So, I’m curious — how did you discover you’d been cheated on? Did you wake up in bed with another woman’s thong stuck to you? Did you get a call? Did you suspect and catch your cheater? Or was it that old stand by — cell phone records?
As clever as cheaters think they are, they do get sloppy. And of course, as chumps, we are trusting. It never occurred to me to look at his cell phone, or ask myself why it was always on silent. I took every working late excuse at face value — he was working late, right?
In retrospect, I was exceptionally chumptacular. The canceled dates, the weird defensiveness, the arrogance. I could sniff it out now, I think, but at the time it was so far from my imagining that someone could do those things — sleep with someone and come home and sleep with me. Say they love me and lie to my face. Allow me to make life-altering decisions that benefited them and then cheat on me.
I found out when the long-term OW called to inform me that she existed. And that she’d been the OW in his last marriage. (And the one before that too, as it turned out.) She wasn’t the only OW, just the one with the longest service record. He was a serial cheater.
I was on a deadline, about to send a large job to the printer and she called the land line phone. We hadn’t lived in town long, no one called the land line phone, but I answered. She asked my name, but not like a telemarker and then hissed, “I bet you’re wondering where your husband is on the weekends. Well, he’s with ME. I should’ve known he was cheating. I was the other woman in his last marriage.”
I tried to take this in. He was driving to Virginia on the weekends he said, to get his house ready to sale. One weekend the realtor demanded he paint the shutters. (Odd realtor I thought. Who can understand the mysteries of realtors.) So that’s where he was.
Then a more terrifying thought. The first thing I said on the phone was “Oh shit. I hope I’m not pregnant.”
That threw her off balance. (Why do affair partners imagine cheaters don’t have sex with their spouses?) And then she asked how long I’d been married. I said since May. And then she started crying.
And then I weirdly thanked her for letting me know. And I hung up.
Confronted him later, he admitted to cheating. (Not how long, or with how many. Just that… yes, he had a mistress and that was her.) And that began the whole next couple years of psychodrama.
It’s 8 years later and I’m happily meh. Infidelity feels like a nightmare that happened to someone else a ages ago. But — to this day, I can perfectly recall how it felt when I found out. That expression “my heart stopped” — was exactly it. I had a huge pain in my chest. It literally knocked the wind out of my sails. And then… numbness.
For days I felt like I was having an out of body experience. I was remarkably calm when I confronted him. I just remember the need to talk afterwards — to anyone that wasn’t him. I called my old shrink in DC, who was a dear and put the cheater on the phone.
“Why’d you cheat?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, if you don’t know, then you can’t promise you won’t do it again, can you?”
That night I talked to one of those hotlines to keep me sane. I didn’t sleep. He, however, did sleep — like a baby. That just totally amazed me.
He was one of those Hot Pocket cheaters, as I’ve described elsewhere. The kind that looks at your crumpled, sobbing body, steps over it, and goes and makes himself a Hot Pocket. The sort that sleeps fine after D-Day. In short, a sociopath.
There was of course sobbing and vomiting. I don’t recall all the particulars, except I lost an impressive amount of weight suddenly. I remember going out one day and ordering a sticky bun (Lancaster County, Pa. makes the most delicious sticky buns) — and just staring at it. Sort of like I forgot what food is for, or why anyone takes an interest in it.
And the other part of the story of my first D-Day was that between the time I got the phone call, and before he came home from work and I confronted him — we were having a furnace installed — that I paid for. And as I wrote an $8000 check to the contractor I burst into tears and apologized that I just learned my husband was cheating on me. He looked terribly startled, but being a good LanCo guy he told me he was very sorry to hear that and he was “going to hold me up to Jesus in prayer.”
(A few years later, he installed the new furnace in my new cheater-free house and I told him his prayers worked. That seemed to please him.)
What a long, strange trip it’s been since then. I remember praying for that marriage to survive. Well, thank God for unanswered prayers. The marriage didn’t survive — I survived. And what a better life I got eventually, as hard won as it was. What a weird catalyst infidelity is. When I look back, that’s how it feels now — like all that misery was just a springboard to a different life. A hard blessing of freedom.
It’s amazing, the kindness of strangers at a time of great pain, and how you never forget it.
Found out through the phone records and coming home from an out of state visit of family/job interview to discover my xW had taken her diaphragms/spermicide out of our home while I was gone. Being a true chump, I had written off the odd phone number on the records hoping it was just her sister that she was calling so frequently over the months. It wasn’t–obviously. Lost like ten/twenty pounds in three weeks after I came home to that discovery and learned who was really on the other end of that phone line.
And I am glad for the life I have now even though it means God did not answer my prayers for reconciliation as well. He had something much better for me. I wake up each day to my new wife and her daughter so thankful to be a husband to a fiercely loyal woman and a daddy to an amazing, adoring little girl. God redeemed this awful experience, indeed!
I prayed so hard for God to change him , for our marriage to work, but what he did was a choice and to continuou to see his married mistress is his choice. ! But like you I think he has better things in store for me! My future is scarry but I got my teen daughters and we will have fun and make do with what happens:-)
Wow, Full Steam, that is awesome! I also prayed and prayed for my marriage, every day praying that God would change his heart and we would reconcile successfully. My ex spit in God’s face and continued to cheat, lie, manipulate and abuse.
Now I’m dating a wonderful man, and while I don’t know what the future might bring, I do at least finally know what it is like to be with a good man who does not lie and who truly cares for me. I thank the Lord for doing what was best for me, even though it hurt back at the time.
Thanks, Wow33 and GladIt’sOver. I had people try to tell me she wasn’t cheating or that I was jumping to conclusions even when they knew this info. The real sucker punch landed three months after her gas lighting me when she finely admitted to it with this man and other MEN she had met at bars! So happy to be done with that madness. She clearly has issues.
After the divorce was through and before I was remarried, I sensed God telling me that He had rejected her for me. She had disqualified herself morally from being my wife. So glad to be with my new family! Night and day different.
GIO, I read here everyday and, so, know your story… I don’t comment often but am today because I am so happy to learn you are still enjoying the company of the new man to whom you opened your life and heart because you were able to move on. You are mighty and inspiring!
“I remember praying for that marriage to survive. Well, thank God for unanswered prayers. The marriage didn’t survive — I survived.”
I used to pray and pray – “Power of a Praying Wife” – cover to cover. I prayed that God would save our family.
And He did. He saved the children and me by having my exH leave and never come back. And for that I will be forever grateful.
My h came home from work with bounty from an employee’s garden. When I said I didn’t know who she was, he flipped out, very out of character, way over the top. That’s when my body told me something was up. From that point, he slept with his phone, and commenced with gas lighting. He worked late, told me I was nuts, had no right to be in his shit, blah blah blah. We spent thousands on mc, he lovebombed me with fancy hotels, but kept her the whole time. Until he confessed, 10mos had passed, 10 mos of vomiting, crying, me being a sub par mom, while he pranced through the house whistling. After he ended it, she wouldnt give up, and due to her typing Tourette’s and the boundary free environment at work, she inadvertently gave me piles of proof of the affair. Ironically, he calls me a martyr for focussing on my pain but wasn’t he the martyr first by running to the ow with his sob story about his pitiful marriage? Jackass. I’m super stuck, thank god for CL. It’s been 9 mos since they ended, but she still works for him. She will be fired soon, and I have a feeling I’m in for a new level of hell when that happens because she’s a real class act. This really sucks.
nic–
I’ll hope you get unstuck. If I was religious, I’d pray for you to get there. Your ex does not respect you. The OW still works for him, and he claims the affair is over and that he’s going to fire her and you believe him.
nic!!! What do you have to do to end it with him and have the life you want? Because I’ll tell you, you don’t want a life with a male who feels entitled to call all the shots, including having affairs.
niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiic….
We love you over here in chump land. This is tough love.
thanks – I’m legally stuck in another country. So I have to be careful. As for the ow, my mil is firing her, they’re interviewing replacements. But my hell is not over, I’m just glad I have the tough love here. I have to play my legal, custody and financial hands very carefully. I’m very well aware that I’m not valued or respected. My eyes are very open. Thanks again 🙂
Good luck. Glad you are aware and awake. Glad your mil is firing the OW! Be safe.
Ok, good. At least you’re playing. I can tell that you’re being very careful and smart. Sorry for all the extra entanglements, but you’ll get there, my dear. You DO DESERVE RESPECT.
Luckily he’s as contrite as can be, so I can use this to my advantage. And skim money.
The ow got her termination today. She’s pissed. Now I wait for the other hillbilly shoe (sandal w/sock?) to drop. It’s a family biz, otherwise I’m sure they’d both be axed. Disrupted all kinds of shit everywhere. For gawds sakes why can’t people just behave properly? The affair has been over for 8+ months, but she thought she was able to handle things well. Until she drank on the weekends. Classy broad. Luckily everyone sees her real colors now and wants her gone, h included. Not sure what the next chapter will bring….
Congrats on at least that.
I kinda feel sorry for her.
(bahahah! Not!)
I found out when I was coaching my son’s Robotics team in my home. He was 13 at the time, so I had a house filled with 12 and 13 year old boys. My son needed a computer to look something up, so I went and got his father’s laptop. My son used that laptop frequently, had even done his Eagle Scout presentation on it a couple weeks before. The computer had been left on. I sat it down on the desk in front of him, lifted the screen, and went to check on some of the other boys. Next thing I knew, I heard a strange sound coming from my son’s direction. I turned and saw him slumped in the chair. The screen in front of him had a chatroll featuring naked dad and naked other woman. As I got closer, I could see that the messages were definitely not PG. I closed the computer and as quietly and calmly as I could, removed it from the room….and that is how I found out.
How horrible! All these stories are horrible, but the kids suffering the D-Day first are among some of the worse IMO.
Dear Lord, that’s awful.
Speechless. That is a rare event for me.
OK everyone, the “winner”, Teri, has been chosen, no more submissions please. Game over.
What a pig Teri! Knowing that his son might use that laptop and still he did that. I hope your son is okay. God only knows how a child’s mind could make sense of that kind of assault on his senses.
Actually, it gets worse. About a year after Dday, my son told his therapist that dad had given him porn one night before Dday to “help him get to sleep”. He said he threw it out of the room and the next morning when he got up, it wasn’t here.
My son is on the autistic spectrum and one of the things about him is that he really can’t lie. He can’t tolerate even discussing lying.
His therapist told the custody evaluator, who said in his report that he didn’t believe it.
Oh god…that is…I can’t even think of an adjective to describe that. On top of finding out his father is a cheater, your son had to see a picture of him naked, I’m guessing mid sex act. Talk about insult to already disgusting injury. I can’t…wow my brain is reeling trying to come up with just one adjective for that…
Holy shit is your son ok ?
I am speechless. Horrific. I am so sorry.
My son is not okay, but he and I and his therapist keep working to get him through. On top of the discovery, his father has been an absolute asshole to him. Dad first off refused to apologize to our son and instead accused me of finding the photos and showing them to him. Then dad threatened to kidnap our son, has told him that he (son) has “deep psychological isssues” because he gets stressed out around his dad, has tried to keep my son from attending extracurricular activities and summer camp…
And now my son gets upset when he sees a photo of woman in a bikini even. So much for healthy sexual development. It has been an on-going nightmare. That was 2.5 years ago, and we are still not out of the woods.
And thank you for asking.
Sorry to harp on about this terrible story but I think Terri that ex should do time for such carelessness and abuse. He was supposed to be the parent FFS, a person who protects and guides his son. I am utterly horrified that this should happen to your boy. Hideous for an adult to see something like this but a child – that just beggars belief! I thought I’d heard it all.
Teri,
I despise your, I assume, ex-husband and I am sending BIG {HUGS, HUGS} to you and your son. I can’t even wrap my head around how devastating that was for him.
Your ex-husband is a consummate donkey’s asshole.
Thank you, Chump Princess.
Teri,
I would like to refer back to my post 2 days ago….STABBING HIM IN THE FOREHEAD WITH A SEAFOOD FORK.BAD BAD BAD…its too good for him….people who do this to children….there is a special place in hell for him. I can empathize because my kids going through a similar shitshow….but not that bad and graphic (at least that they have shared).
I am so sorry…..and I will pray for you and your son, because it is all I can offer.
Bubbles
Oh, Teri, I am so sorry!
That’s despicable, and your X is evil to keep heaping trauma on your son. I hope that you can gain sole custody and get him out of your lives forever.
Well, dad asked for a psych eval because I am “mentally unstable and have rage issues”, so we ended up having the whole family in for a psych eval and custody eval. He was able to charm the evaluator, who bought his “I’m a changed man” hook, line, and sinker…despite the evidence that he had pulled this routine before and fooled a number of therapists (he is a sex addict- I ended up finding pictures of orgies, emails to prostitutes and local convicted child molesters, etc.).
He is a physician and very good at playing the nice guy victim. Therapists eat it up all the time. So while we don’t have a standard visitation order, my son has so much that he is experiencing trauma reactions and anxiety. Dad wants him drugged so he can go on visitation.
Fucking A right you should have a rage issue !! ! Drugged who ? Your son ? Fuck that protect him dont let that happen !
My god you poor creature, my heart goes out to you. Your ex sounds vile Teri. What he allowed happen to your son amounts to child abuse in my opinion. These evaluators can’t see the woods for the tree. He is never going to change sadly. It seems you have a right battle on your hands.
I don’t know what the legal standing is where you are but when I sort legal advise regarding our 15 year old having to visit with his father following his being exposed to inappropriate images I was told he did not have to visit with his father and if is father was to just take him he had the right to just walk out.
we live in Australia and I had to sort out somewhere for my son and 11 yr old daughter to stay while there younger sister is in hospital having Chemo, as our son refused to stay with his father and I have no family. Clearly it is not in your sons best interest to be visiting with his father.
We are in Texas and the law here is non-custodial parent has visitation rights until child turns 18. No one can force him to go, and he has refused on a number of occasions. Dad then takes me to court for enforcement issues and has asked for fines and jail time. So far he has not been very successful, but it has caused a lot of stress and financial problems. He also had me served in front of my son which added to his trauma.
It is abusive as far as I am concerned but as far I know, emotional abuse is not recognized by our family courts.
Really appreciate all the supportive comments. This has been a nightmare. Sorry to hear about other kids suffering as well. People that do this to kids deserve a special rung in Hell.
What your asshole X doesn’t realize is that the day is coming when your son gets to decide whether or not he will have a relationship with his father. Or, as my kids say,” Be careful ’cause we get to choose the nursing home.” Your X is about to lose control of his relationship with YOUR son ; stand back, let your son be in control, and don’t be suprised when the pupil becomes the teacher. He is your son, he isn’t fooled by your X’s bullshit.
I am so sorry:-( that is so awfull!
Teri,
One thing that has helped my son with all of this is my being totally honest not graphic just honest. My X cannot understand why I told our son the truth about his behavior and is angry at me for doing so. X is of the belief that our son should only know about the pictures he found nothing else. I want my son to know he has at least one upright parent. I am sorry your son has had to man up when his father is obvious still a child. Stay strong and look after yourself.
I totally agree. I took my son to a therapist to have a discussion about what he saw so that I wouldn’t be accused of parental alienation (although I was any way). The last thing you want is your kid to be confused about whether or not this is acceptable behavior.
Oh my word….that poor boy. I’m so sorry he has to go through that. Divorce alone – living arrangements, new girl/boy friends for parents, possible step siblings – is awful but to have those images of your father and he’s not trying to fix it? That’s beyond traumatic.
I wish you all the best – and your son.
OMG I can’t imagine the horror of your poor son. I’m glad he’s in therapy.
. . . Because it is totally your son’s fault for his lack of discretion. Got it. What a rube.
I’m so sorry for you and your son. (((hugs))) Your husband is a horrible person and a monster. To add insult to injury is inexcusable. I can’t believe he is till trying to cover his ass. I am so sorry. The man is sick!
Teri – I wish very, very bad things for your despicable ex. And I wish your son – and you – peace and recovery. I’m just heartbroken by your story.
I don’t have an insulting name insulting enough for this. Your poor son. I hope, and I expect, that your love and commitment to him will eventually pay off and you will have a healthy and happy young man capable of love and respect in a relationship. I wish I could give you both a huge hug.
That gave me chills. Sickening. So sorry for your son. I hope he has had all the support, and/or counseling, and love from you that he needs to heal from that shock.
Thank you for you concern. My son has a wonderful therapist. Unfortunately, most of his therapy centers around helping him deal with visitation- especially documenting events and his distress about them. This hasn’t been so much because that’s what the therapist wants to do but because it has been a constant crisis that necessitates it.
We have had 2.5 years now of his intimidating and emotional abusing us both. I don’t anticipate it really getting any better until my son is 18. Hopefully then he’ll get a chance to heal. Meanwhile, it’s mostly crisis management and trying to carve out little islands of safety and comfort for him.
Bless you Teri – thank God your son has you.
Jedi hugs to you both.
I am still dumbfounded with the selfishness of the cheaters, and the lack of empathy.
OMG. That is one of the worst things I have ever read here, and there have been some real doozies. Teri, I am so sorry for what you and your poor son have had to endure. I hope your son recovers from this disgusting filth inflicted by his own father.
Teri, have you read any of Lundy Bancroft’s books especially ‘Why does he do it’? He has some very pertinent things to say about how courts are used as another tool of abusive men, and how courts, their officials and attorneys have to wise up.
I haven’t- thank you for the suggestion. Sounds like something I can totally relate to.
Teri, isn’t it just amazing that your ex traumatizes your son and you, then blames you both for being traumatized? Such classic abuse. I’m so sorry for what you all are going through.
Yeah, blame the victim. Just like when he gets caught with other women and then gets mad at me for having trust issues. It was bad enough when it was me- heartbreaking that he is doing it to our son.
Teri, your story brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. I can’t even fathom what you’ve been through, but one thing’s for sure, your son has one amazing mama advocating for him. I pray you have your own support team of friends and family advocating for *you* as well. Stay strong, and I hope you stick around on this board. Big hugs to you.
FWIW, I don’t think your ex is an asshole. I think he’s a monster.
Teri,
I am so sorry. I am beyond words. Your ex wins the Asshole Olympic Gold Medal. I’m glad you are there for your son and his continued journey to healing. Hugs.
There are no words, that is simply awful. So sorry for you and your son 🙁
It’s tough to think of all this. My issues started with strong perfume smell. Then lipstick on his shirt. His uniform was white shirt. I worked the same job (when you work as a medic it’s tough shit). Our greeting at work was generally a hug! Sure we can just hug someone and lipstick can get on their shirt. It happened with me hugging anyone taller than myself. I was in denial for a long time.
Suddenly he came home with hickey on his neck. I couldn’t be stupid anymore. His explanation was that he just scratched himself and got those “marks.” I do believe that if I found him on top of her he would have had an explanation for that too. The lies they tell! Thank God I woke up!
Food what’s that? I didn’t eat for weeks. Cried all the time. Shut myself in my house and didn’t go anywhere. Drank gallons of coffee. I never drink alcohol or I know I would have stayed stoned for a long time!
Here’s the thing my question to everyone who is reading this blog : what if I had the power to tell you that you only had five more days to live. What changes would you make to your life? How would you live those five days?
Life is just too short !!!!
“Life is just too short !!!!”
Unfortunately, this was my ex’s mantra. 🙁
A hickey? Were you married to a 15-year-old who was cheating with a 14-year-old? Jesus.
I thought the same thing lol !!
I swear I saw a hickey on dickwads neck during his affair. I foolishly brushed it off as nothing thinking he didn’t have time to cheat because he is either working or sleeping. What a trusting idiot I was!! Then again, the hickey just goes along with the sex in the back seat of his truck in a college parking lot or the FOP parking lot. Nice respectful cops, huh? IMO, they (both on the sheriff’s dept) should have been arrested as the college parking lot is right by a day care center on the campus. Just pathetic.
My ex came home with a hickey about 10 years ago. One on his back and one on his neck. I got told to get over it and that nothing happened and that I was making a big deal over nothing and they were just drunk, wrestling and mucking around….. chumpy me believed him. I had a huge light bulb moment the other day when Chump Lady wrote.. He does not respect you!! I just thought OMG he never has.
Lioness,
I totally agree! Not only 5 days left to live but one of the other questions I ask myself regularly is “You have X number of years left to live, is THIS how you want to spend it?” If the answer is no, what are you DOING to change it!
The hickey is basically the OW leaving her “mark”. I guess the lipstick and over whelming perfume stench did not get the reaction she wanted so the hickey is usually used to start the ball rolling on her breaking up the marriage or relationship. I was engaged (over 25 years ago) and my fiancée was working out of the country and coming home every other weekend. He called to say that while on a dive a buoy snapped, hit him in the neck and he had a hematoma on his neck. I (idiot that I was) believed him and even made a joke that it looked like a large hickey. He became very annoyed since you know, he could have died and all. Anyway since that did not get the reaction she wanted she then got pregnant. He was trying to rush the marriage before she flew in from her country but luckily one of the guys he was working with ended up telling his girlfriend who in turn told me. Getting rid of him was the best thing that ever happened to me. I shudder at the thought of being so close to marrying that loser.
I found out after he returned from a trial separation during which he promised there was no affair (of course not!) He wanted to come home and again my only conditions for having him return were that there were no others and that we’d work on the marriage. I didn’t beg him to return and throughout the time of our separation we were in marital therapy. I remember marital therapy mostly being about all the things I did wrong. The therapist also didn’t know what I found out – he’d been having an affair all along.
When he came home he was acting odd, drinking a lot and looking generally busted. He moved around me like I was a piece of furniture. He was out drinking with buddies and it became apparent he hadn’t changed. He was angry at me a lot. I remember having a dinner party during that time and I was very sick with a cold. He wanted to host it anyway and called me “completely useless” because I wasn’t so feeling well and couldn’t help out much.
Anyway, he went out for a business meeting followed up by too much drinking (again) and in the morning I checked a phone we both use. There were text messages. I confronted him immediately. Who was this? He repeatedly asked me what I meant. His mouth was white. Finally he told me it was a woman he’d known but they hadn’t had sex. I was such a chump I really REALLY wanted to believe that. I begged him to tell me the truth because now would be the time to do so. He continued to lie until he was confronted in therapy and revealed the truth, they’d had sex, unprotected, in our family home. He’d been having an affair with her for over a year.
I immediately told him to leave our home and asked for a divorce. I could not stand one more second with him. We’d been together over 21 years. He didn’t like that I’d asked him to leave (I think he wanted to control that part too) and came home drunk again, belligerent and mean. I called the cops. They took him away and I had a friend come over to stay with me. I was terrified. He refused to leave the home so I lawyered up and within one week he was out. It was the most terrifying and surreal time of my life. I could not believe who he was, who he became.
I live a cheater free life now. I rarely have contact although we share a child. My divorce will be final in a few months. I still have great sadness that someone I truly loved could do this and then walk away without much of a care. It’s been one of the hardest times of my life but I got a job, my child and I are doing very well, I’ve travelled and I have good friends. I have difficult days but overall, life is getting better.
It’s hard to tell this story because of the pain that surfaces for me. Truly it was gut wrenching and the man I knew, literally, disappeared. However, I’m grateful that he did reveal the truth because to have gone on any longer would have been torture. I see a better future now but like CL says it’s been hard won.
“the man I knew, literally, disappeared”. Same with me, and this is the thing I’m having the hardest time dealing with. Who has he become? What caused him to break?
” I still have great sadness that someone I truly loved could do this and then walk away without much of a care.”
I never believed this type of thing happened, ever. Our real estate agent’s wife abandoned him for another woman, and I had contempt for the realtor, believe it or not. My ex was appalled by my attitude, ironically. Maybe it was listening to too much Dr. Laura, I don’t know, but I scoffed, “How could he have NOT KNOWN something was up?” And, I became suspicious of HIM!!
Beep-beep!
Maybe a year or two after that–xH walked out without a care, and I had NO CLUE. Actually, there were MANY, MANY clues, but I was a clueless chump.
I now know about the phenomenon of sudden spouse abandonment. Huhn!
Live and learn, I suppose.
Er, the realtor’s wife left him for another man. Either way. Poor guy. He was really nice, too.
I was the same. So chumpy. Looking back there were so many red flags. To many to count. Even before we were married.
My ex walked without even a glance back too. Abandonment at its finest.
Now apparently that is my fault too because his kids have very little to do with him and I am brain washing them because he never makes the effort to see them. 10 months since he has seen my son and 6 since he has seen my daughter but of course that is because of me… he can’t possibly take responsibility for it..
I have huge boundaries now.
“I remember marital therapy mostly being about all the things I did wrong.”
WTF is up with this? Same thing happened in my 1 1/2 years of MC. What was I doing wrong to make her cheat? Still can’t believe I went along with it as long as I did.
Twins dad, I totally agree. Why do so many supposed “professionals in the MC industry” follow this pattern. I went through exactly the same. It still burns me up now. Some one said to me “why don’t you get counselling?”. Bad joke right?
I don’t know what they’re thinking. I have a few theories:
Some are plain average and follow the guidelines taught to them. They seem to have no ability to think.
I also think from experience, they work out that we chumps are easy targets, and spreading the blame makes there job easier. Except, effectively, they aren’t achieving their job. They try to put a bandaid on a braintumour in every single case, and seem to be fixing what Is unfixable. Instead of diagnosing the real problem, that the unfaithful partner is a personality disordered narcissist or worse. They recognize a difficult arsehole, and avoid dealing with it. Much easier to share the blame, get some false reconciliation and everyone’s happy. I honestly don’t know how they sleep at night.
CL’s site, is one of the few, and definitely the best, when it comes to exposing what a sham some of these Mc’s are.
I relate to your comment that the “man I knew, literally, disappeared.”
I have often felt like I am mourning a person who has died because he’s no where to be found.
I don’t know if I’m lucky or not, but we had just been separated a few weeks and I was trying to get him to “let” me come back to our home when I finally told him to admit there was another woman. I was in my car at the curb of “our” place and she was inside. He said, “Yes, there’s another woman. I’m sorry.” And I stared at him and then drove away.
I was in shock for two days and then the pain hit, and it hit hard. When I left our apartment I had taken only my personal belongings. All my furniture, kitchen things, decorations were all there, and it appears she just walked in the door and took my place. I blame him, of course, but how a woman can do that to another woman, and live among her things, is bewildering to me.
Seven months later I am only just coming out of the fog pain and I have good and bad days. I don’t know who she is/was. I assume she’s younger, fitter, sexier, and calmer than I am. I have thought about trying to spy and stalk, but then I knew the pain would be too great, so I just left it.
I actually pray I never know who she is.
Moving,
She may or may not be “younger, fitter, sexier, and calmer” than you. But in time, you will realize that none of that matters.
She is not you. She is not the one he had promised to love; she IS someone willing to break up a family and live (creepy, isn’t it?) among your things.
She is the loser here. And you are now free of a bad man who hurt you. It will get easier.
Mine used his cellphone, the exact same way, all four times he cheated. He’s either a complete moron or he wanted to get caught.
I am embarrassed to write this but my older children outed my ex on his affairs. My daughter noted that my ex kept talking to another woman on his cell phone. When my daughter questioned this my ex stated that the woman was his sister, her aunt and that the aunt had colored her hair. He even called the ow “Carla” his sister’s name. In addition to this my ex was gone every w/e stating he was working out of state. I did not question this because he drove his company work truck and I thought he was working. My daughter grew more suspicious and tried telling me he was cheating but I didn’t believe he would do that. She decided to take matters in her own hands and one w/e prior to him leaving for “work” she went through his overnight bag. She found multiple love letters and cards from the ow professing her love for my ex. My daughter did not tell me until the next day. When she told me my son 18 y/o was home. He guessed my ex’s passwords for email and Facebook. I knew the passwords too just never thought to check the accts. When we started looking through these accts I found not only this affair but others. He kept the notes and pics from other women going back 4 years. All of his affair partners were married women. I called my ex, he denied the affairs, lied about where he was and did not leave the ow to come home for another 3 days. When he did come home, he did not address the affairs, just did a load of laundry, packed his bags and left to stay with the ow for another week. I could have saved myself a lot of grief if I had trusted my gut that something was off and checked his email long ago. My ex is a cold, hard sociopath
omg, Carrie. I am so sorry you went through that.
Carrie, I totally relate to you. My daughter found out about the affairs two years before I did. She was 17 and she read intimate text conversations of her father with another woman. But she didn’t know what to do and a friend told her not to say anything, in case she was mistaken. A year later she told our family therapist that her dad was cheating on me. The therapist confronted him and he totally denied it and I believed him. I thought my daughter was confused, her father would NEVER do that to me. We had been together 19 years and we were completely in love with each other. We were soul mates, divorce wasn’t an option and we were a strong christian couple. JA!!!!!
So I didn’t believe my poor daughter (I honestly thought she was confused). A year later the stbx started complaining about everything and accusing me of being impossible. Out of the blue. We had 5 very difficult months, tried counseling but it didn’t work (of course), he was traveling all the time, I was so confused and hurt but “divorce was not an option” and this was the love of my life, we would get over this bump. Then in august 2012 he said he was done with me and leaving me. He said our marriage was over and he already had divorced me in his mind. But we could work on having a friendship. I was in such a chump-shock that I agreed, I was convinced God would do a miracle and save my marriage. So I let him keep on living with me, sleeping in my bed, etc while being “just friends” (gosh I want to kick my own booty). Anyway, after a month in hell living like that I finally asked God to please show me anything I needed to know. That day I noticed the stbx had changed the password to his phone, and I saw the new password while he was typing it. Later that night he left his phone in the living room after going to bed ( which he never did). My heart raced while I took it and I started searching. I couldn’t find anything and I was about to give up when I swear I heard a voice inside of me (I believe it was God) saying “look in Trash”. So I did. And there they were…all these emails that had devil faced emoticons as “subject”. Plans to meet, airplane tickets to go to Cancun, pictures. The SOB had been sitting me on his lap during our “friendship” days and we had prayed together for transparency and trust in our relationship. I couldn’t believe it. I thought about getting my heaviest pot and destroying his skull with it (he was asleep), but then I remembered I was in the US (I am from Mexico) and I would probably go to jail. So I forwarded the emails (proof) to my email, called a friend and left the house. The SOB woke up, found out I had read his emails, went into my account, deleted them and then took his plane to see the girlfriend. He tried to deny everything. Even today, after 18 months separated (long story) and me finding out the piece of shit doesn’t even know how many women he has slept with, he is DETERMINED to keep his image of sparkling superman and keeps saying that the marriage failed from lack of communication.
Wow. Somehow it was good to remember all this crap. I keep on crying for my marriage, for that man I used to think he was, for my family and the nice life I thought I had. But I am very clear I don’t want to be with this miserable coward. So sad anyway that there are people capable of behaving like this. So sad.
I’m so sorry for all you went through Gaby! I believe “Christian Chumps”( I am one too ) are the chumpiest of the chumps! We want so hard to make our marriage work, we believe the ” xtian husbands” will not lie, cheat and treat us badly but I’ve discovered there are almost as many cheating men in the church as we have outside the church!
You did the right thing, leaving him, it may be hard for a while but truet me life is so much sweeter without having to worry about who your husband is sleeping with! Your self esteem & confidence will return & you will be so much happier.
thank you 13yearchump. Yes, it is so confusing and enfuriating. The Jesus Cheater (as CL calls these men) keeps saying that Jesus died for his sins, past, present and future. So he is covered. God wants him to be happy. It makes me want to throw up. How can a person be so self-deceived. At the end I just want to trust that God can’t be mocked and there will be justice in this life or in the next. But you know what, that doesn’t bring me back my nuclear family.
Anyway. I never worried who he was sleeping with. When I found out he was cheating I didn’t let him come back home ever again. But you are right. It must be hell to be lying there in the bed, hearing him snore and wonder if he is sleeping with someone else. It must be torture.
Let’s take a deep breathe, ask God for healing and move on, one step at a time, one day at a time.
My ex also came home from a trip (on the day that became dday), then he did laundry and put everything back in his suitcase and left.
I found out about my husband’s 3 year affair when he went out to a Bar function ( he’s an attorney) and it was about 10:30 at night and I was going to check on our youngest kid who had been sick. I was walking through the house and heard a woman’s voice and realized that my husband was sitting in his car in the driveway talking on the phone. I thought he was talking to his sister. Couldn’t tell what they were saying but I thought I’d take the dog out and instead of going through the garage ( and alerting him to my presence and allowing him to hangup and possibly continue to keep the affair going) I went out though the front door and walked around to his car. He was reclined in the seat rubbing his genitals. Odd, I thought. Then I noticed that the name on the phone’s screen wasn’t his sister’s name ( it was actually a guy’s name that he played fantasy football with—odd) and it wasn’t his sister’s voice. Odd. Then I opened the door and grabbed the phone…. not his sister. Discovered that he was talking to another attorney who I knew and they had been having a lengthy affair but the icing on the cake—he’d been out to dinner ( 3 hours at a bar that she claimed was “networking” when I called her) with another attorney. I caught him cheating on his mistress. And me cheating on me too.
Wow sounds like a serial cheater but not an ex. Wonder if you told the mistress that she was also being chumped. Caught mine on the phone also, making plans. Thought the affair ended and did the forced “reconciliation period” but he is now the ow’s problem. Free from being his warden and free to enjoy my life.
one morning I got an over usage of cell phone minutes alert in the middle of the billing period. Thinking that odd I looked at our records to see who he was calling ( I knew it wasn’t my overusage) 320 text messages on the previous weekend to a number I didn’t recognize. When I asked ( had no idea it was a woman thought he was doing stupid texting with an old friend of his) he said “Oh that girl sure can text” WTF!!! Got the :”she’s just a friend” excuse. should have left him right then and there.
We had gone to a coworkers (his) wedding together on a Friday night, exactly eight days after our fifth wedding anniversary. Our son had an overnight at Grandma’s that weekend so we could attend, so we found ourselves with a bunch of “us” time that Saturday…something which happened only very rarely.
My normally taciturn and quiet husband (still waters don’t necessarily run deep – something I learned with that guy – lol) was suddenly talkative and loquacious all day. A guy who could never muster the mental energy required to talk about anything more taxing than fishing was suddenly gung-ho to discuss marriage, raising children, what happiness means, what “love” means over the course of a committed relationship, etc. It was absolutely surreal. We used to have a running joke about him being a cyborg, because he was so awful about identifying and processing anything emotional, and now he was spouting off “feeling words” all over the place!
The conversation had a very philosophical tone – he wasn’t discussing specifics of our relationship, just ideas about relationships in general, things he thought about, stuff he wishes he had known, etc. Finally, he got around to discussing our relationship, and said overall, he was really content. He then said “I just wish I had known myself a little better when I decided to get married. There are some things I thought would be nothing that have turned out to be harder than I thought.” I asked him to cite one. His response was “Well, I didn’t think monogamy would be a struggle, but honestly, it is harder than I thought to consider the idea that I will never be with anyone else sexually for the rest of my life. I don’t think I really thought about that at the time.” Then, sort of jokingly, “Maybe we should have discussed an open relationship. Maybe we can talk about that now. Maybe we should revisit that when the baby comes.” (I was five months pregnant with our second child at the time).
*weak laughter*
The joke that was so obviously not a joke.
I remember a friend from many years earlier telling me something I never forgot. She was in a relationship (still is) which can be considered unconventional or alternative when it comes to monogamy. She and her partner have an open relationship (with specific guidelines), and have had one since they got together. It seems to work for them. I had asked her once how it evolved, and I’ll never forget what she said.
“It didn’t ‘evolve’ for us. We are both unconventional by nature, in lots of aspects. Being sexually unconventional is just one of them, and we were both very up front about that from the very beginning of our friendship, let alone when we started dating. LMM, in my opinion, if a normally conventional partner asks you to have an open relationship, you already have one. You just don’t know it yet.”
BOOM.
I played it cool with my husband, didn’t react with fury or anything, just kept the tone conversational and collaborative, like it had been all day. I didn’t flinch. I told him I would be happy to put on the table any and all considerations which we brought to our relationship with honesty and earnestness. I think that response surprised him. Scared him, actually, because he totally shelved the discussion and changed the subject.
When he went upstairs to take a shower a bit later, I was on his phone like a fly to vinegar. It took 30 seconds to find the e-mail between him and his howorker wherein he told her we had a fight on our anniversary because I didn’t like the gift he had gotten me. He told her I gave him the silent treatment and “stink eye” the whole evening, and then carried my resentment through the weekend, essentially ruining the Very Romantic Plans he had laid out for our anniversary.
Every word was a total lie, of course. There was no gift, there was no fight, and we had spent our weekend laughing, cuddling, talking about how lucky we were to have each other, and still managing to fuck like teenagers in spite of my pregnant belly.
His lie to his younger, single, very attractive female coworker was all I needed to know. There is only one motivating factor for a lie like that. So, I guess this is when I found out, although true black-and-white confirmation would come when I installed the spy software on his phone two weeks later, after giving him dozens of opportunities to come clean.
A hundred bucks put the spy software on his phone (took 60 seconds to install and configure), and I began collecting the text messages (thousands of them, literally, thousands a week!), logging his locations via GPS, etc. I knew he would try to see her outside of work at every single opportunity, and he did, true to form. I read the messages they were passing between them to confirm their plans for their next meetup, didn’t say a word about what I knew…and simply showed up to the bar in the middle of their “date.” I waddled my pregnant ass over to the two of them, put a gigantic smile on my face, tapped her on the shoulder and said “Look at how cute you two are! True love is inspiring! Why don’t I buy you guys a drink?” She burst into tears and RAN from the bar, and he just sat there looking stunned.
Then they knew that I knew, and that was that.
You are HUGELY MIGHTY!
Do you know how many chumps would kill for the opportunity to be that cool-headed and calculating when they confront?
Well played LMM. Well played.
WOW outstanding stuff. I would love to know what software you used !
There are several out there, but there are some technical issues involved. First, you need to know the passphrase for the phone. You can’t install monitoring software on a locked phone. Second, if it’s an iPhone, you need to jailbreak it. This is possible to do, but if I remember correctly, there are ways to tell when you’re booting up a jailbroken phone. My STBX is too tech-savvy to take that kind of risk. Android phones don’t have to be jailbroken.
If you know the passwords or can google how to hack them, then this is a pretty decent option–especially if you are in a fault state or if you suspect that your cheater is dissipating marital assets on the affair.
can you get erased texts etc this way?
Good question. I dont think I want them now,,,, they pretty much buried me & I dont need to see that shit, but I did.
If your shitty cheaterpants has an iphone that has been backed up to icloud-there is a phone spy program called phone sherriff that will work even if the phone is not jailbroken. It takes all the info-even old stuff from icloud
I used software commonly available on internet that I didnt need access to her phone to get the secret data that I needed. XW had a locked iPhone, which she would also protect like Fort Knox away from me, the most obvious clue she was having an affair. For your info, Iphones sync and backup when you connect the iphone to itunes on a computer. Well I sure did have full access to the computer though. The software will recover the backup saved under itunes and convert it for you to read. Now I could see all of her contacts (then I knew who she was texting), emails, notepad to-do list, photos, websites, and the most-immediately deleted text messages (I recovered around 250 texts out of 1000s). While I only recovered a day’s worth of texts, thats all I needed to know as XW and her several other men were sexting the most disgusting suggestions to each other. XW lied when asked honestly, and I had concrete proof of her affairs, printed and in safe keeping. My XW is not technically adept, so she truly believes deleting her texts means they are erased, when in fact they are not erased, they are sent to the cache and will be overwritten with new data soon. To this day I have never touched her iphone because she would turn into a ninja. I just converted her itunes backup right off the computer to my horrible surprise. I was worried that these internet sites promoting this software were a scam, but I tried it anyway and it worked. P.S. I only went through this process after I directly asked her if she was cheating which she lied and denied. Then I had no choice but to investigate further as my gut was telling me things were all wrong.
Thanks for the info !
“Every word was a total lie, of course. There was no gift, there was no fight, and we had spent our weekend laughing, cuddling…”
Just goes to show how so many of these cheaters need the “My marriage sucks!” angle in order to cheat, and will exaggerate or lie for it. They need their spouse as the pivot.
“Just goes to show how so many of these cheaters need the “My marriage sucks!” angle in order to cheat, and will exaggerate or lie for it”
I know! I wrote below that we had a disagreement only a few days before he confessed. But the disagreement wasn’t mean spirited or angry. It was about work. Basically, he saw a situation one way, and I saw it another. Our voices weren’t raised and no anger was involved: It was just a difference of opinion. In fact, we RARELY fought (I remember maybe 3 fights in our 4 years together).
I can almost hear him telling his AP that we “fought all the time”.
Ugh.
G.
Oh, the stuff he wrote about me to her…. and true to form, straight out of the Cheater’s Handbook! Looking here, he’s not even original! Although, for the clincher, he did tell her that I had a boyfriend for 6 months. I’d kinda like to know his name… 😉
Really, so amazingly predictable. When my best friend’s husband cheated on her in their small town years ago, he told everyone in town she had cheated on him but because he was such a nice guy, he’d “let her keep the house.” — the house she had owned for years on her own before she even knew him.
I am sure my X told OW all kinds of lies about me. I stupidly tried to contact her right after D-Day because I was devastated and was even willing to say, “if he loves you, yo should be with him, blah blah blah,” but she stonewalled me. Looking back, I am sure X told her that I was a nutcase and to watch out for the lies I would tell about him. I should have known, since when I met him he told me just how “crazy” his previous gfs all were too LOL.
I learned from the OW that the asshat was telling her “we are only together for our daughter’s sake.” There were plenty of other lies he told her, but this one sums it all up.
Yeah, my exH told everyone who didn’t know me that our daughter “wasn’t his” and kinda forgot to mention he had a son….
Oh, and a few years after dday I learned that the OW he left us for (there were several at the same time) found photos online of our daughter (who looks EXACTLY like him and our son – with exH holding the son, wearing his wedding ring…dated photos several years after he was supposed to be divorced from me…).
That still makes me laugh, picturing her face.
After Dday, I saw an email from OW to my ex. She wrote that she wasn’t so sure he was telling the truth about how bad his marriage was, and she felt guilty for being a home wrecker. Well, apparently she didn’t feel THAT guilty, since she kept right on fucking him, but at least she didn’t entirely buy his bullshit about the marriage being terrible. Of course, she knew me so it was probably harder for ex to lie about me.
WOW! I wish I had been as cool and collected as you when confronted with ass-fuck’s cheating. You rock, Little Mighty!
Hmmm, my husband was rather truthful to his little idiot.
He said: ‘I don’t love my wife any more, she doesn’t care about me’.
Awesome LMM!
LMM, you are a total badass. Good for you!
Would love to know what happened after that and how you’re doing now.
My ex-husband told me on Facebook chat. I finally kept asking (through chat) until he admitted it. I asked how long he had been seeing her and he said for over a year. At that moment a warm sensation started from my feet, went up my legs then up my body and finally made it to my head. I also lost a bunch of weight. No vomiting, but I cried so much that I thought my head was going to explode. It’s a year and 7 months later and I am still affected by this. I just drove to work today yelling and cussing in my car on the way to my job. I have this huge hole in my heart that never goes away. It’s an aweful feeling and it just doesn’t seem to go away. I was mad a God this morning and told him I don’t think he exist because if he did he would make him pay by having her leave him. Insteand he asked her to marry him this past Sunday on Mother’s day. Who the hell ask someone to marry them on Mother’s Day?
Someone with mommy issues?
I don’t know CL, but I think that is just wierd. He basically upstaged her kids by asking her to marry him on that day. Odd.
a Narcissist.
yep.
And I want to mention that before he left me, we were married for 21 years. I guess that is why I am still grieving. How long does the grieving last if you have been married this long? I’m sure it’s different for everyone.
Maria,
The grief will eventually pass but you do have to actively work on helping that happen. I lost thirty pounds in a month (could not keep solid food down), had panic attacks and night terrors for months, had that hole in my heart (and stomach) for at least a year, and thought to myself, “I won’t survive this.” But I did, and you will, too.
I had therapy (Yes, even psychologists have “shrinks for shrinks”) and she was a Godsend in helping me to put things into perspective, focus on the things that I could change, let go of things that I had no power to change, and always, kept reminding me that once it had served it’s purpose the anger needed to go, and that “this too would pass.”
Yes, the pain sucks mightily for awhile, but you must keep telling yourself, “This is time limited, and I can handle it.”
I was married for 20 years, and my experience is similar to NotYou. I lost 30 pounds in one month after Dday, needed medication for awhile just to cope and truly did not believe I would survive. But I did, and here I am, better than ever. I would say it took a good two years, however, until I wasn’t thinking about ex and all the abuse for a good portion of every single day. I’m now four years out since Dday, nearly three years since bogus reconciliation ended, two years since divorce, and I STILL think about ex more than I want to. But it does end, Maria, the pain does end. It takes time, and focusing on yourself to get through the healing process.
I too lost 25 lbs in a month and I couldn’t afford it, I had crows feet when I started but the sudden weight loss made me look 10 years older, and still does. It sucks, I would NOT have lost my shit if the asshole had simply made a choice rather than continue to lie so I got to have 3 DDays in a month. The last DDay a month later was a relief until he set me up and then things got worse.
Give yourself time. It took me years to get to where I am. I don’t even know how I survived the first two years, putting one foot in front of the other. I couldn’t have survived without friends and family. One thing I intentionally did was everything my X hadn’t wanted me to do when we were married. Bought a beautiful bicycle (he had always made fun of my love of riding my bike to the store), watched every show he hated, cooked food I loved, reconnected with old friends, slept late on the weekends. I realized I had compromised so much of myself to be a good wife and mother. The other thing I did was ditch the users, the gossips, the gawkers. The sorrow lingers and I’m okay with that. Sorrow is part of the human experience. But I am more content than I have been in years and I’m still standing. Take care of yourself, allow yourself time to grieve and there will come a time when you will be proud of yourself for being the person who made it. I’m rooting for you!
Maria, I was married 31 years, together with my ex for 36. The worst of the grief where I felt like I could barely function lasted about 6 months, and then the anger set in. My divorce took a year and things started getting much better after that, although I still think about my ex a lot more than I wish I did. It’s been 2 1/2 years since D-day for me. I expect it’s something I’ll always carry, but learn to live with. Hang in there because better days are ahead.
Maria,
I cried everyday for over a year too. It will get better, but it’s not always linear – you’ll be doing well, and then something will happen, and you have some tough days again.
But all of us here can tell you – it will get better! Louise has some great suggestions – find the things that you loved before all this, and re-discover them – rediscover YOU. Hugs and prayers for you.
I found their emails totally by chance when he asked me to check something for him and left his account open. I never suspected a thing. He was out at the time so I phoned him and asked who she was. He admitted it and moved straight in with her. I was 36 weeks pregnant and he didn’t even come home that night to check if I was ok. I’ll never forget that pain. Nine months on I am doing ok as a single mum of two and I have realised he never deserved me and was actually a pretty shit husband through a lot of our marriage. He hasn’t once said sorry and now plays the victim – apparently I never let him see the kids and am bleeding him dry (all totally untrue but he is such a good liar he convinces himself!). Good luck to the OW!
36 weeks pregnant?! Oh I HATE the pregnancy cheaters. You are mighty, LJ. And you’re right — he didn’t deserve you.
Pregnancy cheaters are horrible excuses for human beings. I know from whence I speak! My heart goes out to you. You are truly mighty.
Raises hand. First affair happened when I was pregnant. Ex confessed when our extremely colicky child was less than 6 weeks old. Nice, huh?
the WORST of the cheating occurred during my pregnancies and while on maternity leave…. like the rare times I really needed him – made him be an even bigger shit.
My father was an obgyn, he told me pregnancy cheating was common. He’d seen father’s-to-be hitting on ob nurses while their wives were in labor!
I know someone who started having an affair WITH her ob/gyn shortly after her son was born. She dumped her husband for the dr, but they ended up breaking up eventually.
Another pregnancy cheater here!! My first suspicions arose 1 week after the birth of my daughter when STBXH husband asked me to get my mother to help me with my toddler and newborn so he could go to a colleagues leaving lunch (he was on paternity leave and not at work) he wouldn’t tell me the name of the person leaving or where the lunch was and he got dressed up in nice new collared shirt and stunk of aftershave. When he got home I asked a few questions about the lunch and my suspicions were worse as the leaving lunch was miles away from his work and just with one person – the OW. He of course became abusive and defensive when I questioned him. A week after was NYE and we had gone for the day to friends of mine who had kids for a few drinks. We got home at 10pm and went to bed as exhausted with our newborn. At midnight my son came into bed and I noticed my husband wasn’t in bed – he was up listening to music, drinking wine and texting. I let that slide as didn’t want to argue. Following week I noticed from the corner of my eye that every time he received a message on his iPhone he would delete each message as it came through. I pounced on him to see one of the messages which he quickly deleted and attacked me for not trusting him and that he was leaving! He came back an hour later saying it was just a close friendship and didn’t want me to get jealous. I later found out that they were “in love”, going to travel the world together and make each other happy. He swore they never slept together. I wasn’t convinced and asked for his phone to recover the deleted text messages to which he agreed? I don’t know what he was thinking or whether he was just calling my bluff but that was the dumbest thing he ever did! I found more than I bargained for in the deleted text messages – there was yet another woman he was fucking from his work and their sext messages were a new type of disgusting! I am still traumatised by what I read! That affair began when I was 4 months pregnant and continued for 6 months. 1 month into that affair he started seeing the 2nd woman from his work that he was apparently in love with? On DDay I kicked him out and he never showed any remorse and is always so smug it makes me sick! It is 3 months since DDay and I wish such horrid things upon him! I am grateful I found out about his affairs and am out of that relationship! I think he is truly sick in the head! I try and have NC but still need to see him 3 times a week when he visits my son. My daughter he is not really interested in probably as he was cheating on us when I was pregnant with her. Looking fwd to the karma bus hitting him but the sad thing is I probably won’t know about it!
So sorry, N. pregnancy cheaters are fucking scum of the earth. Please don’t even consider going back there. He’s disordered in a major way.
Oh don’t you just love the victim mentality… poor me she won’t let me see the kids. My ex does exactly the same thing.. my kids are nearly 16 and 18. They both have their own mobile phones and are on facebook but does he bother contacting them… Hell No!! He’s too busy with his skank and her kids to see his own. In his own words, he doesn’t have time as he is way to busy. But of course that is my fault because I won’t drop everything anymore when he demands to see them every few months with about 15 minutes notice. I am supposed to change any plans that I have with the kids to accommodate him. He hasn’t seen his son for about 10 months or contacted him and his daughter he might text her every few months.
I caught cheater pants by using the “find my iPhone” app on our iPhones. It was a Saturday afternoon & I was at his parents house with his family and our 4 year old waiting for him to show up for his dad’s 76th bday celebration. He had left EARLY that morning to play in a golf tournament and was supposed to meet us there and his family started asking where he was & why he hadn’t called so I hit that lovely tracking feature on our iPhones & I could see he was at his friends house. Mcshitbag calls me & tells me that he is on the way back from golf to drop his friend off & would be there in an hour or so? I don’t let him know I know he’s lying but start tracking him on the phone & he stops at a location close to my in-laws-which is a strip mall with a bar in it. I was trying to figure out who he would be going to a bar with in the middle of the afternoon so I make up an excuse to run an errand & leave our 4 year old with his family. I drive to the strip mall where the bar is & park but I don’t see his car by the bar…….then I turn around and see that it is parked DIRECTLY in front of a “massage parlor” with all the blacked out windows. I felt like I had been stabbed in the heart & couldn’t catch my breath. I freaked out & ran to the car to leave. I googled the place on my iPhone & saw all the ads for young hot Asian babes 18 & 19 years old. I almost puked! I moved my car directly behind his and parked to wait for him to come out. He couldn’t leave that skeeze pit without addressing me first. Dickwad comes out whistling Dixie and doesn’t see me at first. Then when he sees me he walks to the car to tell me how he hurt his back playing golf & had to get his back worked on. Yea, right-so your back is on your dick? I told him that was funny because I knew that wasn’t the kind of work they did there & held up my iPhone for him to see the hookers ads. He then proceeds to start yelling at me-lie to me, etc. every ridiculous thing you could think of-he didn’t do anything, the lady was 50, I could go in there & check it out for myself, they aren’t hookers, what was I going to do-start a fight with him on & on. I acted like I was going to drive away so he started to leave & I circled back to that place & went in. I saw that shitbag has signed his real name on the register & then one of the girls in the ads came out in some nightgown to ask if I needed any help. I told her I’m sure she already helped my husband and left. I went for a short drive to collect my thoughts & then returned to my in-laws to get my son. When I came around the corner I saw asshat was standing in the front yard looking for me-when I pulled up he ran into the bathroom in the house where he stayed for an hour. Probably trying to wipe his phone clean I’m sure. I didn’t scream yell or make a scene because I didn’t want to freak my son out or destroy my FIL bday……..my son & FIL have a special bond and FIL days are numbered. I don’t know how I did it but I made it through the rest of the night without looking at him or speaking to him. Of course he went home & slept like a baby. I took my son the next morning & went to a friends. He tried to call & threaten me so I called the cops and told him to bring it on. Of course he’s a coward and backed off. He’s been trying to so some weak, imitation pick me dance & false R. Little did I know my nightmare had just begun-I found out about his serious porn habit, second phone, hidden iPhone apps, backpage, craigslist, etc. it’s disgusting. Even worse, I am temporarily stranded here……I don’t have a job,he controls the finances, and he won’t leave. I don’t have anywhere else for me & my baby to go YET but I’m working on it. Every atty I have spoken to says not to leave the house with my son as we are both on title & it could be considered abandonment . Stbx has not been violent but can be very verbally abusive but the court won’t do anything about that. I have my exit plan-getting a job, selling personal items to set money for atty, moving stuff out to secret storage, seeing a therapist etc. in the meantime I’m living in a weird world of avoidance with the fucktard & my son. I know I’m getting close to escape & can’t wait for the day when he is a disappearing blip in my review mirror
Rock on Current Chump, hope you have the money soon/!
Thanks so much Datamwuf-I just sold $600 worth of more stuff today that I can put into my escape fund. Every day is a step closer to freedom for me & my beautiful son.
You can do this current chump! Be brave, save hard and get you and your son away from that scumbag arsehole!!! You deserve so much better!
I don’t even want to bring up all the details of how I found out. Let’s just say cell phone + Find my IPhone app + Motel = exploded marriage.
There’s a lot more to my story, but I don’t want to put too much out here because a lot of it is quite specific and she’s one jealous, stalking harpy. Honestly, for someone who fixated on my X so intensely, I wonder how she still has time to obsess about me. I feel like telling her I’m flattered, but she needs to start concerning herself with all the other people he’s fucking besides her now, and quit worrying about me.
Now about 6 months since all hell broke loose, I am finding out who I am again. There is peace and coziness at my home that I thought would never come. Really, I don’t think about how I found out anymore. It’s pointless now. I just focus on forward motion and fuck the rest.
This is by far the hardest part for me. I am crying as I type this. I found out when a reporter called my office and asked if I wanted to make a comment about what happened on “X Street.” It was a busy day and I didn’t return the call (had no idea what he was referring to). That night, my husband came home and told me a story was about to run in our local newspaper about a police encounter between he and the OW, which occurred on our anniversary. Of course, he tried to deny everything, but I knew better. One of my colleagues came over and told me it was bad, all the news stations were carrying the story. I immediately called my children, some of whom were away at school. They learned literally minutes before the story went viral. I didn’t even talk to my X; I was so worried about protecting my kids.
The funny thing I remember is that I also called the OW, who told me should couldn’t talk because she was IN CHURCH! I immediately began screaming so everyone could hear. Boy did she book it out of there. I learned she was in the middle of a divorce, which was to become final the very next day. After a few, actually alot if choice words, I hunkered down to a shit storm of news ASSHOLES; one of them actually brought cameras into my office.
The next day, I had to make a public presentation to a large group of people. I could have cancelled but, in my business, that would have been viewed as a sign of weakness.I still remember walking across that room, everyone staring to see if I would break down. Well, I didn’t. I wasn’t going to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing my private pain. To this day, some people point to that incident to show how “cold blooded” I am. No, my pain is mine. It does not belong to the world and I refuse to be fodder for the infotainment industry.
It was a slow news weekend, so the story ran on all stations at 6, 10 and 11 o’clock. One of my friends’ daughters was a news anchor and read the story with tears in her eyes (I had known her since she was a child). My kids had to go to school and be subjected to all kinds of harassment. It was just awful.
For me, there was no pretending it didn’t happen, there were no funny stories about stupid shit cheaters do. There was just alot of pain, laid bare for all to see. Years later, I found this site and have been able to freely talk for the first time about what happened to me. I am proud of myself for surviving and I want everyone who is where I was to know that better days are ahead. Ever onward!
“I wasn’t going to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing my private pain.”
I hear you on this. I felt the same way, but specific to my ex. I didn’t want him to see my pain, so I went home early from work and sobbed before he got home. I did this for 2 hours ever day for 3 weeks. Then I put my makeup back on and fixed dinner. He didn’t even deserve to see my pain. There was no way he was going to comfort me (see Marathon Man, re: Chump son’s wisdom). He didn’t deserve to hug me while I sobbed. And I didn’t want to let him into my heart any longer.
Evidence that you were COLD? Seriously? How about evidence that you’re incredibly strong?!
Personally, I was a bucket of emotional slop. I told everyone. Except at work. I kept my drama private for over a year, and only told my boss on the day I was moving out. (I was afraid the ex would come to my work, or start harassing me there.) And then it was out — and one of the proudest moments of my life was when a male coworker teared up and said to me “You were dealing with THAT?! For all that time? You were putting out a newspaper every day? I would’ve been in bed for a month crying. I can’t believe you did your job and didn’t crack.”
You did your job and didn’t crack. Good for you, Louise! Well done.
Whatever happened with the cops and the cheater and the OW — I hope karma took a big bite out of their ass.
Exactly. If a woman holds it together in public and carries on, takes care of business, then she is cold, hard, unfeeling. If she shows any signs of emotion, then she is weak. You can’t win!
I always think of Jackie Kennedy. If ever a person had a right to be a hot mess, that fine lady did, in the wake of her husband’s assassination. But, she held it together for her children, and in the process, helped get a grieving nation through one of the worst times in our history, (not that she was obligated to society, but that was the result.)
Well done, Louise. That took courage.
Thank you! I say karma is nothing more than the natural consequences of bad behavior. Disordered people bring chaos wherever they go, they can’t help themselves. And then they wonder why the karma bus runs over them. My X is an old, sick man. I pay for his care because it’s the right thing to do, but otherwise do not engage. It make me sad to think about what he threw away, but I cannot allow my pity for his present circumstances to allow him back into my life. There was too much hurt. He dumped the OW, who is now unemployed because she showed her crazy for all to see. Of course, she portrays herself as the victim, but what happened to her is all on her. Despite many opportunities, I never shared my opinion of her with anyone except my close circle of friends. She basically ran over herself and is too messed up to understand why her life is off the rails.
I can’t imagine why paying for his care is the ‘right’ thing to do. Compassionate, maybe. Right? NO.
Louise, I think you’re MIGHTY. I also think chumps can feel responsibility where it doesn’t exist and this would seem to be a very good example. JMO
Louise what a story. How on earth did you you get through that shit storm? I think you’re an amazing woman, you thought first of your children. You maintained your dignity, hats off to you. And the OW in church – ain’t that typical.
HOW DARE THEY call you cold-blooded! Wtf! 🙁 So either way you couldn’t “win” with those disgusting people. You were being calm, cool, and collected. You refused to wear the shame of your then-husband’s actions, and rightly so. Why were they obsessing about it so much?
You’re amazingly strong. I hope one day I can learn to look emotionally neutral in crisis around people who don’t have my best interests at heart.
Oh Louise. How awful. Just awful to have to learn and deal with it publically all at once. Having to call your kids because it’s going to be on the news REALLY SUCKS. And you made it through. You and we other chumps aren’t cold blooded. We’re adults who understand the larger long-term ramifications of shit within minutes of it hitting the fan.
Good to hear you’ve come through the other side. But it takes a hidden toll – I know, it’s been 15 years since I divorced my POS first husband. And here I am – trying to finally digest it.
Oh Louise,
I’m so sorry to hear about your public pain. Like it all isn’t bad enough. But yours had to be on the 6:00 o’clock news. Holy shit.
Before my brain found out, my gut found out.
Me and ex were in a movie theater, a rare night out for us. I says *us* because he frequently went to the movies – with his ‘friends’, while I stayed home with our pre-k kids. But this night, the in-laws babysat. In the middle of the movie, I kept noticing him fervently texting, his iPhone lighting up the dark theater. Wasn’t hard to see who he was texting, since it was lighting up our entire row. I thought it odd that he was texting a conversation back-and-forth in our rare date time. I looked up the girl’s name online when I got home, and found out she was in the Real Estate business. We were in the midst of getting our house refinanced, so he was just texting her about that, right? Super chump here.
That’s when my gut found out. It screamed at my until the real Dday a few months later when, out of the blue on a Sunday, he told me he wasn’t in love with me, and was leaving me. Surreal. I asked him if he was seeing someone else and he said “Yes.” I think he expected me to hit him, or scream, or something, but my reaction was surprisingly calm. I just said to him “Well, you need to stop seeing her, because it’s damaging to the marriage” That threw him way off balance (although that was not my intention…I was just trying to control my emotions and not sob in front of him).
Complete out of body experience. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
The gut knows. I think that’s a gift when you live through this. You never hush your gut again.
^^^ This is so true CL. I knew in my heart and gut that something was going on, but I couldn’t believe that he could do that to me. Now I trust my gut on everything. If is doesn’t feel right, it isn’t right.
I recently took a class for work on personal safety and security. The first thing the instructor said was “listen to your gut”. You walk out of the house, if it doesn’t feel right, you go back in. You wait for 20-30min and go out again. If it still doesn’t feel right, you change your plans for the day even if it means cancelling work, etc. This is not some science fiction but based scientific data and analysis
Amen. My gut told me not to marry the SOB. I ignored it – “wedding jitters”.
There were millions of times in that 10 years that I ignored my own intuition. And exH was happy to help – I’ve always been somewhat intelligent, and he started (slowly) slipping “stupid” and “crazy” into his rants. For example, I was “stupid and crazy” for thinking that 40+ calls a day between he and a female co-worker was excessive. Yep.
Never, ever ignore that feeling, fellow chumps.
True dat. I will never, EVER stomp on my intuition again.
If there is one ‘gift’ I could share with all of Chump Nation, including myself, it would be this^^.
“You never hush your gut again.”-CL
“If it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t right.”-Margo
“I will never, EVER stomp on my intuition again.”-Rumblekitty
Yes. The gut instinct that I will never ignore again.
Three years ago I went on my yearly retreat up coast – a week on my own to write, to be alone, recharging. I was so happy in that little house I had rented by the ocean, listening to music I liked, eating food I liked, on my own schedule, just thinking about me and not everyone else all the time.
When it was time to leave I drove onto the ferry and watched the water slip by the bow. I was surprised when tears started streaming down my face – I am not normally a crier, but I was so sad, so very sad to go home again.
Five months later he stood in the kitchen after coming back from a “trip with a friend” and told me he was leaving because he didn’t like the way things were going, and that he had talked to “everyone” for the past three years about what he should do. Everyone but me, of course.
I didn’t find out about the OW for another ten months, but thinking back my body sure knew something was very, very wrong that day on the ferry – I just didn’t have any context to know what it was saying.
Won’t happen again.
I understand that, thinking he had a good reason to be texting someone. When I found the 47 texts a day my cheater (a home remodeling contractor) was sending to OW, I thought well, he is just texting pictures of things from Home Depot or Lowe’s, right? Till I saw the texts after 10 p.m. at at 7:30 etc.. DUH! even now, I wonder what was in the photos she texted him when she first woke up, but I can guess. ICK.
I had spent a year dealing with his depression, his complaints about feeling stuck in his job, and a general attitude of disgust toward me. I could do nothing right, it seemed — and he took a lot of “work trips” and went on weekend jaunts with his friends. I was alone a lot, and when he was there, I felt invisible.
I knew in my gut something was happening. In retrospect, I fully knew. But he was such a convincing liar, and we had been together for so long. I convinced myself that I must be crazy.
The remember the day I found out very clearly. I stopped at the drycleaner on the way home. When I got home, I immediately opened his laptop and looked at his online chats. Nothing was locked because I was not a person who snooped at that point. I saw a series of chats between him and the OW, an old friend of a friend.
The first one I opened started with him complaining that he was depressed. This was what he chatted to me daily, as well — and I had been working like crazy to convince him that his life was not shit. The OW’s response floored me, but at least it answered all of my questions at once. It read: “You are doing great. You have 2 degrees, a house, and a pretty girlfriend. You’ve been having an affair for a year and your wife has no idea.”
I continued to read the series of chats from the previous months. They talked about me with the same level of disgust that I had been feeling from him. And why? I had done nothing to either of them. He painted me as the cause of his problems, and she backed him up. It was as if I was an abuser. This person had wormed her way into MY life. It still gives me the creeps to think about.
It is SO creepy to think that OW and xH were talking about me and, worst of all, my kids. She knew NOTHING about me, yet she felt entitled to hurt my kids during their formative adolescence. She is a piece of shit and he is a coward covered in shit.
She actually bragged about tricking you? shows the low character of most OW.
Yes, it does. The funny(?) thing is that at some point when I was still stuck in cyber-stalker mode, she posted something on Twitter about the woman who had an affair with her husband (at the same time). She called her out to the mat for sleeping with a married man. It took a lot of strength not to respond to this gross hypocrisy, but I’m glad I never stooped to her level.
Wow, Lily Bart. I’m not sure I’d have had enough restraint not to comment in that situation. What a disgusting hypocrite! I hope someday she gets publicly called out to the mat as well!
My cheater confessed, but I actually suspected about a week into it. My ex and I belonged to another forum for several years. His AP joined about 4 years later. He mentioned that there was a newbie on the board that that he liked what she was writing about and that she was “cute” (the picture she used was much more flattering than some of the ‘real life’ pics she sent him!). I chuckled, “Do I have anything to worry about?” He chuckled back, “I dunno, hun! You might have some competition!” That stupid passive-aggressive *smile* of his…
He told me that he received a private message from her. Not unusual. I heard him laughing and typing a few evenings later, and I asked if he was in chat with ‘her’. He said, “Yes! Why don’t you join us?” I declined. She rubbed me the wrong way, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then I started noticing that he was typing a lot. But his job required him to type a lot, so I wasn’t suspicious–yet. (he’s also an attorney. No offense to CL’s wonderful attorney–and the few attorneys who post here at ChumpNation, but WTF is with attorney’s a cheating?!). About a week later, I realized he hadn’t mentioned her lately.
Then one day we were chatting about something or other, and her name came up in conversation. He mentioned (with that stupid passive-aggressive smile AGAIN) that he had received a few private messages from her. He repeated himself several times, adding, “But you don’t know about *THOSE* emails!”. I became agitated and reminded him that he already TOLD me that she had been writing to him. When I look back on that episode, I realize that he was almost TAUNTING me, but I didn’t realize that I wasn’t taking the bait. But it was then that I started to become suspicious…
He started playing some ‘dreamy’ music in the morning, which was something that he NEVER did before. My gut was screaming at me, but I wasn’t certain. I asked him if he loved me and with that STUPID PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE SMILE, he said, “YES!”
The following evening, he was laughing while typing away. I had a hunch he was chatting with ‘her’. He came to where I was, and hinted about having sex. Something in he back of my mind told me that he was talking about sex with ‘her’…so I declined (I’m soooo glad I turned him down!) The next day we had a disagreement about something or other, but it wasn’t really a big deal. I believe NOW that he used that as the catalyst to make his decision to end our 4 year relationship in order to be with her…
…and three days later, he did just that. He started the conversation by saying, “Don’t worry. I’m not cheating on you.” Umm, yes you are! We’ve BOTH watched enough Dr. Phil TOGETHER and agreed that an emotional affair IS cheating!
To say our relationship “life” flashed before my eyes when he told me about her is an understatement. He refused to tell me who she was, but I had guessed correctly. I snooped on his computer and found enough information that made me want to puke. Didn’t eat for several days (ain’t the cheater’s “diet” grand?). In one fell swoop I lost my b/f of 4 years, a job (I worked part time for him) and a place to live. I had no money, and he basically gave me a few days to move. Luckily, I knew my rights. He voluntarily left his house, and I spent two weeks trying to get my crap together. He avoided me like the plague (coward!) I borrowed some money from friends and moved out.
I could go on and on…
G.
OMG – how did I find out….Brings back the memories and the feelings of utter disbelief and despair. I read here faithfully, but have not commented in a looong time. Now I feel the need to do so.
Like many here I was chumpy. It never ever ever crossed my mind that he could cheat. In my mind he was the most faithful and reliable and thrustworthy husband and soo lucky to have him:). He had been weird for a while. Very busy at work, many meetings in the evening. But I was in a crisis of my own at work, and did not pay too much mind, figuring things would find their way. Then the arguments about nothing and everything. How I was too busy with the kids, too boring, too tired, too little sex. I had decided to quit my very well paid top executive job – couldn’t take it anymore. Told him he was going to have to put in his share now financially. That I couldn’t continue pulling it on my own. Arguments got different, he was almost mean and harsh. Started talking about how he wanted to move out and live on his own for a while so that he could figure out what was going on, he wasn’t feeling like himself and he needed time by himself blah blah blah. I wouldn’t have it and tried to talk with him. Tried to help him figure out what was going on and how he could find his way out. Never mind ofcourse that I was in the worst place myself. I kept on the pressure, because I felt something shifting but couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was and why he would want to move out for a while. Then one day he said, okay, we will talk about it.
That evening, while in bed, and it’s so awful to remember this, I remember everything, the smell, the sounds, the feelings, everything. He said “well, the truth of the matter is that I am having an affair”. At first I thought I heard wrong, that’s how unexpected that one was for me. When it sank in it was for real, I literally felt the earth fall away. I did not know where the ground was, where the basis was, my footing gone. My whole world my whole belief system everything I stood for and worked for and believed in – it was nothing. And I didn’t know how to find solid ground. I was dizzy. When I said that we could work things out, we had too much to just walk away – he was hesitant. I sensed that he was gone already, but my mind not ready to accept that. That moment I felt, yes felt, my heart break and it hurt.
Many horrible moments followed, like the evenings he went to see her, while I sat home waiting, praying and hoping that he would pick ME! But the FIND OUT moment remains with me forever. For days and days I cried and cried and cried. I went to work and performed okay. But in my car, the bathroom, I cried. I couldn’t eat. I did not know anymore or still where the ground was, my whole world was turning and I was lost.
Horrible. There were 2 reconciliations in about 6 weeks. The last one he told me he knew for sure now that he wanted to be with me forever. Which for him lasted all of 10 days:). I worked like crazy, had sex with him every single day, I danced and worked., But I could not deny that he was not. I couldn’t spackle. And I couldn’t stand this life, this nowhere land. When after those 10 days into the 2nd reconciliation I point blanc asked him when he was going to put his money where his mouth was and show that he wanted our marriage to work, he feebled again. And I knew that waiting and staying would kill me. I was also afraid leaving and divorcing would kill me. But one was a slow death with millions of agonizing moments. Leaving and divorcing would kill me quick and at least allowed me to know what was what.
And so, 8 days after the final conversation about it, we stood before a judge and we divorced, took less than 3 minutes. The divorce convenant was already prepared and signed from before the 1st reconciliation. Done over and out. I am now 3.5 years out, and I am fine. The finding out however, I will never ever forget.
That was so well written!
My story is very similar and you describe it perfectly. I am sorry we have that in common.
My heart hurt so much too! I kept picking up things that made me feel connected to other people and holding them over my heart to comfort myself. My cell phone, pictures of our kids, stuffed animals they used to play with, etc. I felt like my heart was going to break, and I felt really disoriented…
Phone. Like a lot of people. I came into the bathroom one day and his phone was lying in the tub. I thought that was weird. Why would he leave his phone in the bathroom? Why would he take his phone to the bathroom? His phone was locked, and he had a password, but I have minimal hacking skills and I know how to bypass a password. So, I cracked his phone and immediately there it all was. He had a sextext string going with the OW where he went into detail about how he wanted to change her diaper and treat her like a baby. This seemed like some form of pedophelia to me as we had a 4 month old at the time (boy). He denies the affair was sexual even to this day. Even in court. After 8 months of fake reconciliation I found another text string on his phone. Same girl. She said “I am thirsty for you.” and he said “Parched.” gross. gross. gross. He arranged to be gone, overnight, and said he was visiting old college friends. So, he was gone overnight, he admits that he was with her, I found sextexts from her on his phone, but he sits there and says that I am “hysterical, jealous, needy and paranoid” and that he never cheated on me. HE SAYS THIS IN COURT, even when presented with all the evidence he uses these words to describe me. Hysterical, jealous, needy and paranoid, and he never cheated. I despise them both- him and OW. And, on first D-Day, when confronting him, I threw the baby’s jack-in-the-box at the flat screen and broke it. Believe it or not, I bought him a new 50″ during our fake reconciliation. What. a. chump.
Should’ve aimed for his head.
Or used a seafood fork.
Or the ice pick
My ex wasn’t a cake eater per se. I now know the timeline and his call to me from Saudi Arabia telling me to “get health insurance, I want a divorce” was 10 days after he met her. For weeks he claimed no OW existed. Refused to talk by phone only email. Blamed me for everything and I believed it, after all he was in Saudi friggin Arabia right?!
He had changed his password to his email within 3days of telling me he wanted a divorce. He unfriended me and my family from Facebook and changed his marital status to separated. I couldn’t understand how someone could write “loving you more today than yesterday” on Saturday and then ask for a divorce on Monday. Well duh!
My gut was creaming there was someone else so I sat down at the computer and thought like him. Took me 30 minutes to figure out the new password. Nothing really in there other than a receipt for a plane ticket back home and an email to his dad describing the ambush they were planning on me to get his stuff out of the house….yeah, it didn’t work out like he planned. 😉
Still something was missing I knew it. So I waited until his plane left Saudi (which I had the ticket info for, that’s how I knew that) and changed his Facebook password. BOOM!
There it was. An email from her:
“I can’t believe you will be gone for 7 days. I miss you already. How will I wake up without you next to me?” Blah blah blah, you get The idea
I prayed too then I got really angry at God for not answering my prayers. Huh guess He does know what he’s doing after all. 2 years later I laugh about his stupidity. I still wonder if I had reminded him he wanted a glass of wine if we’d be married but then my brain kicks in and reminds me why I glad I’m not with him.
My new bf, about 8 weeks in is so much better at communicating than exH ever was. Too soon to see where it will go, but it is nice and I am enjoying the moment.
There was nothing salacious like thongs, lipstick, or perfume. I have an idea when things started with the woman for whom he left. In retrospect, there were tiny things that I picked up on after he returned from a business trip– A phone call Sunday morning which he grabbed and ran out of the room, posting a bunch of old pictures on Facebook, and avoiding sex. Then he was gone.
With my academic schedule, he probably never was faithful, it would have been so easy. Starting a new job with new girls and a lot of business travel and a company cell phone accelerated things.
Every now and then, things hit me, like the traffic ticket that was mailed to him for a town he never visited but he insisted on paying or all those nights he was visiting his parents.
These are all tidbits that sometimes piece together. But when he left me, with no reason, in the house, I found out about her, that one, she was a certainty, no doubts.
I never say how I found out nor did I confront him. I still maintain my silence. I will say that I was absolutely stunned after he walked out and functioning on only a most basic, instinctual level when a name, seemingly out of nowhere, popped into my head. I was able to go from there.
The day I found out, when I saw it with my own eyes, is forever etched in my head. I honestly felt like I was channeling rage directly from the bowels of hell.
But, hey, let’s lighten up. My favorite story is getting a phone call while hunkering in a cement basement during a tornado scare from a friend who breathlessly described, blow by blow, of spotting my husband in a restaurant with her in another state. Or maybe my favorite is my super-religious and anal cousin running into them at a big box retailer. “She was tying her shoe!” she exclaimed. “And I stared at them! They didn’t see me, but I stared at them!” Get ’em, girl.
I really wish in those situations people would go up to the idiot couple and say “Hey! Aren’t you married to my cousin? I was at your wedding! Who’s your friend here?”
The OW and the asshat worked together. The rumor at work was that they were having an affair. After DDay, his co-workers (our friends) told me about the rumors. I did confront them and asked why they never told me and they said because “they were just rumors.” Friendship was over right after that. I will never understand why people don’t say anything.
I am okay with them not saying anything– I was fine with him thinking I was in the dark. I just jotted down the dates, times, and locations. I thought it would be helpful when I had my attorney subpoena everyone. Admittedly, though, my cousin is a Romney-loving Mormon* and an actress, so I would have appreciated a sassy encounter.
*Nothing wrong with this, just saying. . .
I’m sure your cousin thought she was doing her bit for the team, but honestly, how are you supposed to be aided by the knowledge that she saw OW tying her shoe in Walmart?
Mine is so stupid it almost makes me laugh now. I took my son to a hockey game in my husband’s car (which I am never allowed to drive except on rare occasions that mine is in the shop) and dropped my wallet on the floor. When I went to pick it up I found a sex guide stashed under the driver’s seat. I called the dirtball and asked about it and he said, “I bought it to spice up our love life.” Which of course, he had no intention of doing. At that point I had already tried to liven things up a million ways save greeting him dressed in saran wrap and installing a stripper pole in the bedroom. But he had mental and physical “issues” that made it impossible for even think about sex. With me, anyhow.
After finding the book I started looking for other evidence and sure enough, there were months of luuuurve emails and IMs with a secret woman he’d been meeting up with every few months. He just happened to get boner pills from the doctor the same day he invited her out for drinks and a massage. So I decided to confront him in a marriage counselor’s office, to have an objective person there to dial 911 if necessary. There he confessed to sex with a different woman altogether — and did so with a smile on his face. I fled the office, vomiting and crying. He went back to work. Then I found the longterm FaceBook EAs which he just called “inappropriate flirting.” Later, in more MC he confessed to cheating on me 20 years earlier when we were living together before marriage.
Would you believe I used to think it was cool that he gets along so well with women? Oh barf.
“Would you believe I used to think it was cool that he gets along so well with women? Oh barf.”
Gad – that is exactly one of the things I liked about him. He got along SO well with other women and since I wasn’t the jealous type, and I SO trusted him that it was fine with me.
Now, I’m convinced there have been several he was ‘so kind’ to tell me that they came onto him and all he did was kiss them and tell them he was married. What a fool I’ve been!
Two of these women that had come on to him had also committed suicide shortly after he told me of his encounters with them. He had the audacity to say they did it because he rejected them. wtf?
‘Two of these women that had come on to him had also committed suicide shortly after he told me of his encounters with them. He had the audacity to say they did it because he rejected them.’
I call sociopath on that!
Ok, I have to jump in here on this- my X targeted women who were mentally imbalanced, they were his favorite prey. He love-bombed them, and was SO nice and understanding. The more emotional problems they had, the more he was attracted! He also liked inviting them over, to be in my presence, after he had had some kind of sexual thing with them. (A lot of these things I’ve figured out in retrospect). I guess he got a big charge out of that scenario.
Anyway, that’s very sad, these AP’s that get suicidal, nobody should have to feel that bad. My X’s final AP tried to kill herself at least 5 times. I figure they really deserve each other!
What is it with these cheaters? I too had the husband who had so many female friends and was always there for their problems! Was never there or even listened to my problems! Nor did I ever get introduced to these female friends. Funnily enough they were all attractive and he was only friends with them as he wanted to fuck them!
My gut knew too, but my X sandbagged me and I honestly didn’t think he was stupid enough to get entangled with an obviously damaged and manipulative person (and she was a married “Christian”). I also learned that many of our family’s problems (and we all have them) were gratuitously shared with crazy bitch, or CB as my kids like to call her. I think we all instinctually know, but don’t want to think badly of the people we love. Our good nature is used against us. But cheaters being the disordered fucks they are can’t keep their lies hidden. The truth will out.
“I think we all instinctually know, but don’t want to think badly of the people we love.”
The day my ex confessed was also the day he told me, “Other women find me attractive. There’s a lot about me you don’t know.”
*shudder*. I get chills just thinking about the possibilities…
G.
Louise, it particularly angers me and sickens me when cheaters or OW/OM use “Christian” as their identity. Their behavior could not be further from the label!
Oh yeah…my STBXH’s OW claimed to be a Christian too! My husband tried to tell me she was a good person as she was one! Someone hand me a bucket, I think I am going to puke! I am a christian too and I have done some shitty things in my life but never fucked a married man with a family. I could never destroy someone’s family. I can only hope what goes around, comes around!!
I found out while I was at work. The first thing I used to do when I got there was check Facebook (now I check CL 🙂 I opened it up and saw I had a message. I started reading it…”You don’t know who I am and I don’t know how to tell you this but…” Then someone came in my office so I had to minimize the screen. For the next 20 minutes (until the person left) I was internally shaking and didn’t know what was happening. When I opened the message back up I continued to read and learned that I was receiving a message from a guy claiming that his girlfriend was having an affair with my ex. For the next 6 hours I kept messaging this guy (we talked back and forth) and I text someone else who was a mutually friend of this ‘stranger’. I wanted to make sure that he could be trusted before accusing my ex of this. After getting all my facts straight I told my husband he better leave work now and get home.
I arranged for my mom to take my kids and my ex arrived. I handed him the email. He read it and when he was finished started reading it again. I knew he didn’t know what to say. I said “well”. He says “what”. I asked him if he was having an affair and he said no. He said he just hugged her. That email I showed him never used the word “sex” which is why I had spent so many hours earlier getting my facts straight. I also knew he was going to lie and wanted to trap him. I asked him if he slept with her and then all the sudden we had a sort of Bill Clinton moment. He asked what that meant. WTF!!!! I finally had to say “did you stick your dick in her vagina”? He said yes and lowered his head to the ground. I immediately called his mother and her response “well you can’t expect him to be alone forever”. Another WTF moment!!! I kicked him out and have never looked back.
“You can’t expect him to be alone forever.” Wha? He wasn’t alone. He was married.
That’s exactly what I said! The whole family is sick!
The first thing I did was call him Mom and Dad too. I loved that moment, lol!
I’m more shocked by his mom’s reaction than by his. What a nutbar!
I have two discovery stories. A couple years apart.
I’m 5 1/2 or so (give or take a few months, I’m not counting anymore) safely into meh. But, like CL, I was PAINFULLY chumptacular. I did exactly the same things she did. Took everything at face value. Never bothered to check his phone, told myself that he was just playing games when he was up on the computer until 3 am, quietly shut up and took the abuse when he told me that it “hurt” that I “couldn’t trust him” and that I “just didn’t want him to have friends” when I asked him why he was out so late. Yup. All of it.
Well, I discovered the final OW first.
He had moved out of my parent’s house (oh, yeah, he was living with me in MY PARENT’S HOUSE. My mom wanted him out.) and told me that he “still loved me” and that I was allowed to still call him my boyfriend if anyone asked. He even gave me a full-on kiss before he left.
So, as I was under the impression that he was still my boyfriend, given that he told me that I could…y’know…call him my boyfriend, I went about as if he still were. I was in considerable emotional pain though. It wasn’t the lowest I could go, but it still hurt.
So I go to visit him at work one night, he worked at a 24 hour diner. And While there I asked him “Are you interested in someone else?” He said “Sometimes I think I am, but not really. No.”
I came home and I couldn’t sleep, so I got on the computer and looked at one of his art pages (I should say commission pages because he never does his own art. Just pays other people to do it for him.) And I notice that a comment is missing from his shout box. One that had been there for a while before. I wondered if the person who’d left it was still friends with him. Her name was in his watcher list, so I clicked it….
And there it was. EVERYTHING. Love-bombing, little hearts, “squees” about him, and I shit you not, RAINBOWS. Seriously. Fucking RAINBOWS. Linked to a secret profile he’d made. They referred to each other BY FIRST NAME, something he told me never to do online, because he didn’t want anyone to know his real name. It was vomit-inducing. The sheer flood of “love” between them spewed out all over her page. Needless to say, I. was. FURIOUS.
It was 7 o’clock in the morning. I didn’t care who was in the house or who was sleeping. I was SCREAMING at him on the phone. All the pain and anger he had put me through over our relationship exploded out of me like a volcano at a volume of about 200 decibels. I demanded to know what the fuck he was doing with this twat, what the fuck made him think it was okay to lie straight to my face the way he did, and of course, “Have. You. FUCKED. HER?!” (Of course he avoided that last question like the plague. Even when my dad told him to come get his computer out of our garage or he was going to throw it away. The only answers he ever gave were “That’s not important.” or “I’m not going to answer that.” Which means yes. He did. Probably about 150 times in their first week.)
Yeah, I contacted her to let her know that I existed, because I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt that she might not know. But no, I was wrong. She DID. And she gave me an even more vomit-inducing sob story about how shitty her life has been and how he makes her So Happy and they were Meant To Be and how they Make Each Other Feel So Good. Chumpy me took it at the time, but hindsight is 20/20 and once I realized she was basically telling me that her shitty life entitles her to someone else’s boyfriend, I got righteously MAD.
This was probably the lowest of the low I got. Because after that, he saw no reason to even try to be nice anymore. He turned into the biggest asshole and the most narcissistic, poisonous jerk I ever knew. He probably said more venomous things to me then than he had before. But my good friends convinced me to go NC. It was really, really hard. But I did it.
7 months go by and I’m with the man who is now my husband. A week into our relationship, guess who starts texting me. The first thing I want to know is “What the hell do YOU want?” The next thing is “What happened to schmoopie-shits?” He doesn’t tell me the latter, but good god I got the sludge that was the former…I was somewhat on shakey legs at that time, and thank goodness I had smart friends to tell me that he was slime and help me remember the pain. I told him “I’m not leaving -husband’s name- just because you decided to re-evaluate my worth.”
He got all upset that *gasp* I dared to be in another relationship and *gaspgasp* I actually had sex with this new person. Well, how DARE I get into a relationship with someone who is completely unattached to anyone else and who loves me. Don’t I know he can fuck whoever he wants and I’m supposed to be single until I’m dead?!
For the next two years he sporadically tried to contact me. Asking if I “thought about him.” He even contacted me on the “anniversary” of a car accident we’d been in. How sentimental…(Yet he couldn’t bother to get off his ass for a normal date or care about our anniversaries…) At that point he was grasping for threads of a relationship that was never going to happen again and looking for any signs of life of feelings for him. He found none.
DDay 2 came unexpectedly when I was introduced to my husband’s friend. She was one of those people who just knows everyone because she’s friendly like that. Just knows everyone. So we were goofing around and dropping some names to see who she knew. I dropped ex’s name and her eyebrows crashed together and she said “I HATE HIM.” When asked why, she told me “Well, he cheated on me with my best friend.” I asked her when she was with him, and turns out, our dates overlapped. Big time.
We started talking to each other at about a mile a minute, matching up dates, sharing situations, and everything fit together like a damn puzzle. Things that had confused her suddenly made sense with my half of the story added in. Things that I thought were weird made sense with HER half added. She was just as much chumped as I was. Didn’t know I existed. For all she knew, he lived with a “room mate” who “didn’t like guests.” Which was why she could never come over. I had a birth control scare one night, and he had disappeared into the bathroom. Turned out, he was on the phone with her. What she was getting on the other end was “My room mate might be pregnant and I don’t know what to do, Gummy Bear!” (his nickname for her…*bleah* he had no nickname for me…)
So myself and this girl became friends. Sharing a mutual experience with this dude.
Turns out, she also knew final OW. The reason he contacted me after 7 months? He’d knocked her up and tried to run back to me. He ended up going back to her when she miscarried. When she found his messages to me.
Yup. ….Over 5 years in meh now. Good. Riddance.
CL…Your last three days have been spot on for me…
I found out by the “old-standby” cell phone records; found thousands of texts, pictures, emails from my ex-wife to my son’s best-friend’s dad. I was such a chump that I didn’t realize that my ex-wife would even consider cheating. Gotta repeat this…It never even entered my mind that MY wife could cheat…smh, stupid!!!
In retrospect, I was the adult in the relationship…working three jobs so she could be a selfish, trophy SAHW…paying for her plastic surgery, tattoo’s and piercings, Victoria’s Secret panties, tanning and nail balances…I could never figure out why we never had any money. Then when the kids actually turn into “work” she takes off and starts fucking a older, dorky, short, creeper…who is her “soul-mate, because he listens too me!” Such a wonderful connection she has found!
Guess who all four of the kids what to live with now? ME!! rant over…
It also pisses me off that I know what Christian Louboutin shoes are and how much they cost. God damn, I’m stupid..cunt! Now rant over
ffghtr67 – “It also pisses me off that I know what Christian Louboutin shoes are and how much they cost.”
omg – what a shock that must be. She sounds like she thought she was a real princess in those fancy shoes, while picking up guys. What a lo-life slut and having you pay for her vanity. I’m so sorry.
I refinanced my house to pay for my husband’s cancer treatments. I took care of a sick and dying man. After it was all over he MADE me got through another fake wedding and ‘repeat our vows.’
I caught him fucking OW four months later. Ouch~~!
P.S. He didn’t die.
Since I am a chump, I had more than one DDay.
1) odd that my H would get out of bed to read an email message from female fellow grad student; we would check each others message, though not read them.
Next day, I started reading messages in French via dictionary. Confronted him at a friend’c house, totally gaslighted, and I totally fell for it (raise hand, Chump right here!). he said, just infatuation, etc; we were in MC for 8 months. I of course blamed OW as pursuing him, not vice versa.
An aside, H had been having nightmares (linked this later) and was frequently on chat rooms, etc. Another aside, only time I had any type of infection was during that time, but I did not go to a doctor, commercials make you think it’s a normal occurrence if you are a woman…. Stayed married, got pregnant 7 months later.
2) 11 years later, life chugging along, had another kid. H acting kinda like he did before, on FB a lot, texting friends, would spent 3-4 hours making dinner. Given the similar behavior, checked email messages to a colleague (I joined FB to keep an eye on her… Her interactions with H were always inappropriate. Anyway… She signed all her email messages “love you” and turns out they would meetup at the gym to work out.
I confronted, he denied anything going on, and said she had thrown herself at him, told him to leave his family for her, etc. ah, the gaslight, and innocent me.
We had a chat, I asked if he felt like he did before when we were in MC, etc.. He denied any problems with the marriage… It was work. So, just in case, I upped the PDA, etc (kisses at work in front of students… Ok, if that’s what you want!)
As an aside, he’d been suffering from insomnia for years (recall nightmares above…)
So, I encouraged him to move to DC for a year for a new job, since he was unhappy at work. H would gain skills, could consult on the side doing the preferred work, etc.
3) 1.5 yrs post DDay #2, H went to DC and came home every 4 weeks or so to see me and the kids. We Skyped, emailed, and texted daily, and wrote hand written letters to one another! Just like we did in college when we attended different schools.
But in hindsight, he started acting funny within 6 weeks, when the kids and I came to visit.
Each visit home, more and more distant. Silly me, we went through MC, he could talk to me if something was wrong, etc.
7 months later, when home visiting– went out to dinner and I was told “he did not want to end up like his parents, was tired of living a lie.” Oh, and he understood why my father literally abandoned my family, and he wished he could do the same…WHAT?
I should have walked away when he said he did not want to do MC again, but he said it was the marriage, and I never thought there was another woman (Chump hand raised again!) It took another 2.5 months for him to admit, #1 was a physical affair (but only 1x! Ha!) Said #3 was not an affair, but he loved her… Uh, huh.
As for #2– I still see her ugly face at work. She went around telling some folks they had an affair, others she simply said her boyfriend broke up with her. She really is mentally ill, and I hate that I have to interact with her, although she usually ignores me (she cannot manage work friendly… It’s all or nothing, and since she has agreed to no personal contact with me, she ignores me.
I have no regret in my actions. When you are truthful and honest and cannot imagine engaging in those behaviors, you cannot imagine your spouse doing it as well.
And now the OW #3 is the OWife, and she is welcome to the emotionally stunted exH.
They live overseas, so if I am lucky I will not have to meet her until a high school graduation.
I got that too. Students “throwing themselves” at him, writing love notes I’d find in his pockets…
Yes! During our discussion after DDay #2, H asked if I was even hit on? Me, never!
He claimed he would get hit on ALL the time: 3 women at work, women at conferences, at bars when traveling….
Who knows how much is true, but I do believe you let off a “vibe.” I have never been offered drugs, and was never hit on when married.
(still not getting hit on now that I am single…. but working on that!)
zyx321 – gee, I always wondered why I didn’t get ‘hit on’ like he always claimed he did. I agree, it’s got to be the vibe – I actually never thought sexually about a guy, well – other than the FedEx guy (hey, quick lay, buddie?) When I thought about this after we broke up and I was feeling very damaged, I wondered *why* dammit, nobody ever hit on me. Doh – guess it takes us awhile to figure this out.
I think that all the attention and “getting hit on” was probably not just a vibe. I don’t think I’d trust all the attention to not be solicited. Sure, I bet a cheater would get hit on all the time if he/she seeks it out.
Left his FB message page open,.
I found long blonde hair in my hairbrush. I sat there staring at the brush for minutes, pulling out the over-processed strands and holding them up to the light – trying to convince myself that maybe they were mine even though I have dark brown hair. He denied it, he had no clue whose blonde hair that was! No one had been in our home!! After lots of lots of denials and blame shifting – I must have lent the brush to someone, why can’t I remember?? – he finally admitted drip by drip that his employee had spent the night when I was out of town. I never thought he would cheat on me. My world = collapsed. When I said that I can’t believe he brought someone into our bed and let her use my towels and beauty products in the morning, he said, “it’s just a bed! I changed the sheets!!” Of course, I later found out that she was just one of many, both in and out of our home, but finding the hair in my hairbrush was one of the shittiest ways I found out about his APs.
Uggh. He used your hairbrush??!! Shameless! But I guess we already knew that.
I found OW’s hairs in my clothes dryer. Gross.
Oops, mean to say “She used your hairbrush”
She used your hairbrush? What a bitch. No, really.
eww…I was swimming one day and kept coming up to a BIG RED HAIR (I’m short brown and we haven’t had any guests over for ages) that had swirled itself into a ball. Thought it was a bug at first, and hate bugs in the pool. So, as I kept swimming by it and tried to pick it up, it kept eluding me with the current of my hand. Frustrating! Once I figured it out it was HER hair (yes, knew about affair by then), I made him come in and vacuum it out. He actually smirked and giggled a little while he did that. If that doesn’t make you puke, I don’t know what would.
Ew!!! You have to download the song by Bobby Blue Bland “That Did It” — It’s about a cheater, and the breaking points. And there’s a line:
“And I saw your Other Man wearing my brand new shoes.”
(Oh that did it…)
What IS it with APs using chump’s stuff?! Like fucking your spouse isn’t bad enough, they need your HAIRBRUSH?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmUsPTp7p2o
Here have a listen.
I am dancing around my bedroom with my dog to this! Thank you all for every single post, and thank you Chump Lady! Sing it, Bobby!
It’s about marking their territory. Like dogs peeing on the porch. And about the high they get from getting over on other people.
Like you’ve said in other posts CL, the AP often wants the chumps LIFE! I’m sure that MOST of the AP’s feel a certain amount of P-O-W-E-R–a certain ‘rush’–from using the chumps stuff.
Losers. All of ’em.
G.
The filthy OW was 47 and childless. And , in her mind she was 25! Guess what she wanted? My three sons, so she could hang with them, and feel young. (All of them despise her)
This is so awful. Such a terrible violation of every aspect of your life.
Ew.
Married 36 years. Suddenly – Facebook “friend” from college popped back into his life. He went on a trip to football game with Frat buddy who told me later the whole ride there, she was all he could discuss. Two weeks later, I found a text from him to her – saying he “was thinking of her” – I questioned, he knew he was busted, slunk in down in his couch and gaslighted with a big, “So what? I can have friends can’t I?” Got busier and busier at work that spring. Home less and less – more and more drinks on the bay with buddies. Yeah, chumpette to the max I was. Hugely grumpy, definitely distant and crabby pants when he was around me – I could do NOTHING right.
But we were taking a trip to Spain in Aug. to see our son’s great friend married. Romance, travel, light times with new memories – ideas to glean as our son was to be married 9 mos. later and he and his fiance were traveling with us along with 50 other Americans to this delightful spot north of Portugal.
He spat at me that I couldn’t make the travel arrangements correctly, I didn’t know how to be efficient or make a plan. Where was his damn passport anyway??? (mommy, I know) I finally asked him if he just wanted to forget it since he was so busy and stressed with work. I didn’t realize at that moment in time, he was making his decision to leave just didn’t know how to do it. So on our car ride across Spain, on the Wed. before the wedding, when we were lost cuz he couldn’t work the Gsked if there waPS (my fault), he told me he was DONE with me – too many other things he wanted to do with his life. He figured he had 20 good years left and he wasn’t spendin’ em with me. Sobbing, crying, I asked if there was someone else which he flatly denied, objected, hissed absolutely not!!! I frantically tried to reason that our son was to be married the next July and my husband was best man. He told me he’d just bow out – family wasn’t important.
Made it through the spain wedding without telling anyone – hindsight – I shoulda left on the next plane but I didn’t want it to be about me and spoil with drama a wonderful day with our life long friends. We got home Labor Day 2011 and he LEFT – out, gone, finished. Moved into a farm house we own and began renovating it like crazy – with all kinds of tasteful accoutrements according to our daughter who visited. Still denied there was anyone until I found out he booked a trip to Paris with his college “friend” for that December. Who happens to have an IT job with Bank of the Planet. Fancy, schmancy, sophisticated Washingtonian girly girl – can make a mean reservation.
He left a message on my phone that he needed his passport in a hurry and he would I swear, “ransack the house” if I didn’t find it for him. I knew when and where he was going but didn’t let him know. I asked where he was bound and he lied that he was going to the Caribbean for Thanksgiving because he needed to be alone, not being able to bear having no holiday with family – we always used to have about 30 folks for the day.
Well, I guess they moved the capital of France south and west on the globe just for him.
: ) I called him told him I knew and once again – just the big “so what?” I had made him miserable for 30 yrs and he was gonna do what he wanted – and they were “just friends” I filed for divorce that day. Kicker is, her husband and two grown daughters had no idea that my cheater even existed.
Told our friends and family for months all through the holidays and beyond that I was a crazy bitch – that there was no one else. However I had evidence Paris, Brussels, Brugge, of plays, dinners, events, tours, farmhouse trysts when he couldn’t spend his $$$ or his time fast enough to be with her.
Continued to deny to all and lie to all that his new friend and her whole family had welcomed him with open arms into their fab circle and when he drank and binged too excessively – he would just stay over at their house. Told our friends and family for months that I was a crazy bitch – that there was no one else.
Left the country again – no one could find him – not even his children – only his secretary knew where he was – lied to the kids that he won a sales trip when if fact he was in Cancun with his chipee.
Finally, I went to talk with him on a brilliant Feb morning down at the farm house and caught them – this phantom woman that didn’t exist was lounging on the couch and my cheater was in his underpants cleaning up after a party they had thrown the night before. Jerry Springerishness ensued but so what?
When I later talked to her husband once last spring, he told me he never laid eyes on my husband and he blames himself for not being able to take care of his missy in the way she wanted – with the $$$ she needs.
My pathological liar to the max – about everything – always- and forever has now stalled the divorce for 2 1/2 years – 3 motions to compel, 1 motion for sanctions, two settlement conferences and numerous phone conferences with master. Why you ask? Because, he didn’t want a divorce!! Just a legal separation please – that way not just cake – but the WHOLE BAKERY would be his – he could do as he pleases and I can eat sand. Cuz I made him miserable, dontcha know : )
Nain, I’m so sorry you went through that. What a jerk. It’s amazing how they just toss you aside like so much rubbish after so many years and creating a family together.
It took him 36 years to figure out YOU made him miserable. These people cannot hear their own nonsense.
Actually looking for a clever response to this claim- mine also claims that I emotionally abused him for 10years (I dared to call him out on his perpetual unemployment, and losing jobs right and left)
His reasons for cheating are obviously bulllshit but when I hear that I’m the prick and not the other way around it makes my blood boil
What should I say to his clAim that he’s been miserable for 10 years but only now he’s speaking out about it? Btw, this isa middle age man we’re talking about.
Claudia, the very very best answer to that kind of claim is;
‘yeah, right’
And WALK AWAY!
As CL says, you can’t talk logic to stupid (or something of that ilk!), PLUS your arguing with him and trying to show him what an idiot he’s being is just all more kibbles to him!
Save the ranting you’d LIKE to say to him for your friends, a Word doc, or here! He doesn’t deserve your time or your words.
I was on my 3rd month in the hospital with a rare and incurable disease, on the opposite side of the country from my family, when I found out. Husband was visiting me for a week, for our anniversary. He was on his phone an enormous amount and kept leaving the room to talk, which was very odd for him. We had given each other our email passwords, since we weren’t sure if I would make it through. So I checked his email.
Sure enough, lots of emails where he told OW (a family friend) how much she meant to him, that he’d take care of her forever, etc — all the same stuff he’d been telling me. It was absolutely nightmarish, especially when he went back home (to her) — and I was still in the hospital 3,000 miles away. Obviously, I got much worse in the next several weeks — almost didn’t make it. Still consider it a miracle that I’m alive today, and I’m only in my early 40s.
Anyway, I did make it, got discharged a few weeks later (but still very, very sick), returned home, and kicked out my lying, cheating husband. He promptly moved in with the OW, who had just relocated to the other side of the country (ironically, where I’d been in the hospital). That left just me — still very sick, not even able to take care of myself — as the only parent for our young kids. But I pulled through, with help from family and hired caretakers, and am now a happy single (disabled) mom. Still not quite at meh, but working on it 🙂
asshole. seriously Sunshine you may have a disability as a result of your illness. but I am 100% positive it is your Ex that is disabled. asshole
Thanks, Sammie, You’re right. He’s a lying, cheating sociopath who abandoned his kids when they needed him most.
PS – Tracy – I KNOW I could never have learned as much as quickly and come to profound understanding without your blog. The inspired leadership you provide and the group of wonderful people who contribute have all made a difference to so many. Isn’t that what a legacy of a good life is all about?
Thanks Nain. 🙂 I keep doing it because it pisses me off there’s no other place with this message. Otherwise it’s just the Unicorns out there for new chumps.
Here here, CL! I’m also so grateful for your blog. Only wish I could have recognized my chumpdom earlier in my marriage.
I found out the night our only child left for college. Talk about a double whammy. Had his password to his cellphone for months but never checked sent e-mails. There it all was. Appointments with escorts all made from a special secret google phone number
sent to his I-pad. Mine was a Jesus Cheater too. Appointments made at 8 in the morning before church and then met up with them in the afternoon claiming he had to go to the office( Big wig CFO) or go to the YMCA to work out. Mine was a definite Hot Pocket cheater in fact I would go so far as he would have gone out to celebrate at the local Chinese buffet as I was puking guts out also and having
numbing in my extremities, nightmares and night terrors. He got mad I checked cell phone and said I violated his privacy. No apology, just life as usual for him and expected me to get over it after only one week. At one point before I left I had had numbness in arms and hands and thought I was having a stroke. I asked if we could go to the hospital and he got mad saying that I was selfish and I couldn’t have picked a worse time to be sick as
he had important meetings at work coupled with the fact he had a cold (Wah- wah). I left in Dec and am signing my decree next week. Got a good settlement and am getting closer to meh day by day. Thanks to Chump Lady this site has helped me a lot.
My X is a home remodeling contractor. Every morning we had a ritual of saying “what’s your day like today?” He would usually ask me first (I’m an attorney). After I told him my plans for the day, I asked him about his. He said, “Oh, I’ll be working in four different houses today then I have to go to dinner with a client who wants to thank me for some work I did on their house.” I thought the “their” was weird but in the past he’d always accuse me of being paranoid if I acted jealous.
So I just, “Oh, well, where are you guys going?” and he said “Oh, the way I am dressed, probably just Burger King.” That sounded extremely weird to me because if any client of mine wanted to give me a thank you dinner I doubt they’d go to a fast food joint. But I didn’t question him.
It was a Monday night, and when I came home from work I tripped over his work boots in the kitchen doorway which was also very odd because he is always OCD about putting things away. But I just moved the boots, had my dinner, and started working on my legal work I’d brought back from the office. I went to bed at my usual 9:30 or so. But I woke up at 10:30 and noticed he wasn’t in bed. I went down to the guest room and looked there because he’d said recently that I was snoring and he was sleeping there but he wasn’t there either.
I then texted X to ask him “when will you be home?” and he instantly texted right back, “11:30 thereabouts”. I thought it was weird because he said he was going to Burger King and it seemed unlikely they’d be open that late on a Monday!!!??
Suddenly I had a really bad feeling similar to a prior time when he’d gone to a movie with a male friend and I’d had the same weird feeling because that time, I had texted him about 11 p.m. when they’d been out for 5 hours, and when he came home he yelled at me to never interrupt him like that ever again! On that prior occasion I was suspicious and went to my computer and logged into the cell phone account and saw that indeed, the only calls that day were work, to me, and to this male friend.
So I thought I would calm myself down by logging in again, and that I’d see that all was fine. When I logged into his cell number on our family plan, lo and behold there were dozens and dozens of calls and texts all to a number with an area code I recognized as the City of residence of a woman X was working for remodeling her rental property in our city. It hit me like a punch in the stomach! I just KNEW. I can still remember that pain freshly right now even though I am 98% meh right now.
The rest of the insanity of that night just compounded the agony. He strolled in the house at exactly 11:30 and cheerily asked me why I was still awake. I told him I couldn’t sleep and he cheerily said “Why?” I asked him, “were you out on a DATE?” and he rolled his eyes and went “NO!!” like I was nuts. Staring at the computer screen for 40 minutes before he walked in had steeled me for this moment, so I just told him, “You know, if you were ever seeing someone else, I would want the truth from you.” SILENCE. “So, ARE YOU?” and he said yes. I can remember every disgusting word from his lips that night. I kicked him out on the spot when he refused to get counseling or do anything to save our life together and in hindsight I’m so glad I didn’t waste any time doing any of that.
Ten months later, I have found emails he wrote to another OW five years earlier. And I realize that he is a serial cheater, who had so little respect for me that he thought it was quite okay to lie to me for years while I fed, housed and supported him, and let him verbally and sexually abuse me for 16 years.
Thank God I found out, and thank God for therapy, friends, family and for the power of the truth. And for Chumplady. I could never be more proud of myself than when I think of me that night, gullible, trusting, my heart breaking, realizing the truth of the man before me, who he really is, and summoning the courage to do the right thing and tell him he had to leave, then and there.
I too, have lost 25 pounds from not being able to eat; waking up at 3 a.m. most nights, bursting into tears all the time, telling strangers what happened, walking in circles in my house… so glad that is behind me now. I almost lost my law practice because I couldn’t function and would go home at noon and just cry. Two paralegals quit for unrelated reasons and it all would have gone down the tubes if my brother hadn’t needed a job just then. Thank god for family. I estimate this whole experience has cost me $30,000 in lost income last year, as well as $7000 in fees for attorney, accountant, and therapist bills. And there’s still a legal battle ahead over our house. And he has just moved on, Hot Pocket fashion as CL said, living with OW half the time and our (my former) friends the rest of the time, while “waiting for his check” that he thinks he deserves from me, after deceiving me for 16 years.
Grrr. “Waiting for the check” — isn’t that just a metaphor for these users?
He fessed up. He had to because no contact order was about to be served. I ignored all the red flags prior to that. I was in shock mainly because he was in bad health and I didn’t think he had the energy to have an affair. I lost a bunch of weight too. I remained calm when he told me and kicked him out but foolishly took him back. That was 3 years ago. He passed away a year ago. The whole thing makes me very sad and disgusted.
I had suspected my X for some time and on several occasions had asked him our right, “are you seeing someone else? as you clearly are not into me. There is something going on”
Rapid response “no”. then he would erasure me I had nothing to worry about. So Christian Chump me would accept nothing was going on. But there were big signs.
His attitude had become unbearable at times and the relationship between X and our then 14 yr old son was bordering on none existent. I was worried big time but am great at spackle so no one knew. And X was great at playing the guilt card for accusing him of such things. clearly my state of mind was an issue.
3 weeks before D,day I blew up at X as things were not right and I could not put my finger on what it was. He did nothing around the house, we had put the house on the market a year prior and it had not sold so we discussed staying and renovating as originally planed. but as usual I would discuss things with X to ensure we were on the same page only to later find we were not even in the same book. Nothing got done, he showed no interest had gone from have a good job to now working casually. He had no drive. I had a really good job in a School and it was like he was jealous I worked school hours and additional hours at events if needed. but was home during school holidays to look after the kids. great. Nope all of a sudden X wants to return to study to be a teacher.
Claims he has always wanted to be a teacher. WTF since when you do not even have the patience to help our kids with their home work let alone teach one of them the piano, one of which is sitting in the lounge room and is your musical gifting. you want to study to be a teacher? How do you plan to do this as you are barely engaged in this family as it is how do you plan to take the time to study and spend time with us? how do you plan to pay uni fees as you make next to nothing? we are meant to be getting ahead and we seem to be going backwards, WTF and if you spent more time doing stuff of value rather than spending time on FB and posting selfies we would all be a lot better off. Yep I cracked as this barrage of questions from me was met with the one constant in our marriage. STONE silence when ever the conversation became to difficult. The Ostrich effect as I have come to call it. Stick your head in the sand and hope it will just blow over as you are the man the head of the house your entitled to your own way you do not have to explain…… I cracked so bad Spackle was falling from the walls . I told X i wanted a divorce and that I was moving out, our house is not big and I have a loud voice so the kids heard. Next thing I know he’s sitting in the lounge huging our 9 and 11 yr old girls, the 14 year old is in the yard kicking the crap out of his soccer ball. I tell the kids I can’t do this any more there is shit going on and X wants to burry his head in the sand and pretend nothing is happening. I explain to my girls it is a good thing as I am not a good mummy when I am around daddy but it will all be ok. Later that day I tell a couple in eldership in our church what I have done. and that week we start MC, X is all “I love you and want to make our marriage work” I’m thinking Bullshit. I cant shake the gut feeling that has been nagging me now for what seems ever. Driving to work one day I start praying “God My radar is usually not this off. If X is telling me the truth why can’t I shake this feeling. Please if there is anything in my marriage that is not right please expose it” I will be a little more specific next time as to how.. two weeks later our 14 yr old some says Mum I need to take to you. Ok
Son then explains that for ages now there morning routine after I left for work was X sitting in the toilet for ever then going and having a shower for ever then off to work via dropping the kids to school and often late ( this I knew to be true as sons home room teacher had contacted me to find out why son was always late?) ok Son continues. two weeks ago I had dads phone on the way to the car and I unlocked it and all these photos of naked men came up. Mum its not the first time I have seen it either. I didn’t know if I should tell you. I don’t want to be responsible for braking up my parents. No Ostrich syndrome here. Am so proud of him. So I thanked him and asked him to leave it with me. I’m angry. I’m really angry because during MC X had been asked if he was free of all porn. Yep dealt with that years ago. LIAR
So I cook dinner and I wait till son is at youth group and the girls are in bed the whole time he knows something is up because he keeps asking me if I’m ok. and when the time is right I stay very calm. And I confront him. He tries to lie, I tell him son has seen it and to imagine how that conversation went. He then tries the ‘I was just curios’ excuse. What are you 15. I have asked you before for and I am asking again and you need to stop lying for your own sake, Have you been with another Woman? No! Have you been with another man? No! But X is now as white as a sheet and shaking violently and says. ‘I feel really light headed. I think I might pass out’ Me ” I don’t care you have lied to me, you have lied to eldership, I don’t care what lies you tell your mother but you are going to pack a bag and go there tonight. And with little more instruction he did. A week later D,Day I was asked to meet with him and the couple from eldership that were counseling us which I did and that is when he sat and told me that 8 years ago he had had an affair with another man and that since then he had been with several others intermittently. He stated he was sorry and that he would take full responsibility. there was no emotion in his voice or remorse it was just cold like here are the facts.
I am sure a lot of you will be familiar with the tv program “once apon a time” the heart removal concept. That is what my chest felt like, as though some one had punched their hand in and was trying to pull something out.
He is still living with his mum, they are very co dependent, I am currently living in our family home with our three children. X has taken no responsibility and recently when asked Why he did it X answered ” 6 weeks ago I was delivered from an unclean sexual spirit”. Wow if only all life’s problems were that easy to fix.
Holy crap, Sammie D. That’s unreal. How are your kids doing now, especially your 14 year-old? Do they have a relationship with their dad at all? Hugs to you.
I saw a text come across my wife’s phone on Christmas morning. It was from a neighbor, asking her “R U happy?” So that was nice!
I only read one text message on my STBXW’s phone, “Hey sexy!” from our neighbor across the cul-de-sac. I almost vomited.
I found his text conversation with a howorker:
Him: Are you at home?
Her: Yes!
Him: Let me in you hot fuck
At least I didn’t have to live on the same street as her or the other ones either and they weren’t in my circle of acquaintances, I’m grateful for that or I might have ended up in jail since I went ballistic when I found out.
They suck.
Should have walked the phone over and jammed it down his throat ,,,,,,,
I would have but didn’t find out it was him until much later, and he was already dead! Died of a heart attack (what heart?) a few months earlier. She might have even been with him when it happened, I never found out.
Karma
Christmas morning, that sucks, Jay.
“The Love-But-Not-In-Love Speech” and “Bomb Drop” (He wanted a divorce.) made me instantly suspicious of an affair because it was totally out of character for him.
I procured online and printed out ALL of his cell phone, banking, ATM, and credit card records for the prior year. Paid a site $5 for owner’s name of unfamiliar cell phone…and in retrospect it all fell into place.
Later PI tapes confirmed that my suspicions of who and what were 100% accurate.
Divorce.
Him “fantasy clinging” until she finally dumped him. [
[The “dumping” may have had something to with the fact that I told BOTH of them that regardless of how many years they waited to try and make their relationship look innocent, that any attempt on her part to enter MY family would result in a perpetual World War III… AND that the moment I ever got news that she had left her husband, the PI’s videos would be given to her husband at his work place to prevent interception plus copies of the tapes would be mailed to her young adult children. BTW, I still have those tapes in a safe place. ]
I grieved and moved on- so no chance of him coming back here.
We both have new lives but I suspect mine is better.
Same sad story that dumb shits all over the world play out everyday. And completely needless if people would just do the right thing.
Along with cell phone detective work, the best way to find out if someone is cheating?
Follow the money trail. Just follow the money.
It kind of blows me away how people don’t connect infidelity to financial infidelity.
I think chumps just think “Oh they would never…”
Yeah they would.
I was never one to snoop in his business….no checking up…no going through his possessions UNTIL my gut told me it might be prudent to do so.
And as for checking out the financials? I may be atypical, but after the cell records sent a red flag to the top of my suspicion pole, analysis of his spending habits as compared to his travel habits was the first thing that occurred to me.
I mean when you see a mid-day credit card charge for a motel on the very day the two of them are at a one-day out- of- town workshop, how much more do you need?
Plus that little bit of knowledge was invaluable in saving my PI time (and me money) because people (even when they cheat) have predictable behavior. The fools used the same motel as they had before. The GPS the PI had (with my permission) secretly put on our vehicles in the wee hours didn’t hurt either. 😉
In our state (at that time and may still be) it is perfectly legal for only one of the owners to give permission for a GPS to be installed, and video surveillance is also legal as long as there is no sound. I also found out that a “sweep” of a vehicle to check for a GPS won’t return results if the vehicle has On Star. Bwahaha!
I know what you mean about this. My STBXW had racked up huge credit card debts in the few years before the affairs came out. I found out about the debt first and it never occurred to me that this was just the tip of the iceberg.
When I reluctantly researched my ex’s cell phone records I found hours long conversations between him and his coworker. One time he even called her from our home at 6 am (I’m sure they were discussing business, right?). One conversation I saw lasted off and on for hours as he flew across the country. I put together that he talked to her for an hour on his layover, then texted me “boarding now.” When he landed in another airport he talked to her for another hour, and texted me “arrived.”
At first when I was looking at the cell records I wasn’t sure whose number he was calling, so I dialed it. When she answered I asked very sweetly “May I ask who’s speaking?”She said her name, then I said “Thank you,” and hung up. Within 30 SECONDS my husband texted me to ask if I’d tried to call her. I just ignored his text.
How did I find out? He told me, it was a whirlwind of information telling me he was leaving me, he was cheating, he created a new life, how stupid I was for trusting him and not expecting this from him. Two hours before he was calling me cutsie names and saying how much he loved me and then the rug pulled out from under me. Went into total shock and couldn’t react. Didn’t sleep or eat for two days and then went to the hospital where they had to spell it out for me that I was in shock, that my brain was fighting for resources to process the trauma. I never want to feel that way again. Never. Ever. Again.
That was 10 months ago. I’m in recovery. Noticing red flags I probably should have seen if I weren’t so blindly in love for the past 13 years. I’m no where near where I want to be. Everytime he contacts me I go into shock to a lesser degree. However, I’m getting there, not as soon as I would like – but right now – all I care about is the quality of my care, not the time it’s taking.
CC, the same sort of thing happened to me. I used to say it was like my husband was kryptonite because being exposed to him sent me into crying jags and made me feel weak.
CC, please check out EMDR therapy, it saved me, it might help you
Wasn’t married to the guy, can’t say that I really loved him.. But it’s the HOW.. The TOTAL and COMPLETE Embarrassment of my chump-maker that got me off men for a while….
Dated Mr. Super-Douche from May to August in 2008. I was a city girl, he was a redneck.. (MEH) So, I started suspecting weirdness about 2 weeks before the break-up. We went to a party one of his friends threw and it was a good time until the older set started to leave. Then I was being subtly and insidiously being mocked by his buddies and the women completely ignoring me. I didn’t say anything about it and went on with my business in life.. Then it was 3 days before my birthday and the phone calls stopped. I tried contacting him.. but no response. He had given me a few things to repair on my sewing machine; his daughters ripped pajamas, his shorts.. to shorten.
Then, the night before my birthday, he dumps me. I bring his bag of sewing to where he worked and threw it at him calling him an asshole while I was at it. A short time later, I found out he had dumped me for another girl… with the same birthday….
I took along break from men…
But now I am happy with the most amazing and devoted man I could ever ask for. A man who goes above and beyond for me and loves me for exactly who I am! We’ve gone on some amazing adventures and he’s been a rock of support in my life. In hindsight, that guy did me a huge.. HUGE favor.. 🙂
He dumped you the night before your birthday? Mine confessed on the day after Valentine’s day.
What is WITH cheater’s and birthdays holidays?????
G.
My ExH was a MLC type of cheater. On the way home from scattering my mother’s ashes in Hawaii (she died 10 months before), he picked a bull-shit fight. Wouldn’t talk to me slept in the guest room. Next day tells me that he wants a divorce. Loves me only like a “family member”. I ask if there is someone else, he denies it, but says that he’s attracted now to “all sorts of women”, where he used to only have eyes for me. Tells me that he has a co-worker friend that texts him at work, flirtatious messages and they have occasional lunches. He denies affair. After 3 weeks, he initiated divorce process after I gave him that time to get his head together and get into counseling while I stayed with my Dad. He moved out while I was gone. Wouldn’t tell me where he lived as he didn’t “trust” me in “my anger”. He came by only to get the mail (he wouldn’t let me have a key to the mail box). We were going through a mediation service and I had signed a waiver of service after he insisted he couldn’t wait for me to do that what I got back from my vacation to Australia (12 days later). He was so concerned that he had me served as I was leaving for my trip, the day before my birthday.
Two months later, I was checking our frequently flier accounts (I was to receive the miles in the divorce) and noticed he had a trip booked with one of our companion discounts. Low and behold, there was the OWs name. He’s such a cheapskate, he didn’t pay full price for his whore’s ticket. They were going away for his birthday. I confronted him, he denied and told me not to refrain from contacting him. He wasn’t cheating…
Can I share one of those breakdown and cry over stranger stories?
Recently, it was my birthday. I spent it going to therapy and getting my dog’s anal glands squeezed out.
I had the horrible realization that I was spending my birthday dealing with the shit from 3 assholes, just at the kid at Starbucks said through the speaker,”Good morning, how are you doing today?” I started to cry and said,” You don’t wanna know.”
My order was free, along with a free brownie which ended up being the only present and birthday cake I got that day.
I wrote a thank you note that weekend, and apparently the sweet boy and all the baristas cried. I still get free coffee sometimes, depending on who’s behind the counter!
Awww! I LOVE that story!!!
LOVE IT.
That is such a sweet thing for them to do. Next time you have a birthday, though, throw a party for yourself. I’ve been doing that for years, even when I was married since my ex was usually traveling for business. I’ve found that other divorced and widowed people are very understanding and make a great support system.
Ooo ooo I’ve got a few of these stories too.
Shortly after D-day, I had to call our insurance company and get things separated. It was a complete pain in the ass because there were a few snarls to deal with, and I really wasn’t up for anything at this time; It didn’t take much to send me to tears. Anyway, they connect me to the office manager and I of course lost it and started blubbering over the phone about what I needed to do etc.: This lady started telling me about what happened to her and her cheater-ex and assured me I would survive and be happy again. She probably talked to me for an hour. She even called to check up on me twice in two months. (I sent her flowers a month ago I was so touched by her kindness.)
Another time, my car got stuck in the middle of my street during a huge snow storm. I tried to get it out for 10 minutes and all of a sudden a sweet kid about 25 years old gets out and starts busting his ass to help me. He was so sweet. He stopped me, held both my freezing hands in his and said, “You go get back in your car. I got this.” He freed me from the snow bank and when I finally got home, I cried all over the place by how sweet people can be.
My favorite one though came from my lawyer. She typically charges about $4,500 but had agreed to let me make payments. After a particularly bad day, I had called her to ask if it was OK to skip a payment until the next week. It was obvious I was a mess. Damn I was broken. Anyway she says, “You know what . . . next week is fine, and since I’m in private practice, I’m going to charge you $1,500 because I like you.” She then told me that my divorce will be the best thing that ever happened to you. So far she’s been right.
Stuff like this really carried me through when I was at my lowest. It makes me tear up just thinking about how much I needed this kindness at the time. 🙂
I
That’s why I believe it’s so important to pass on kindness when you can.
I’ve decided when I retire, my retirement job is working at Starbucks! 😉
Yep. I will never ever forget how this stuff carried me through. These things happened back when I could barely get the energy to get out of bed and get dressed. They have no idea how much it helped.
Shortly after dday (he left when I was a SAHM with $88 and 2 preschoolers), the garage door broke – it was stuck UP, and there was no lock on the door between the garage and the house.
ExH had been very creepy and threatening, so I called the garage door fixing guy, and start bawling on the phone. They came out and did a free service call, ended up fixing the door THAT DAY; and the office lady told me that he asked her to work out a plan with me for payment “whenever I could – make it work, and make sure she’s safe…” There truly are angels everywhere.
Love that. You needed that kindness that day and I’m so glad you got it 🙂
“How are you doing today?”
There’s a question my cheater never asked in 22 years of marriage. Not. Once. Don’t think I’m alone in that experience with these self-involved freaks.
I would get that question when he was about to ask me for something. It only took me a six or seven times to figure that out. How embarrassing. I think I’m dumb, maybe just chumpy.
Oh my gosh Nomar I never got that either, he just seemed not interested in me or the things that were important to me.No empathy when I was sick, made me feel guilty for beeing sick and wanting his attention!!
Mine asked but I don’t think he really wanted to know nor cared. Just another form of impression management that he was polite.
Recently, it was my birthday. I spent it going to therapy and getting my dog’s anal glands squeezed out.
They call it “expressing the anal glands”.
Which always reminds me of that Madonna song, “Express Yourself”… because I wish they would 🙂
Now THAT’S funny!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have BIG dogs (Newfys) and from time to time they do…express themselves…by scooting. (If you’re not a dog person, just pass on by 😉
Nowadays, it just reminds me of my Ex talking. Ewww, something stinks in here, what could it be? But, I forgive my dogs. I love them.
To the tune of Madonna’s “Express Yourself”:
Express yourself
Hey, hey, hey, hey
You gotta scoot that butt
So you can…
Respect yourself
Hey, hey, hey, hey
I love Chump singalongs!
Cell phone bill and other shit FB email she denied it said it was an old friend blah blah, I said really 500 texts in a 2 day period is a little more than a friend sorry. I was in denial. Yea me the recovering alcoholic in denial lol. My gut told me,,, but the bill was the crushing blow she had to admit it to me. We have a spare room that was an office that she wanted to convert back to a bed room asap I didnt understand why, but after I caught her it all made sense. She was going to move the other person in thinking I would leave her when I found out. Sorry your not doing that to me & my angels no fucking way. I called the other person & said you can have her if you want but not my kids and not my house go fuck yourself & I am calling your partner next fucko & your job to have them check the phone records etc etc I pretty much started a 10 alarm fire. I am a pretty humble dude AA teaches me to be humble, BUT when you fuck with my kids I turn into a diff animal,, I will hunt you & hurt you if you fuck with my kids.
We go to MC and I told her if you want to stay you have to get help so she goes to a counseling by herself & they both told her she has NPD. She did show a little empathy and showed she was sorry for about a month maybe 2 its a work in progress, 1 day at a time. Is it perfect nope do I throw it in her face once in a while or question her a lot yes, but I work on that also i am not a total dick that i do it all the time. I hope one day I can trust her again she is a good mom and was a good wife at one time.
NPD is no effing joke.
I think this is why my STBXW would not go to IC, because they would tell her she has NPD too.
Our MC told my ex he should be tested for BPD, he got indignant with her. He went into a complete rage at me on the drive home….irony?
Starting at the age of 14 my W has been diagnosed 3 times with NPD and she still denies it. Even today she is in denial about it.
I’ve told the story several times so probably most of you remember. My husband had been traveling a LOT for business, which wasn’t that unusual. However, I’d recognized the signs of what seemed to be a midlife crisis…he was losing weight, working out a lot, buying a sports car, etc. He seemed more distant but I also knew he was under a lot of stress at work (or so I thought). He was always a workaholic. Well, he came home from a business trip and as usual I was hoping to “reconnect” with him. I was worried about the distance in our relationship and kept trying to find ways for us to do more things together. For many months I’d noticed that as soon as he got home from a trip he immediately went outside on our farm and started doing chores or yard work. He was very active so I thought maybe he was trying to decompress from the stress of having to sit still in so many meetings.
Well, this one morning after he’d gotten home I asked hopefully if he’d like to go to a movie with me that night. He waved me off, and went outside as usual. I was so disappointed and frustrated, I went upstairs and burst into tears. I decided to go outside and confront him. I admit I was crying, very depressed, and somewhat hysterical. I asked why he never wanted to do things with me any more through my sobs. That’s when HE burst into tears, which was completely uncharacteristic. I kept asking him “what is it?” as panic rose up in my chest.
We went upstairs and once again I asked him to tell me what was wrong. That’s when he said “the problem is you.” I immediately stood up and started to leave the room because I didn’t know what the hell to say to that, but he started listing all the things I’d done over the years that had now lead him to “fall out of love with me.”
I tried to be a good listener and apologized for the things he felt I’d done wrong. I assured him that feelings were fickle, and that I’d also had times in our marriage when I felt disconnected and stressed. I told him he might be going through a midlife crisis, but if we could just spend more time doing things together (and he could find more balance in his work life) that his feelings would come back.
This night started a 2 months period where he was intermittently sobbing, acting bizarre, and sometimes curling up on the couch crying in a fetal position. I was so concerned I thought he might have a brain tumor. It was obvious he was seriously depressed. No amount of pleading could get him to go to the doctor, even asking his mother to talk to him didn’t work.
As I’ve mentioned here before, I finally discovered the journal he was “keeping work notes in.” That’s when I learned the whole truth of him being in love with his married coworker. I was shaking so hard in the bathroom as I read it, I remember feeling horribly guilty for invading his privacy. It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion, you don’t want to look but you can’t look away either. I was skimming as fast as I could as absolute panic rose up inside me. He’d already been to a lawyer, had detailed lists of how he wanted to split our assets, etc. I was flabbergasted. As I’ve mentioned before, he was writing about me as I walked around our house, saying things like he couldn’t stand me to touch him, that I was old, he was tired of me, etc.
After reading his journal I marched upstairs, woke him up at 2 am, and told him his little game was over. All he needed to do if he wanted a divorce was tell me. He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. As I proceeded to tell him things I’d read in his journal he asked, “How do you know all this stuff?” That’s when I told him,” I read your journal” and watched as all the color drained from his face. He started telling me I didn’t understand what I read, and launched into a lot of crazy excuses about “playing out different scenarios”on paper because he felt confused. That’s when it started to sink into my thick head the kind of manipulation I’d been living with. I realized how easily he twisted the truth and tried to convince me I didn’t understand what I was reading.
By the way, we’d discussed his relationship with this coworker over the years and he’d always assured me that they were just friends and I had nothing to worry about.
Lyn- I am so happy that you found that journal. In retrospect the only thing worse would have been if he would have pulled off his version of divorce and you being brought in on the end. That is the only thing I can think of that would have been more devistating than reading it in black and white.
Yeah, although reading it was terrible, it was also a relief to know the damn truth. It explained all the crazy behavior and blame shifting that was going on. I still struggle with wondering what I could have done differently…but just say “forward” to myself when those thoughts come. Go forward, don’t look back, or else I might turn into a salt pillar like Lot’s wife when she looked back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the bible.
My awesome friends gave me a beautifully framed card that says “don’t look back, you’re not going that way”. I have it in my bathroom, on the counter, so it’s one of the first & last things I see every day.
I found a journal too. In his car. Saying he “loved ____unconditionally.” It was underlined twice. That was four years ago – they’re getting married now.
We were married 18 years, 3 kids. She is 20 years younger than him.
I’m going to say something and I may catch some slack for this but here it goes:
All romantic love is based on condition. Anyone keeps poking holes in romantic love and it breaks down. There are always conditions involved in romantic love….fidelity being one of them
Somehow you just reminded me how blind I was. My husband would go out every single night because he was “bored” but I didn’t go because we had no money. He can bum cigs and beer off his friends the whole night, but the two of us can’t. This went on for months, and it began to be seven days a week. Finally I decided to “make a date” with him and I got my hair cut, dressed as nice as I could, and met him at a cafe/bar. He was mad that I was late because he was “meeting his friend later.” And his two friends, whom I had known for months, were looking really uncomfortable with me there. He could not wait to walk me to my car so that I could go home (alone, as usual) and he could continue his night with his friend. I was so fucking blind. I hate myself for that.
PS I found CL while on Huffpo and seeking info on NPD.
Michael, the best book I read on NPD was the one with wizard of oz in the title, simple, succinct and clear.
Yup it’s on my Kindle it’s called the Wizard of Oz and other narcissists, I also read When Love Is a Lie by Zari Ballard both are pretty good 🙂 thanks and happy Saturday !
Work had separated us for a few months before our wedding, but I had secured a job in his office and was about two weeks away from moving across country permanently. I had quit my job, delayed my degree and was moving away from all of my friends and family to be with him. I was on my way to book the moving truck, and he called to tell me he wanted a prenup. We had been together for over a decade and this had never come up before. Moreover, I was the one without student loans, almost no debt and a family with money. He had nothing but bills, including 250k in student loans– so it didn’t make sense. (In fact, I had taken a second job where he worked just to help pay for the wedding and to help pay his student loans). Also, we had also sunk all of our savings to date into the wedding, so we didn’t even have money for lawyers to draft a prenup. The red flags started flying.
When I refused to sign away my rights, he told me the prenup was a “dealbreaker” for him. I told him I couldn’t believe he was bringing this up now after I had sacrificed everything to be with him and after so much time together. He paused for a really long time and then said “this needs to be a longer conversation.” We Skyped later that evening and he was just sitting in his office chair sobbing. After several minutes went by, all he said was “I’m sorry I didn’t know myself better.” At that moment, I knew what he had done. It turned out he’d been sleeping with a secretary in the office since I had left– a woman who would have worked for me when I started the job there in a few days (*shudder*).
He NCed her and promised to take a leave from work and come out to where I was for counseling. And he went into IC. But when I told him he’d have to quit his job, he turned on me, started blameshifting, etc. Then he admitted he had taken her to a petting zoo and slept with her one more time [insert eye roll here]. That was it for me. I told him he wasn’t a true partner, had no moral compass and I had lost all respect for him. He told me we were “fiscally incompatible” (I insisted we move out of the apartment that had holes in the floor and no bathroom– so he’s right about that) and then tried to argue something about how I liked to go to bed too early. Really, he had nothing to go on. My family and I had been good to him and supported him unconditionally. He’s an idiot.
I quit the job and, save some emails from him and his brother that I have ignored, I never spoke to him again.
A PETTING ZOO?
Where cheaters go to pet each other?
If this isn’t a bullet dodged story, I don’t know what is.
Amen to that.
It’s hard to recount this stuff b/c it make she feel like a world class idiot = chump!
1. 2 years into our marriage I found a letter in his pocket when doing the laundry.
Background: the letter was from my best friend at the time. Months earlier she asked me if she could get his point of view on something when she was having guy trouble. OK. (DUH) At first it was totally innocent. Letter writing from US to Germany where we were while he was in the Army. The letters were the EA. When she came to visit for 2 weeks it became physical. They even took a trip to Switzerland together b/c I had to work. What? I trusted both of them. I had NO reason to doubt either of them.
I found the letter after we got back to Germany from attending his Grandmother’s funeral. Yup. While were we back he and she went out to a “club” = hotel. I didn’t party/dance and they knew if they said they were going to a club I wouldn’t want to go. But “you two go ahead and have fun”
Lost trust w/ him and my “best” friend.
We tried to work through it even though he denied it when confronted – note to self: if someone answers a question you know the answer to w/ another question they are hiding something.
2) 15 years later. Suspicious calls, texts. Turns out it was an old friend from high school. We lived on the East coast and she in CA so it was never physical.
I ask him to stop talking to her b/c we’ve been here before and it’s not right to bring another woman into our marriage again. Gaslighting ensues. They’re friends. Why can’t I understand that? It’s innocent. You’re the one w/ the control issues. You keep me from my friends. ETC. I could go on all day.
At the time he was an alcoholic. He had not been our entire marriage.
Now that I look back he has coping issues and it always leads to some addiction or another. Attention from other women, immersing himself in me, hobbies, job ADD, smoking, alcohol and finally AA meetings – which I fully supported but it was too much, too. It was always too much of something.
In the end 2009 he “chose me”. All grand w/ flowers and tears. I fell for that and felt that was the solid moment in our marriage. Truly.
We went to MC, made some good progress (I thought) but I now I think he was always looking for a way out so ONE sentence I said in MC was the switch that was flipped for him.
He “stuck it out” for a few more years only to leave ME last summer.
3) Last summer he started talking to yet another old friend from high school – recently divorced herself. I’m sure she helped him see “he didn’t need to live this way any more” b/c I’m such a shrew 😉 I was devastated. I did the pick me dance HARD – remember I told you I don’t dance :D.
In the end I had to do EVERYthing in the divorce I never ever wanted.
I moved out of our bedroom.
I made him sit down w/ me to tell our daughter – he wanted to wait for I don’t know what!
I asked him for a trail separation where he moved out in hopes of coming back to work it out.
I goaded him into filing paperwork.
I laid out how we’d split things and do visitation.
I moved out of our house – too emotional for me to stay there after 18 years.
He had a bumbling lawyer that he wanted me to use b/c “we can work this out ourselves”.
Um, no…I don’t think I’ll be happily helping you divorce me and be all buddy-buddy.
Good thing, too. His lawyer only took the case b/c he was assured this would be a simple uncontested divorce and he doesn’t do divorce so my lawyer had to do EVERYthing.
As I read everyone’s stories it helps me b/c I am very stuck between knowing this will be better eventually and missing him and the life I thought we’d have. I met him when I was 18 and haven’t dated since then…so much change. Finances suck, living arrangements, job. His life looks pretty damn good – our house, my car, our dog, our cat, job, time w/ our daughter that I don’t get to experience.
THanks for letting me get it out. I know it was L.O.N.G.
OH right. I forgot to finish #3. He flew out to see her in CO during our trial separation where I was ASSURED that I had a chance. I also set up trial separation guidelines (that included no other people in our marriage during that time) that he AGREED to.
He had this very elaborate rouse going for the 4 days he was away. He’s not a good liar and never covers anything up but this was GOOD. LOTS of details. He told daughter he was going camping in a very remote place alone. No cell coverage for their nightly FaceTIme unless he drove into town so it would likely not happen but he could text.
Wow…I finally told him I knew. He lied to our daughter for weeks. His mother called me to find out if he “got into his campsite” ok. Of course he tells me he didn’t sleep w/ her but I don’t believe it.
Even after all of this and the very cold treatment I’ve gotten from him in the last 10m after 26 years together I can’t wrap my head around the fact that I’M not the one losing here.
Yes, I see a therapist 🙂
I can relate to everyone’s sleepless nights, panic attacks, constant crying ( I still do this but I’m not frantic anymore), weight loss, detective work, etc.
We didn’t have what I would ever call a bad marriage – you know, aside from the cheating 😉
I found out when his whorehole called me. She saved me probably about $1500 because I was about to use a private detective to follow my husband because I couldn’t keep spackling. (sp?) She called to tell me because she thought I would kick him out and he would go flying right back to her vagina. She got it partially right–I did kick him out but he went to his parents’ house. He wasn’t home when she called me and when he did come home, I confronted him. He denied everything. When I asked him why someone would call me and tell me he is cheating with them, he said “I have enemies out there who are lying about me”. He would not come clean at all. So I finally told him that I was going to call a private detective and give him the phone number and let him do some investigating and I was going to turn over everything the detective asked me for, my h finally admitted it. After he admitted it, I called his parents and told them “I have some bad news. Your son is a scumbag. I’m divorcing Jackass because he admitted to having an affair. You might want to come here to pick him up because I am throwing him out”.
I told my husband to get out and my husband refused. So I told my husband that I was calling the cops to tell them that there was a very volatile situation where tempers could escalate. So my h finally left. You know, a couple months later, my h told me he thought it was wrong for me to throw him out–that I shouldn’t have done that. I guess that was hard for him to forgive. Can you imagine?!
I could write almost endlessly about everything but I’m too weary already. This marriage has worn me out. I can’t wait for this to finally be over. And it will be over soon.
WHOREHOLE !! Outstanding !! Where do you guys/girls come up with these,,,,, tooo funny !!
I learned about the affair about 10 days before STBX’s birthday, somewhere around late September/early October 2012.
I’d had inklings STBX had lost his father the previous year, and his interest in sex was sporadic. STBX’s sex drive had never been really strong, and since we still were having sex, I figured that he was in depression from his father’s death and from job stress.
In the meantime, I knew that there was a woman at work about whom he talked about a lot. She’d had a tough life: abusive parents, twice married and divorced, a medically-fragile child, and a sporadic employment history since she’d not gone to college. However, she was pursuing a degree at a community college, and seemed to be very competent. As I learned all of this, I also discovered that he was very interested in her dating history: that she’d been propositioned by the married plant manager, that she had a married boyfriend, etc. I told STBX that he was getting way too involved in the private lives of his employees, and that these kinds of conversations–especially with female employees–could be grounds for harassment charges if the woman later decided that she wasn’t being promoted due to corporate sexism.
After a longer than usual hiatus in our sex lives, he had a small change in his technique. I nearly lost it there, since I KNEW he had to have learned it from someone else. But I forced it out of my mind.
Then, one day when I was sitting at the computer, the thought came into my mind that this was about OW. I went downstairs and asked him if OW had feelings for him. He looked surprised and said no. I went back upstairs. We met again in the kitchen, and he put his phone down on the counter while he went into another room. Normally, the phone would lock, but at that time, it didn’t. There was a Facebook chat, with STBX saying, “kb confronted me” followed by OW’s “what did you say???”
I remember thinking two things. First, that I’d not confronted him, and second, that this showed he was having an affair.
I immediately swung into Internet Chump mode, and googled infidelity. Thankfully, the hits brought the “Truth about Deception” site up, with its very comforting message that cheaters cheat because they can. The hits also included Chump Lady.
I kept everything to myself. I think that STBX thinks I don’t really know–that I suspect, but don’t know because he’s been very clever (not!). I made an appointment to see a lawyer, and then took stock of my situation.
STBX made nearly 3 times what I did. If I left him in my no-fault state, I’d not have enough to live on with my current job. I became determined to get a better job. I took stock of myself. For several years, I’d cooked what STBX would eat, and he ate a lot of crap food. I’d gained 50 lbs. I figured that if I lost weight, I’d look more professional in an interview. I went on a diet and lost the weight. I interviewed and got the job that I have now, one that will allow me to live independently, though quite circumspectly. I went to work eliminating my debts and improving my credit. Save for my student loans, I owe less than STBX.
I saved up the retainer fees and now have a very small war chest of funds from which to draw. I rented a storage facility, and am packing boxes of things that he’s not likely to notice are gone.
I plan on filing within the month.
Oh, and today is our anniversary, so I love this column! Last year, my brother was in town on this day and we were to have gone out to dinner together. STBX called to say he was being held late at work. In fact, according to the Starbucks receipt in his wallet, he was sitting in Starbucks with OW when he made that call.
UGH! STILL married but not really. THat’ll be me in 10 days.
COLD to call you on your anniversary last year while WITH OW.
Congratulations on your job, debt paying and weight loss. GOOD LUCK!
More than Dday itself, the moment that burned into my mind that STBX is a first class asshole was when he hopped into bed and complained that his feet hurt. His feet always hurt, and for nearly every night of our marriage, I’d rubbed them to help stretch out the muscles/ligaments that–if he stretched them himself–would help alleviate his pain.
I knew that he’d just had a very long and heart-felt session talking to OW about how much he loved her, and that I never supported him in any way. And then he asks me to rub his damn feet, all the while smiling as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
I gave some kind of lame excuse, and have not rubbed his feet since.
mmmmm….the “change in technique”….I think I overlooked that too. I had a woozy moment right now just thinking about it
Go KB Go! I am doing the same thing all on the ‘down low’…congrats on being so close!!
Kb I got goosebumps reading your story!!
I look up to you!!! You gave me hope and I thank you for that! Those things you mentioned are the exacted same things that apply to me.
1. I live in a no fault state
2.he makes 3x more that I do
3. Want to loose weight
4 get a better job to support myself and my girls!! To be indipendent so I have enough money to visit my parent and family overseas because that was never his priority when we were married!!
I wish you the best and brightest future!!!
Last year, XH suddenly told me he was getting his own apartment near his place of work to “crash” when he worked late at night. When I pressed him, he told me he loved me but was no longer in love with me, wanted to leave the marriage, felt like I neglected him in favor of the children, had 101 reasons as to why I was a “horrible” wife, said he was undergoing some midlife crisis, but volunteered that he was “faithful” to me. I never thought he would actually cheat on me, but I thought he was thinking about it (possibly had someone in mind), but was trying to split with me first so he could pursue his single life.
After he told me this, I became Amazon chump and Internet chump, reading everything and anything I could get my hands on how to be a “better” wife and “save” my marriage and putting all my energy into doing a major pick-me-dance. I know CL knocks MB, and I do have issues with them because they think cheaters are in some temporary “fog” severely underestimate the chance of a marriage surviving infidelity and ignore character disorders altogether, but I think they saved me. When I posted on MB about what my XH said, fellow posters immediately said that he was definitely having an affair, but I was insistent that there was no way he would do that. None of the other websites or books I read, or marriage coaches (Mort Fertel, Homer McDonald, Divorce Busters) I consulted mentioned that. As an aside, I think whenever anyone gives the ILYBINILWY speech, I think you immediately have to think “affair.” MB posters suggested I look at his computer or phone for evidence, but I thought they were crazy to think my XH was having an affair, so I didn’t.
A couple of months later, XH didn’t come for 4 nights in a row, saying he was sleeping over at his place of work (hadn’t yet moved into his new apartment). I then became a little suspicious, because of what MB posters had said. I looked at the family computer, which XH sometimes uses, and noticed in the web history searches for romantic bed and breakfasts, romantic restaurants, airline flights, and it look liked he tried to book a room for that weekend and was checking incoming flights for that weekend. I then checked his cell phone records and noticed there were was a phone number he was calling and texting an inordinate number of times per day. When XH came home, I confronted him. First he had some weird story about he became friends with a transsexual man he met on the sidewalk who was visiting from out of town and needed a place to stay, and that XH used the hotel room only to take a shower (XH has a sexual fetish for men who dress as women and later told me, if it weren’t for the affair, he was seriously considering having a sex change operation). When I asked him more about who this “man” was, XH finally confessed that it was actually some 25-year old girl (he’s 45) from a foreign country who had no place to stay, and he needed to “help” her and had romantic feelings for her.
Needless to say, I was in shock and devastated and lost like 20 pounds in a month. A lot of people actually commented on how good I looked and how I lost by pregnancy weight so quickly! (My younger child was 6 months old at the time.) Even after finding this out, I still continued my pick-me-dance, determined to save this marriage and praying everyday for it. I have to say again that MB saved me here, too, as fellow posters insisted that doing the pick-me-dance for longer than a few weeks was putting your emotional and physical health at risk and urged me to go into “Plan B”–NC with XH (except for necessary communication regarding the kids) and filing for divorce to protect my and my kids’ legal and financial rights. Luckily, XH had already moved out by then, so NC was easier, but he still wanted to go out to lunch and dinner with me from time to time and see the kids about once a week and act like everything was okay and that we were great friends and talk with me on the phone at night about his “problems” and how he felt suicidal, etc., like using me as his free therapist.
Then, I found CL and realized there’s no going back. According to MB, you only come out of “Plan B” if the “wayward” meets certain conditions to restore the trust, e.g., writes a letter to OW promising to never see her again and becomes completely transparent–provides email, phone, computer and bank and phone account passwords, installs a GPS on the phone, takes a lie detector test, etc. XH never did any of those things, but, even if he did, I would not take him back at this point, though I still get emails from him about how he never wanted a divorce, divorce is a mistake, I’m ruining the kids’ lives, I’m “destroying” him, he thinks we can have a happy marriage, etc.
Cell phone records for me, too. Guess what I found out? Wednesday night, I found out that in addition to the 3 year affair he’s been having with his “true love”, he’s been having an affair for a year and half now with another gal, in another state. I confronted the 2 OWs, now they know about each other. Strangely, he’s thrown aside the year and a half affair with no qualms. But the past 2 days all I have received from him is nasty calls and texts because I ruined his love (he makes sure he reminds me how much he loves her) with his Oklahoma flower. He’s been sending me suicidal texts all morning, claiming that it’s my fault he’s going to kill himself, because I ruined everything by getting in the middle of his relationship with her. He can’t believe I did this. He thought I was the one person who would never do something like this. I promised him that I would not contact or stalk the OW. It’s all my fault, I should feel guilty. I discovered the second concurrent affair through cell phones records. We’ve been apart since Dday in January; however, we are still on the same bills until a settlement has been reached. I had the audacity to go through the cell phone bill..that’s in MY name by the way..and “snoop” into “his stuff”. And then I dared to call both OWs. Because I snooped into our phone bill again, and confronted his women, I ruined his life. I imagine by the way he’s acting his true love in Oklahoma is freezing him out at the moment, since this is the 2nd time he’s lied to her, too. What amazes me? I found out about the first affair through cell phone records. Did he think that miraculously I wouldn’t use that method again? As I go through the bill, I am finding many more #s that I don’t recognize. My assumption is that in addition to these 2 affairs, there could be more going on. I will not follow through, because I am at the breaking point right now. Double whammy. 2 affairs at the same time. Probably more. What confuses me? He loves his woman in OK so much, as he has repeatedly told me. Yet..he cheated on her, too? Hello? I’m lost here.
Sure, it’s YOUR fault that OW1 knows about OW2.
What i find confusing is why OW1 is upset about OW2. Did she think she was special for someone reason? The ONLY OW?
Hey, OW1…he’s married!!! You were never the only one.
Geez. What is she mad about?
She does think she is special, Edie. It’s a situation where he apparently has claimed that she’s the only one he has ever really loved, and can’t be without her. She has believed every single lie he has told her, especially that I am a psycho liar, and that every single thing I told her was not true at all. OW1 has texted me to let me know that she doesn’t believe me, because all of their friends have told her that I am the liar; not my STBX. They have totally rallied around him, bashing me. This despite the fact that I forwarded her many of the graphic texts that OW2 and my STBX have exchanged over time. OW1 is nuts. Once I discovered his affair, I contacted her to let her know about his WIFE. He had lied to her from the beginning..telling her we were divorced. She had no idea I existed. She said she was done with him. However, 2 weeks later they were back together. I found out it’s because he insisted that I was lying, we had been divorced for a long time, everything I said was untrue. So she took him back. And now since I discovered Affair #2, I thought she would realize the truth. But no..they are all against me, protecting him.
Clearly the OW/OM in these situations are delusional and have their own set of issues b/c if I found out I was even remotely involved w/ a man as OW I’d drop that like a hot potato. I want no part of that. Not just b/c I’ve been through it and it’s cruel to the chumped spouse but that’s a bunch of crap to hang your hopes on.
OW had no idea you existed. You say she’s nuts. That explains a lot.
You have tried to impart info for these women and they don’t want to listen. You’ve done your part but they don’t want to see or be saved.
Yep, I tried talking to the last 2 OW. OW#1 didn’t return my call. And …surprise… when we split he did not go to her. He had OW#2 lined up already. I contacted her, she did not reply. I really hope I get to see their world crumble. 🙂 OW/OM deserve what they get.
Now I’m getting this: “Of all people, I never thought you’d do something like this.” And “Why are you so hell bent on punishing me?” And “How could you call her? Why would you do that? Why DID you do that? How could you do this to me?” “You did what you did, so fuck you. I’m done working with you on this divorce, I’ll see you in court. I hope I run up your fucking attorney bills so high you’ll never be able to pay them.” As he has still been helping me financially because I still pay all of the bills, I have not filed for temporary support, per my attorney’s advice. It will take months to go into effect, and we’re hoping this will all be done by then. However, he has now said he will disconnect the electricity, because he knows it’s 3 months past due and I can’t pay it. He’s going to let it be shut off. And we have a 12 year old daughter at home! He is doing all of this to punish me for daring to tell OW1 about OW2. He has turned this on me 100%. Just when I think things can’t get any worse..BOOM it smacks me in the face.
We had just moved into a new house, so we could be closer to his work, since the commute from the suburbs had become a nightmare. We were only in the house 9 months, and it was the day before Valentines day 2014. My STBX who never comes home in the daytime, arrived with the biggest most beautiful bouquet of roses he has ever given me. (I’ve recieved lots of jewelry and expensive gifts from him over the past year) His explanation was that since he was going out of the country tomorrow, he wanted to make sure I got them. He travels out of the country ALOT. He’s a very well known Oncologist who takes care of several VIPs, Presidents, etc., all over the world.
As he was walking in the door, I was opening the mail. And I found a receipt for a heart shaped gift he had bought for another woman. I innocently asked him about it, not thinking he would ever cheat on me. He at first tried to lie his way out of it, and then said “Well, I think we should have this conversation now. I’m in love with another woman” I fell to the floor, shaking, my heart pounding out of my chest. My 13 year old son was there, and saw the whole thing. While I hated that he had to witness it, I was glad he saw it firsthand, so he wouldn’t question my explanations. My husband wouldn’t leave until he told us the story. OW is 33 and has a one year old. She is married. She works with him. The gift was not sent to her, but her mother, who is encouraging the whole affair. (“Because she cares for her daughter and granddaughter, and while the husband is a nice guy, he doesn’t provide for them adequately, and she wants security for her daughter”) STBX says, “I haven’t cheated on you, we haven’t had sex yet!” So, doesn’t this sound fishy – OW gets to be with a very powerful, famous, doctor, who can afford her, and she doesn’t even have to have sex with him!!!!!! (gold digger????) Plus, I don’t believe it.
After a week or so of my own investigating, I found out her name, her husband’s name, their address, etc….. I discovered she had been on 3 of the foreign trips with him, as “part of the team” He was her boss when the affair started. WHICH WAS OVER A YEAR AGO, before we moved!
My STBX begged me not to bother them, since they were going through “issues” (Oh, but we’re not?) He has also begged me not to tell the husband, since they had planned to make it look like their affair started after she gets a divorce. (She filed 3/31)
STBX asked if he could stay until the fall. That is when he was going to tell me. He actually thought we could all be friends, and do fun things together. He asked, “Don’t you want me to be happy?”
I told him to leave, and my 13 yo son hasn’t seen him since. My 20 yo son went to see him the next day to express his anger, and that was it.
Here’s the worst part: Last August, he went on a business trip to China My now 21 yo daughter went with him. She discovered some odd emails back and forth on his blackberry (she had permission to use it to email her boyfriend) The emails were to a Steve Baker from a Barbara Walker. These were their code names based on their initials. Hers are SB. When my daughter questioned them, he blamed it on her for snooping. That’s right, the police are to blame for discovering the criminal!!! He made my daughter keep it a secret. What a coward!!!!
My poor daughter is a mess! She broke up with her boyfriend. She’s a good kid, and gets amazing grades at college, but she has been acting out a little (boys and alcohol)
Right now, we’re in limbo. Struggling with the finances, since he is taking money out to pay for his apartment, etc…. Plus, I’m spending thousands a month now on counseling for everyone. (my 13 yo has to go 3x per week)
Our marriage wasn’t perfect Nobody’s is. I asked for counseling several times over the years – but he said he was happy, we didn’t need it. NOW, that he got caught he wants me to go to mc with him. ??????? I go next week.
That’s my story.
Brand new pain for you.
LOL “don’t you want me to be happy?” Hey, what about YOUR happiness?
What a jerk for involving your daughter like that – and the counseling costs!!
I wish you well getting it all worked out. Cyber ((HUGS))
Thank you Edie. Hugs to you too!!!!
Wow. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the part about her mother pimping her daughter out for ‘security’. with a cheater? good luck with that.
yes denver_girl, I’m still trying to understand that. And I’m sure OW’s mother is my age, or slightly younger.
OW’s mom lived with her. Mommy dearest knew about the affair and apparently didn’t have any issues with her daughter seeing a married man. Their lack of morals, integrity, and character definitely runs in the family.
I opened an email from his PayPal account that was sent to our joint email account. Even though it was a few weeks before Christmas and it was possible it was a gift for me, the sick feeling in my stomach told me to open it. Yep. A heart necklace sent to “a special woman who has come into my life” and he asked PayPal to please not send the receipt to the address they did, but to send it to another. (Obviously they didn’t read the special instructions). I was at work when I opened it and so was he (we work at the same huge medical institution). I calmly printed it off, scanned it to a PDF and emailed it to him with the subject line “Merry Christmas”. Then I sent the OW a message on FB telling her what she was getting in the mail. (We were all friends even though we had never met). He didn’t respond to the email but called that night to tell me it was so busy he decided to sleep at the hospital since he had to be back early the next day. I said that’s a good idea and hung up. Didn’t speak or look at him for a week. And he was mad at me! But the best part is I googled the item from the company he bought it from. It was a silver heart on a black silk cord. She eventually broke it off with him after the BS he was telling her didn’t add up and sent the necklace back. And now his new wife wears a silver heart necklace on a black cord. Ha! I love that he gave her a second hand gift. And the icing on the cake is I still have the receipt, just in case…
I found out about AP-2 from an anonymous letter from a friend. I confronted her, then rug-swept out of disbelief. She came up with some BS. AP-3 was through cell phone records. Spoke with AP-2s wife and explained about AP-1, AP-2, AP-2a, and AP-3. I left so as not to find out about AP-4 through AP-n.
Sorry, I’m an Engineer. That’s how we see things.
“I left so as not to find out about AP-4 through AP-n.” I like this thinking.
Lol. What a great sense of humor! Sorry about the Cheater though 🙁
I am a super-duper chump – the abridged version:
Our daughter was born in March. Three days after that, my mother suffered a massive stroke. In the middle of my year of sheer joy/hell, XH asked for an open marriage. I agreed for multiple reasons, fatigue being #1. When Schmoopie dumped him to find her own man six months later, he sank into a deep depression. The kind you go into after a break up. I tried everything to cheer him up and he finally told me he had fallen in love with her and was grieving(SHOCK #1). He followed that up by confessing that he’d been cheating on me for our entire relationship with another woman, his ex-gf (SHOCK #2).
I should have left then but felt like I should try to work it out for the sake of our 15 month old. That December, Schmoopie broke up with her bf and asked XH if they could resume their previous arrangement. The moron actually had the cajones to ask me if I’d mind. I told him that he must be out of his expletive deleted skull if he thought I wouldn’t mind after he’d confessed a ten year affair.
Marriage and game over.
My 10yo daughter told me he was touching OW bum in front of her…. then that he called her “carino” which means sweetheart in Spanish and when confronted by my girl he said he got confused (?????), then that my ex and OW locked themselves in the car after kicking the kids out to the park and told her that they had something very important to discuss and were not to be disturbed….
This is the same asshole that reported me to Spanish police for kidnapping my kids and illegally taking them back to the UK, the same asshole that took me to court in Spain for sole custody ( he lost last month) and the same asshole whose girlfriend keeps abusing me by email and watssup ( harassment injunction in progress in both countries)
Can anybody beat that?
I am a run of the mill chump. I also fell for “I have to work” when actually working turned out to be chatting online on his laptop. I also found out from phone records. When I confronted him he said “I can’t really talking about this now because my meringues are about to come out of the oven.” Seriously. When I pressed it he said, “OK, fine, but we are only talking until the timer goes off.” And, yes, as I was curled up in the fetal position crying, he, despite being so sorry, had to go make himself a snack and came back very distraught that I hadn’t picked up ice cream on my last trip to the grocery store. I think that was just before he said “You are over reacting. I am the one who is going to suffer the most in this. Think of how my mother is going to react to me!” And I still stayed for 3 more years trying to make it work and continued to believe. Capital C capital H capital U capital M capital P.
When they walk over your collapsed body because they’re making meringues, I guess that’s a better class of cheater-sociopath than the ones who walk over you to get a Hot Pocket. NOT!!!!!
We had grown apart, we weren’t having sex, he found any excuse to leave the house, like ordering a pizza from a place clear across town (later finding out she lived out that way) and taking so long to come back with it. I can’t pinpoint when it happened but I started to think he was cheating. On one night that he didn’t work, I awoke from a deep sleep at 3am. He wasn’t in bed. I got up and found him in the guest bathroom in the hallway. It was odd because we have a master bathroom he could use. I went to where he kept his phone charging and it was gone. It was at that time that I knew everything I was feeling was true. He stayed in the bathroom for about a half hour. When he came back to bed, I told him I had heard his phone beeping and when he pretended to go get it, I saw him take it out of his pajama pocket. I leaped out of bed and turned on the lights, and so began my game of twenty questions with him, to where he finally admitted he was sleeping with someone else from work. The second I heard those words, I lost my breathe. He literally knocked the wind out of me. There we were, at 3:30am arguing in our bedroom, while our two year old slept in the middle of the bed. She slept through it all. I called my sister who lives an hour away and told her to come quickly because I needed someone to calm me down and keep me from grabbing the softball bat I keep at the side of the bed.
As for the guy I was casually seeing – instagram pictures. She was the serious girlfriend. I informed her he was cheating. I told her I didn’t know she existed. I apologized – like a true chump – and I left that mess immediately. Went no contact and will never speak to either of them again. Not long after, I found Chump Lady. There will be no ChumpedThrice.
“we weren’t having sex,”
I see that in the majority of affairs, the sex has dwindled or stopped altogether. Mine was just the opposite..he wanted sex just as much or even more frequently as before the affair started. It was always good in that department, and it never faltered, even when he was cheating on me. Anyone have any theories?
My experience was the same. I think cheaters are on a HUGE natural high, cheating warms their evil little souls! Going from one bed, to the other, they are just where they want to be- in the center of attention, fabricating the lies they love, and FOOLING PEOPLE. That makes them superior to us, and dead sexy, too! I think it’s easy to understand, why they become ‘hypersexualized’. BTW, that’s also a mental illness diagnosis, goes along nicely with the narcissism.
He had gone with the kids to the city – the kids to visit their grandma and he to attend some work courses so I was alone at home and decided to call my mother-in-law to find out when thanksgiving dinner was on the weekend so I could travel to the city. The first thing she said was ‘I’m so sorry’ and I said ‘whaaat???’ She said she was sorry that our marriage was over and that she and the kids, as well as some of my husband’s friends, had all met the other woman over dinner the previous evening. That’s how I found out he was cheating. As icing on the cake, when I called his cell phone to demand an explanation, he said he had already asked her to marry him, and WHEN WAS I LEAVING??? Then began the screaming and crying . . .
Meg, so sorry, what an &^%$$£”!, seriously what a twisted POS!!!!!!
There are no words for such a dirt bag. However, I hope you’re happy you’re out of that family. They all seem twisted – acting like it’s acceptable behavior.
Oh Meg that is really awful.
Holy shit! That’s cold!
Holy fuck !! I am so sorry,,,,,,,
mag, yours sounds like mine’s evil twin. Stay strong and many hugs!
Thank you chump nation, it’s such a relief to tell things like this and be understood. Let’s all stay strong and be thankful we are trying to move on.
OMG!!! What a fucked up family!!!! Who the heck are these people?! That’s a real momma’s boy there…….his MOM delivers the news to you!?!
What a complete piece of shit! There is a special place in hell for people like this!!!
Peace to you!
well I guess she thought I knew . . . I don’t blame her for that.
Thank you, peace to you too
Wow, what a flaming narcissist. How heartless to introduce her to the family before you had any clue…and in front of your kids??? I sincerely hope his family and friends saw him for what he truly is. And if not, then good riddance to all of them.
Gee .. .which time? The first one … I found emails between her and him, but he denied anything going on…”just friends” … I also found out that they had lived together before he and I got together. He forgot to give me that little detail. 2 years into the marriage she called me at work to tell me they had had an ongoing affair since before we got married. Didn’t believe it so she sent me every email the two of them had exchanged. Very apparent she wasn’t lying. She was in hopes that I would leave him so she could have him. I didn’t. She died 6 years into our marriage still waiting and with him still stringing her on. The one that broke the camel’s back … I arrived home early from work and walked in the door to the kitchen just as his phone was ringing. He took it out of his pocket and tipped it towards himself so he could see the number and I just happened to catch a glimpse of it too. He silenced it and dropped it back into his pocket. I told him he could answer it. He told me it was “no one”. I had noticed that it wasn’t a number on the screen, but a name. So “no one” was important enough for him to change the number to a name. I pressed him and he eventually told me it was “an old friend”. Pressed a little further and found out it was his high school sweetheart who found him on facebook 2 weeks earlier. They had been “chatting”. I got on his computer and found all kinds of “nice” emails. They started out friendly enough, but ended with “can’t wait to see and hold you”. I contacted her and she apologized saying she had no intention of causing trouble in my marriage and realized that they had gotten too flirty (Ya think?). The next day he told me he had called her and broken it off. I checked the cell phone bill … nope. Just another lie in a long line of them. Then they went underground because he had a work cell phone that I had no access to. Things went on and Easter happened. 2 days after Easter he started talking about how old he was feeling (red flag! Same talk he gave me when I found out about Jane. Said she made him feel young.) I simply said, “You’ve been talking to Jane again.” He didn’t bother to deny it. Instead he said, “She’s been emailing me. I had to answer. Why wouldn’t I answer?” I just said, “because I asked you not to.” I picked my pillow up and went to the guest bedroom. The next day I moved all of my things out of the bedroom. 2 days later he informed me he wanted a divorce, but Jane had nothing to do with it. He was just unhappy. I walked away. A few days later I was doing our taxes (my H had an internet business) and I needed to get on his paypal account to get all the figures but the password had been changed. When I asked him for the new password he hemmed and hawed and said he could give me the information I needed. I pressed until he finally gave it to me. So guess who started looking deeply into the account? ME! I found a charge to a hotel from a few weeks before that was half way between his work and hers. I called the hotel the next day and asked them for a copy of the receipt saying that my husband had stayed there and n