'AITA for selling the collection my ex-husband has kept for his entire life?'

"AITA for selling the collection my ex-husband has kept for his entire life?"

Me (31F) and my Ex Husband(39M) are currently divorced and I have moved on and am currently remarried to my current husband. While me and my ex-husband were still together 3 years ago, I explained to him that I wanted an open relationship. He had been neglectful in our relationship and wasn't trying. He would hardly kiss me. No dates. No cuddles.

No watching TV together. He spent every waking moment playing video games. I could not get him to stop playing video games. I was a gamer too so I understood but he played almost 8 hours a day while working a full-time job. I also could not get him to get rid of any video games he has had for most of his life and since he was a teenager. He wouldn't even get rid of our 50 lb tube TV.

We lived in a small apartment and we didn't have the room. We had made a deal that if he used it once in the next year that we could keep it. He turned it on immediately after I said that and never turned it on again. So, getting back to the open relationship part. I told him that we had to go to couples counseling.

His choices were open relationship with couples counseling (basically separating), he tries in our relationship or we get a divorce. He chose the open relationship over the other options. He would not get off video games, he would not even watch a movie with me and he said going on a walk with me was boring and that I never wanted to do anything that he wanted to do.

All he want to do is play video games and all he wanted to pitch was the idea of playing video games. Note: this was only after we got married. Before marriage he was full of activities.

His idea of hanging out was playing video games together and I made a full effort to start a twitch Channel to make hanging out and playing video games more interesting because I was growing sick of video games. He would not do the same for me though and do things that I liked.

I could only get him to do walks. Not even go out. I was a stay-at-home wife and did not want to spend all my free time in the afternoon playing video games with him because I was alone all day and I wanted to spend time with him. I did have my hobbies but I just wanted to be around him. I cared about him.

Asking me to play video games is just one idea. He would suggest different games as if its a completely different idea of something we could do. He turned down all of my ideas. He also would tell our friends that he would not do something as simple as go on a walk with me because I only wanted to go walking around our neighborhood and nowhere else. I had begged him to leave the house. I had begged him for ideas.

The reason why I was a stay-at-home wife is because I wanted to take a year off of work. He was fine with this because he said me cleaning the house would give him time to do the things he wanted. I didn't think that meant he only wanted to play video games and wanted more time to play video games.

Fast forward to us starting our open relationship. I had a little bit of success early on. He tried out dating apps and tried to find ways to date other women. He told me his motivation was that he was extremely hurt that I slept with other people and he was jealous and he felt like if he slept with someone too...

...it would make the pain go away. (I found this out a year later in a letter he sent me). I explained to him that all we had to do to close the open relationship was for him to try in our marriage.

After a month of having an open relationship he finally has a date. He works third shift and explains to me he has a breakfast date before he goes to sleep the next day. He told me her name and told me he met her on tinder. One of our few rules was that we had to tell people that we were married. I asked him if he can prove to me that he told this person he was married.

I can prove this for anyone I slept with already. He could not prove it and he told me I need to trust him. I then asked to see his Tinder profile. He refused to let me see his Tinder profile. So I told him that he had until 4:00 a.m. to show me proof, even a screenshot cropped down of him saying that he was married or I wanted a divorce. This was his rule because he was afraid he was going to lose me to someone else.

He kept insisting that I needed to trust him and by morning I received no answer. He left to go on his breakfast date mad at 8:00 a.m. He told me it was local and at a coffee shop.

He usually goes to sleep at 11:00 a.m.. at 11:00 a.m., I call him and I get no answer. I text him and I get no answer, I call him and I get no answer. I text him and I get no answer at 1:00 p.m. I call and text again with no answer.

At 3:00 p.m. I receive a call from a police station another city. It was him. He called to tell me that he was arrested and he is not going to tell me why and that I will find out soon enough. He said he's going to find a way to bail himself out and when he gets home he will explain himself.

Well, he did not come home for 5 days. He would not tell me what was wrong no matter how much I begged. I was going insane. After the next day I started searching for other jails he could be in because they did not hold him long and he had not reached out to me. After hours of refreshing 10 different jails websites, it popped up.

Cue the mental breakdown. He was arrested for enticing an FBI agent behind a computer screen pretending to be a minor. He met up with her and got arrested. (Think of that show with Chris Hansen).

Since I was a stay-at-home wife, I used the little bit left of our savings to bail him out so he can go back to work. I had no income at the time and I gave him all of my savings back when we got married which equated to more than $25,000. He had blew a ton of it. When I went to bail him out I realized we only had a fraction of our savings left.

We started out with significantly more than that. I only wanted to take a year off work so most of my contributions should not have been gone. We lived below our means. So, after not having access to our finances for a year or so, I find out we don't have hardly any money. I was in a vulnerable spot. Hardly any money. Nothing in my name. No job. Just a lease and no way to pay anything for more than a month.

I bailed him out so he can work and they told us that there was a chance he would be rearrested by the FBI because the charges he had were state charges and he could be re arrested and facing federal charges. So I waited until our lease ran out and I moved out a month early and he had not made arrangements yet to deal with his stuff.

We were under the impression that he was not going to be re-arrested under federal charges because it had been 6 months. Right before our lease was up they showed up at his door while I was at work and they arrested him after i already moved out and divorced him.

I did not bail him out again. I had a job and was moving into my own apartment and I did not need the help anymore. The problem at hand was now that he did not pack up any of his stuff nor did he find a new place to live when our lease was going to be up.

My name was on the lease and they would have charged me so much money to have his things removed and to clean the apartment . We had already given our notice that we were going to move out. All he left me was a spreadsheet on his computer of usernames and passwords for our bills.

Also his debit card was left on his desk with his wallet. He called me to tell me I can use what I needed to pay off the rest of his bail that he owed and to pay off whatever bills I had from him.

It was not enough. My younger sister co-signed his bail so I had to pay it off or she would be stuck with the bill. I had to pack all of his stuff in a matter of weeks. I gave all of his stuff to his cousins and his parents to store. I gave his car to his cousin. And then I found an Excel sheet on his computer before I gave his computer to his cousin as well.

The additional Excel sheet was a price list intended for me of all of his video games and what they were worth. When I spoke to him on the phone he wanted me to sell Whatever video games I needed to sell to make money to pay off his bail and send to him in prison.

I sold a few to my older sister to help pay off his bail and I sent him the extra from what I sold so he could call his mother from prison. This was only two or three video games that I sold. He had a ton left.

He told me I could send the rest with his cousin and his cousin will store them at his mother's house until he gets out of prison. He tried telling me how much I owed him out of any money I received. He acted like any money I made off of his video games was meant to pay back anything I had to pay of his bills and that I would just give him the rest.

I told him I was keeping the rest of the little bit of money I had and that I don't owe him anything. I told him that I'll send his video games along with his cousins and I want to be done with it. I found out he got sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Here we are 2 years later and as it turns out, I kept his video games. These are all very old PlayStation 2 and Xbox games and some of them are worth hundreds of dollars each. Games like Steel Battalion on Xbox and persona 2 on ps1.

I asked my new husband if he would sell these video games for me one by one on eBay and maybe we can use the money to decorate our new home. He hadn't really sold video games before so I offered up one of my video games to see how it would go. The first video game I offered for him to sell sold for $77.

We plan on selling all of them. AITA for lying to my ex-husband and telling him that I will give his family his video game collection but instead sell them because of the trauma he put me through and the savings he spent of mine?

After reading the comments, OP edited the post to include:

If I asked him if I could sell his games, he would probably tell me yes. He believed he ruined my life and has a lot of guilt for how things went. He knows the effect it had on me.

He had a 90k bail the first time. Using a bondsman, i had to pay 10k. (Idk how it works) I put 5 k down. I split our money in savings and took the 5k out of his half. He went back to work and had the other 5k on a payment plan.

He got rearrested when he owed around 300 left. He paid extra payments as well. I did not bail him out when they came down with federal charges and they re-arrested him.

Here's what people had to say to OP:

2_old_for_this_spit said:

Sell them all. Use the money as you see fit and tell him you're replacing what he took from the savings account, bail, and other expenses you pid on his behalf. NTA.

Evening_Audience_674 said:

NTA. Sell it all. He’s a criminal.

karebear66 said:

He took your savings. You get his games. NTA.

girlwithdog_79 said:

YTA for putting your little sister on the hook for a criminal's bail, I don't care that you paid it back, that is just vile.

AppealEasy2128 said:

He doesn’t deserve a millisecond of joy ever again. NTA I hope his cellmates know why he’s in.

the_greek_italian said:

Honestly, after everything he put you through AND the crime he committed, NTA. He owes you financially and emotionally anyways, so sell everything.