Instead of enjoying unpacking and getting settled into my new home, I’ve been dealing with fears about finances, changes in my family dynamic, and helping children cope with their emotions.

Thursday I walked into my house and saw my 3 youngest children sobbing while my mother held them. She was crying too. Apparently my husband thought it was a good idea to announce to the kids, without discussing it with me first or having me present, that he was moving into the downstairs apartment and we might be getting divorced.

I was furious that I walked into this shitshow unprepared. He was acting like a petulant, pouting CHILD. That had been his m.o. since the beginning and I was so DONE with his emotional immaturity.

The next few days were not great for my husband and me. I was barely containing my anger and found it best not to speak to him in person. Rather, I would email him so that I had a moment to think carefully about how I would sound. And I would have a record of his words to me, which became increasingly offensive, which made me even angrier.

HE did this. I would have gone to my grave married to him. HE caused these unwanted changes in our family. And then had the audacity to tell me about his childish, exaggerated doom and revenge scenarios that he thought I would commit against him.

The last one was the final straw. After I communicated in a civil fashion, I got this email:

Since it’s inevitable can you please not bring men you meet at a bar to the house. There is no need to endanger the children… If you do… that would cross a boundary and I will take legal action.

This email INFURIATED ME.

Not only have I NEVER picked up a man in a bar in my entire LIFE, but I’ve only had sex with two men, both of whom were my husbands!

I’ve also never put my children in danger since the oldest was born 24 years ago.

How DARE me talk to me in this way. This was when I decided to hire an attorney. I pulled up the attorney retainer agreement in my email and filled it out. I paid the $5,000. I’m DONE with this man.

At this point he began demanding that my mother, who had come up to be a support person for me during this time, go home. She cannot drive, but wanted my dad to come get her, and TOLD me to ask my dad to come get her.

The nerve! I refuse to be his communication go-between so he can avoid uncomfortable conversations.

In addition, he wanted to move my oldest daughter’s things out of her room so he could move into it.

I put my foot down and told him that under no circumstances was he to touch my daughter’s things. Not only is it creepy as fuck for him to move all of her personal belongings, but she was out of town at the time. I didn’t want her to come home to all of her stuff getting haphazardly tossed into a corner somewhere and him sleeping in her room.

No way in hell was I going to let him do that. My daughter’s emotional health is precarious, she’s in therapy and considering medication, and is very particular about her belongings. She’d spent months saving money she’d earned at her job to buy things to fix up her room in the new house. She’d already spent days unpacking and arranging things. If he was going to change everything and take her room out from under her due to HIS dishonesty, it wasn’t going to happen like this!

This angered him. He said to me, “You’re not my wife!”

I responded, “Oh YES I am. Like it or not I am still your wife and I still have a say what happens here, especially with regards to my daughter (his stepdaughter).”

At this point he walked off telling me over and over to fuck myself.

I was so embarrassed that this was happening in our front yard, in our new neighborhood. I didn’t want to be those type of people.

The next day we did have a civil conversation, and I was very clear that I would NOT tolerate his crazy, offensive predictions. I told him that he had been ignoring my needs and gaslighting me for years, getting angry at my lack of excitement about having lousy, unfulfilling, embarrassing, frustrating sex with him. I was justifiably angry after putting up with his sexual ineptitude and total lack of ability in bed. I was angry at all the times he couldn’t get or keep an erection. All the times he went limp in my mouth, my hand, inside me. That our sex life had revolved around his inability to perform. That I had been ignoring my own needs for the sake of the children for 13 years, and that THIS was the result.

My anger was pouring out now because my loneliness, frustration, pain, resentment and anger had been pushed down for so long. That he had been clueless to the extent I had been suffering in an attempt to “work it out”, “focus on the positive”, and other ways of sweeping issues under the rug to preserve HIS ego, pride and feelings.

He’s hurt because he’s lost his best friend and is now lonely and with zero support system in place. But that’s not my fault and it’s not my problem. It’s his problem to solve.

I encouraged him to call his parents and ask for their support and love, and to seek counseling.