I don't know if that's the kind of "scared" I think about.  

I have to live with my own inner dialogue.  So in that sense, it's not quite true that "he" can't hurt me, because "I" can still hurt.  Nowadays it's anger with myself for getting so flustered during the divorce mediation that I got locked into a terrible deal.  I'm angry with myself for being so gullible that I didn't realize I should have gone full-on scorched earth with him.  When he asked me if he could keep the house -- I should have held out.  I should have known not to just accept his valuation.  I should have known I was entitled to much more than he would ever part with.

When I saw how poorly my lawyer was doing, I should have fired him and gotten someone who wasn't so easily manipulated by the other side.

I should never have wasted my life with this man.  I should have realized that trying to do right by my daughter was actually going to make my life infinitely worse: if I'd divorced when she was still young, I might have salvaged my own career before it was too late.  Instead, I thought I had to wait until she was out of the house -- and at that point, it was too late for me to build any kind of meaningful stream of income.

So yeah, I don't need to see my ex.  Running into him will bring back everything.  I don't care what he's doing with his life.  He's likely making the same dumb mistakes he's made over and over and they're not my problem any more.

Just reading this brought back all the feelings.

 

"These guys will play the "shame" card, and blame "society" for their shame, and expect us to toe the line where they draw it about "telling," but the shame they ought to feel, but don't, is about what they are willing to do to us and to ask us to do.  "

I wanted to respond to this.  It's entirely his concern if he prefers to stay in the closet, right on up to the moment when he attempts to shift blame to me.  

I would make that extremely clear to him.  You initiated this divorce because of his behavior, and as long as his public commentary is consistent with that reality, there's no need to out him.  The moment he tries to shift blame to you, you have every right to correct the record.  

I think the rules around not "outing" people shouldn't require us to be complicit in our own victimization.

I told my daughter after D-day but before I'd made any decisions about whether or not to leave the marriage.  I felt like there was just too much lying in the family, that it had affected everyone -- including her -- and that I'd gotten to the point where I was speculating like crazy about whether she'd already guessed.  So I had to put my foot down and say "no more secrets in this family."  

I'm so sorry your divorce decree prohibited you from being honest within the family.  In addition to being the ex-wife of a gay man, I'm also a lawyer and the more I see of these nondisparagement clauses, the more I'm convinced they're a disasterous idea that somehow became normalized a long time ago -- and nobody has ever revisited the idea of whether they're really doing far more harm than good.

I agree that you should tell your son, but do so in a way that he won't defensively take his father's side.  You might say something to the effect of how you had learned of his father's sexuality and you realized that this situation was untenable -- not only for you, but for your husband as well.  You can tell your son the divorce decree has barred you from discussing this with him until he turned 18, but at this point there is nothing healthy about a family in which secrecy and lying is the norm.  

HeldHostage: I have psoriasis, too.  I can't tell you how many doctors have told me I need to "avoid stress".  I mean ... how exactly does that work?