It’s a really sad thing when you’ve been married to someone for most of your life but you’ve grown apart and ask for divorce but instead of having a clean, quick break of it things linger on and you end up becoming shitty, petty people.

That isn’t a hypothetical, of course. I mean myself and my ex husband. We still live in the same house because even though I brought up divorce 5 years ago (and we’ve been separated that entire time) he has refused until now to actually finalise anything.

I won’t lie, having a continued joint bank account has benefited me but I think the whole experience has overall benefited him more. He likes the idea of playing happy families, delaying when he has to tell his friends and family that he is divorced.

There were times he was in denial about it. There were times when he was angry about it. There were times when he was really sullen about it.

Now though? Now he’s just fucking petty about it. And apologies for getting into the granular detail about how annoying of a person he is to deal with.

And I can’t help but ride that Petty Train right alongside him.

One of the things that pissed me off about him long before we were separated was his quest to ‘balance’ things out. If I do this, he’ll do that. If he does this, he expects me to do that. Without my agreement usually.

But nauseatingly, he has brought up several things that are ‘mine’ to do and ‘his’ to do. It’s never felt so …fucking regimented like it has in the last few months though.

Yes, one of ‘my’ tasks is to feed the dog his dinner at 6pm every day. Fine, I’m happy to do that. But on occasion, I am not home to feed the dog his dinner. I’ve noticed though that my ex husband keeps track of how many days I don’t feed the dog dinner and somewhat coincidentally, he’ll ask me to feed the dog his lunch instead (something that my ex husband usually does as he works downstairs but we have never ‘formalised’).

And how petty is that? Counting how many days he has to feed the dog and taking it out on me. Instead of, you know, just feeding the dog. He’s keeping score with me.

It isn’t my only example though. For the past several weeks he’s taken it up a notch. We had ‘agreed’ that I would walk the dog three days out of the five weekday and my ex husband would walk the dog the other two days. In light of that imbalance, he would also do the weekly food shop. This was never a problem because he’s fussy about the meat and vegetables he picks up and he doesn’t like me doing the food shop anyway. He was always going to do the food shop because he’s controlling like that. But in making this agreement he’s agreed the smaller amount of effort in doing the dog walk in exchange for something he isn’t willing to give up anyway.

It’s become a problem though because of my course that happens Tuesdays from 2pm-9pm. Because of this, he has to walk the dog his two days a week AND Tuesday afternoon because I am not around to do this.

On Sunday, we discuss the upcoming week, which days I’m in the office, which day he is. What our plans are. Can I have dog walks on Tuesday and Wednesday, he asks. Sure, but you’ll have to do Monday afternoon as well as I’m leaving right after work (with our child for an event that has been scheduled in for several weeks now).

That doesn’t sound very ideal for me, he said. Can you walk the dog Monday and Tuesday morning, and he’ll do the full day on Wednesday?

So you want me to walk the dog Monday morning, Tuesday morning, go into the office for 7am on Wednesday, and for me to walk the dog Thursday and Friday morning and afternoon? I asked. Not one day in the week to lay in bed in the morning and have a slow start?

Yes, he said. Because that makes it ‘ideal’ for him.

So, I’ve decided that every day this week my alarm is going to go off at 6am (instead of 7am). And instead of being really quiet about getting up, getting ready and getting dressed I’m not going to bother. If I can’t find the clothes I need and fumble around, if I need to turn the big light on so be it.

If you want to play the Petty Wars, I will show you how low I’ll go. I hope you enjoy your week of lazy, slow mornings lounging about in bed. With the big light on, the curtains opened, me opening and shutting the wardrobe, leaving the en suite light on. And whatever else I can think of.