So I was checking my links, and someone posted a comment to my site on this article written by an Other Woman at the Experience Project. It’s from a couple years ago, so God knows how it worked out with her and her soulmate schmoopie, but the letter was so execrable I thought it deserved a translation. If any of you want to know what goes on in the noggins of affair partners, here’s a look.
Can The Other Woman Ever Really Become The Wife?
I’ve read a lot of judgmental comments on different sites but we should never say what we would or would not do because we honestly never know until we find ourselves in a place called “here”. I became the other woman (OW) a little over a year ago. We were both married at the time. The irony is that I specialized in advising single people and couples who were involved in adulterous affairs for a number of years before I found myself in the situation and I never ever thought that this would happen to me.
Nothing makes adultery right. I dare not even search for any justification. However as far as crime goes, there is a difference between a grown man violently raping a 2 year old baby and an 18 year old boy that falls in love with a 15 year old girl who loves him back and has consensual sex with her. Both men are called rapists but the degree of wrong-doing and guilt is so different in these cases. My point is that I have learned through my years of experience as an advisor and my own heart-breaking experience now being an OW that you cannot apply a blanket generalization to all of these situations.
In most cases if you go beyond the surface acts and get to the heart of the matter, everyone in the situation has a role as both victim and villain – the faithful spouse, the cheating spouse and the OW/OM. A brief synopsis of our story:
1) We were both in very bad marriages; his was APPARENTLY BAD and dead for years and mine was secretly bad and coasting for years.
2) Neither of us were seeking an affair or sex and fought hard to maintain a professional relationship and friendship even to the point of involving our spouses in our struggles and asking them for intervention.
3) He and I and both of our spouses had deep emotional scars from childhood and from our marriages (him 29 years and me 10).
4) And most importantly, we were deeply in love before we ever crossed lines physically (this had nothing to do with sex, we were both sexually satisfied in our marriages).When a genuine spiritual connection is developed between two people whether rightly or wrongly, it is as strong as death and not nearly as easy to walk away from as people say. Not all people who cheat get caught up into the sex. It can go much deeper than that which in the end means that any way you go great devastation awaits. To return to a spouse that you know in your heart you will never be in love with the way you are in love with your affair partner will save a family but cause perpetual pain to you and the spouse indefinitely. To leave the spouse to start new with the affair will damage a family and put a life long label on an other wise loving relationship. Neither choice is an easy one and truthfully, at the end of the day you have to be able to recover from and successfully move forward with the decision that you can live with. There is no definitive right or wrong answer that you can apply to every case.
In my case the affair opened my eyes to how abusive my marriage was and so although my husband was willing to forgive and take me back, I chose to divorce him quickly. I was glad to be free, but sad that an affair was involved in ending it. In my lover’s case, after 30 years of marriage it was a much slower process and harder decision to make for him but he did finally choose to divorce. My divorce was amicable, his was not and he is still in the process thereof. His wife does not want to divorce although she is fully aware of the affair and that made it emotionally harder for us all. You hate to see someone else in pain no matter who they are or how you feel about them… sigh.
I honestly never thought that we would both end up divorced. Soon we will have the opportunity to marry each other and have a “legitimate” future together. And crazy enough, I never worry about him cheating on me, nor he me. It’s not that I trust him or even myself. If we can do it once we can do it again. But I trust what we have. The magnitude of our love is nothing short of a miracle really and we don’t believe that anything can come between us. Besides, the truth of the matter is that fear of a possible affair is responsible for creating the conditions that cause them in many cases in the first place! So yes – I would lay my head down in peace at night as his wife.
But did I get off scott-free? No! There is always a price to pay. I guess I got the “Mistress fairytale ending”. But believe me there are skeletons in the closet of happily ever after land. I don’t know to date if I can go through with marrying him. I don’t know if I can live with the lifelong stigma of being the “former OW”. It’s a lot of pressure and I am trying to be honest with myself about the ramifications of this. But who could walk away from a love so great that our friends call it a miracle?
The drum is still rolling on this one, but one thing I can say with confidence is that he and I and our ex-spouses are all going to be better off divorced. Our marriages were bad and really destroying us. People just shouldn’t stay in marriages that are causing so much pain and devastation. If you are not willing to do whatever it takes to fix it, then get the hell out of it so that you both can be Free and enjoy your lives. You think staying together for the kids is best, but children raised in unhappy 2 parent homes turn out worse off than kids raised in happy single parent homes! Whether I marry him or not, I will always be glad that the affair was used to bring decades of marital misery to an end for all of us. We will all recover one day and hopefully find True happiness and peace.
And my translation:
Can The Other Woman Ever Really Become The Wife?
Sure. Happens all the time. Better question is “Can the Other Woman Stay the Wife?”
I’ve read a lot of judgmental comments on different sites but we should never say what we would or would not do because we honestly never know until we find ourselves in a place called “here”.
Yeah, those judgmental people call “here” — “up your ass, where your head is.” I think we (speaking for the judgmental people) can honestly say we know what we would do or not do — we wouldn’t put ourselves in that position. Both screwing other married people, and putting our heads up our ass.
I became the other woman (OW) a little over a year ago. We were both married at the time. The irony is that I specialized in advising single people and couples who were involved in adulterous affairs for a number of years before I found myself in the situation and I never ever thought that this would happen to me.
Dear God, don’t tell me you’re a therapist. You advise people about affairs, and yet in the paragraph above you profess complete ignorance about what you would or would not do in such a situation.
Nice work if you can get it, OW. I wish someone would pay me for professional advice for which I’m completely ignorant. Wall Street hedge fund manager comes to mind.
Nothing makes adultery right. I dare not even search for any justification.
Something tells me what comes after this is going to be a justification…
However as far as crime goes, there is a difference between a grown man violently raping a 2 year old baby and an 18 year old boy that falls in love with a 15 year old girl who loves him back and has consensual sex with her. Both men are called rapists but the degree of wrong-doing and guilt is so different in these cases.
Which is to say, the 18-year-old didn’t really commit a crime at all, except consensually love someone the wrong age — some arbitrary, unkind boundary society puts in place that keeps true lovers apart. Which is a lot like that other unkind, arbitrary, societal boundary — marriage.
My point is that I have learned through my years of experience as an advisor and my own heart-breaking experience now being an OW that you cannot apply a blanket generalization to all of these situations.
No of course not. Some Other Women are BAD. And then there are the Other Women who hey, just happen to fall in love with a married person. Those Other Women are totally different than the BAD sorts.
In most cases if you go beyond the surface acts and get to the heart of the matter, everyone in the situation has a role as both victim and villain – the faithful spouse, the cheating spouse and the OW/OM.
Uh, I think you did the math wrong there. It would be the faithful spouseS and the cheaters. Unless you’ve got some other weird group sex going on there. Anyway, I think the point you’re trying to make is that (and we’ve never heard THIS before) — really, we’re all guilty. It’s all just the same, we take turns as victim and villain. Which is to say, you’re really not the bad guy here. Or okay, it looks that way, but REALLY those “faithful” people, oh, they’re villains too!
A brief synopsis of our story:
1) We were both in very bad marriages; his was APPARENTLY BAD and dead for years and mine was secretly bad and coasting for years.
Yeah, no married man in the history of cheating married men has ever told his OW that his marriage was “dead” before. I think even you share some skepticism on this for putting “apparently bad” in all caps.
As for you, WTF is “secretly bad”? Whose secret? Yours? Let me guess — it was a complete secret to your husband.
2) Neither of us were seeking an affair or sex and fought hard to maintain a professional relationship and friendship even to the point of involving our spouses in our struggles and asking them for intervention.
Oh please. You mean you asked your spouses to do the “pick me” dance to win you back. But of course they failed, because Your Great Love Cannot Be Denied. But damn, if they’d only danced harder, they could’ve prevented this. They had their chance! It’s on THEM really!
3) He and I and both of our spouses had deep emotional scars from childhood and from our marriages (him 29 years and me 10).
And that makes you unique exactly how? I think I speak for everyone on the planet when I say “I have deep, emotional scars from childhood.”
4) And most importantly, we were deeply in love before we ever crossed lines physically (this had nothing to do with sex, we were both sexually satisfied in our marriages).
Yeah, that pick me dance sex is good, isn’t it? The important thing to know, that makes your affair stand out from the others as Not Bad, was that you were in love first before you fucked. Yes, you aren’t one of those sweaty, rutting horndog cheaters. You’re above such baser instincts.
When a genuine spiritual connection is developed…
Exactly. You exist on a higher plane of Platonic ideals, really.
between two people whether rightly or wrongly, it is as strong as death and not nearly as easy to walk away from as people say.
Ask Tori Spelling how that’s working out for her.
Anyway, I hear you. It was a Force Greater Than Us Both. Those “genuine spiritual connections” absolve people of responsibility all the time, just compelling their hapless bodies forward into Motel 8s nationwide.
Not all people who cheat get caught up into the sex.
No. Some hold hands and recite Bible verses.
It can go much deeper than that which in the end means that any way you go great devastation awaits.
I blame the genuine spiritual connection.
To return to a spouse that you know in your heart you will never be in love with the way you are in love with your affair partner will save a family but cause perpetual pain to you and the spouse indefinitely.
Oh the pathos.
To leave the spouse to start new with the affair will damage a family and put a life long label on an other wise loving relationship.
Wise, loving relationships damage families. Trying to wrap my head around that one, OW. Oh hang on, let me give it a label. MINDFUCK.
Neither choice is an easy one and truthfully, at the end of the day you have to be able to recover from and successfully move forward with the decision that you can live with. There is no definitive right or wrong answer that you can apply to every case.
No there’s no right or wrong, just fuzzy little gray bunnies of truth that frolic along the borders of rationalization, nibbling the daisies of perception. Why can’t they exist in their morally nebulous pasture? Why must the big, black wolves of judgment come and gobble the bunnies up? And judge them? WHY?
In my case the affair opened my eyes to how abusive my marriage was
Of course it did. It always takes an affair to realize you’re in an abusive situation. People just never come to those realizations themselves until someone else fucks them.
and so although my husband was willing to forgive and take me back, I chose to divorce him quickly.
Yeah, he sounds like a real abuser to me, OW. He was willing to forgive you and work on the marriage. God, I don’t know how you lived with such a person all those years.
I was glad to be free, but sad that an affair was involved in ending it.
Interesting sentence construction. Active voice “I was glad to be free…” We have a pronoun! “… sad that an affair was involved in ending it.” Passive voice! No pronouns, no responsibility. The affair ended it. Not you.
In my lover’s case, after 30 years of marriage it was a much slower process and harder decision to make for him but he did finally choose to divorce.
You won that pick me dance, didn’t you OW?
My divorce was amicable, his was not and he is still in the process thereof. His wife does not want to divorce although she is fully aware of the affair and that made it emotionally harder for us all. You hate to see someone else in pain no matter who they are or how you feel about them… sigh.
It couldn’t be that your married lover is eating cake? Nah. I’m sure it’s that bitch’s fault the marriage is dragging on. That’s how chumps are — they make things “emotionally harder” for everyone. Cheaters not so much.
I honestly never thought that we would both end up divorced. Soon we will have the opportunity to marry each other and have a “legitimate” future together.
Because nothing is more legitimate than two cheaters marrying each other. As I’ve said here before — a farce registered at Macy’s.
And crazy enough, I never worry about him cheating on me, nor he me.
Yes that is crazy. But I know you’re secure in exactly how special you are. So special that he’s dragging his feet on that divorce thing.
It’s not that I trust him or even myself. If we can do it once we can do it again. But I trust what we have. The magnitude of our love is nothing short of a miracle really and we don’t believe that anything can come between us.
You don’t trust him. You don’t trust yourself. But! You do trust that genuine, spiritual connection! The butterflies never lie, OW. Never.
Besides, the truth of the matter is that fear of a possible affair is responsible for creating the conditions that cause them in many cases in the first place! So yes – I would lay my head down in peace at night as his wife.
Yes, that’s what causes cheating. The FEAR of cheating. Just compels people to fuck each other all the time. I hear this from cheaters — your fear of me cheating caused me to cheat! They do say that, it’s true. So, OW, a good recipe for marital bliss with this guy is to never question him or act jealous. Even when he’s acting all shady and stuff. As long as you stay calm, he’ll never do to you what he did to his wife. She panicked and look what happened. You two developed a genuine, spiritual connection because she was AFRAID of exactly that. It’s her fault.
But did I get off scott-free? No! There is always a price to pay. I guess I got the “Mistress fairytale ending”.
Sounds fairy tale to me. Last you reported, he’s still with his wife.
But believe me there are skeletons in the closet of happily ever after land.
You don’t say.
I don’t know to date if I can go through with marrying him. I don’t know if I can live with the lifelong stigma of being the “former OW”. It’s a lot of pressure and I am trying to be honest with myself about the ramifications of this. But who could walk away from a love so great that our friends call it a miracle?
Yeah, it’s hard to walk away from a miracle. Most people think of miracles as stuff like walking on water, or feeding the hungry, or curing cancer — but other people think of miracles as living with lifelong stigmas. That’s a tough nut to crack, OW.
The drum is still rolling on this one, but one thing I can say with confidence is that he and I and our ex-spouses are all going to be better off divorced.
One thing I can say with confidence is that your spouses are better off without you two.
Our marriages were bad and really destroying us. People just shouldn’t stay in marriages that are causing so much pain and devastation. If you are not willing to do whatever it takes to fix it, then get the hell out of it so that you both can be Free and enjoy your lives.
Because you did that, right? You tried to fix your marriage and got out honestly, right? Oh sorry, I forgot, you give advice when you know fuck all about what you’re talking about.
You think staying together for the kids is best, but children raised in unhappy 2 parent homes turn out worse off than kids raised in happy single parent homes!
Cheaters NEVER can say that, OW. NEVER. It’s like you’re a drunk driver saying “killing your kid as a drunk driver led to you discovering your gift of public speaking at MADD rallies. You owe it all to me!” Shut the fuck up, OW.
Whether I marry him or not, I will always be glad that the affair was used to bring decades of marital misery to an end for all of us. We will all recover one day and hopefully find True happiness and peace.
Yes, you’re just an instrument of God, aren’t you? I’m sure your exes will find happiness and peace one day. You and your “lover” — you’re going to find karma.
And she’s a bitch.
Excellent graduate-levek seminar on cheaterspeak, CL. Though I think you can usually get a good rough-and-ready translation of this drek by just recognizing that cheaters usually mean the OPPOSITE of what they say.
For instance, when today’s cheater exemplar says, “Nothing makes adultery right. I dare not even search for any justification,” she means, “Sometimes adultery is all right and I searched for and found a justification in my case.”
Or in yesterday’s column, when Derp McSpermot said, ”That’s my worst nightmare, I cheated on my wife” he meant “That was my most precious dream. To cheat on my wife.” Or possibly, “That’s my worst nightmare. I got caught cheating on my wife.”
“…cheaters usually mean the OPPOSITE of what they say. ”
I agree! I had the pleasure of reading some of the correspondence between my ex and his AP. His AP wrote, “I don’t want to HURT Gypsy”…
…while she was actively engaging in behavior that would be OBVIOUSLY hurtful to me!
Of course, ex probably thought she was WONDERFUL for “caring” so much about someone she never even met before! *gag*
G.
Oh yeah, my STBX said that the OW really admires how much X still loves me. Ahhh…. gee….well that makes it all better then. But don’t worry honey he’ll never do that to you …..You’re special, SNORT!
“I don’t want to HURT Gypsy”
Yeah, I’m sure he’d say it wasn’t his cheating that hurt you, but rather your reaction.
“Gypsy, stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!”
These people are more f*cked up than a 3-legged spider with polio.
“A three legged spider with polio.” LOL. I love your writing as much as CL’s.
On par with Chelsa Handler. (Who also does not like OW’s much.)
Wouldn’t it be great for Tracey to be on her show?
Tracy. Apologies for the error.
IMO, it’s a throw away line. “I don’t want to hurt Gypsy.” See there. I’ve acknowledged that she could, theoretically, get hurt. And I’ve said gee, I don’t want that. So I’m good. My actions don’t have to reflect what I say. The fact that I’ve said it means it is so.
And the fact I’ve said it means that if she still gets hurt because of my ACTIONS, those words magically make any responsibility on my part disappear.
‘I never MEANT to be mean to you or the kids’ and ‘I didn’t do it ON PURPOSE to hurt you or the kids’ are some of my narc ex’s faves.
Yup, my exH confessed to affair #1, 12 years later. When asked, he said he did not admit to it when I accused him of the affair because he “did not want to hurt my feelings.”
Translation: I didn’t want to piss you off in case it meant you would deny me ego kibbles.
The OW told my X ‘I only want what’s best for everyone’
And by “everyone” I mean “moi”.
This is similar to the “But he / she always asks about you.” or as the Brits say “He/ she always asks after you.”……. meaning, I guess no matter how nasty and or dismissive my friends are of you, because they ask about you must a sign that the problem is not them…….
Lol! Love this!
Great post CL!
About the only thing I want to thank the OW for is taking my POS cheater off my hands.
Me, too! Except that in the process she insinuated herself where she had no business, and in the process made it much too easy for a damaged man to act in a cowardly way, thereby hurting the family who actually loved him. So, in the end, I have nothing to say to OW. She’s a POS, too.
Amen, Miss Sunshine! Looks like we have more in common than just our name… ;/
It kills me a little every time I have to drop my son off at the Clusterfuckdale shangrila home, where OW has successfully convinced him that she just wants to be “his friend” after helping his father nuke his childhood. I hate those assholes.
ChutesandLadders, you win the word cheesesteak award for best use of words in a manner opposite to that of the word salad. Your posts cheer me up every time. Bang on.
How about she try this on for size – when she discovers that this thing is bigger than both of them and she can’t stay in her marriage – freaking get a divorce BEFORE the cheating happens. Jeezus!
Hey, and I trusted what I had with my husband. I trusted he would speak up if he was unhappy because he had no trouble speaking up about anything else. I trusted he wouldn’t tell me everyday that he loved me, when he didn’t. Oh yeah, that trust in feeling (even if you don’t trust yourself or the other person) is going to make it so damnit!
My feelings exactly bogie. That sick abuse of trust is what is so damaging to me. I kept telling him. You could have had her honestly all you had to do was let me the fuck know. He played God with my life for YEARS. My God what a miracle they had.
Yes! This is what I grapple with. I wanted him to go, but he couldn’t until he found someone else. Unfortunately that took 10 years or so. He could have had mor time to look if he’d just left and I didn’t need to be so hurt and insulted and disrespected surely?
The only time he told me he loved me was when he’d fucked something up and while I was tryoing to talk to him about it he’d start whining and crying and tell me “but he loved me”. I never really got that from him.
“The magnitude of our love is nothing short of a miracle really and we don’t believe that anything can come between us.”
And her friends say that their love is a miracle? Really? Did she really say that? A grown woman? A couples therapist?! Her lack of insight and maturity is shocking. She is a naive child.
CL, it is almost like she has read your blog and is trying to serve as the perfect example of the delusional, self-centered cheater that you have profiled for us so well. Our love is so special. Our x-spouses were villainous. We have deep emotional wounds from childhood. Check, check, and check.
“And her friends say that their love is a miracle? Really? ”
This sounded fishy to me, too. I bet she misheard…..and her friends are actually saying that it will be a “miracle” if he actually leaves his wife, or a “miracle” if the cheater-relationship lasts.
Friends? Does she have any???
I listen to her BS for five seconds and then run!
That she has friends is the miracle…
Hey, miracles happen!
We Canadians walk on water! It’s just January when we do….
Also did you notice how she said a few times that she may NOT marry cheaterboy?
So after all that pain and destruction, she’s thinking that cheaterboy may not be a good bet. How fucking selfish is that? I thought she said they had The Greatest Love of All? Now that the toy is broken, she doesn’t want to play with it anymore.
I think if I was the BS I’d make that bitch marry him…”you wanted him, now TAKE him”!
She’s just trying to save face with that – he hasn’t left his wife, she left her husband, so now she has to act like she’s not sure…my ex’s gf says “he’d marry me right now if I’d say yes”, hahaha, sure he would, just like the past dozen gf’s who thought he would marry them too. And he won’t cheat on you. Right. She must be an excellent therapist. That’s probably where she found the poor woman’s husband. And the rape of a 15-yr old v. the rape of a 2-yr old, what a roundabout shady-vague way of saying cheating is a victimless crime. It’s not. Ever.
Kind of like the Pottery Barn rule???
What a heinous, fatuous piece of drivel – beautifully dissected by CL.
I do believe that cheaters get what they deserve from each other, but I can’t help feeling that they get more out of society than they ought to. I’m not advocating a return to pelting adulterers with stones but I can’t help but feel that there is a widespread acceptance of cheating (classed as finding your true love [vomit]) which makes it easy to do these days. There is very little condemnation and far too much “understanding”.
As a single mum here in the UK, I have social outcast status – not completely outcast but I am not welcome at dinner parties or functions where turning up without a partner is “uncomfortable” for others. I am welcome at “mum” type events or all women groups (bookclubs etc) but not at couple type events. I’m very long in the tooth at this single mum thing now (11 years) and have stopped being hurt by my exclusion but it still seems to me that the rewards go to the married/partnered – regardless of how that came about!
I completely agree English Lady. I feel like cheating is not condemned the same way it used to be. I also have an issue with no-fault states. I mean, my ex cheated and I get stuck with a HUGE legal bill. This makes no sense to me. He wanted out…he should have to pay the way then!
I also feel like an outcast around my friends, who are all married. It’s very difficult and I still struggle, years later, with this. My ex is remarried (to OW), with a brand new house and all the shiny things…I struggle in a basement apartment with 2 little kids. Hoping that karma train is gearing up because this just doesn’t seem right.
Ugh – that makes me SICK to hear! Yes I agree- no fault is bullshit. I’m so sorry to hear your story – the same thing happened to me – I moved 1250 miles from my family to be with my ex to a place that I could no way afford on my own. He started banging some pig at work. Of course I ditched him (I got almost NOTHING – short marriage) ALL the things I wanted – fix up the house, etc, was MIRACULOUSLY done the second this pig moved in! Of course they sold that house and bought a beautiful fancy house. MY story DOES have a (sort of) happy ending: She met a poker dealer at her bachelorette cruise (spoiled little princes she was – I didn’t even get a HONEYMOON and he’s paying for this bitch’s bachelorette cruise!) and she ditched my ex for him! The wedding was all paid for and they lost all their money. Of course the more evil you are, the happier your life: She married the poker dealer and now they have a beautiful house (I have no idea how – she must have inherited money?) and she has a lovely set of twins. BTW – get vomit bag out- my EX called me to CRY!! Can ANYONE beat THAT narcissism?! Anyone?!?
Oh Pam, the karma right there! I pray that my ex’s marriage is short lived. I want him to SUFFER the way he made us suffer. Sounds like your ex got what was coming to him. I hope that in and of itself makes you smile! 🙂
My ex is getting married to the affair in a few months. She is two decades younger than him and the wedding sounds like a Royal occasion. I wonder how the OW’s family (especially her parents) can invite all their friends to watch a 50 year old man marry their first daughter? My oldest refuses to go. The older folk in the audience must be able to identify what happened here as my children stand there in their little tuxes. And some sort of “hand holding” for the OW, my ex and my children at the ceremony to join them as a “family.”
Perhaps I should walk him down the aisle to give him away.
Linda, volunteer to kick him down the aisle shouting “go on, get” the whole way. Although he does seem to be doing a splendid job of making a fool of himself all on his own.
Some people’s houses, etc. are so big that they must be in debt. People can look a lot richer than they are.
I agree wholeheartedly with English Lady and Sick of HER Chump. I see it too..friends and his family go on about life like he did absolutely nothing wrong. “Shit happens” is the attitude I’ve gotten from everybody. Yeah..no biggie that he destroyed a family. Heck, he still has the love of his friends and family..why should he care about the kids and I? I’ve said this before too..I disagree with the whole “no-fault divorce” concept. Number 1, they don’t have any repercussions for what the did. Hello..YOU are the one that fucked up MY life..but that doesn’t matter..it’s okay that you did that, because you have no consequences from your actions. Number 2, alimony is NOT a guarantee, and actually hard to fight for and receive where I live. So the faithful partners gets screwed in every way..first of all with society accepting that fact that “shit happens” and cheating is just fine and dandy; secondly a lot of us are left holding the bag financially, while the cheater gets to gallop off into the sunset with his soul mate and no worries, leaving us back here to pick up the pieces and try to make ends meet every single day. Really makes me wonder about mankind somedays!
Sandy I couldn’t have said it better myself. They fuck up our lives, with no consequences. Two weeks after DDay I called my ex mother in law and her response: “you can’t expect him to be alone forever can you”. WTF!?!?!?! No consequences, not a care in the world. I’m ignored like yesterday’s garbage. In the 3 years since DDay she has not spoken to me or called her grandkids. It’s sick. Financially I’m screwed…was a SAHM and now am only able to work part time as I have kids to take care of…on MY OWN. The way this all unfolded is bullshit. And all I keep hearing from everyone is that it’s time to move on and get over it. How?? With mind boggling debt and nowhere to live (I’m in my parent’s basement). He went on 4 trips last year…no suffering there. I can only wish that he is suffering in a way that I can’t see.
Divorce is not failure, cheating is failure. Internalize it. Believe it.
Gee whiz English Lady! They do that in the UK too? I have that same problem here. I noticed that at a few holiday parties. Very few want a almost divorced woman at their party. I thought my stbxh’s family would have stopped speaking to him for walking out on me and our children but they didnt. They quit speaking to me!! They talk to him and the OW like they have been married for years. Unbelievable!!! Married people do get the benefits somehow. They suck. and i feel your pain.
“They talk to him and the OW like they have been married for years.”
WTF is up with that anyway? I’m the outcast, for no reason other than the fact that my H is a lying, cheating piece of cow dung.
HA! Sandy R Im giving my oldest daughter a graduation barbeque next month. She’s graduating from High School. I told my daughter that if she wanted her dad’s side of the family to come, she could invite them herself. But Im not talking to any of their asses!! My STBXH controls them with his money. They are always broke and in need so they are too chicken shit to call out his bad behavior!! I loved my inlaws like my own family and they are gonna treat me like this? So whenever my STBXH doesnt come get his kids I send out an mass text message to his family to let them know just how good their dear broher is!! All of em can suck wind!!!
While I think it’d be super if the cheater’s family started to shun him/her, realistically, it’s not going to happen. In STBX’s family, his brother was obviously interested in this sweet young thing at work who had a crush on him. STBX’s mother was NOT happy at all. Fast forward a few years. STBX’s brother had started living with his schmoopie before they were married, and very likely prior to the divorce going through. The brother’s relationship with schmoopie were not allowed to be mentioned. Blood was thicker than water.
Of course, my FiL cheated on my MiL. No one was supposed to talk about that, either.
Yep. My dad was kicked out by my mum after a year of the pick me dance, problem was, he’s gay. His extremely conservative family then abandoned all five of us, mum, me and my three siblings. She came from another country and they were her family for 20 years, she catered every family event for free for all of those years, 21sts, weddings, my grandparents’ Golden Wedding, etc. We were dumped. Crazy. But great really. They were creepy and weird and we kids (teens and up) were thrilled we didn’t have to hang with those banjo playing cousins any longer, lol. Still a shitty thing to do to an awesome DIL/SIL.
Wow, HrC, your Mum was a saint! And the truth about your father’s sexual identity must have been devastating. His family has no class, to disown such a good woman and the children who rightfully deserve their support. No one should lie to another person because they simply can not choose to live honestly. I was married for twenty years to someone living a deceitful life (which robbed me of years of mine) and while recovery’s been one of my life’s greatest challenges nothing compares to my greater legacy. My three beautiful resilient intelligent children are my gift to this world and I am sure your mother feels the same about her four! Wishing you and your family a blessed journey. Remember all that “crap” had nothing to do with you, surround yourself with kindred spirits (family can be found:) )and don’t allow anyone to stand in the way of your dreams.
Thank you, Drew. My Mum has been dead 13 years now. She moved forward and remarried a fabulous guy and was very happy with him, and her rebuilt life until her early demise. She loved my boy. She would be so amazing and supportive of me as I walk this shit stained path, and so fucking disappointed in him. As he is. He can’t believe he is that arsehole. But he is. Infidelity sucks. I think it might actually suck more when the fucking cheater is aghast at what he did after two and a half decades of fun and love than serial, narcissistic aresholes. Maybe I’m wrong.
Yes, EL, I know this is my fate. And something I never had any say in.
Truth be told, I tried to avoid it by eating the s sandwich and sucking up the humiliation for 5 years.
But the unloved abuse and disrespect (oh yeah, and being caught with OW again) just wasn’t worth it. I accept this status now. It is what it is.
Best Homer Simpson voice: “mmmm stoning ahhhhhhhh”
He was welcomed into her family with open arms, despite a 27 year age gap. She was welcome into his family with open arms despite their dodgy religious values that were anti sex before marriage but not sex whilst marriaee to someone else or baby making whilst married to someone else or completely abandonng your other family whilst with the new person. And his friends, who had eaten and been to my home, congratulated him publically for being a “fossily old thing”. Society sucks!
A 27-year age gap? That’s like, statutory.
Sorry, Nat1. It’s disgusting that you’re going through this. And you’re right: it’s not just the cheaters themselves that suck (which they totally do) but everyone and everything else that’s complicit, including old ”friends.” The whole thing is systemic, though. Look at Hugh Heffner, for crying out loud. The guy’s so old he practically needs to be carbon dated, but every time you see him he’s with yet another barely-legal blonde. Hurray! What a display of manhood! Now of course you can say it’s all about his money and position (and likely it is), but you’d never see the shoe on the other foot gender-wise. So where does that leave us 50+ women who’ve been chumped? Why do men always need to be with women who are that much younger? It reminds me of Moonstruck, where Olympia Dukakis plays a classic chump wife to a significantly younger OW. She spends the whole movie asking people, “Why do men cheat on their wives?” And finally at the end she gets the answer: because they fear death.
“Fossily old thing”? How about a dirty old goat with the sense God gave thereof.
Thank you for that!! My stbx never ever told me he was unhappy in our marriage. What I noticed is that he changed years ago slowly pulling away. We would just talk about general everyday life stuff and kids. I did not realize until now that he was depriving me of meaningful conversations , because he was sharing this stuf with them at work and and his lady’s at the running group. That’s where he found his smoopy of 2 years.He was getting his fill there sharing personal things with the OW, and now all of a sudden we had a bad marriage!! She was telling him I guess how bad her husband was and that they have problems!!! Ok Sherlock , she should confide in girlfriends, siblings , parents. Not the opposite sex.Really?
Rewriting history that’s what he is doing!!!
And character assacinstion thats what he is doing!! How dare I made him miserable all these 22 years!!! Jerk!!!
The same thing happened in my case Wow. When the OW was confronted, she said she was having a tough time and “needed someone to confide in”. Really??? My husband at a BAR??? She has a sister, friends, coworkers…but she picks a married man!!!! Bullshit. My ex also never told me he was unhappy. Asshole!
yup, at least one EA started because colleague confided in my H… I told him she was inappropriate, etc. Still do this day claims was not an EA, but it was.
I even ASKED if things were ok, etc etc, and he DENIED any issues.
It’s just drivel.
I asked, too, on several occasions. When Schmoopie was starting to pursue him, I told STBX that he needed to be careful with her. When she was stalking him on Facebook, liking every post he made within seconds, even if he posted in the wee hours of the morning, I asked if I should be concerned about this. No.
Okay, I get that STBX is conflict-avoidant,but resolving conflict is part of communications. Early on in the marriage, I learned that “communications” meant that I agree with everything he said lest he think I disagreed with him.
So in my mind, he checked out a long time ago, and his affair is just confirmation that he’s not really willing or able to have an adult relationship.
Oh, this is RICH! I can’t be held responsible for my actions either. Barf! Barf! These fuckwits thrive on drama they manufacture. Don’t tell me cheaters don’t know EXACTLY what they are doing when they make decisions. It’s not as if an alien led you to cheat! Oh yeah even good marriages fall prey to crappy decisions! I actually felt like throwing up reading that letter, it could have been written by my ex and his OW ( wife #2 , husband #3 , how apt!) Most married people know how to interact with members of the opposite sex, there is almost an innate understanding about it! Nix the intimate sharing of information, the late nights “working” and time spent together, etc, all that stuff that invariably opens that door. One’s ability to protect and respect your significant other requires grown up behavior. What makes this letter’s author even more pathetic is that she is actually PROFESSIONALLY trained to recognize what is and what is NOT OKAY when it comes to counseling others. She has a CODE of ETHICS. Let me see, I know what led to my marriage’s demise. Two stupid people looking for, oh yeah, a “miracle” outside of their own boring years long commitment to others. You know the ones in which said spouses were actually honoring their vows. Big news there sharing intimate information with someone else other than your partner opens the door to all sorts of craptastic behavior and is not a great way of nurturing a relationship. Is it just me or do these people seem incapable of thinking?
DREW ” OMG ” sounds like my husband jezz-I-JIT lol ‘ she will have to life with forever known as AP . what baffles me his christian family don’t believe in divorce or abortion .. I couldn’t take it I gave this OW few nicknames after DDAY was week before our 28yr . After this finally pissed him off so bad because of nicknames he moved into his sister house now she has both grown brothers flopping he sleeping on the floor with sleeping bag .. LOL KARMA yup .. he has to pay all bills n buy groceries here .. so I hope she can afford to support him because he will pay for his infidelity adultery .. OW not so special he cheated and lied to me he will do it to her too ‘ KARMA . she know ‘s this she afraid but hey that’s the price she will pay for her miracle what a pieces of horse chitt she is LOL congratulations she wins the door prize .
Yep. The OW had a death in the family and couldn’t process her grief with her husband, her children, her living mother, two living sisters, her bereaved sister-in-law, a living brother, and three other in-laws—never mind her friends. That’s what started the FB affair. It’s all bullshit. They have no life skills and so off to find some kibbles to make the pain of life go away.
Why would they tell us they’re unhappy? That would indicate a desire to have a good relationship and perhaps make some effort. Far easier to throw us a bone every so often while having fun on the side.
Hmm, did anyone else notice that “We were both in very bad marriages; his was APPARENTLY BAD and dead for years and mine was secretly bad and coasting for years” somehow doesn’t quite fit with “we were both sexually satisfied in our marriages.” Um, bullshit. Sounds like someone has a little case of rewriting history to suit their own purposes.
Yep, mine does this all the time. “We were never happy” , then “of course we had good times”, re-writing extraordinaire!
Ugh, seriously! One of the “frustrations” that my ex expressed was that I was too hard on him about his smoking EVEN THOUGH he told me a year ago that he wanted to quit, but he needed me to be strict and not let him smoke unless he was drinking. (So basically he wanted to go from a chain smoker to a “social smoker”)
It’s like cheaters forget facts and just see the past through their own “Oh poor me!” filters.
I caught that as well – and didn’t buy it, either.
Yes, I also noticed that disconnect.
Yes, I liked the “secretly” bad part, too – that was my FAVE! What a monster – her poor husband got blindsided 🙁
During divorce settlement discussion, my STBX finally confirmed that the OW had still been married at the time (still don’t know the divorce date, but I have a very good idea). I asked if I needed to feel sorry for her (abused, etc). His response was “no one misses him” with an inference of bad/ abuse etc.
But I bet he was blindsided like me, and did a very aggressive pick me dance. That’s the hint i got from a friend (who heard things from exH).
Poor chump, they had only been married a maximum of two years, and he moved and changed jobs for her career. I hope he is healing at this point, but i have never contacted him. It’s been 2 years for me, probably longer for him.
CL: Just in time for Easter, you areva magician who has devised the phrase “fuzzy little gray bunnies of truth” and I couldn’t be more delighted! Hilarious vivisection of the source material.
As a chumpy lawyer, my money is on the author being a relatively new family law attorney (and not in a good way). The overdeveloped sense of entitlement, laying it on thick to make her argument, lotsa big words, and the use of “thereof” in anything other than a legal document all felt like the people I duck away from at professional events.
That’s a good theory. Keep ducking.
I just love the way cheaters wax poetic about how wonderful it is to “end decades of life in a miserable marriage”! I call BS! I thought she said she wasn’t ‘t going to justify screwing another woman’s husband and being an adulteress, but, oops, she just had to try to paint that turd anyways now didn’t she! You can read this sand almost hear the “harlequin romance angst” in every line! I was trying to choke down some food while reading this, but suddenly lost what appetite I had! These idiots are just pathetic!
Yeah! Seriously! Cheaters always say how “miserable” they were in their current relationships and how they’re really just “good people in unfortunate circumstances.” Well, guess who created those unfortunate circumstances? The cheaters did by not keeping it in their pants! Yeesh!
Genuinely GOOD people talk to their partner and discuss ways to address the tension and the problems in a healthy manner, with divorce as a last resort BEFORE sleeping around!
Funny thing…
My ex actually told his AP when they first started chatting online that he had a “pretty good thing with Gypsy”. No real talk about how “miserable” he was., probably because he WASN’T miserable.
On dday, I didn’t give him a chance to give me all of the phoney-baloney excuses. (ILYBINILWY, it “just happened”, etc.) I was PISSED. And amazingly, shortly AFTER dday, he started telling people about how he was “in denial” about how unhappy he was.
Geez, when these people look in the mirror, I’m surprised that they see ANY reflection at all!
My ex actually took me to his workplace and introduced me to everyone, and they were saying things like “You’re right, she IS too good for you” (Keep in mind he was their warehouse supervisor) He even introduced me to the OW and when he said something about how he wasn’t on my level, her response was “I’m sure you’re sweet to her at home.”
Then, when it came to light that he and I broke up and he started immediately seeing the OW (I don’t think they knew about the “overlap” since he controlled the narrative there), I heard from a mutual friend he was going around telling people I was abusive and insecure. Yeah, letting you live in my apartment rent-free, paying for all our date nights, cleaning up after you, and showering you with gifts was really “abusive.” Oh, and of course I became “insecure” after he started coming home late (if at all), barely said a single word to me when he was, and was constantly glued to his laptop and his cell phone. Catching glimpses of his laptop screen and seeing him browsing Craigslist hookup postings instead of “working” didn’t help me trust him much either *rolls eyes*
It’s so funny how these cheaters seem to care more about “coming out ahead” and perception management than bettering themselves.
It’s so funny how these cheaters seem to care more about “coming out ahead” and perception management than bettering themselves.
My ex husband told me very close to the end of our marriage of 37 years that he adored me and couldn’t live without me. His work colleagues often told me how much he worshipped me. And yet now, I am the worse person in the world who has done nothing but create drama. Maybe I did whilst I was trying to put out all of the spot fires that he started. To be very honest with you, I am starting to get confused because I know the truth of what has taken place and yet I have been pushed out by everyone including my 2 children and the door firmly closed.
Maree, This is the hard part. Even after you split, they keep up the blame shifting, gas lighting, lying to to make themselves look good, and ruining your reputation. I’m 1 1/2 years out from separation/ divorce, and honestly I don’t know which is worse: the original cheating/ deception/ abandonment, or the 1 1/2 years since then of smearing my name, verbally abusing me through email/ text, trying (unsuccessfully) to brainwash our kids against me, etc. Sounds like you should definitely look for a good therapist and support group, if you don’t have them already. If your ex is a sociopath like mine, this shit behavior doesn’t go away — no matter how “happy” they claim to be.
Maree, I really feel for you! We get blamed for our reaction to all the injustice that was heaped upon us. I believe that time will sort this out. Just be happy that you know the truth and have faith that the universe will right things eventually!
I’m sorry. Hugs
“Of course I became “insecure” after he started coming home late (if at all), barely said a single word to me when he was, and was constantly glued to his laptop and his cell phone. Catching glimpses of his laptop screen and seeing him browsing Craigslist hookup postings instead of “working” didn’t help me trust him much either *rolls eyes*”
Akko, I got that, too. When I tried to talk to him about what I’d seen him looking at, he said, “When you’re in a good mood, everything’s great; but every couple of weeks you invent some new problem, and we’re right back in it all over again. Why are you so insecure? If you can’t trust me, I can’t be in this relationship.”
3 deftly combined sentences later, his porn addiction, overworked hard drive, bookmarked Craigslist ‘therapeutic services’ and Escort Files all became a function of my moods/insecurity, with an implied threat to either shut up about it or he’d leave. The joke’s on him, though, because I took my ‘moods’ and my ‘insecurity’ and had my own place before he ever even knew I was looking. And now I’m making a stable new drama-free life for myself and my girls.
Hooray! I’m so glad to hear that you got you and your girls out of there! I really do believe now that the best thing was for us to leave. Leave all that drama and the abuse and lead a happy lives for ourselves. We have no obligation to people who hurt us – love is conditional, like CL says!
Yes, those miserables marriages with all that great sex! And how, precisely, do you have a great sex life with someone you are betraying? Just wondering about the gymnastics involved in that–never mind. It always comes back to kibbles and cake.
Ugh. Yeah. In the last few years of our marriage my POS had both of us banging him and I had the very real feeling of being used. Later I found the HIV test tucked into our financial paperwork. Nice. No wonder I felt like a prostitute, all that sex and I still couldn’t come. Mindfuck, anyone? Couldn’t wrap my head around the signals my body was sending until the day the disordered wank asked me for a divorce. Then it all began to make sense. Ewwwwww.
Wow! Such justification in their actions on having an affair. Where the hell is her head. Yup, up her a– or his. Such an entitled letter. She’s trying to unload this stuff to clear her non conscience. I find this so despicable that she’s saying that this is a miracle. Of course she’s a councillor and she knows whats best. Narcissistic beyond words. She knows even if she marries him she will ALWAYS be the OW. They chose it, and now they have to live with it. Their choices that have hurt many people and hurt that fade but cannot be undone. I hope they marry and one day one of them or both will cheat and lets here the rumblings them. It will happen. Karma is a real b—h! I hope it hits them with full force, after all they deserve nothing less. These are not honourable or dignified people.
The writer is a delusional twat.
This cheating pig can go eat a bag of dicks. All that self serving fluff yet she’s got the emotional maturity of a high schooler.
Sad, but the reality is that people like this, the word salad mongers, the “spiritually evolved” types are not affected by the type of analysis done here by CL.
I can see this woman, shaking her head as she reads this saying to herself “this poor, unevolved, underformed CL person just has not risen to the higher plane yet” or something similar.
Ever notice that in the WS sections of forums like SI, the writng is vastly inferior to the writings of the betrayed? Ever notice that, despite their procalamtions of superiority and spirituality, folks like this OW, consistently, show that they lack analytical abilities? That they often contradict themselves, as CL points out?
Yet, they are way more evolved and spiritual than the lesser beings that they cheat on.
This type of person(And almost all cheaters are like this to some degree) is a narcissist, caught up in beleiving that she is superior, more evolved, wiser etc than others.
I see this time and again with cheaters, just like I see how they are drawn to vague, opaque language and phrases designed to give the impression that they are privy to some little secret about life that the rest of us are not.
Fact of the matter is that seldom do folks marry someone that is not in their same league intellectually or lookswise. Yet, these cheaters, once they start cheating, become convinced that they are smarter, more evolved, more desireable than their faithful partners.
And, miraculously, almost every betrayed spouse, according to them, somehow devolved into an abusive, controlling, nagging, fat slob after marriage.
Fact is that if you were living with one of these narcissists for any lenght of time, you, probably, did change. But, the change was the result of their constant abuse and criticism and was done merely to protect yourself.
Hell yes, I had moved into the basement and not slept in the same bed with my wife for over a year before finding out she had been cheating for a good long time. Think I did that because I was just a son of a bitch? Maybe it was because I was tired of getting doused withfreezing cold water when I showered. Or, maybe, for some odd reason, I stopped feeling at ease with my XW after she told me I was ” like a woman” and that i “had no penis” ( I measured, it is above average((so, I got that going for me 🙂 )
Thing is , I withdrew from this shrew with good reason(the above are just a fraction of the things I experienced).
“Fact is that if you were living with one of these narcissists for any length of time, you, probably, did change. But, the change was the result of their constant abuse and criticism and was done merely to protect yourself.”
This!
Btw, Arnold, I cringe at the thought of such passive-aggressive behavior as throwing cold water on you during a shower…..among other unkind things. Glad that bad experience has ended for you. (similar for me as well)
Arnold, thanks you for writing that.
I DID become angry and aggressive, sarcastic and visibly unhappy. That is on me and I have to own that I chose to behave that way.
But it came about because I tried to raise my thoughts, feelings and needs. I tried to raise issues I was concerned about. So when I wasn’t heard, I would raise my voice or escalate, or ‘explain’ it to him to try and get heard.
It never, ever worked and I never let up on the hopium that ‘this time’ he would meet me half way. I never stopped the excuse that he didn’t understand and when he did, we would be eternally happy.
The alternative? To recognise that he WAS this uncaring, he WAS this concrete, he WAS this selfish and this shallow…. spackle is easier, until the carving knife of discovering the affair rips it all apart.
That is what my marriage was like. I really loved him, but had the cheek to be a nag and to be unhappy that I was invisible. I deserved to be cheated on, being such a bitch and a drag!
Parsy, you are not alone. What you have just described would be most of us. I think the not being heard and just shut down is what kills me the most. I don’t have a voice. My situation has all been one sided and it is his side. I am apparently a real shrew and I didn’t even know it!!! I really loved my ex of 37 years also. No more though. But I still cry for what has been lost.
Sorry Patsy for spelling your name incorrectly.
Patsy and Maree – same here. I was a royal B that last year or so, constantly trying to get him to see that I counted too. I hated what I became, but I am back to my old self now, freedom.
Count me in on this trend too. This came up in therapy- when you try to talk to someone for years, a thousand different ways and their behavior never changes- you get pissed and eventually enraged, before you just shut down.
Asshole x now tries to say I was always angry. I wasn’t, until years of being ignored and invisible set in.
I sometimes think that we, the abused become the abusers and then that is when the blame shifting comes into being and we are blamed for everything that has gone wrong.
Yes! This is what happened to me. Became so angry with him for how he treated me, hoping for years it would change.
Well said, Maree. Well said.
I remember when my son was born I began to feel more and more irritable with ex’s bad treatment. It was the build up and the realization that I did not want this abuse around my son. The irritability grew into anger then hot anger with the knowledge of his cheating. You mean I tolerated you for all these years when you were hooked up with a married woman while I was arranging date nights and reading meditation books around the clock to deal with my anger? I am just coming down from the rage. Can’t wait to come to my meh. Please God. Enough is enough.
I had so disengaged by the time he actually cheated, I was weirdly relieved. NOW I had a “concrete” reason to divorce this dysfunctional, alcoholic, lying person – who was *not* the man I married. But then his meme was I was angry, spent all my time on FB & Pintrest… & that I was mentally abusive. WTF?? I don’t even know what that means, except that I called him out on his BS. So he went out & found a fuck buddy on line. I don’t even have an OW to be pissed at. They all figured him out PDQ & dumped his lying ass. Kinda jealous of them, in a way…
That’s a really good point. I was so angry most the time over feeling ignored, but stuffed my feelings because expressing them never changed anything. My anger was directed inward and turned into deep depression. I feel so much happier now
Marie, I was not a pleasant person to be around for at least parts of the last year but, like many others, I was frustrated and trying to BE SEEN AND HEARD. But wasn’t and didn’t know or understand why. My reaction was to fall into a depression, one I wasn’t even aware of until my therapist pointed it out.
Now? Now that he’s out of my life mostly and I am working hard to rebuild and have a good life? I have normal anger, such as at my kids (ok, sometimes I’m just a raggy mum) but overall I’m back to being the positive, happy, driven, spirited person I was so long ago. Altered, to be sure, but my essential personality has slowly come back to the fore. Amazing how ex depleted me. Amazing that while my sub-conscious knew it my conscious self refused to see or accept.
Now both are in sync and life is much, much better.
“Fact is that if you were living with one of these narcissists for any length of time, you, probably, did change. But, the change was the result of their constant abuse and criticism and was done merely to protect yourself.”
Thanks for sharing this, Arnold, and I’m so sorry for what you had to go through and I also applaud your courage in sharing the experience of it. It really is so healing to read these stories–as horrible and heart-wrenching as they are–and realize we’re not alone. You know, how long did we all keep it in? Trying to make good and make sense and make it through. I also needed some figurative cold water in my face today, because right now I’m hating on men, and I needed to be reminded that this pain transcends gender. Anybody can chump someone else out, and anybody can wake up and find out their whole life has been a fiction. But it takes a special person to shine a light in the dark and be brave enough to say, “This is what happened to me.”
Thank you, Arnold. I hope things get much, much better for you. And for all of us who are hurting.
I hate it that she used the example of a man raping a 2 yr old baby as an example and comparison to her degree of being a OW. That’s just despicable. To the OW, don’t even go there.
Yeah – where did THAT example come from?! This broad has some really dark ideas rattling around in that empty skull of hers!
But think about it, how useful! That defense can be applied to so many situations where sincere repentance is called for. Sorry that I lied, cheated, stole money from you, whatever, but at least I ain’t no baby raper!
That freaked me out as well. WTF, this OW is really messed up.
Agree. Physical violence against an infant is in her head. As an example or comparative or whatever. Kind of says enough about her right frickin there. Eww.
Could not agree more. That was such an over the top, unnecessary image…. that kind of extremism is such a hamfisted, cheap trick. Cheater or not, there’s a way to be a human being. (I know, this makes me one of those judgmental people that OW has unfairly encountered.)
I know eh? It’s that whole ‘there are degrees of wrongness’–well, sure there is. Duh! Someone accidentally bumps into you in line vs someone targets you for opening a can of whupass–sure!
But it doesn’t follow that HER “predicament” falls under the “less”wrong category, just because some things are “less” wrong than others. Plus, “less” wrong doesn’t make it equivalent to “right” (as in the above example–I accidentally step on your toe–I still have to apologize–not say, “What? Your toe got hurt? Well, you WERE standing close to me. And besides, it’s not like I MEANT to, it’s more like your toe was MEANT to be stepped on”)
That’s it exactly Chump in the Sand!
Just because you are found “not guilty” of murder, doesn’t mean that you didn’t commit the murder or commit a crime. Facts are adeptly distorted or re-arranged in a way in which they no longer resemble accuracy or truth (evidence not presented, half truths, impression management), and thus you are “adjudged” not guilty because a reasonable doubt has been raised – not because you didn’t actually deliberately kill someone. Since the people who are assigned to “judge” you (or accept or decline to accept your version of events) are not parties to the actual crime, they, base their judgment, or acceptance of your version of events, on what they THINK they know based on what has been presented to them as “facts” and their own perceptions and innate biases.
In the relating of events where judgment or acceptance is being sought – who has the most motivation to lie and/or distort the accuracy of events – the perpetrator or the victim? I think if I’m a victim of a crime and live to tell the tale, I’m pretty clear about how I received my wounds. A victim of a crime usually relates the events of the crime to see justice done and to be made whole. The perpetrator is merely trying to avoid conviction.
Of course, society would need to stop dumbing down absolutely everything in order for ordinary people to develop enough critical thinking skills where those obvious facts would even be recognized. So when we talk about why people view infidelity the way in which they do, it may be due in large part to the fact that the intelligence and morals of society have deliberately been “dumbed down” (see discussion of “Reality” shows), critical thinking skills are almost non-existent and all morals seem to be situational (read: whatever feels good to me and suits my purposes at any given time).
And though there IS some substance to situational ethics (ex, stealing bread to feed your family, assassinating Hitler), minimization is NOT the same thing. How wonderful the perp feels about the crime does not make it better.
I think you should patent this Bullshit translator, Tracy – it’s pure GOLD!
Do all cheaters work from some badly written romance novel script? I saw this in the OW’s portion of the article “We will all recover one day and hopefully find True happiness and peace” and thought – holy shit – that is pretty damned close to “find peace and be happy. All the good memories will linger…” that my ex wrote. Seriously – they are so damned good at sneaking around, lying to their spouses, booking Super 8 Hotels at great rates (mine actually used a membership card to accumulate points for free nights!)…..but they can’t come up with any decent dialogue? Pathetic.
Best line of the whole thing from CL was: ” I’m sure your exes will find happiness and peace one day. You and your “lover” — you’re going to find karma.”
I think I’m going to have to send that to my ex – maybe engraved on a butt plug so he has more than his head to put up his ass.
The affairy tale narrative…the affair is the miracle catalyst that allows all to move on to true happiness.
See….cheaters are all about miracles and true happiness. Cheating is a good thing….
Cheaters, are all about happiness….they gift the world with unicorns sliding down farting rainbows and multi colored poop confetti.
A happy ending for cheaters is a happy ending for all humanity.
My STBXH and his OW (who he is now currently living with) used HER HUSBAND’S credit card for the hotel rooms! I mean, my husband is an asshole but also a truly big DB for fucking this guy’s wife on this poor guy’s dime!!!!
I’m still shocked over that. I don’t know why. I guess I didn’t think my STBXH had a set of balls that big!!!!
“My STBXH and his OW (who he is now currently living with) used HER HUSBAND’S credit card for the hotel rooms! I mean, my husband is an asshole but also a truly big DB for fucking this guy’s wife on this poor guy’s dime!!!!”
That takes ‘disrespect’ all the way from here to the Delta Quadrant.
Man. And Kimmy, the fact that you even had to find this out is just–
/sigh/
Hope her Chump sticks her with the bills. I did not pay a dime of my ex’s credit card debt. No way was I going to pay for his whore.
Pretty positive this is what happened in my situation. My ex didn’t have any disposable income, his married whore didn’t have a job, yet she managed to drive 50 miles one way to meet my ex for motel sex. Her poor hubby (still married, don’t think he ever found out, and from what I can tell, their latest interlude ended 2 years ago …) likely paid for the car, the gas, the hotel room, and the food (since whore clearly had to eat, she was over 300 pounds at the time of the affair). So grateful I never married the POS, and more grateful we never commingled finances.
I wish I could have added an audio track that plays while you read the OW’s essay. Maybe some Bronx cheer raspberries and cheesy sitcom-style audio laugh tracks at key points of that pile of self involved and oblivious prose.
This matches pretty much how my ex-wife sold things to me, while it was accurate that we are better off apart, she credited her affair with freeing both of us … an affair I had to play detective to unveil after being gas lighted for a long time (while our daughter was undergoing chemo… just scratching the surface here) . She also could not help it. That combination of not taking any responsibility, not having the bravery to tell me what was going on while crediting her selfish behavior as being the right solution for everyone still leaves me slack-jawed.
An oh yeah, f*ck you OW and kiss my chump *ss.
She cheated while your daughter was in CHEMO?!
And she wonders how you don’t see that as improving for everyone involved?
No words!
Well, chemo is hard. A child with a devastating illness–hard. Supporting a spouse emotionally in a time of crisis–hard. She would have to think about the needs of someone else. No kibbles in any of that. It occurs to me that real crisis probably escalates the need for gaslighting (so as not to be called out on the emotional and physical absence) and the desirability of the OM/OW. So in the exact moment when a real married partner would stand up for the marriage, the family, the spouse, the cheater/narcissist goes shopping for a soul mate to jump to, if he/she doesn’t already have one.
“Well, chemo is hard. A child with a devastating illness–hard. Supporting a spouse emotionally in a time of crisis–hard. She would have to think about the needs of someone else. No kibbles in any of that. It occurs to me that real crisis probably escalates the need for gaslighting (so as not to be called out on the emotional and physical absence) and the desirability of the OM/OW. So in the exact moment when a real married partner would stand up for the marriage, the family, the spouse, the cheater/narcissist goes shopping for a soul mate to jump to, if he/she doesn’t already have one.”
LaJ, you just described perfectly the last 4 years of my life in caring for a terminally ill child. Just when I needed my partner the most to stand for our relationship, and for the needs of our blended family, he decided to go shopping.
That is completely fucked. You XH should have his ass kicked. I’ll volunteer.
Arnold, can I hire you also? I will pay you well !! Just a thought.
I’m happy to help.
FoolMeTwice, I agree with what you’re saying. My ex was a serial cheater but it seems it was all just flings and sidepieces that ‘meant little’, if you know what I mean. Then, in the final year of our marriage (and even a bit in the prior year or two) there were real issues with the kids, with me, with a lot of things in life. Instead of being there for me and the kids, as we had always been there for him, he amped up the cheating to nuclear proportions, desperately searching for someone who would focus solely on him. He more or less admitted this, not realising what he was saying. To him, love was everyone boosting him, putting him at the front of the line, making sure everything was good for him, that all his needs were number one. When that didn’t always happen he felt unloved or whatever and went to find his kibbles elsewhere. It never occurred to him that anyone else’s needs might have to take priority at any given time, that it was a two way street, and that his kids needed him to put them first when needed.
I’m happy to be out of it because seeing it now it makes me sick that he was so selfish. And I feel sorry for my kids, because they see this now as well – that it’s really all about him and that’s that.
Now he’s with final OW (or shall we call her simultaneous OW?) and he’s bending over backwards for her. I used to get pissed hearing about this but then remember he was like that when we first got together as well. He’s simply repeating a pattern and final OW thinks she’s special and he’ll be ‘good’ and blah blah blah, true love, etc. It’s going to be a rather scary wake up call for her unless she spends the rest of her life making him and his needs more important than hers, as Ex’s mother did for his father. She’s a broken woman but she ‘kept her man’.
So… she’s sad that the affair was involved in ending her marriage. Then, several paragraphs down, she writes that she was glad the affair was used to end their miserable marriages.
Typical mindfuckery.
Affair= MIRACULOUS love…I’m still choking on that!
Sounds like Eve in the Garden of Eden raving about those yummy new apples she found.
Meh, pretty sure the Deuteronomist(s) added that allegory to pretty much undermine Asherah (YHWH’s ex wife) worship some time after the 5th or 6th century BCE. Definitely post “Babylonian Exile” anyway.
TimeHeals, whatever the origin of the tale, I still picture Eve going on and on about the delicious fruit, just like the AP getting all mooshy about their true love. It is all rainbows and butterflies until they have to face reality.
The facts are none of us are perfect. However, some take those faults and try to parade them about as if they were evidence of their being more fully evolved… More spiritually aware than Chumps. Rubbish!
And just like Eve, there comes a day of reckoning. Call it Karma, whatever, that time comes.
LOL. And more importantly, no Asherah poles/snakes in temples/churches/mosques/etc.
Don’t ask me why, but I went through a long Ancient Near Eastern Archeology period.
If you ask some folks who stick to biblical literature, they might point out that Asherah was the consort of Ba’al (or El) in the Canaanite pantheon, and while that’s true, Ba’al just means “highest lord” and El just means “god” in the same way Elohim means Gods (plural and no gender identification).
Prior to the Babylonian captivity, Asherah poles (carved images of Asherah) were in the temples. One even stood in the first temple. Another Asherah symbol was the snake because it sheds its skin, and it was thought this meant snakes regenerated, and they lived in the earth, and if you are going to have a goddess of fertility, things like trees, fruit and snakes are potent symbols in the ancient near eastern mind for such a goddess. The First Temple built by King Solomon had Asherah poles within it (according to the Torah and your Bible–do a search for Asherah on a bible gateway).
So … I kind of think of that allegory as telling people to stop with all the Asherah worshiping. All of her “powers” are taken over by YHWH, and then we get a tale rich with Asherah imagery pinning the downfall of man on her, so to speak.
So no Asherah poles, please.
I just thought it was funny how Adam took the damn fruit, and the first thing he did was blameshift God for giving him the woman who tempted him….clearly, blameshitting is an ancient art…
The devil made him do it!
Clearly!
Yeah, I don’t think that part of that story makes any sense at all in a modern context.
It makes a lot more sense if you think about the fact that the Covenant wasn’t conditional initially.
Historically, I think there were two factions in Jerusalem prior to the Babylonian captivity/exile. One was pro-Babylonian, and one was pro-Egyptian, and the pro-Egyptian faction was in power (spoiler: they were on the losing side of the Babylonian-Egyptian conflict), and so Jerusalem is sacked, the First Temple (of Solomon) is destroyed, the major cities in ancient Israel are razed, and all the Patriarchy leaders are enslaved and exiled to Babylon.
So from about 597 BCE to 538 BCE there was a lot introspection and a lot of explaining to do about that covenant. The pro-Babylonian faction gained clout, and they set about explaining why the YHWH’s temple was destroyed and why his chosen people were enslaved (not everybody was exiled or enslaved), and the pro-Babylonian faction was going to write that history, and the conclusion/explanation was… the prohibition about “putting other gods before” YHWH.
And this is a big part of the focus of Joshua, Judges, Kings, and Samuel, and it was also a big part of how the Pentateuch was revised.
So we get a lot of tales about worshiping graven images and how that is a fallen state, the evolution of monotheism from monolatry and an Eden episode rich in Asherah imagery basically warning about corrupting influences other than YHWH.
Cheaters in their warped minds envision themselves as spiritual beings who are on touch with “love” that for most perdition mortals have no true understanding of it.
Translation….for narcissists who happen to be therapists.
The centre of the universe is me…me…me…love is about me..for me…me “love” is hard to comprehend for those who do not know me…if you were to know me you would love me…for those I do not love any longer it was that you could not appreciate the gift of me.
To love me …is to understand love…if I love you…it’s because you know me….me…me…
Smartest sarcasm in the land, ChumpLady. LMFAO!!!
It just amazes me how these cheaters can justify and rationalize their bs using ‘love’ as an excuse! I was married for a lot of years( 23) and I worked alongside people I on occasion admired greatly and had crushes for. Did I ever act on it? Never! I kept it to myself and dealt with it until it died. I knew it wasn’t real, that it was inappropriate and wrong. I was married and had vowed to forsake all others and I had kids I loved too much to hurt. It’s normal to have occasional crushes on others , but to act on it… No! And you know if you start to feel that way, that your marriage needs work. You either fix it or you get out! But cheating, gas lighting, blame shifting etc. … I could not do that to anyone, not my worst enemy! These people have given themselves permission to act on their feelings because they’re selfish, Narcisstic assholes with no conscience, integrity or character! They can justify all they want, they can make it about ‘love’ but really it’s about lack of self control and responsibility, weakness, laziness, selfishness and narcissism! That’s not love and never will be!
Agree completely, Movingon. You make a vow, you keep it. And if you can’t keep it, you do the next best thing, which is to tell the person that you can no longer keep the vow and end the relationship with some respect and dignity. There is NO EXCUSE FOR CHEATING NO MATTER WHAT. What happened to common decency? My fuck-x acts like the nicest guy in the world. He pretends to be a man of integrity, unlike other men. In reality, he has no character. Otherwise, he couldn’t have lied and cheated his way into destroying my life and the life we had created together. I hope his fucking skank was worth what he lost. Fuck them all.
Yes, LoyalG, everyone thought my ex was the nicest guy too! Many have seen thru it but not all! It’s frustrating but I believe in the laws of the universe…. Time and truth will tell! In the meantime, we know and that’s all that matters now! Just keep being yourself and let sleeping dogs lie!
And this was my LOL moment of the day:
“The drum is still rolling on this one, but one thing I can say with confidence is that he and I and our ex-spouses are all going to be better off divorced.
One thing I can say with confidence is that your spouses are better off without you two.”
Totally Agree. So much better off. It makes me sad to think of all those POS out there though. They should come with a warning label. Or a louder one. Lol
Wow – This could have easily been written by the OW in my situation.
“you cannot apply a blanket generalization to all of these situations.”
What??
I haven’t even FINISHED the article yet but I know that was said by a person who has never been wronged in this way!
Blanket generalization? YES you can. It’s easy. Don’t cheat. Period. No grey area. You want out of your marriage – get out.
It’s hard enough thinking you’re not loved, not worth it, doubting yourself, doubting what you THOUGHT was real, being strung along and your spouse wanting out of the marriage but no, lets add cheating to that trauma!
Ok now i’ll go back and finish reading…I was so pissed reading that one line!
Here’s my blanket generalization: Cheating devastates the faithful partner emotionally and psychologically. Being betrayed is horrifically painful, and while that pain fades and becomes more manageable, it never goes away. It takes tremendous effort to recover, which is complicated by the devastation of children and other family members who are also betrayed by the cheater. If divorce ensues, it at best halves the financial resources needed to support a family, and at worst, creates financial devastation for the faithful partner, who has, unlike the cheater, not lined up a new partner to help out financially.
Well said Loved! Love your name by the way…I can sooo relate 🙂
Ok THAT blanket generalization I’ll allow. That’s true.
Mr. Cheaterpants will be FINE financially in short order. Not to mention he will inherit tons from his parents one day.
Me?
I’m working 2 part time jobs while I live w/ my daughter at my father & step mother’s.
After all I did to support him, keep our finances in order (great credit rating) etc.
Very well said. Yes cheating does devastate the faithful partner in every respect. I don’t think I will ever recover because I have been painted as crazy, a drama queen and many other hurtful comments and they are just from my 2 adult children. My ex husband betrayed the 3 of us and yet here I am all alone with nobody to speak to, except the 4 walls. It isn’t fair but this is how it is.
Maree,
I am so sorry you are feeling isolated and alone. I think one of the hardest things about dealing with narcissism is the discovery that not only have you been abused but that other people you love are still being abused by the narco-nut and can’t see it. I suspect that is what is going on with your children. On some level, they are taking their anger and fear out on you because it is safer. If they reject you; you get sad. If they reject your ex, he’d get angry and attack them. They can’t see the manipulation, but you are forced to experience it even after the marriage ends. It certainly is not fair. I wish you the best and I hope that your kids will eventually have the epiphany they need.
Hi Eilonwy. Thank you but I have to tell you, my ex husband would not get angry and attack my children. He is a completely spineless coward. He sent our son to our apartment to tell me that I was leaving and what I would be getting “to make it easier for me”!! That was 3 years ago. So my (I won’t say our son) is still doing his bidding. I had a wonderful relationship with my boy who is now 31 years old and the venom with which he speaks to me now is heartbreaking. He speaks down to me like I am an idiot and he blames me for everything that has happened. I just don’t know what to do any more but I can honestly say, I do not trust my son at all. That statement alone destroys me but I think I need to be vigilant now for my own well being. Tragic isn’t it?
Maree:
My heart breaks for you and your situation. I suspect your children know your love is real and that you will always love them. They question that love from your ex and likely feel the need to keep earning it from him as they are so unsure of it. Gaining approval from him. I find that my youngest daughter does this all of the time. My situation is different than yours as my girls are both teens and they live primarily with me. I am hoping my youngest learns what her dad is all about soon and on her own. She will be crushed but she will know the truth from her own discovery.
Indeed it is tragic. And I agree with your decision to be vigilant. You know your EX has no scruples about using and manipulating your children, so you have to look after yourself. But I will continue to hope that your adult children have the epiphanies they need (and that you deserve).
This.
“Not all people who cheat get caught up into the sex.
No. Some hold hands and recite Bible verses.”
LMAO!!! or they meet and sit in a car in parking lots, just talk for about 15-20 minutes, kiss for 3 seconds and after the kiss tell her “there will never be anything between us, regardless”
OR;
they meet at the back, in the work restroom on their breaks, while chatting, they do their business and the other holds the toilet paper and they take turns.
That was a FABULOUS job of cheater translation – you deserve the Nobel Prize of bullshit deciphering! This stupid bitch reminds me SO much of Mark Sanford, Mr. Appalachian Trail. That poor woman with whom he had three (four?)children and had been married to for 30 years?! OH he was NEVER in LOVE with HER! NO! This is REAL! He has met his SOUL MATE!!! I like how this monster is also 20 or so years younger than him. Reading this makes me ache for that man’s wife. I am on firstwivesworld.com and I read stories like this all the time (also read Runaway Husbands – please read if this has happened to you! – ALL the women’s stories are eerily similar – kindred spirits, you will find!) That poor woman invested her whole life with this shitbag. And trust me, OW, being ditched for a dumb whore is something you NEVER get over – you can do your best to move on, but is scars you FOR LIFE. It is humiliating. It is dehumanizing. The rejection is debilitating. I hope the wife gets every penny he has. And THEN some! The OW will bitch about the child support/alimony – oh that’s my FAVE!!! I hope and pray this guy meets a stripper, gives this ‘ho every STI in the book and kicks her to the curb for his latest “soul mate.”
Thank GOD for your site, Tracy!! I am so sick I didn’t find it years earlier, after my FIRST cheater. :-/
That Mark Sanford is a simpering, pathetic guy. I cannot believe he was re-elected(or, maybe it was just the primary win over Stephen Colbert’s sister).
In any case, just watching the guymakes my skin crawl, just like watching McCain, Clinton or Guilliani does.
Can’t you just look at these guys and feel the oil oozing out form their reptilian pores?
“It was a Force Greater Than Us Both. Those “genuine spiritual connections” absolve people of responsibility all the time, just compelling their hapless bodies forward into Motel 8s nationwide.”
lol!! Too funny. Also points out how desperately OW try to make it seem like a spiritual happening. No, skank, it was just sex with a married man who is NOT divorcing his wife for you.
“I specialized in advising single people and couples who were involved in adulterous affairs for a number of years”
I’m wondering what kind of advice she’s giving out now to her adulterous clients.
Well of course you cannot generalize. Every special snowflake is different.
Is there ANY way to find out who she is? I would give a month’s pay! PLEEEEEZE!!!!
LOL. Yes, every snowflake is completely different (well, I don’t know if anybody has ever done an exhaustive comparison of snowflakes, so maybe not ‘every’ snowflake), and the ways they are different are pretty much insignificant in real-world applications involving snow.
Timeheals – now THAT was really funny!
Snicker!
My XW re-branded her private counseling practice (she’s an LMFT) specializing in couples therapy dealing with adultery and rebuilding trust WHILE SHE WAS STILL CHEATING ON ME. Plus, she re-branded on her website (in bold) that this was a CHRISTIAN practice.
A lot of the lines from this OW article sound so familiar. Cheaters aren’t very original. Same lines. Same lies. Pathetic.
Good work, CL, on this one!
Wow. That’s CRAZY. But what evidence of her lying and hypocrisy.
Well she can hide “behind” God, but she won’t be able to hide FROM the consequences He allows her to eventually experience. God is NOT mocked.
Second attempt to post. Not sure what I did to make it come up blank.
My comment was: Bravo! This deserves a standing ovation.
He was in a bad marriage for THIRTY years and didn’t know it? Was he in a coma or something? And did anyone notice that she was in a ten year marriage? So she is what, twenty years younger than the sack of shit who left his wife after THIRTY years? Bet his wife didn’t know how horribe their marriage was. Otherwise, she would never have stood in the way of miraculous love.
This drivel was so difficult to read because the amount of narcissistic self-justification in it is mindfucking. Got a bad marriage? Work on it or leave. But I suspect OW’s “true love” didn’t have a bad marriage until this bitch showed up. Want to know what makes a long-term marriage turn bad? Finding out that the person who has shared life’s ups and downs with you is fucking someone else!
My ex never told me we had a bad marriage (he just wanted a piece of ass on the side and didn’t think I would find out). But the OW, who was also married, sure did. She spewed venomous bullshit about me and her poor husband. Frankly, he bore the brunt of it and it was so sad to see . He was one of the kindest people I have met and he silently accepted her bullshit…until she started interfering with his right to see his kids.
There is no happy ending in these situations,EVER. My ex is now a broken, sick old man, who I genuinely feel sorry for.(I know I shouldn’t, but we were together for a long time and he has lost everything-the respect of his community, the love of his children, the comfort of the lovely home we built together, his health). The karma bus hit the OW, backed up, and ran over her again for good measure. Relationships that begin in lies end in lies.
One last thought. The OW doesn’t have skeletons in her closet. She has skeletons all over her front yard and believe me, in the words of Leonard Cohen,”everybody knows.” If she thinks she is going to avoid the OW label, particularly among the peers in her profession, she is smoking crack (one of my kids’ favorite expressions)! Years later, the woman who destroyed my marriage cannot find work in her field because she is considered untrustworthy. Sucks to be her.
And his biggest loss of all, the love of a good woman, who he took for granted and lost because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.
Louise, this is me and my ex husband. I had to learn not to love him anymore once he started having sex with 20 year old Asian prostitutes and then bragging like a teenager to his work colleagues. He is 62 years old. We have lost 37 years of family history and 44 years of friendship (I use that term loosely now) and we have lost the most important thing of all and that is our family unit which I always thought was very unique. It will never be the same ever again.
You are better off without him, Maree. You will be BETTER in the future. No one can take away our honorable, trusting hearts. They have no f-ing clue.
Maree, oh I just seeing you typed the 44 years of friendship…that is for me, such a great loss, the friendship we had as a foundation to our marriage, and it is just out the window, he doesn’t are about any of it, right out the window.
Love that you put you use the term loosely now
I will use it to shove myself forward
But I suspect OW’s “true love” didn’t have a bad marriage until this bitch showed up.
Unless of course there were other OW’s before this one…..
Leonard Cohen – oh yes.
Louise wrote: “She has skeletons all over her front yard and believe me, in the words of Leonard Cohen,’everybody knows.’ ”
…Everybody knows…The Captain lies..
…Everybody knows…The plague is coming…
…Everybody knows…It’s moving fast…
The last 2 lines are in reference about others’ posts on being accepted back into society after this stigma is attached to a new divorcee (old, but still..). Socially, I think everybody is afraid of us now – new demons, new fears, new virus just by inviting one of us, now ‘infected fruit’ out to a couples event.
Well, bring on the dogs!
OK, I just had to get a kleenex to wipe away my tears from laughing so hard.
What’s amazing to me is that the letter from the OW sounds almost plausible, it even evoked my sympathy until CL translated it.
OMG, the specialness of cheaters! My ex seemed to think God had a lot to do with his decision to have an affair with a married woman at the office. The day after he left he emailed “Trust the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto thine own understanding,” (Proverbs 3:5). See, it wasn’t my ex’s fault, it was God’s will!! How could I, as his wife of 31 years, argue with God’s will???
Anyway, CL, this paragraph was especially hysterical:
“No there’s no right or wrong, just fuzzy little gray bunnies of truth that frolic along the borders of rationalization, nibbling the daisies of perception. Why can’t they exist in their morally nebulous pasture? Why must the big, black wolves of judgment come and gobble the bunnies up? And judge them? WHY?”
I too particularly liked the bunnies 🙂
Reminds me of the scene in the movie MASH, where Frank Burns and Hotlips are about ready to jump each others’ bones. I think he says something like ” God meant us to be together”.
She whips open her robe and clutches his face to her tits proclaiming ‘ His will be done”.
I can see my XW doing this, proclaiming “Let the chemistry be sexualized”(Or, let the games begin).
Arnold, you made me laugh. “Let the chemistry be sexualized” is so a ridiculous!!!
“Let the chemistry be sexualized”
Not to beat a dead horse (much), but this sounds like something Gwyneth Paltrow would say!
Quit it Arnold! I’m really tearing up here. In stitches that Shant Be Broken.
(they’re holding my insides together!)
It’s just one bwahahaha after another today with you guys!!!
…and down came the fairy Godmother, and SHE said,
Little bunny Foofoos I don’t want to see you
Screwing with some field mice and fucking people’s heads…
I think CL is taking over my brain, because I read the original first, and when I read CL commentary, it was like she had read my mind.
It’s a chump miracle!
What a great post! You hit the nail on the head–many times!
“…everyone in the situation has a role as both victim and villain – the faithful spouse, the cheating spouse and the OW/OM.”
No. I was never a villain. That man had a damn good wife. I woke up every day and attempted to be the best version of myself because I thought that is what you do in a good marriage. He was going to spread around regardless.
“People just shouldn’t stay in marriages that are causing so much pain and devastation. If you are not willing to do whatever it takes to fix it. . . ”
As I recollect, there was little “pain and devastation” in my marriage. Our marriage was a revolving fun house– constant travel, new cars every few months, a quiet little home. He just wanted to tap something else. Swapping wives is kind of like swapping a Porsche. I was willing to do whatever it took to fix “it” but I cannot compete with an individual who stoops so lows, like on her knees low, that she will so easily cast aside her dignity to engage in an affair with a married man. I’m not that kind of girl, I have standards and a conscience, so perhaps you are right, it would never work. But that does not negate the fact you are a condescending bitch.
Why oh why can’t these people just admit they are assholes and just say what they mean: It’s all about me and to hell with anyone else. It would be about the only honest thing they could do.
“Why oh why can’t these people just admit they are assholes and just say what they mean: It’s all about me and to hell with anyone else. It would be about the only honest thing they could do”
*Standing ovation. Applauding. Loudly and furiously.*
Yeah, I olve those lines , too. Why oh why can’t they just admit they are assholes.
I think I will send that question to my XW. ‘just tell me, why, oh why, can’t you admit you are a fucking asshole?”
Did I ever telly you folks that my XW, in finally admitting some form of cheating said” Yes, I had inappropriate relationships where “” the chemistry became sexualized “”””
Yes, I know I mentioned it. But, it still amazed me that anyone could be such a pompous, deluded asshole so as to feel no embarrassment in mouthing such drivel.
The fucking “chemistry became sexualized”. How’s that for tasking responsibility? It was just a fucking chemistry.A bunch of hormones, inadvertently escaped their bodies while they were chatting, and “poof”- sexualized fucking chemistry.
This nutjob of an Xw is a “certified spiritual adviser” now. Would you take advice from someone so fucked in the head as to have actually used the phrase ” the chemistry became sexualized”?
Mine used to brag he was an “ordained minister.” It was apparently some on-line outfit. He was an agnostic who apparently believed in Bokonism.
I had to google Bokonism. Guess I’m not in the cool kid club.
Well, Chump Lady, now that you know what it is, he may be interested in sleeping with you. It was one if of his “contact me if. . .” points on his on-line dating profile. Lucky gal!
Arnold, so, did you consciously uncouple from your passive-aggressive wife? Had the dishonesty become asexual?
That crazy bitch announced, two weeks after my dad had died, that she was heading off to Chicago to share a room and visit musueums with some guy from her AA group. Two fucking weeks after my dad died of cancer.
I was left with my two boys, one with DownSyndrome and Autism, for the week while she frolicked(not that that was anything new, as she barely helped me with tme growing up).
Her sister came to me and pleaded with me to divorce her. So, I got out, left her withthe house and paid child support despite having custody over 60% of the time and her making the same salary as me.
What a fucking stupid ass I was, but this was in the 1990’s before i knew anything about MGTOW or men’s rights or Briffault’s law.
I will never, ever get married again. But, I do love my girlfriend.
Yes! I’m starting the wave over that one!
This!!
“In my case the affair opened my eyes to how abusive my marriage was
Of course it did. It always takes an affair to realize you’re in an abusive situation. People just never come to those realizations themselves until someone else fucks them.”
Yeah, my ex had this troupe going full blast with his OW. I was abusive and controlling, that must be why he nearly killed me when I told him we were divorcing. Yeah, right.
And the bit about how her miracle love is not divorced yet totally laughable; My ex refused to divorce or leave the house and the whole time he was telling the OW that I was the one who wouldn’t let him go….hahahahaha, the pathos indeed…
“In my case the affair opened my eyes to how abusive my marriage was”
Actually, her chumped spouse has a hulluva lot more reason to say this than she does.
Nerve Level: 1,000
Yeah, their spouse are so abusive that they felt no trepidation about cheating on them. Give me a fucking break. If one is in an abusive relationship, the last thing one is apt to do is cheat and set the abuser off.
But, affair partners eat this shit up.
My exH used to claim I was “abusive” because I wouldn’t add him to my checking account or the deed of my house (both pre-marital assets); reason being I need a perfect credit score for my job, and he spent money like it grew on trees.
In reaity, I actually WAS the one who was being abused, but I was too used to it; it crept up slowly and become normal; and I was embarrassed. Being called, “lazy, crazy, pathethic, disgusting”; being told that “women at work can never believe I would want to marry you…” – that was my normal. Oh, and being spit on, choked, and having my head smashed into walls and windows – that was all my fault. Because every once in a while I would cry. And he would feel like I was trying to make HIM feel guilty for something – and HE DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG. So a nice head to the wall was his logical solution to keep me from doing that manipulative, crying thing.
So, HE was being abused, and I was overreacting. Got it?
And it took me a good three years to admit that my exH WAS abusive; and to say that out loud, and really believe it, because I’d really started to believe it had all been my fault. And it’s still hard.
So, you fucking, cheating, OW whore – your marriage wasn’t abusive. And your finally-free exH can now be the one to wake up and realize how evil YOU are, and know that being set free from YOUR abuse is the blessing in disguise – after he picks up the shattered remains of what’s left of his life…that takes a while. May you rot in hell.
My xH didn’t put my name on his checking account for 13 years of our marriage–until I had corrective surgery that made me more attractive. He said he did it because he was afraid I would leave him after I’d had that done. And then he cheated and left.
Jedi hugs RdefiningMe, I understand how the slow changes make things “normalized”. You are not alone
Loved those translation lines as well, Datdamwuf! Plus the following bit:
“and so although my husband was willing to forgive and take me back, I chose to divorce him quickly.
Yeah, he sounds like a real abuser to me, OW. He was willing to forgive you and work on the marriage. God, I don’t know how you lived with such a person all those years.”
Can you hear the entitlement in that statement? “and so although my husband was willing to forgive and take me back….” Translation: “Of course, he would want me back. I am awesome, and he’s an abusive piece of crap.” Could there be a character flaw in you? No way! You’re a victim of a true “spiritual connection” that just couldn’t be denied. Sickening!
I’m confused by the entire letter/bullshit ………….
she says first “sad that an affair was involved in ending it” and then she says…… “glad that the affair was used to bring decades of marital misery to an end”.
So, which is it cheater???? I guess it depends on where she is in the story.
You can tell just how confused she is with her actions and feelings. One minute she is happy she found her lover boy and the next she doesn’t know if she wants to marry him.
WTF is wrong with cheaters!?! Don’t they understand the layers of hurt? The family (including children) and extended family that are hurt by their miracle love?! The financial destruction and emotional turmoil? The years of self examination of the chumps and “what the heck just happened to my life?”
Fuck them! (crap mood today…..can ya tell?)
Good point Kimmy!!!
CL, loved your translation to her delusional bullshit!
She actually thinks that she’s so much better than all the OW, because she had a “spiritual connection”. Yes, that’s why his divorce is still not final, nor has he moved out of the family home!! Your spiritual connection, and your miracle love will always be there especially with a man probably 20 years older than you!
Spiritual connection = he is hung like a horse.
I don’t know what I’d do without the comments on this site to brighten my days.
Arnold, laughing so hard you’re making my new hernia stitches tear!
Uh no, not hung like a horse. 🙂 has money though. Makes up for the inches missing.
Oh my GOD, you guys!! You’re debasing a beautiful thing! It’s miraculous and spiritual! *Tch!*
LOL!
Let’s put this through the Universal Bullshit Translator: “Falling in love” (I really want to fuck you).
Universal Bullshit Translator: “Spiritual Connection” (I really want to fuck you).
Naw, while I am sure that plays a role, I am sure it’s buried so deeply beneath the bullshit that feeds this entitlement that the author of that bizarre pile of dung (a cafeteria-sized-supply of shit sandwich filling) thinks of the sex part as incidental 🙂
Stars aligned, mystical forces compelled, His ways were mysterious, a choir of angels sang, the Universe orbited around the divine pair as her bush burned, tea leaves configured themselves in the shape of their Holy Embrace.
And the Lord said, “Let these two people who are married to other people couple. And it was so”.
Hallelujah! It’s an honest-to-friggin’-God miracle! They’re really doing God’s work, you see? The screwing is nice (and sweaty), but it’s God’s Will 😉
And the people sang Kumbaya….except they forgot the words to it….
If she feels so noble because the fucking only happened AFTER the spiritual connection developed, then why didn’t she divorce her husband as soon as she felt those spiritual butterflies? I mean, she and her cheat partner are an actual MIRACLE of pure, beautiful LOVE, so it shouldn’t have been too hard to wait to consummate that miracle all their friends speak of until after the divorce, right?
Oh, wait. This is just another OW we’re talking about. By definition, a liar, a manipulator, a selfish person who feels just fine in having no integrity, maturity or self control.
I admit, I PRAY this disgusting, self righteous, smug, preening whore is run down by the karma bus, although of course, she will never see it coming and will simply feel sorry for herself and her beautiful, spiritual “miracle.”
My commentary on “Spiritual Connection”. Can we just call a spade a spade. Spiritual means God. Unless you’re your own God, then, it’s you. Newsflash – you’re not God. But, let’s go with God. So…it’s a “God Connection”. So let’s go with Jesus (God) first. Yeah, I’m pretty sure Jesus with all the angels and saints providing that connection. Let’s see: God is about Marriage, submission to the Father’s Will and Commandments, loyalty, devotion, oneness, commitment, reconciliation, restoration. (That was the entire point of the cross). He pretty much says “don’t fuck anyone else but your one spouse for life”. Bible spends a lot of time saying “don’t fuck anyone else”. So, your spiritual connection is from the enemy of God – Satan. I haven’t checked out Muslim, Hindu, or the others – but – I think it’s spiritual universally – to not fuck someone else, lie, cheat, betray, etc; I could be wrong. Your clitoris is not spiritual. Your pituitary gland is not spiritual. Your nipples are not spiritual. Your 25 second orgasmic state is not spiritual. It’s called flesh. You know, the thing that God commands you not to live by. I need to murder someone. Something about the hate I have for them makes me feel like aiming a flame thrower out them. It’s our spiritual connection. I feel so spiritually connected to my 8 year old student. You wouldn’t understand. Let me give him a blow job since I have so much spiritual connection to him. Spiritual connection – that’s like the INVISABLE STAMP OF APPROVAL, isn’t it. Spiritual connection means (I want to fuck you). I love you means I want to fuck only you. I don’t love you anymore means I want to fuck someone else other than you. Even God is saying “Jesus Christ”.
wow – Christine Fisher.
You sure nailed that cross to the coffin for me – err…silly words, but.
My husband started sending me bible quotes once he left. He said, The Truth Shall Set You Free. Meaning him? I guess? He’s told me much more than I ever wanted to hear!! It all haunts me and will for the rest of my life.
So, THIS is repentance?
I just don’t understand how supposedly religious cheaters can justify their conduct. Are The Ten Commandments pick and choose? Best two out of three? The ones who use religion as a pass really piss me off. “I’m not perfect, just forgiven.” No, you are a skanky whore, who uses religion as a get out of jail free pass. Can’t help but think that Jesus would not approve.
Is it just me or Karma is already coming for her? The last part where she says that she does’nt know whether she will ever marry him sounds like she is dancing the pick me dance for him. How could she walk away if their love was a miracle? It’s seems to me like a ploy to make herself attractive and still unatainable for the OM. She still wants to be chased. Perhaps, she sees that he’s not divorced yet?
She might be histrionic. She might really get off on making him work hard for her, so she can dump him for the next idiot who thinks he’s special.
It’s a lot of pressure and I am trying to be honest with myself about the ramifications of this. But who could walk away from a love so great that our friends call it a miracle?
Who the hell are her friends?
Two married people cheating and having sex with people other than their spouses. Surely this is a miracle and almost never happens.
I will now perform my infamous eye-rolling technique (it was on the dday list of offenses along with the socks).
I think eye rolling is perfectly acceptable when something idiotic is happening.
Seriously, TH. What woman wouldn’t feel compelled to cheat on the sane, responsible, faithful father of her twins if he rolls his eyes at her? Definitely acts of equally disgraceful measure. 🙂
Hah, was commenting over there then realized that article is from 2011 so I asked for an update…doubt there will be one.
Gwyneth?
LOL!!! Totally!!
Hahahahaha! Truly awesome translation, CL! Standing ovation.
This letter freaked me out because of the out-of-nowhere reference to a brutal rape (WTF?!), but otherwise I love it. Even without the translation, it’s just so apparent that this AP, like so many, is a bundle of insecurity. Her main concern, which she states over and over in different veiled ways, is that participating in an affair might make her look bad. Even though she’s found a miraculous love (yay for cheaters!), she’s fixated on whether other people might think less of her for cheating. She’s thrilled to be out of an abusive marriage, but sad that it ended because of an affair…. because the marriage ending due to her affair means that she can’t come out of this smelling like a rose.
I don’t know why I am comforted by evidence that so many cheaters (like my stbx, and the woman he cheated with) are insecure, needy egomaniacs, but it cheers me! I guess it helps place them in proper perspective, because externally they labor to project a pulled- together persona. Thanks, CL and thanks, insecure cheating author of the original article!
You’re so right. The claims of abuse are fabricated in order to gain sympathy and approval for being such a whore.
“You think staying together for the kids is best, but children raised in unhappy 2 parent homes turn out worse off than kids raised in happy single parent homes!”
Cheaters NEVER can say that, OW. NEVER. It’s like you’re a drunk driver saying “killing your kid as a drunk driver led to you discovering your gift of public speaking at MADD rallies. You owe it all to me!” Shut the fuck up, OW.
Thank you CL for expressing utter contempt that is spot-on for this part of the letter. I was completely revolted when I read this part. My STBXW said this a couple of times and it wasn’t until later that I realized her nerve. Shut the fuck up, OW, indeed!
LOVE the BS translation, CL! Makes me laugh so hard!
This part particularly burns me; ‘fought hard to maintain a professional relationship and friendship even to the point of involving our spouses in our struggles and asking them for intervention.’
Uh, maintaining a professional relationship and friendship with someone you find attractive or are developing a crush on, while still married/in a committed relationship, has a special name. It’s called EATING CAKE.
If you are a grown-up who is serious about honesty, commitment and being fair to your spouse, you STAY AWAY from a person like that. If you have to, you ask for a transfer, ask your boss to avoid putting you on projects together, ask to move to a different desk or office, or fucking find another job. You end the ‘friendship’. You don’t e-mail, text, meet for lunch, or give longing glances in the hallway. You do WHATEVER you need to do to protect your partner and your family.
Because No Contact works in this kind of case too – it’s amazing! You stop seeing the person, stop ANY contact, and it hurts and you feel obsessed for a while, but then, bit by bit, that crazy passion fades. Really it does, and grown-ups know this, doesn’t even take that long. You will not ‘save a family but cause perpetual pain to you and the spouse indefinitely’. If you honestly stay away from the butterfly-person, and work honestly on making your marriage a happy and functional one, that infatuation will go away, pretty damned fast, and soon you won’t remember why it seemed to be such a big deal at the time.
Note the key words that keep popping up here; grown-up, and honesty. That’s what’s missing with the ‘twu lurv’ affairs, for sure.
Right on Karen! As if we’ve never had those feelings for people we’ve worked with or known… Difference is we were mature and responsible enough to do the right thing!
I worked in a male-dominated export lumber business, trading along side all these men, as well as traveling overseas and meeting only male customers. First female export lumber trader – I think – ever!) Ya, some fellas were putty cute and I was a horny 35 yr old. Did I EVER ever ever act upon any impulses? NO! Did all those asshole married men come on to me almost any chance they got when I was traveling overseas- YES! I held my dignity and I know my reputation is secure in my business. Resist temptation, isn’t that what we’re taught when young?
This letter from OW makes me just PUKE.
This is a great explanation: “You stop seeing the person, stop ANY contact, and it hurts and you feel obsessed for a while, but then, bit by bit, that crazy passion fades. Really it does, and grown-ups know this, doesn’t even take that long. You will not ‘save a family but cause perpetual pain to you and the spouse indefinitely’. If you honestly stay away from the butterfly-person, and work honestly on making your marriage a happy and functional one, that infatuation will go away, pretty damned fast, and soon you won’t remember why it seemed to be such a big deal at the time.”
And go to your partner and say, “Let’s work on getting the romance back.”
Actually, there is a much more direct and instant solution.
YOU TELL YOUR SPOUSE. Every attraction, every fantasy every longing.
That kills the FANTASY stone dead, and their devastated reaction kicks some reality into you.
Am I the only one who would love to see a T-shirt with the fuzzy little gray bunnies of truth frolicking in their morally nebulous pasture (located along the borders of rationalization) and nibbling on the daisies of perception? I’d double my order if the big, black wolves of judgement were on it too…and triple my order if they were all, y’know…judging. Oh man, that would be AWESOME!
Please make it happen, Chump Lady, oh PLEEEEEEEEEEEASE!
The fuzzy little gray bunnies would make a good cartoon… I’ll see what I can do.
Yay!!!
Thank you, dear Chump Lady! I will try to be a patient chump.
(don’t forget the Big Black Wolves of Judgement!)
😉
I wish I could wear a gray bunny T-shirt for Easter!
Am always looking for just the right T. Graduation’s coming up and was thinking of wearing a shirt with BS survivor embroidered lovingly on my left breast. Bunnies would work!
Written by the porny, ass slamming, church lady herself. This is the same shit she pontificates to her friends AND in her heart of hearts is destined to be with ASSHAT in the future.
The only difference is her occupation. I envision Asshat and her driving off into the sunset in her fucking pink Cadillac.
What’s drove me to white hot rage a while back was her referencing MY kids by name and CURRENT ages to her sympathizes.
I’m counting days down. I do believe they will end up in true love forevah! Asshat is pissed because a bunch of other married male whores have been porking her butt the whole time that Asshat was “the one!”. He never asks me how I know. I just told him he messed with the wrong Bad Ass Bitch From Hell, and his GF lives her life without filters and very much online.
OMG, that site is full of OWs “helping” each other through their “pain” as they navigate the difficulty of their affair with a married man. It’s insane, I have deleted that site from my history so I’m not tempted to read anymore crazy talk over there.
I made the same mistake of going to the site. It was like watching a train wreck! You know it is going to end badly, but you can’t take your eyes off the scene. The amount of self-delusion was depressing.
Oddly, it made me feel better to read some of the true romance bullshit there, because it made me remember that OW are uniformly fucked up. Who else but a seriously damaged individual would intentionally destroy a marriage?
Yeah, it is a reminder that the attraction isn’t because they have some extra-special vagina with superpowers–it’s because they’re willing to follow the cheater script.
Brilliant! I so do *love* the Cheater’s Universal Bullshit Translater. Pleeease create one we can all use, CL!
The closest I can come up with, is, I decided the other day that if I simply reverse what ExH (aka baby-man) says, I’ll have it about right. For example:
“I would never do that to you.” Really = “I am doing that to you right now.”
“I am not seeing anyone else.” Really = “Yes, I have a side piece.”
“She had nothing to do with our marriage/divorce negotiations.” Really = “She was right there whispering in my ear the whole time.”
and…
“I am so sorry; I am a monster.” Really = “I am not sorry; you are a monster.”
If I had a dollar for every time my ex said “I’m not a monster” I’d have been able to pay half my attorney fees on that alone. Mind you, I never said he was a monster, he just kept saying he was not. They DO tell you who they are if you listen.
Oh my goodness. I heard this too. This gave me a chill…
I got that exact line too.
Hmm, I got that too.
We need an app for that !
Wow – I got ” I feel like a horrible monster” after he told the kids. Weird how similar the words are from the monsters.
I’m so amazed by the immaturity of people who “find” themselves in love. If you are single, you can afford to be oblivious like this. But if you’re married, and you feel yourself developing a crush on someone, you just don’t let it go farther. Do they think they are the only ones who get crushes at work? That’s as common as dirt, buttheads. Even as a single girl, you get crushes on the married men at work and them on you. But, instead of choosing to enter into an affair that will ruin your life/his life/her life/the kids lives FOREVER, you go home and knit, or have some chocolate, or some wine, or make some fucking banana bread. You choose to be drama-free and wait for someone who’s single. Are they really so immature they think they can’t choose not to go forward with their crush?
Hit the nail on the head!
“Are they really so immature they think they can’t choose not to go forward with their crush?”
My ex told his family and probably everyone else, “I had no choice.”
OK, so if I read this right,
the affair was a miracle that allowed OW to have a deep beautiful love. A love that provided her the clarity to recognize what a nightmare her marriage had been to that point. Because she and husband, and AP and wife were all otherwise damaged by their childhood, everyone involved is actually LUKCY that OW and AP have left their partners. And aren’t the children so much better off now.
But, because is she is the OW – the beauty of their deep and beautiful love may not be permanent – because it really sucks to have people stigmatize you….
Have I got it right?
Miracle love that dissipates in the light of day (or reality)….
Chump Lady: LOVE your ending!! It was the best ending so far. Perfect.
I would love for CL to create a “Chump” Cereal and inside of each box put a handy dandy Universal Bullshit Decoder Ring. This “Delusional Whore Deconstruction” was the best!
Lord, where to begin with the delusional whore and CL’s fabulous deconstruction of her rancid-assed, “Me-Me-Me-I” opera. People like this make me long to transform into Captain Insane-O and open up a can of whupass.
No, your “love” is not a miracle, in spite of what your idiotic, morally-challenged “friends” tell you. No, your affair did not “open your eyes” to how abusive your marriage was. Your affair opened your eyes to the fact that you would have to find some excuse to justify and rationalize your foul treatment of your faithful husband. “We don’t believe anything can come between us,” except possibly another and younger delusional, compassionless whore such as you.
But the money quote? “His wife does not want to divorce although she is fully aware of the affair and that made it emotionally harder for us all. You hate to see someone else in pain no matter who they are or how you feel about them.” Well apparently, he’s not that anxious to divorce his wife either, since he hasn’t (at least at the writing of this drivel). If he was willing to put her through the pain of an affair, what’s holding him back from putting her through the pain of a divorce? It’s not as if she can actually stop him from filing for divorce. Apparently, he can withstand just fine seeing the pain of the OW having to wait for him. And she is/was waiting, no matter how much confetti she kept shooting out of her vagina and how much bullshit she infused into her missive.
People of genuine character and integrity don’t cheat because they are usually mature adults who exercise self-restraint, self-control and self-discipline. They are called Chumps. We understand that we do not have to attend every fuckfest to which we are invited, not that we are not invited to any. We know how to back away from the rogue penises and vaginas that beckon us into temptation. It’s called a moral compass. It’s the same moral compass that keeps us from killing or maiming the Cheaters.
“One thing I can say with confidence is that your spouses are better off without you two.” Amen CL, Amen.
‘ mature adults who exercise self-restraint, self-control and self-discipline’ Right on the money with this one, CP. We do those things because;
a) we don’t have the (lack of) heart to hurt and betray people so deliberately
b) we have character, it would feel so wrong
c) we know that by exercising those qualities, we WIN. We gain so much; real relationships, real love, real respect and self-respect, real tranquility …..
The most pathetic thing is that the narcs don’t understand this, and then don’t understand why they feel so empty inside and why their relationships all end up being so dissatisfying.
KarenE … beautifully said.
Well Said!
CL,
Many thanks for continuing to bring cold, hard reason into what is completely unreasonable. Like so many of us, I have heard many of the lines that you refer to in your post and it is simply blameshifting.
(sarcasm alert) How can I, who is so emotionally distant and unattached, know anything about the “true love” that my XW and the OM have? I guess having a conscience is overrated, since it gets in the way of that “true love”. (end of sarcasm alert).
If someone has to spend all this time justifying that her situation is different, it just means that, at her core, she knows she’s not different at all but needs to convince herself. I am so glad the cheaters’ spouses are rid of these cheaters. This OW will spend the rest of her life convincing herself that she is no longer the OW. I don’t care what she says but the minute he starts acting weirdly towards her, she will go into hyper vigilant mode. Who the heck is she kidding? Herself, of course. What a tortured life. She can have it.
OMG a commenter on the site wrote:
“Ideally, it is best to end one relationship before beginning another, but in my experience, the spouse who engages in an affair has usually checked out of the marriage long ago. Unfortunately the betrayed spouse didn’t get the memo…”
Oh, how fucking unfortunate for the poor chump. Not getting a secret memo that wasn’t sent so that it could remain secret for the sake of cake-eating and ego kibbles. Tsk tsk. Fire the secretary….
Yeah, and if they checked out long ago, why not JUST LEAVE?????? As hard as a divorce can be, and all the emotional, financial and child-related repercussions, it’s still not as hard as the discovery of betrayal, followed (with our w/o a period of unicorn hunting) by that divorce.
But that’s not what they want, eh? They want the marriage w/all its benefits, AND the affair with its accompanying kibbles and pleasures, for as long as they can manage, and when they can’t manage that anymore, lots of pick-me dancing from both sides. CAKE!
Cheaters don’t care about betrayal because they are not on the receiving end.
“You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.”
Do cheaters think marriage is Hotel California?? If you’ve checked out, pack your shit and leave. …that would mean giving up cake. *sigh*
Yeah, CITS, I about injured myself rolling my eyes on that one, too. It’s just dripping with flippancy. Condescension. Entitlement. And stupidity.
“Ideally…” and “In my experience…” Like this moron’s take is: “Well, yes, IDEALLY we’d all be above board and such. But my dear hopelessly naive petunia, let me clue you in on how the real world works. Oh, sweetie, your ignorance about these things is too, too charming!”
In my experience, ideally you could go fuck yourself, Cheaty McHalfwit.
LOL. No, tell me what you really think. And don’t beat around the bush 🙂
Amazing how not only did I not get the memo, but no one else that we knew got that memo either. They thought we wer solid, as did I. Well, goes to show that the Postal Service is really, really, really slow these days.
That memo probably would have been something like,:
I’m so insecure that I need to have someone else in my life before I leave you. Because, you know, you make good money and you give me sex when I want it, and you listen to all my woes at work, and do the house work, and split the snow shoveling and wood stacking with me, and get the tickets to all the concerts and races, and don’t mind when I go for trips with my buddies, and everything. I need someone to do all that stuff before I leave you. And you? Who cares if you have anyone around for emotional support, much less helping you with all the things that need done in your new household when I find that younger woman and try out the goods for a while before deciding that the marriage is over.
Bingo!
That’s the memo exactly, bogie. Unfortunately, these people are too cowardly to do anything but keep it in their Drafts folder. Sometimes for years of our lives. Actually, I doubt most of them would have the self-awareness to even be able to articulate a memo like that. Not to disparage James Brown, but I think most cheater self-talk goes more like this:
I feel good. I knew that I would now.
I feel good. I knew that I would now.
So good. So good. I got you.
(Shriek. Sexy dance. Repeat.)
Gawd, this OW’s letter, and that whole Experience Bullshit Project site, really has me agitated. It’s like a repository for the human psyche’s desperate baser need to feel special, central, exceptional, justified. Ours Is a Great Love — A Miracle, Even. You Ordinaries Couldn’t Possibly Understand.
English Lady’s response about reality TV shows applies equally well here to reading anything by Soulmate Schmoopies. You never walk away from exposure to this sort of thing a better person in any way (except when it’s immediately followed by a Chump Lady response).
Damn. I need to go meditate.
See now, again, how can we blame the miracle coupling when it’s the Postal Services’ fault?
Set the chump dogs on the postal workers!
Besides all the obvious that everybody has so acutely pointed out about this post. .
It really bothered me that she actually ‘sighed’….and said, “at the end of the day”.
Lemme break her legs.
I noticed that bitchy sigh also, oh, what to do the wifie is so beside herself and it makes us uncomfortable, but not enough to stop…(fill in blank)
OW has another post on the experience project website and she and OM met at church. She and her husband were ministers, so her husband trusted her not to cheat.
I may have found what happened next. It looks like she’s single and on a dating site.
It’s a bit bizarre, because the dating profile is very Christian and conservative. She won’t approach a guy, only wait for him to find her. The relationship has to be around Jesus, etc. The guy must be single and available.
I’m less sure it’s her, but there is also someone who bills herself as a speaker and writer with YouTube videos and a website about intimacy issues – her mission is to break the bonds of sexual perversion. (As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.) She believes in succubi. (I am still not making this up.)
The stuff is either weird and a little sad or fantastically hypocritical if this is her (she, I know, but really). Or maybe it’s hypocritical and sad.
Diana L,
I, too, think I’ve tracked down the OW in the blog post and we both found the same person, assuming we’re right, of course. The whole thing is just sad. The cheaters destroyed so many lives, and now she’s on the prowl for another victim. The whole thing is just bizarre. Very scary that she’s giving advice on intimacy.
Guess their love wasn’t that miraculous after all. I hate it when people insinuate that twu luv was destined by forces outside of themselves. Sorry, but any higher, loving power does NOT support cheating, no matter how you spin it!
But you know what though? If this were the same person, it just further confirms that cheating doesn’t end well. The karma bus has its own time table and some of us may not get front row seats to he unfolding wreckage but we can all trust that their souls are tortured.
Well, if that’s all true, then it would explain the references to ‘miracles’; although, I’m having a hard time getting my mind around the Conservative Christian Sewing Circle that would proclaim an adulterous affair between two married people with families the stuff miracles are made of.
OMG !
That bitch.
She never said she was a professional.
“The irony is that I specialized in advising single people and couples who were involved in adulterous affairs for a number of years before I found myself in the situation and I never ever thought that this would happen to me.”
She was the preachers wife.
Get it.
Free advise from church!
The Church Chumps that trusted her must be appalled !
The OW was divorced and found him through business, they were Jr HS sweethearts. Begged to see him, he was having affair, dumped her and met up with old gf. Told me he was not in love with me but would always love me after 22 years. Pushed me away sexually, said he was done with the marriage it wasn’t working for 10 years and left 14 months ago. Thinks I’m supposed to be his best friend and business partner,. Running his business partners business to pay back money we owe him. We have 2 kids 22 & 19 who are so confused, thought everything was fine. I tried to be nice and talk to him, a month ago stopped talking only texting when necessary.
So sorry. But look at you, doing the honorable thing, to settle the financial obligation. I hope you are doing kind things for yourself, too. Going “no contact” is certainly one of those things. We can’t be “best friends” with someone who betrays us, cheats, lie, and sticks us with the full load of responsibility. As they say, if he’s your “friend,” who needs enemies?
Sure, the wife is holding it up, right. The little man is all afraid and isn’t sure the ow can be trusted. The letter made me so pissed off. The wife will be so much better off without her whorehound
I feel sorry for any of her clients, what kind of fricken advise did she give them. She telling them all to “follow their hearts” oh, let me puke
She probably advises them to do whatever will line her own pockets. After all, she is the only one who matters.
Isn’t it funny how the cheating matches made in heaven are delayed by the whoredog, first he cheats on his wife then he uses her for an excuse as to why he isn’t divorcing, her health, she is so upset, the kids, whatever…hey whoredog file …
The whoredog found the bone can’t he just marry it? No, cake is so much better.
Ugh, reading this really made me sick to my stomach. The way cheaters think is so sick and twisted and when they write, the crazy really shows up. It’s like going on a ride in an amusement park sans amusement with all of the twists and turns they have to make to try and validate themselves. Ewwww, sorry I read this, it brings back so many crazy, nauseating memories for me.
Job well done CL in illustrating the complete sickness of the cheater and the complete and utter denial and faux emotion of their involvement in anything! Now I am physically sick, the same way I felt after I broke up , I was spitting up in my mouth some days realizing what I had just lived through. Haven’t been there in a while.
Deborah – yeah, like vomiting a little in your mouth, again.
It’s all so trashy.
For fuks sake….NOTHING makes cheating OK….is this OW mentally retarded or what?
I have been married 25 years and neither my husband or I have ever cheated. I’ve been reading this because a friend is struggling with a cheating wife. Though I have never worn your shoes, I can imagine how I’d see red if my husband went off with another woman and lived a “fairytale” life, in a nice house etc.
But living in bitterness and anger never helps us feel good or whole. For a while, allowing ourselves to experience truly death-dealing anger probably feels both necessary and good. But after a time, it will eat away at us. For the spouse who has been cheated on, the most important thing you can do is focus on the future not the past.
You deserve more. You are better off without your ex. I imagine this is almost impossible to swallow. It seems like it would be important to do your best to let it go. To aim for forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t mean the ex is/ was right–but it allows you to move on and rebuild.
The other thing that is so cruel is how often the man cheats and b/c he is the earner, his life continues in the same vein whereas the woman suffers in terms of her lifestyle. This must seem like a daily slap in the face. The dependency on a man is so undermining. I’m a writer and until about ten years ago I barely made two pennies. Even so, I’m not sure I would have wanted his money if we’d gotten divorced. I would have needed it, but I would have hated relying on him. It’s hard to build up a sense of self worth and potential when you depend on the very person who rejected you.
Good luck everyone.
Katrin,
You’ve been married 25 years and never cheated on. You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. If you care about your chumpy friend, don’t give him your “don’t be angry and bitter” speech. He is dealing with a pain you cannot even conceive of right now. It is his right to be pissed as hell. That anger needs to fuel him OUT of that abusive situation. The LAST thing he needs is some claptrap from a person who doesn’t get it. Ask yourself if his anger and vulnerability make you uncomfortable. If you didn’t prefer things back when he was his old self. (I’m sure he prefers to not be tortured by this as well.)
No one wants to stay in anger. But anger is a stage of GRIEF. He’s lost his wife, his life as he knew it. He is going to be angry and hurt for a long time while he works through the stages of grief. If your child was hit and killed by a drunk driver, would you appreciate someone telling you not to be angry about it and focus on the future? No, you wouldn’t.
You’re not a chump, so don’t presume to tell people what to do. You’ve got some nerve.
Katrin, who knows so much about that which she has never experienced, presumes to conclude that those of us who are here aren’t moving on, primarily because of our extreme bitterness.
Well, first off, I think I speak for most of us when I say, we aren’t bitter as much as we are just reeling with HURT. Sheer pain. There’s a difference. But one thing I’ve learned from this whole ” journey” is that emotional idiots like Katrin can’t tell the difference. In their incubator worlds, where they think they have it all figured out, they label everything that’s not happy and joyful as “bitter.” Because they are too stupid to understand the differences between feelings such as bitterness and hurt.
Second, who us this bitch to say we aren’t moving on? Excuse me? My marriage imploded while I was in my last year of nursing school, at age 47. Bitch, I continued on, even though I couldn’t concentrate, was suicidal, couldn’t sleep, and was crying 24/7. I graduated with honors. I got a job. On a transplant unit of a major teaching hospital. I renovated and then sold a house and had a new one built. I helped all of my three children plan weddings and I have welcomed four grandchildren into the world.
Don’t talk to me about moving on. I could write a book about moving on.
Katrin, you owe us all an apology. You are a smug and self-righteous and you have NO IDEA what you are talking about or WHO you are talking about.
If I’m bitter about anything, it’s that people like Katrin can’t keep their stupidity to themselves. Tbey just have to seek people out to offend. They think they know so much but all they do is prove how small minded they are.
All my alimony goes to my kids who are young adults in college. (As very young parents in our 20’s my ex and I made the decision together to have children and that one of us would work at home and one of us would work outside of it. I had a great time as a SAHM and supported my peace officer husband’s intense career. Fast forward twenty years and my ex has made the decision to not only leave the marriage for his affair partner but to annihilate his family financially. Alimony is one sixth of his net income. Lol. That money however is what is paying for our children to finish school. At one point all three were attending college. POS ex hasn’t quite figured out that walking out on your children financially usually means they don’t have the opportunity to pursue higher ed but my kids were raised to believe it was their job to earn a degree. Who doesn’t need one to compete in today’s economy? This year I will have two graduates and another who is looking to transfer to a four year. The impact of our divorce has had a profound affect on me and my children. That alimony, rightfully mine and less than it should be, pays many ed expenses. Rent, food, books. As to moving on trust me when someone ruins your life financially (and is a fucked up entitled Cheater) it can seriously piss you off. The sex I was having with him and his skank? Ewwww. We don’t choose to be a participant in that mindfuck either. Alimony? Let’s just call it an Ed fund.
Nobody should be made to feel bad for taking alimony after staying home with the kids. You earned it.
In an ideal world, you’d be entitled to as much of his income as it took to get you to parity (i.e. you have equal incomes), plus money for the kids, including his share of their education. And if he cheated, you’d be entitled to more.
Hey, I took alimony and I never stayed home with kids. I took everything we ever owned, plus the alimony, and if don’t feel bad. If I got everything he will ever own, it wouldn’t make me feel bad.
My ex has never paid the alimony he was ordered (and agreed) to pay. He’s cheerfully remained unemployed, without assets and working odd jobs under the table to get out of paying support. He tells our son he doesn’t see any reason he should have to pay alimony.
His mindset is typical of the disordered. He should be able to do anything he wants, and if it hurts someone else, even his own son or the woman he vowed to be with forever, well, too bad. He spent the entire 20 year marriage fucking other people, lying to me and treating me like shit. Now he feels insulted and inconvenienced that he’s expected to pay a couple hundred dollars a month in alimony. Poor sausage.
Yeah, much tougher on the woman betrayed, eh? Well, tell that to all the betrayed men who had no shot at custody because they bought into the stupid SAHM paradigm. Time for guys to learn about Briffault’s law and hypergamy in women.
Arnold: nobody has more right than you to feel the way you do about women. You’ve been through abject hell and back, so I get why you think the way you do. Not to open a can of worms, but isn’t assuming that women will be hypergamous the same as assuming that no man can be monogamous? If we repealed no-fault divorce or more people got prenups it would probably be a good start. I see plenty of people who don’t follow their worse natures (men who are faithful and women who aren’t looking to trade up). Here’s a question: do you think that doing away with no fault would help the situation? The way I see it, the spouse who actually plays by the rules loses in the current system. I have a male friend who is going through hell with his cheating wife. She is severely disordered and he’s terrified that she’ll take everything he’s earned while she’s barely worked. (They have no children, thankfully.) It just seems that she gets the upper hand because she’s not playing by the rules. Sick stuff.
Yeah, I may have gone a little overboard on the MGTOW/Hypergamy deal.
I know not all women are like this.
It is just that in our culture, it seems that many fail to see or are brainwashed into believing that women are, somehow, less prone to evil then men.
I know from my observations they are equally abusive, physically and emotionally.
I know they lie and cheat at about the same rate as men.
I know they cheat for pure sex as frequently as men and do not need more of an emotional connection to have sex than men do.
I wonder when society will wake up to the fact that neither gender is more noble or gentler than the other.
And, yes, I think no fault divorce sucks.
We pretend to hold this contract up as sacrosanct, yet it is the only contract I know of that can be broken with absolute impunity.
I agree Arnold!
I’m not clear what causes some people to have a psychological issue against a person receiving alimony, but clearly some people resent it enough that it resembles a form of mental illness. I could understand if the person who resented it was actually paying alimony but it seems that these people are usually folks who are relatively unaffected by the whole issue. They usually know someone who gets alimony, and because of that, they think they have cause to criticize the receipt of alimony. I suppose it stems from the fact that many women receive alimony after the abrupt endings of their long term marriages. Perhaps these women are still in a great deal of pain. And their so-called friends, who clearly lack essential critical thinking skills, conclude that receiving alimony keeps them in a cycle of pain. Then, because they are idiots, these friends go out and write rude things about people who receive alimony. I had such a friend. One of the last things I asked her was, after everything that happened to me, did she think having to file bankruptcy, while my ex didn’t, would help me to feel better? She didn’t answer, but sadly, I doubt she understood how cruel, insensitive, and uneducated she was being. I deserved every last dime (and more) that my ex ever gave me. Receiving it didn’t make me feel anything, it simply helped me pay my bills. I no longer receive it and I don’t feel any mor loving or forgiving towards my ex. I’m just broke. So, Katrin, you can kiss my big fat ass with your smug attitude. I hate to say this because it’s mean, but it’s how I feel. I hope your husband cheats on you and you get to experience this first hand. Because you would deserve it. Everyone who has ever taken the time to be mean to someone who goes through this, those are the people who deserve it.
“a psychological issue against a person receiving alimony”
It seems to go along with the whole “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” thinking of certain political factions. The not seeing all the variables of the situation and its history, trying to simplify things into a simple right or wrong. Morons. I did take reduced lump sum maintenance in case cheater lost his job but had to pay out early some on our house which I put the full down payment on which he used for down payment on house with OW and her four kids, grrr…. That was my hard earned money used for his bitch. Have to pay even more when daughter graduates. It is going to be tough financially until then and beyond. Cheaters suck. I say take them for whatever you can!
I think I’m going to feel really good with my alimony. I supported this guy, relocated, schmoozed with the higher ups, had his children etc. I wasn’t salaried buy I definitely earned it. Actually I feel good now with temporary, he on the other hand not so good.
Katrin,
thank you for your well meaning letter. Believe me if I could get over this in any way I could I would do it. I have read a ton of books on affairs and how to heal, I am in a 12 steps programme and I am in therapy. The OW is still alive and untouched, and my husband has not been shot. What else can I do, because if you have some snake oil that works, I want it. I don’t want to be in this place and feel like this.
Do you have ANY idea how painful this is? The one person I gave my heart to, who I thought was my friend and my partner in life turns out not to care and my whole life – the whole construct of it – isn’t what I thought it was. My kids aren’t in a healthy family. They aren’t safe. They don’t take being loved for granted. Their whole life has come crashing down because of something as banal, stupid and selfish as someone’s penis and someone’s vagina [all the lies, cruelty and abuse that goes with wanting that stuff].
I will never, ever be able to explain to you how traumatic it is. You simply have no idea what being in so much pain that you don’t want to live, feels like. You have no idea.
PS and as for moving on, I have gone back to university (honours so far) and have got a job, after 20 years SAHM. WTF more am I supposed to do?
I wish people like you would just be quiet. A friend (who had clearly been discussing me with another friend) said to me: you know what your trouble is? You can’t forgive [and you need to get over it].
That put me into a serious depression for days. Why? Maybe it is because I am a bitter bitch who just can’t move on. But may be because even my FRIENDS don’t get it -it must be me. Hell, I never got it before I got Chumped, and of course this was NEVER going to happen to me!
Oops just realized I am part of the “smug unknowing class.” In reality, I am someone who dealt with the amazing pain that is self-inflicted when you can’t find a way to forgive–or at least try to forgive– someone who has wronged you.
Yes, you are.
Self inflicted pain? Seriously? That’s a mindfuck. Cheaters inflict real pain — and the proper response to pain is to feel PAIN, and be angry, hurt, and upset by it. The message here is to “gain a life” to get to “meh” — to not let this shit define you and feel indifference towards your cheater. But that’s a far cry from the crap you’re peddling, which is to deny grief and insist on immediate forgiveness and moving forward.
Tell that to someone who had to paternity test his children, or lost a baby in a miscarriage to an STD (thanks to a cheating husband), or who got abandoned.
You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. Troll.
And I don’t appreciate your links to the books you’re selling. So I’m taking that out. You say something stupid ass on my site again and I’m banning you.
Had to have 3 STD tests (that is 4 vials of blood – on top of my regular yearly blood tests) in a 10 month period. Had to get expensive medication to clean up the infection he gave me from her. Chose to get Hep B shots because the doc said it would be a good precaution since Hep B doesn’t show up on tests right away. Had over 30 years with this man, of which I and everyone we knew thought was a great marriage and you expect me to get over the pain of betrayal in what? 3 days? Screw you. You are not doing your “friend” any favors with your attitude. I am getting over it and getting on with my life, but I don’t need YOU to be so self righteous (because it could never happen to you – keep believing that) and tell me that I need to follow your damn time table.
Katrin, I don’t mind the fact that you are part of the smug unknowing class nearly as much as I mind the fact that you are part of the smug unknowing class HERE, on a website designed to be a safe place for people who’ve been chumped. It’s as absurd and offensive as a non-alcoholic attending an AA meeting and presuming to offer advice on the experience of recovery from substance abuse.
If you really care about your friend, you should direct him here. You can’t heal for him by proxy, especially when you really have no clue how it actually feels. Personally, I feel defiled by your comments, and I hope you go far, far away.
Katrin, if you follow this site, the goal ChumpLady promotes is to get to “meh” where you don’t care about the cheater any more and you’re not in pain, you’re happy. You can’t get there without going through anger and grief first.
I have found that in general, people who’ve been terribly wronged need to get mad before they forgive. Otherwise, they end up mad at the world and not really letting go or forgiving.
Another melodramatic, immature cheater with a “but I’m special” complex. The crap they come up with is so damn repetitive, the only thing I feel now when I read/hear this garbage is, well, boredom. (*if I squint really hard I think I can see “meh” off in the distance.)
Being bitter and angry DEFINITELY IS (not just probably) a necessary step in the right direction katrin. To not be angry for as long as it takes in this situation would be to crumple in upon oneself in depression. It takes as long as it takes to be angry and then one is sad and then the anger comes back again from time to time. The anger is what propels one to “get a life” and let it go in time but more because one is strong and not falling into depression which would happen if not allowed to feel angry for as long as one wants or needs to. That’s what this site allows where people can come and express that so as not to burden other people in our lives, who have never experienced anything like this who think we should have moved on already.
Don’t get me started on forgiveness as someone in an earlier post pointed out needs to involve atonement which seems nonexistent in the ex’s all here have and just doesn’t go along with the disordered kind of personality that can cheat. Acceptance of what happened, yes, but forgiveness isn’t something someone one can just decide it’s time for. If it ever comes it would be very, very far down the road after our new lives are just naturally all our focus and we become meh. Even then it’s not something needed in order to move on. It’s the anger that helps us move on.
You’re bringing up some good points and are being a good friend in trying to understand. I think the no-fault divorce laws were set-up to make divorce easier and protect non-wage earning spouse (USUALLY the non cheating SAHM-I know women cheat too more than ever these days). The law has backfired for some as the decades have gone by. It is a very bitter pill to swallow to have to pay out to a cheating spouse and there is just no reason why someone who has been cheated on can have no legal recourse. I think states need to come up with something where it’s not one size fits all.
Was thinking katrin just clueless, not selling something, gullible me. 🙂
Katrin, I was married 31 years, with my ex for 36 years. We celebrated our 25th year anniversary and I had every expectation of growing old with him and enjoying our future grandchildren together. What I’m trying to say is this could happen to you. If it can happen to me it can happen to anyone. For a very long time after he left I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move forward or make decisions, all I could do was cry and sleep. It wasn’t until I got really angry, full of white hot rage, that I was able to move forward with my life and get to a place of acceptance. I hope forgiveness comes some day, but I’m not going to force it. My ex hasn’t asked for forgiveness anyway, he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. In fact he blamed me for HIS decision to have an affair. I think that was even more cruel than his cheating. Sometimes I think about the story we’re told in church of Jesus being beaten and nailed to a cross. It’s said he looked down before dying and said “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” We’ve heard that story so much we think it’s easy. We think it’s what we’d do too, until we’re in a position where we feel we’ve lost everything we loved at the hands of our own personal Judas. That’s when we discover we’re really human and not divine.
Beautifully said.
wow – so beautifully said!
Wow Lyn..you put into words beautifully what I myself am feeling, and I think most of uss are. I really do not care for people commenting on infidelity when they have never experienced it themselves..there is absolutely no way that anyone can understand it unless they’ve been there. 3 months out I still cry and want to sleep all of the time. But that is slowly turning into that “white hot rage” that you mentioned. Bit by bit and day by day that anger is growing, and I absolutely despise his right now. As a matter of fact, I hate his guts. And like yours, my H doesn’t think he did a damn thing wrong..”He didn’t mean for it to happen, and he didn’t go out looking for it”. Obviously it was some sort of “divine intervention” that caused him to throw away 26 years and 3 children. I am the one that lost everything..my best friend, the man I love/d with all of my heart, and the person I always thought I would grow old with, as we watched our children have children. Such an excellent description..these cheaters really are our own personal Judas’s. The level of betrayal is unimaginable, and the majority of them feel absolutely no remorse. That’s the reason I come here every day, to struggle through this with those of us who are shattered, and picking up the pieces of the life we once thought we had. Advice from someone who has no clue, such as “move on, get over it” just torks me off. Again..until you walk in OUR shoes, take your advice and shove it.
Sandy R. Hugs first and foremost. And THIS, “The level of betrayal is unimaginable”. The day I receive my last alimony payment is the day I will ask every legislator in the State of Ca to penalize spouses who intentionally dissipate assets, and to take a hard look at a family court system that allows bullies to win settlement agreements because judges and lawyers have no clue what Narcs are capable of. A good starting place would be progressive mediation. Financial statements should also be certified. A CDFA should be provided for those in long term marriages and if we can agree on child support there ought to be a formula for maintenance.
Oh yes Katrin, I need to forgive the person who tried to emotionally and financially ruin me after 11 years of marriage. Also, if a rapist breaks into my house at night to attack me, I’ll forgive that too. Or I get Madoffed by a financial planner, I need to forgive that.
Please shut the fuck up. All I NEED to do is except it happened, I don’t need to forgive other people who try to destroy me.
Oh and good luck with your marriage. I’m sure this would never, ever happen to you.
Some thoughts on forgiveness:
The one single thing that makes it easiest to forgive is when you are happy.
Nobody gets to forgiveness quickly and expecting that you should backfires.
As everyone has said, anger when you’ve been hurt is a good thing and sometimes you have to go through pain to get out of it.
The wrong kind of forgiving is bad for the sinner/oppressor. No revenge, but no doormat either. (or to paraphrase Jesus, you guys, stop stoning people, and you, stop committing adultery.)
For the people talking about the article “For the thrill of the affair: why married women cheat”. Here’s a quote that had me laughing so hard I fell off my chair.
:Noel Biderman insisted that his business does people more good than harm because the threat of infidelity can be a martial wake-up call.
“I see it as a platform that helps people stay married. Millions of people have affairs because they want to stay married,” he said. “I help millions of people find contentment, passion and happiness through my service.”:
Did you read that? Read it again! Yes that’s right.. he says people have affairs because they WANT TO STAY MARRIED. W O W
Funny. That was what I told my ex twenty+ years ago BEFORE we married. You know going over values and ground rules and expectations. Deal breakers: Drugs and Infidelity. The end.
Katrin…you say you have been with your hub 25 or so years and neither of you have cheated. How exactly do you know you have not been cheated on?
And it seems to me you say it pretty smug, like you are the wife master and we are, what, failures?
Oh my husband has never cheated and me either, na na na na
Can you just keep your stupid thoughts in your head and not type them here?
Kristen also, if you do find out you have been cheated on, you will be the last to know, it isn’t like he is going to put it on the news for you
It is funny she won’t worry about him cheating or him her. I know she meant it as they will be true, but really with the history it should be a given they will cheat on each other.
With ow in my triangle lovely marriage, she was on sites saying she was single I thought, no she isn’t she has a married man at her place, and my h was trying for a record of women … that is what he spouted one day when I asked if he loved the ow, it was a fast no and he was going to get as many women as possible.
By the looks of his size now, his attitude, the fact he is married and has drinking issues ..understatement.. I am sure the ladies are lining up. He is larger than I have ever seen him in my life.
CL, I love how fierce and protective you are. In those first two years of my ex’s abandonment and my overwhelming grief I could barely breathe. But I did go to work. I was (and am!) a great parent, and I scrambled to pay most of the bills even when court fees were half my take home pay. Could not save my home (his income was 3x mine and he chose not to pay the mortgage because he had new priorities). In addition to their family home and town, Our children, 17, 19, and 21 (a junior at UM) were robbed of their college savings as well as a father they thought they knew. I had many well meaning people come up to me in our community and say stuff that didn’t make a bit of sense. Even coworkers didn’t understand why I was pursuing alimony! No one realizes exactly what a third party does to that marital settlement. Assets disappearing are the norm The rest of that small community just plain ignored me, like mid life affairs were contagious (ha!) but that was how sparkly the ex was. You know the usual BS. Moving forward is and will be an ongoing process. I was ANGRY for a long time but knew that is what propelled me forward. My marriage was normal up until he met OW. I was an attentive intentional spouse. The moment I realized another woman was fucking my husband was the same day he told me he wanted a divorce and the day I realized I could not fix our marriage. I realize now my ex is and always will be a selfish piece of shit who has no regard for others; his dick will always come first. Funny thing though his new love and courtship exactly mirrors our early years together. Except this time he has married someone worthy of him. Finding this BLOG has been a godsend. People here know exactly what I am going through.
This is really an interesting blog. Lately I been reading LS forum on the OW/OM post. What an eye opener to see these posters talk about their love for their mm/mw. Hell the softening or referring to the cheaters as “their” anything is sick. The excuses these folks give and the reasoning behind their behavior makes me believe most are high on crack, it’s really sad though. The letter in your post is dead on. These people need a new play book as they all use the same words. Yuck!
I am rechumping. Right at the moment I have various loose ends to tie up but after I leave, both my cheating husband and the OW will find out I’ve trump chumped them. She’s a gold digger and I have complete and total control of our finances, which I’m depleting faster than he can earn, so I’m running up the credit cards now. Hope she’s will be happy with just him, because after the dust settles, he will be beyond broke. Yup I was the chump, the champion of chumps, so good at chumpiness that my husband can’t conceive that I would ever entertain the notion of divorce, but I’m already gone emotionally and mentally.
Priceless. I wish we could See Her Now. After C. L. points out her passive prose she goes on to 3rd person: “You hate to see someone else in pain no matter who they are or how you feel about them… sigh.” “SIGH?!” Oh the woeful hardship of patronizing and pitying the faithful bitch who lost! When she runs out of unaccountable speak she justifies her spiritual miracle just like we did in elementary school: Oh, some girl thinks that guy is cute so I will too (or the reverse.) “Even her friends” think their cheating is miraculous.” Empirical evidence, scientific absolution. I am seriously concerned for her clients, but hopefully she no longer works in her fairy tale. Otherwise her license should be revoked and she should be forced to read C.L’s response on the 6:00 news.
Well.. you got the Chump.. Chump Lady.