And the Bitch Cookie Goes to…
A common cheater tactic is what we at Chump Nation call a “bitch cookie” reward. It’s when FWs demand acknowledgment for doing something they should be doing anyway as a matter of decency. Or a bitch cookie is an accomplishment so trifling, it’s an embarrassment they mentioned it, but you will be penalized for not lavishing praise.
Some bitch cookie examples:
Hey, they paid child support this month. Huzzah!
Okay, so they cheated. It’s not like they beat you.
She was faithful for entire months.
Upon reviewing the records, it’s not like he ever slept with you and Schmoopie on the same day.
It’s not like the cheating took that much time. A couple hours a week, max.
You discovered her affair, but hey, she doesn’t blame you. Throw confetti!
Don’t untangle the bitch cookie skein.
I have no idea why FWs arm themselves with such weak defenses. Maybe bitch cookie rewards are a kind of gaslighting I BRING GREAT THINGS TO THE TABLE! BEHOLD MY MAGNIFICENCE! When really, kibble dispersement is pretty thin. Maybe it’s a kind of DARVO. You fail to sufficiently appreciate them!
Whatever it is, it’s maddening. So your Friday Challenge is to share your bitch cookie examples.
And a shout out to CN emeritus Katthebat for first giving us the term “bitch cookie“!
TGIF!
* “But I help to cook and I wash the dishes” ( Thanks, but no thanks)
* “Are you not glad that I chose you?”
(POS cheater denied she was AP. She was just a friend going through a divorce and wanted someone to talk to. POS didn’t want to be rude to her and not engage with her, but it was OK for POS to backstab me. That was not rude.)
*”I am gold compared to other men. All men cheat physically, l have never done that. I promise on my kids’ lives ”
(Lying liar sick POS)
*” I’m trying really hard to be the man you want me to be, but it is a sacrifice”
( If that was not an admission that POS was a serial cheater from the get go, then I don’t know.”
My exFW also thinks he’s way better than other men. He also claims to have never physically cheated (except once) which is an absolute garbage load of BS!
It’s such a struggle to live a normal, drama free, non-scheming life with your spouse and family, isn’t it. Such a sacrifice!
Oh my gosh. A bitch cookie smorgasbord!
Said about one of the OW:
“There is so much about her that is just like YOU!”
Yes, asshat… we both have vajayjays. 🙄 This comment might have counted also as the “I bet you would really like her!” type.
The real meaning of this is: “There’s nothing wrong with you. I want what I have with you, just in a newer, shinier body.”
Like buying the same car again, but a newer model year. Or maybe the same model, but just with some professional detailing and a new air freshener. Because you know that you once sideswiped a trash can in your old car and the scratches might show through the repair in a couple of years, whereas you have no idea that the new car was submerged for two weeks during Katrina and only fully dried out a couple of months ago.
My X certainly didn’t trade up physically. He must have just gotten a more pliable and quieter make and model.
Same- they want enablers, or mommy bangmaids, not life partners.
Mine liked foreign woman.
Mine went for someone 35 years old, and hence, she was somewhat shinier than me, who was turning 50. I was not not feeling that great about turning 50 as it was, and then to find out my marriage was imploding didn’t help. (I’m over that now, thank god) But I didn’t really focus too much on her looks as she certainly didn’t look any better than I had at 35. It was also just so textbook, I couldn’t get past the pathetic stereotype.
My FW has refused to pay child support so I took him to court for temp support…still waiting for a verdict. Our divorce court judges are so behind that I am told it could take a year before they rule on temp support.
My FW’s reply…”as an act of Goodwill I will pay one tutoring bill for (our daughter). Goodwill? Why dont FWs think they are equally responsible for taking care of their children?
I got that too…. Disgusting selfish pigs.
He sounds like Louis XIV.
These are the same kind of dipshits who, during the relationship, think they are “babysitting” their own kids for you when you go out.
Yup, got that too🤬🤬🤬
Yknow it’s bugged me for years but it wasn’t Rumblekitty who came up with this term, it was me (“Kara” from the original site.) It’s a phrase my friends and I used early in college to describe people who did the bare minimum and wanted praise for it. My buddy Brian was the person who first told me what it meant. Not sure how RK got credit for this or why they never corrected but it would be cool to finally be acknowledged as the person who shared this term.
Yikes sorry. You’re right I didn’t come up with it, I first heard it from listening to my mom and her divorced friends vent I didn’t feel the need to correct anything but here, take all my proceeds I’ve earned from the term for the last 10 years. smh . . .
You can shake your head until your ears fall off. Sarcastic pettiness doesn’t look good on the person who’s been taking credit for my contribution this whole time.
Think of it this way, HellofaChump is correct in saying that CL usually is good about giving her readers/commenters due credit for things they say or contribute to the blog that get used in future posts. Poem contests, guest blogs, quotes, and ideas. DivorcedMinister and his comments that turned into guest blogs that turned into guest speaking at the convention is the biggest example that comes to mind.
When a commenter says something, shares an idea that has not been seen/discussed on this blog before that gets a positive reception, and then gets included in another blog post, it’s kind of nice to get that recognition. Did I invent the term “bitch cookie?” No. Like I said, my buddy Brian told me about it and my college friends used it in our vernacular regularly. But I remember the comment I made here where I initially shared the phrase and the meaning behind it. It got a positive reaction and CL even responded. I remember that because I thought it was cool it actually got that much of a response.
Now imagine my disappointment when it was used in the next blog with someone else’s name on it, over and over again for years. Wondering why I got looked over.
It does suck to actually be the first to contribute an idea to this blog, remember that I was, remember the conversation I had with my friend about the phrase, share it here and just…not be given the same courtesy as other commenters and long term readers are. You can think it’s petty if you want, but it was disappointing. It’s BEEN disappointing. I’m sure some other long term readers who have made contributions of ideas or phrases that got turned into posts aren’t the only people on earth to think of those things, but they were the first to bring them HERE. DivorcedMinister probably isn’t the first or only minister out there to believe that chumps should seek better lives away from toxic marriages, or that god is not an excuse to force someone to stay in a toxic marriage, but he’s the one championing that the most in this space because of the experiences in his life. It wouldn’t be fair to take his words and credit them to someone else, even if he didn’t invent the idea of healing from the pain of divorce through faith.
I heard that phrase from my mom and her friend years ago IRL before I ever used it here. (I had plenty of opportunities to use it while in the middle of my fun divorce close to 10 years ago.) You feel you said it first and should have credit for it; so by all means it is yours. I don’t feel it’s something worth arguing about, especially from so long ago.
I apologize! I stand corrected!!!!
I had an idea today, thinking about this. I have a suggestion: New Quote Contest.
We share phrases, terms, concepts, ideas we all have heard in our lives. Maybe from friends, family, experiences, etc. Turn it into a short phrase that can be used or referred to here. A couple of the best ones that either haven’t been shared or discussed here before, or not often brought up, get chosen to be added to the Chump Nation vernacular. Whichever commenters came up with the phrase will obviously be given props for it.
Maybe the idea itself isn’t original, but creating a new term would be the key. Something catchy to encapsulate a relatable feeling relevant to the experience of being a chump.
New Phrase Friday? New Phrase Phriday?
I’ve noticed CL always takes the time to give props to readers so this had to be an innocent mix-up.
As a former editor for an eco publication myself, I realized that, in the web age, the concept of “going viral” had become an all-purpose alibi for not crediting original sources of pithy quotes and coinages. Mostly it’s not done intentionally but someone mistook an original idea or coinage for a folksy saying or “viral thing” with long lost authorship. I’d had my own ideas or turns of phrase lifted quite a bit and knew it felt pretty violating, not “flattering,” sort of like being ass-grabbed on the subway. Consequently, I became a stickler for tracking down even obscure sources of the tiniest quips. If these things were clever enough to repeat, they were clever enough to credit. If it wasn’t possible, I’d at least say “As a commenter once put it” or some reference indicating I wasn’t the author.
Like CL, my own late editor, an old newsman, always made an effort to do this, partly because his god was the fourth estate, partly because he was a font of original ideas himself and had no need to steal thunder and partly because it’s community building.
You are clearly very thorough in your sourcing HOAC! As an addendum to the discussion of correctly identifying and referencing sources — I will note here something you once quoted me for: the term FOG. Aka “fear-obligation-guilt”. It’s a term I use a lot as I was once a moderator there.
For clarity that term while used and quoted by me, is originally from the creators of Out Of The Fog both the site and the book. It is/was a term from their Tool Box which is a glossary of all the terms for the site and forum users and the base concept for it all.
I bow down to original sources! Thank you for bringing this up!
No worries at all HOAC! It’s awesome when the knowledge is shared and “paid forward” so thoughtfully… I always appreciate your insights and deep dives that are on point with their references. Kudos! 🙏
This isn’t the first time Ive mentioned it was me who shared this term. You’re the first person to acknowledge me.
It’s just really frustrating to share something here, have it become a staple on the blog, and have her turn it into a cartoon, but still have someone else keep getting credit.
Oversight, I’m sure. Also bringing it up in comment threads tends to make other commenters nervous over potential he-said/she-said conflict and, if they don’t have a particular sensitivity about the “sovereignty of ideas” and who authors them, it can seem like a tempest in a teapot and a distraction from the main theme, especially if the theme is important or deals with life and death issues.
But I’m kind of an “intellectual property rights socialist,” especially after working in media where idea theft– whether deliberate or accidental– is commonplace. For one, people who consider themselves to be big shot journos or authors sometimes tend to only quote “lofty” sources that elevate the overall status of their own work. Consequently, they sometimes steal from “lowly,” obscure sources they don’t see any personal advantage in crediting (clearly CL is not of that ilk since she frequently credits reader aliases). Then there are others who are so clueless about the creative process that, when they find quotes or ideas they like, they pick them up and put them in their pockets like pretty shells they found on the beach– i.e., like something produced as a mindless accident of nature and evolution and not something filtered out of an entire life experience or decades of trauma or many dark nights of the soul.
So, personally, I don’t care if the source doesn’t happen to be a famous author or sparkling intellectual whose epic career depends on ownership of original ideas and if they don’t add “lofty” citations to what I write to make me look more important by association. To me, there’s something so miraculous about the process of human insight and its expression that the source can be, say, a retired lunch lady in Kentucky but her original ideas and coinages are still a sacred contribution to human discourse. Plus if you can get the backstory about how someone came up with a really clever idea or turn of phrase, there’s usually something heart-stopping and fascinating behind it.
I remember having a conversation about the practice of not crediting people who were too “lowly” and obscure to elevate the author’s status with a (late, RIP) science writer who was on the NY Times’ nonfiction bestseller list for a decade. He (card-carrying agnostic) pointed out that Jesus was never published in his lifetime. And who would plagiarize Jesus?
My STBX grabbed me in a headlock from behind, with just enough pressure on my neck to hurt a bit, and said “I’ve never tried to strangle you, have I baby? I’ve never tried to beat you up, have I?”.
Does that count as a Bitch Cookie?
Omg! You’re lucky you got out alive.
I am so, so sorry. That sounds terrifying.
Absolutely a bitch cookie, and assault on top of that.
Thanks CDC! TBH, I was more gobsmacked than anything else at the time, but I was very wary of him after that!
It counts as criminal code for “Choking, suffocation or strangulation in a domestic setting.” In some places, the individual act is punishable by up to 7 years in prison. If the state couldn’t prove anything beyond an attempt, it could count as terrorist threat, where someone communicates, either directly or indirectly, a threat to commit any crime of violence with intent to terrorize another.
Blimey! In fairness, the Guards did say it was an assault and I could prosecute. There weren’t any witnesses though, so as it’d have been my word against his, I didn’t see the point of putting myself through even more stress and bother than I was already going through!
He was crafty enough to do that when there was no one else around though, wasn’t he? Very sly! Makes me believe he knew what he was doing was wrong and I’m well of out of it!
And by “more stress and bother,” what you really mean is that you– in a state where you were pushed to the absolute limits of life-threatening, life-shortening physiological stress– shied away from courting the added catastrophic humiliation– technically known as the “second injury of domestic violence” (i.e., the failure of justice and helping professionals to aid and protect victims)– of having your claims rejected by authority for “lack of admissible proof.”
Yes, that’s exactly it!
Ineffective judicial response to domestic violence claims is one of the major reasons that only a tiny fraction of victims file reports or push their claims to full prosecution. A lot of victims conclude that, if they can’t actually kill (or deactivate through legal restraint) the killer wasp outright, what’s the point of lamely waving their hands and rolled up newspapers at it and pissing it off even more?
Do you know what, that’s also it! I had to live in the same village as him, he knows I’m here on my own most of the time as my son’s at work, and he can climb over the wall into the back garden so if I had the back door unlocked he could easily get in, plus he still had a rake of his stuff here that I needed him to clear out, so I was reluctant to antagonise him!
The Garda sergeant did ring him and warn him though, and he did behave himself after that, thanks be to God!
Yes & psycho assault too!
Yes, it’s just a pity there were no witnesses and the Irish Justice system is a sham! Far too lenient on violent offenders!
That’s a huge issue on the other side of the world too.
I see it all the time in my job.
It’s the same across the water in Britain too! It’d make you wonder why?
‘I still found you attractive even though you gained weight after our third kid’. Here’s a cookie, go eff yourself, FW!
Would he help motivate me into getting in shape by running/walking with me after dinner though? Not a chance.
There’s a PTSD trauma memory right there…feels good to write it out! 😜
Gaining weight is normal as you age. Nothing to be ashamed of. And good people will love your wonderful self even when you have extra weight, and not expect a bitch cookie for it! Your ex is just a shallow POS. Tracy is right when she says FWs just aren’t that deep.
Yes and I’d say that if someone loves a person for WHO they are, their character and their unique qualities, that the way aging changes their body doesn’t affect the love. I think when you see those old couples, who still think the world of each other, this is why. The love is for the person, not their exterior nor what they give nor do for the other. It’s very profound and has real substance.
The opposite of FW ” lurve” really!
If it’s any comfort, I was verbally attacked for being a “bag of bones” compared to the zoftig AP. It’s all completely arbitrary and means nothing. The actual driver for “attraction” in personality-disordered people can be oppositional-defiant or based on some Freudian, psychotic family-of-origin delusion. Whatever the case, it’s certainly not objective. If anything, it has to do with the need to blame others for abusers’ own internally-driven, destructive, creepy psychosis towards anyone intimately close to them. It has less than nothing to do with how objectively attractive or good or bad the victim is. Otherwise, why would Beyonce, Uma Thurman, Shakira and Halle Berry have been cheated on?
It gets a bit complicated but, basically, fucked-up destructo people need to externalize blame for their own disordered, paranoid, abusive, compulsively ugly impulses so they can pretend to themselves that they’re not irredeemable creeps and freaks. Domestic abusers will lay the blame for their own destructive behavior on everything and anything about their primary partners for “failing” to “inspire” them to be better people. So whether you’re skinny and happen to love mid-century R&B or curvy and love ska or bluegrass, your abuser will arbitrarily target those qualities as the “reason” they simply had to abuse you. Because- gasp– they couldn’t have been abusing you simply because they were criminal pieces of shit.
In short, the reasons an abuser abused you can never be objective because abuse itself is isn’t objective or reasonable. In other words, we don’t have to draw our sense of “objective” self-worth from what fucked-up people deem as worthy or unworthy. I’m pretty sure that the only reason your FW tried to make you feel unattractively “fat” is because you were particularly lovely, radiant and fertile-looking in that period and he was threatened by the specter of competition and anything that would threaten his sense of control and primacy.
Ex/OW was way too overweight according to ex/FW, but I was slightly too skinny (but he didn’t mind too much, he quantified) and he didn’t like my hair.
My hair, that everyone else loves. I don’t say this to brag – I’ve recieved compliments on it my entire life. He didn’t like it. And granted, everyone has their own taste, but he would never compliment it or say nice things about it. I discussed this with a sibling recently, actually.
It doesn’t matter, a FW will say anything to disparage you. It’s part of the discard.
I don’t think it’s weird that he particularly disliked things about you that other people liked. That’s because I think the “discard” is part of the psychosis of masked dependency.
People who don’t have reactive attachment disorder coupled with whatever other demented psychosexual issues afflict this kind of abuser just won’t be able to wrap their heads around why a partner would view them in a competitive way or be actually “catty” to a partner.
We usually associate cattiness with intrasexual competition. If, say, a woman does this to another woman, most people understand that, due to context, the negging is probably motivated by envy and rivalry, not jealous possession. But where envy and rivalry come in for abusers is that, specifically, the “competition” or “race” is about who chumps who being that, in the mind of an abuser, catastrophic abandonment is a given in all intimate relationships and, in order not to be the victim, you have to be the perp. The fact that abusers never seem so horny and sexually obsessed as when they’re in an intimate relationship even makes me suspect that the sexual drive involved only comes secondary to the need not to be the victim of infidelity. Like, you know, they might not even bother but, see, it’s all about who dicks who over first so they gotta do it.
But how does an abuser enforce one-sided monogamy beyond putting the victim in a cage and risking life in prison? How do they whittle someone down to the point that the latter may have so little self esteem and hope for future relationships that it makes it extremely difficult for them to leave for someone else or even move on in the case the abuser decides to put the partner in cold storage? Being shallow themselves and since the agenda is to sexually hobble the victim, the abuser might take note of every single external quality the target has that seems attractive or admirable to other people and then irradiate it with contempt to the point that the person eventually thinks their best traits are their most shameful.
I get the feeling this comes naturally because every compliment that anyone gives a victim or anything the victim likes about themselves is read by the abuser as the victim saying, “See how high my stock runs and how much opportunity I have to better deal you?” This generates such vengeful rage in abusers that they actually begin to intensely hate and automatically devalue whatever trait they perceive that others admire about their partners or that the partner likes about themselves. It works on the principle that a lie is more believable if you believe it yourself. They invest in their own catty negging, sometimes even to the point of believing it. Ergo the hair that everyone else likes becomes genuinely ugly through the abuser’s demented lens. And, bonus, if they can get the victim to cut it off out of shame (as my exSIL did when her creepy husband negged her long hair), then no one’s going to contradict this delusion.
Of course an abuser can also pick on a victim’s actual weaknesses and flaws to wear them down but that’s not nearly as effective as attacking admirable qualities. Either way, since these are often surface qualities related to perceived sexual value, the abuser can also do the double damage of reducing the victim to body parts or gendered personality traits. First the abuser reduces you to something that could only ever have sexual value if any value at all, then they take that sexual value away.
Completely agreed. And it’s very effective! FWs can have you self-doubt everything you thought you knew about yourself, and I fully believe it’s some (in a very 1960’s shrink voice) “psychosexual” dysfunction after dealing with ex/FW.
In the particular case of ex/FW, I think there was a secondry reason – his strange fixation with ex/OW. Ex/OW was naturally dark brown but constantly dyed her hair blonde. My hair is a midpoint between the two with lots of highlights and lowlights, to the point where I’ve had hair stylists disagree on whether it’s blonde or brown. He, apparently, only liked “proper” blonde and brown – not my “weird in-between” natural hair color. I wouldn’t dye it for him, but I used to hope that if I swam more in the summer it would lighten just a little and make him happy. I’m sure he made a comment about how her straight hair was more appealing than my waves and loose curls, but not often enough for me to really remember, and I wasn’t going to straight my hair every morning anyways. I tried doing that in middle school, and quickly learned my hair never keeps any styling well unless there’s a lot of hair spray involved. And then it felt crunchy and gross and looked awful for days after.
…or maybe it was supposed to make me pick-me dance. But I wasn’t going to dye my hair for him, if that was what he wanting. I’ve never dyed my hair before (except for temporary spray dye – once – during spirit week in grade school) and try my best to avoid hair damage. While I used to envy how long ex/OW’s hair was (as I have always loved having long hair), I now recognize it as extensions. And I’m not going to get extensions, either.
…no shade to the people who dye their hair and/or have extensions. I love seeing all the cool stuff other people do to their hair! It’s just not for me (although, every once and a while, I consider getting brightly colored streaks in the front, just for fun).
Thanks for the uplifting talk…I know now that it wouldn’t have mattered what I looked like. His attention span had already expanded outside of our marriage.
I wonder if it’s just a matter of drifting attention. What I read about the particular syndrome of abusers is that, due to whatever horrors they grew up with, all seem to have some form of reactive attachment disorder where, if they start feeling anything close to “love” (which does not resemble what love is to normal people) for a partner, it quickly boomerangs into suspicion, distrust and eventual all out enmity, after which point they see the partner through a completely distorted lens. But, rather than facing that their hostile feelings and distorted perceptions are entirely internally-generated and not “caused” nor deserved by the target (which would make them the problem. demented and the bad guy), some will “drift,” if only to prove to themselves “See, it’s not me! I can feel positive (if shallow, self gratifying, kibbly) feelings towards other people, just not that ^(&$ing demonic bitch/bastard I’m married to!”
In other words, even the drifting had zero to do with the victim. When I first read about attachment disorder in domestic batterers, I thought of it like people with a fatal allergy to all dietary proteins who have to consume a synthetic amino acid formula to survive, though the synthetic formula is pretty toxic and will probably shorten their lifespans. Abusers are allergic to actual love. It turns to hate in their systems.
Of course the analogy is a little objectifying since it compares chumps to pieces of meat. But you could say we’re grass-fed rib-eye (and witting APs are toxic amino acids synthesized from bacteria, lol).
I’ll gladly be compared to grass-fed meat. It’s the best!
Ah, I used to get organic grass-fed tomahawk for peanuts from a farm share outfit but they went bust during covid and my kids still mourn the loss. I found other sources but nothing quite as amazing.
Mine used to whine about how much parenthood “took a toll on his body.” Ummmm….I grew our five children IN MY BODY, asshole! And he would make fun of my stretched out skin from carrying twins and then lament over how much we ate badly as parents because of donuts at swim team. I can’t even.
Another FW that we’re glad is gone!
No wonder I have PTSD: I woke up early & suddenly because I had a dream about FW!! I hardly ever dream & certainly not about that guy! I was in a living room with him & Schmoopie & one of our kids and he was telling us him & Schmoops will retire soon to a tropical island. He’s not close to retirement age. FW then followed me into a bedroom & was handsy all over me trying to get me to sleep with him. Yuck. 🤢I think I need something strong in my coffee this morning 😫
That reminds me of the only time I dreamt about FW, a couple years after DDay/separation. It wasn’t a sex dream but dream-me knew I had just slept with him. I woke up in a panic, a disgusted panic.
Like they haven’t taken enough already; now they steal our precious sleep!
I had dreams about my FW for several years after my divorce (I was married 30 years.) But after I really started focusing solely on what made me happy, my job, and my hobbies, my dreams changed. I heard a long time ago that the things we dream about are the things we’re anxious about. Once I was focused on what made me happy, my dreams were about how I was attaining my happiness. For example, I’d dream about my retirement accounts and if I was going to be able to survive and travel. Or I’d dream about aspects of my work, or getting to the dental appointment on time. In other words, my anxieties changed as they became relevant to my everyday life. As the FW was no longer part of my everyday life, I was no longer anxious about him, and subsequently, no longer dreaming about him. Some people still have small children with their FWs; I can only imagine that they will continue to have dreams about the FWs until their shared children grow up and are on their own for 2 or 3 years. I’m glad my children were grown and gone by the time I was divorced, so I didn’t have those types of associated anxieties.
Similar story here. I found that the dreams where he appeared were the worst when I was still in family house. Parts of my story is scary, so I had reason for those dreams and discussed them at length with my trauma therapist.
When I moved myself and the college kids to a rental, they were significantly less, even during the divorce process.
Then I bought a house and moved again, and I’ve only had two dreams where he appeared, and in both cases, I walked away from him and didn’t even engage.
Now I dream about trips, my adult kids, my friends, my dog, and my work. All good.
I’ve been having nearly nightly dreams about FW for the last year and it’s unsettling. Last night I dreamt I found several partially wrapped gifts of sensible pajamas for the OW.
FW considered himself generous, but I wonder how many times OW and I were given the same gifts. He always disappeared “shopping” for multiple evenings/weekend days before Christmas.
Any chumps have a remedy for the dreams? I’ve been divorced and no contact for over three years.
My strategy is not to stress about them. Your brain is still processing what you went through, even years later. Maybe you could speed it up a little with some therapy. I used to have nightmares about FW nearly every night. I just accepted them as part of the healing process, which made them less traumatizing. Now I hardly ever have them.
I trained myself to wake up when he appeared. For the longest time, I’d go to bed and tell myself that I could stop any dream I didn’t like. I rehearsed with my therapist stopping a dream that way. She had me close my eye and describe a recent dream with him, and then give myself permissions to end the dream. It took several rehearsals, and then I rehearsed myself at home as well.
Now I literally just walk away from him in my dreams and don’t engage. Then I go on with my dream.
I had serial nightmares of coming home and finding massive, six foot, mutant tiger lilies wrapped in a kind of plastic film that looked exactly like body bags. I think it symbolized FW’s ruse to use stock romantic gestures as a means of gaining entry to my life in order to commit grave harm.
My other comment is waiting moderation likely because I added a link to pop sugar’s “bruja guide to cord-cutting from ex”. YouTube also has videos on how to do this too. I hope this helps. I can’t imagine nightly dreams (nightmares) about a FW!
SBS: I can’t imagine nightly dreams (nightmares) about a FW! My friend used to do cord-cutting ceremonies…I might need her to do one with me now! https://www.popsugar.com/amphtml/smart-living/bruja-guide-to-cord-cutting-from-ex-48950575
It could be a warning that he may be thinking of trying to hoover you again!
I dreamt that FW brought 3 girls into my house whilst I was asleep and they woke me up laughing! I went out and grabbed one of them, demanding to know who they were and what they were doing in my gaff. FW sneering said to me ” What’s up with you? What’s your problem!” and I woke up with a massive adrenaline surge, my heart nearly bursting out of my chest. A couple of weeks later I found evidence of him cheating, and sure enough, there were 3 possible Schmoopies and one definite, who it turns out was only 17, not the 18 he told me she was! Dirty, sleazy animal!
The weird thing was, the one I grabbed hold of was so skinny, I was able to hold her entire torso in one hand, and my hands aren’t large by any means! The other 2 were so insubstantial as to be more like phantoms!
Anyway, this is why I wouldn’t ever totally discount dreams anymore, but when they have that sort of effect on me, I’d keep them in mind as a possible warning, or my subconscious trying to make something conscious, if you see what I mean! Just be aware!
I absolutely agree. I’ve had many dreams in my life that came true in some way, at least partially, so I always pay attention to dreams even if it’s just to be aware of where my head’s at during a particular period. But I’ve dreamed of accidents, deaths, other things that did happen. Your mind is both processing input at the subconscious level constantly and also receiving info from sources you would not necessarily be open to if you were awake.
Yes, I think that’s the case, and I do believe that God can give us messages in our dreams. I also believe the Other Fella, Him Downstairs, can mess with our dreams as well, but some people might think I’m too woo! I do think our own subconscious drives most of our dreams though.
Thanks for the warning! I did a soul/cord cutting ceremony a couple years ago to break the karmic connection with my ex, but I may need a follow- up! That’s freaky how accurate your dream was!!
Good idea! I prayed a prayer to cut soul ties with STBX every day for months, and have followed up on a couple of occasions recently when I’ve had a bit of a wobble and felt I missed the old him IYKWM! I’d say it’s something that would need to be done regularly and for a while, depending on how long the relationship was with the person you want to cut the soul tie with, so I’d say a follow-up’d be the right job!
Generally, I don’t really miss him ( who he used to SEEM to be!) at all anymore, except when I’m very, very tired or if I’m late to change my oestrogen patch, which causes me to feel like I used to just before my period- PMS!! Good ol’ HRT eh?
Yes cord cutting can take a few goes- some are pretty strong.
Very shortly after I began to hear about his lifetime (he was in his 70s at the time) of lies, betrayal and purchasing whores, I left a library book by the door to be returned, and asked him to return it to the library. It is located a mile from our home. They have a drive-thru drop-off. He did that and expected lavish praise. Even in my traumatized state, I yelled at him, “You don’t get a gold medal for returnig a library book after 20 years of f-ing whores.” Of course, he acted hurt. Happy to report I hit the delete button, and karma did her number, too. Apparently he developed bloody urine, and after numerous tests and trips to the doctor and urologist, a scope procedure, CT scan and more, they catheterized him (would have been sort of fun to watch, in a nasty way) and taped all the plasticware to his leg. I am not sure what they may have told him was the actual diagnosis, blood clots and some sort of scarring, I think from decades of STDs and STIs. But I have to admit, delight upon learning he now lives with a catheter. Kind of a buzz kill, huh? Not related to this topic,but just learned, so wanted to share the joy, if you will.
It’s hard to sexy that up. Maybe some tinsel.
Ah, sweet justice. Thanks for sharing that.
This is a 2-for-1, bitch cookie & karma! Glad you got to hear about some karma! My ex will go to the ends of the earth to never show me any of his karma lol. But I have intel that he’s been experiencing some for awhile now bahaha. He’d never connect the dots though that it’s karma.
Friend told me the diagnosis is WDS. Wandering dick syndrome. Laughed so hard I nearly fell off the treadmill at the gym. Thanks to all for the support.
😂😂😂
Oh! Speaking of catheters! The X had an inexperienced nurse that didn’t insert the tube properly and the entire end ruptured. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving patient. My nurse friend said that it was essentially impossible to happen. The X was in mountains of pain and in hindsight, it occurred when he was cheating, so karma all the way.
During the divorce, the X needed an operation for his hemorrhoids. Instead of getting surgery in Thailand (affordable and excellent care), he flew back to the states to get his operation. Imagine spending 25+ hours on a flight with an anal sphincter issue?!? So glad that he is not my problem! (But the kids and I love the mental image!!!)
Back in 2015, just after our divorce, the visitation schedule said I get the kids all day Memorial Day, but I was exhausted and needed a break. I asked if we could stick to the regular non-holiday schedule with him taking them until noon so that I could have the morning off on my day off. He agreed.
He brought this up for *years* after the fact, like he was so magnanimous for giving me an entire half a holiday that one time. Never mind that he canceled visitation repeatedly due to being “sick” or “injured” (and once, I caught him faking). Never mind that he never once took the kids so I could rest when I was sick. On one occasion, he even last-minute ditched his regularly scheduled visitation when I was sick to help a friend move.
No, he gave me half a holiday and spent a few extra hours with his own kids *once*. Throw him a parade.
An old boyfriend once paid for 2 textbooks for me…never mind how I helped cover his rent & hydro bills a few times, plus made him meals all the time! I was so young & stupid! But yup, I kept hearing about “that time I bought you some books”. I guess they do so little for us in return that they easily remember (and can only point out) these “I’m a hero that saved you” brief interludes. 🍪 🤮
I guess this is further proof–as though we needed it!–of how transactional they are.
Yeesh. It’s such a loser mentality they have. Funny you should mention parades. I used to make FW angry when he brought up his bitch cookie by asking him if he wanted a parade. It was amusing to watch him seethe.
Actually attended a large parade with FW. He bitched the entire time and then got mad when I didn’t want to attend a second time.
Mine literally demanded that I “recognize that she was confessing because she felt guilty.” Seriously… This was followed by, “I didn’t have to tell you, you know. I could have just kept it a secret, but I honestly feel ashamed.”
I have no actual proof that anything else was going on, but lying liars lie, and people capable of cheating are just not capable of the level of introspection or self-actualization needed to truly confess due to shame or guilt, even IF they do feel shame or guilt, which I highly doubt.
Oh wow, bitch cookie!! My FW told me not out of shame but because I knew something was up and I “wasn’t going to let it go.” Still wanted points for his “honesty.”
How magnanimous of her! 🏆
FW reminded me many times that despite the cheating, he was a good guy because -get this- he had a job. I understand where that came from, because most of the people in his trailer trash family didn’t work, so he thought it was impressive. I told him that where I came from, having a job is a requirement for adulthood, not an accomplishment. I made sure to say it in a snooty, superior voice, which he hated. I also asked him what he would have to brag about when he retired. Then it was crickets. He would later forget I had shot that down and try again. I would shoot it down again and he would seethe, then forget. He was stubborn about that bitch cookie, because it was all he had. I was just as stubborn about calling bullshit on it. It’s such a relief that it is no no longer neccessary to refute his nonsense.
One of the things he told me after DD was, “ i’ve been helping out more! I do the laundry!” of course, he was doing the laundry to cover up perfume, and etc from his clothes…
“Of course, he was doing the laundry to cover up perfume, and etc from his clothes.” For some reason this particular example–of a FW pretending his efforts with the laundry are due to his desire to contribute, rather than to his need to cover up schmoopie’s smell–is for me one of most telling, striking bitch cookies on this page. It reminds me how polluted the atmosphere would often feel for me after D-Day, when my ex would compound the problem between us by piling lie upon dumb lie. It’s so good to be out of that.
Ah yes! It took about 3 weeks after mine moved out after D-Day to realize that I was only losing about 30 minutes a week to housework that I realized that mine was barely doing anything. It’s almost like these idiots WANT to get caught. The first tip-off to “something’s up” is generally “change in overt behavior.”
This! And I had to complain about Schmoopie’s cheap smelling fabric softener that was leaking from his clothes. So to sabotage me, he left a load of “darks” in the front loader wash machine and everything smelled like mildew after that.
I forgot to mention another one. When I asked FW what sacrifices he had ever made for me, his reply was; “I married you.” I was supposed to be grateful that this loser deigned to wed me. I’m hardly ever speechless, but that one did it. What can you say to that, other than goodbye.
As your name here implies, “Oh for f***’s sake!”
Mine got passive aggressive and said something like that once in anger and talked about “what she sacrificed” for me. Really…still trying to figure that out unless she meant “opportunities to be with other people”, which, incidentally, she did anyway(hence why I am here.)
The irony is that they clearly got so much out of the marriage and we got so little, yet they are claiming it was a sacrifice on their part. They aren’t right in the head.
That really is a clear statement about his attitude towards marriage.
Mine was even clearer, because it was an action, not words. Action as in leaving the bastard.
Mine told me he saw his AP in a store years before he cheated with her the second time and “they were both alone and he didn’t approach her” well wah wah wee wah….good on you for I dunno….doing what you should do? Idiot.
“This one time I could have betrayed you BUT I DIDN’T!” (jazz hands)
“I always held you up on a pedestal, but never did this with COW.” – His way of saying he always thought I was perfect/he liked me more than his affair partner, yet me not living up to that perfection was also one reason he had to cheat on me.
Mine makes SUCH a big show of taking out the trash every time he comes by to pick up or drop the kids. Yes, that certainly makes up for not paying child support most of last year, thanks so much. He also apparently keeps a tally of who is driving kids which ways between our homes.
FW has moved out but for some weird reason still comes by to take out the trash, clean the litter boxes, and wash some dishes. I can’t really fight it because he’s still paying half the mortgage and is still on the deed and mortgage since we don’t have a settlement yet (he’s dragging his feet on the divorce). Since I don’t believe he’s capable of guilt and he told me he’s not going to apologize for “the things” he’s done, I have to assume this is so that he can tell the child mistress and whomever else what a good guy he is for doing these things. Also, so our daughter sees him doing them and continues to think he’s great (he comes by once a week after picking her up from school when I have to go into the office for work).
I mean, this in no way makes up for 7 years of living a secret double life, secretly cashing out all our joint investment accounts, taking the equity from refinancing our house and telling me it was going to pay off debt and using it to pay off his secret credit cards instead, paying a stipend to his sugar baby for 4 years… etc. etc.
Also, we have four cats. He has said all along and continues to say he’s taking two of them. He’s been gone 8 months and hasn’t even talked about taking them. I brought it up once (saying he could leave them as long as he pays 1/2 of their maintenance and vet bills) and he said no, no, he’s going to take them he just has to figure out how that’ll work. He lives with two hos (one of whom I believe was an AP) who I think are cam girls (26; he’s 50) in a luxury apartment. My daughter says it’s very big but empty; they barely have any furniture. I don’t understand why taking the cats is an issue. Whatever. FWs gonna FW.
Oh of course he won’t take the cats–he’d have to take CARE of them. Mine refused to take more than a sofa, a rug, and a TV from our house of 13 years. I sat him down to try to split our furniture, homegoods, and art–he took nothing. I packed up all his things in boxes and put them in the garage — his childhood comics collections, his musical instruments. He stood there in front of witnesses including his father and said he didn’t want it. I paid to put them in storage for several years, figuring my children might want them if nothing else. He’s also dragging his feet on signing any settlement that obligates him to pay child support, and whenever I scare up enough money to have my lawyer bounce it back he puts in ridiculous requests. Most recently it was to split our art collection. NOW. After YEARS. But he doesn’t really remember what art we had so he just asked for the paintings I HAPPEN to have hanging in my living room, which he can see. It’s so tiresome. He can’t come have my art after 4 years and two moves. He had more chances to lay claim to it!
Yeah, when he left he took some clothes and a few items from the kitchen. Recently I found out he took the pizza stone and pizza pan and I told him they have to come back. He “borrowed” the ladder for several months until I told him he had X days to bring it back. Dude, you left me with all your s**t to deal with, most of his clothes, all of his old files, paperwork, personal items — everything he didn’t want to deal with because the new him is a minimalist and doesn’t need crap. Well, now I’m stuck with 21 years of his crap. He’s dragging his feet on the divorce because he wants to cap how much he has to pay in child support and is refusing alimony.
Why are they like this?!
Mine complained to the judge that I “took all of the paperwork,” yet I submitted and supplied all of OUR paperwork because he was too lazy. But! I can’t supply HIS paperwork, and even post decree, he has yet to submit paperwork, including IRS paperwork.
FW had all the paperwork because I trusted him SO MUCH that he handled everything. But he doesn’t want to be told that he’s going to have to pay more than he wants to (or to pay his lawyer) so he just doesn’t respond to things. He wants me to pay for it all even though he makes double my salary.
I wouldn’t let him touch my trash ever again then. I would deliberately empty the bins right as he was driving up. My single male neighbour thought he was doing me this huge heroic favour by telling me my car parking lights were on & he made a huge point of letting me know this AGAIN the next time I saw him. I did thank him for being neighbourly & I told him I would do the same for him, but his disappointed face told me he at least expected baked cookies, a home-cooked meal, or a roll in the hay. Why wasn’t a thank you enough??!!
Almost 39 year of marriage, I find out he was cheating (for the last five years, his admission). He said “I was faithful for 15 years”. This was not my first Dday. He had cheated the first 19 years too. We did the whole counseling thing (Chump Lady wasn’t around yet). And evidently I was supposed to be happy, because that got me a 15 year cheating free marriage! SMH
Mine said, I haven’t cheated on you for the last year. I caught him cheating for years and he “took a break” from cheating. His comment was completely untrue. He never stopped but tried to make it seem like he had and should have been rewarded. What a waste of time he was.
Mine liked to remind me that he “wasn’t cheating the whole time”. Ok Asshole. So you only cheated 20 out of the 30 years. Excuse me! My mistake.
Why is this an excuse! Mine said it was a whole 7.5 years I didn’t cheat on you since the first time. Dang man….couldn’t make it a decade? Would he like to also add “that you know of” seems more accurate.
“I’ve never cheated on you before.”
So, you deserve a pass?
You ever notice with these geniuses that they focus on everything they do right and everything we do wrong? Pretty sure it’s supposed to go the opposite way.
Numerous times after divorce he used to email me that he wasn’t required to split his post retirement stock options with me that were maturing and we received for seven years post retirement.
Oh, thank you, oh my great One!! I was only with you for 38 years and made limitless sacrifices with that job of employment you had. From the generosity of your heart that you very grudgingly share any spoils with me or our three children. We should consider ourselves damn lucky for that in your eyes.
Another line from him when he was sulking pre divorce was that he “ didn’t want to give up half his net worth”. To who? To your family?! To your children?! To the ppl you pledged to love and protect for all time?!Yeah, who wants to look out for those insignificants when me and Schmoopie could have it all?
I do see the real moral dilemma for you there, Bud. Especially tricky to master when you have no conscience whatsoever.
Oh this resonates with me! I signed away my survivor rights to his pension so “we” would receive a greater amount. When he had to offer up my half in the property settlement, I had to laugh.
He neglected his kids for years and they sometimes claim not to even have a dad.
He blamed me for neglecting his kids.
He led a double life and had a secret second family.
He left after having me be a stay at home mom while building his own career.
He mentally, emotionally, and sexually abused me for years.
But but but… he pays for things so it isn’t so bad, right?
Oh wow! Mine had a secret second family as well. It really messed with our kids’ sense of worth, they want nothing to do with him, and he has completely abandoned them. Yet, he can see nothing wrong with his actions and invites our kids to visit his “new crew.”
He told me he did so many chores. He did 2. He washed dishes and mowed the lawn. I made a list of the chores I did and stopped when it hit 2 pages. Not to mention I was the major wage earner. I guess I was supposed to be grateful that his highness deigned to grace me with his awesomeness.
About once every six or seven years, Cheating Bastard Ex would toss out a kibble morsel—something so completely basic and relatively simple a normal person would do without giving it a second thought—and expect to be heaped with praise for weeks and months after. Things like reimbursing me for half the cost of replacing a roof or HVAC system, or washing and cleaning out my vehicle.
Honest to Pete, was I supposed to kiss his feet when he brought home two 5 lb bags of flour during the pandemic??? Or fall to my knees in gratitude when, after decades of not buying me a birthday gift, he bought me a child-sized blouse? Is my bitch cookie that I should have been thankful that he married me at all? That’s pretty much how I know he viewed it.
He was faithful for the first 6 years of our marriage, he told me after DDay.
What an incredible sacrifice that must of been for him! How fortunate for me you were faithful at all, let alone a whole 6 years straight. Let’s call the Guinness Book of Records on that one! ( somehow that statement loses its sparkle when you cheated for the next 32 years)
Oh aren’t we lucky?? I got 9 whole years of faithfulness (he claims) before he cheated for the next 7 on the DL.
These FWs are unbelievable.
I didn’t cheat on the kids, this doesn’t impact them and I resent you implying that it does! Really? Oh, my bad, let’s nominate you for father of the year while I take them to therapy
Ahhh their criminal thinking errors! It’s basic Balance and Restorative Justice-you don’t just victimize one person, you victimize the community. To say nothing of your ability to trust ever again. If only dipshit behavior DID exist in a vacuum.
Exactly but they never think their actions hurt anyone!
“I never needed Cialis with you.” His response after I found the prescription bottle in his truck and confronted him. (How valued and desired I should feel about that I guess?🤷🏼♀️)
That’s an interesting comment to me – why would he cheat with people he DID need Cialis for? So strange.
I don’t have bitch cookie examples, my first cheater just up and left without a word and never spoke to me again, and the second (online dating) just fessed up and threw himself on the mercy of the court with no excuses. It does occur to me though, that they do bitch cookies because….like the rest of the relationship….they provide a thin veneer of cover and THEY DON’T TAKE MUCH EFFORT. Effort is the key to me, they don’t want to put a lot of effort into their relationships. Cunning, scheming, planning, sure – but I think they enjoy a lot of that – but real effort? Not so much. It cuts into their James Bond act.
He wanted me moved out of our home so he could sell it pre-divorce, after he had decided to take off with the five year schmoopie he was then living with. But he was going to make it really appealing for me.
“I’ll help you find an apartment and we can get one with a bird feeder in the yard.”
That would make anyone on this earth fly to their closet for the suitcase and start packing!
( that’s enough from me, I’ll let other ppl share their bitch cookies now, lol)
“I will bring my defense and show technical evidence, with proofs, to you and your friends and prove my innocence!”
He never did. Because he was lying.
My FW whined every time he paid a bill. Because I didn’t contribute. And that I didn’t appreciate it. I’d have been happy to “contribute”. But all of my income was going towards our auto, health, personal property insurance. Oh, and the home furnishings and decor. His clothing. My clothing. Vacations. Housekeeper. All holiday gifts (for his family, friends and mine). The down payment and closing costs for our home. All of the upgrades to said home.
After I left his sorry ass, I couldn’t believe how much $$$ I had extra every month.
Give the man a bitch cookie for making the mortgage payment! Well done, sir! What a guy!
Bahahaha! Mine would flick his speeding tickets at me and say, “I need you to pay that.” I would mentally calculate the increase in our auto insurance. During separation, when I kicked him off my plan, he was shocked at how expensive his coverage was! I kept telling him, your insurance is expensive! You are costing me a fortune! Bitch cookie for finally paying his own bills!!!
Having to finally pay your own insurance… My ex-FW found this out the hard way too. I told her it was her Asshole Tax.
Let’s see…
“I’m focusing on my master’s degree!”(gets put on academic probation-I actually had to help her build a spreadsheet to prove to herself that she was not actually getting expelled.)
“I pay my share of the bills!”(most are late and in my name; proceeds to spend an equal amount of money on my credit card on takeout for “us” that I cannot eat)
“I took care of dinner!”(see the above statement about using my credit card)
“I spend enough time with you”(stands me up for date night routinely to do other things with no time to reschedule, else does the other things with schmoopie instead)
“I did the laundry”(which I still had to change over, collect, sort, fold, and pay for-she was satisfied that overturning a laundry bag into a machine, dropping in pucks, and pressing a button constituted the full chore. If she did do everything by herself she never sorted or folded anything and usually left it in piles or put it some place no human would put clean clothing-I found clothes that had been missing for years after she moved out. Also-not so much a bitch cookie, but she stole our hamper for her secret new apartment prior to D-Day claiming that it was broken-unless it was physically ran over by a truck there was no way it was broken, and even then, I think we can all agree that hampers should probably never in front of a truck.)
My naive, lovestruck self thought I was investing in our future. My chumped self sees that I was taken pretty significant advantage of.
In my field, we value “I” statements. The more and more I think about it, the more any statement that began with “I” was the indicator that some half truth was about to come spilling out.
“I have no idea why FWs arm themselves with such weak defenses. Maybe bitch cookie rewards are a kind of gaslighting”
Not to untangle the skein, but I think some of these things are a justification they make to themselves to make the cheating ok. Thinking of the “it’s only a couple hours a week” thing. They say it enough times in their own heads that they start to believe it, so don’t think twice about how ridiculous it is to demand praise/credit. Or worse, they’ve devalued the Chump so much that they literally believe their minimal effort is all we deserve.
100% this. FW honestly seems to think that him f’ing around with someone young enough to be his daughter, extorting joint finances to pay her stipend, taking her on secret trips, calling out from work to take long weekend trips with her, putting her up in hotels within a mile of our home for 3-4 day stretches so he could visit whenever he wanted are all acceptable because he was there for the big stuff. He didn’t miss date nights or birthdays. He was there on Christmas (for 1/2 a day, usually).
He was emotionally gone long before I knew about the cheating and I was turning myself inside out to try to fix things. I didn’t know what was wrong and he would claim depression and refuse to talk about it. But after DDay he couldn’t stop talking about how great he was for still driving our daughter to/from school twice a week and picking up dinner or taking out the trash while living a double life. He had always done the bare minimum and I made excuse after excuse because of his depression. And he thought this was a fair exchange for being ‘such a good husband.’
AFTER D day when I found out he had sex with a coworker from the cafeteria who made his morning egg so perfect. After HR was investing his dalliance using a hospital room with an empty bed. After my tears and puking.
.After I asked him to leave for 2 weeks and find a therapist. After I secretly lawyered up before he got home again..He texted me from Extended
Stay America and said ” Hey Chump, my therapist said my sex problem is currently cured After 4 sessions,. Now it’s your turn since you saying NO to what I demanded drove me to have sex at work. Hey!!+ I could have a Woman EVERY NIGHT coming to my hotel room, but I choose our marriage and YOU!
Filed and changed the locks. ( he had an armory)Cheater was served at the hotel.
Wait! One more! After D day( 15 days later I filed) I went for STD testing and called cheater and wailed on the phone.. I’ve just been up in stirrups and I’m so humiliated! How could you do this to us!!! Cheater said, I’m coming right now from work to hug you!!!! I’m leaving now! But really, my doctor tested me and I’m negative so it wasn’t me!! You know you always get those things too!!( I told him to stay away from me and just cried my eyes out in the parking lot of my gyns office.
It is indeed humiliating to have to tell your gyno you need to be tested fot STDs because your husband cheated. Been there, sis. ❤
I can’t imagine how he could think that statement would be such an honor to you!
I’m not sure this counts as a bitch cookie because the favour wasn’t even his to give. FW is a retired airline employee and as such we could travel for a very nominal fee and it allowed me to visit my family more often. My parents would always re-imburse me for my expenses. FW thought that my parents should thank him for the benefit provided by his employer. What can I say?!
I just remembered another one! After Dday #1 (why I didn’t leave then I’ll never understand) my GP insisted I be tested for STDs. I came home crying and he very magnanimously told me I needn’t have bothered because he was tested every six months at work. Wow, thanks. Seems to me the company doc colluded – supplying the Viagra samples and the condoms. If only I’d known….
Omg Janie, the airline gave regular free STD checks? Like as a matter of course? Ew.
Yeah, pilots older than forty are required to have a medical every six months and I guess FW shared enough of his history with the MD that she thought it wise to test for STDs too. Then she gave him the Viagra and the condoms. Wish I’d known.
I am barreling towards 80 years of age.at a dizzying pace, and only now do I perhaps have a more or less complete accounting of my wife’s compendium of affairs and extra- marital sexual high jinks, brought about by the realization on her part that the Ancestry kit I was about to mail to our eldest son for Christmas would reveal that he is not my biological child. Although I had Iong suspected that back 54 years ago my wife, A nurse at a major teaching hospital had been cheating on me, in that analog pre cellphone, pre social media era. Who knew that hospitals were such a hotbed of promiscuity? But for every Resident and Intern doctor with a sense of entitlement who lusted after nurses, there were.an equal number of very willing and compliant single and married nurses, my wife being one of the latter. That preface aside, I have heard A litany of.absurd excused and attempts at justification and rationalization. The only that apparently was true,.wss that everybody in ER and X-Ray were boinking somebody, but the one.that frosted my nut was ” I was going to tell you anyway!”..Well darling you had 54 years, which was followed by” You must admit he was a.great child, and over achieving career husband and.father to your grndkinds”..Uh no not my grandkids..the poisonous pill of her adultery has now impacted so many lives, starting with our children who are devastated. I’m only thankful my parents are no longer living and would be so saddened too.
I am sorry you went through that hell. What a disgusting person she is.
This is abominable. I’m so sorry, Waited.
I am so sorry. Your ex is a truly evil person, and I mean that literally. I believe women who practice paternity fraud should be put in jail. I don’t care how old she is (I don’t think age should be used as a factor to protect people from the consequences of crime.) It’s one of the rottenest things a person can do to someone. I do hope you and your son, as I’m sure you do think of him that way, have a good relationship despite this knowledge. Your case once again reminds me that we need to have punishment for adultery in our divorce laws and that children should automatically be DNA tested at birth. This should become routine. Men should not be robbed of their chance to preserve their genetic heritage and be forced to raise someone else’s child in a web of lies. It’s probably better that it came out at this point then your son finding out on his own perhaps after your passing, and hers, that he might never know who his biological father was and what the genetic history is on that side.
“we need to have punishment for adultery in our divorce laws”
I AGREE, actual punishment. Just this morning I heard a story about a “heart balm tort” lawsuit in NC. The Chump was awarded a huge sum but the FW OM immediately filed for bankruptcy and the Chump didn’t see a penny. That’s fraud and theft. Jail, immediately. Of course that didn’t happen.
It was on NPR Morning Edition of anyone wants to know about it.
I am so sorry this happened to you and your family.
This is beyond reprehensible. You deserved better! I hope you will find peace in being rid of that excuse for a human being.
Oh! Where do I start? My FW wants praise every time he changes the toilet paper, every time he cleans the kitchen (even though most of the time I have to nag and force him) he wants praise for every tiny thing he does. Finally, I’d had enough and said (this was during the awful pick me phase) “you know what? I did this stuff for 27 years without being asked and without being told to, and all I got for my hard work was being stabbed in the back by your infidelity/betrayal!” His response was, “I never asked you to do that or expected anything from you, it was your CHOICE to do that.” Maddening! Hair pulling, maddening! I would ask everyone if they could believe this, but I bet you all do, because you probably got similar comments and behavior from your FW’s! Trust that they suck! (We can all hear Tracy in our head saying that, right?). But in the end, I just told him from that moment on, I would no longer be thanking him. He is expected to do that and contribute to the household just like I was, and he never once thanked me, so this is just reciprocity. Fast forward to years later, the best part is when you get to meh, and divorce them! Then you can finally BREATHE!
Oh my God as if we all had a CHOICE to use toilet paper!! I would occasionally ask him to pick up TP if he was going out
sleeping around on me every weekendshopping, and he’d come home with ONE roll of TP (for a 4 BR, 4 bath house) because he “wasn’t sure what kind I wanted.”ONE bog roll?! I don’t think you can but single bog rolls so I reckon he must’ve robbed it from somewhere, like a public toilet or even the OW’s house!!!
That’s 100% weaponized incompetence.
When he dropped me off, I politely asked him where he wanted to pick me up — in this exact spot, or on the other side of the street so he wouldn’t have to cross traffic on the busy street. He blew up at me, face within inches of mine, SCREAMING at me with his face purple, the veins in his forehead bulging and spit flying everywhere “Just be grateful I’m picking you up.” And he shoved me out of the front seat and drove off in MY car. Later, when talking about that incident, he said “At least I never hit you.”
This man never actually hit me. But he routinely screamed at me, engaged in rage driving with me in the car, and was actually plotting a fatal “accident” for me. He never hit me — Bitch Cookie!
Yes, it’s so good you’re away from that horror now.
😱
Ruby, I’m so glad you’re safe. What a monster.
I can just hear him now when we get to court.
SHE left first – yeah, to work overseas TEMPORARILY and spend time with my parents and adult kids- WHICH YOU KNEW ABOUT.
I was left alllll alone to look after the house and pets- * cue violins*
I supported her and paid for everything AND took her on holidays!!!- yeah, because you kept taking my cars after smashing your own- as we live rural, I couldn’t exactly walk to work. The holidays were all organised by you- because you wanted to control everything and never asked me.
Not so much a holiday as it was you ignoring me in another location as I said to you.
I hope the judge went to Costco for the caterer’s package of cookies he’s going to need.
Paraphrasing here, but “No matter what you could say about me, I’ll still always hate your ex!”
My ex, who he had never met.
My ex, who I had mutually broken up with after our relationship had straggled along for far too long.
My ex, who despite his immaturity, was still far better than ex/FW.
I don’t know what he was expecting each time he said this. There were other little bitch cookie things too, but this one stands out. Said ex and I didn’t have the healthiest of relationships, with both of us being immature. But we tried, we had some good times together, and I bear no ill will against him. I think ex/FW focusing his anger on said ex made it easier to cope with his own terrible treatment of me.
How many of us were given TERRIBLE gifts and then punished for not being grateful? I talk about how I kept making my needs smaller and smaller and still being disappointed. As an example, my ex loved German’s chocolate cake so for his birthday I made him one. I don’t like chocolate or coconut, but it’s what he wanted. I knew for mine he wouldn’t bake a cake, but I asked him to buy vanilla with lemon filling. He came home with chocolate marble – and lemon filling – because marble is “better” than vanilla. The cake was gross and he was mad I wouldn’t eat it. I knew my ex wouldn’t throw me a party, so I planned and paid for a vacation to a Mexican resort. He was a pill the whole time, spoiling the whole trip, and didn’t even wish me a happy birthday. For Christmas he bought me a vacuum cleaner. I had a vacuum cleaner.
It’s not about money, either, If you’re stopping for donuts, bring me one. If you’re making tea, ask if I want one, too. One of my friends was upset her guy kept spending hundreds of dollars on designer handbags when she was a books, crafts, and pajamas kind of gal. Gifts are about showing people that they are seen and valued, that their happiness matters. The gifts that cheaters buy us (if any) don’t reflect us, our interests, and what would make us happy – it’s all about the version of us they want us to be and to check off a chore with minimal effort.
All that is to say, I see being bad at gifts as a sign of selfishness and a lack of empathy now, a huge red flag. If they claim their only love language is physical touch they get booted from the game. 🚩🚩🚩🚩
RIGHT?
Mine had the tendency in all things, including gift giving, to take what was asked for and kind of twist it into something else. And yes, occasionally (in the good times) it would bend super thoughtful in an unexpected way. Generally though it tended to either trend low effort or otherwise “why did you even bother asking?” but yes, I could not boo-boo face to(or be anything but bright and chipper to something poorly thought out/super low effort).
At times she would even trigger huge fights before gift giving holidays to prevent even the concept of needing to be that thoughtful at bay(true to form-one way or another D-Day was planned for very close before my birthday).
I’m big on gifts and courtesy, too. I don’t expect someone to read my mind, but I give potential partners the heads up. Mine would buy me things only as part of a cycle my sibling noticed later on with ice cream. And any time he did buy me something major, he expected all the bitch cookies there ever ever was. I figured it was just because I was bad at finances, so obviously I shouldn’t expect gifts from him, since he was doing so much for me! But I still gave him gifts, tried to make sure we had food he liked, and did my best to pay my half of the bills. He would only clean as a part of the “ice cream cycle” so everything housekeeping fell to me, and I was bad at keeping up with all of it (he was v messy). I excused a lot at the time because of how he held finances over my head…
“It’s only ever been you, until now.”
Gee, um, thanks for not being a serial cheater before you actually became one, I guess?
You know, I know we never had formal training in long term relationships, but I must have missed the day where we found out we were supposed to be giving partial credit where it concerns “soul destroying trauma”.
“I almost bought you flowers today for no reason!” Followed by a genuine look of pride.
I’m chuckling out loud! This is a fabulous bitch cookie. Very nice.
This is it. This one is the most pathetic. The bitchiest cookie.
🤦🏾♀️
When he got angry with me, instead of showing emotion, he would throw my favourite things out and then “help” me look for them, sometimes for several months. He threw out some important things. Many many items. He even threw out my university diploma.
He would also hide my car keys every day and then “help” me find them while making remarks about how absent-minded I was. Funny how I stopped losing my keys after I changed the locks.
I’m not sure if this counts.
Whoooo! That’s classic gaslighting! What a snake!!!
Hiding or throwing out your stuff and telling you that you lost it is creepy, classic Charles Boyer level gaslighting. Wow, that is sick.
Mine did something similar. He would claim that he couldn’t find something of his, and then go rooting through all of the kids and my stuff. I would always tell him, go through your stuff, not ours! He would tell me, sometimes you put stuff away in the wrong spot. In hind sight, he was checking up on me to see if he could discover MY infidelity (which didn’t exist). He always pawned it off with some nonsense about how he was being helpful to clear out the things “we” didn’t need in the house and that I was so ungrateful for his “assistance.”
I am so sorry, kokichi.
It is best that these individuals are in the rear-view mirror, but also a journey to get over (not them), the experience.
These individuals are in the minority.
That’s psychological abuse.
Absolutely. Stereotypical gaslighting. I’m so sorry, FT, that’s awful. And horrifying.
Well, since you asked …
“I never slept with anyone else inside the house.”
Really? Like that makes all the difference? Were you out on the patio furniture?
I’m glad to know there’s a line he simply would not cross, but in fact it was another lie. It wasn’t even a convincing lie. It’s like he couldn’t even be bothered coming up with a plausible lie!
I remember telling my best mate that my STBXH “couldn’t even be bothered to concoct a PLAUSIBLE lie!” over one of the many ridiculous fibs he’d been telling me! I think I was more vexed over having my intelligence insulted than being lied to at the time! I mean to say, at least put some bloody effort into your porkies, would you!!!
“Were you out on the patio furniture?” 😄
FW after DDay whined that I wasn’t thankful for him.
To this day I wish I asked him “thankful for WHAT exactly?” just so I could give him his bitch cookie.
He wasn’t by far the worst FW in these comments, but he wasn’t winning any awards as a husband or father either.
Yeah, I cheated on you but at least I didn’t Drew Peterson you. Meaning, yeah I cheated on you but at least I didn’t murder you. Yeah, bitch cookie.
What??? Bloody Hell!!!
Mine was really put out that he had to have a job. I was so confused by that because if he hadn’t married me, he would have never worked? How does that work? He had a deadbeat father who abandoned him as a child and his mother was a disgusting welfare queen. He grew up poor. That was one of the things I thought we bonded over. I grew up poor with not great parents too and I thought we both wanted better.
But then I realized, he would have been like his mother. She had three children by three different men, two only a year apart. She had been married to three different men but only one of her children’s father. She scammed every form of financial assistance known to man. We raised her youngest child through high school and years later I found out she was receiving multiple forms of assistance for him AND child support. We never saw a dime and we sure as fuck were not rich. When she needed money, she cooked up a scam or laid down on her back and spread her legs.
He would have been the same exact way. I ruined that for him. He wanted to be a welfare leech who pulled romance scams on people. So disgusting. I was always grossed out by his mother, whom he claimed to also be disgusted by, but he was exactly like her. It’s no wonder she blamed me for “stealing” her son from her. They probably got along great until he had to pretend to be a responsible person to keep me. So gross.
FW: “but I bought you flowers on Valentine’s Day! I try so hard, you will never trust me nothing is good enough for you”
ME: (in retrospect) fuck you you fucking fuck.
“If you knew her, you would like her.” Eww, she may work out a lot and preach about health but then she fucks random people for money. Not healthy at all. No thanks, not my type of friend.
“But I made all these changes for you!” Yet he still looks at porn, which is the gateway to only fans then strippers then escorts. The big change would be not doing any of that shit and having a real relationship.