Hi bosker bear, hope you are still reading even if you aren't posting.
I too got beyond mad at the complete lack of consequences stbxah seemed to experience.
I realise actually that he does have consequences, although it still seems not as many as I'm sure I would have if I behaved like that. It does feel almost as if the more outrageous your behaviour the more likely you are to attract a sort of stunned help, people almost seem to rush to get you out of holes, almost unable to believe that anyone could really have got themselves into such a pickle through their own actions. Whereas if you do something slightly wrong, that can seem to be punished severely.
Or maybe its that if you behave really badly, then you attract the sort of person who reacts with a stunned help, with everyone else giving you a wide berth in the first place.
I wouldn't want to live on my aunt's sofa, no home, no job, borrowing lap-tops, not financially supporting my child, living on unemployment benefits. So to me these would be very difficult consequences. This is not a judgement on those who do have to rely on unemployment benefits, which I think are a neccessary part of a civilised society, or to anyone who loses a home, or cannot support their child as they would wish. Just that if these things happened to me as a result of my actions, I wouldn't consider myself to have dodged a bullet.
and yes, I wanted bad things to happen to him, I often felt mean and nasty and angry, it wasn't pleasant being in that frame of mind, hope you are able to find a little peace.
I have been on these boards for 4? 5 years (I lost my first log in) I didn't post much about my situation, and still don't as ex broke into my computer ages ago, found out who I was and tracks what I write, but I know that reaching out and writing it down is brave and courageous, especially if you are afraid of critisism or needing external validation. I am a very slow emotional learner, it took me a long time to "get" and much longer still to put into practice the things that people talk about here, and much longer still for things to become an easy habit that isn't painful.
Some things I have learned are that when I have an emotional reaction to something that someone else writes, either directly to me or about themselves, the important thing was for me to look at why, what that could tell me about my thought processes, not theirs, because I can never really know why someone said something or what they meant, but I can work out why I react the way I do, and if I want to, work on changing that.
It was SO hard to turn my focus away from someone else when that is how I had been used to thinking, like my brain got used to walking a certain path on automatic and just wouldn't get off of it. The small steps at the beginning ARE the hardest ones, it's like turning a tanker in my experience, my feelings and thinking patterns have a lot of inertia. So congratulate yourself that you didn't immediately rush to his emotional rescue when his ex was angry and harsh due to him not pulling his weight financially. Recognising that is his consequence and leaving it to him.
have you thought about something you could do today that would make your life better in 30 days time? just your life, no reference to anyone else; could be reading a new book, tackling your finances, learning a new skill, going to AL-anon, committing to only worrying for no more than 1 hour a day, walking at lunch-time? whatever you want, just pick one thing and then congratulate yourself for that. This may seem like a nonsense suggestion, but I found it helped distract me, something new, and at the end of the 30 days as a bonus, I had something new and good in my life (a new skill, therapy, less debt, etc)