I'm dating a very lovely man after the end of a very shitty 10 year marriage. In the last 2 weeks I have basically ended a going nowhere entry level job and started my dream career.

In absolute textbook behaviour, my boyfriend

  1. had a beautiful bouquet of flowers (that looked really expensive) delivered to me when I told him I got the job
  2. on the day I left my old job brought fancy restaurant takeout and nice wine, because we are in lockdown (he's in my support bubble) and he said he would have preferred to take me out for dinner but that's all we can do at the moment
  3. Texted me on the morning I was due to start to ask if there was anything that I needed and to check in with how I was feeling
  4. Brought me coffee on my break on my first day (he lives around the corner from my office and is WFH)
  5. Is being incredibly understanding about my evident imposter syndrome and is constantly telling me how brilliant I am (I'm kind of in the same industry as him now so he knows a lot of my peers and tells me I'm better than they are, and I think believes it)

I used to think that this sort of thing only happened to women in films and not in real life, which looking back feels pretty pathetic and I'm almost ashamed at how little I thought I deserved.

The added side effect of decent behaviour now though is that now that I have someone treating me with the respect I deserve, I feel much more confident in dealing with my ex, so I'm being much more assertive about making him accommodate our kid's schedule so that I can work, as I worked around him for many years believing he was more important. Now I know that my needs (and obviously my son's needs) are as important as his and if he's inconvenienced he can go and whistle!