How do you feel about this?

because I'm properly confused.

So last year, July 2022, I was 80% ready to leave this relationship.

I am still wondering if I did the right thing to stay.

I made a private bank account, after telling him numerous times I wanted our finances seperated. He told me before he could never be with someone with seperate finances, because he feels that as a family you have family finances and nothing else. However I felt like that wasn't working for our family. I had an almost equal income, yet 70-80% of our expenses were either for him or his kids. Whenever he wanted something for him or his kids, he would fight or manipulate his way into getting it. I never had an equal say. Eventually it got to a point where I saw no end to our financial struggle (which shouldn't have been a struggle either way because we have a decent income) and I decided to pull my finances, with the accepted risk of ending up single, which ended up being a huge fight when he accidentally got my new bank info in our mail.

I told him that I felt like he wasn't taking me into account ever and that I felt like I was never an equal. I've been more of a cleaning lady/sitter/secretary / piggyback. This is how I felt, he made me feel ridiculous every time I told him this during the 8 years before. He was denying and telling me it's not true and constantly gaslighting me about that I was seeing things. And I thought this was sortof normal because my mom showed similar behaviors towards me when I was growing up. So anyway, I opened that account because I was done enough to risk my family on (we do have a kid together) and a relationship after that wasn't necessary for me at all. First he accused me of cheating, because I was obviously manipulated into pulling my finances and wanting to leave my relationship (for someone else). Then he said that I had manipulated him into thinking that I was totally fine with his behavior and I was completely understanding his *unknown mental issues* and that he was telling everyone about how that made me perfect for him.

I remember our fights vividly where he would tell me to stop feeling hurt because for him the situation had passed. I remember him yelling at me because he forgot his wallet or keys or phone, numerous timew. I remember how angry he would get because I was crying. Aparantly crying is manipulating. I remember him telling me I shouldn't be upset about him mistreating me because it's just who he is and I should deal with that.

At some point. I became a ghost, a shadow of myself. At another point, I realized that I never do anything that makes me happy because either when I plan something, he overplans the whole thing to make it nothing like the original plan (like this one time I wanted to go for a walk and a picnic without electronics, and he turned it into watching tv all day with order in food.. on the day that I wanted to avoid electronics because I was so done watching tv all day) or he makes sure it's canceled (when I try to do things with other friends) he also manipulated me into thinking that the friends I had before we dated aren't good friends and now that I want to reconnect with them he feels like I shouldn't reach out to people who've been out of my life for so long because they "obviously don't care"

I have kept contact with some of my friends behind his back. He would see it as dishonesty. It's why I'm protective of my phone. It's innocent completely.

ANYWAYS so July 2022 I took the risk of opening my private account with the possibility of destroying our relationship, which I was fine with.

He still is blaming me for deceiving him because he genuinely thought that I was accepting his behavior. I can't actually believe that considering all the xights we've had. I have threatened to leave him twice (obviously I wasn't mentally ready to actually leave at that point) and now he's blaming me for not putting in my all 100% because I keep expecting him to go back to his previous behaviors. Sure he's made a truckload of improvement but it's still not really what I want. He's doing a lot of house work. Like a lot. But all is on his terms. He still has a temper. He still denies my feelings. He still talks down on me. But when I try to mention it to him, he tells me I'm not appreciating all his work. Which I actually am and am telling him and am showing him. When I tell him, about his behavior, he keeps turning things around about how He's working his ass off to keep me, and I'm not doing thesame. Like every thing he's asked me to do, I'm not doing.. one of his things is to keep the bathroom hairfree and I am losing a lot of hair definitely with the stress I'm currently under so hairfree isn't actually a thing at all.. or to sort some little stuffs out, which have not actually a space so I move them and then they're wrong again, and so I move them again but they are wrong again but he doesn't really know where he does want them.. and he constantly wants to talk about the future (like when we're like 60, I'm 30 currently) but I want to assess the next year to talk about the future anyway but he says that is halfassing it and setting it up to fail..

Writing this out.. I feel like you guys will probably think it's ridiculous to try and work this out.

Oh and he does blame this app for "giving me ideas" and that I shouldn't be comparing our relationship with strangers because what do they know..

Sorry for the long post, thanks for reading.

If updates are needed I'll probably add below 🤷‍♀️