Dear Husband,
It's been 117 days since we decided to get a divorce and since you've lived in our house. A lot has happened in those 117 days.
In those 117 days, I have experienced more emotions than I knew it was possible for any one person to feel in such a short time period. My emotions have ranged from anger, hurt, sadness, abandonment, disappoint, hatred, and disgust, to clarity, understanding, numbness, meh, contentment, pride, and self-love. Over the course of the last 117 days, I have been forced to face the truth, which has caused me to grow and evolve and to find more inner strength than I knew I had, and that you certainly never would have believed I was capable of having.
During the first 60 of those 117 days, I missed you terribly. I missed being married. I missed the comfort of knowing I had a spouse and a partner. I missed the good times we shared, the simple daily things we did as husband and wife, the family we had created. Then, around day 60, I started to miss you less. I learned the truth about who you are and the reality of what our marriage was.
From day 60-100, I stopped missing you and missed the man you pretended to be. I missed the man I thought always had my back, the man who once defended me to an unfair boss. I missed the man who went out for late-night donut runs after the kids were in bed, the man who stopped at bakeries on the way home to bring me treats. I missed the man who made me laugh, who laid on the couch with me to watch TV, who played cards and board games with me. But I realized it had been a long time since you had stopped pretending to be that man. I was missing a ghost, a figment of both your and my imaginations. There's no sense missing something that never really existed.
So where am I now, past day 100? I no longer miss you. I mean, what would I be missing, really?
I don't miss being your maid. You expected me to clean the house, buy the food, prepare the meals, chauffeur all the kids (yours and mine), do the laundry, wash the dishes, ensure the homework was done and showers were taken, and pay the bills on time. You expected me to do this by myself. You didn't help with these chores. For the longest time, I couldn't understand why you refused to help me. I wasted so much energy fighting with you over this. Now I know that you couldn't be bothered because if I was willing to do it, even while complaining about it, there was no reason for you to help. Plus, you were probably so exhuasted from all of your extramarital escapades that you had no energy left to help your wife.
I don't miss fearing you would give me an STD. You were galavanting around, having unprotected sex with who knows how many women, for the entire course of not only our marriage but probably our entire relationship. It is a miracle that you never gave me a disease. But the fact that you would put my health at risk by having unprotected sex with other women, some of whom you probably barely knew, and then have sex with me, is just despicable. So I don't miss risking my health for you.
I also don't miss you putting my child's safety in danger when you snuck out of the house in the middle of the night for trysts when I was out of town for work. You left a child - whose age is still in the single digits - home alone in bed so you could have sex. What kind of man does this?
I don't miss the way you made me feel. You lied, gaslighted, and manipulated. You made me question my self-worth. You made me feel ashamed of who I am, feel guilty for spending time with my child, and feel unattractive and undesired. I don't miss the constant worrying that I wasn't good enough or that you would choose someone else over me.
I don't miss the person I was when I was with you. I was insecure. I drifted apart from my friends and family members. I gave up activities I truly enjoyed. I lost my sense of self.
So, no, Husband, I don't miss you anymore. Because there was nothing good to miss. Instead of missing you now, I look forward to what's to come for me. I have no idea what the world has in store, where life will take me, what path I will end up on. But I know that no matter what happens, it will be better than life with you. I will be happier than I ever was with you.
But I do wonder, when Other Woman #4 leaves you, and you have no house, no nice things, no one to take care of you, when you are left with nothing, will you miss me? I'm betting the answer is yes.
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