first appointment, and waited in the waiting room while I was talking with the therapist. She had a white noise machine by the door so people outside couldn’t hear the conversations with her clients. It also drowned out conversations and noise coming from outside.
I came out of the appointment and found him in the waiting room chatting with another woman, and he was telling her EVERYTHING about my depression and why I was there. To a complete stranger.
This! XH “accidentally” spilled any confidences, and then would state he did it for my benefit.
I worked in office part time and a patient tells me how sorry she is about my alcoholic sister. WTF. Why would you talk about that to someone I don’t know & didn’t know my sister?
I had this Sandyfeet. After we split I had the receptionist at my son’s school tell me about my problems to conceive
Ex FW had told all and sundry when we’d literally had the conversation to keep it private, when we were together
Goodness knows what else he told people
The true telltale just occurred to me. You want her in the room, just close the door. She’d be along in a sec, and open it without knocking.
So many of mine are already here. Hope I don’t duplicate!
He would say he intended to do something very basic, like take the trash out, then he wouldn’t do it. If I then did it, he would act indignant, as if I had insulted him by taking away his opportunity to do the thing, and sulk openly, sometimes for hours.
He painted wildly squiggly abstract acrylic paintings on cheap canvasses, using eye-exploding color combinations, then wanted to put them up all over our home, unframed and with paint-streaked unfinished edges. He resisted limits, wanting every single painting to go up, even to the exclusion of other artwork, and perceived any desire to limit the number as unsupportive of his creativity.
Whenever we went to visit family or friends, he would go to the bathroom promptly, take a smelly dump, and leave the door open upon exiting. He once even did this when we stayed a night with some people we had never met who were hosting us at a nationwide event. I developed a habit of waiting for him to leave the bathroom at these times to flush a second time, spray any air freshener they had in the toilet bowl, turn on a fan if they had one, and close the door. And you guessed it, he got offended. Thought I was being too parental.
So I guess you can boil him down to “being mega selfish and sulking when expected to competently adult”. 😂
Dickhead would get this scrunched up “are you stupid?” face whenever I asked a question or needed his help. Gawd, I don’t miss that all. And, one wonders why I don’t like asking people for anything when the one person I should have expected support from was the one who never gave it and made feel bad for even asking or having expectations. He was huge piece of shit that I do not miss.
Don’t miss:
Subtle information about his life he gave for a dig or to see see what I’d tolerate. ex. Going to a concert but couldn’t get a ticket for me or a threesome details his “ friend “ participated in
-Watching him buy multiples of things he liked. Shoes, coats, motorcycles, campers, sex workers( didn’t see that one but later heard about those. See above )
-Being the marriage police since he rarely was around
-Listening to him talk excessively without saying anything or ever asking about others unless it was gossip to repeat to someone later. He loved gossip
-His smell- a musty walking bong. I never figured how to wash that from his clothing. It makes me gag remembering it
-The dead eye judgmental stare
-His anger/moods
-The entitlement
-if he was home, his 5 am self sex sessions in the bathroom that reeked when he opened the door.
– obsessiveness over his things but never doing maintenance on our home
-neglected kids
– his relationship with his parents
-being abused
– the accusations but learned it was everything he was doing
-all the drama and chaos that he left in his wake and always blamed someone else then expected me to fix whatever
-being married to someone whose emotional growth peaked at around 14 or younger. Incapable of change
– his always wanting what someone else has and schemes to get things
-his extreme selfishness
1. Buying duplicates/ triplicates/ multiples of crappy things. He was so disorganized he never knew where he kept anything and would go and buy more even though he already had many of the thing. Tools were big for this – for example a variety pack of cheaply made screwdrivers even though he already had tons of screwdrivers. Shop vacs. I found no fewer than 6 circular power saws and 5 power drills dispersed around the rental property we bought together (and that I now manage 100% of). He hasn’t come back for them. And he works in construction. So he must have at many more of each out there at other job sites. He also had multiple vehicles at a time, that were always breaking down and that he was constantly having to repair or move because of street cleaning (too many to fit in the garage) or forgetting about and getting parking tickets. I guess this is a metaphor for his relationships – why not have just one that works and take care of it when he can have multiples in various states of disrepair?
2. Also (as others have mentioned) did the walking in front of me thing.
3. Also (again, as others have mentioned) was clumsy and always dropping, breaking things.
Oddly enough though, only MY things got broken. Never his!
Same. He never broke anything of his. I love to collect glassware and dishes. I can’t tell you how many he smashed.
Lundy Bancroft talks about that in his book. Violent men always break/smash your things, never their own. Which lays bare their excuse, “I just lost control”. Fuckwit did that to me too.
My XH the substance abuser did this–“accidentally” or maybe not so much.
Yeah, mine too. He smashed all of my coffee mug collection while I was getting ready for a job interview, then screamed at me that I had too many coffee mugs.
One time when I was on call, he wanted us to paint the closet doors. I got called into work, so he painted the closet doors. Somehow, he managed to get a streak of paint across every one of my jackets, coats, etc. None on his, interspersed with mine; only on my outerwear. He said he was sorry “your jackets got paint on them.” Yeah, right. Winter came early that year — it was -20 degrees and all I had was the fleece jacket and Goretex shell I was wearing when he did his painting that day. I was FREEZING. He couldn’t imagine what the problem was because HE was warm enough. I ordered a parka online, and it was supposed to show up at our rented mailbox on Tuesday. He disappeared with the car all day Tuesday and Wednesday during the hours the mailbox place was open so that I couldn’t get my parka. Thursday was warm again and I didn’t need the jacket, so then he let me use the car to go pick it up.
When FW “lost control” and beat the shit out of me, I realized when my doctor commented that they only (generally speaking) beat you where it can’t be seen – i.e. hidden by clothes – and that was so true of my FW. And I asked him once if he “lost control” with his boss at work and exploded. When he said no, then I told him he never actually “lost control” did he!!!
Sounds like he had ADHD honestly. I have it and do #1 and #3. You don’t have to like it or marry it, of course.
After cook
I don’t miss his family’s recipes. They were all full of fat, salt, and/or sugar, and frankly, I did not like any of them. When we went there or visited one of his siblings, of course, we had to ooh and aah as I watched them take multiple plates washed down with soda. My tastes don’t run that way, and I prefer not to be in a food coma after dinner. His mother provided a family cookbook, and I had to make those dishes (of course). As my ex aged, that’s mostly what he wanted.
After he left, our college kids were blunt about how little they liked those recipes, so that was that. I sent him the family cookbook once he got settled and returned to the healthy cooking I had been raised with. Thankfully, both of them never did embrace that type of eating.
Oh, Elsie, isn’t it glorious to finally be able to enjoy something so basic as eating what you actually enjoy?
Constant complaints/remarks about something not being done well enough, like the house was never tidy enough, the food was not master chef level cooked, accusing me of shrinking his clothes (when I always washed according to instructions)… accusing me of basically everything he would find bad or not good enough or annoying in a certain moment, I was just where he would chanel all his frustrations.
Ignoring my texts or calls for hours with some lame excuse, when every time he was with me, he was basically glued to his phone, responsive to everyone and everything, texting and taking calls even in the middle of dinners or family moments. God, I hated that shit. Of course if I would do the same or check my phone during family time (which almost never happened), I would get a complaint from him in a matter of seconds. Fucking double standards everywhere.
1) FW had to be right ALL the time. With me, her sisters, mom, everyone. She never listened to anyone else’s opinion or considered any differing point of view. It was always her way. Hell, she thought she was God.
2) Fast food pretty much every day. I eat very healthy, but I can see treating yourself a couple times a month. But, for FW XW it was BK, McDs, hot dogs, etc. every damn day, disgusting!
3) FW did absolutely NO housework. Even though I watched the kids most of the time, I also did ALL of the house cleaning and upkeep. I still do all the housework, but now it’s my damn house (yes, I got the house)!
Yes, the fast food hamburger addiction. Blech. All those goddamn sesame seeds all over his car (eating in the car is my #1 deal breaker). And congrats on getting the house, WisedUp!
He picks his nose and eats it. It has been fifty six years since he was in preschool.
He prides himself on how small a bag he can pack for a trip. This economic genius meant he brought a single pair of underwear for a week long trip and washed it in the bathroom sink every night.
As a huge fan of Lynyrd Skynryd, he took their advice to be a simple kind of man. One of his favorite movies is Roadhouse, starring Patrick Swayze. I too love Lynyrd Skynrd, but hate Roadhouse, and I never have to see it ever again. He’s probably watching it right now as I write this. My efforts at broadening his cultural horizons were unsuccessful, as evidenced by his secret side piece.
She’ll need subtitles.
He loved that movie too. FW Favorite quote “PAIN DON’T HURT”, dumbest line ever.
You shouldn’t have to ask someone more than once to please roll down the window of the car if you fart. I had to ask, every time. For twenty seven years.
When eating, he sticks his tongue out so it’s under the chosen utensil, ostensibly to catch any spills. Proof that his brain is stuck in reptilian brain gear. Little Hammer noticed this too. It grossed both of us out. Licking his fingers loudly instead of using a napkin pretty much cemented my habit of averting my eyes while eating with him, and
He never once responded to polite requests to modify his behavior. I did so, many times.
Most importantly, I did not use my grievances, which I spoke up about, as an excuse to cheat, while after DDay he rolled out a laundry list of unspoken grievances to justify his treachery.
Of course I have habits that would bother others, but one of them is not abusing someone and blaming it on their behavior.
“Of course I have habits that would bother others, but one of them is not abusing someone and blaming it on their behavior.”
Exactly!! We all do.
Btw, related to your request that he open a window as a consideration for the passengers: I was always stunned when FW would pull into a gas station on the hottest day of the year and NOT think to crack open the windows for those of us inside, even after I pointed it out to him. Why was that so hard?
Of course, if I didn’t extend certain courtesies to him, all hell would break loose. #doublestandards 🙄 Can’t believe I put up with that shit.
Spinach, I sure have my foibles and idiosyncrasies and issues, and I have cringed in recognition reading here today. (I sometimes blow my nose in the shower. But never as a houseguest.)
But I delight in knowing that Traitor Ex and the Craigslist Cockroach’s illicit relationship, a fantasy that was not sustainable, is now Real Life in harsh light out of the shadows, with all their foibles, idiosyncrasies, and issues, which include character rot, untrustworthiness, a lack of empathy, and missing moral compasses. She didn’t get a good guy who was free and clear and single and now she’s the one who has to drink her daily dose of denial while he lies to her and cheats on her. He chose a woman of equally disordered character who has her eye on his wallet, and is maybe fucking around on him too. Not even counting the involved child they were both happy to knife in the heart.
That is the sweet smell of karma, IMHO.
Karma, indeed.
I remind myself that ex didn’t get a character transplant. If anything, he’s probably even more shitty, mean, angry, and moody now that he’s feeling the consequences of his behavior, which includes estrangement from his own kids and a much-less robust bank account. [I want to pause here to thank my kick-ass lawyer.]
I can’t imagine what it must be like in their house. Wifetress is a serial cheater, also with eyes firmly fixed on his wallet. (She went after at least one other MD in their group before focussing all her flirty energy on him.) Oh, and she cheated on her own husband. I’m sure FW is still rage driving and porn surfing. He’s still stomping around the house. He’s still addicted to fly fishing.
Fun times!!
“He’s all yours, schmoopie. He’s all yours.” #karma
After cooking his fav meals for years, told me he just wanted something “different”. Uh huh. And he really asked me to groom the hair off a mole on his shoulder – as he was getting ready to meet up with the twit twat. But he also developed heinously bad breath all of a sudden when he started cheating. But that woman stayed with that. Even his kids were horrified about how dad suddenly smelled horrid. I guess when you let Satan in, it exudes all sorts of ways. Omgosh just reading all these, glad to have escaped them.
His poor boundaries.
His nasty passive aggressive conflict avoidant playing dumb routine.
His shitty toupee.
I just see the words “shitty toupee” and laugh out loud. Klootzak was an occasional user of Rogaine and I have wondered if he will end up in the shitty toupee club.
Oooh! I’ll play – though it’s hard to narrow it down to three🤣!
1) I won’t miss him coming home from work in his fancy suits and getting undressed, only to stalk me, catch me unaware, and then rub his smelly, sweaty socks in my face. Yes, you read that right. In. My. Face. When I’d complain and ask him to stop because that was disgusting, he’d tell me that I was “too sensitive.”
2) I won’t miss how he would come up behind me when I was bent over (putting on clothes, tying my shoes, picking up something from the floor) and hit my behind so hard it would knock me over. Then he’d say “you need to learn how to fall better.”
3) I won’t miss how I would “miss” my cues to back him up in a lie. It wasn’t enough that I wouldn’t contradict him, I had to be an active participant in the lies or he’d be furious that I wasn’t better “thinking on my feet.”
There are a TON more – him being hypercritical about how I cleaned (“do you really need a WetJet? Why can’t you use an old-fashioned mop?”), cleaning up “crinkly” socks (eeew!), how long and disgusting his fingernails were…
Amazing, isn’t it, that we were always “too sensitive”, but we were expected to constantly accommodate *their* ‘sensitivities’.
Hearing that I’m “too sensitive.” It’s now been eight years since the divorce and I haven’t heard it once, used to hear it ALL the f***ing time.
Wow, what an abuser. I’m so glad you got away!!!
The sports obsession… and the way he would gate-keep other people’s reasons for liking the teams they liked.
His mouth breathing & bad breath.
His toenail fungus & recurring athlete’s foot.
Love really is blind sometimes.
I don’t miss his daily weed habit and the drain on our finances. He insisted on buying the “best” and most expensive, of course.
He was a lousy kisser, a perfunctory lover.
He drove too fast and aggressively. I hated riding in a car with him. Altercations with other drivers happened often and it was very scary. One altercation ended up with both him and the other driver getting out of their cars at a red light, almost leading to blows. Our 5 year old was in her car seat, terrified. My daughter told me about other incidences when I wasn’t in the car.
He’d slam, throw and break things when he got angry or frustrated. Some things expensive and/or precious. A couple of laptops, cell phones. He threw a lamp and almost hit our chihuahua. It could have killed her. I kicked him out that night, but of course took him back the next day.
Any or all of these things will be an immediate dealbreaker in any future relationships.
Nemesis, another driver pointing a gun at us on the freeway for who knows what cured my urge to respond to other drivers. I’m glad you weren’t killed. It happens.
If another driver is seriously out of line, I ask Siri to call the highway patrol and I let them handle it.
❤️
Only three? I could come up with a million!
1.) Racist comments. Only made AFTER we married. My father transferred to the South when I was a child because he was successful in desegregating a department store in the north. I literally grew up color blind. Finding out you’re married to a racist is just awful.
2.) Constantly worried he’ll be fired. Because he was one and a half months after our wedding. Because he committed fraud. The only reason he wasn’t arrested was because my father knew the victim and talked him out of pressing charges. Getting fired ought to be enough (but it wasn’t).
3.) The showboating. Always having to be better than. Ever more expensive cars (he had 4 in the seven years I knew him. I had zero). The best designer clothing (that I paid for, I had to either go without or only buy on sale). Expensive vacations that yup, you guessed it, I paid for (it was ghastly travelling with him — couldn’t be pleased and just couldn’t roll with the flow).
So glad he’s out of my life!
I forgot about the racism! I had to constantly remind him to say “Asian” instead of oriental. He never used the N word that I can recall, but he still considered people of color to be “less than”. So, I was pretty surprised when he left for and eventually married a Chinese massage parlor ho who can barely speak English. Or, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. The fact that he considers her to be “less than” may be a huge part of the appeal.
Mine was also fired from multiple jobs. I’ll probably never know the true reasons.
Mine used to refer to his bi-racial nephew and niece as “coffee and creams, who always have a chip on their shoulders”. Always behind their backs of course , and nice as pie to their mother’s faces.
By the way, why is “oriental” deemed offensive ?
I would google this and read through the responses for a more expanded explanations on using Asian v. Oriental.
It seems to be considered offensive in the US, but not the UK.
1. fussiness about having the exact ingredients in a recipe. “don’t use dried parsley, you need fresh parsley. what’s wrong with you? you’re not following the recipe and recipes are meant to be followed exactly.”
2. hogging the vanity of every hotel room we stayed in. he’d rush in and spread his stuff across most/all of the available space.
3. walking ahead of me, not opening the door and ushering me into a public room unless there were other people, who he valued, in attendance. it’s all about the image.
and for a bonus, tearing down other people’s appearance everywhere we would go. it was a running commentary of “why is he dressed like that? he looks terrible.” and “she looks good in that skirt but that blazer is all wrong.”
Oh, this is easy! I don’t miss
* seeing skid marks on whitey tighties in the wash
* watching him down peanut butter on bread, as if he were starving, as I’m doing dishes from the wonderful meal I prepared & we all enjoyed
* watching him run to get the trash cans out, triggered only by hearing the garbage truck coming down the street
*have to add a 4th – he expected me to enjoy sex when he smelled gross. “I’m just gonna need a shower afterwards”
Douchebag
Same regarding the garbage cans. It was one of his few household responsibilities. He told me one of the reasons he left was because he was tired of taking out the garbage cans. 🙄
Yep, me too. The garbage was FW’s only regular household chore, yet he refused to do it properly. He would get the kitchen garbage and ignore the garbage from the other rooms, forcing me to take care if it. When you are doing garbage for three bathrooms and three bedrooms, not having to do the kitchen garbage is not even a labor saver. Yeesh, what a passive aggressive little shit.