In June, I filed for divorce. My husband slammed the door and left for someone younger and prettier. The details no longer mattered. Victor, my ex, seemed the epitome of charm before the wedding: bouquets of flowers, tender words, romance. But after the wedding, the trial version of the “perfect husband” ended, and the full version turned out to have limited capabilities. Nothing criminal, but a splinter poisoned my life. He began counting every penny. And he did it with a kind of sadistic pleasure.
His salary was slightly higher than mine: 15,000 rubles. This made him the “breadwinner” and me the housekeeper. But he calculated expenses according to his own logic. Purchases “for the home” were considered his generosity. “For the home” was a car on credit, for 20,000 a month, which he used to take me to Auchan once a week. “For the home”: curtains, pans, kitchen renovations. “For me”: clothes and toys for my son, daycare, and doctor’s fees. “For me”: utilities, because I paid for them. And since I paid, it meant they were my expenses. All of this, in his view, was “for my wife.” And he, he believed, spent almost nothing on himself. In his eyes and those of his family, I was a “black hole” devouring the budget. I earned less, but I spent everything he contributed. Every month he would maliciously ask me, “How much do you have left?” Of course, there was no money left.
Last year, his favorite phrase was: “We have to set limits; you want too much.” And he did set limits. At first, we agreed to keep 10,000 for ourselves and the rest for the common fund. Then he pocketed the difference in salary, keeping 25, and I the same 10. Later, he reduced his contribution by another 10,000, declaring, “Your 500-ruble cream is a luxury, and I’ll get by on soap.” In the end, I was assigned fifty-five thousand for the house, food, the loan, and the child: twenty from him and thirty-five from me. But it wasn’t enough. I stopped saving my ten thousand, investing my entire salary—forty-five thousand—in the family. I lived off meager bonuses and paltry subsidies, listening to how he “supported” me and how soon he would cut it all. Greedy, they say.
Why didn’t I leave sooner? I was a fool. I believed him, his mother, my mother. I thought he was right: I can’t count, he feeds me. I wore old clothes, saved on everything, dulled the pain with pills, postponed a visit to the dentist (the free clinic was closed and there was no money for a private one). But Victor spent thirty-five thousand a month on his “wants”: a new phone, exorbitantly priced sneakers, car speakers. And he proudly recounted how well he managed the budget.
And then, the divorce. My “breadwinner” flew away with the one who doesn’t darn jeans, paints her nails, does sit-ups, and doesn’t think about how to feed her family with pennies or knit her son a scarf with old threads. She cried at night. How am I going to manage alone with a child? I saved even more, looking to the future with horror.
But my paycheck arrived. And—miracle!—there was money left on the card. A lot. Before then, I’d already gone into debt. Then an advance arrived, and there was even more money. I sat down, wiped my tears, grabbed a notebook, and started counting. Income, expenses, all in cash. Yes, her salary, or rather, her measly twenty thousand, vanished. But the car loan disappeared too: another twenty. I started spending half of it on food. No one complains that chicken isn’t food, or orders steaks, “fatter” borscht, or expensive sausages. No one complains about a cheese for two hundred rubles or orders a “normal” one for six hundred. There’s no need to buy beer, sweets don’t disappear in a day. And no one says, “Your cutlets are disgusting, order sushi.”
I fixed my teeth! Oh my God, I did it! I threw away the rags I was embarrassed to pick up my son from daycare in, bought simple but new clothes. I went to the hairdresser for the first time in five years. After the divorce, Viktor started paying child support: eight thousand, enough for the garden and the pool. Before New Year’s, he “took pity” and sent five thousand more, writing: “Buy the child some fruit and a gift, don’t you dare spend it on yourself, I know you.” “On you” is funny. Drunk with freedom and with money in my wallet, I bought my son everything he dreamed of: a microscope, Lego, a smartwatch. I renovated his room with his bonus. For New Year’s, I gave him hamsters in a big cage.
In November, I accepted a promotion I’d previously dreaded. More work? How will I manage the house? But I do. I don’t have to spend hours in front of the stove, making dumplings (“Am I supporting you so you can eat store-bought food?”). No one calls me a parasite, no one pushes me around.