Post-breakup clarity

About 3 months ago I found this sub. I started reading the handbook and all that was written there resonated with me. All this time I had been told I was asking, expecting too much of men. That if I wanted to be loved, I had to be easily lovable for them. This was the first place that told me, and taught me, to love myself first, to put myself first.

Putting myself first is something I've never truly done. When I found this sub, I was still in a relationship that had been going on for almost 4,5 years. In those years, he was my number one priority. I've put so much of my energy in him. As I read the handbook I noticed things about our relationship that were not ok, how LV he actually is, but blinded by love for him I confinced myself he was "medium value", perhaps he could become HV. At this stage I was doubting our relationship, so I did decide that he had to conform to certain standards I had but never enforced. Meanwhile he had doubted our relationship, which he had done multiple times before (should've left the 1st time), but this time came to the conclusion to end it. I told him I saw one last chance for our relationship; couples counceling and him putting in the energy I had put in all this time. Unsuprisingly, he did not want or could not do this.

Thus came an end to 4,5 years wasted on this boy.. He is 24-years-old, as am I, but he doesn't deserve the noun man. He truly is way too immature, still. Anyway, thanks to this sub I know two things: the reason that this relationship did not work does not lay with me, and I deserve way better than this. Although sometimes it still hurts, knowing these things make moving on so much easier. I've also vowed to never get attached to a man as quickly as I did before, and to be ready to leave them behind if they do not measure up.

On my do to list still stands the task of writing down all the reasons he sucked. I'd like to do it here so I can hear from you guys how much better off I am without him. So here it goes, all the behaviour I will never accept again:

1. When we lived together I communicated my bare minimum cleanliness standards. A clean counter, tidying up after yourself, and a clean toilet. He found me to be unreasonable, and "just like my mother". I had unrealistic standards, according to him. He couldn't pick up his dirty socks from behind the bed that came off during the night as he went to bed with them still on. Gross.
2. We split our direct costs of living 50/50, even though he earned 4x more than I did, and I had to get more student loans to be able to afford living expenses. That was fair, according to him. Whenever I was stressing out about money, he'd say that I was exaggerating and that I could easily manage with the money I had. I could not easily manage, I barely managed. I tried to borrow the least amount of money possible, so I was barely able to do fun stuff or buy mysef clothes. He did take me out for dinner like once every two months (insert sarcastic applause).
3. As mentioned before, after dating for 3 years he told me he sometimes doubted our relationship. Over the next 1,5 years, he told me 4 or 5 more times. I stopped counting, I did not take it seriously at a certain point anymore, though it hurt every time. We regularly talked about our future, so I thought it wasn't that serious. Apparently that was just talk, he did not truly imagine me in his future.
4. Speaking of talking about our future, I've struggled with mental health on and off the last few years. My dad died 6 years ago, so I was just kind of getting out of my grief when we got together. Then 2,5 years ago my grandpa had a heart attack. I was really scared of losing him, and it really brought back a lot. A year later my ex got a burn-out and I had to take care of EVERYTHING plus help him manage himself. At around the same time, my trauma was triggered (thinking of it now, maybe it had something to do with this..), and since then I've been struggling. I have been going to therapy on and off, working on it, but it's a slow process. Mental health has always been important to me, thus I've never had a problem calling in sick when I needed a mental health day. Well that's where the trouble started. He thought I was lazy, because I sometimes called in sick when I "wasn't sick". Of course he was right in his way of thinking, you should always go to work unless you are physically unable to. Wonder how he got burned out.. Anyway, I slowly had to do less and less, though the one thing I never dropped was taking care of him. I did let some things go, but I never stopped doing a lot of emotional labor for him (why?? why did I do this for him? ugh). This boy had the audacity to call me lazy. He imagined a future where he had to "do all the work" while I would sit on my ass at home all the time. Damn boy, where did you get that idea? When I carried the full mental load of our household? Or did all the emotional labor in our relationship? Maybe you picked that idea up when I took care of EVERYTHING when you had your breakdown and the first thing you picked up again was work instead of household tasks! I moved back in with my mom 2 months later, because it was too much for me.
5. Onto the next one, he never supported me emotionally. Certainly not in the extend I did for him, but a better way to put it is he did nothing at all in this department. I had to explain to him in full detail what it was like for me to life with my trauma for him to start to understand. I don't think he ever truly did. A few weeks back, when we were still together, we were hanging out with another friend who asked me what it was like. The friend was shocked at what I told him, he was super sympathetic and understanding. My ex moreso understood the gravity of what I said because of the reaction of our friend than because of my words. He never asked me how I was, like truly ask, or ask me if there was anything he could do for me. He'd just greet me and then I would ask him how his day was. He'd tell about his day and then.. asked me absolutely nothing. Seriously, if I think about it now I get so pissed, why did I stuck around for so long?
6. He never put me first, or second, or thirth. Until a year ago he worked in a bakery. If his boss asked him to jump up and down, he did. He worked nights, getting up at ridiculous times, and it was almost impossible to get the saturday off or to call in sick. I had to schedule any social engagements with friends and family into this reallly small window of sunday afternoon or evening or monday afternoon. All other days he had to go to bed early because of work, and after work I could not reliably plan anything cause even if he would've said to his boss: "I have to leave by this time", if work demanded it he would be working overtime. There was almost always a need for working overtime, so he was always tired, often working 10+ hours a day, 5 times a week. The time he wasn't tired, sleeping or working was often spend on chores (I had to ask him to do, multiple times, and he'd get angry at me for asking), social engagements or sports. I got his time when he was tired, so kinda worthless.
7. He was addicted to porn and sex in the beginning of our relationship, expecting to have sex multiple times a week. Once it "dwindled down" to once a week he would often complain. He sometimes tried to pressure me into sex. Not in a way where alarm bells were ringing, but more with nagging and "funny remarks" here and there. "I can't even remember the last time you gave me a BJ". Those kind of remarks. I have a bad history with this kind of behaviour from men, and felt very uncomfortable about it. I was and am more vocal about not liking this, but it took him 4 years to stop. He did quit watching porn and masturbating, which made it better as well.
8. Not respecting my boundaries. When I said no or stop, with tickling for example, he never directly stopped. He also was quite rough and would sometimes accidentally hurt me. So I started to loudly yelp whenever he hurt me. He said I should stop exaggerating, I said he really did hurt me, he never believed me. He did stop, when I would yelp, but still would vocalise that I was exaggerating so he was still being a dick.
9. Whenever we had arguments he would withdrawl/shut down emotionally at a certain point, and after that start making hurtful remarks. We've talked about it a lot, but he never saw the need to go to therapy for his inability to deal with (his own and others') emotions, even though he did recognize the behaviour from his dad and found it problematic in his dad.
10. He thought that my actions were to punish him, instead of protecting myself . Once I started to leave or send him away when the above happened, as he was hurting me and would not get out of it unless he'd have time alone, he thought I did it to punish him. He was so absorbed with himself that he truly thought my actions revolved around him. Perhaps also because for a long time, they did. Guess he couldn't deal with not being the most important thing to me.
11. For a time, he would deal with his anger by throwing with things or hitting stuff. I told him I would NOT tolerate that shit. That's the first step in the direction of physical abuse. He was mad about it at first, said it was normal for guys to express their anger that way. I send him an arcticle where a man explained how this was the first step to physical abuse, and he stopped.

I will say he is just VERY misguided and emotionally immature. I don't think he ever did any of those things with malicious intent or to cause me harm. I do think he truly loved me, he's just a far far way from being a HVM. I do hope for him to get there one day, to change for the better, though not for me but for him. I told him that if we were done, we would be done forever. No coming back in a week, a month, a year or even 10 year. I will stick to that. I believe every person has a change to become HV, but not with an ex-partner, because you will pick up those old patterns again. I'm glad that this is on paper, cause now if I'd ever have doubts I'll read my own words and KNOW to leave him in the past.

Not everything about our relationship was bad of course, otherwise I wouldn't have stuck around for 4,5 years (I'd like to think..). At the end I was putting my head in the sand and avoiding confronting myself with the facts because I wanted it to work, I wanted to grow old with him and have him see that he truly had a treasure in me. I am glad he broke that fantasy, and I will leave that fantasy in the past. This is the harsh lesson we all learn; we can't change a man if we show him enough love. I will take the lessons I've learned and the good memories with me.

For now I am focusing on improving myself. I've boughy The body keeps the score and The bullet journal method from the recommended reading list and I am so glad I can invest my energy in these books and myself. I hope therapy will start soon for me, though waiting lists are a b*tch. This time is for me, for healing and for self-betterment. I will not start dating before I fully love every aspect of myself and my life. When/if I start dating again, a man will be a nice addition to my life, not a fulfilling purpose for me. Until that time, I'll be here to read all your stories and to level up with you.

P.S. He wanted to stay friends after our breakup. Guess what I said? That's right, NO THANK YOU. We will be civil, but that's it.