The Lure for the NW, my Replacement

Backstory: EXNH-Psychopath announced his engagement to NW about 3 1/2 months after our divorce was final. Last June he was begging me to come back, because he couldn't find anybody else like me, he said. This June he will marry NW. [Insert Woman Here]

Don't think I'm sad. I'm not. I'm not disappointed or freaked out. I called it. I predicted it. Down to the Month of his marriage. It was validating to me to know that I was right - I was just a fixture, a tool, a toy, a caretaker, and was totally replaceable. I'm glad to be replaced. Yuck - why would I want to be there?

Eww.

So, what DOES mystify me is: how this woman is being lured. I'm learning. I'm figuring it out. My best friend is like: It's the MONEY. It's that HOUSE. And then I learn on here, OH yeah, it's my amazing children he uses as bait. She is in love with my kids. Eww. My kids are a prop, and a tool. And then it develops that he's hooked her on the promise of a certain lifestyle - -- so she tends the gardens that I built (that he tells her HE built them because I did NOTHING) and she picks out chickens and she leads the charge to build the coop with my children. Eww.

So, now we are up to the present moment. My daughter comes home and starts telling me all about how NW is talking about buying this and that for the house. This is interesting to me. The things that my daughter describes that NW is aiming to buy sound like things that EXNH-Psychopath would HATE. So, I wonder -- who is he? Who is he REALLY? He is luring her with this promise of buying stuff to fill a "dream house" and they are planning to build a pool and get a cow and a goat, and I'm thinking, MAN this girl is TRAPPED. I expect he is busy complimenting all her great ideas, and getting her to do all the leg work on purchases - then, he'll pull the rug out and twist it and end up getting exactly what he REALLY wants. I bet he's just got her spinning on the internet and through magazines and catalogues, and she's thinking she's hit the jackpot. Meanwhile, I KNOW how in debt he is, and I KNOW that he's going to have to settle big time with me (property settlement hasn't happened yet), I KNOW how he scrapes buy and overspends and pours money down the toilet.

Meanwhile, I'm planning my life for the moment that I am free of him financially. I'll be getting EXACTLY what I like, thank you very much. What suits ME. I will not have to compromise or listen to him pontificate about architecture and proportion (gag me with a giant spoon). I won't have to live in a house that is devoid of warmth (even though I ooooooze warmth and creativity). I won't have to endure him anymore.

He still lives in my head -- as I walked around Pottery Barn today, I could not look at a oversized curved arm sofa without hearing his contemptuous commentary between my ears.

What an ass.