Feel free to comment on any of this, I just want to get some stray thoughts out there.

I've been thinking about everything regarding how my ex talked about their NP. I'd mostly hear about them when my ex was feeling resentful, which was often. Their total dependency (cannot drive in a city where that is the only option), their failures to contribute to household chores, how my ex's days off were turned into picking up their NP's slack.

When I did hear anything good, it was mostly things unrelated to my ex-meta's actual character. Academic achievements, mostly. All recited with what to me felt like a clinical level of distance. Perhaps this was meant to be for my benefit, I do not know.

However I feel like that's precisely the problem. All these things that I think were said to comfort me, but only unsettled. Once, when I was pointing out the inherent hierarchy in them being an NP and me being an LDR, my ex said that they don't go on dates or make dedicated couple time with NP, and that was an "advantage" I had. Thinking back on it all now? Man, they really have no business dating literally anyone else until they sort that shit out. There's so much more that I'm not mentioning, and perhaps their relationship is better than my ex made it out to be, but if so the way they communicate it to others has got to change.