The Paralysis Leaving a Cheater: Why Didn’t I Go Sooner?

A scientist whose name I forget once said that “facts tend to cluster around a good theory.” Over the years, certain theories on dv that initially felt organically true as you put it just keep “gathering facts” like sticky lint rollers. One example is the suspicion that domestic violence is mostly motivated by enforcing one-sided monogamy and all that entails– an abuser getting sex on demand or being able to fuck around while the victim is terrorized and brainwashed into remaining monogamous “or else.” In other words, dv as all-purpose sex crime– protracted rape as well as enforcement of rape by deception.

The “protracted” part is the added mindfuck which makes domestic abuse victims distrust intuition, something one dv expert termed “perspecticide.” Basically abuse may appear temporally unrelated to victims’ failure to sexually appease or victims may not know about the cheating going on which is driving the abuser to be more abusive as a means of doubling down on the enforcement of victims’ monogamy and rape by deception (by destroying self esteem so the victim is too broken to resist or “move on,” by making the victim too afraid to ask or even conceive whether they’re being cheated on, etc).

Of course asking abusers why they’re abusing is a waste of time since they’re never going to admit to sexual control/protracted rape/rape by deception as a motive. Disguising this is arguably the whole reason their enforcement is made to seem unrelated– because they want to tell themselves and others that victims complied of their own free will and they demand that victims believe this too. It’s not unrelated to how many stranger rapists deludedly think victims “love” them except domestic abusers take steps to bolster delusions with the appearance of supporting evidence. It’s really all so they don’t look like rapists or feel like rapists… while still committing it.

I think the mindfuck aspect of it makes it not only confusing for victims but scarier which is exactly why horror films often use the device of ambiguity to crank up the terror. For instance, the first time a raptor gets loose in Jurassic Park, we only see the poor dinosaur wrangler from the waist up and see his expression as he’s levitated off the floor and can only imagine what’s happening to his lower body behind the cage.

But statistics can tell us what’s going on behind the cage, confirms what our guts and imaginations sense and takes some of the ambiguity out of it. Twenty years ago there wasn’t much science clearly supporting the idea of dv as enforcement of one-sided monogamy but now the research seems to be catching up. It’s only a tiny logical leap from there to guess that coercive control has the same MO except it’s just less athletic to carry out than physical assault and has less risk of prison in places that haven’t yet criminalized CC. Then it’s only another tiny logical leap from there to see the sexual MO in CC as a statistical harbinger of homicide since sexual abuse in a relationship is a quantifiable lethality risk factor. That’s one skein that’s worth untangling since it can predict risk in post-separation abuse and help victims prepare accordingly.

So when you ask, “Is my best bet to simply be aware, be vigilant and take any hints of danger seriously?”, you’re asking “Is the hamster dead (is your ex one of those coercive controllers who become violent for the first time when killing a former victim)? Or is it only sleeping (are you getting worked up over nothing)?”

Here’s my not very mathematical equation when the risk is death or serious injury especially in a situation where there are psychological and social factors pressuring us to lower our guard:

Gut feeling + statistical risk aligning with gut feeling= batten the hatches and prepare for the worst and don’t feel one bit bad about overcorrecting against pressure to deny risk in the case nothing happens.

I mean one shouldn’t feel even a teeny tiny bit bad for erring on the side of caution because the pressures to pretend the hamster is sleeping are massive when emerging from abuse. Recent victims really have to overcorrect for it.

Actually I remember a better analogy for repressing gut intuition of risk than dead hamsters: hypothermia. A lawyer friend who’s a national activist against the deadly use of restraint and seclusion in schools against disabled children was talking about how one of the problems in protecting kids is that parents are socially and instituionally gaslighted into minimizing the risk as well as having a normal aversion to imagining the worst when it comes to their kids.

Imagining a child dying is like looking into the sun– can’t be done without going blind. So parents might see signs their child is being abused in school– bruises or changes in behavior– but, according to my friend, a lot of parents react by going into a kind of floaty, dopey trance. She imitated the typical singsongy “la dee dah” voice of people who are in the throes of trancing out. I told her I thought it sounded like hypothermia where people lost in the howling tundra start feeling sleepy and tell themselves “Oh I’ll just lie down in this snowdrift for a second to rest…” and then freeze to death because feeling sleepy is actually a symptom of hypothermia. In other words, just the fact you’re feeling unreal or tranced out or eerily calm is confirmation that your intution is screaming and danger is afoot. From then on, she used that analogy to explain to parents how their guts may signal danger to their kids: “When you feel like you’re falling asleep in the snow.”

I suspect that, among the domestic abuse victims who end up being killed after escaping, some probably knew it was coming though didn’t have the resources to protect themselves but many were also thinking “He’d never do that…” Of those who think this, a portion would have have been sublimating a gut feeling under real or anticipated social pressure not to appear to be overreacting. In other words, they basically died of ambiguity and false shame. They lay down in the snow drift.

Though the same people wouldn’t feel silly or embarrassed if, say, they made their kids wear seat belts on a drive to the store and then didn’t have an accident or if they slowed the car to a crawl in dense fog and realized later they were totally alone on the road and there was little risk, I think it’s the fact that the risk related to abuse comes in the form of a person– and that acknowledging that risk requires imagining the worst of someone who, for a long time, would severely punish any criticism. Similarly, parents of disabled kids sense the scary power crappy teachers wield over their disabled children and there’s a tendency to freeze and fawn lest a crappy teacher get miffed over suspicions of being crappy and take it out on the child. Waffling over the issue of whether the risk is real may reflect a lingering wisp of Stockholm syndrome– fear of “thinking unambiguously disloyal thoughts” about an abusive person because of the risk that abusers will telepathically sense this and punish.

Furthermore, abused women are always dangling on the brink of being called cranks and nuts by bystanders so it feels very precarious to prepare for a violent threat that doesn’t happen. Being cast as a nut can even have real consequences like losing critical social support, employment or child custody. Last but not least, acknowledging the risk can involve “bothering” law enforcement who very often subtly wet-blanket victims’ pleas for protection or outright threaten to charge victims with filing false reports in the case the perceived threat doesn’t manifest immediately.

Then of course is the usual functional denialism that allows people to even drive on the freeway to work every day in spite of the considerable risk of fatal crashes. Humans tend to deny mortality in the first place just to get through the day.

So I say go ahead and think those disloyal thoughts, buckle up and just give a cheer if nothing does happen. There are things it’s lovely to be wrong about– yay, yay. Then re-batten the hatches because, given all the above factors, the feeling you mostly can’t trust at this point is the “hamster is just sleeping” impulse or the temptation to take a nap in a snowdrift, so, again, adjust accordingly.

To bolster resolve and fight back against perspecticide, it would help a lot to get feedback and support from organizations that specialize in coercive control but, if none exist locally, most battered women’s resources that don’t suck will be knowledgeable about coercive control and will still happily offer services and support to people who are “merely” suffering psychological abuse. Even if there are no concrete local resources, there are national organizations.

I remember you recounting your ex’s work on that documentary and agree that it’s totally chilling.

I can also attest that being cast as a “crazy prevaricator” can have deadly consequences and some blameshifting smear campaigns can’t be ignored. It’s also hard to stop detractors (usually a perpetrator’s flying monkeys) from “living in your head” when they’re actually following you into parking lots. Try banishing someone from your thoughts when they’re swinging fists at you.

Years ago this is why I also sued on top of prosecuting a workplace stalker in order to have a permanent, publicly searchable record in the case the creep ever tracked me down again and/or in the case the perp’s claims that I was a “crazy liar who framed innocent men” followed me professionally or put a “rape me/beat me” sign on my back for future freaks who might preemptively view the buzz as a get-out-of-jail card.

I also wasn’t being paranoid about the above risks because these things had already happened in the wake of the first arrest (one situation involved parking lot and swinging fists) and before the criminal stalking/attempted assault case had been resolved. The claim that I “framed innocent men” spread widely, affected work opportunities, I was bullied right and left and even threatened with assault twice more by coworkers who repeated the same “spurned suitor” pattern as the stalker because, due to the buzz, they relied on the idea that I’d been cast as a prevaricator. There was also a little message in there that when a freak tries to play rescuer to get laid, damsels in distress better not say no or else.

It was especially eerie that the above went on even after the perpetrator was re-arrested in a SWAT raid. You’d think eight two-hundred LB cops in riot gear carrying assault rifles might have been a slight deterrent but nope. Even if they never research prosecution statistics, it’s like there’s some stubborn communal consciousness lizard brain knowledge among freaks that those who assault women are only– in reality– found guilty in only about 1.5% of cases. It’s like they “feel” the statistical reality in the air and don’t bargain for exceptions. In any case, I could tell the perpetrator’s flying monkeys felt totally sure he’d be exonerated– until he wasn’t. It was only when the stalker was forced to take a plea that the flying monkey feeding frenzy stopped. But since, as a supposedly first time offender (he wasn’t, just hadn’t been previously busted), the perpetrator’s criminal record would eventually be expunged, I feared the situation would keep repeating itself in the future and I wanted it out there that I was telling the truth and willing to go to the wall to prove it.

I think the judge in the lawsuit meant well when she told my lawyer that I was suing “for catharsis.” It was a way of saying she could tell I wasn’t merely out for money even though the jury’s award was pretty big. But the judge missed the fucked up societal reason why I had to sue– because it’s victims who end up having to exonerate themselves to get the targets off their backs.

So, yeah, playing things for perceptions and telegraphing to all and sundry how la-dee-dah sane and balanced we are is a good strategy but shouldn’t stop us from taking action– however stealthily– to prepare for the worst because the smear campaigns will happen along with any related fallout even if the victim does nothing. You may not know it yet but your ex is likely already spinning a narrative against you to prime bystanders.

One of the most important things in being able to take action is surrounding ourselves with people who get it and who validate our feelings. If your ex is gathering numbers on his side, gather more on yours. In that sense you’re lucky because resources for coercive control are becoming more accessible and common. One hub to tap into is anything related to the work of Dr. Christine Cocciola. She has a Youtube channel, a website for survivors, another for practitioners, coaches and laypeople who want to train in recognizing coercive control or act as expert witnesses.

You may be able to find an online group, a specialist or even train as an “ally” because one of the most effective ways to surround yourself with a ton of allies is to be one. Some of the best support I’ve gotten when I found myself in trouble was through activists who worked on the same causes I did even if the cause didn’t appear related to the difficulty I was dealing with.

Plus if it became known that you were involved in coercive control channels, your ex might realize that, if anything happened to you, he’d be the #1 suspect. That’s another reason I think coercive control should be criminalized– because it will inform the lizard perceptions of perps and their proxies that society isn’t tolerating that shit anymore in the same way current low prosecution rates send the reverse message.

Not that I’d ever “thank” adversity or shitty people for “teaching” me things, but my stalking saga as an intern was an education in human darkness and bystander psychology which prepped me for other events like dealing with psycho inlaws and a FW. I mean you’re never really prepared for things like that but I think I was just a little less confused and less prone to buy into typical DARVO nonsense and victim-blaming because I’d learned about the concept of “neutralization”– the wild and crazy lies most serial offenders (including most serial killers) tell themselves and others to reduce the stigma of their offenses and dehumanize their victims.

Speaking of which, you wrote, “He used his emotional intelligence to customize his stories to his audience…”

I think in Germany there’s a specific, weird subcategory of borderline personality disorder which is described as doing this– “Haltlose personality disorder.” At least in German psychiatry, most child molesters are believed to have this disorder and it’s thought they’re more likely to be violent or even murderous or stage fake suicides.

If this personality pattern exists (the Wikipedia page on it seems like it was written by a doddering Victorian Freudian), I wonder if it relates to cheating or poaching because I went through another previous saga that kind of demystified my own FW drama a bit. It was also my first experience with DARVO and “neutralization”: Someone I went to school with who poached my first boyfriend used to do this tailored defamation thing. Or at least she thought she poached the boyfriend when, in reality, I was actually relieved since I’d moved away for school and this guy had become like an oppressive, guilt-inducing, passive aggressive loose end I didn’t know what to do with. He tried the silent treatment thinking I’d quit school and come scurrying back but instead I just– whoops– accepted the next date I was asked on and moved on. Though there was no formal breakup, he was suddenly engaged to this neighbor. It’s no defense of him but apparently she’d begun sidling up to him the second I left for school, told him I was fucking around, etc.

When I was invited to their speedy wedding, I was in the middle of loving life and having a fabulous time being young and free in NYC and every kind of silly, fun or interesting storybook nonsense was happening to me. I didn’t realize I was expected to show up at the wedding looking crushed and defeated instead of waltzing around like Julie Andrews in a field of mountain wildflowers and they both glared at me through the whole ceremony, then verbally attacked me afterwards.

At 17, I vaguely grasped they weren’t happy I was happy and I avoided them, even stopped sharing good news with people we knew in common because their resentment scared me and felt like a jinx. But it’s as if she in particular was trying to occupy my old life, attempting to befriend all my friends just as she’d always found ways to lurk around my ex and I when we’d been dating. Soon I started catching wind of the rumors she was spreading among everyone I knew back home. To religious types, she’d tell a bizarre story of how I’d tried to “force” someone to have an abortion (?). To men she’d say I was a whore or man-hater or lesbian because I was raised by feminists. To feminists she’d say I was (bingo) homophobic or that I used appearance and sex to get ahead. And on and on. When I’d go back home for the holidays, I noticed the chilly or hostile treatment I got from various people. But fuck it, my parents and close friends weren’t susceptible to the bs and I’d just go back to my fab life in the city and forget about it.

The marriage lasted only a few years and she pulled a very splashy fake suicide attempt at the end (took an insufficient overdose, cut her wrists the wrong way, smeared blood all over the walls). Then the ex-bf immediately wrote me a drunken, disgustingly sexual letter saying we could be together again at last. I resealed the thing and sent it back like it contained anthrax. And of course she went around telling everyone that I’d deliberately broken them up, that I wanted her dead and “hated” her because she “stole” a man from me. Gaah. I don’t know how I’d done all that while being out of contact with both of them for years but go figure.

Then she got knocked up twice by a professor who was apparently still involved with the mother of his other children. That didn’t work out. I heard years later that she was caught pilfering money and pills from an older relative and, when cut off financially, accused the relative of molesting her as a child, though curiously she’d constantly dump her kids with the same relative. She then reportedly used her kids to blackmail the relative into supporting her financially again. When the relative was fading away in a old age home, she reportedly charmed the staff to get him put on heavy, life-shortening sedatives without his consent so he’d be stoned enough to sign over power of attorney. In any event, she took over the estate and denied inheritance to her cousins and sibling who, by then, simply let her do it because she’d already ravaged the estate and because of her penchant for making up criminal allegations against anyone who crossed her. It seems the money ran out quickly and, last I heard, her youngest kid ended up doing a prison stint for felony stalking.

One of the creepiest things about this woman is that she continued trying to contact me over the years and would attempt to hoover back into my life or would go to great lengths to track down and try to cultivate people I knew but she didn’t. Because I was embarrassed to have any association with someone so crazy and chaotic, I was uncomfortable being forced to tell the backstory of why I avoided this woman like the plague. The whole thing was like a protracted Single White Female drama. I began to realize I was her real fixation, not the ex. She was also like napalm because, for reasons I could never figure out, a lot of people thought she was authentic and “really sweet” so she managed to keep showing up on the periphery of my life like a bad penny.

Here’s something I “learnt” from the bs, aside from the fact that I probably cracked down harder and faster on a workplace stalker and his flying monkeys because I realized people like this have no limits:

— Judge people by their enmeshments if they’re fully aware of how shitty the person they’re enmeshed with is (it’s a different story when someone doesn’t know). Like a nice-seeming person with an obviously vicious dog, the dog is really the unmasked version of its owner. Though FW didn’t appear to share traits with this woman at first, I now see it as a big red flag that his mother was uncannily similar to this woman in many ways (save for the larcenous bit and the fake suicide thing) and a big red flag that FW was enmeshed with his toxic mother. Since the affair partner was a dead ringer for FW’s toxic mommy (stumpy neck, giant lantern jaw, tendency to switch back and forth between dry, cold cyborg persona and giggly or weepy “widdle girl,” not to mention the psycho obsession with inventing and projecting demonic traits onto me), I realized that FW was not only acclimatized to but sought this type of woman as a toxic proxy and enforcer to express all the ugly inclinations he knew enough to conceal for years.
By the same token, it seems women like this are, in effect, taking the shape of weapons that are useful to men to enforce patriarchy.

In any event, the mask came off when he had a big rift with his mummy and he immediately ran out to find her exact replacement. Then whenever the affair partner would blackmail him with silent treatment and temporary breakups and he’d fear losing his replacement sock puppet, all the ugliness would suddenly spew directly out of him. He was basically Norman Bates who, without his mommy or mommy clone, had to dress up in mom drag to attack women himself. Fortunately no knives or showers were involved.

Other weird odds and ends I figured out:

— Cheating, like battering, seems to mostly be about masked dependency on a primary relationship and “fighting back” against that dependency on the belief the partner deliberately and cruelly fostered it and revels in the power they wield. It probably explains the confusing thing where cheaters often act like they’re getting revenge (for what?) and seem to revel in the power of it. Poaching seems to be about the victory of usurpation. Both seem to be reenacting some shit from childhood and it’s probably why those relationships tend to crash when the victim removes themselves or refuses to suffer enough. The suffering is what makes even butt ugly affair partners seem ravishing and makes orgasms extra tingly.

— Cheaters and poachers tend to have a quasi-Calvinist cult mentality whether this is expressed through periodic spates of fanatic religiosity or worshipful idealization of people they view as inherently transcendent. Though it’s harder to see when they’re in the stage of playing the humble beta or lackey role in life, on some level they are profoundly inegalitarian and seem to believe in something like the divine right of kings– the idea that some are born superior to others, probably to the extent they hope this lofty status will one day be granted to them. I think narcissim as a concept misses the fact this personality type is the psychological root of racism, sexism, classism, whateverism– hierarchical, about pecking order. It also misses the fact that so-called narcissists spend half their lives eating shit from bigger fish. I imagine finding a chump is meant as a break from all the shit-eating.

— Beware of women who radically switch back and forth between a normal adult voice and ootsie-wootsie simpering “baby voice” or fluttery girly voice. There’s probably some similarity between typical “Southern belle” switcheroo that a lot of women do to dodge and weave around patriarchy and psychopathic age-regression but people who do the latter get super defensive about it, either because they can’t control it or because the agenda underlying the behavior is too heinous and aggressive to admit.

— The usual “every accusation from a narcissist is a confession” thing but cheaters may also “displace” their proxies’ ugliness onto a partner. Pay particular attention to people who accuse you of trying or wanting to kill them because they probably harbor murderous thoughts towards you and/or whoever they’re enmeshed with does. I suspect part of why cheaters become so abusive is that affair partners are, by nature, pretty awful people which creates an extra serving of ugly traits to displace onto victims.

— Related to the above, –Cheaters and poachers have a lot of overlaps with that German profile thingy for creative defamatory prevaricators.

— Just because some petty detractor is powerless to actually harm you doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take note of the intent to do so because they can suddenly do real harm when you’re in a weakened position.

–Cheaters and poachers have a lot of overlaps with that German profile thingy for creative defamatory prevaricators.

— Only abusers actually “play” victim and tend to be good at it while actual victims hate being victims and are very bad at doing so. This is probably why many bystanders find the fakers more sympathetic than the real deals– because a faker is detached enough to both tailor the lie to the audience as well as give a tasteful performance– like letting one single tear fall elegantly down their cheek as they gently murmur out their tall tales of suffering woe while real victims are ugly crying or catatonic or babbling like loons.

p.s., If you encounter a therapist who specializes in coercive control, they already understand why abuse survivors “didn’t leave earlier” because it’s part of the training to help victims understand the million and one intimidating cues and gestures that coercive controllers give off and part of the training to understand those cues and gestures aren’t just kidding around but equate to calculable risk. In fact if you express any shame about delaying your escape or what you “allowed,” someone genuinely versed will correct the notion that you were actually free to leave without risk of serious consequences and would instead commend you for the truly miraculous feat of escaping.

It’s such a radically different, humanizing view of survivors compared to the old, standard “takes two to tango” or psychological deficiency theory of DV victims which has been such a tremendous failure in helping victims leave over the years that Evan Stark and his wife Anne Flitcraft dedicated a chapter to explaining this failure in a book on PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Therapy and the Victims of Violent Crime edited by Frank Ochberg which I highly recommend).