Sometimes the Universe is just trying to tell us something…
We don’t see the cosmic signs right away, but we sense them. Only later, you look at the situation and think OMG, a SIGN FROM GOD I WAS BEING A CHUMP!
For me it was a truckload of cow shit. My 40th birthday was 2 months before my first D-Day and I just ordered myself a truckload of manure to spread on my new garden in the new house I’d just bought with the new (cheating) husband. I literally shoveled shit on my 40th birthday. Ankle deep in cow poop on my birthday I thought… hmmm, this is a metaphor for something.
And then my “metaphor” called me 6 weeks later — the OW informing me of her existence.
For my husband, it was searing eye pain. He used to wake up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain in his eyes, and feared he was going blind. After D-Day, it went away. Now he says it was like God saying “OPEN YOUR EYES!” Weird, huh?
I thought of today’s post after my husband and I spent the weekend with someone dear to me who just found out she’d been chumped after 20+ years of marriage. I won’t go into the ghastly details, except to say they’re ghastly. But as she was telling us her story, she mentioned that her STBX had a penchant for buying clunkers (he couldn’t afford) at car auctions and having decimated their finances, her car was one of his crappy, unreliable purchases.
She’s driving long-distance in this “new” clunker and she realizes all the check engine lights are on. STBX assures her it’s fine. So she drives the thing — 40,000 miles! — but the lights keep flashing. So she gets some tape and covers up the dashboard so she doesn’t see the light.
At that point my husband exclaimed: “THAT’S A CHUMP METAPHOR!”
So today’s question is — what’s your chump metaphor? What was your chumpy sign from God you didn’t read quite right? A burning bush? A load of shit? Inexplicable blindness?
Tell me.
LOL-Tracy, I posted elsewhere about you–you know shit!
Mine is a constant pain in the neck.
Ha! Or you could say I shovel shit.
Pain in the neck! LOL. I’m waiting for someone to post “pain in the butt.” 🙂
Yeah, but you can identify shit a mile a way. Someone emails you from miles away, you bend over the screen, sniff daintily a few times, and say,”Yup, that’s shit alright….”
Add the whole organic inspector thing, and you’re a PK, and I gotta say, you’re pretty well-versed in all forms, quantities and qualities of shit.
Well they say there is a thin line between the prayer list and the shit list.
Master of Shit. I’ll add it to my credentials. LOL.
I litterally developed a pain in the neck. About 3 years before d day i got the most horrendous ulcer on my neck which absolutely refused to go away with creams antibiotics anything. In the end i had a biopsy because all my lymph nodes were up. The thing was so aggravating it used to keep me awake at night (in between the nightmares about him and his family not kistening to me and ganging up on me to abuse me -yes huge red flag waving) so i literally lay there sometimes repeating to myself “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” . You guessed it d day came and went and the horrible tracking ulcer which seemed to actually move round my neck eventually went away. Now i am left with a mark that actually looks like i have had a rope noose around my neck . People even ask if i have had a strangulation injury. Im tempted to say yes because thats what was happening to my life. Other big red flags were the extreme tiredness in the middle of the day no matter how long i slept at night. Yes the universe is screaming at you ! – but usually only in hindsight….
Mine was scentlessness!
Husband came home after work very late (again) after apparently having been out for a Chinese with his work team. Now, I don’t know about Chinese restaurants in the US, but here in the UK, if you’ve been sitting in a Chinese restaurant for the evening, you smell very strongly of Chinese food. Your clothes smell, your hair smells & your breath smells.
Husband smelt of soap! I knew in that instant that something was very wrong. It then took me another few weeks to collect enough evidence to confront him but that was my Damascus moment.
My (original) wedding day car accident.
I was driving to it, and at a 2-way stop intersection in the countryside, I looked both ways, saw nothing, started into the intersection, and was blindsided (metaphor #1!) by a woman speeding through. Hugh crashing boom.
I passed out from shock (metaphor #2!) shortly after turning off the engine.
I kept waking up in the emergency room, suprised to realize my soon-to-be husband was there (along with my kids) and me saying things like “oh – you came! I’m so glad you’re here!” and then passing out again.
Repeated the process many times, each time forgetting everything from the prior time (metaphor #3!)
I suffered permanent knee damage, and kept thinking I really should call off the wedding, but instead just rescheduled everything for the next week.
So, let’s see, thats BLINDSIDED, SHOCK, DAMAGE – boyohboy I shoulda listened!
My wedding band. Supposedly indestructible and corrosion-free titanium, it started losing its luster within the first year. By the time I took it off for the last time 6 months post D-Day1, it was completely dull with no finish left on it whatsoever. Really looked bad. It was an apt metaphor.
Not sure this is a metaphor, but I remember going to get a card for his birthday or our anniversary close to D day and standing there after reading all the beautiful cards with lovely words and having an extremely hard time choosing one cause I realized at that point, they were all too nice and I didn’t feel that way about him or our marriage anymore. But I picked a card and signed my name and carried on hoping things would improve. Should have listened to my gut!
Same exact scene at the card store for me! None of the lovey dovey cards felt right, but I bought one anyway.
I did that, too.
Scotty, maybe it was a fake.
Which is also a metaphor.
My wedding ring band cracked – broke right in two! And my veil almost caught fire as I leaned over to light the unity candle at our wedding. Both of those might be considered “signs”, but the biggest sign I had was my gut feeling that I could not trust him, although he said, “Look me in the eyes! I would NEVER cheat on you!” …this after he already had cheated. Always trust your gut. I knew I was a chump even before I became an official chump.
OMG! that was the exact words my ex said to me! he already cheated and he was on his second skank! and while he kept telling me “stop over analyzing things, you think I am going to hurt you, cheat on you and tell you lies over and over, why do you see me like this?” because I just wouldn’t/couldn’t set the wedding date because I had a gut feeling that I couldn’t trust him either, also I felt something was really off, even though he was very caring, loving and sweet, but I couldn’t prove it and he was trying to convince me that my gut feelings were wrong. He did cheat on me with many, he did hurt me and boy, he told me lies over and over and over! Yep listen and always trust your gut!!
I got “What’s the one thing I told you I’d never do to you? I don’t believe in cheating.” Not once, but many times he told me that. Even during the 3 year affair. How do they lie so easily?
My ex did exactly the same, looked deep in my eyes and made promise after promise, but I couldn’t shake the gut feeling. In the end he convinced me (and some friends and family members) that I was “crazy” to be distrusting of such a loving husband and all around good guy.
I never got a wedding ring. My X suggested there was no point me having one, as I could never were it at work, due to hygiene reasons. Money better spent on hers, in her mind.
She didn’t take my surname when we married, and she was a Ms, not Mrs. Yeah, the red lights were flashing like crazy on the dash board, and I ignored them like the chump I was.
I don’t think her not taking your name is a red flag, as a lot of women do not feel the need to give up their established identity simply because they marry. To be honest, I really struggled with the decision for a long time and completely regret taking his name, mainly because I’m known professionally by it and to switch back would be odd at this point. It’s a sad bit of patriarchy that will hopefully be rejected fully at some point – because I don’t see men falling all over themselves to take their wife’s name.
I would agree with Nord.
This chump kept her surname and has no regrets. The choice would have been different if I wanted kids.
And I still use Ms….
I don’t see why a title needs to reflect my marital status. His didn’t and I don’t see why it should be anybody else’s business.
I hear what you’re saying. I wasn’t intending to be judgemental regarding the choice of titles and married names. I accepted her decisions regarding those things quite happily at the time.
It’s just that with the benefit of hindsight, they were huge red flags in my case. My X is a lawyer, but was still a student when we got married. She had no established career with her name.
She has a friend who is a lawyer. She once said to me: ” I kept my own surname when I got married for work only. I took my husband’s name when we are a family, and all other aspects of life. It was just easier. I could see what a PITA it is for parents, who are married, to have 2 different surnames”…………..this woman is a family lawyer.
Ohh man that sounds just like my STBX..She left me for a woman 12yrs younger than me…Those red flags too many too list..
I lost two wedding rings at the beach playing with the kids while she slept..The original and the replacement…Hmmm was i missing something?
That reminds me of another one…must have been about 3 years from d day and we were out celebrating at christmas and when i got home noticed the diamond had fallen out of my engagment ring. I had a huge sinking feeling of dread and took it as an omen. I reckon it was about this time he had ‘checked out’ of the marriage but played a very convincing loving husband until the day he left.
Yes, I had the wedding ring issue, too. His first ring literally fell APART (it was a fancy kind that had three strips of metal bands fused into one…until they fell apart). It wasn’t cheap, either, and was from a good store, so this was odd.
Then he flat out LOST the second one and we had to buy another one.
Then he kept misplacing the third one (maybe because he kept taking it off so he could flirt or bed women?!). Once i found the third one stuck in the drum of the clothes dryer – it was in his pants pocket and had gotten washed and dried, then stuck in the drum. sheesh.
We had a Case of the Missing Wedding Bands at our house, too.
(followed by its sequel, the Mysterious Case of the Missing Replacement Wedding Band).
Those babies were just flying off his fingers!
On our 10th wedding anniversary my ring finger was stung by a bee.
Later in the middle of the night my finger swelled to enormous proportions and hurt so badly I had to go the Emergency Room. Ultimately the doctor had to saw off my wedding and engagement rings.
The doctor was a very kind, elderly man and he kept saying “I’m so sorry to be doing this, your rings are beautiful. Hopefully you can have them replaced.”
Oh yeah, you bet I replaced them, Doc Patterson.
With a new man and a new life. 🙂
Ha! You know in some mythologies, bees are considered messengers from God.
(I learned this at a farm conference seminar on beekeeping.)
The first wedding ring he had he “lost” it. The second one he never wore because he has a physical job and didn’t want to get his finger ripped off. The diamond fell out of MY wedding ring and he was going to replace it..for years..and never did.
My ex said he could wear his wedding ring because as a surgeon he was always washing his hands and he didn’t want to loose it. Yep, chumpy me bought it!
couldn’t wear………geez I need an editor.
Ye,s mine gave me that one, too….said he couldn’t wear it at his job. Then I would visit and notice that other men didn’t have any problem wearing theirs……*sigh*
Mine also went through a lot of wedding rings – 4, I think. He was fond of saying, “It doesn’t matter if I wear a ring, I’m still married.”
I lost my ring right after DDAY1. It apparently slipped off while putting up Christmas lights, but I had no idea where it went.
I found it long after the snow had melted when I was doing yard work one day.
When I lost it, my ex (the self-professed Empath) said it was a cosmic “sign” that we weren’t supposed to stay together, and hence the EA she was pursuing was A-OK.
This is kind of why I roll my eyes involuntarily when folks mention serendipitous “signs”.
PS. I have to suppress quoting Jeff Foxworthy by saying, “Here’s your sign”. lol. No offense intended to anybody else. The intended offense is to a specific party 🙂
lol 🙂
hahaha!
OMG! I was thinking about all the wedding ring signs that I read here, and I suddenly realized I had them too! My engagement ring was bought in a hurry on a trip to Italy, I got to pick it out (in retrospect, I think he felt pressured and couldn´t do it himself) but it was the cheapest ring (though nice gold) with the smallest diamond possible. It was so thin that they couldn´t inscribe my name on it, and my fiancé said he would get it done “later” (it never happened).
For the wedding ring, my STBX´s father (the Father of all Narcs) gave us the wedding rings from his first wedding (his wife died of cancer when my STBX was 18 years old…probably stress related…) and said during the ceremony that we should return them if we were ever to get divorced!! I only wore the wedding ring on special occasions but the engagement ring I wore permanently and it got lost one winter in the snow and appeared when the snow melted, and then in the last ten years the little diamond fell out 3 times. I replaced two of them (without telling my husband) except the last one. . Now I see that it was a sign of the 3 OW….on Dday I returned both stupid rings….
Oh yes. The wedding band. Mine was an expensive titanium model from a very well-known jeweler (that one might have breakfast at). My finger started itching and swelling up around it noticeably. I kept taking it off, letting it heal, then putting it back on again, only to have the process repeat. My now-ex finally said, “Just stop wearing it for a while,” which I did. Didn’t matter. Whenever I put it back on, I’d react. No other piece of jewelry I wore had the same effect. Of course, later in false reconciliation, he told me it upset him when I didn’t wear my ring.
Me. I was the best indicator that something was off.
I’m normally a happy person who loves to laugh. In the last years of my marriage I was angry a lot and sad. I kept going to see my doctor because my STBX thought I should and “needed help.” Um,….no.
That and for my 20th anniversary I got a ring and the huge stone fell out of it.
That’s hitting rock bottom.
(Ok, I couldn’t resist the pun, I’m sorry)
I had a diamond fly out of my eternity band.
The universe was shouting at me to GET OUT.
Can we sue jewellers for false advertising when you get an eternity band from your cheater?
LOL!
hahaha!!!!
Your eternity was a dud.
Indeed it was.
I remember a priceless quote my ex fucktard put into the legal financial settlement documents : “the respondant retains an expensive diamond eternity ring ….” twat….the irony was lost on him.
I forgot– the diamond fell out of my engagement ring several years ago, but I was able to find it and have it reset. I was so upset when I lost it, but ironically, I’ve been trying to sell that stupid thing for ages now, and I don’t have any takers! Maybe it would have been better if the stone had gotten lost and stayed lost!
Thensome, that describes me pretty well. I’m a person who really lives to laugh, yet the last few years of my marriage saw me as this angry, resentful woman who flew off the handle at any little thing. This, of course, is why ex had to cheat. But this does not explain why he was cheating well before that and the cause and effect that his cheating may (ok, very much did) have on our marriage. It’s when you sense something is up but can’t quite put your finger on it that you go a bit nutso. My kids say I’m a much happier, if much poorer, person these days. And I like it. 🙂
I’ve got two. First was Debilitating depression that started right after he got home from nine months in Guam (where the affair began). He was so robotic and cold to me and I became so depressed that I ended up on medications and in therapy. Second was my wedding ring started to cause little blisters on my finger that were painful and annoying so I stopped wearing it. I thought it was from moving to a tropical climate (we were stationed in Hawaii). Nope, it was just a sign of the pain and annoyance that he was about to cause.
I had a dream: we were on vacation in destin, fl. He was out playing golf. I went to the hotel room to get something. There was writing all over the walls. On a small table sat three wine glasses, though there were only two of us.
Duh.
Wooow!
I hope you enjoyed shopping at silver sands and Destin commence 😉
I had 3,
1- instead of him coming to see me (in the beginning) since his car was at the shop, I said I will come and see you, 5 minutes away from his house my car just died and I mean just died, no light no nothing, my cell, no service and it was dark. I waited for couple of minutes then my car just started and it never happened again.
2-After dating for 8 months, I was invited to their family party so I can meet the whole family, got in my car and on my way there, there was an accident, so I had to wait for about an hour before they opened the roads again and I was late over an hour.
3-I figured one day I would just go and surprise him and have lunch together (in the beginning again) I was in left (fast) lane and as cars approached to the light I don’t know why but I decided to get on the right lane. My car and the truck on my left was the first ones at the light. It was a 4 way intersection, When the green light came on we both started to move, before I knew it, there was another truck and the driver obviously decided to burn the red light, speeding fast and coming from the left direction and t-boned the truck that was on my left, I swerved to the right, and I was ok, but if that was me on that left lane, I wouldn’t have survived that in my car, getting hit by that truck. I drive a 4 door truck now.
I should’ve took those signs as a warning…
So, you’re telling us that you have a smart car? 🙂
I guess I did have a smart car, much smarter than me, that’s for sure 😉
This is almost as good as a burning bush.
We had decided to go to Las Vegas to get married and I had booked the wedding at ‘The Little Wedding Chapel’ a few months in advance, The day we flew to Vegas everything that could go wrong did. When we got to the airport they had bumped one of us off the flight so we were stuck in the airport several hours longer than we anticipated. When we finally got to Vegas we rented some fun red car and were flying down the freeway towards our motel in it and turned on the air conditioner and the motor died! There we were in a dead car on a busy freeway with cars flying around us trying to miss us. I thought for sure we were going to get killed.
We had to get road side assistance back to the car rental place. We finally made it to our room and realized we were never going to make our wedding in time so I called and moved it up two hours. When I went to get dressed I realized that I forgotten half my outfit!! I was going to wear a lace cut out white suit and needed the pants hemmed and had left them at home hanging in my laundry room! I ended up wearing a pair of black jeans. On the way down the elevator I had some kind of panic attack where I couldn’t breathe (never had one before or since) By the time the elevator landed security and my soon to be husband were bending over me. My eyes were watering so badly all my makeup had come off. I said, ‘let’s just go!’ We finally got to the car and and drove to the wedding chapel. And swear to dog, it had burned to the ground and there was nothing but yellow police tape all around it. You can’t make this stuff up.
I knew at the moment it was some kind of omen. My mom had been dead several years and I thought for sure she was talking to me. Most people would have run, buy oh no, we found another chapel to get married at.
Gio, swear to God I was just going to post this! At my first wedding — the CHURCH CAUGHT ON FIRE! Never heard of anyone else this ever happened to! We showed up to the rehearsal night to find fire trucks. The roof caught on fire. They said the sanctuary was still okay, so the wedding went on.
As if the church catching fire wasn’t omen enough, we also had no wedding rings. The guy who was supposed to make them, fucked up. (Long story). Had to borrow rings.
Yeah… the universe was trying to tell me something.
OMG! Church on fire!!!!
Burned down church – you can’t make this shit up!
It’s interesting that the burning church comes up. I had forgotten all about it, but right before we were to go meet with the priest to discuss our very small wedding, the church which I had attended all of my growing up years and where we were scheduled to get married, burned to the ground!! I had completely forgotten about that! LOLOLOLOL!!!! That church was over 100 years old. We ended up getting married in the nun’s chapel in the convent.
Oh. Oh CL, you win, the only thing better would be if lightening struck.
It was literally weeks after BD and after my gut had screamed at me enough I confirmed wasbands affair with my friend and I had confirmation that is was physical.
So I’m truly not sure why it took me so long after the discovery of the invoice for a really really expensive silver ring to realise that he hadn’t purchased it for himself.
I guess your lizard brain only lets you know things at a pace at which you can cope with the information.
This man was love bombing and romantic right up until bomb drop!!
TRUST THAT THEY SUCK!!!
To be clear, the ring was purchased before bomb drop
Apparently, 95% of your neurotransmitters are in your digestive system–there is a belief that our digestive system–which may add credence to the whole “gut feeling”.
http://neurosciencestuff.tumblr.com/post/38271759345/gut-instincts-the-secrets-of-your-second-brain
wow…that is so interesting…I found out about one of my wife’s affairs which was long distance, but my gut told me there was also someone local ..Two weeks ago I went to dinner with a couple we used to hang out with…They thought I knew that she was also sleeping with our neighbor, while also conducting the long distance affair which is the reason we are divorcing…I did not, just the gut…as painful as it was I am so happy to know that my gut was right.
My gut told me about a second affair, too…he was never caught and I never brought it up….but my gut tells me it happened. Moot point now, since I left my cheater.
My gut did that too…I began losing a bunch of weight when I discovered that something was off awhile before I was dumped.
@Gio — You made me LOL and think of this:
Great clip, Alyosha! (I embedded it for you.)
That reminds me of a joke.
A hurricane was coming, and this guy needed to evacuate. The police came to his home and said “Get out! A hurricane is coming!”
The man said, “I don’t need to worry. God will take care of me.”
The storm came. Flood waters started to creep in. Pretty soon, his first floor was underwater. A neighbor came by in a canoe. “Jump in!”
The man said, “I don’t need to worry. God will take care of me.”
The flood waters rose, now the man is sitting on his roof. A rescue helicopter comes by, the pilot shouts down, “Grab the rope!”
The man says, “God will take care of me.”
Then the man drowns. He’s in heaven all pissed off and meets God. “God! You let me drown! I waited and waited and waited for you! And you never came!”
God says “WTF? I sent a police officer, a neighbor, and a HELICOPTER!”
True dat!
I’ve always loved this story – God (in my experience) doesn’t stand there in billowing white robes with a halo – but He does send us plenty of “help” in the most awesome ways – if you choose to see it. I think that you can believe in coincidence or miracles – but believing in miracles sure makes life more wonderful 🙂
I asked for a sign to show me whether or not the marriage was salvageable. Two days later I found the texts to and from the girl he met on eharmony! Oh, the cuteness, the lies…made the decision so much easier. He was the type of narc that didn’t even bother to clear his text history, because he was so convinced that I was too stupid to figure him out.
Whodathunk,
I had a similar experience – I knew something was off, and wanted to know the truth. A couple days later I found directions to my XW’s date with the OM, and the planning and lies followed and shortly after I was dumped.
RedefiningMe,
Sadly though, organized religion and I are not on the best of terms these days – it is how the XW met the OM. I simply want to make progress in this whole mess without having more nonsense come along and continue to push me down. It’s like the message is “No no no, sit back down, you need to remember your life still sucks”.
CW – I am so sorry that thisi whole nightmare is happening to you – to any of us. All I can offer is my experience with the hope that my words can help someone – even a little bit.
I remember being told that “this” would make me bitter; I could stay stuck in the drama; or I could take the lessons I needed from it and move forward into a better life. For whatever reason, early on, I chose “c” – and you get to choose too. This can be the beginning of a much better, more peaceful life… but it takes a while to see it.
Hugs and prayers to you. And whether you believe in God or are mad at Him, as a pastors kid whose had her own struggles with God – I can only say that He REALLY hates cheaters – and if your ex used church and religion as the way/place to destroy your family…yikes. Wouldn’t want to be in their shoes :). It will get better, and please know that goodness and decency still exist – often in the most unexpected places.
Alyosha…Yes!! This was EXACTLY my wedding day!! Hahaha!!!
I KNEW it was an omen. I mean the whole day was so FUBAR’D and then getting to the wedding chapel and it was a smouldering heap with yellow police tape surrounding it.
I mean, what Bigger Omen could I have asked for? Gawd, a sane person would have ran so fast.
I actually said out loud, ‘Mom? Are you trying to tell me Something?’
Alyosha…Even funnier…..my mom’s name was ‘Dolores’ just like in the Steve Martin clip and I just knew she was trying to tell me ‘something.’
Oh my God, these are making me laugh so hard! It’s just like that Steve Martin movie, “The Jerk”, where he prays, “God, if this is wrong, please give me a sign.” And things start flying all around him — so he says, “Nope, no signs. Guess it’s ok!”
Mine isn’t nearly as dramatic as a church on fire, but I had a dream back when we were dating that I was swimming through a tunnel to find catacombs, and when I got to the end there was nothing there, just a dead end. Yep. Of course, when I woke up — even though I actually realized this was about the relationship — I rationalized it was because catacombs are below, so of course this was a sign that I just needed to go DEEPER.
God almighty. I’m glad I can laugh about it now.
Not so much a metaphor, but definitely a sign…
I was married ten years, and for most of the marriage, I had this creepy, repetitive dream. I was wandering around my old junior high school, looking for my locker. I’d search and search, and when I finally found the locker, I couldn’t open it. Then I’d wake up.
So right around D-day, I find this dream interpretation website (dreammoods.com). And it says this, “to dream of a school locker denotes hidden feelings, knowledge, and attitudes that you need to learn and/or acknowledge. To dream that you cannot open a locker or that your forgot the combination suggests that you are unsure of where you stand in a particular situation. You feel you have lost some aspect of yourself. If you cannot find your locker, then it symbolizes your insecurities about your role or position in a situation.”
BINGO. So, exH leaves, and I discover over time that he’s been screwing around our whole marriage, embezzling $ from work…and the list goes on.
And I’ve never, ever had that dream again.
Oh my gosh! I would have this exact same dream!! I would also be wandering around the school trying to figure out my class schedule – I would go up to the door of random classes and peek in to see if it looked like a class I recognized (in my dream I had lost my printed schedule). I would wake up feeling disoriented, lost, frustrated and scared. A perfect metaphor for my marriage!
Oh my gosh also… I was sitting here thinking, gee, except for him “losing” his wedding ring like others said above and never replacing it and telling me he would never wear a wedding ring again (in hindsight during affair #1), did I actually have any signs? Then I read your post – I, too, had that SAME confusing, recurring dream for YEARS about not being able to find my locker or remember my combination (and now that you point it out, probably ONLY DURING MY MARRIED LIFE!) (although sometimes I also had a calculus final, so in addition to not being able to find my locker/remember the combination, I also couldn’t remember what period I actually had my final because I hadn’t been to class!) Wow, I have never been able to find an interpretation for that, but that is such an odd scenario and three of us have had this dream! This dream has puzzled me for years and I would even tell people I had this weird recurring dream.. and they thought I was just that .. weird! 😉
I should add this is something that always bothered me, so maybe this was my “sign”, but it was way before I met my now ex. They had a fortune teller at some function I went to when I was in high school, so I went with my friends and we all got our “reading”. Of course it was just for fun. But one of the things that stuck with me was that I would “not get settled until later in life”.
Fast forward. For years, I would ponder/agonize over what that meant, because I met my now ex in college, got married at 25, had my kids in my early 30’s, had a nice job, thought I had at least an ok husband, nice house, and I just couldn’t understand what that meant… was I going to die young because “settled later in life” must have meant that 25 was really “later” in my life. Because, after all, I had everything “earlier” in my life than what I considered “later”. Then all this started, and I realized perhaps this is referring to now. Because now that I no longer live with my potentially narcissistic passive aggressive ex, even though I am raising 3 kids basically on my own, my life is calmer and more peaceful, and I DO FEEL MORE SETTLED emotionally. In hind sight, I was not “settled” emotionally even though I thought I was settled?!
During the course of our 27 year marriage, the skin under my ring would occassionally peel and then it would spread to surrounding fingers. Sometimes it would get red, itchy and sort of irritated to the point where I’d have to take off both my engagement and wedding ring for short periods of time. This got really bad during our false reconciliation that dragged on for 3 plus years. Once I made the decision to divorce and removed them , I have no such peeling or flaking. I took that as a sign from the universe that I did the right thing.
When I was dating my now-husband (20 years ago) I consulted a psychic. The image she gave me in regards to him was that “he was torn between two apple trees”.
She predicted a long, bumpy road if the relationship persisted.
Yep.
During the Affair, when I smiled in pictures, my mouth would purse up. It became known as the “Chipmunk Face. “. I had become as small and insignificant as a rodent. I can’t even make the face now.
Ok, THAT I would love to see a cartoon of!
When searching for a venue for our wedding, we decided upon a classy, older, but popular landmark inn located in our area. Unexpectedly, within a year following our wedding, the whole structure was leveled with a wrecking ball, and dynamite, flat as a pancake, gone. I should have sought a divorce attorney right away. Who knew?
My mom cheated on my dad and is now on husband #4. My mother immediately hated my now ex-wife, told me not to marry her.
That was my sign in hindsight….no one can sniff out a bitch better than another bitch.
LOL!
Bah ha ha!!!!!
see, it takes one to know one lol!
I suppose the fact that he was out of town at the time and proposed via sms should have been a sign
o_O
You got a TEXT proposal? No freaking WAY!
Yes, but she accepted it!!!!!
LOL! I also should have known by the way he proposed..he went to a jewelry store with his Mom, came back and handed me the ring box and said “here”. Yep. What a story I have to tell!
I had been dating my stbx for almost a year and he leaned over in the car and said, ‘I want to marry you. If you don’t marry me I don’t ever want to see you again.’ Duh, now that should have been a warning. Yep, complete control freak. So romantic too.
Yeah, my health. Just at the time Ex started running ads in CraigsList and all that fine shit, I started having horrific migraines…and gaining weight….and blowing discs in my back…. My body was trying to tell me something! Thankfully now that I’m on my own, the headaches are basically gone (bwahaha), but I still have a ways to go on the other two. Just like the fall- out from being chumped, it doesn’t clear up over night. Going in for another MRI next week.(Maybe when my back recovers, it will be Tuesday, and I will have arrived at the town called Meh!)
But the other REALLy weird thing? HE started snoring. Never before, never since. But the whole time he was out cheating, or ineptly trying to cheat, he snored like a bear with plugged nostrils. Nothing fixed it. I decided post Dday that it was the ultimate form of passive aggressive behavior, which fit his personality. He could even do it in his sleep! Asshole.
“He could even do it in his sleep! Asshole.”
thank you for giving me a great chuckle!! :))))
Mine Talked in his sleep! Not in the beginning and not all the time but in some major concentrated burst’s…. Also in the last 6 months or so before I changed the locks I was having severe pain in my stomach…….which…..just…faded…away…
Toni,
too bad the fucktard didn’t tell you everything while he was talking in his sleep…now that would’ve been clutch 😉
I was always getting sick when I was with my ex for almost a decade, but guess what?? I haven’t got sick not once, not even a simple cold, since I threw him out! you see our bodies were telling us we were being screwed. Life is much better without the lying cheats, no anxiety nothing and I sleep like a baby every night now! 🙂
About a few months D-Day, all the Tiffany’s jewelry that my ex had gotten me a year ago had started to tarnish. I planned on going to get it polished together, but he would always cancel at the last minute for some reason or another and borrow the car (and since we shared a car, that meant I couldn’t go).
Then, the engagement ring he got me started to poke my finger to the point that sometimes it would start to bleed! When I would point this out, he would get mad and INSIST I keep wearing it, saying it was a symbol of our love.
Oh, and of course he would have insomnia, night sweats (to the point that I was washing the sheets every other day or he would sleep on a towel), and he couldn’t go the entire night without getting up twice to go to the bathroom.
Ooh, but my favorite is how he would criticize others for things (I later found out) that he himself was guilty of. He criticized his ex for jumping from relationship to relationship, but that’s what he did; he criticized his friend for not finishing his college degree, even though he didn’t even start college; he criticized me for not respecting him, even though HE was the one disrespecting ME by sleeping around! Gah!
I used to have a recurring nightmare that there was a huge rat in the basement (of our brand new house). Never had that dream again after D-day.
For about three weeks before D-Day, randomly I woke up after just falling asleep with a searing mental image of a giant hand ripping out my heart! For two seconds or so, this was accompanied by a huge whoosh, rushing feeling from head to toe and I couldn’t breathe and thought I was dying!
I didn’t know what it was, and I started googling to see if it was a symptom of menopause or something else… the last time it happened was July 20, 2013, nine days before D-Day. We were at my brother’s house helping my daughter move, and X and I were lying in bed going to sleep. We’d had a busy day with my family, and X was all jovial and helpful, hugging and joking with the kids, etc. but secretly (I found out later) was texting and sneaking off to call OW on the phone. He’d already been sleeping with her for at least a month.
I know now that my heart indeed was being RIPPED OUT.
It still makes me so sad and mad, even after six months of therapy, and accepting the facts that accountants, attorneys and the therapist have presented me with: that he is a snake, a worm who used me financially and abused me emotionally and sexually. I still feel sad that my heart was ripped out. But I know this was truly a sign… someone or something was trying to wake me up and tell me.
I feel like my heart was literally ripped out, too. It’s the absolute worst feeling in the world. I’ve been shattered in a million pieces by an uncaring, unloving person that I spent 26 years with, who decided that his 3 year piece was much more valuable then I ever was.
I’m right there with you, Sandy. It sucks. They suck.
No one can ever hurt me like this again.
Finding out none of it was real, he wasn’t real (diagnosed narc) just sucks.
I had a recurring dream that it was college exam week, and I had forgotten or not realized or not gotten around to attending class/studying/whatever. It was ‘test time’ and I felt blindsided and unprepared and a little crazy because how had I let that happen? I had this recurrent dream for YEARS. Anyone see a metaphor there? Interpretations?
Seriously – I love dreammoods.com. It has really opened my eyes.
Test taking dreams are apparently very common – it said… “Taking an exam in your dream implies that you are being put to the test or being scrutinized in some area of your waking life. As with most common dream themes, dreams about taking a test have to do with anxiety..” Yep, lots of anxiety in dealing w/cheaters.
I have had that dream a lot! Where I have a mid-term or final in a class that I have completely forgotten to attend all semester. Hmmmm….
Yes, whodathunk, that one! I’m not actually taking the test in the dream, it’s more the realization that I forgot or didn’t know ’til now . . . but somehow should have known . . . ahhhhhh . . .
Oh, I just remembered that about 6 months before D-day I had a dream where I told my husband “You can go to her, I’m strong enough for you to leave me now.”
Sorry, I commented too early before I got down here! As I said above, this is often the second part of not being able to find my locker/remember my combination – I too am at final time and same thing as you .. forgot when my calculus class was, hadn’t gone all year and now I had a final to take. So I guess this plus the locker combination one is a very telling combo for me! Wow. And thanks for the interpretation of this – I have never had success finding a good explanation for my convoluted dream!
We got married at a bed and breakfast and had our reception at a local restaurant. Over the past two plus years (while dealing with all this mess), the restaurant burned down and the B&B went out of business and was being sold.
When my ex returned after our first separation to try and ‘reconcile’, I got poison ivy that turned into a month long bout of systemic poison ivy! It took about 5 weeks to recover, he left again after 6 weeks. Good riddance to both!
It was always a joke that I couldn’t remember our first meeting. A few years later I did and recalled him asking me to dance and me refusing and walking away. He love bombed me into thinking we were both in love (well we were but with the same person – him!) . Nearly forty years later when he ran away I realised that my first instincts had been right – I should have kept walking.
Doesn’t it feel great, though, to know your intincts are right on?
inStincts
I don’t know how this qualifies but here it is;
I started having dreams at night that there was a guy down my street who was super hot in a Gabriel Byrne kind of way and he was always “around”. For example, I’d look out my bedroom window and I’d see him looking at me from his bedroom window a few houses down. I’d try to stay away from him because I was married and loved my husband but it was like a magnetic pull to the dude down the street.
One evening, the guy down the street was over my house helping me with something while my husband was out doing God knows what, and we’re drinking wine and just chatting. At some point, he decides he’s going to teach me to slow dance. So he’s holding me and looking into my eyes and I say I feel guilty doing this and my husband wouldn’t be happy if I was dancing with someone else, and he would always say, “You’re not supposed to be with that guy.”
I started having this dream around the same time my husband’s affair started, but obviously I didn’t know what he was up to yet. Now I’m divorced and I haven’t met whoever this neighbor is. 😉 Weird.
I totally want to have that neighbor…especially now!
Well, if he exists, he doesn’t live down my street. 🙂 But maybe I’ll meet him someday when I feel like a normal person and not a newly divorced person. 🙂
After my stupid ex denied even an emotional affair, I dreamed that he was closed off in a room with a heavy set long haired woman. I knew (in the dream) that they were kissing. I tried to get to the room but it was up a flight of stairs and there were snakes all along them. I tried to climb up the stairs but fell slipping on the snakes. In my dream I was in Bloomington Indiana. I learned when one of the monster women of Bloomington’s “birth community” visited our home with her offspring that my nightmare ex had an affair with he president of a “birth education organization” (mean girls incorporated) She wa pregnant at the time (motherfucker) and had gross stringy long hair. I almost had a stroke when I heard but somehow my unconscious knew. It did make sense after the initial shock was over. (I am still shocked at what people will do to others in the name of family support)
I’m new and just now seeing this thread. Chumpectomy, what you wrote really hit me, especially the bit about the stairs. A few weeks after DD and right before I moved out, I had a horrible nightmare in which my X was chasing me up the stairs and I was afraid for my life. Suddenly I heard a gunshot, and when I turned, I saw that my X had been shot in the back. In an instant, the fear I’d had completely dissipated and I ran back down to try to rescue him. Thinking of this now, it all seems so prophetic. Here’s the universe handing my life pattern to me on a silver platter: rescue the very person who’s bent on destroying you. HELLO!!!!
Would be very interesting to see what stairs represent in dream interpretation. Progression, or lack thereof? Me running back down the stairs would be the ultimate wake-up call if that’s the case.
I love this topic! Here’s my addition:
We had MICE in our home! About six weeks before I kicked him out for good, we started seeing droppings everywhere, but especially in the TV room where he would spend his nights texting and browsing the internet on his laptop for hours. That room seemed to be the epicenter of the activity.
I am a neat-freak so I scoured the house from top to bottom, cleaned and cleaned, and cleaned again, but they would not go away! After I kicked him out, however, the mice disappeared immediately!! All gone, with no additional action from me! Based on the influence of a friend who is into animal totems, I looked up the meaning for mice, and GUESS WHAT?!? They represent SECRETS!! Once he was gone, the secrets were gone from our family! Now it is just me, and my two beautiful boys, and a home filled with as much honesty, truthfulness, trustworthiness and love as we can muster! The Universe is amazing!
Also, related to the whole mind-body connection, in the past year since our divorce, I have GROWN TALLER and my vision is now 20-20… and I’m in my early 40s!! Again, the manifestations of living a true life are beautiful and hilarious!
wow that’s so true chimera !! I had problems with palmetto (water) bugs in my house which drove me nuts and just like you I am a neat freak, did the cleaning, spraying nothing would work, kicked the asswipe out, guess what?? not one palmetto bug ever, completely gone since!!
of course I didn’t know at the time, but when he would come near me during his affair(s) my neck would get so stiff and would just ache, then I noticed I was only getting that stiff/hurting neck when he was around me, now that’s completely gone too.
Interesting about the mice. I make no claim to being a neat freak, but once our home was overrun with mice. I didn’t find it very fair that they seemed to have an affinity for my clothes in the closet, my dresser, and boxes of my books or my sons’ old clothes and toys. That is all very normal, except…they left my husband’s clothes, stuff, and shoes alone. Just my children and I were shat upon.
Every time I took back my husband/future husband I got rear-ended. The last time was about 2 days after he moved himself into my new house. Coming home from work, about 5 blocks from home, sitting at a stop light, rear-ended again. Each time I was rear-ended, I was at a stop light. (And yes, my break lights worked)
It happened three times, twice before we got married, the last time after I discovered him cheating and took him back anyways. The universe was literally trying to give me that figurative shove forward.
Talk about a kick in the butt…
I got rear ended on D-Day. Couldn’t get EX or his secretary on the phone. Unusual. Went home and while putting out the trash had a vision of her perfect fingernails. I just knew. It must have been the garbage connection.
My cosmic event was related to D-day, not that the marriage should not be…
then H came home one weekend and announced that he was tired of living a lie, etc etc (no mention of an OW for another 3.5 months).
I drop him off at the airport on his return to work in another state…..I just missed a horrific 10 car pile up on the freeway by about 3 minutes.
Two days later, just missed getting rear ended.
Then the cat died, the first piece of furniture we bought for the house broke, etc.
All signs of endings.
Before our wedding, we rescued a second dog. He took a while to get used to life in a household, but became a beloved member of the family. The Ex bought this dog a collar that had the logo of the Ex’s favorite sports team embroidered on it. Because the doggie was a rescue who could run off when frightened, we made sure the collar was one that fit snugly and was not easy to remove.
One day, after a series of particularly hideous series of cheating and addiction-related events, I returned home to find Mr. CrazyMaker Extraordinaire on the couch. I knew I couldn’t be in the same building with him at that moment, so grabbed the dogs to take them for a hike.
As we drove, and then got out of the car, I prayed and prayed for a sign…”tell me what to do!” The dogs and I hiked, they ran around exploring. I lost sight of them for a moment…when they came bounding around the corner, the rescue dog’s collar was gone.
My prayer for guidance was clearly answered. I went home and told the Ex “I think we are going to have to get a divorce” and told him the story. Of course, because I’m a chump, I lived through several months of more bs, but that was the day I knew what to do.
I thank my dogs all the time for helping me be brave and for showing me what I knew I needed to do.
I laugh when I picture the two of them trying to get that darn collar off, what with no opposable thumbs to help…maybe my guardian angel buzzed down and said, ok doggies, today’s the day– let’s ditch this thing.
I went back and searched for the collar, which was nowhere to be seen. A year later, right before the divorce was final, it was hanging on the trailhead sign. I mailed it to the Ex.
My many signs from the Universe were not subtle!
Dogs are so smart!
Your story reminded me of another. We got my cheater’s dog in the divorce, as my son bonded with him, and cheater totally neglected the creature. (As in, “Oh his bladder can go for over 24 hours before I need to let him out.”)
Anyway, the dog was a friendly, sweet dog, and it had been his. Cheater comes over to get his things (with a constable escort) one day, and the dog is on the porch. They both haven’t seen each other in awhile.
Cheater says to dog “Hi Joey! Come here!” And smiles and tries to get the dog to come to him.
That dog just sat there and looked at him and would. Not. Come.
Later my son and I referred to the dog as “Joey Dog of Insight.”
Same thing here CL. My dog barely wagged his tail that last time he saw the X. It was funny because prior to splitting up, the dog loved him.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say my dog was trying to protect me. He sat right at my feet and wouldn’t move until asshole left.
Those insightful dogs! Those stories remind me that the same thing happened with the first dog (who LOVED the Ex). During The Troubles, he had gone out of town and came back to the house. He walked in, called for her, she came to the room we were both in and she absolutely ICED him. No eye contact, would not come near him, sat on my lap (a 60 pound lap-dog). That moment said more to me than any other. The man I thought I loved had left the building. Turns out he had been on a drug-and-cheating binge and any decency he had left had been extinguished. And she knew it. I still think that moment must have been one of the low points in his life.
Good dog, Rumblekitty!
My dogs saved my life!! He brought 3 inti the relationship and they all denuded up liking me best. Lol
Sorry for the typos! I was trying to say his dogs ended up liking me best.
“I thank my dogs all the time for helping me be brave and for showing me what I knew I needed to do.”
Love that story. My dog didn’t tell me to leave my ex, but he stayed right by my side throughout the aftermath of my divorce. I doubt I’m the only Chump who feels like he couldn’t have gotten through those weeks and months without a faithful pooch.
“If you don’t have a dog–at least one–there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.” (Vincent van Gogh)
That’s a great quote, Nomar. 🙂 I love how my dog let me smother him with my tears and never once got annoyed. He really helped me when I was at my absolute lowest.
At the time during his affair, we had 2 cats and a puppy. The male cat who was extremely bonded with me, use to run from him, would not look at him and in the evenings would drape himself around my shoulders if I was on the couch, purring in my ear constantly. I now think those animals knew- they could probably scent another person on him but I also think they worried for my safety. The puppy who is full grown now doesn’t even know who he is anymore. And just like all of you, my animals surrounded and supported me throughout this entire mess. I’ll always be grateful to them!!!more loyal than my husband of 23 yrs!!!
The dogs are mine, and I’ll fight for custody. 🙂 I love our cats, too, but he does well with them and at least one of the cats would do better in a household without dogs.
Our younger dog keeps trying to make up to him, but he constantly rebuffs her. In fact, watching him interact with the dogs makes me grateful we don’t have children. He’s permissive, so they’ve horrible manners around him. Then, when it’s not cute anymore, he doesn’t understand why they still persist in the same behaviors he was rewarding moments previously!
My “universe” moment was while walking the dogs in the park 2 summers ago. The thought came in my head–very clearly, as if someone were talking–that we would divorce. At that time, I knew that he was being pursued by OW, but thought that he was fending her off. Little did I know that this is very likely when he first started sleeping with her, versus merely sexting with her.
watching him interact with the dogs makes me grateful we don’t have children.
I had the same reaction to watching my dogs and my ex interact.
I gladly spoil them 🙂
Ok, can’t resist hijacking this thread a wee bit. My stbx and I always had Great Danes as our passion in life. Took one (his favorite?) up to #17 in the country. A great experience! Well, guess who just walked right out on our 4 Danes and the horrid wife without a look back? Oh yeah, he met the douche-bag at a dog show. Anyway, my dogs have been my heart and soul and I can’t believe anybody could just walk away from everything they ‘loved’ for something he thought he luved. Yeah, it’s extra work but it’s work I LOVE. I am genuine and I like that about myself 🙂 (I think the dogs were just part of his ‘accessories’ when it came right down to it, like me)
oh, Dogs are the best. I don’t think I would have made it through the past year without my Newfy-girl. We have regular cuddle time, when she gets up on the bed and we snuggle, back to back. And she lets me bury my face in her magnificent big strong furry self and wail. Then she licks my tears. I “rescued” her, but man, has she returned the favor about 1000x over.
I just…dogs… no words. Love dogs.
So at one point, cheater had his mistress, his oblivious wife (me), and a therapist, all of whom he lied to, of course. Our 2nd dog had died and I kept saying I wanted to get another rescue Newf. He always said no, no.
In hindsight, he had all the people-cake, and I couldn’t even have a (nother) dog for some love and kibbles (pun). He was literally starving me, emotionally. What bastards they are, not to smear bastards or anything.
After the divorce, I caved and got my son a dog from a rescue shelter. Our sweet beagle rescued all of us!
About two months after the dog came to live with us, X emailed me that he would be fine if the dog came on visitations, like the dog was part his, too.
I shut that shit idea down quick.
Around the time my ex-wife’s cheating seems to have started, and her gas-lighting kicked into high gear, I began having “ocular migraines.” Unlike regular migraines, they don’t involve debilitating pain; instead, they involve a pulsing blob arising in the middle of your field of vision and growing until they sometimes blur over pretty much everything. When you don’t know what they are they’re scary as hell, and feel like you’d imagine a stroke or brain tumor must feel, but luckily they pass in 30 minutes or so and cause no permanent harm. In retrospect, I think *I was gas-lighted to the point that I couldn’t even see straight.*
Me too, Nomar! They are freaky!
I haven’t had one since I finally got all of his crap out of the storage unit post-divorce.
OMG! I used to get these all the time too! Now that I think about it, haven’t had one since he left!
There’s got to be a huge mind/body connection with emotional abuse. No migraines here, but I broke out in a weird rash and ground my teeth at night. After I left him, those things never happened again.
To me the clearest sign was totally bizarre. I’ve written about it before, but right before D-day my ex had been traveling a lot for business. My family was visiting, and as my husband arrived home from his trip I opened the door to greet him. I smiled and said hello, but he didn’t look me in the face. A voice as clear as day said “There’s somebody else” into my ear. It was so real it could have been said by someone standing next to me, but there was no one there. I thought, “wow, that was weird,” and tried to quell the anxiety that rose up inside. I went back to visiting with my family and by the time everyone left I had convinced myself it was just a weird anxiety attack.
The voice I heard said “pay attention”. I tried but still saw nothing 🙁
Huge mind-body connection, and one I try to caution people about. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s ( one of the autoimmunes) at the beginning of the end. My body was shrieking at me to put myself first, and to live a life of integrity, which means to eat no more shit sandwiches and to stop sharing a home with a liar. I didn’t listen to myself soon enough, so continue to pay the price with my health. But it is getting better. New Chumps: don’t be like me! Preserve yourself. Listen to your body and believe the signs.
For sure. The folks at the Pain Management Center I went to today are very explicit about that, and they employ alternative therapies to help you learn to militate against the reaction. Stress and emotional overload (cortisol letdown, adrenaline spike etc.) can trigger underlying biological stuff big time.
It’s just the condiments on the shit sandwich! Instead of relish or mayo, you get…back pain, rashes, migraine. wheeee.
And NOW I know what I was experiencing too! Thanks Nomar, I definitely had ocular migraines and was scared thinking that I was dying. Haven’t had one since he moved out. Totally enlightening. =)
WBW, here is an excellent simulation of an occular migraine from the Mayo Clinic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVFIcF9lyk8
Sometimes they’re bigger or smaller or cover different parts of the field of vision. Plus they can be accompanied by a sense of pressure inside your head. And more rarely (and most alarmingly) they can be followed by a period of an hour or two when your verbal ability is compromised (I would start sentences and be unable to finish them).
I still get them from time to time, but more rarely and much less severely. I consider it a relic of my infidelity experience.
Wow my chump sign from the universe was just this morning. I was talking to Verizon as my cheater (was going to type wayward) has been cheating and I having been swapping his phone with an old relic here to spy and see who is calling while he is at work. I have done it so much I freaked the account out and it said it couldn’t send my phone a code. So I am on chat with Verizon, they say you have swapped phones so many times from December and it is messing up your plan, what is going on.
I have a flash of intelligence as I type the words “I am spying on my cheating husband” to them.
And as I typed it I realized this is really stupid of me, and I went and made coffee and could not bare to even see what they chatted back to this chump.
When I started dating my STBX I had lost over 150 pounds over 2.5 years. When we moved in together I started to gain weight. At times I would manage to lose 10 to 20 pounds, but then I would go back to stress eating. By the time we got to D-Day #1 – I had gained back all but about 15 pounds over the past 4.5 years. A couple of weeks before D-Day #2 (3 months after D-Day #1), I went back to Weight Watchers. Now I have lost 56 pounds (plus the roughly 230 pounds of the STBX).
Also – I broke my ankle right before he cheated on me with OW#1 and I ended up in the hospital for emergency gallbladder surgery a week later. He kept the “date” he had made with OW#1 (as I was supposed to be out of town for a bridal shower) while I was in the hospital. I threw out my back right before D-Day #2 (with OW #2).
Should have listened to the signs my body was sending.
I know, eh, hoser? 😉
The night I got engaged we drove back to his parent’s house to give them the good news. As I was getting out of the car, somehow I accidentally slammed my ring finger in the car door! It was smashed good, dripping blood and throbbing, so at a time I should have been squealing and proudly showing off my ring I was mostly in pain. For weeks my ring finger was swollen, black and blue. I cringed when people asked to see my ring because I didn’t want them to see how ugly my finger looked. My fingernail fell off and took a year to grow back, just in time for the wedding.
My signs: My cortisol levels reached epic heights, thyroid went bonkers, I gained 15lbs. But, even more interesting—HE started having health problems, namely an acute episode over a month of super high blood pressure. He bought a blood pressure cuff and was monitoring it 3x day, having panic attacks and wondering if he was going to have to go on hypertension medication, at the age of 40.
After D-Day, I immediately lost the 15lbs, granted from stress and lack of appetite from the trauma, but still, skinny jeans make me happy.
I told him “Why the fuck do you think you had that blood pressure episode??? because you were LYING.” He looked at me legitimately stunned–he never put 2 & 2 together. Asshole.
yup, my exH had health issues during the cheating/marriage issues:
nightmares for months… now know during affair #1; I accused him and was gaslighted, but I now know he broke it off then
insomnia for YEARS: guilt, I guess; that’s what happens when you hide the cheating and do nothing to work on the marriage.
I was quite angry when I heard the insomnia stopped when he moved to other city and got away from me. No, was not my fault, it was YOUR fault for keeping secrets and not working on things.
I saw a little karma during my H’s affair. He suddenly developed acid-reflux issues. So bad he couldn’t eat, and this guy’s an eater. Later, he said he thought it was caused from hiding so much from me. Poor fella. He still has it. He’s also developed over the top hi-blood pressure, immense arthritis everywhere, bad shoulder, bad knee and he’s losing his hair – ha – she can have the old Shit!
LOL, I’m not particularly superstitious, so I don’t know about “Cosmic Signs” (my feeling is the Cosmos is up to many things far more important than how my day is going on any given day–smile), but…
We got married in Gulf Shores, Alabama. We were staying in a cabin on Dauphin Island, and the day after the wedding there was a storm, and the island was flooded, and we had to be evacuated in caravans (driving in about 2 feet of salt water, unable to see the road). The road connecting the island to the mainland was nearly impassable due to huge driftwood logs covering it. Those first 18 or so miles took hours to cover.
In retrospect, it was a perfect metaphor for what I was allowing into my life 🙂
My dream: beautiful, idyllic beach vacation/honeymoon with a gulf-front beach house (nice one too) 100 ft from the water on the Gulf of Mexico.
Reality: Near hurricane, narrow escape, much difficulty.
It was a template for my hope for the marriage vs the reality of it 🙂
Speaking of dreams..I cannot escape the H, even in my dreams! Most nights I dream that I am chasing him and chasing him, and I just can’t ever catch up, and I watch him fade into the distance. I wake up bawling like a baby!
Sounds like this is recent for you. That goes away just as soon as you reconstruct your own personal narrative, I think. It did for me, anyway.
I am 8 weeks out from Dday. TimeHeals..how did you reconstruct your own personal narrative? I am open for advice, big time!
You start small.
For me, the first thing I resolved to do was walk my dogs twice a day. I have walked them over a thousand miles in the last year 🙂
Little changes add up to big changes. Start small.
what Timeheals said is true Sandy, little changes do add up to big changes. I should know 🙂
Thanks, Time Heals, for the great advice.
For recurring, upsetting dreams, it can help to write out the dream with as much detail as you can manage, but complete it with a better ending. Perhaps you see him walk away, collapse crying, then get up and walk towards a beautiful sunrise? Or a friend comes to comfort you and help you walk away? Or he walks away, and you shrug and give a little laugh and turn to walk another direction?
Then you read over this ‘revised dream’ several times a day, including before going to sleep. Weirdly, when they do this, people rarely dream the revised dream, but it often stops the recurring one!
Good to know..I’ll try anything at this point!
I, too, have had – not dreams – but nightmares about this guy I thought I loved. Funny, never dreamt about him before. He would be coming up the stairs, walking into my bedroom and it was so frightening. The dogs didn’t bark because they knew him. I was sure he was going to kill me I was so terrified. Ran to the bottom of the stairs, couldn’t get the door open after trying and trying and then he came at me. Of course, you wake up then but I could use that therapy of imagining a different outcome before I go to bed. The dream was SO real I don’t even have to write it down. Not uneasy to interpret, I guess. I was damn scared of the guy!
Thought of another. During my marriage to a cheater, I used to frequently dream about tornadoes. Typically I was caught out on a wide prairie with one or more tornadoes moving erratically on the horizon, leaving me uncertain whether there was any direction I could move in to be safe.
Just now looked up the meaning of tornado dreams at dreammoods.com and found:
“To see a tornado in your dream suggests that you are experiencing some extreme emotional outbursts and temper tantrums. Is there a situation or relationship in your life that may be potentially destructive? To dream that you are in a tornado means that you are feeling overwhelmed and out of control. Your plans will be filled with much complications and you will be met with a series of disappointments. To see several tornadoes in your dream represent people around you who are prone to violent outbursts and shifting mood swings. It may also symbolize a volatile situation or relationship.”
Now I read that and I think, well, DUH!
I had lots of tornado dreams too nomar!
OMG, I did too. I thought it was because I kept falling asleep with the weather channel on (seriously).
I used to also dream about a bear breaking into my house. It was recurring and I would wake up in a cold sweat and practically panting. So I just checked out the interpretation of this dream and it apparently means that you are concerned about a sexual rival.
I had this dream before I found out and a little after but have never had it since.
Someone else with tornado dreams! I have been having them for decades. I don’t think mine are tied to my bad marriage, however.
They would always involve my failed attempts at trying to get everyone to take shelter from the approaching tornado. And I would wake up just as it was closing in on us.
Wow, I have had tornado dreams for years. Usually multiple tornadoes coming toward me, and I am responsible for herding a group of people to safety but can’t quite get them to cooperate. How is it that I never associated those dreams with my XH? I thought it was just a Midwest thing. Come to think of it, I have not had one of those dreams since I left him in June 2012.
One recurring dream I used to have (no longer) focused on the roof of a house I’ve never been in – it was always leaking or otherwise in disrepair, which I was diligently trying to fix. Makes sense!
“To see a roof in your dream symbolizes a barrier between two states of consciousness. You are protecting or sheltering your consciousness, mentality, and beliefs. The dream provides an overview of how you see yourself and who you think you are.
To dream that the roof is leaking represents distractions, annoyances, and unwanted influences in your life. New information is slowly revealing itself to you. Something is finally getting through to you. Alternatively, the dream means that someone is imposing and intruding their thoughts and opinions on you.
To dream that the roof is falling in, indicates that your high ideals are crashing down on you. Perhaps you need to rethink the high expectations or goals you have set for yourself.
Scotty, I ALWAYS dreamed the rood was leaking, that’s amazing!
Lots of tornado dreams…
Dreams – this has GOT to be another thread entirely. I have recurring dreams of being on a huge, very high bridge that curves in the middle and I’m about to drive off it at anytime. They are the scariest! I’m sure it means I’m about to drive my life off a cliff. lol Need to visit that dream site.
You know that’s funny, I had lots of dreams about tornadoes, mostly more than 4-5 coming at me from every direction and I was always looking for a place to hide, then my roof leaking, I also had that too more than once and in my last dream, the roof wasn’t just leaking, it was flooding in every room in the house and I was so upset. I haven’t had any of those dreams since I threw him out and went NC.
For about 10 years prior to DDay, I would have occasions where I would wake up in the night with the feeling that my heart was stopped and I would gasp for air and cry out. After awhile I started to track when these occured. I even went to see a few doctors, convinced I had a heart problem. My husband (a doctor) was unconcerned, in fact he was extemely irritated because when these “episodes” occurred it would disturb his sleep which would piss him off. I would try to calm down quickly so he wouldn’t be mad at me.
Well as you can all guess, once I knew the truth of his double life, I never had another episode. And when I have looked back at the dates when the panic attacks happened, they correspond to his serial cheating. My subconscious knew something was very wrong while my conscious mind was in denial.
A few months before d-day I was feeling jealous at the attention my Ex was giving a mutual friend- he had been giving her this attention for years. Whenever I rose a fuss he would tell me she is like a sister, yada, yada, yada. This particular night I said the words “I am probably going to find out you’re secretly fucking her and I will not even be surprised!” He laughed it off and said I was being silly. I told myself I really only said that to get his attention of my jealousy- and I knew he would never really cheat on me. CHUMP!!! A few months later- on my birthday no doubt- that myth became a very real reality!! I look back now and realize God even put the words in my mouth as I still denied it!!
I once heard of a woman who blurted out “I know about all your affairs over the years” when she had absolutely no intention of saying that. To her surprise her husband broke down and started sobbing because it was true. She felt like God had put the words in her mouth.
Wow. I’ve had similar see below.
1) In the months leading up to D-day, I became depressed and emotional. I could tell stbx had checked out emotionally but he kept saying that nothing was wrong. I thought something was going wrong with me. I now know it was my gut telling me that there was something wrong with my marriage.
2) Around the time my stbx started his first affair, he developed a problem where he started pissing blood. When the affair cooled off, the symptoms went away. The day he started an affair with second OW, he wound up in hospital that same night with a bladder that was blocked up with blood clots. When he stopped screwing around, the blood disappeared. Through OWs 3 and 4, he was pissing blood off and on. The doctors could never figure out what the cause was. Symbolic, eh? For the record, I tested negative for STDs so I know that was not the problem.
1) In the months leading up to D-day, I became depressed and emotional. I could tell stbx had checked out emotionally but he kept saying that nothing was wrong. I thought something was going wrong with me.
Same for me, Mai Mai. I too could tell the H had been checked out emotionally for quite some time, but I chose to ignore it, thinking it was just a phase. (Yeah, a 3 year phase with the OW) I was depressed, emotional, and squashing the nagging feeling that something was truly wrong. So I spent the last few years of my marriage depressed and emotional, and now that I know about the affair, and his abandonment of the kids and I on DDay for the OW, I’m feeling depressed and emotional. What a vicious circle! (BTW, he’s happy as a clam with the OW)
I also became incredibly depressed and felt like I was a “worthless person.” My husband was gone on business trips constantly, and when he came home the first thing he did was go outside and start doing work around the yard. He would do anything to avoid spending time with me.
Mine was when I went for my annual pap and my doctor was like, “Do you need an STD test?”- I was like um no I why would I, I’ve been with him for 3 years now, and found the question odd because I had just had a baby 9 months ago. He tried to cover it up with oh I’m getting you and the girl in the next room confused? He must have known or it was just a slip up. Anyways I found out 6 months later dirt bag daddy was cheating on me. So I did need that test! And that really sucks, the feeling that someone you trusted put your health in jeopardy. Just to fill their needs. But I’m clear of any STDs.
Rain, that ‘fill their needs’ NEEDS to be in quotation marks ! ‘Cause we all know it means ‘fill their ego at little or no cost to them’.
Yes, I am a chump who ignored Cosmic Warnings prior to my marriage and Cosmic Signs during our 16-year marriage.
My first sign was on our very first date in college. We had been introduced by a mutual friend and had enjoyed a group outing the week before. But on our very first date with just the two of us, I had this very, very strong feeling of aversion, that I wasn’t safe, and I wanted more than anything to get back to my dorm room. This feeling was so strong that I finally feigned illness and he took me back to my dorm. Like many women, I thought the problem was all me not appreciating a nice boy. After all, he was much nicer, gentler, quieter, than my other boyfriends had been. And our mutual friend had grown up next door to him and vouched for him. So I go out with him again to give it another chance. We stopped by his dorm room at his college and when he excused himself to go to the bathroom, I happened to notice on his bookshelf an entire collection of porn magazines. Again, I had that sick feeling — what if I was out with a sicko? But later, I pooh poohed my concerns with “all guys look at porn,” especially young college guys. After that, didn’t date him any more for about a year. But after we graduated college, we reconnected just as friends as coincidentally we were both looking for jobs in the same region. We became closer as friends, then later that grew into a romantic relationship, then engagement. I thought I was doing everything right. Then, about two weeks before our wedding, I had a dream. I dreamed that my fiancé died and I didn’t even care. The dream felt real. I woke up sweating. I was mortified with myself that I had dreamed of such a terrible loss and that I didn’t even care he had died! What kind of heartless person was I????? I told no one about the dream. I convinced myself it was just a dream, a meaningless dream, and stuffed it deep down into the recesses of my psyche, pretending it hadn’t happened. Later, after we married, I began to have a recurring nightmare over the course of our 16 year marriage. I dreamed that my husband and I were sleeping in our bed, and that shadowy dark figures would break into our house and try to “get” me, all while my husband lay there oblivious. In the dreams, sometimes the figures would break in through the back door. Sometimes they would break in through the windows. One particularly vivid dream, they were in the attic and were coming through the attic access pull down stair just outside our bedroom door. Always then were coming for me in the bed and I would wake up just before they “got me.” Sometimes I would find myself halfway across the house running from the “intruders” when I would wake up. Often I would scream out in my sleep: “Mama! Mama! Mama!” screaming for my mother to help protect me from the intruders. One time I remember waking up to the sound of “I’m NOT your MAMA.” This was my husband saying this, irritated that I had called out in terror in my sleep. After 16 years, my husband left me and our two children (a week-old infant and a toddler) to start a new life with his most recent OW. I actually began sleeping better than I ever had in my life. I never had the dream again, and it has now been almost 9 years. Also, turns out he had a serious porn addiction that he kept hidden from me and he also serially cheated on me for at least 12 years (if not more) of our marriage. YIKES!!!!!
OMG where do I start?
The day before our wedding, my in laws were in town. One SIL went rollerblading and had a huge wipeout, badly banding up her elbow and knees. Later that night another SIL went to answer the phone in her hotel room and hit her head on the corner of the night stand, requiring a middle of the night trip to the emergency room for stitches.
Three weeks after our wedding, the bar where we had our wedding dance was destroyed by fire. The second night of our honeymoon, STBX forgot his ring at the hotel. We had to drive back from the next destination to retrieve it. Why the hell did he take it off in the first place? The souvenir ring I purchased at a nice little gift shop during our honeymoon essentially fell apart a few months later. (It was a sort of Southwest mosaic – all the stone pieces came apart.)
DDay number 1 happened 2 months after our wedding. We separated for 20 months. When I (stupidly) agreed to (false) reconciliation, STBX was in a car accident on the way to our first marriage counseling appointment.
Wow, I had almost forgotten this awful dream from my first cheater-marriage:
In the dream, I was about 9 months pregnant and at work (in reality, yes I did work 20 hours a week while going to law school but was not pregnant then, but had 3 young kids with cheater-X). In the dream, I came out of my office into the parking lot, and X was standing there pointing a gun at me. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, I woke up.
Later, in reality, we were meeting at a parking lot halfway between our two residences to exchange the kids for his weekend with them. When I got out of my car, he said, “Did you know that a man shot and killed his ex-wife here last weekend?” I had seen that in the paper but thought it very weird that he wanted to tell me that.
Creeptacular!
That’s downright spooky!
This is exactly what scares me. Since we no longer know who they are anymore, who knows if we’ll be the next one in the news during the D process!!!!
Mine is a DOOZY!! We got engaged at Windows on the World at the top of the World Trade Center in NYC. Need I say more?
OMG Nicole..when I read your post, it was so bizarre I had to laugh out loud! Talk about a big HUGE sign, lol!
Yeah, that’s some bad mojo.
Yikes!
It is an awful and tragic metaphor for our marriage. I remember vividly the day the towers fell – I was home with our youngest son who was sick with an ear infection – rocking him to sleep and watching the TV on mute. I could not get the image from my mind for weeks afterwards of my Ex going down on one knee at our table after my ring was delivered in the dessert menu – the wait staff all clapping and smiling for us – the complimentary champagne they brought to our table. I wonder if some of those same wait staff died ten years later? (we got engaged in 1991) I feel like crying right now typing this – we were so young and “in lurv” (at least I was) – and that was a magical night for a little country girl who had only flown on a plane one other time before that trip to NYC. I was so young and naive and bowled over by all the “sparkles.” I sometimes wish I could go back and be that young girl again and start over…but with a stronger backbone and the clear eyes of a woman of experience and reason.
I paid for half of my own engagement ring so I could have something “nice.” I also paid for both our wedding bands. I paid for his graduate school. The down payment for our first house came from my parents.
After we divorced, I realized that every nice thing HE left with – car, electronics, furniture, etc. – was bought during the marriage. Every nice thing I was left with – jewelry, antiques, art, etc. – was given to me by my parents. Yet he accused me of “spending all his money.”
Cosmic sign: if he can’t afford to give you a nice ring, he probably can’t afford to give you a nice life. Unless you plan to finance the relationship by yourself, think carefully.
I can totally relate to this from my first and second marriage. No engagement ring in my first, and the second marriage, Mr. Cheater recycled wife #2’s. Same deal, anything nice in my life, I inherited or received as a gift from my family.
That’s changed now. Very blessed. But boy, you’re right it’s a Sign — stingy motherfucking exes.
My ex-husband used to rotate cars. We had new (used) cars every 3-4 months. More than once, there was something he *had* to have, got worked up over it, got it, and it was on Craigslist a month later.
I used to joke, “When are you going to get tired of me and rotate me out?”
Joke was on me!
Hah! My cheater ex had THREE of everything! Three cars, three motorcycles, three kayaks, etc.
My mother said “He probably has three women. That should tell you something.”
Well come to think of it he had three wives. More than three OW undoubtably.
Was he a Trinitarian?
I am dying over here!
One evening I simply asked if he had rearranged the coffee mugs and glasses. He went into a narcissistic rage, screaming, “Are you calling me a liar?” over and over and over. This for a couple that never raised voices, fought, or talked about anything significant for 31 years. 14 months later we’re divorced and the OW is busy taking her place in history…
I had weird vibrations with all 3OW who worked with my husband, but I put them off as all of us good Chumps tend to do.
But there were the cosmic signs too: OW#1 helped me clean some old books (we are all historians) from which I got a sinus infection that her Chinese accupuncturist husband treated me for in their home (and the three times I went I felt awful and the sinusitis was never cured). The sinus problem only went away when OW#1 and husband left the country…
Seven years later (I thought that OW#1 was “just” a one night stand -CHUMP!)) I ask my STBXH for a divorce or a radical change because I was hating how he was treating me and the sexless marriage we lived in. He offered a third option – a temporary separation so he could “think things over.” I agreed (CHUMP!) but only on the condition that we would be monogamous (CHUMP AGAIN!) and that it would be short. As soon as he moved into his newly remodeled temporary place (Nov 2013), things started to happen there: the glass shower door completely collapsed on my youngest daughter when she was visiting him (fortunately, only minor cuts), he got locked out of the apartment several times, a closet door fell off, curtain rod broke, and since DDay (Jan 2014) he has hardly any running water…
But early in January of this year, after many horrible fake Christmas family events, I received a prayer booklet from my very religious hairdresser to ask for my husband to return to me after praying for 9 nights. I prayed the first night but was uncomfortable with doing so because the question kept coming up “why should I pray for something I don´t really want?” (I didn´t want him to come back and continue treating me in the same way). So the second night I could not even get past the first few words and didn´t continue to pray but 9 days later – Dday for OW#3! Though I kicked him out and started divorce proceedings immediately, (thanks to Chumplady´s advice) a month later (for Valentine´s) I started to get hopium for a post-divorce reconciliation after we had some great conversations that we hadn´t had in years, but once I realized how stupid reconciliation would be, I asked for another “sign” and two days later, when I was transferring some old photos from one of his hard drives I found 16 pages of poetry and pictures for an OW#2 that occurred five years ago….so a new Dday and the realization that he´s been cheating for the past 7 to 9 years…! Should have listened to my gut and kicked him out the first time!!!
Seems like lots of recurring dream chumps – how interesting is that? I was told it was because I was trying so hard to hold it all together during the day – to “keep up appearances”, so the only way I could get my OWN attention was to have these dreams OVER and OVER.
So now I’ve been having one where I’m almost ready to graduate from college, but I’m panicking because I’m not sure I have all the classes/credits I need. So I look that up and find, “To dream that you are at a graduation represents your achievements. You are successfully transitioning to a higher level and moving forward to important things. To dream that you do not have enough units or credits to graduate suggests that you are not giving yourself enough credit about your successes and achievements. You are short-changing yourself for your accomplishments.”
So I guess that’s better – there is hope, life is moving on…I just need to realize it, and start believing that I’m a Mighty Chump 🙂
Oh gosh, I have that dream all the time!
The day before my wedding, I went out for a “bachelorette party” to which the organizer decided NOT to invite my friends. So it was just she and I at this restaurant that was too rich for my blood. I wanted so badly to have an excuse to get out of there. Then, the lights in the restaurant flickered and went out. The storm of the century had arrived (it was in August), and roads were blocked off! I made it home safely, but it took two hours to drive ten minutes away. I should have seen the signs of the stormy marriage ahead!
I don’t have an earth-shattering one moment– but I was feeling very unwell toward the end of my marriage. I had weird headaches, dizziness, and gastrointestinal problems. I thought that something was seriously wrong with me and went to see several specialists. After everything went down, and I finally moved out into my own place eight months later, I had a stunning realization– the symptoms were gone. I felt good.
I have since learned that when I feel an extreme amount of stress, I get all of those symptoms. My body is trying to tell me to relax and to get away from the things that are causing me stress if I can, and it was certainly telling me that well before DDay. I guess it took the A to get me to listen.
On our wedding night 37 years ago my ex husband got a bad headache which he never got whilst we dated. I had to go out into the rain in my night gear to get some medication from a bag he kept in the boot of his car. Suffice to say our wedding night was quite. To this day I think it was an omen that I totally ignored but there have been many many more over the years. Gee I was a real CHUMP!!
Another good one was the day our 1st child our daughter was born 35 years ago. I never got a card or even a single flower. He bought himself a cricket bat because he was already focusing on after 5 days of work and me with no company, he was going to play cricket on Saturday’s. A new baby couldn’t even hold his interest and now she is her father’s greatest backer. She can’t stand the sight or sound of me.
Same here, Maree. By the time I had our 3rd child, it was no biggie. He even LEFT during the night of my first day of labor..because I wouldn’t quit crying from the pain. He went home and went to bed. And over the course of the affair, I no longer received birthday or anniversary cards, let alone gifts for my birthday, our anniversary or Christmas. All of the gifts were going to the OW.
Sandy, I could add a million more but CL would not allow me back on the site!! I like it here as it helps me keep my sanity on days that aren’t going so well!!!
That’s so fucked up Sandy. I hope OW chokes on all of it!
give it some time Maree, just give it some time.
I had a small dog that my STBXH got for my daughter and I when my daughter was 3 years old. Right when my cheater began his affair this dog would bite him. At that point we had the dog for about ten years. She really did NOT like him all of the sudden. I couldn’t figure out this change in her behavior. She became ill and I guess I associated her illness with her sudden hatred of him. I had many ddays and after one particularly bad one he told me he thought he loved the OW so he moved out for ten months and lived with his parents (who lived right next door). He wasn’t out the door more than two months and my dog finally died! I guess she figured he wasn’t coming back and she could die since she didn’t have to protect me anymore. I had to call him and ask him to bury her for me.
No cosmic sign here… Months before DDay my asshole STBX flat out asked me if I would blame him if he cheated on me… Chump of the century move, I said no…
I take it back, Kimmie reminded me of something. I guess it could be a sign that after he moved out I asked him to watch our dog so I could go away for a weekend. Granted she was old and not doing great but she wasn’t anywhere near death. I returned to find her unable to stand laying in her own waste and he is nowhere to be found. She passed away early the next morning. She was an anniversary present to him from me for our 2nd annivsary and we were days away from our 16th. I was still being gaslighted that the affair was over, we would return to MC and reconcile… She, our dog, knew he wasn’t coming home. She was really his dog, she missed him, I believe she wasn’t interested in living without him and that weekend showed her how little cared…
That’s so sad!!!
A few things for me… I was sick all the time the last two years. I caught every bug that went around, colds, flu, sinus infections, everything. The first year I lived on my own, my employer actually pointed out that I had never called in sick that entire year.
Dreams – while we were still together, I would dream that we were driving in circles in our minivan in a canyon that was filling up with water. We were on the verge of losing our house as well as me wanting to get out of the marriage = drowning.
Once I did leave, I would have dreams about college and hanging out with my friends at college = evidently all I wanted was to return to a part of my life that was fun and carefree.
After I left I kept having dreams about bugs on the walls in my bedroom. I would get up, kill them and get back in bed, only to open my eyes and see more. I would do that same dream cycle all night long = in reality he was “bugging” me. He wouldn’t leave me alone the first 2.5 years. Constantly calling and texting to keep me engaged and push my buttons.
3 years out and I barely get sick, and don’t have these crazy dreams. he is still bugging me though. All I want is to finalize the divorce!
Oh, god. These stories remind me. After Dday, one night before I moved out, we ended up driving together past the house where we had our first apartment together, 25 years ago. It was a big old Victorian house–we had the whole first floor–12 foot ceilings, fireplace, huge kitchen, the works. Seemed so romantic, at the time.
It was a moonlit night (it really was) and you could see that….the whole back of the house had been ripped off, and only the facade was standing. Metaphor in the flesh or what?
I started laughing. He didn’t. It was one of those ‘click’ moments when I knew it was permanently over, and he was clueless.
Reading all these posts makes me so mad at not only the heartache that these cheaters put all us Chumps through but the serious health problems they caused. Fucking cake eaters.
Yeah–may they choke on the cake where no one knows the Heimlich maneuvre.
Going to church on a Sunday morning last April by myself while my boy scout leader husband was on a camping trip with my boys (and his OW and her son, who I would find out about later), praying for God to come back into our marriage, and the sermon being about “Leave that which causes you to sin.”
In the midst of the high point of his affair a week after said campout, he decides to try to make our marriage closer by building a garden with me… only to lose his wedding ring in the dirt. (MORE SHIT SHOVELING!!!) He was absolutely freaking out about it. Didn’t freak out about it when he’d go to her house and take it off to fuck her.
Also, for two months before he revealed it all (I’m so chumpy that in marriage counseling, he was talking about how I NEVER GAVE HIM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT, so I stopped trusting my gut the whole damn time he was with her) I had a NUMBER of instances where things fell off the wall, moved by themselves in plain sight of me and an impartial witness. I still believe it was my now dead, CHUMPED GRANDMOTHER warning me to open my eyes, lest she have to keep throwing shit around until I paid attention.
In false reconciliation mode, the day a mirror my husband gave me fell off the wall was a day that he was snapping a photo of himself in a gift his slut gave him and posting it as his facebook profile picture so she would know he was missing her. And Why can’t I just GIVE HIM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT That it’s over? Um, DUH. Because it isn’t??????????
Somebody please smack the shit out of me and tell me to divorce his ass?
Trying! That’s GASLIGHTING!!! ABUSE!!! You deserve better!!!! Please consider yourself slapped!!! Run run run.
Trying, your grandmother was definitely sending you those signs. I believe that. Your (hopefully soon-to-be-X) husband has some cake-eating balls to post that as his FB profile in plain sight while still married to you.
Mine suggested that he and I start watching “House of Cards” together, and we watched it every night (show about sleazy Pol who’s having an affair) together while he was already fucking OW for at least a month. When the show ended he’d say “Love you,” and kiss me goodnight then after I left the room he’d start texting OW and presumably sexting, as they exchanged numerous photos as well. SICK. SICK. SICK.
Mine watched multiple re-runs of Mad Men. For 4 months – totally absorbed. He must have loved all the affairs going on..
Funny you mention this. Ex and I hardly watched much tv together anymore (no surprise), but the one program we started actually watching together was Mad Men. We watched it together for a while, and I remember saying to him (among other comments about how the men treated women back then! ha ha) something like “gee, it’s a good thing men don’t cheat on their wives like that now days; how could they have done that like that” or “did men really have that many affairs back then and cheat on their wives all the time? Good thing they don’t do that anymore”. And shortly after that, he quit watching it with me. Forever. And hindsite tells me this is probably when the final affair was starting/in progress. Guess he was getting lessons and taking notes! 😉
Ha. I admit to being bad and logging into his Netflix after he moved out. He started watching the entire Season 1 of House of Cards all over again, presumably with Schmoopie this time. I can just see them sitting there together holding hands on the couch watching Kevin Spacey’s character fuck the young journalist… is Schmoopie (OW) secretly wondering who is this guy sitting next to her ???? bwaa haa haa.
So, you’re saying you’re still with him?
Hon, divorcing his donkey ain’t gonna help…
We are separated but not yet filed, trying to douse the hopium pipe and calling laywers. I’m getting there. I do think CL is right. Some of us dumbass chumps need to be hurt sufficiently to drop the damn hopium pipe. I spoke of my chumped, dead grandmother. My chumpy mother is still with my cheating dad. Unravel HIS SKEIN OF FUCKEDUPNESS? Please. My skein is fucked up enough. I’m a third generation chump, and that WE DO NOT GET DIVORCED tape needs to be erased. There are some cultures even in enlightened America where women are supposed to suck up and put up with this shit. So believe me, I’ve been asking why the fuck I am putting up with this. I’ve been reading this site for months, often seeing my marriage in these stories, and wondering WHY THE FUCK AM I STUCK.
Reading “In sheep’s clothing,” too. Also eye opening.
It sounds like you know intellectually why you’re stuck. It’s overcoming those ‘tapes’ and the fear/obligation/guilt thing that’s so emotionally difficult. You may suspect that no matter what you do, all of this is going to get blame-dumped on you, and part of you might buy into it. Just Don’t. You know better. And Chump Nation has got your back. We got you, and as soon as you wind up the mo to break the 3-generation mold, you are gonna kick this thing outta the water. Have you read “The Verbally Abusive Relationship” by Patricia Evans? Highly recommend.
It sucks when it’s so ingrained to stay.
My mom was the only one of her sisters who did NOT cheat on her husband, but she stayed with him despite abuse. At 10 I told her to divorce him (she didn’t). I don’t know why she stayed–her entire family supported her leaving him.
You said you have boys. They need to see that women are not to be chumped (well, no one is). They need to see the line drawn, sawn and excavated.
And you need to divorce the entire selfish bastard (not just his ass, because you may only accidentally divorce a hole in the ground) for you and your grammy. Make her proud.
BTW, as a minister’s wife…
…I hope you get support from people in your church (you said you were in church in your post). If they are not supportive, you need to get a church community that will have your back.
Don’t feel guilty that you’re not a “real” Christian if you need to “leave their fold”. Don’t be manipulated with “adultery isn’t grounds for divorce–it’s grounds for forgiveness” bullshit. “Can I still be a Christian and divorce?” Don’t GET me started hon! That’s people making decisions for your life who don’t have to live out your consequences. That’s people who want to hide from reality, because they can’t DEAL with reality.
Does it mean you have to give up on church? Hell no! Like I said, you can find church communities that will have your back, and you may find yourself lucky enough to get a much nicer view of who God is on the other side.
Just sayin’.
It does suck that my church is one that doesn’t believe in divorce. He has been told that he will be paying for an annulment, with his OW’s “apology note” being thrown into the mix. The argument can be made that his character disordered ass was not capable of making this commitment, hence the lack of a valid marriage. There are people who will attest to his background (four time divorce mother) , character, and mental disorder. And I guess he can pay for all of that and it will be $3000 less that he can spend on his whore.
I’m also stuck because one of the kids has special needs, and I have been the primary advocate. While I’ve been shuffling our kid around to therapies and doctors, he was shuffling his dick around all sorts of people, but Schmoopie is his SAVIOR. I know this is fifty shades of fucked up. I’m reading In Sheep’s Clothing and checking off every point that makes me susceptible to this manipulation. I fucking SHAKE WITH ANGER AND DISGUST – not just at him, but at ME. Why the fuck did I give up EVERYTHING FOR THIS JERK. (All rhetorical questions). Never again.
This is all labor pains on the birth to a new life. It has to be. Right?
TrustThatTheySuck, (no reply button under your post)
I hope you live in a fault divorce state, and that you have documentation. All that work with your special needs child needs to be acknowledged in whatever settlement you get–I’m a teacher, and I have a personal background with people with special needs–and I KNOW it’s a full-time job as it is (as a teen, I also worked in daycamps with people with multiple needs–most were non-verbal and non-ambulatory–I met a woman many years later with a son in those categories, and she said, “Oh, so you know what it’s like!” and I answered “No, I really don’t–because I got to go home at night.”)
If you are talking about a Catholic church, you are not obliged to take part of the annulment process, or sign any papers if you feel like it’s a lie (my husband’s first wife was Catholic, and my husband said,”I’m not signing that–we really were married! She left!”).
If you are Catholic, there are still Catholic church communities out there who would support you as the injured party. You don’t necessarily have to give up your denomination if you have to give up your church.
Having said that, there are large, program-oriented churches that run support groups for people who are divorcing–those kinds of churches are often online if you want to search one out. One friend of mine went to a small local church, as a small congregation can offer many friendly faces and real support.
You’ve been abused enough by your STBX and the OW. Don’t allow any community to add spiritual abuse to the mix. God doesn’t work that way.
Trying, I hear you. “We” don’t get divorced either. And “At least he doesn’t hit you” says my mom.
I toked on the hopium pipe earlier today. He came home from his counseling appointment in tears about how he was treating me.
Those old tapes are so hard to erase.
We were on holiday last year and one evening we were chatting about a historical character, then he said he had seen his statue when he went to Boston years ago. Right then the penny dropped: when he got back from Boston he showed me some pics and in one there was one of a woma, I remembere that when I asked who she was, she said one of the researchers of the place he went to visit- fast forward to last year and I immediately said: so when you went to Boston, you shagged someone else, he said yes. I then demanded to know all his cheating (he actually claimed that he did not remember being with me at the time! Anyway). He owned up to 3 but that it was all in the past.
The next day, I went and checked his phone, and yup, clear as day, a message from the 4th OW! I just knew.
Sorry for all the typos, damn tablet!
I quite literally had a “love guru” tell us we weren’t meant for each other.
To elaborate, we went to see a movie around the time that crappy Mike Myers movie “The Love Guru” was coming out. They had this big setup for it where couples could step on little foot panels and it would “predict” your relationship success and read your love fortune. We stepped on it for the hell of it and it said we were a mismatch at best and the little quote said “Oh my, this is disastrous!” in a bad Punjab accent.
Few months after that he told me about this dream he had where he was playing a video game (which isn’t much different from real life…) and this female character in the game was naked and whatnot. He said I was in the dream wearing a bikini and he was so wrapped up in the game that my dream self told him “You’re blatantly ignoring what’s right in front of you.”
The dream had a double meaning. He was ignoring me and I was ignoring the red flags!
I had a 4 cm (benign) tumor removed from my thyroid 6 days before XH told me he was wanted to rent another apartment in the city (for work reasons), was no longer in love with me and wanted to leave the marriage.
While XH was having an affair, he looked weird, like an alien, because he was injecting himself with Botox (he’s a doctor).
I have so many I don’t know where to start..I was so good at spackling that I needed a boat load of signs.
Before we got married XH bought us an all inclusive vacation to Mexico. 2 days before we leave I get in a car accident, totaled car, busted lip and got seat belt burn. The next day was 9/11. He got a refund for the cancelled flights and we never rescheduled that trip, nor paid for another vacation.
We got married in the islands. The night before our wedding he got plastered on all inclusive booze. The next morning he couldn’t find the shoes that went with his wedding suit and was late to the wedding.
My wedding ring never fit, I always wore a ring guard that would wear and eventually start snagging on things or poking my finger.
One week a month, I work abroad. I have been doing this for 2 1/2 years- originally to support my stbx and children because he had quit work so he could ‘pursue his dream’. Yeah. Right.
About a week before D-Day, I was in London and dreamt that stbx and I were having a very strong discussion. It was clear in the dream that he was going away and I was not going with him. The discussion revolved around the terms on which he was leaving. I was not trying to hold on to him but he could not leave until he heard what I had to say. We kept walking around in a circle, looking one another in the eye and speaking strongly. His mother and step-father were also in the dream, standing to one side and waiting for him to finish his discussion with me so he could start this journey. They were planning to accompany him. When we finally reached an agreement, he walked away with them.
A couple of days after I had that dream, I received an e-mail (an e-mail!) from him saying he wanted a separation. D-Day followed on from there, but only after much lying and gaslighting and me having to dig, dig, dig for the truth. His mother changed pretty much over night from a friendly MIL to a b*tch with a heart of ice. I don’t think she ever truly accepted me. I never realized until post D-Day what a mama’s boy he is. I think I am better off without either of them in my life. They both suck.
heck my ex’s mother used to bug me for lunch, dinner whatever, then she would order the most expensive things on the menu, stuff her face, then push me the bill (always) saying “oh thank you it was delicious!” then tell me how lucky her son was that he found such a good woman like me, the total package, he really needed a good woman in his life and he finally found one and kept saying I cant wait to see you two married, cant wait for the wedding, then go hang out with the first OW(the married ho-worker) and her blow buddy for over 3 years. She knew the whole fucking time! Oh yeah they ALL suck!!
My stbx has this cute little sports car he loved to drive on “trips.” I had no hard evidence so one day I prayed that he would have no pleasure in wrong doing. That same day he called to tell me that whilst driving a really bad thunderstorm poured down for two hours while he was on the road and his convertible top got stuck. What he didn’t tell me was he had a passenger OW with him. Two hours pouring rain and the interior is all moldy. He became really angry when I told him my prayer.
Love this Jinx!
“the interior is all moldy”
That’s a pretty good description of most cheaters, actually!
I like the idea of God as thinking it’s a good idea to douse cheaters and their affair partners with buckets of cold water. I’d be okay with lightning, too, but I would take buckets of water in a pinch.
lightning actually starts from ground up, maybe the electricity the cheating fuckers have between them, when they are together, can be that ground point for lightning to find them and zap them both!!
Thanks guys.
*snort* So ultimately,he blames you for the weather…when you would have had a reasonable recourse to douse the back seat with buckets of water directly!
Good one, Jinx!
O.K., I HAD to respond to this one! My first comment since finding this site. Here goes-
Our first date was to see the movie “War of the Roses”. And, another HUGE sign was my dad passed away the morning of my soon to be ex-husband’s 30th birthday.
Ah, “War of the Roses.” A great and terrifying movie. With many great lines. Perhaps my favorite, spoken by Danny DeVito’s divorce lawyer character: “There are two dilemmas that rattle the human skull. How do you hold onto someone who won’t stay? And how do you get rid of someone who won’t go?”
*sigh* Jeeezuz….THAT Quote by Devito’s lawyer.. ** Shudder** LIVED IT.
Worst. First. Date. Movie. Ever.
Ohh, now let me tell you!
Mine was excruciating migraines for 2-3 days at a time, with violent vomiting episodes. It is hard to believe even for me, but every week I will have 2-3 days out of 7 days of this deep throbbing pain.
Another sign was muscle spasm; this developed during his last affair; at the beginning of this affair I would get them as I would fall asleep but before the D Day they became very frequently and with very high intensity.
As soon as I found out what was going on and ask him to move out of the house they stopped completely! Not one migraine.
Looking back too my life, now I know when he cheated on me; each time I got very sick – episodes inexplicable migraines that would last for a couple of months. I would go to doctors, run tests over test and even a brain scan. I am slender, fit and active! Doctors could not pinpoint the cause of the pain. Nothing wrong with me physically! Then as they appear they would go away.
So so many……
He would come home and run a bath, after his extra long day at work.
He was so so tired and would then proceed to soak for hours.
I even went in a couple of times and joined him.
Now that I think about it…..I was steeping in that skank with him.
Then there were the trips to the Duluth Office that he use to take me on.They were day trips every month or so, we would make them into mini vacations in the summer or fall. Not this winter but last, he would go a bit more often and never ask me to go with him. I never volunteered either, not much fun in the winter. Twice he stayed the night on my urging because the roads were pretty bad. Come to find out that the reason he wasn’t asking me, was because……you guessed it! Took the little prostitute with him, gave her money to shop and the use of our car while he worked. He didn’t protest staying over night because he really was so very tired. I felt so bad for him, he worked so hard to put food on our table after all. Fucker!
And that is just the tip of the iceberg…..
Like all the programming assignments he suddenly didn’t have time at work to complete and would have to work every night as soon as he popped in the door and set up his laptop and multiple screens so he could multi task. He could change screens in a quick hurry….he was a real pro you know!
Face Palm
We are such trusting folks aren’t we?
Per the bath — skank tea! Ew!
While my covert aggressive ex still had me relatively convinced that he meant well and any of his acts with bad results just “happened”, like pure bad luck, I had a dream. In the dream, I was looking at his smiling face. He was always smiling in real life. The next thing I knew I was almost falling backwards in horror because he changed into a wide-mouth gaping demon coming to swallow me. I woke up, and I still didn’t get what it meant. I do now.
Hmmmm, sadly, I kick my own ass at the many, many signs I chose to ignore. A few off the top of my head…
1. Epic cheapness at restaurants. I was always embarrassed. Come to find out, he was cheap with EVERYTHING.
2. Having the most powerful “fight or flight” sensation of my life when we decided we should get married. It felt like I had just made a deal with the devil. My whole body was screaming “NOOOOOOOO,” but chumpy me ignored it.
3. Taking the week off to build a bar in the basement the week I gave birth to our first son. Coming to the hospital for 1/2 hour visits and insisting I stop trying to learn how to nurse the baby for a second so I could praise him on the soffet he built. Going back to work the day after the baby and I came home.
4. Telling me to “wait until after the game” when our four-year old fell off the swing set and was screaming in pain. I brought him by myself, and yup, his arm was broken. He never met us at the hospital (it was Yankees v. Red Sox after all). Ignoring the voices in my head screaming, SELF-ABSORBED, ASSHOLE!
5. Mowing the lawn on Mother’s Day in 88 degree heat while 6 months pregnant with our third child. Yup, another baseball game took precedence. Ignored the voice screaming, DOUCHEBAG ASSHOLE!
6. Bringing me a last-minute card purchased from Dollar Tree for our anniversary, and finding a much more intimate card he bought as a 2 for 1 in his glove compartment. Finding the receipt time stamped for 5 minutes before he got home late from “work.”
I am a CHUMP.
Can I run over him with a lawnmower in 88 degree heat? And staunch his wounds with 2 for 1 Dollar Tree cards?
He’d only recycle them, CL. Don’t waste the dollar!
LOL!
This one actually made me cry. And it made me remember my first cheater (the one I was married to), who, about a week before my birthday, asked me to wait in the car while he went in the drugstore to buy a birthday card for a “friend” he’d met at the University he was attending (while I worked and supported him and our three kids). The “friend” was an 18 year old girl he was interested in, who he also invited to dinner at our house. Oh, did I get a birthday card? Do you need to ask? of course not.
May He have Constant Indigestion after EVERY Meal and His Birthday be Forgotten Every Year whilst others tell Him it’s No Big Deal and to Chill out when He’s Offended THEY Forgot.
We were due to go on a cruise for his 50th birthday and both caught Norovirus the day before and had to cancel. He re-booked it… and left 3 weeks after we got back, all planned.
Should have known then…
My entire 20-year marriage was a cosmic sign that I had made a mistake. So many signs I spackled over as fast as I could.
There were several times I caught him with gay porn, or contacting guys in a really suspicious manner. He would look up nude beaches, or gay clubs, or “guys fucking” or similar. He actually got a ticket once for being naked on a public beach.
He had a few really over-the-top ridiculous “business ideas” throughout our marriage that all lost us money. Once he started a dinner club, that definitely lost money. He also started a motivational speaker business years ago. Got one gig at a local business. Afterwards, they refused to pay him the full amount, because they said he was awful. LOL, yet he still thinks of himself as so inspirational, and still calls himself a motivational speaker, still trying to get that gig going!
His lies were so obvious, in retrospect. I cannot believe I fell for so much bullshit. I am the biggest chump alive.
I could list about a thousand more, but those come to mind right off.
I wonder how many of our cheaters are also losers at life in general. I supported my cheater for 16 years and though not married, put him on the deed to our house. Now I am paying up the wazoo for accountants and lawyers to get him off and buy him out, when the accountants say I owe him nothing, in fact he owes ME for the food and shelter I provided for 16 years. After I kicked him out on D-Day I finally looked through his desk and saw he never earned more than $20,000 a year. All that time I had been spackling and pumping up his home remodeling business to everyone, like he was some kind of successful businessman! I am a chump!
I should have known when he was late picking me up from the hospital with our new daughter-I had to sit in the hallway with her- and he said that he had to work.
No flowers….nothing…
When we got home, he had not set up the bassinett. (Bad luck to set it up before you bring the baby home). Ugh!
Bostonirisher, that is just awful. something similar happened to me…when I had our first child, he chose to work overtime the next day rather than visit me and the baby in hospital… when he did come, he came empty handed too… nothing for the baby, nothing for me…. I had given him the best gift in the world and he couldn’t acknowledge it… I cried for days.
Boston and Verity.. I’m soo Very Sorry. Pieces of shit, they are.
Men CUM, Boom They’re DADs, Due ” respect ” by the courts for the wonderous ability to have an Orgasm with Active Sperm ** has nothing to do with WORK for it **
My Ex Sperm Donor, I Call him that cause he’s Not a Man nor Father * earned titles, both* has denied ALL of his children,Several by Different Women, Each One.
I only found out how Bad it was and just How Many after I was Already Pregnant,myself. His Family kept up that Illusion of Close, Honorable Catholic Clan, so that their Precious Reputation wouldn’t be Tarnished. All Manufactured Patina. Meanwhile, Innocents getting burned by The Truth, After Already Caught up in Their Web of ” Ommisions”. Fucking Narcissistic/Sociopathic Families Suck !!!!!!!!!
Irish, Verity-
This is years later. Had to respond. I felt your pain.
My monster psychopath did the same thing. When my water broke I called him at his job as a WAITER to tell him, he was pissed! “Can I come home after my shift?” I said no. He came later. Sat on the couch and put his hand on his head saying what a headache he had! He refused to take me to the hospital that night and took me the next day. Then he left me for eight hours. Only to return and disappear while at the hospital. Then he yelled at me for asking ?s and “being vague”.
I did not get Flowers or a card either. I cried for months. I begged I pleaded. He said I didn’t deserve flowers.
When I think about it, there were a lot of red flags when it came to our children that showed that he was only into “us” if it benefited him. He slept during a lot of my labors with all three children. You know, because staying up all those hours to see YOUR CHILD COME INTO THE WORLD is such an inconvenience I can remember setting up the crib for my second child while heavily pregnant because he was doing his usual, passive-aggressive, “I’ll get to it never because you’ll eventually do it” routine. When I RARELY went out with friends or to have a little time to myself, and I left him with the kids, he’d call after an hour like my free time had an expiration date– “When are you coming home?” You know, because he shouldn’t have to have a hand in caring for those kids; that was MY job!
Boy, did I spackle the hell out of the way he behaved as a dad. I told myself all kinds of excuses– how it’s harder for men to bond with their children, etc. I have since witnessed many men who are very loving toward and involved with their children, and I now know that my chumpiness about my ex went beyond his having an A.
It seems many of us are in the same boat here. What I don’t understand is why we were all such fools. I have no idea why I tolerated the things I did and I am sure most of us can’t answer that question. It makes me terribly sad to think we wasted so much time on so many losers … and yet here we are still standing. Power to us all.
I don’t know about you, Maree, but I’m a people pleaser, and I always wanted people to like me. It was so important to me to feel loved and appreciated, so I also desperately wanted to find Mr. Right. I now have the clarity to see where that stems from in my life, and I guess that I should thank my XWH for that. I have finally stopped caring about what people think of me and if I’m pleasing them or not. I am finally in a place where I know that my worth isn’t based on being with a man or of having the approval and appreciation of everyone I meet, and I have been happier and more at peace with who I am ever since. It took getting whacked with a figurative shovel to understand, but I’m grateful that I did learn and finally understand. I’m sure that some of us on here fell for the lovebombing and then spackled when we saw things we didn’t like because of some long-held beliefs we had about ourselves (I’m unlovable, my worth is based on what others think of me) or behaviors we had learned.
Perfectly said MovingOn. We could be twins separated at birth. I am now 62 years of age and I never thought that I would ever find peace of mind and I have. It took a lot of crap to get here and now and again I go back a step but that is only temporary. By the way I love the term ‘spackled’. Until I found this sight I didn’t realise that I hold the title in Australia (I think!) for the best spackler. Although I am sure there would be many more Chumps who would think otherwise. Thanks for your comment.
MovingOn, I was just like you “a people pleaser”, I was too nice and because of that over the years people took advantage of me non-stop to a point my needs my wants, my happiness, peace were being sacrificed, which my ex and his family took full advantage of, they were like “vultures” in every way! but no more! Now my needs, my wants and my happiness, peace(after my kid of course) comes first! I have set strict boundaries and got to tell you, no one liked that lol!!
Maree, it feels good to have peace of mind doesn’t it? 🙂
We had 3 children and I worked nights at the local hospital. They always had to be fed, bathed and his dinner prepared before I left for work. He would deliberately come home just in time for me to go, I would often be waiting on the doorstep with my coat on ready to do a 12 hour shift.
I spackled that he was ‘good’ provider… but actually so was I. What he actually was, was a workaholic loner who didn’t want a family. My colleagues used to talk about how considerate their husbands were…. I was always so envious.
It was only after he left that my kids said they dreaded me working those shifts.
In the months leading up to D-day, I developed a really bad hemorrhoid (that had to be sliced), I had to be rushed to hospital on two separate occasions as my heart “short circuited” and got stuck at over 140bpm resting rate (ironically both times after a huge argument about his “female friend”), and then finally also rushed to hospital in the middle of the night with a gastric ulcer.
So basically, he was a huge pain my ass, was breaking my heart, and then kicking me in the guts….
If that’s not a bunch of good examples of your body telling you what your mind doesn’t want to believe, I don’t know what is! Hindsight is such a beautiful thing 🙂
Thankfully I got the hard evidence I needed shortly after to leave him, before it quite literally killed me!!!
Pheww…
Where to start…. The VERY Beginning…
You guys familiar with those vintage, metal, gold accented sad, red nosed,bearded clown statuettes ? I had a weird fascination with them when I was a little girl. SAD SAUSAGE with the ” Great sense of humor ” Preface.
When I was 7, out playing in the back yard of our house, I heard a splashing sound echoing from one of those old round aluminum above ground pools about 3 feet deep…when I looked in there was a exhausted squirrel, paddling frantically round. Afraid he would drown if I didn’t get him out with a quickness, and unthinking, I leaned down to let him crawl up unto my hand out of the water. Before I could crouch to lay my hand down on the ground to let him go free, the little sucker freaked out and Bit me. Those little teeth are Friggin Viccious !! So, I Freak out and start Shaking my hand to get it off and it winds up Back in the pool. I Screamed and cried and ran in the house, Bleeding like Crazzy. Dad called animal control to get the squirrel out. They were worried about Rabies. Sweet little me was determined that if it had Rabies I was willing to take the plate full of shots to the belly to “save it”.**naive** FAST FORWARD 26 YEARS… I’m on Yahoo Personals and see this man’s face and I’m hit by something I’d never felt before in my life ** too Good to be True** and his Headliner Reads : “Drowning Boy Saved by Pet Squirrel.”
FATE or a WARNING ?! It’s ONLY Because of My Daughter, I Call it FATE.
Did I mention, whilst I was praying, a year Before, a voice in my head said ” at 33 everything you know is gonna change,everything you were meant to be you will become” ??
I was Allergic to his Sperm. It Literally felt like I was on FIRE. Women with this Allergy do Exposure therapy with ” sanitized” samples to become insensitive to their proteins in order to get pregnant. Nonetheless I was Not Trying to Get Preggo with him..and was told since 16 there was a good chance I would be unable to conceive due to endometriosis diagnosis at the tender age of 16.
I was Totally taken back when I found out I was gonna be a mum.
I wonder Just How many women wind up with a husband whose Literal D.N.A. they are Allergic to , wind up finding out they are Soo NOT supposed to be together.
Sudden temporary onslaught of blindness..Yep. A Half an hour…and he didn’t even seem worried that I Suddenly Couldn’t SEE.
When I was 3 months pregnant I slept on the couch, and I found there was a time I Could NOT Wake Up..At All, I’d open my Eyes and Couldn’t Move as though I was Literally Paralised and slipped back into sleep, unable to pull myself out of my slumber.
Also right about this time, his EX decided to just Walk into the Apartment with Their * rumored,never confirmed* toddler girl on her hip, whilst I was Resting on the couch. This Soo took me off guard.. I only knew her by the description I was given by his mother. I was gonna wait until he got back to deal with his own business, his ex, his daughter. Well he walked into the apartment ,took one look at her and the kid on her hip and walked out…Not a WORD to her or me. He was gone for TWO HOURS. His Flippin Mother shows up , The EX and her are Screaming at eachother like No Class Gutterrats, in front of her baby kin ,no less..” Bitches,this,Whores.. That”..Demanding a DNA Test..
His Mother Asks Me to Help carry out HER *the Ex’s* Shit she Left There. **Supposedly 3 YEARS After they’d ” broken up “. His Mum’s got ” Bad Knees ” So I Took the Stuff up to the front gate of the ” Compound” just to End the Crap and get it Over with.
EX Never told his mum I was Pregnant cause According to Him it was ” Never The Right Time”. Well I Told her Right Then and There that I was Pregnant..HORRENDOUS ,EMPATHY-Less Bitch decides to bring up his OTHER Ex that he was with for 7 Years, that she supposedly hated, but was suddenly talking like she was hoping her son would get back with her, even though they were an Absolute Trainwreck together,Drunk, fighting,Dysfunctional..and her Dumdarse son, tried to Kill himself when he was with her They were just Sooo Happy Together. I told her at that Point I Didn’t Give a Damn WHAT They Did or Who she wanted him with Cause I was DONE dealing with their GHOSTS and Drama. Tired of cleaning up THEIR shit, and getting Berated for the ” Pleasure” of doing so. She also Brought up that She didn’t know her son’s First Daughter ** YESSSS, ANOTHER BABYMAMA* I told her it’s her OWN fault she didn’t know her granddaughter.. Alittle girl isn’t gonna go chasing after HER to get to know her, That’s the GRANDPARENT’s Job…Not a Child’s.
Needless to say…After All this……and this isn’t ALL that Happened Either..I’ve had Nothing to do with ANY of them for more than 3 Years. They don’t so much as even get Pictures of her. and of Course Deadbeat doesn’t pay Childsupport.
He has FOUR Babymamas that I KNOW of. Knowing him..it’s probably at Least 6 by now.
oh..and These are members of a ” Good, Successful * on the Surface*, Fine, Upstanding **lol* Catholic, Italian family. **eyeroll*
There are Many more things..would make your Heads spin…
but I’ll leave it There for now.
All I can say is, when it comes to my defense.. My Gorgeous Little Girl.
I EARNED HER. Went to Hell and Back for Her. She’s MINE. <3
And also after I’d left him and moved out….I sold my engagement ring.
The best I could achieve was 1/10 the purchase price. Which I thought was quite apt considering he was 1/10 the man I thought he was…
Although perhaps 1/100 would have been more fitting 😉
Oh yes, the bringing home of the new baby! My cheater ex had a house party while I was in the hospital with our newborn daughter. When he brought us home he hadn’t cleaned up. He saw my dismay at coming home to a messy house and said comfortingly, “Don’t worry. It can wait until you feel better”.
That one would be funny if it were a line in an Adam Sandler movie. But in real life, pathetic!
Ok….UUmmm…NO !!!
I Wanna Kick him in The Head..Probably wouldn’t hurt his arse, though, Cause He has No Feelings or any BRAIN.
Our last Valentines together, he got me a card with an old timey acrobatic act. The female was on the trapeze, holding (supporting) her partner swinging below and it said “Where would I be without YOU???…Hanging out with all the WRONG people!!!” No Lie…..
On our 10th anniversary (I filed for divorce on our 11th), he bought me a bouquet of 10 flowers. 5 were red roses and 5 were something half wilted (don’t remember what they were) …he explained that he picked those stems out because, “it’s been half and half. Half the time things have been really good and half the time things have pretty much sucked.”
I shit you not.
Good Lord! Another entry for the category of “You cannot make this stuff up.”
I’m so sorry, Marcie! Hope you are able to laugh about this now. If not, some day you will, because it’s just so completely beyond the pale.
I bought flowers for myself this week for the first time ever. Bonus: you can pick the ones you actually like! (No, my ex never bothered to ask what flowers I liked.)
After we split up he moved in with somebody he met like 2 minutes later (not OW but another eventual ex wife) anyway, I was traveling for work and had arranged for him to stay with our kids in my house for several hours until I got home at the end of the week. Knowing this was planned, I went to the pharmacy before my trip – bought a nice little bouquet and had the clerk write a card like, “call me when you’re ready. You’re a really neat gal! Dan” – and left it on my kitchen table…
Man was XH steamed but I got some childish happy satisfaction from it nonetheless. Still makes me chuckle!
you deserved them! Hope they filled your home with warmth and fragrance.
lol Marcie! now you gave me a chuckle :))) LOL!
Ha – I got a birthday card and a bunch of flowers from shitforbrains. At the time he wasn’t talking to me, can’t even remember what my ‘hideous crime’ was – probably raised my voice, or told him ‘no’ about something – who knows. Anyway, on the card envelope he’d written something to the effect of ‘The flowers don’t mean anything, but I would have felt bad not giving you something for your birthday’. WTF!
my shitbrick ex didn’t get me no gift, no flowers, not even a card for my birthday, then a day later he starts love bombing, how much he loves me yadda yadda, like I am so stupid I didn’t know that he wanted some. I swear my ex is such a narc that he thinks he is so smooth, so smart, so irresistible and I must be dumb to fall for that (like his ex-wife)!
If he thought I was that stupid to fall for that, well he is stupider than he thinks I am! SMH……
He is A Dick Marcie!!
aren’t you glad you got rid of the asshole?? I know I am 🙂
1) While pregnant with my second child I developed eczema. I battled it for 10 years. Would get it to clear up briefly, but would always have it come back with a vengeance. Within 6 weeks of moving out it had pretty much cleared up, and have not had hardly any issues with it in the 18 months since.
2) After our oldest daughter was born, a few days before Christmas and after a 4 day labor and delivery, he insisted I stay up on Christmas Eve to help him wrap the gifts for his family I had purchased before giving birth instead if getting much needed sleep or soaking in the tub as I was supposed to do 2 times a day, but he was never available to watch the baby to do.
3) I had just given birth to my third child and he took the week off to help out. My daughter is not gaining weight and I develop strep throat. Start running a fever of 104. He leaves me in the house to take care of the new baby, our 3 year old son, and 5 year old daughter to mow the lawn and do landscaping projects.
4) A couple of months before he told me he wanted out I was trying to buy a birthday card for him and all of them were about what a great husband he was and I could not make myself buy one.
I am not your usual chump though. My ex was pretty good at hiding it and I did not discover the affair until 6 months after the divorce was final. But, it sure did explain the past 7 years of hell and why he had withdrawn so completely from my and the kids lives.
I worked with a guy that told me he knew it was time to leave his wife, when he had this recurring nightmare where he’d be literally chocking to death and reach down his throat and pull out his wedding ring.
My first XW was addicted to Corectol , ” the woman’s laxative”. It would giver her explosive diarrhea , which would adhere to the underside of our toilet seat( disgusting , I know(( and too much information)) ).
She was completely full of shit and would spread her shit around such that many folks considered her a complete asshole( including me and her sister).
I suddenly developed an allergic reaction to my wedding ring. No, really!! I was allergic to my ring–and apparently my husband was allergic to marriage. After 17 years of wearing it, my ring was now causing a painful, itchy rash on my middle finger (ha!) and ring finger. The dermatologist said I had developed an allergy to nickel, which is present in even platinum jewelry. Oh but the coincidence! Husband is revealed to have a whore, um, affair partner and simultaneously my wedding ring causes extreme discomfort. Hmmmm
Someone gave me a copy of the book Too Good To Leave, Too Bad To Stay after D-Day. The book has about 30 exercises for you to work through and the idea is that at the end if you have more good answers you stay and vice versa.
Exercise one was “Think of a time when things were very, very good…”
and I couldn’t think of one!
I realised there had never been a time when I hadn’t been walking on eggshells trying to keep him happy.
So that was the end of that 🙂
I read that book and its fabulous 🙂
me too. Snapped me straight and I’ve recommended it to others!
How about this one? My ex left the door to our house unlocked and some guy came in and stole all of my jewelry and my computer with all of my digital pictures. Only my stuff went missing for the most part.
So I lost my value and my memories. Oh, and the guy ran off with my social security card. So my identity too. I am still not over losing all of that jewelry. I’m damn careful with my stuff, had some of it for 28 years and kept track of it through 15 moves. Ex was great at destroying anything I was very sentimentally attached to.
I think he took your stuff.
Yeah, one would wonder, but other houses in the neighborhood all got hit at the same time and he was walking my stepson to school. But it does still feel like he stole something for sure. I got all of the insurance money for everything. But you can’t replace the memories from the people who gave that stuff to me.
My STBX and I were married by a priest in his family (the same one who married X’s parents, also to become a cheating husband I now know).
During the ceremony, he asked the guests to raise their hands in prayer over us- in the very exact gesture of ‘Heil Hitler.’ It became a joke among most in attendance because it was rather awkward and uncomfortable… But oh how fitting and cosmic it is in hindsight.
Too many to share with dreams and health issues but one other huge red flag that shows my chumpness at its height:
Early on, my very sarcastic X had this joke where if I was walking behind him on a sidewalk he’d turn around and snap his fingers and tell me to stay back like a dog. I actually found this funny- not sure what the fuck was wrong with me but he’s one mysogynistic mofo for sure.
the best man at my wedding gave a toast where he literally said, “I’ve never seen an awkward drama-filled fight that I didn’t like”. .. aside from the embarrassment in front of 150 people – I felt hit by a two-by-four because I knew he was right and wondered what I’d just done.
I didn’t know I was a chump until I found out I was CHUMPED. However, I know I’m a Super Chump now because despite his affirmations of NC with his hypocrital church porn lady, they are STILL in contact. My sign came in the form of Lottery Master’s tickets which he applied for last year and won last month. Golf is the only sport she can slog her aping ass in a golf cart to “play” and something they shared. Currently, she’s whining about the fact that she can’t go to the Master’s with him next month! Blargh!
He’s waiting for me to pull the plug so he can tell everyone he’s the victim. And then get with her because this has been in the works since 2012! Holy hell! I am a Super Chump!
I’ve tried to pick a moment, but there were so many obvious things.
As far as metaphors? Well, perhaps the fact that he said to me early on, “There’s no need for us to get each other birthday gifts nor celebrate xmas nor any of that. If we want something we just buy it for ourselves.”
That just turned our whole existence into nothing special, just like those holidays and birthdays.
And that happened 15 years before D-Day. Can you say chumpity-chump-chump, y’all?
My h never wanted to celebrate, either. No cards, no presents, no parties, no birthday cakes, etc. He went along with making appearances at family functions, but that’s basically it. His idea was to acknowledge occasions by going out to eat. Oh, and doing it on the actual date of the occasion was not important to him either. “It’s just a day, like any other day.” I think that’s just his personality, tone everything wayyyyy down.
That’s how I’ve felt too, turned everything into nothing special. And here we are.
My stbx was also this way about my birthday and other occasions. (Valentines? oh, he didn’t want to be like everybody else and buy flowers) EXCEPT, when it came to HIS birthday – oh he wanted a triple layer German Choc homemade cake every year, like his mom made him (chump me, complied) and the fact his b’day was on Halloween he made a huge deal out of it. (chump me decorated, cooked, had parties every year)
I can’t believe I never got an ounce of anything back from this jackass.
My cheater informed me back when we first started dating, that he didn’t “do” Valentines Day, because every gift he ever got his previous girlfriend was “not good enough for her.” What did I say “Oh. OK.” Last year when I discovered OW, I also found on his cell a # for a jewelry store in the city OW lives in. When I confronted him, he said OW had asked him to call the store to see if they were open that day because she needed him to pick up some jewelry she left there to be repaired. YEAH. SURE. RIGHT.
rigghhtttt. I guess she couldn’t call the store herself. The poor little damsel in distress…
I cant believe some of the stupid lies these cheaters say and they actually expect us to believe it!
nicolette14, I know, really. She used her phone to call him to ask him to call the jewelry store? Then I also found a receipt in his trash can for chocolates and strawberries he brought her for breakfast one day after I’d gone to work. How romantic! When I confronted him with that factoid, he screeched, “how did you know THAT?” But then this man also was so stupid that he didn’t realize I could log into the cell phone online account and see the #s he was calling (phone that I paid for him to have, by the way). Which was how I caught him. Very Very Stupid.
Four years prior to d-day, I woke up one morning with really bad indigestion. We had no Tums so I made a quick trip to the grocery because I didn’t want to wake up my ex-wife.
The indigestion was really a heart attack, I ended up driving myself to the emergency room. I went into cardiac arrest by the time I made it to the hospital. Long story short…I lived and made it through cardiac rehab, basically by myself. It always bothered me that I was THAT sick and nearly died, yet I wasn’t comfortable telling my ex.
That’s the universe trying to tell me something.
WOW. What does cardiac arrest feel like? Does it hurt?
Are you ok now, ffght? That really nails it, what a sad story.
It’s an odd feeling. Didn’t hurt, weirdly peaceful. It was more emotional than anything.
Yikes!
Wow. What a powerful post. How are you doing now, ffghtr67? Did your health improve after you left?
I used to dream I’d lost my wedding rings. My hands would be naked in my dream and I would many times wake, hyper ventilating and simply unable to feel that the rings were on my fingers. I had to physically take my rings off in the end, to be able to have a good nights sleep. Had the same dream for years. A sign or no?
It’s 5 years post divoce, 6 since DDay. When I wake up and feel that phantom wedding band on my finger, I know its gonna be a crap day. I only wore it for a year and a half, but I’ve felt it for years… oo
My ultimate chumpy moment was about a month in to our enmeshed dating, I said to him:
‘what are the colour of my eyes?’ And he didn’t know.
I was SAYING: you don’t see me as a person. I vocalised it! Yet Chumpy me carried on taping up the dashboard.
15 years later, he brought OW in our house, into my bed. Yes, we are interchangeable objects for his benefit, not real people. He actually vocalised it: I stopped seeing you.
I can relate. I’d let my hair go gray during the last 3 years X and I were together and often I’d angst about it and he would say, “Don’t worry! I don’t care about that!” At the time I told myself what a lucky woman I was to have a man who loved me gray hair and all– now i realize he was telling me he “didn’t care” about ME!!!
And 2 mos after D-Day he came back to talk to me and didn’t even notice that I had colored my hair back to brown again. I said, “you didn’t even notice I changed my hair!” and he said, “I’m noticing NOW.” What an ass. Wish I’d seen it so long ago. But then I wouldn’t be a Chump. Ha.
On a lighter note, shortly after our wedding, the priest who married us quit the priesthood. It was so soon afterward that we joked that maybe we weren’t legally married. Fast forward 11 years.
It was fourteen years before my D-Day, and I suddenly suspected my husband of cheating on me with not one but two of his co-workers. I was pregnant with our youngest son, and the knowledge just came to me like I was hit over the head by a ton of bricks, despite having no proof whatsoever.
Ex then went on a lengthy campaign of convincing me that it was not true, and that I was crazy to think this. I spackled until I “believed” him, so desperately did I want to believe with two young children and an infant on the way.
As soon as I began to trust my ex, and tell myself I was just imagining things, I started having panic attacks, depression, and had to go on anti-depressants. After that, I continued to have bouts of panic attacks until by the end of our marriage, I became so depressed I had to stay home from work for a month. I blamed everything but my “wonderful” and “supportive” husband.
Then, on D-Day, I found out I had been right all along, my ex had been having affairs and group sex with those women, by that time for 15 years! Yet, despite the terrible revelations and the stress of the divorce on me and our 3 children, I never had another panic attack again, and felt better than I had in years.
People who did not know about D-Day would come up to me and ask if I had a facelift or what I had done to look so much younger and so wonderful. It was hysterical to tell them that D-Day had just occurred a day, a week, or a month before. There is something so freeing about the truth after so many years of pathological lies.
I will NEVER fail to trust my gut again.
That’s just awesome. It reminds me of that line from Keats about truth and beauty. And I feel the same way as you: I will NEVER fail to trust my gut again.
About two months after D-day, while deep in false R, I had the most realistic, detailed and terrifying nightmare I have ever experienced.
In the dream, I was downstairs in the family room in the basement of our house, standing near the door to the walk-out patio. I was in the house alone, but suddenly I heard the sound of footsteps walking above me on the first floor. I knew the instant I heard those footsteps that I was in MORTAL danger and the person in the house intended to inflict extreme harm. I have never been more terrified in my entire life, waking or sleeping. I literally felt the black, evil menace of this person pouring throughout the house.
I ran out door onto the patio to save myself. As I stood safe on the patio, I decided I was not going to let this person invade my home and drive me out. I went back into the basement and stood there trying to scream to this person to GET OUT. I was so paralzed with fear that I was trying to scream as loud as I could “GET OUT, GET OUT OF MY HOUSE,” but the words were barely coming out as a whisper. I can still feel myself trying with every ounce of my being to scream at this person to make them leave my house.
I finally woke up and as soon as my eyes popped open, I “knew” that the deadly stranger in my dream invading my home was my husband.
That’s so amazing Kammie, you subconscious self KNEW and told you. Always trust yourself.
Terrifying Kammie. Our subconscious knows and our dreams seem to try and tell us something.
I remember having dreams where we were at some kind of social functions with lots of people. And I would get lost in these crowds and not know anyone, and I’d search and search for him in the crowds in different rooms or places – and I always stumbled into him – literally bump into him without seeing him. But the kicker is that in my dream, when I bumped into him or fell over him, he was always standing in the middle of these mobs of partying people, with his pants down getting a BJ from some shadow ….
Thanks so much Kelly and Marcie. I’m really trying. I am having a hard time letting go (after 35+ years) and trusting myself instead of putting my energy and “trust” in him. TODAY is the day (again) that I need to say Yes or No. I’m getting love-bombed (wouldn’t realize what this is without CL) for ANOTHER “one last chance.”
I think some of the most insidious damage that these narcs inflict on their loving, caring partners is that they make us doubt ourselves! I come here to read and gather strength and KNOW that I deserve better, that it is up to ME to look forward and walk through to the other side. Yet I’m the one that is keeping myself in limbo, paralyzed by fear and doubt.
Signs, signs, everywhere the signs!
1. His whole family missed the flight to the wedding rehearsal, and then the next day came a half hour late to the family wedding. We had to wait for them!
2. My lucky number was always 11. When I found out about the OW, her cell phone number ended in 1111. That was a sign that his affair was my lucky get-out-of-jail-free card.
3. He came back after I filed for divorce. He came back, and I later found 2 snakes in the car next to his luggage. It was February and 15 degrees in our state, but he had just gotten back from Florida.
4. I found a great “midlife crisis” silver cube paperweight, with words on the side. I bought it as a Christmas gift for him because it had “Porsche” [his car} on one side and I always joked that I let him have his dream car because it was cheaper than him having an affair. Of course, the word “affair” was on the cube and he didn’t remark that he had been having one for 2 years. I found out a year later. The OW had more rides in the Porsche than I did!
5. A week before our 25th anniversary, I found the VISA charge for match.com and thought it was a jobsearch company because he had lost a few jobs! Then I found his little profile.
6. He forgot my birthdays. He had no idea what my social security number was, after 34+ years of marriage. If I got contacts or drastically changed my hair, he never noticed. Little invisible me!
My cosmic sign – it rained buckets on our wedding day. In the middle of a 5-year drought in California, in May (when it NEVER rains), it rained on our wedding day. At the time we said it was a sign of good luck, as they do in Italy, but that always felt a little contrived to me. We had planned an outdoor wedding that we hastily moved indoors to where the reception was planned so of course the rehearsed entrances were all messed up. And we have NEVER found the videotape that we had made.
My FIL (whom I love dearly) told me that, on the day he heard that we’d separated, all the leaves fell off the camellia that we’d given him for a previous Father’s Day.
The diamond in my engagement ring — which was his great-grandmother’s diamond — chipped a few years ago during a move that I did not want to make, as I was carrying boxes up from the basement and grazed my hand against the concrete stairs. Have you ever heard of a diamond chipping?
And when I told my mother (who’d always distrusted my STBX — inexplicably, I thought) that cheating was the reason for the divorce, she told me that she always knew he would do that…but that she’d hoped, after 30 years, that I was “safe.”
But one more thing — I’ve been having dreams with babies in them. Never in my life have I had dreams of babies before, not even while pregnant. And I didn’t even need dreammoods.com (which was mentioned several times above) to tell me that this is about new beginnings and potential. 🙂
Andrea, I stayed friends with my X’s parents for the last 25 years since divorce from their son… they even became friends with me and my most recent X (cheater #2). Of course we had a reason to stay friends since they are my kids’ grandparents. Cheater #2 has made sure that his family hates me or at least he tells me that they do, because of “how I neglected him over the years” (while feeding and housing and servicing him in every possible other way). I concluded it’s their loss, if they choose to believe him. Deep down, they must know he is a liar, cheater, and loser.
Dear Muse – I think you are right, that people understand when their sons are awful. And you’re right, it’s their loss if they choose to believe him. Some people are not evolved enough to hold two possibly contradictory notions in their heads and feel that they must choose between the spouses. And if they feel that they must choose…what choice do they have, really? Even if your son (IDK if you have a son, but for the sake of argument…) did awful things, would you love him anyway? I would. (I do. My son has hurt ME over the mess with my STBX and I still love him. But I’d criticize him if he did to anyone else what he’s done to me, or if he did to anyone else what his dad did to me. I’m NOT criticizing him right now because I don’t think that would be helpful.) So it is no surprise to me that my in- laws want to stay close to their son. And I hope they do. In the main, he’s a decent guy, he just made incredibly shitty choices regarding me. He’s nice to his parents and to people in general. (Well, no, he’s still a narcissist but most of his relationships are so shallow that people never get to the point of figuring that out, or it doesn’t really affect them.) But like your first X’s parents, his parents love me and always will. I want to protect that relationship for my sake and for my children’s sake. And part of that deal is that I refuse to criticize my STBX to his family. If their relationship blows up, I don’t want to be responsible for it in any way. And I think it’s even more likely that, if I triangulate all of us by criticizing him, it will destroy my relationship with them. Not worth it to me. I have other people to complain to. 😉
A few months before it all blew apart, I was in the shower one morning and ex came upstairs and said, “A rat ran upstairs from the basement and I’ve trapped it in the coat closet. I’m going to work now.” I listened to the rat scratching at the closet door for 2 hours (ewwwww!) while I waited for the exterminator. Well, pretty soon after that I insisted that we tear the deck off the house that the rats were living under and replace it with a patio. Solved the rat problem, all except for one. Shortly after that the last rat left the sinking ship and I was left with a nice, serene patio.
When we first started dating, my ex sent me a photo of himself. My first reaction was that it looked like he had facial wasting, like that caused by HIV meds. Shortly thereafter, one of my close friends told me that she had HIV. During this whole time, while texting, my phone would weirdly autocorrect words like ‘give’ to ‘HIV.’ My poz friend begged me to use condoms with him, since I’d already had dday #1 plus a billion red flags. I listened to her not just based on logic, but be because HIV kept on popping up in weird ways around me (friends, clients, conversations, etc). Eventually, I left the country to visit family and, of course, he went out and engaged in some of the riskiest behavior he could find. Surprise surprise, guess what he got? I’m just grateful all those signs actually made me be careful with him!
OMG. You know, you should not sign yourself Superchump. You sound awfully intelligent and aware. I read your post with my heart in my mouth, worrying that as I got to the end I’d hear some really bad news…so glad that you are safe.
Ditto what Andrea said. More like Superintuitive!
I wasn’t married to the cheater, but we had made plans and commitments that involved sharing a home, business, etc. He had suggested that he move to his parents’ old house to do some repairs before we begsn official life together. After 7 traumatic weeks involving a death in his family and his radical unplugging from our relationship, I went to see him, trying to figure out if he was drowning in depression or “something else.” We spent a bizarre evening at “his” house, in which he barely spoke to me. Which spoke volumes. I went home and the next day, began untangling our affairs, even thought his response to the direct question “are we through?” was to blame me for “being in a hurry.” Four days later I discovered he had a FB page, which he had opened 4 days after going to a wake for an old friend. His page had one “friend,”–not me or his daughter or his siblings but the sister of his deceased buddy. The night of that wake he had called to claim he was “too tired” to come over as he usually did on Saturday. But he talked about this woman and wondered “where her husband was.” Which was what he had said about me two years before. Those words were the sign that his attention had turned to someone else and 3 days later he had become her friend and not mine. Literally.
This should have been the red flag, but I spackled.
We were both really into fish/aquariums and such. Had 3 big tanks in the house already. H wanted to get one of the “new fangled” bio cube tanks. One with EVERYTHING included in a closed system (no cords and components hanging off the outside of the tank). We got as far a deciding to try a saltwater setup when he pulls out “I want seahorses.” I was enchanted with the idea at first. Then I did the research on their care. Someone would have to hatch out brine shrimp EVERY day to feed them. I knew who would end up having to do all the upkeep on the tank. Mentally adding the messy chore of keeping the food alive to be fed to the seahorses made the decision for me. Not a chance.
Red flag right there!
He wanted something showy, but I just knew I’d have to do ALL the work and within a few months he’d get bored of the display itself.
In the months leading up to the bastard confessing, I suddenly started having panic attacks come out of the blue. In all of our nine years together I never once had a thought that he would ever cheat and then in November of 2012 something clicked in my head. He wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. He was home every night, there wasn’t any suspicious cell phone activity, nothing was “off” so to speak. Then one afternoon after I had gotten to work (I worked 2nd shift at the time) I broke. I started crying hysterically for no reason, much to the dismay of my male boss. He asked what was wrong and I told him, I think my husband is cheating- I don’t know for sure nor do I have any proof, but it’s just a feeling. My boss looked at me and said, “Instincts are never wrong.”
Fast forward to February- the feeling got worse. I asked him and of course he said no. He knew what side his bread was buttered on and he would never. Yeah. Right! That was when the cell phone bull shit started. He started keeping his phone in his pocket at all times, then there was a lock on the phone. On weekends when we were home together, he suddenly had to shit a lot, because he would take his phone into that bathroom “to look at facebook”. Finally one day, I asked if he needed to make a doctors appointment because someone that needs to shit that much must have a serious problem.
Things just snowballed from there. By spring he was going out with his friends more often and catting his ass home in the wee hours of the morning, golfing more often, not returning phone calls or texts from me. Basically dropping off the grid for hours on end and then would give me some excuse that he was at his brothers, left the phone in the truck… blah blah blah…
Once June rolled around I had been having this weird dream every few nights that a woman was going to knock on our front door and tell me she was seeing my husband. It got to the point that if a strange car was parked anywhere in the vicinity of our house I would start to freak out thinking “This is it- it’s “HER!” She didn’t come to my door personally, but started by mailing a card to the house. Then calling the house phone from an unlisted number- as many times as 15 calls one night- (digital phone logs never lie). The day of 4th of July he suddenly decided he wanted to attend his brothers annual cook out by himself because “he would feel uncomfortable if I was there”. I asked why and he said his brother suggested that he and I “take a break for a little while”. I asked why. His brother cheats on his wife like its his job and she had no idea. She knew my husband was cheating on me (she’s friends with the skank) and never said anything, because she didn’t want to get involved, so I decided not to tell her how often her husband cheats- I don’t want to get involved either.
Middle of July- he finally confesses. When he told me, I was surprised to find I was okay because I already knew, I just needed to hear his rat bastard mouth say it. The thing that pissed me off, was he smirked when he said he’d been “seeing a chick on the side”. I wanted to punch him in the throat.
Did they end up together? No… she was after what she thought was a self-employed, financially well off guy. What she got was a guy that is flat broke and had me paying all the bills. She’s a gold digging skank and he’s a broke-ass turd. My secret wish is that he knocks her up and they live unhappily ever after!
A dream I had this morning makes a good metaphor. Picture a plane that’s going down… that was my relationship with X. It’s been 8 months since D-Day, after my 16 yr relationship with X, and a week ago I stumbled on a folder on a computer in my house that had a bunch of “sent” emails from him to a woman I’d never heard of before. The emails made it clear that he was “dating” her while living with me, had probably slept with her and in the very best case scenario was actively pursuing her (“thank you for a wonderful Friday evening. You really made a special effort for us, and I truly appreciate it. Thank you for letting me into your world just a little bit more.”). Though I’ve had 8 months to accept that he cheated on me in 2013, here was proof he was cheating or at best trying to, in 2009 as well.
On D-Day, of course he swore it was the first time it happened — I didn’t ask, he just offered that information. This email trove made it clear there was a previous OW in 2009. This has both elated me in a strange way because I now understand how on D-Day he could be so weirdly detached, and it also freed me from my obsession over the 2013 OW (thinking stupidly still that they were somehow “in love”)….. but this morning, processing these newly riled up emotions, I had a vivid dream that I was in an airplane with my family members (it wasn’t clear who, but it wasn’t my kids). I was in the passenger seat in the cockpit, not sure who was piloting and I looked at the dash panel and all of a sudden all the lights flashed then went out; then the plane engine died and it started descending….. as the dream me was thinking, “Oh, I’m going to die now,” the real me suddenly thought, “no, this is just a dream and you can wake up now and make it stop.”
Sometimes I think the “me” that had the courage the night of D-Day to spy on our online family wireless plan, saw the dozens-daily calls and texts to one number, and confronted his cheerful laughing ass when he waltzed in the door… and threw him out that very night… is the same “me” that somehow sensed the entire 16 year relationship was a plane that was going down.
So glad it’s over, still very mad, and still sometimes sad. What makes me angry still is that he knew I thought we were in a monagamous relationship and that is what I wanted, but he wanted to “date” others, so he did it secretly — he robbed me of MY chance to date others and have a chance for happiness with someone who would actually love and respect me.
Thanks to that last round of email I stumbled on, I “see him for who he really is” as my therapist has guided me to doing, and I realize that this man never loved me and never respected me. Glad I’m steering my own plane now.
Muse, thank you for sharing this. I am humbled and inspired by the collective wisdom of my fellow chumps. How I wish I could meet you guys in person. What a pub night that would be!
Well, why couldn’t we meet each other? I’m a chump in Denver. Would be delighted to meet other chumps in my city.
We got married in front of a very dramatic tree. After our wedding the tree fell over.
My boss was acting very strange and uncharacteristic for about 2 months. Then one day he fainted at work and was rushed to the hospital….dehydration, exhaustion, and lack of eating. The next Monday he pulled us into a room and told us his wife had an affair, and he kicked her out. I left the room thanking God my wife would never do that to me. Literally 3 days later, I figured out my wife was having an affair.
The silver lining is he has been very understand and supportive of me. Any other boss probably would have fired me based on my lack of performance.
A few months after dday, and a rocky day he almost left….we had Chinese and opened the fortune cookies. Mine was empty….I cried and said I had no fortune. He got “when one door closes another opens”. It was like from a movie. He cried and held me, but left me in the dust a few weeks later. I wish I had gotten his and me the empty one. But, apparently an empty one is good luck……
The other sign was we had ants in our condo the summer he cheated. We never had a bug in this place before. I often wonder if the uninverse was giving me signs to look.
Weeks before D-Day and after the last time he dumped me (of course he wanted to be friends), I had a dream that we were talking through game pieces with messages on them. His game piece message told me that he was busy with 2 newborns of his. I woke up angry at him because him having newborns to take care of already was way too early to happen for it to not be cheating. I stopped being angry after a few moments because it was just a dream. He can’t even have children naturally. I told him about the dream through text message and he just found it funny “lol newborn… kittens”. The game pieces seemed random to me until D-day when I realized I’m the loser of a sick game I didn’t even know I was playing.