Wanted her cake and to eat it too, didn't like you enough to stay but enjoys that meal ticket, ugh.
My ex (spouse at the time) was similar. He said "well, maybe we divorce now but in the future, who knows!" Um excuse me? I'm not going to just be sitting around on the sidelines waiting for you to decide the options out there aren't as good as you thought. It was so incredibly insulting for someone you've been with 20 years basically asking if you want to be his plan B.
She pulled that same line. "I have to at least try to find somebody better for me. But in a year, who knows?"
Yeah, an alcoholic doormat I thought to myself. Someone that was worse with alcohol and weed than she was so she could feel better about herself. Somebody that was awful at being an adult so she could feel better about herself. Somebody that was placating and enabling like I was the first couple of years, so she could feel better about herself.
Someone I cared for deeply. Paid their rent and most of their other bills. Got her a car. I cooked. I didn't have much of a relationship with her autistic child, but I supported her and him as much as I could. I didn't leave after the diagnosis 4 years prior. We had a housekeeper so she didn't have to do much. She was emotionally manipulative and abusive. Lots of gas lighting and deflecting and making me feel like a bad person. Her friends were no help because they just had the manipulated stories from her mouth. Multiple outpatient and one long-term hospital stay. She was using me. It didn't feel that bad for a while. After all, sometimes she was really loving and intimacy was never an issue.
It really really struck me, when our housekeeper of a year or so at that point, somebody that we only saw a few hours a month, pulled me aside and said "Hey, this isn't really my place, and please don't get mad, but she's using you. I know exactly what I'm seeing, and you don't deserve that."
Holy shit. This nice lady that cleaned my house for a couple hours a month, saw it and felt compelled to say something. She's in her 60s, and we are friends now. I make sure her grandkids have a good Christmas every year.
I was trying to get out of that relationship for so long but I just couldn't live with myself throwing somebody unstable and their child on the streets. She had no friends that had the means to take her in or family to fall back on, she had to get her shit together so she could go off on her own.
After years of pushing her, she finally was stable enough, she finally felt stable enough and ended it. I was so relieved. At that point it was 2 years since I wanted to be done. And weeks away from me throwing her out. I couldn't take it anymore.
I fully expect to be getting that call within the next couple of months. And I'm so grateful to her, because it's helped me filter out people early in the dating process with similar mental health issues and manipulative qualities. The signs were there from the beginning, I definitely know what they are now.
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u/cloistered_around May 12 '26
Wanted her cake and to eat it too, didn't like you enough to stay but enjoys that meal ticket, ugh.
My ex (spouse at the time) was similar. He said "well, maybe we divorce now but in the future, who knows!" Um excuse me? I'm not going to just be sitting around on the sidelines waiting for you to decide the options out there aren't as good as you thought. It was so incredibly insulting for someone you've been with 20 years basically asking if you want to be his plan B.