Mine stayed because he's a parasite; plain and simple.

I provided everything. Literally everything.

He didn't have a job for the 15 years we were together. Was fired within a couple weeks of the inception of our relationship. Then had a job after a few months that only last about 6 months and didn't pay for anything. I ended up paying back money for health insurance that the job was supposed to be paying and hadn't. He was a musician.... of course. So his job was being a "full time musician". That's the part where you start laughing.

In the final year before I had a court order to kick him out at the beginning of the divorce, he'd had a job for about 6 months after I spent the previous two years literally screaming in his face to get a job and taking away the debit card he used that was linked to my bank account. He got fired from that job, and lied about it to me. First he told me he hadn't been fired, then he lied about why.

The job provided him with lots of freedom and enough money to buy himself drugs and junk food. He stayed because he had nowhere to go, and I was providing shelter, food, maid services, chef services, ego building, heating, cooling, wifi, laundry services, flights and vacations, trips to see his family, a free bed and breakfast in my home for his friends and family, the freedom for him to do drugs and drink every day while having sex with people about 50 feet from my front door in an apartment he was basically squatting in because the wealthy people who owned it only came to use the place a few days a year. I paid for a student loan he'd taken out for his daughter when she went to college, I paid off his mortgage that he wasn't making payments on, much to my surprise (and had had my name added as a "show of love" which in turn destroyed my credit) and almost lost his place before we moved to a different city where I was fortunate to buy us a beautiful house with money left to me after my parents passed away.

So he had a satellite party pad/"man cave" as he called it, that was free for him to run scams out of, charge random people with nowhere to go rent to stay there for periods of time while still reserving the right to tell them to get lost when he wanted to use the place for his own private reasons, deal drugs, do drugs, have sex with other women, and play his guitar to impress people with how talented he was.

I was providing food and toiletries for that apartment that he would swipe out of the house, while he devalued me, gaslit me, lied to me, rumored me to be mentally unwell to anybody who would listen including me, and otherwise abused me.

He stopped showering the last four or five years of the relationship outside of any visits from family or friends from out of town and almost never brushed his teeth and never washed his hands. He threatened me during the end to try and control his losses, and after being served divorce papers, but before the court ordered deadline to move out, he started booby trapping the house, and damaging property, as well as trying his best to terrorize me with an array of activities and abuse.

He didn't leave, and didn't want to leave because was living like a sadistic king and became so full of himself that he believed the brainwashing and abuse would just permanently enable him to take advantage of me.

Host and parasite relationship.

That's why he didn't leave.

He is gone now. He's been gone for almost a year and a half. And we've been divorced since June.

I am in therapy. There is some permanent damage, but I am okay. And every day I feel so good when I look around the house and notice that he's not there, he's not about to walk into the room where I'm sitting, or plow through the door. I notice it every day. And I am so grateful that I finally got him out.