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Leave a cheater, gain a life!

You Might Be a Chump If…

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Well, yesterday we explored how you can be completely blindsided by cheating. I mean, I had no idea. It never occurred to me to ask if he had a 20-year long affair, a kid, dodgy financials, or P.O. boxes. Whoddathunkit, right?

But like all chumps, in retrospect I could kick myself for being such a trusting chump.

So today, it’s time again to ask — in the vein of comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s You Might Be a Redneck If … —  how you might be a chump. What are the signs? (See the clip for inspiration. If you’re a redneck chump — double bonus!)

Ever wonder what quirks are particular to chumps?

You might be a chump (YMBAC) if … instead of a happy marriage you have 80 perfectly tended rose bushes.

YMBAC if… you’ve bought the entire infidelity oeuvre on Amazon and underlined passages for your cheater, only to find them unread.

YMBAC if… you actually sort of believed he was sleeping in his car in Vermont in January.

YMBAC if… you received a tie-dyed license plate cover for Christmas… and that was the best present.

If your cheater has three cars, three motorcycles, four kayaks, and more boxes coming from eBay each day…. and his gift to you is a tie-dyed license plate cover? YMBAC.

If your children don’t really look anything like you… YMBAC.

YMBAC if… you book all your marriage counseling sessions… and pay for them.

Your turn chumps! I’m sure you’ve got material.

Comments

  1. YMBAC if you assumed the thousands of texts and hours of phone conversations into the late night and early morning was “just” about an emotional affair.

    YMBAC if you bought the “need” to go drinking and clubbing multiple nights a week alone or with “the girls.”

    YMBAC if doubted your eyes and intuition even with hard evidence of an affair in the furry of a cheater at the height of gaslighting you.

      • YMBAC if you couldn’t understand why your youth-pastor husband WOULDN’T go to see “Fireproof” with you. I still have not seen it and I don’t think I can.

        • Don’t bother, it sucks. Wife cheats because husband is messed up, looking at porn, I think. He is the bad guy, and must win his cheating wife back. Message: cheating is justified.

      • DM,
        The OW “made” my ExH watch that movie Fireproof so that he could find his way back. ExH said “See what a great person OW is!” ugh

      • My ex gave Fireproof as the reason he decided we should reconcile. He said he watched it and didn’t want to be like the guy in the movie. Too bad that was total bullshit and there was nothing sincere about his reconciliation attempt. Turned out it was just a way to try and get out of paying support. I’m pretty sure he was still cheating during the eight months of bogus reconciliation as well. He’s a hardcore Jesus cheater.

        • I watched that movie twice during my break-up and even asked WAW to watch it and was thankfully met with indifference. The second time I saw it on I was actually going to text her and let her know…I am very glad I didn’t. That movie set me back a while.

          • I was encouraged to watch it. I’m so glad I didn’t. I admit I had a crush on Kirk Cameron in high school but that wasn’t enough to watch it. LOL! I had plenty of other things that set me back.

          • I actually asked a line from that movie to WAW. — “Do you think I am a good man?” I wasn’t expecting the answer I got. She said “Yes, but it doesn’t matter.” That will stick with me a while. I hate that movie.

            • YMBAC if you watched that movie while your husband hid behind his laptop and you think lalala that could never happen to me. LOL the movie sucked…but how odd my STBb. ashed all the indiscretions in that movie so admittedly! Now I know he was a single site and porn trolling extraordinaire WTH – crazy days!

        • ***Spoiler Alert: A movie that made its rounds here in the US among charismatic/evangelical/fundamental Christian circles about a guy addicted to porn who almost loses his wife. She is cheating on him with a married doctor. He does the “Love Dare” which is the nice way of saying the “Pick Me Dance” buys her parents some needed medical supplies then she finds out comes back to him. They do a marriage rededication. Many naive Christians think this is the way to solve marriage issues. Plus, the movie does little to actually address the affair. In my opinion, it is trash.

          • I have had several religious types try to hoist this movie on me. I can’t stand Kirk Cameron.. can’t stand him. I would reconcile if my STBX had any sense of decency, but alas, he keeps lying and talking to the whore. No amount of medical supplies is going to do the trick.

          • My ex said it was the married doctor who cheats with the wife that reminded him of himself.

            • Wow, I was so sure that I could fix my marriage by doing the Love Dare! I went too three bookstores looking for the little brown book. I watched the movie…twice. I was so sure this was my saving grace…. Its just like everyone says, a load of crap!

          • Sounds like the movie makes a justification for cheating.

            And for putting the burden on the non-cheater to “win” back the cheater.

            What a crock of crap.

            What I find particularly REVOLTING is the sanctimony this crap piece of fiction seems to lend to smug ignorant types who use it as justification for counseling chumps. It is further evidence that some people really are quite stupid.

          • WTF is it with married doctors? That was my ex’s first affair (that I know about). Maybe she saw the movie?

            • Doctors are a cheating group (not all of course) and many women like their status and paycheck (although both are falling) They (many of them anyway) have big egos that need filling! I am a nurse. For many years people said why didn’t you marry a doctor? That is why & then it happened anyway!

      • Oh no, Divorce Minister!!! I did the 40 day dare, too 🙁
        Another spoiler alert; IT DIDN’T WORK!

        • I didn’t do the dare. But did watch the movie. My ex LOVED the movie. I remember her telling me that she loved how Caleb never confronted his wife for cheating but just the doctor. That should have told me everything I needed to know about her extra-curriculars…alas, it took a few more months before that became painfully obvious.

      • OMG Triple cringe!! I watched that movie and did the dare too. What a waste of time.

      • My now ex actually bought me the book for Christmas even though he was 2 years into his second affair with a second ho-worker. I threw the book into a fire pit after I found it. YMBAC if….

      • Watched the movie with ExH. Waste of time. He read the book and underlined all the “to do’s” and the love types. Well when I left….the book got shredded and tossed onto the bed.

        • Me.

          ME Me ME ME ME.

          That sounds like your ex.

          Oh, but I’m SURE he asked YOU how HE could be a better husband, right?

          WHAaaaAAaAT? He didn’t???

          I’m SHOCKED NOT shocked.

      • Quadruple Cringe.!! And I had ever other darn book frm the Familylife website. I read every article on that site on marriage all to no avail. Now they have some good info. Just doesn’t apply to a sociopath

    • That was the asshole the first 7 yrs of marriage, clubbing almost every week while I was sahm. I was young and naive and did not ferociously complain about this. On one argument he explained he goes to the clubs not to pick up girls but he just liked the atmosphere ( yup the sweet atmosphere of abundant free pussy on heels) Fast forward 7yrs I reminded him of this response and he looks at me blankly. Asshole apparently forgot he told me this.

  2. He suddenly bought a heap of new clothes and underwear, his phone developed connection problems when he was away on business, I never received the necklace I found a receipt for….
    Saw the clues but did not connect the dots.

    • He gave me a handcuff charm ONLY, without a chain for my 40th birthday. That was it!!!! I learned later he gave a matching charm to OW with a chain and God only knows what else. He was in law enforcement. After that d-day I hated every gift he ever gave me. He was so thoughtful to his whores. I never bought a chain for that ridiculous charm, I think I LOST it. A-hole STBXh

      • Wait–

        He got YOU, for YOUR birthday, a reminder of HIS occupation.

        “Here, honey. I’m fabulous. I’m a cop. And for your special day, here’s a special reminder to put around your neck or wrist (whatever you purchase because I’m too preoccupied) of how fabulous I am. Happy Birthday, which is really about me, if you think about it.”

    • OMG! U too? I found a coach purse and a tiffany necklace receipt. Never got em!! They are all the same

        • You got a birthday present? Better than Cheater #2. Don’t even get me started on anniversaries……GRRRRR!!!

          • Her Blondness–I’ve been thinking about you? How are you doing with Cheater #2? (and how are you yourself?)

  3. You actually allowed your cheater to make you believe you were crazy, paranoid, disoriented, too anxious, too high strung, too weird, too negative, not sexy enough, don’t dress right, don’t cook the right meals, are not a good parent, don’t push the tube of toothpaste right, don’t buy the right salad mix, don’t wear high heels.. etc etc etc.

    For a while, you really did the introspective work of trying to fix yourself and pretzel to keep your chump. Because you know you have faults and you took the criticism to heart.

    If you did these things, YMBAC but alas, you are definitely a quality human being.

    • >< Been there too… I guess luckily I've gone in to my next relationship very aware of how helpful all the introspective work was now that I'm in a healthy relationship!

      • I was told, when he started hanging out with 20 something single dope smoking losers (he is 41, paunchy, grouchy and recently a braggart) who I feared were a bad influence that “I am the alpha dog. They don’t control me. You don’t control me. NO ONE CONTROLS ME.” Found out he is cheating. I’m new to the chump arena and am still reeling. Apparently I have 4 kids. Not 3. One teenager was hard enough. Ugh.

    • Lol, you don’t buy the right salad mix, really? That is certainly grounds for an affair!

      • I left my coffee mugs in the sink, unwashed. I left pens in the pockets of my apron that went into the washing machine. I allowed him to treat me like ass.

        • I enjoyed the crab cakes HE made on Thanksgiving – after dday he said to me, “You think I like crab cakes on Thanksgiving?” WTF? I was also a snob & had a job not a career. Go ahead f the OWhore & life will be sooo much better than life with me.

          • hurt1, I still think that crab cakes story is one of the most crazy-assed things I’ve read on this blog. Who turns a Thanksgiving menu into a reason for cheating? Especially since it was his menu choice? gah

            You know what, though, this is basically a metaphor for what all our cheaters do. They make choices to suit themselves, then turn around and blame us as if we were the ones who did it.

            • Even though I was in shock as he had just revealed his cheating a few minutes before, I was able muster a laugh & said, “you have to be kidding.” He answer was to spew all the crap cheaters use to justify their exit.

        • I kept the refrigerator and pantry too full of food.

          I also spoiled the dogs so much that they whined at us to play with them when we tried to watch TV. My bad.

          • Tempest, how could you? No wonder he had to cheat, what with you keeping food in the house! 😉

            • Well, GladIt’sOver, sometimes a Tupperware container would fall out when he opened the refrigerator. You can imagine how irritating that must have been, and caused him to want to have his whatzit stroked by a 20-something (just to relieve the stress). I was such a bad wife.

              • If only they would be honest.

                “I HAD to cheat, because you are not strange puss to me, and you don’t revolve around me and tell me all the time how fabulous I am. And even if you could transform yourself into several different women who are all designed to please me, you still wouldn’t do it right. Plus, you’re not the boss of me, and I like to wander. Could you hurry up with my laundry?”

              • Yeah, and while you are at it get those crap streaks out of my underwear woman! You know my side piece is turned off by that, get on it!

              • Snort. I made the greivous mistake of having cotton balls in the house (they frightened him); buying an onion once in 10 years (no onions ever); and asking him to touch a wet towel (wet towels…wet laundry of any type was scary) once. How dare I.

                Someday, someone will chase him in his nightmares wielding wet towels, cotton balls, and waving an onion. Giggle.

          • I didn’t do enough of his laundry when the kids were little, I don’t like sailboats and I dress too conservatively (says my Jesus cheater.) I think they actually believe this crap.

            • Mine accused me of not wearing high heels, even though I have foot issues. No man is going to tell me how to dress. F him.

              • Mine said the same thing about high heels. When I refused to wear them he said I just didn’t make him a priority. Then that was his favorite line and that is what he is still telling everyone. I didn’t tell him what to wear. Pig.

              • The thing is, though. you cannot win with these people. Even if your whole closet were full of Louboutins and Manolo Blahniks, they’d still find a reason that you were falling short of the mark and they needed to cheat.

              • Oh sure. Then it would be complaints how we dressed too slutty or something. Blah blah blah blah. Ultimately their words mean nothing. It’s just painful at the time.

        • I took the produce sticker off of an apple once and stuck it on the counter absentmindedly (instead of immediately putting it in the trash). And I saved plastic bags so that I could take them to Walmart to recycle (it made the broom closet too full he said). And left my shoes by the door when I got home, instead of immediately walking upstairs to put them in the closet.

          All of this ^^^^^^ = me being a “hoarder”. This is what he told everyone in his family and his friends.

          • Keelog–you and I could start a new show, how Hoarder Chumps drove their Cheater to Fuck Around (on the Lifetime channel). I didn’t put my shoes away immediately either [ ;: O], and (even though our downstairs always looked like a home decorating magazine spread) the cupboards were too full of food & different sets of dishes (we entertained a lot).

            Our poor long-suffering spouses. You can see how the horrors of living with us guaranteed they would need the solace of another woman….off to flagellate myself for my bad habits…..

          • YMBAC if you actually wondered how you could be the reason he had to cheat on you, the reason he KEPT cheating on you, and then the reason he had to give the other piece of ass up! I was actually responsible for all this without even knowing he was doing it! Talk about the magical powers I have! I make people do all kinds of things without even trying! And, I was willing to try to figure this mindfuckery out!!

    • Precisely my story too! Wasn’t wrong salad mix though – I didn’t use the right size pot to steam green beans in.

      • Apparently when I cook, there are cooking smells in the house. This is wrong, and I’m trying to kill him. Who knew that cooking a simple pasta sauce with garlic had so much lethality?

        • “Apparently when I cook, there are cooking smells in the house. This is wrong, and I’m trying to kill him.”….

          KB….. I laughed so hard thought I was going to pass out!

        • Thats cuz he’s an emotional vampire, and garlic = death for him, you see. 😀
          Bring on more garlic!

        • Oh holy of NO-HE-DID-NOT say that! Laughed so hard I fell right off the chair. That. Is. Classic.

        • I had too many different bottle of shampoo in the shower!!! Gasp! And when I ate chips, they made crunching noises. Don’t know how he tolerated me. 🙂

      • Jabber I bet that pot would have been the perfect sise for belting him over the head with!

      • Who the fuck cares what size pot you cook beans in? If they get cooked, they get cooked.
        The stupidity of these cheaters never ceases to astound me.

      • Yes, my new name for X is “He-who-cannot-be-pleased.”

        (any other Rumpole of the Bailey fans out there? he called his wife “She-who-must-be-obeyed”)

        • I loved Rumpole anyway, though!!! His nickname for his wife was so appropriate I really couldn’t fault him for having such a sense of humor about it. At least Rumpole was smart enough not to say things like that to her face!

          • I refer to asswipe as “he who must not be named” ala Voldemort in Harry Potter.

      • Magicrain that is it really isn’t it? If I listed all the YMBAC ifs I’d be here for weeks. So I’ll take yours and will only add:

        YMBAC if you genuinely forgot, forgave, swept aside all the misdemeanours, insults, lies and could not see the fluorescent flashing alarm screaming signs even though you saw them. And then after all that you believed the non existent remorse was real. Only to suffer more of the same shit in different shades and aromas before yep more forgiving, forgetting, sweeping… And so on and so on and so on and…

  4. I had beautiful gardens and roses bushes. The inside was painted multiple times. It was picture perfect! How funny! A friend commented that it was all filling the gap…. Uh huh!

    • Same here. Once I moved out, my ex tended to the garden and took all the credit for it.

    • I really thought I was going to die during the hellacious first months after Dday. Good Lord, what was I thinking?

      • Me too. But with time, pharmaceuticals & an excellent IC, I finally accepted the reality that he was a cheater, a liar & a spreader of an STD. I do get teary-eyed when I think of all the years that were loving & fun.

        • Hurt1, which pharmaceuticals. Thinking about going back on Lexapro, but open to suggestion.

          The real problem is, I don’t think anything would be needed if I was in a place of financial and emotional support freedom. But my family other than my son consists of a bunch of narcissist assholes who love to scapegoat. I allowed my finances to be intertwined with his and we weren’t married. I hate to dump my problems on friends, at least at not until I’m stronger. So which meds work? I think I am going to try Lexapro again, just waiting on insurance.

            • Started with Lexapro, needed more support through Christmas and was put on Paxil…I am even a better me!

          • Jen,

            Lexapro & Wellbutin saved me. Not to be all woe is me, but my parents are deceased & my brother lives overseas with his family.I moved to this area 26 years ago because of ex’s job. He’s gone & so is my financial security (until I’m 59 !/2 years old – 10 years way). Oh, how I wish I had had family to have helped me through this.

            • Visiting my only family now, my sister. Today I went to the cemetery and sat on my dad’s headstone & cried & cried. He was so wise, and I so miss his counsel. If anyone had the magic words, it would’ve been him.

            • The lack of financial security is the thing that keeps me pissed off at times. Everything ‘we’ worked for is gone. He has the money and I’m struggling like hell. It’s not as bad as it was but I definitely do not feel secure. Wish I was the kind of woman to go for a sugar daddy (or young enough to do it!).

              • Mehphista’s momma had the same thing happen, too. Somehow she got there, and is now in comfortable retirement. I think it was just plain grit, she had no choice. But she got her degree, worked her way up through her field, all after age 45. She’s awesome.

                I get those days, at which point, I tell myself to shut up, and trust the magic. I think one of the post-chumpery headfucks after finding out you only control you is that the universe really does have the first move sometimes. Living hand to mouth is not what I had in mind, at all, nor am I working in my original field. Scary, but kind of scary good.

                I won’t get what I planned, because much of it was connected to what I THOUGHT I had as opposed to what was, which was toxic. What I WILL get, though, is something new. Better. Meanwhile, yep, it sucks to be in your financial teens when rocking towards 50.

                “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”

                bug hugs,
                x-Meh.

              • Yep. I’m more or less meh these days except for the money. I know I will never see the $41000 he owes me. Considering he has moved back in with his father to live rent-free, still has no job and still is doing whatever he feels like doing, it doesn’t seem likely he is going to change. It’s hard for me to believe this is the same man who once had an excellent career and a lovely home.

      • Yes, I remember thinking I wanted to die but could not because of the children….sigh….

        It is good to know I am so much better now. But I will never forget or quite fully get over that hurt and pain. It was more immense than the sea.

        • One of my friends was amused, because she checked with me post-D-Day to make sure I wasn’t going to harm myself, and I said, “No!! because then X would have to raise the 13 yo daughter!”

        • “But I will never forget or quite fully get over that hurt and pain. It was more immense than the sea.”

          THIS! Thank you Kelly!

          • I still had a relationship with my MIL a few months after dday. I remember telling her that I had cried a bathtub’s worth of tears. Her response was “oh really” with a dumbstruck tone. WTF? Your son cheated, ran away & left me financially strapped for months until my attorney had me file for support. What the hell did MIL think I was doing all alone & scared for my future?

        • This^^ The first three days after dday. Glad I no longer owned guns. I would have eased my pain. Good It hurt.

  6. YMBAC if you find a profile for Adult Friend Finder setup to his name and you believe it was because Microsoft AutoFill inputed his information even though it was his “friend” who was using the computer and site…

    YMBAC if when he says ” Get health insurance, I want a divorce” over the phone part of you thinks he must still care for you in some capacity because he’s worried about your health

    YMBAC if you catch him in more than 10 lies and you believe he only lied because he was afraid of your reaction to the truth (despite the number of times you’ve told him lying is far worse)

    YMBAC if you send in all your post separation emails to some “save your marriage alone” guy on the Internet to ensure you are dancing the pick me dance properly

    Today would have been our 5 year anniversary…today happily single (most days) and laughing that she took him off my hands.

    • Oh yes…and how could I forget….YMBAC if you were the mistresses clothing and believe you still might be able to save your marriage

      • Ashley..today would have been my 16th anniversary! Thankfully it was just “another day”. It’s been over a year since he decided to leave his family for the OW. I am finally comfortable with my life!

    • YMBAC if your husband’s Internet search history contains the phrase, “guys fucking,” and when you ask him about it, he glares at you and replies, “So what?”

  7. YMBAC if you believed in your heart that he LYBIILWY …and found out that Schmoopie moved into your former home on FB.

    • His girlfriend (nothing against her, I’m just afraid for her) put up a new FB profile photo…she’s obviously standing on the balcony of the condo that I STILL PARTIALLY OWN because it’s taken my ex this long to refinance (closing might be Monday, fingers crossed). The divorce went through in July 2013.

  9. Your idiot, irresponsible, immature, lying, cheating, unprofessional, moronic douche bag gets fired for sexual harassment and you suspect he was sleeping with the accuser or others and you don’t follow your intuition and stay with him anyway!

    • My ex had multiple affairs with coworkers, threesomes and orgies, sent pictures of his dick to a woman there, ran naked through a public park to “surprise” another guy there. And yet when they told him he could quit or be fired, he threatened to sue THEM for sexual harassment.

  10. YMBAC if…he leaves to go on a surprise cruise trip (without you) and you send him texts wishing him a nice time.
    YMBAC if…you write a check for his airline ticket from his recent trip to Germany to visit your son (who he visited one day but spent the rest of the week in a different town telling you he didn’t want to be “picked on by his family”) and then you see the name of his old girlfriend pop up on his phone shortly after.
    YMBAC if…you garden, cook, work, pay bills, taxi children, book romantic vacations alone with a man that will tell you you are a frigid pole if you dare mention his affair and constantly remind you of what a bad mother and wife you are therefore he needs to cheat, (oh and you actually feel sorry for him and go to MC to save the rotten marriage)
    YMBAC if…you let the MC convince you that if you just tried harder, “knocked his socks off in bed” or tried to do your best thwart his temper tantrums, that he may actually really become the man and companion you thought you married.

  11. YMBAC…….if you trust that most people are good.

    YMBAC…….If you took back and forgave a cheat. Only to be burnt again 🙁

    YMBAC……if you let a MC/psychologist tell you that you need to own your part of the blame in your cheating spouses affair!!

    Wow, I could do this all day :))

    • Oh Kraft, that hurt! Because despite pretty much everything here fitting, these are the ones that fit me best.

      Hi, my name is Karen, and I was SUCH a Chump. (Not anymore, though!!!!)

      • Me too Kraft….you just described everything about me and my story! I did the best “pick me” dance only to be cheated on again…but this time he left me and moved in with the ugly OW. That was a year ago…and I’m with you Karen–NOT ANYMORE!!
        LOL at all the great comments!!!

  12. YMBAC if… you believe your spouse when he wants to give a “random” female co-worker $1000 to help her and her struggling family because it’s the “right thing to do.” And she’ll pay it back…yeah right…

    • Oh the follow up – of course that turned out to be the OW… She paid it back all right…

      Though, I guess at this point I’m kinda grateful, she has the crazy messed up narcissistic relationship (they are BOTH narcissists), and I actually have a loving, caring person who makes me feel like a princess. 😀

        • How about “dyk currency?” lol My exazzhole told me he was helping a male friend cheat. That’s why thousands of dollars were missing from the account and there were umpteen hotel charges on the statement. And his response when i said well where is the money he paid u back? “Uhhh I spent it!” WTF?!!! A guy helping a guy cheat? yeah….right…..

    • OMG, mine did this too! He gave $1000 to his assistant to help her through some tough times. His assistant was horrible at her job and it had been suggested to him on several occasions by other managers that he should let her go. He told me he felt bad for her…now I’m wondering if he f’d her too but I never asked him when I found out about all the others. He was either f’ing her or she knew about his other ho workers and it was hush money. The $1000 did get paid back but I was pissed when he gave it to her. A manager should never lend money to a direct report – I tried to tell him there has to be a company rule about this! She still works for him to this day.

      • Yes! The OW was TERRIBLE at her job and even he talked about how he needed to let her go (he was her supervisor as well). I kept wondering why he kept her around…and found out the hard way of course.

        The fun part was that I worked there too…so I turned in the evidence of their affair to the GM, and they were both “invited to leave.” Lol!

    • My ex also was given $1000 by a woman who was renting a room in his house during our separation and during bogus reconciliation after Dday. I was suspicious about the relationship between the two of them, they seemed to always be texting each other and having long talks late at night. Long after she had moved out of the house and long after our reconciliation ended, I actually emailed her to ask if anything had ever gone on with them. Got a bizarre response, and then that very same day she loaned him $1000 to help write his book about himself (I saw the check on the bank account record.) I still don’t know for sure, but I assume my suspicions were correct and they were sleeping together.

    • OMG my cheater pants is ALWAYS helping someone! some friend of a friend. The magic amount was 5k. Every time. For years I believed him. Add this to my list of being a chump. Damn what a gullible ass I was.

  13. YMBAC if you actually believed that the reason he phoned you several times a day was because he actually cared about you and wanted to speak to you.

    • Yeah, they do that to chart your whereabouts. Mine was constantly burning up my phone. But oddly not available when I called his. #redflag

      • Mine NEVER answered his phone when I called him…it was always “dead” or he was on a work call or he was out of cell range, etc. But whenever his phone rang at home (especially if we were in the middle of family time, dinner, discussion) he was johnny on the spot. Passive-aggressive douche.

      • Mine would call to make sure I was at the park with our son, then bring OW to our house to fuck her.

    • Oh Yes thats so everything I got…and CL the not avail when calling his phone. He has said recently….but I called you all the time because I cared. I know he called all the time to get his kibbles and to chart my whereabouts/

    • Shit, Shit, Shit !!!!!!
      This makes me so mad! He would call me when I was on my job driving in a fucking blizzard, at night, to ‘see how you are’, and what’s your ETA?
      It took me forever, and the find my phone app, to see what he was doing- running home to our house ten minutes before I got there. Ugh, I am a great big Chump, I thought he was caring about my welfare. I think he was, a little, but it was like 95/5, his kibble fun/my safety

    • Yup, me too. And he used to call on his way home to joke that I needed to make sure my boyfriend was gone. It’s so funny I forgot to laugh.

    • My x used to blow a gasket if I didn’t let him know my work schedule (I’m a shift worker), when I had appointments or even when I made plans to do the grocery shopping.

      RED FLAG – spouse wants to know your whereabouts at all times but can’t be located, contacted or even vaguely describe their itinerary for you!

      • Or texts “are you getting off early today?” when I had slowdowns at work. Mother effer! His business at our house, now my house, its still here. Yeah right so he could get her out of my bed before I got home. I made the bastard buy me a new bed. A virgin bed!

          • For a few years after dday before I thought about dating, I called myself a born-again-virgin as ex was the only man I was ever with sexually.

              • I’m impressed. He was number five for me, two of them were long term, engagements even.

                My sister has numbers and thinks this makes for good experience. So does my son’s father, who when trying to woo me back imbetween breakups with current x, used his experience as a selling point. He said he’s gotten to be quite good now, better than he was when he was my fiancé/baby daddy.

                I just do not care. Neither of them were the best I’ve ever had and I would venture to say I taught both of them a thing or two. It’s not about numbers. It’s about spirit, connection, and for gods sake just knowing what you’re doing.

                They are so empty, of course they need multiple partners.

  14. YMBAC if you are happy he is going out with co-workers because he works so hard and never had many friends.
    YBMAC if he calls you to wonder if he should drive home drunk and then you say, “NO, Honey, be safe. Stay at the office for tonight.”

    • You know your a chump when you open the mail and there are records of him getting HIV testing within weeks of DDay.

      YMBAC if you find period stains on your new sheets and you are post menopause.

      YMBAC if he is no longer interested in sex because of excessive masturbation and porn use.

      YMBAC if he constantly looks at young girl and on DDay you imagine he found a beautiful replacement only to find out she is ugly, trashy, addicted to drugs, gambling, alcohol, and has a history of disorderly conduct, assault, and mental health issues. Yes, I was replaced by miss piggy!

      • NewbieChump: Yes, but she’s so non-judgmental and understands what his struggles are at work! And he’s met her husband, and he’s okay with them having lunch together and going out to talk about work.

      • Oh Donna, big deal! Be happy! Water seeks it’s own level, who knew it was sewer water. He sounds like my ex, he met his “twin” on Facebook ! She can have his stupid ass!

        • Sorry Donna, that comment sounded flip. What I meant was, we are far better than the OW and deep inside our cheaters know this. They pick these unfortunate looking ,dumb as a box of rocks ,sub humans to make them “feel” superior! The ex is a miserable wanna be intelligentsia, problem is, he’s stupid as shit! She just makes him “feel” smarter! Besides, it’s hard to show her how brilliant and successful you are when your ex wife just stripped you of every damn thing you worked for all your life PLUS your future earnings and retirement pay too! Let Miss Piggy have him! She has a broke 60 year old man. Lucky her!

        • Roberta, it didn’t sound flip. It is right on. I would come home from work smiling and he would be angry. I kept saying, he just doesn’t like it when I’m happy. I love my job, my family, and my home. He was a dick plain and simple, yeah right. That is being too kind. The other woman is a classless whore. But him, he is an idiot. Both my therapist and lawyer both said he is dumb. I am laughing because the dick got a whore who makes less than half my salary. You have to be pretty limited to give up your entire family for a cheap fuck. He has no retirement and I kept my pension. He is pissing through the money he was supposed to be saving for our retirement home. I know he is NOT happy. She has him posing with a fucking lap dog with bows, listens to country music, and sits at a casino for hours with her on his lap chugging beer. He likes none of these things!! In the past I always took him back, this time I filed. He is also close to 60, balding, hearing loss, pisses the bed, and is the most boring person I have ever met. Narcissists do not age well and his supply is GONE. He doesn’t work for 5 months out of the year and instead of getting a job to hold him over he goes on fuck hunts for other women. I have finally detoxed from this asshole. He was always thinking he missed something. Yes, I agree. He missed a link to morals, appreciation, and love. I am past the Who, What, When, Where, and Why of the discard. There is no logic to their distorted reality. I expect some day a narcissist wakes up and realizes there is an ugly whore attached to the used up vagina. Lets face it, they are fucked if they stay with the OW and fucked if they don’t. They have no where to go. We are free!!! Our life will be so much better. I am sure of this.

          • Donna, we dodged a bullet. Let the HO take care of them! I agree they don’t age well. My ex has been nothing but sick, actually was hospitalized and has a central line in now because he gets so many infections in his lungs. He’s a mess! He’s stuck with that nasty piece of trash he found on Facebook now and no one in the family will have anything to do with him! I have been told he isn’t happy, but he supposedly wanted the divorce so he could be with the tramp! It’s just tragic all around!

            • It is tragic for them Roberta. At this point almost a year from DDay I cry less and have shifted my focus on my future. He try’s to inch his way back to familiarity using my granddaughter. She shares information about his life. He got a new vehicle (spending the money he hid). Asks how I’m doing (mask on) and missing supply. I was a forgiving person once. I have changed for the better. I remind myself that I am worthy of respect. I have become selfish with my love. He too wanted a divorce and never filed. He was confident I would do the pick me dance. My therapist said if I ever went back with him he would destroy me by upping the injury. I never wanted to face the pain and hoped he would change. We dated at 16 and got married at 21. We had three children and struggled. I loved my life and tolerated the abuse for 36 years of marriage. He was stuck developmentally and lived like a teenager. He always worked against me and blamed everything on me for many years. As sick as it sounds I loved a cold calculating narcissist tha lead a double life. It’s on them Roberta. The other women are objects. They only love themselves. I am grateful he has limited contact with our adult children. I have finally detatched from him and the false memories, complaints, detective work, lies, other women, triangulation, Reconcilliation, and hopium. We have ourselves back. That is what we can control, a brighter future.

              • Thank you for this comment Donna. It was something I needed to hear today. It was heart-healing.

              • I agree with Chump Princess. With a few minor detail changes this was my life also. Always looking the other way with the emotional abuse that comes with the territory of a narcissist.

                Thank you, Donna, for putting this so eloquently.

      • “You know your a chump when you open the mail and there are records of him getting HIV testing within weeks of DDay. ”

        My ex used to donate blood all the time, and this was back in the days when they would ask you not to donate if you were a man who slept with men. He would just lie about it. It wasn’t until years later that I realized he was using the blood donation process as a covert way of getting HIV tests. Actually, it amazes me he never tested positive after all of his gay bath house exploits.

      • YMBACI………..
        He drools over his brother’s wife who is a tall willowy brunette, while you are a petite blonde. He says you should dye your hair to match hers. You think, well he’s entitled to his opinion.
        You get into a small fender bender and you are upset and crying when you get home. He looks at you with those dead reptilian eyes and tells you to shut up. ……and you do.
        You go to one session with a MC , cheater ex admits to an affair ongoing, and the MC refuses to even address it. You don’t stand up for yourself.
        You find yourself with an outbreak of a permanent STD when the only person you have had sex with in the last ten years was him, and he accuses you of cheating and exposing him to it. And you don’t throw his worthless cheating mass out because you haven’t connected the dots.
        Yep…..a chump to the core…..that was me. I’m older and a lot wise now. ZERO tolerance for narcissistic bull now. Thanks to CL for helping me understand better how they operate.

  15. Aside from all the tell-tale traditional red flag signs of cheating…

    YMBAC if your spouse acts like an entitled teenager instead of a partner.

    YMBAC if you do research on open marriages after d-day.

  17. YMBAC if a woman’s shirt that is not yours turns up in your suitcase after he flies to see you (at his vacation condo) after being apart for 2 months.

    YMBAC if after that two months, you think that he made the effort because it’s Valentine’s Day weekend, but he has the chance to rent his condo and net a couple hundred bucks, so you spend 11 hours driving home on Valentine’s Day.

    YMBAC if he thinks far enough ahead about Valentine’s Day to ask you to edit a photo of him and his daughters so he can have it printed and framed for each of them… and completely forgets it’s Valentine’s Day while you’re driving his ass 11 hours home.

    YMBAC if you also notice his phone is now always left in his car or pocket when he’s at your house, even though he used to leave it on the counter, and you think it’s not good news, but you also don’t think you should leave without solid proof.

    And best of all, YMBAC if even though you finally realize he’s having at least one affair, he treats you like a convenience, and you want out, but think you should stick it out a couple more months because you don’t want to dump him before he has knee surgery or right before his birthday.

    YMBA reformed C if you’re lucky enough to meet the man I did right after I set myself free and finally realize I’m worth being treated like I’m the love of someone’s life. 🙂

    • Yep! HUGE clue! My ex used to leave his phone out in the living room charging or laying around overnight…suddenly it was attached to him and never left his person. Well, except that one day he left it out when he went running and I read all of their disgusting unicorn and rainbow lovey dovey texts with LOTS of emojis. I texted her from his phone that she should tell her boyfriend to password protect his phone and left. Long story but we had a vacation plan the next day and he went anyway without me!!!! WHO DOES THAT? He said we “needed a few days to clear our heads.” Yes, she and her husband were friends of ours. And yes, she told him the next morning that she was taking US to the airport. Which, he of course knew was a lie because he knew I knew because he was reading her emails…

      • Yeah, when the only time you see his phone is when he’s texting first thing in the morning, when he’s trying to hide that he has it when he goes to the bathroom for a long sit, If he grabs it and tucks it away when a text comes in when it’s lying on the console in the car… LOL

        I have never looked in anyone’s wallet, gone through their papers, let alone poked through a phone, but when I was at his place one night and got up to let the dog out at 3am and saw it sitting on his counter charging…well, you better believe I looked. For all his stealth, he also did not have it password protected. All I had to see was that there were several emails and replies to emails from a “username@talkmatch.com”. Didn’t even bother to read any of them, because it didn’t matter. It meant he had to have a live account if he answered email.

        Made the excuse that I couldn’t sleep, went home, found his active profile, composed a very short ‘dump’ email and waited. Sure enough, probably 5 minutes after he got his arse out of bed, the profile went to “online now.” I took a screenshot, pasted it in the email and hit SEND.

        Done! Thank god I wasn’t married to the idiot, and getting out was relatively easy once he stopped stalking me!

        • That is so awesome. He had a match profile that isn’t active, but he checks the matches. (I looked at his email and knew he had read them.). I signed up for match.com with an awesome profile knowing he would likely get me as a match. I used a picture I cropped him out of as a profile pic. I only kept it open a month because I was getting emails I had no I tension of responding to. I hope he saw it though. I can play passive aggressive too!

        • Champ, Not Chump- Yes! I already had red flags- my intuition was SCREAMING at me. I’m not a big snooper either. I just needed proof and then poof 15 years of marriage was OVER…after he went to go run the marathon I started calling lawyers and moving half of the money. He had the nerve to text me that he PR’d. You know, in case I cared. Meanwhile I could only eat rice and would even puke that up thinking about them…ASSHAT

      • Ymbac … when you see a friend request he send to a downgrade on fb and swears that his fb has been acting up and is sending random friendship request .

  18. YMBAC if you sleep with the fucker after a few hours of catching him in bed with the fugly owhore because you believed his lies and excuses ( seriously suffered from emotional/ psychological abuse)

    YMBAC if you seriously considered believing the fucker that his online dating profile with his PIC was set up for a work colleague. Work colleague I was told could not approach women therefore enlisted his help to….to…to create a dating profile with assholes PIC. With asshole trolling the site for potential fuck buddies. With asshole online chatting/ calling/ meeting/ fucking these online hoes. I’m still trying to figure out how this helped said work colleague * insert sarcastic eye roll*

  19. YMBAC if your wife shows up at 2:30 AM and says, “I just got a ride home from some guy, don’t make a big deal of it, I didn’t want to wake you up to have to come get me…”

    YMBAC if you think, “My God, she wouldn’t actually demolish a 30+ year seemingly great marriage…by doing what it sure seems like she’s doing. Would she?”

    YMBAC if you find yourself groping to change how you dress, look, relate because she always seems irritated at you for no reason that you can understand.

    YMBAC if the harder you work to try to please her and up your game, the angrier she gets.

    Yep, I could keep this up for quite a while.

  20. YMBAC if the OW visits you at your home when you’re alone (pre D-Day), and you greet her with lemonade, homemade cookies, and an inviting chase lounge outside for her to relax on a hot summer day, and she, without asking your approval, takes off her shirt and bra and starts to “catch some rays” topless….and, though you think it a bit odd, you say nothing because you don’t want to offend her.

    YMBAC if, right after D-Day, the same OW comes over to your house uninvited when she realizes you know the truth, sits in a chair in your living room, with your husband by your side on the sofa, apologizes for what has happened, and states “he will never cheat on you”…..AND YOU SO DESPARATELY WANT TO BELIEVE IT, THAT YOU BUY INTO THAT OVERFLOWING CROCK OF BS!

    • Well, isn’t she just one special lying exhibitionist cheater pants manipulator?

      • LMAO! Yes..yes she is….
        Meanwhile (post divorce), I discovered that their affair is one of the worse kept secrets in our (my former) church, as my ex is (still) an Elder in that church, and she is the wife of another Elder in the same church. Both poster children for Jesus Cheaters.

        • And Latter Day Saints? They are the worst. We need to keep them out of political office. I’m not saying this because I am racist, I’m saying it because I had a first hand look inside, and it seriously messed up. There are good people submitting to a horrible dogma. Kind of like chumps submitting to cheaters.

          • Sigh, when will people stop attaching the actions of an individual to the church. As an LDS guy, the church promotes chastity. You should talk to that person’s bishop…

            • No kidding. I am an LDS woman that was totally chumped by my husband. The LDS church does NOT promote infidelity. Completely the opposite. In fact, the church helped me get out of my abusive relationship. I had nowhere to go and they helped with with my move, helped me clean everything, gave me food, helped with my daughter, gas cards, utilities that were so far in arrears because my husband would empty the bank accounts, go get loaded and go to hotel rooms over and over. They have even given me weekly counseling to help get through this. If I didn’t have the church, I would be languishing in a shelter until I could pay off my behind utilities and hopefully find childcare and a job that would pay enough for my daughter and I to have our own place. That’s if we got out at all.

        • Glad you left that church. Yuck! My husband was an elder at our non-denominational church and they kicked him out immediately from the elders and his teaching position. There are churches who follow the laws of the bible.

          • Wtf is it with the churches and the big shots in the churches? I’m anointed by God and can do no wrong? Fuck it, annoys the hell out of me cos the same assholes call atheists immoral.

            • Datdamwuf IMO, just like predators hang out were their prey lives, a lot of narcissists hang out where their prey lives…they camouflage themselves in positions of power so their prey will be powerless, i.e., church leaders, lawyers, paramedics, doctors or any position they can create a hologram of superiority, heroism or ultimate humbleness/kind volunteer….to prey on unsuspecting targets…its all about feeding their ego.

              • add College Professors to your list–tons of adoring students worshiping their intellect. Narc’s paradise.

              • I totally agree overcomer, churches are full of them because of great chump supply.

              • When I was interviewing to get into the US Navy as a chaplain, the officer interviewing me was very clear this was a concern. They really wanted to avoid the narcissists. And apparently its a problem with pastors. Plus, I would add they do not require a class on ministerial sexual misconduct for no reason at seminary. Clearly, these issues are old hat for clergy, sadly. But that does not mean we are all bad just as not all counselors are bad. There are so doosies, though.

            • I’ve repeatedly mentioned the holier-than-thou-God-has-brought-us-together associate past(wh)or(e) who is the OW in my case. The STBX was an agnostic (at best) until being a Christian and going to church was the price of admission to her vagina and lofty lifestyle. I have no ministerial credentials, but even with my simple layman’s faith I understand that God does not cause nor condone something he has called out as sin, nor does God have any part in chaos and destruction of a family.

              Perhaps they should both read the passage in the bible which talks about God not being mocked and what a man soweth he shall reap.

        • Wait, she’s a wife of a church elder? Topless sunbathing? I swear, I canNOT keep up with religious trends these days!

    • Sounds like she liked the Cake Eating setup, so they put together this little act to placate you.
      And, she likes to show off her boobs! Aren’t they special???

      • They were SO special, that, when I had my D-Day (in the form of sexts and emails to my then-husband), they included shots of just “The Girls”. My secondary reaction (after the first initial devastating shock), was “well…I certainly recognize THOSE!!”

        • You have me snorting.

          The more I read this stuff the more I am coming to understand churches consist of three main types of people, the narcissist, the passive aggressive and scapegoat, those labled as angry, outspoken, too black and white, unforgiving, judgmental or not really walking with God because their views differ from those in the first two categories.

          Life is too short to submit to people who care only for themselves.

          • This the reason I have never been able to get my Christian husband to go to church. He says that when you put “organized” and “religion” in the same sentence all hell is going to break loose.

  21. I love this

    YMBAC if you send your love when he ‘visits’ his best friends widow.

    YMBAC if he suddenly starts making wine, refers to her as his ‘wine consultant’, spends hours on the phone to her and you’re proud he’s such a good friend.

    YMBAC if you believe that he just wants time to ‘be alone’

    Yep, I was a Chump

    • I he says after dday, you were always home when I was home. I told him it’s because I live here.

  22. YMBAC if she goes to Paris with her “girlfriend”, but there are no photos of her and the “girlfriend” in Paris. Turns out her “girlfriend” was a male co-woker.

    YMBAC if she needs to work with her “girlfriend” at her house on a report, and stays over because they are doing an all-nighter to finish it.

    After D-Day, initially I did feel stupid initially for not spotting the signs…. but you trust, and they abuse that trust in every way.

    I’m 10 months post divorce, and she can’t understand why I can’t be happy for her — she’s found happiness with her affair partner, and I just need to swallow the shit sandwich.

    • It boggles the mind that these people want us to “be happy” for them after what they did.

      (LondonChump–in a few weeks, watch the forums. A few of us, state-side, will be flying to London the second half of July, and would love to meet up with other chumps.)

    • Oh London chump I’m so sorry. How devastating to think that while you were trusting and living your life she was off enjoying Paris. That just burns me. I hope your anger over the injustice of it all propels you to a better future

  23. Oh, and YMBAC if at or near D-Day they seem to revel in being 10 feet tall, cocky, and bulletproof when you have been hit and shattered by the worst news of your life.

    • We so need a good code word for the above.
      Mine acted 10′ tall and bullet proof, use to strut in and out of our daughters hospital room after d’day with swagger.
      Would make me so made, he cared nothing for the destruction he had caused but bet he didn’t get his panties in a bunch when I challenged him on it.

      • They are so bizarre. They revel in the edginess of sneaking around, but then when they get caught, it’s like some sort of new phase they go into: “I can do whatever I want to do, and you’re not the boss of me! Nyah, nyah, nyah.”

        I don’t know what the code word for that arrogance could be.

        • “I don’t know what the code word for that arrogance could be.”

          I like to call it “wickedness” or “evil.”

          • Wickedness, evil…you’re right…I still remember the shock of seeing the cold, snakelike eyes and the emotionless smirk on X’s face during the one and only time we went to pastoral counseling right after the 2nd (known) d-day. It was chilling. It even shocked the pastor, and those guys have probably seen pretty much everything. The pastor cut the meeting short and told me in private to get out of the marriage and get out now. I am so glad to be free of that disordered and soulless train wreck of a person.

        • Omg….mine was strutting around like he was banging Pamela Anderson and in reality she would make a train take a dirt road.

      • “Mine acted 10′ tall and bullet proof, use to strut in and out…after d’day with swagger…he cared nothing for the destruction he had caused”
        Ah, yes. The effin’ swagger. The peacock strut. I never saw a smirk, but I saw the swagger. They are all the same.

    • Yes, mine, as I was doubled up with pain about the news of his affair from years past, and said, “Why did it have to be a 20-something to make me feel horrible about myself,” viciously said, “You’re lucky it wasn’t a 40-year old as that would have been more hazardous to my leaving you.” Fucker.

      • Tempest, FTG. At my absolute lowest point, when I wished a black hole would open up beneath me and swallow me whole, I was curled in a ball and couldn’t stop crying. I told him, “I feel so unlovable.” The words were ripped out of me; it felt like I finally made my deepest and most vulnerable spot of myself public. His response? He puffed up, still standing tall across the room, and said, “See? I know I’m lovable. I know I have a lot of love to give.”

        I now know the truth is the exact opposite of that. He is the unlovable one.

          • Thank you for the validation. It took me a while to get over that one. I have fully processed it and see it for what it is, but the absolute cruelty of it still manages to stun me. It’s hard to fathom how anybody could be indifferent to someone else’s pain, let alone a spouse’s pain.

        • Stronger, they prey on vulnerability initially and during the discard viscously carve out our guts for the slaughter. That is the way I felt with his parting words. I see my x as a sociopath that drew the line and instead of having the balls to kill me he preferred to enjoy the suffering. Normal people can’t do this! Then not only do chumps have to deal with the discard, they have to face the fact that the person they loved was an imposter. I am rewriting the script. When his parting words invade my thoughts I remind myself that he is disordered and everything that came out of his mouth was a lie. What he thinks will never control me again.

          • Donna, again – I am right there with you! This past week, I’ve been feeling/wishing a hole would open up in the earth and just swallow me whole. End the misery and pain. But I’m slowly starting to come out of it now. I did have a moment of clarity a couple of weeks back, when he lied to his family about why we’re splitting, made me the villain, and they started unfriending me on FB, and I thought – he will NEVER stop hurting me…not until either I am dead, or I walk away. And thank god for that one moment, because I really believe it’s the truth. The more I loved him, and the more punishment I took – the more he dished out. I believe that he had no respect for me to begin with, and me taking all of his shit just made it all more justifiable in his sick head. So, I’m walking away. I will not let him destroy what is left of my heart and soul.

            • TBC, I never considered how much abuse I tolerated until I found an amazing therapist with knowledge of narcissistic relationships. Within the first hour of therapy after telling him about the way he discarded me after 41 years he said he was disturbed and was a narcissist. There I sat wanting to know just how to stop loving this asshole. He told me he robbed me of my soul and if I EVER took him back from this point I wouldn’t survive. I’m thinking he might have been a chump at some point. Everything he told me was accurate right down to him escalating when I filed to the fact that he would discard his children. If your leaving gather ALL his /her information and accounts. Know it gets better and those days of disbelief will turn into relief. And as far as the OP, they also lack character. I imagine those bottom feeders waiting outside of a prison waiting to fuck the newly released inmates. They aren’t special.

              • Wish I had your therapist Donna, my ex did exactly all that including discarding the children too. At least we know what he is.

          • Standing applause, Donna. I too am rewriting the script. He projected so much of his disordered self on to me, and had me twisted up for years over *my* flaws. There have been so many moments of clarity since I’ve gotten some distance from him.

  24. YMBAC if your spouse tells you that he “shared hotel rooms” with his female coworker but never had sex and you believe him.

    • or that he has several female “drinking buddies” at conferences, but it’s purely platonic.

      • Or he has a standing weekly coffee date with a coworker, and when you say you find that inappropriate, he tells you that you are being silly because nothing would ever happen, “She knows I am a happily married man!”

        • My H was so convinced that he and his Schmoopie had created some amazing new classification of human relationship…when I referred to her as his “girlfriend” with whom he had “dates”, he said “She isn’t my ‘girlfriend’!”. I responded “You two make plans and go places together just you two where you discuss your relationship…she IS your girlfriend and you go on DATES”.

          He looked like he was going to shit himself…but only for a few seconds, he certainly couldn’t feel guilty or recognize he did something wrong, so he undertook some quick mental gymnastics to create a delusion to fix this awkward situation…heaven only knew what it was.

          • I also referred to the OW as his girlfriend and he constantly denied it. “SHE’S NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!!” Used the same reasoning that you did Unicorn and he still just denied it. They are so stupid.

            • They sure are stupid. Mine would take the howorker with him and the kids when they’d go to the zoo or the Farmers market. I of course couldn’t join in because it was always during a weekday and I have to work. But HEY, I was invited. They tried. They’d follow up their dates with two hour phone calls at night, discussing “work and OW’s sick cats”. Sounds like dating, yes?

              • Oh, yes. The married people going on dates. Sigh….
                What crazy planet are they from? This is why I was so confused, the cognitive dissonance was overwhelming my brain- once I was driving down State Street, and I almost blacked out, because I was thinking about all the conflicting info! I had to quickly pull over, I just couldn’t take it. Fun times! When your husband says he loves you, but the asshole neighbor is his constant companion.

  25. YMBAC if you did not question your spouse’s need to travel to Vegas 4-5 times per year to “blow off steam”
    YMBAC if you believed your spouse’s story that his phones were stolen from his Vegas hotel room because his room door didn’t lock.
    YMBAC if you believed thousands of text messages were exchanged with other women because they were “just friends”
    YMBAC if you believed that he erased all of his Facebook private messages because he gets too many of them
    YMBAC if you yelled at your daughter for claiming she saw her father using zoosk

  26. YMBAC if you believe what they say no matter the hard evidence

    YMBAC if you believe it was “just a kiss” even though you’ve been ignored and treated badly for months and he doesn’t turn up at the hospital the day after your first child was born.

    YMBAC If he says he needs a separate residence to find his “creative space” so it can help with his creative work , even though you have pulled him up on going out night after night with his female assistant…and he says its just chilling out after a hard days work. Then suggests and solidly pushes for you and two young children to move 900km away where your family live because “it’s cheaper there, and I’m away with work so much you will enjoy your family support”………THEN you stupidly do it

    YMBAC then when you move interstate to give him “creative space” he suddenly brings totally new sexual moves to the bedroom

    YMBAC if you contract Herpes when your first born is 5mths old and you have been with H for 7 yrs and never been anywhere since, and have found a love letter to his assistant….and still he explains it all away….and you believe his BS because you love him so much, and because he’s such a great fucking liar.

    YMBAC if you find evidence of porn sites and he blames it on his male assistant.

    Nah not may be….I am a complete Chump

    • Actually – and this SUCKS – herpes can lie dormant for years and years. You won’t test positive in labs unless it’s active. Extreme stress can make it flare… like discovering that my husband is an asshole and has been lying to me for years. .

      • Same with genital warts. I had two removed recently & the fucker has been gone over 5 years. It was quite a surprise to learn about STD dormancy. How nice, now I have a reminder of the OWhore in my own body.

  27. YMBAC if your wife becomes vegan and insists the kids eat organic, but gets Botox and Breast Implants.

    • Mine did that too. In the big bathroom on the main floor. The kids pointed it out to me. Even if there was company – the guests would have to run upstairs.

      Looking back he would be in there for hours……

      I am a chump.

  29. YMBAC if you find you have crabs and confront your only intimate partner and they are very calm in their response and tell you, ” you must have picked them up off a public toilet” and you accept this response despite spending days trying to remember the last time you used a public toilet.

    YMBAC if your partner is randomly shaving his junk even though he knows you don’t like it. Because your opinion does not matter, because it is not for you.

    YMBAC if you randomly receive a text from your partner that reads “you will identify me by the red carnation” when you question your partner expect some random comment about how they received some random text they thought they would respond to. Expect them to be offended when you press the issue.
    They won’t know how you got it. Or what the problem is.

    YMBAC if your husband can take time to have dinner on a regular basis with random members of a committee he is on but can only take you for coffee. And that’s only if he has managed to get some sort of voucher.

    YMBAC if you suspect that you are and no matter what your partner says on the subject or how often they turn it back on you, if your gut is screaming RUN. YMBAC.

    • OMG, I had forgotten about the random text I received years ago… it said “have you ever done it with someone else watching?”

      • So weird. He asked me (in person), “have you ever done it outside?”

        Seemed kinda shocked when I responded “yes”. I had to be the one to suggest we try our shower, I was the more adventurous of the two of us.

  30. YMBAC if you stuck with him through all the horrors of his poor sausage act and chemo. He was always to ill to talk, but not to work or go on business trips(yeah right).
    YMBAC when you sold the house and he signed to put the remainder of the cash in his sole account. Daughter made me check with attorney and now it is my sole account! Ha, so sue me you miserable bastard.
    YMBAC when he was going to see an elderly aunt on Valentine’s Day

    So many lies and so much heartbreak after a 31 year marriage.

    I might have been a chump but now I am an angry monster. I guess I do not know how to deal with the towering rage and the pacing nights plotting revenge, it is so not me and I find this angry, bloodthirsty, monster which I have let loose the most challenging aspect to deal with. I tell you I could rip their brains out…….but they haven’ got any. So that is that path closed. Taking revenge via his wallet is not so satisfactory but probably will be more sustaining then a long jail sentence.

    • YMBAC, if he got prostate cancer and you took care of all his needs, waited years for him to be able to finally get it up after two prostheses operations and in the week he can finally use IT he tells you he is DATING!

      YMBAC, if you reconcile when the other woman tells him, ” you call THAT sex” and dumps him.

      YMBAC, if you accept his inability to have normal sex because you still have compassion for the asshole.

      What the fuck was I thinking.

        • When the Cheater told me about the Whore and said “I’m in love with her, and she’s in love with me”, my first thought was She couldn’t possibly have had sex with you”, lol. Contrary to popular myth, Cheaters are sorry lays.

  31. YMBAC if . . . at a social event you find yourself talking to a woman from work that he introduced you to, and she is very strangely and creepily interested in you and the details of your life, way beyond the social niceties.

    YMBAC if . . . she grumps about having “no time!!!” to deal with minor household crises, even though she is a teacher and it is summer time, so you take care of them in spite of YOUR busy schedule.

    YMBAC if . . . he gets irritated by your ‘hassling’ him and never giving him privacy, while minutes later complaining that you don’t pay enough attention to him.

    YMBAC if . . . she pouts about you never wanting to go anywhere or do anything fun and exciting with her, then refuses to go when you arrange a fun, exciting trip as a surprise.

    YMBAC if . . . you believe he actually DID run down the hall for the phone and THAT’s why he was out of breath when you called his cell phone unexpectedly during the day when he didn’t answer his office phone.

  32. he forgot to tell you he withdrew all of your kids college fund and put it in an off shore account

  33. YMBAC if you spend the weekend halfway across the country with your daughter, sweating while you assemble a slew of IKEA furniture (that does not fit together as advertised) for her first apartment, while good old Dad is home wining and dining the OW.

    • Or if you spend the day helping move your son into his dorm room his first year in college and having lunch with him, while she races off after about a half hour in the morning to get back to the beach, so she can have some “private time for just me”.

      • I love that these asshole cheaters ruin what are supposed to be good times for the kids…high school celebrations, graduations, holidays, everything college/expense related for our three young adults. Guess he was too busy paying for his new pussy while the rest of us were trying to live. YMBAC if you did “all the work” in the marriage and your ex would just “show up at his/her convenience.” I can count on two hands the number of times he attended anything at the high school. Not once did he attend son’s throwing competitions. Our kids were heavily into sports and academics. My daughter’s boyfriend (and his best friend, lol!) attended every game, her father…? Who knows what he was doing!

  34. YMBAC if you find a mix tape of Ukrainian love songs in his car and still believe him when he says he’s not fucking his Ukrainian co-worker who gives you dirty looks every time you see her.

    YMBAC if, after 4 years of marriage, he tells you he doesn’t like it anymore when you bring him lunch at work.

    YMBAC if you ask your husband if you suggest a date night once a week (since he’s always out with his friends) and he tells you that you need more hobbies.

        • Alright guys, cutting close to the quick–some of us are of Polish origin and actually like to hear “Beer Barrel Polka” at weddings, then eat kielbasa and sauerkraut to cure the hangover the next day.

    • Oh Lulu, My husband took up Russian poetry and said he’d always been interested in learning Russian, which his “platonic” co-worker was willing to spend time teaching him. I was “crazy, controlling, negative, judgmental”. When I found the texts detailing dates, outings, love notes, etc., he said it was only “emotional.” I believed him. He even offered her a special date idea that I had come up with the week before in an effort to rekindle our romance. Champion Chump! The reason I have never been invited to a single office event or get-together is because “I knew you didn’t like to drink”

  35. YMBAC if … during reconciliation you bought her line of “I need some space” so paid for an office outside the home from which she “conducted her affairs”

  36. YMBAC…..if he starts telling you to stop calling him at work because….he’s working. And you do. And his daily calls home cease as well.

      • oh wow, major flashback…. ‘leave me alone! I am working!’ (when I called to APOLOGIZE for being jealous and doubting her)

        Oh yes, of course the affair was with her boss – did you have to ask?

        • Yep! This! They all get so very, very busy and they just can’t see their way clear to talk or take a couple days off to discuss their marriage. Now I know what he was busy doing, sexting the whore at work, writing childish poetry to her, calling her on his work cell phone. I don’t even want to talk about the ten days he just took off to sleep with her in her husbands bed! Oh yeah……. So damn busy! POS!

          • I thought X was the only one who wrote poetry to his whored. And he would write poems to me about if he coul walk the straight line and talk as out his dark side. Yes he thought be was a poet, drummer, lover. He failed in just about everything he tried. Sick

        • Same here, Jobin. Affair with her boss — she used to call me at work all the time. but if I called her — way too busy to talk.

    • Yep, mine got all indignant about me calling and texting “too much”, yet phone records indicate he had plenty of time during the day to call/text that whore. She would often call and he’d call her RIGHT back, smack dab in the middle of the day. When I pointed this out to him.. he said “talking to friends is different than talking to you”… Ah, hows that? Plenty of time for the MOWhore but not enough to touch base with your wife?

      Pfft.

  37. YMBAC if you move from making joint decisions to having little meetings in which you know you are being manipulated to agree to a path you don’t like but is justified by convoluted cheater logic.
    YMBAC if you’ve been suddenly and cruelly discarded but figure it might be because his father just died.
    YMBAC if after DDay your write the “why wasn’t I enough?” letter/email.
    YMBAC if you lived with someone who seemed apolitical and found out 2 years later that he is a wing nut political zealot once he ramps up his FB account from “strictly cheater” to “trolling for anyone with kibbles.”
    YMBAC if you know he’s a liar, a cheater, a con artist, and a black hole of suckitude, and you spent the first few months post-DDay wanting him back and thinking what he did was just a mistake…..arrrggghhhh….

  38. YMBAC if you drag yourself out of bed 4 days after surgery and, even though it hurts like hell, you mow the lawn (taking a break halfway through to go inside and lie down because of the pain). You do this because he is working extra long hours and he is exhausted and might be stressed from your having surgery. You mow the lawn so he won’t have to. Then, on DDay a few weeks later, you find out that some of those long hours were spent with the OW.
    We’re divorced now!

    • YMBAC if you believed that all those late night cell phone calls in the car, in the garage, in the dark were with “his brother” or his drummer friend and that the two condoms his 17 year old daughter found in his wallet (after being picked up at the police station for his second DUI) were there, but he and skankHo were “just talking” and he wouldn’t have put them in his wallet “if he wasn’t drinking.”

    • He LET you mow the lawn 4 days after surgery.

      What a fucking coward piece of shit.

      • My sentiments, exactly. He didn’t know I was going to do it – he was at work. But after he got home and saw that I had done it, I expected him to say “oh, my gosh, you shouldn’t have done it so soon after surgery! I would have done it! . . .” But he didn’t even thank me. Didn’t tell me not to mow again for a few weeks. Nothing. As you say – fucking coward piece of shit.

    • YMBAC, if he keeps a supply of dog biscuits in his car and you don’t have a dog.

      YMBAC, if he spends 15oo on flowers on your 36 year anniversary and takes you out and calls the whore to meet him
      there and you can’t find him for hours because he’s getting laid in her car. Yup.

      I am so past this shit now. Thankfully, I filed and awaiting final order. I am getting my soul back daily. It’s really embarrassing to think I put up with such a disordered sociopath for 41 years total. The old anniversary date is coming up this month and I will call it my freedom day from now on. CN has been my guiding light to recognize I am not alone. We may be chumps but an educated chump gives me the strength I was lacking. CN is awesome!!

      • Hugs to you on your first solo anniversary. I was only married a quarter of the time you were, but that first anniversary came and went without me even realizing it. I considered this a step on the road to meh

    • How inconsiderate of you to have surgery! Look how it stressed him out. No wonder he cheated, married to a selfish wife like you. 😉

  39. YMBAC if you all of a sudden he no longer has time to text or call you, however, can find lots of “me” time away from the family to be on his phone “reading the news”. Or when he goes out to look at apartments, because he thinks he needs some space and doesn’t come home until late in the evening….yep, apartment rental places are open til 9 or later…..Silly Chump.

    YMBAC if you believe that he really is having stomach issues (for months and months) and has to spend hours a day in the bathroom…..And he gets mad at you for being concerned about his health and tells you that you are the potty police.

    YMBAC if you believe all the horrible things that all of a sudden are wrong with you and they need space to work out “their” issues as it is not fair to you…..Oh Boy.

    YMBAC if you ignore/accept that the physical evidence is “just me thinking about you at work”.

    YMBAC if you believed the lies of “If you want out of a relationship, go, BEFORE you cheat”.

    YMBAC if you really believed that you were working on the relationship, which he acknowledged, but the only thing he was working on was OWhore.

    YMBAC if you took the high road and on DDay put the rest of his stuff in storage, paid the month rental, sent him a key in the mail and an email to pick up his stuff.

    YMBAC if you thought that they actually gave a damn about you, your family, your home, your pets, your future, your health, etc,etc,etc.

    YMBAC if you unknowingly did the pick me dance and could have won “Dancing with the Stars”

    YMBAC if when you asked them for honesty he told you “I am being honest”. Really….Honest, huh?

    YMBAC if when you asked on a few occasions if there was someone else and were told, “Oh no, honey, there is no one else”. (OWhore and possibly others would disagree).

    YMBAC if you are on this site and finding comfort that you are not alone in your chumpiness.

    I could go on all day with this…..

  40. YMBAC if your H leaves your annual summer beach vacation 3 days early because attending his class reunion is more important and he can’t understand why you want him to stay with you. (Much later you find out that one of his OW is a HS friend).

    YMBAC when your H schedules a week’s vacation with his work ‘guy’ friends out of the blue, lies to his boss by telling him he’s out on business, uses company funds to pay for it, doesn’t care that you’re upset about it, then tells you it’s going to be an annual trip.

    YMBAC when your H completely blows off Mother’s Day and your birthday….but sits at the table while your family celebrates with you and never says a word.

    YMBAC when you believe your H that he’s so busy at work that he has to constantly be emailing and texting on the weekends even though you don’t like it at all.

    and, of course,
    YMBAC when you completely trust your H’s commitment to you even though you don’t like the way he treats you – ignores you, makes you responsible for everything, doesn’t co-parent, talks bad about you to your child, and many more things that you resent but you let him keep doing these things because someday he’ll step up again.

    • oh and the biggie!!!

      YMBAC if his words and actions NEVER match up!!!! Always promises to try harder, pay more attention to you, etc. but never does!

  41. YMBAC if … during reconciliation you get her a new car and wonder how she puts 400 miles a week on it when she doesn’t even have a job

    YMBAC if … you take sexy photos of her wearing your hat and new shirt and later find out she immediately texted them to the OM with a barf-inducing cheesy tagline.

    YMBAC if … you notice texts sents from her phone the same time she was went to the restroom at the restaurant you ate at last night

    YMBAC if … you had sex with your wife the same day she just go back from running a long errand

    YMBAC if … your wife misses her period even though you have not had sex in 6 weeks

    YMBAC if … the other parents in your community start asking why your wife never attends any of your kid’s sporting events

    YMBAC if … your wife says “You know, I used to get a lot of attention from other men.”

    YMBAC if … your spouse never leaves her computer out in the open any more

    YMBAC if … after dday, your spouse says “But my emotional needs are not being met”

    YMBAC if … you read an article off the internet about BPD and NPD and every point rings true

    • “YMBAC if … you read an article off the internet about BPD and NPD and every point rings true”

      Oh yeah, I hear this one.

    • Damn. I’m a stay-at-home-mom. We live in a village and go to an adjacent village almost daily. I’ve put less than 600 miles on our vehicle since November. Valvoline knows my car well… it’s the only one they allow free fluid toppers on past the 3-month date because it has insanely low usage. At this rate, I won’t hit 3K miles until sometime in 2016, figuring I’ll have a few trips out of town to up the mileage. lol.

  42. YMBAC if he reaches for a book to read as you climb into bed naked.

    YMBAC if when he is around others he pushes his chest out so far he looks awkward.

    YMBAC if your doing all the heavy lifting in your relationship, but he is always disgruntled in some way. But when you become disgruntled over something you are treated like you should be ashamed of your self.

    • But when you become disgruntled over something you are treated like you should be ashamed of your self.

      ^^This

    • Thankful, he was always disgruntled. I am laughing just saying the word. I can picture a cartoon cheater named Disgruntled. Hi my name is Disgruntled. I have limited interests. Why is your name Disgruntled? Because: my wife bought the wrong lettuce, she put too much garlic in the sauce, she left a space in the dishwasher, she throws the laundry down the stairs, and I’m just disgruntled. That’s why I cheat. Aren’t they so mindful?

  43. YMBAC if you find condoms and porno in a camper, coat pocket, and pants pocket and your wife has been chemo paused and does not need them.

    • Informal, what am asshole to do this to you when you needed him the most. He deserves a special extra dose of karma.

  44. YMBAC if… you asked her for the name of the hotel she was staying at with her “work girlfriend” (actually work guy friend-fuckbuddy), who she was going on an out-of-town “shopping trip”with….and you called in and paid to have the room upgraded as a surprise for the “girls”!!!! (palm to face)

  45. YMBAC …..you truly believe the dive restaurant that he goes to for coffee every morning with the guys is innocent.

    YMBAC…..you truly believe he wouldn’t cheat let alone with a trashy waitress younger than our daughter.

    YMBAC….to believe when he’s talking behind everyone else’s back that he isn’t talking about you behind yours.

    The list goes on and on and on…..

  46. 1) YMBAC if you believed him all those evenings he said he was working.

    2) YMBAC if you believed that he could really never go on holiday with you because work kept him so busy (a variant of 1 above)

    3) YMBAC if you believed when he said he had absolutely no idea why he could never have sex with you and that he was upset about it, and would do something about it…tomorrow

  47. 1. YMBAC if you sat next the Cheater on the couch every night watching “House of Cards” with him, featuring infidelity heavily in the plot (Series 1), and every night he’d say “time to watch ‘our show'”… watch it and watch you watch it not knowing he had been a serial cheater for 16 years and was currently in an affair… then when the show ended he’d kiss and hug you and say, “Goodnight, Love you!” as you went to bed then he’d whip out his phone and text OW on the phone account you were paying for.

    2. YMBAC if you were just so happy he was safe and sound when he didn’t come home the night before, in the middle of the winter, didn’t answer his phone or texts for hours on end till you fitfully fell asleep worried he had crashed in a snowbank, then when at 8:30 a.m. you heard his key in the door you were just so happy he was okay!! what happened? you said and he said he was at a bar and had too many beers and dropped his phone in the truck and was too drunk to pick it up or to drive home so he slept in his truck in January. “No matter!” you said, I’m just glad you are ok!! (Wait, he drove home in the morning, why couldn’t he use his phone THEN?” Oh wait, you are a Chump.

    3. YMBAC if you told him you got a weird phone call at home from Adult Protective Services asking for his EX-Girlfriend by name. “OMG, he said – she is Crazy! She must have given them this address and phone number!” No, you are a chump. He’d been reported by her for a domestic violence incident and told them that was her boyfriend’s phone number.

    • I also believed that not only did he sleep in his truck in upstate NY in January, but that he slept in his truck in a cornfield on his solo trip to the midwest to visit his family. Chump!! he coudn’t be reached, of course, because there was no cell signal in the cornfield.

      • OMG! Sleeping in the car! Apparently there is a cell phone outage and lack of affordable hotel space all across the Northern states in winter. Who knew?

    • My husband has been telling me that he’s been living in the car for WEEKS now because he has to leave because he “can’t take the criticism in our conflicts.” Those same conflicts where he is often criticizing me for being “too emotional, relentless, persistent” about talking about such things like “Why were you gone for seven weeks, barely sent us any money and yes, we are sad about that.” Uh-huh. The only comeback that works in his favor is “would I smell this bad if I was staying at someone’s house?” OKay, maybe that is a fair point…..

  48. YMBAC if during your marriage you frequently felt like you were a mid-level manager constantly being given a “needs improvement” evaluation by your spouse CEO no matter how hard you worked, and you thought that shit was NORMAL. You also felt that each “needs improvement” evaluation would be the one to get you fired – during your entire 25 year marriage.

    YMBAC if many of the negative traits (not self-aware, not affectionate enough, etc.) your cheater ascribed to you were actually HIS “negative” traits, but you kept analyzing and trying to fix yourself to make yourself a “better” partner .

    YMBAC if the MC tells you in one sentence that it was your efforts that have held the marriage together so far, then in a later sentence tells you that you need to do MORE in order to make the marriage better and you continue to attend sessions with her because you’re so desperate to make the marriage work. ARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!

    YMBAC if you believe your cheater when he tells you that the names, services and prices of prostitutes he has scribbled on random pieces of paper are from “long before” even though at least one is written on an envelope post-marked only 2 days before you find it.

    YMBAC if you catch your spouse “peeping-tom” your 19-year-old daughter (his step-daughter who he has helped raised from childhood) through her door while she is in her room getting dressed and you believe him when he tells you that he’s never done that before, doesn’t know what came over him and he will never do it again and you believe him.

    And this is just the tip of the Chump iceberg.

    • CP, “YMBAC if during your marriage you frequently felt like you were a mid-level manager constantly being given a “needs improvement” evaluation by your spouse CEO no matter how hard you worked, and you thought that shit was NORMAL. You also felt that each “needs improvement” evaluation would be the one to get you fired – during your entire 25 year marriage.” This is exactly what I felt like for the 22 years I was married. And damn if that whole “fired” thing was exactly why I tried for so long to avoid. It was inevitable because he was always looking for my replacement and apparently giving “interviews” through the whole 22 years. Luckily there was one applicant that he couldn’t pass up, because you know he had to be “happy”. Freaking ass*oles all of them.

    • Negative traits were actually his traits! Yes! What a mystery that he hated all my “lies”. I would take so much thought to make SURE everything I told him were completely true.
      I never really suspected him of being a compulsive, sociopathic liar until he smugly told the judge that I would kill my children. The look on his face: power and glee! jackass.
      He had NO evidence. Dude, just ’cause you would kill and lie doesn’t mean I would.
      (Lightening bolt, please)

    • Peeping on his 19 year-old stepdaughter? CP, that is the absolute lowest of the low. I am absolutely sicked! Thank GOD I got out before my girls had to go through that. UGH

      • FoolMeTwice, you have no idea. He had raised this girl as his own daughter since she was around 5 or 6 years old. That is just the incident I personally witnessed. I later found photographs (I believe it was right before or right after dday 2) that he had taken of her without her knowledge. I’ve been told that there was other creepy behavior, as well, but he never once attempted to actually “touch” her inappropriately. His “fascination age” seems to be with girls in their late teens/early 20’s. There was also a time when the younger children were under 5 that a sales clerk (she may have been 19 or 20) accused him of having flirted with her and asking for her phone number. He said that she was lying about him and that he had merely requested that she contact him when some merchandise came in. He and I went to the manager where I defended him and said that my husband was owed an apology. I remember the manager looking at me with sympathy. I will never truly know what actually took place, but knowing what I know now, I think the sales clerk is the one owed an apology – particularly by me.

        I consider myself an intelligent woman but I was almost completely blind about this Flaming Turd from Satan’s Ass for a long time. There were red flags, and I see them all now in hindsight, but I simply was not able to see them because living crazy had become my normal.

  49. My ex was the director of a Jewish Community Center. At functions he would greet board members and staff by kissing them, some on the lips. When I witnessed this and voiced my concern, he made it my problem. He said “we’re like family here,” I’m just a friendly guy, I can’t help it if people like me. The creepy gut feeling never left me and I soon found out he was a serial predator/cheater….especially at work. Some of the JCC people still think he’s a great guy, but myself and his kids can’t stomach him. Karma.

  50. YMBAC If you find a white towel with Holiday Inn in big green letters on it in your bedroom, and believe his story that he found it.
    YMBAC If you then find a pen from the same hotel in his pocket, and he admits that insane neighbor invited him there to hang out for a while, and have a few drinks – and you still believe him.
    YMBAC If your hubby tells you – It’s someone else’s turn to work! (when you tell him the house will probably go to foreclosure next year, at this rate)
    YMBAC If you think you maybe could save your marriage if he could just relax, maybe he needs a back rub every day, instead of twice a week!
    But you are a SMART CHUMP if you leave, finally, and let her have him!

  51. YMBAC if your boyfriend stays up until 3 am on the computer with the door shut.

    YMBAC if your boyfriend refuses to let you talk to his friends for no reason.

    YMBAC if you tell him one of your sexual fantasies of a celebrity crush and he gets mad at you for not thinking of HIM, but then proceeds to tell you he’s going to hang out with a girl he just met that’s “Just a friend, I swear.”

    YMBAC if your boyfriend wants to go to Germany without you to see how many phone numbers of German girls he can get.

    YMBAC if your boyfriend hasn’t paid his part of rent this month, but buys a new car…

    YMBAC if your boyfriend sits there and continues to play a video game, not even pausing it, while you’re sitting next to him sobbing.

    YMBAC if you meet a girl who didn’t know YOU existed, but knows your boyfriend and can name details of his personality and the time they spent together.

    YMBAC if your boyfriend doesn’t want you to come out to his parent’s house with him because “You just don’t need to come this time.”

    …Eyyyyeup.

    • Kara, the XH literally walked over my body as I was weeping in the fetal position on the ground. Not a care in the world about me…only cared about himself.

      • That happened to me too.
        I literally froze up to the point where I couldn’t move, tears were running UP my forehead and he just shut out the lights and went to sleep. I laid there all night because the shock of it all froze me. I couldn’t even move at all. I have never experienced anything like that before or since. I should’ve have left after that. It makes me sick to think about it.

  52. YMBAC if you tell your spouse that picking up strange women for dancing in a club in Vegas is inappropriate, and he angrily tells you that maybe you should get divorced.

    YMBAC if you don’t question your spouse’s story about remaining in the gym locker room for 45 minutes while you waited outside because he “lost the key to his lock.” If that was the case, how did he eventually get his locker open and come out fully dressed? And why did he then go into a rage when you told him he had been inconsiderate? This happened during our dating days. Of course, years later he admitted that he screwed other guys in locker rooms quite frequently. Still, it took me years longer to remember the gym incident and put together the pieces of the puzzle.

    YMBAC if you didn’t question your then-boyfriend’s story about driving home a Donna Summer drag queen from a drag club. You seriously believed he just dropped the guy off at his apartment and nothing else happened? C’mon.

    • 🙁 Well, he was right about one thing, yeah, you should have gotten divorced, but not because you were too uptight, because he was a lousy cheater!

      Which you did so all the better.

      When I caught my ex boyfriend with his last OW, she told me that I should move on so they could be happy together with their love.

      She was right, I did need to move on, but NOT for her sake. For mine.

      And I am SO happy I did. Not just because life is better on the other side, but because he inevitably cheated on her too lol.

  53. YMBAC if he deletes his history before shutting down the computer.
    YMBAC if after you bust him on his YAHOO account picking up other women, he suddenly goes to Best Buy and purchases a new laptop for himself and recycling the ‘family’ laptop that still worked
    YMBAC if he names friends on his phone Bob/Amanda when “Bob” has a separate listing
    YMBAC when he buys anything he fucking wants without consulting you – like sports cars and claiming it is for our son – who needs money for college more than he needs a fucking sports car!
    YMBAC when for Christmas he gives his parents a $1200 grill (again without consulting me) and giving his wife a jacket he received for ‘a perfect safety award’ at work.
    YMBAC if on your birthday he comes home from the bar at 2:30 a.m. and at 4 am is puking on the bedroom carpeting. And THAT IS ALL you got for your birthday
    YMBAC when you take an innocent trip down to Texas with a friend and you come back to accusations that the reason you went was to whore yourself out.
    YMBAC when on Mothers Day he says “Why should I wish you a happy fucking mothers day? You aren’t my fucking mom!”
    YMBAC for him not telling you he loves you for 15 years becaus “He doesn’t want to get hurt again” due to an affair I had that never happened
    YMBAC for being blamed for an affair that never happened for 15 fucking years
    YMBAC if he accuses you of having a ‘secret contact list’ on your cell phone because you got a weather alert while we were sleeping

    • I got that too – “YMBAC when on Mothers Day he says “Why should I wish you a happy fucking mothers day? You aren’t my fucking mom!” So imagine how I felt last year when I found a gushy lovey dovey email to a 2008 OW, wishing her a Happy Mother’s Day.

      • Yes–far be it from the father of my sons to be a good role model. But I was the one who sent flowers to his mother “from him,” and he always worked on Mother’s Day, with no effort made whatsoever.

        Real nice.

        • Your buying flowers for his mother reminded me.

          When my XH’s grandmother died a few years ago (way before d’day) I just had this compulsion to buy flowers for my now XH and our kids to place on his grandmothers casket. I am so glad I followed my gut that day. XFIL also a cheater, had not bothered with flowers for his own mothers funeral and those that I purchased where all that were on her casket when she was laid to rest.

          Dysfunctional types are selfish to the core.

      • Ewww, it’s not that Cluster B’s don’t know how to make a partner feel loved, it’s that they won’t do any of that, and you can’t make them! Otherwise known as ‘All the kibbles are for me, you should know that! Now go do your chores!’

        • So true. I didn’t understand why we didn’t celebrate special days like everyone else. Looking back he truly didn’t understand why people planned anything. Could not pick out a thoughtful gift to save his life. YMBAC if you forgive your spouse for not giving you gifts on any occasion. He did always buy himself stuff though.

  54. My ex bought me the love dare book, i almost cried until i realized he bought it so i could use it on him. He was always buying me books so that i could learn to be a better wife. The last one was how to affair proof your marriage. Almost hit him with it.

    • He bought you a book on how to affair-proof your marriage???

      WTF!

      Is that not the height of narcissistic arrogance? As if your job is to SERVE him! As if he’s issuing you a warning–and honey! You better dance, and dance real pretty for him.

      YMBAC if you dance.

      Hopefully you’re reformed and now realize that he might have helped to affair-proof his marriage by being a loving husband and not fucking other women.

      GOOD FUCKING RIDDANCE!

      • YMBAC if you dance and don’t even know it. My ex had a terribly hard *snort* decision to make our last two years together. (Hey, red flags there but I was fucking clueless!).
        Leave the marriage for his special racquetball whore or stay with his loyal family. Ding! ding! Ding! His choice? Leave, and fuck us over-me and our kids- financially!

    • YMBAC if you’ve ever had the love dare book thrown at you while your exH was working on the steps (Yep. That actually happened). Pretty sure THAT wasn’t part of the love dare directions!

  55. **** Sorry if any of these are repeats from other posters ****

    From my X’s EA:

    YMBAC if you can do *nothing* right
    YMBAC if you see an email from another person who tells your SO “I miss you”, then believe the explanation that “we are just working together on a project”.
    YMBAC if your SO is convinced *YOU* are having an affair, and accuses you of such.
    YMBAC if you are increasingly devalued

    From my friend’s experience with her BF:
    YMBAC if your SO guards their phone like Fort Knox
    YMBAC if your SO has weird excuses for not answering his/her phone, or having it go right to voicemail.
    YMBAC if sex suddenly becomes – just sex.
    YMBAC if your SO tries to change you in some way
    YMBAC if your SO has “a lot of friends” of the opposite sex
    YMBAC if your SO makes plans with you, then, “needs” to break them or reschedule
    YMBAC if your SO (who claims you are The One), can’t see you more than 1 to 2 times a week, when you know darn well they CAN.

  56. YMBAC if you believe the jerk that he cheated on his former wife but won’t cheat with you because you’re “special.”

    YMBAC if your H slams down his computer when you walk in the room.

    YMBAC if your H stays out until 4 or 5 at graduate student parties, and everyone knows he is flirting with woman 30 years younger (except you).

    YMBAC if you find notes for H to prep himself for a sexual harassment hearing plus condoms in his computer bag. (To my credit–I did twig at that point & bailed. September 11th–oh, the irony.)

  57. YMBAC if he chooses to sleep in the loft endlessly because he doesn’t want his snoring to bother you and you believe him.

    YMBAC if he always takes extra days while on a work trip to get accustomed to the time difference and you feel sorry for him.

    YMBAC if he switches hotels from all his other colleagues while on his work trips so that he can get ‘a toaster in his room’ and you feel for his diabetic needs.

    YMBAC when he buys an extortionately expensive car just after D-Day because he says he has not had any fun in his life for so many years and you don’t tell him where to go.

    YMBAC when the MC gaslights you and you don’t tell her where to go.

    • LOL, mine slept in the guest room because of my supposed snoring. Then he spent hours sexting or texting OW from the phone account I’d been paying for him to have for the previous ten years.

  58. YMBAC if you buy into the RIC / therapy agenda and make the “marriage a safe, happy place to be.”. It already was, that’s why they panic when they think you will find out they are a Cheater and will throw them out of the Dangerous Unhappy Marriage.

    UMBAC if you try to outwhore the slut screwing around with your spouse. I did this, and can honestly say I have no interest in sexting, or trying to be sexy. Luckily I realized this pretty quickly and didn’t go very far into it. I’m not interested in photos of any guy’s junk. And I won’t be sending any either. Ditto with porn, chat rooms, Skype, etc.

  59. Oh yes – the phone hoarding! OMG – can’t live without that!! The phone locking. The carrying of the phone along side his leg while he is walking thinking you can’t see it. Always having it on vibrate. Doesn’t get more than 2 inches from his body. Looking at a text and talking to you (referring to another text but wanting you to believe he is talking about a different text) that was sent out hours ago because you got the same fucking mass text. Positioning himself just right in the chair while watching tv so that he can glance at his phone thinking you don’t fucking know it is there! POS

  60. YMBAC if…your response to a cheating spouse is to attend marriage counseling.

    Your marriage did not cause the affair. So how will attending marriage counseling stop the affair?

    A didn’t cause B. D through F caused B. So, working on A won’t affect B. Get that through your skull, ASAP.

    (This is not to knock marriage counseling. If your spouse never cheated, or if you have a unicorn committed to reconciliation who works on his own problems for a few months, then try MC to make your marriage even stronger. But don’t, ever, think that your marriage “contributed” to your spouse’s cheating, and somehow working on your marriage will make your spouse a faithful person. That’s specious reasoning.

  61. Ymbac if you got a plug-in electric lawn mower for your 50th birthday and you’ve use a contract lawn service for over ten years

    • Should have added it’s a 1 acre lot, and my 50th birthday was at the height of her betrayal. Sick shit. Yelled and tried to blame me in front of our son for telling her the wrong thing to order. Until I showed her what I circled BIG in the advertisement. Not close to what she ordered. But I said that’s OK it’s the thought that counts and gave her no grief for it. What a f#$%ing c#%nt she was then. Worse part is I’m still with her trying to heal. Not sure it’s any better.

      • They never understand any one else’s needs. I think the disordered love the power that says,”fuck you!” It’s a deliberate mindfuck purchasing something their spouse desires and was very specific with. During my marriage I just went out and bought what I wanted because with a Narc you are never going to get what you want. That includes a reciprocal loving marriage. Too, our argument was never about things but the loving, caring gesture behind it. My condolences.

  62. I wore the OW’S sunglasses for a while, i had found a pair in the car and just wore them with innocence, not even questioning why there is randomly a pair of ladies sunglasses lying in our car. And to put cream on top, at one time I found the passenger car seat was in lying position. WOW, how could I have missed that message?

    • Wow–sunglasses.

      Huhn….

      There were wrong sunglasses in his truck. I never figured it out. He must have loved that.

      • YMBAC when you find a random pair of women’s sunglasses in his parent’s guest room that had a long blond hair in them- while they were out of town. Then everyone tried to give them to me and they were not mine. He even did! And you don’t worry about it because you trust him so much.

  63. YMBAC if he was constantly in love with women from work, and was open about it–“What! I can’t HELP it if I’m infatuated!” he would charge. “She and I have a lot in common–you and I have NOTHING in common!” This was the theme since you were dating, and he was in love with a classmate, and every time he fell in love with a different blonde tech from work, thereafter. But, you knew it would blow over, and every time, sure enough it did! And you STILL believed he’d never cheat.

    YMBAC if you believed that it was a really good thing, actually, that he kept a separate bank account, and hoarded money and refused to buy you any token of affection when you were out together. I mean, you have your OWN money, right? And he’s so frugal, and who needs that junk–you can buy it yourself! It hurts a little, and it’s kinda irritating to be married to a withholding cheapskate who treats you like you’re a total pain in the ass, but you’ll get over it. Plus, fiscal discipline is a good thing. (Since the divorce, oddly enough, you’re doing really well. You’re not a spendthrift, it turns out.)

    YMBAC if you hated to ask him for help because it might irritate him, or he’d say he was going to do it but never did, or, his bad back, so…. I mean, he works full-time, and you only work “part-time,” except for when you worked full-time. Either way, part-time or full-time, you took care of the kids and the house (inside AND outside, because of his bad back and also he’s not the one who wanted that quarter-acre lot, YOU did, though he does like to go out and pick fresh fruit off the trees you prune every fall.) It’s not his fault that you signed the kids up for activities that he doesn’t like, and that you chose to send them to schools outside the neighborhood. And, by the way, those charter school dues are voluntary. You might have more money if you didn’t choose to pay the requested donation that funds teachers and programs for the school, he reminds you. What kind of chump are you, if you pay, when a few of the other parents don’t pay, he wants to know. Just because you both earn high salaries doesn’t mean you should be a chump.

    YMBAC if he refused to acknowledge that you’re a good mother. Everyone else says so, but he withholds, deliberately. The thing is, as he explains, his mom was a single mom, and had to struggle, while you have it pretty good. So you can understand why his standard is pretty high. She’s a really good mom. She did the best she could–she was resourceful, whereas it’s almost you don’t even know what that’s like since your parents are still married. It’s not that you’re a BAD mom, but…sometimes you raise your voice to the kids, and you really don’t need to do that. He never raises his voice at the kids. Just because you tell him that he’s a great dad, and you mean it, too, doesn’t make you a good mom. The childless babysitter you had for a while–now, she was good, he liked to point out. She would run the dishwasher even if it wasn’t totally full, and that’s just smart, if you think about it. And she does a lot of crafts and takes the kids places. I mean, you do, too, but it’s not the same. So you wait–one day he will see that you ARE a good mother.

    YMBAC if you bite your tongue when he is a spineless coward who treats your father like a petulant teen would treat the detention monitor. Sometimes your dad can be a bit overbearing. So you can kind of understand how uncomfortable it makes your husband. That’s why he takes a nap the minute you arrive at your parents’ house 90 minutes away for a visit, and turns your dad down for any activity that he suggests. Even though your dad tries to think of things your husband would enjoy doing…why can’t your father just leave your husband alone on his day off? Ugh! It hurts to see your father treated like this, and it hurts to see your mother bite her tongue when her husband is being insulted by your husband, and it’s REALLY fairly off-putting, but that’s no way to think of your husband.

    YMBAC if your home has a lot of furniture in it that was picked up at garage sales and rehabbed nicely by his mother. She’s really generous–she gives freely, even though she really doesn’t have a lot herself. She’s talented at slip-covering and finding value-priced attractive pieces in her wealthy community. It’s almost like she’s your personal decorator. Your tastes are not necessarily the same, but even with your combined salaries, there never seems to be enough money to buy your own furniture–it’s weird, but it must make sense somehow. And you can never agree on what you like, either. He gets really irritated and wants to buy the first thing he sees at the store. And since he’s the one with the full-time salary, you’re kind of stuck. So, you live with ratty old furniture in your run-down old house. Who cares, right? The kids are little, and you have a great family.

    YMBAC if he bought the kids and himself used snowboarding equipment on Craig’s List, but nothing for you. You’re not good at it, anyway, and you can just rent. He says it’s pretty expensive when you rent, and he’s not going to wait in line with you–there’s a mountain up there. That time his work friends drove up to meet him at the ski area, when you were staying in a house with family friends? Remember when he ditched you to meet them, because you were taking FOREVER to get sunscreen on the kids, and breakfast made and cleaned up, and ready yourself, and his friends were waiting for him–and “J” was there, and he’s really good at snowboarding and he couldn’t wait to teach them all how to snowboard/show off? YMBAC if you just went along with it. It hurt, but whatever.

    YMBAC if you were sorry for being a pain in the ass. And you totally understood why he really didn’t want you to go to his work functions and embarrass him. You’re popular amongst your own work-mates and mothers’ groups and friends, but I guess it’s his thing, and you might not fit in.

    YMBAC if you totally understand why everyone else at his work has a picture or more of their spouse or significant other on their locker, but he doesn’t. I mean, it’s not like there ARE any good pictures of you that you’d want everyone to see, anyway. It’s not a big deal. You were just noticing one day when you visited him with the kids during his evening shift.

    YMBAC if you really thought that he was sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the living room because “his back hurt too much” on the new, firm mattress on your bed that was too soft for him. YMBAC, too, if you were only mildly irritated that he wanted his own bedroom in the small, 3-bedroom house that you shared with your three children. And that he wanted his own house, and felt good about buying it, even though you could barely afford it–“it’s my get-away place,” he purred. And his mother helped to furnish the place with smart pieces reflective of her taste. He liked it. It was very generous of her, and made the place more comfortable. If you slaved away there, painting, and pulling weeds, and cleaning up after mice, using up your weekends, and buying inexpensive appliances, struggling to pay off your credit card, while he kept his bank account separate from yours, and sneered at you for being financially irresponsible, and you thought that maybe he was right? YMBAC. YMBAC if you were hoping that you’d be able to replace the 1950’s kitchen and 1980’s vinyl floor in your family home, but the other house needed new doors, and tree removal, and siding. If you lived in an embarrassingly ugly little house, while spending over double on his get-away place at the coast, and you thought, well…some day….YMBAC.

    One weekend, your friends’ husbands pitched in to fly you from California to NYC with their wives and pay for your lodging and Broadway show. You couldn’t afford it yourself, so you’d begged out, responsibly. You were trying to pay off that credit card, what with the washing machine and dryer and dishes, etc. for his getaway place. That second home was expensive, but he loved it. And don’t look at HIM! You don’t NEED to go to NYC. So your SAHM friends surprised you! And it’s really not cool to think of your husband in a negative way. YMBAC if you felt guilty for wondering if it made your husband feel weird that other husbands were nice to their SAHM wives and to you like that. You wondered what they thought of your husband, but you’re all friends, so it doesn’t matter.

    YMBAC if you spent another weekend driving to and from his getaway place, and helping to spruce the place up so that his latest work crush and her new husband would be comfortable when they borrowed the place for the weekend. He was so excited, wasn’t he! He really wanted the place nice for her. And surely he was over her, you figured, since she was a newlywed. So it was ok. He needed help. He has a bad back! (But never at his getaway place.)

    YMBAC if you thought his impromptu solo getaway trip to Hawaii for “hiking” was to clear his head–I mean, work had been REALLY stressful for him! He’d been working A LOT!! That’s WHY he could never go anywhere with you and the kids. Plus, his back hurt all the time. You can’t expect him to ride in a car when his back hurts all the time!

    YMBAC if you thought that he really drove to Yosemite–twice on an impromptu basis–alone, to sleep in the tent cabins in the dead of winter, because work had been really stressful, and he loves Yosemite, and ice-hiking! Speaking of freezing cold, you have more than a twinge of guilt, and maybe could even be called out for being a frigid, self-centered bore for not dropping everything–work, the kids, the dog–to go with him when he told you he was going at the last minute. You really don’t like the cold, but why should it matter what you want? He works really hard. You work full-time, now, too, but you used to only work part-time, while he worked full-time.

    YMBAC if you thought the shaved wad of gray pubes in the toilet was there just because he’s absent-minded and was grooming for you. He’d been a little distant, but when you got together, there seemed to be a bit of urgency to do that one thing he likes.

    YMBAC if you had sex twice after D-day with the loser. And you begged him to “fight for us!” and he just snorted. He was pissed at you for making him cheat on her with you. That kinda made your heart and head hurt, but he must have his point.

    YMBAC if you thought that maybe when he was over his infatuation with the final OW that the two of you could be really close friends again, and maybe travel together as two single friends–maybe with benefits, *wink-wink!*. He hates to travel.

    • It’s such a tangled web. My story was similar, and all we can do is try to put it in the past. Keep saying to ourselves, live for right now! And adore the kids we got off these strange people.

      • That’s why, when I look back, I have a hard time saying that I’d have it any other way. I got 3 kids who are everything to me. (And good insurance, too. I kept that after the divorce!)

        Hug your kids, FW!

        • Same to you.
          It’s too bad my three sons have all the knowledge they do of their father. I’m sure they WISH they could admire him. They were hurt too.
          But, they are all so strong, and just beautiful, intelligent people. I hope they choose well for partners, my oldest son definately has, she’s a gem.

    • YMBAC if, like me, you took the daily dose of birth control, when he was superior for taking NO medication. You carried and birthed three of his children, but he refused to get a vasectomy, because “I refuse to get castrated.” My dermatologist, testing me for a nickle allergy, wanted to know why I was considering a nickel-based tubal ligation procedure. He tried to convince me that a vasectomy was the way to go. It was a little humiliating, though he was well-meaning. I guess my gyno and dermatologist were perplexed as to why my ex wouldn’t take his turn and act like a loving husband. After the laparoscopic tubal ligation, my ex took forever to show up at the recovery room to take me home. The nurses kept asking me when he was going to get there. That was humiliating, too. But it’s not cool to be resentful of your own husband. YMBAC for thinking that way, you know.

      When I had jaw surgery to correct a facial deformity, same thing. I had driven myself to surgery and stayed in the hospital overnight, recovering from major facial bone reconstruction. He took forever getting to the hospital the next morning, though I had made all the arrangements to get him a one-way rental car to the hospital so he could drive my car home. The nurse kept asking me when he was going to get there. It was humiliating. He arrived, and then left. The transporter wheeled me to the parking lot, but xH was nowhere to be found. I reassured the transporter that xH would be by any second to get me, so I declined his offer to take me back inside. And I waited in the February cold. Finally I weakly made my way on foot back to where I knew he would be–the cafeteria. I was trembling and fuzzy-headed. What!? HE was HUNGRY! YMBAC if, in my situation, like I did, you felt guilty for inconveniencing your xH and for making this all about yourself, and bleeding and bruising, and being ugly and swollen for a couple of weeks. He got a much hotter wife out of the deal, but, God, what a pain in the ass I could be sometimes.

      I gave birth to our middle and third child at the hospital where he works. I popped the kids out, and he went back to work while I was in the L&D ward. He laughed that his co-workers clucked at him for leaving my side. YMBAC if that kinda made you proud, because your husband is such a good employee.

      • Miss Sunshine, mine too refused to have a vasectomy. I was having some female issues and was concerned that the pill may not be as effective as we needed it to be. Neither of us wanted more children (‘we’ had 1- ‘I’ had 2 – our daughter and him). I kept saying ‘do you plan to have children with someone else cause I’m not planning to have anymore’. And of course, after I found out about his cheating and asked, a’hole proudly said that he never once used a condom with his many women and prostitutes.

        • Well, there’s a clue that your ex is a complete freak. He bragged about not using condoms with prostitutes.
          They really have ZERO sense that anyone else has a conscience (because they do not have one themselves). And forget about feelings. Everyone in THEIR world is just a drone.

          As I like to say, these freaks are remarkably lacking in INsight and self-awareness for being so completely self-absorbed.

          Reading everyone’s stories here makes it all so apparent.

          Even getting my own story in black and white makes it more apparent. But it took the cheating to finally clarify everything.

          I’m sorry the freak you were married to put your body and soul at risk like that. You didn’t deserve it. He was lucky to have you, but had no clue.

        • I read that refusal to use condom or birth control is a sign of a narcissist or sociopath. My ex always refused, even after I just gave birth. And he admitted in the end he never used condoms even when engaged in group sex.

        • My first husband (and father of my three grown kids) would not permit me to use birth control because “it wasn’t natural.” He preferred to use coitus interruptus, which was fine for HIM, and when I complained that it denied me my chance for pleasure, he started waiting till after I was asleep, exhausted from working fulltime, taking care of the kids, and attending school so at least one of us good get a good job to support the 3 kids we already had. So I would awaken to him on top of me. Many years later I realized this was rape. I divorced him a couple years after that started, after discovering his online woman. He then took up with a woman who had told him she never wanted children; got her pregnant and was “heartbroken” when she had an abortion. She dumped him too.

          My “current” Ex, the cheater of 16 years that I am recovering from, NEVER used condoms. The reason he never fathered any children despite the unknown legions of women (and men) that he has fucked, is that he is incapable of normal, vaginal sex. I believe you are right that it is probably typical of narcissists and other disordered types, to refuse to use birth control. Anything that impedes their selfish pleasure… consequences don’t matter … that’s for the little people.

          • You’ve been twice abused, Miss Muse.

            I hope you’ll have better. You deserve it.

        • Miss Sunshine, I hope his next wife is a husband beater with a fierce backhand. That happened to my niece’s POS ex. LOL. He lives in fear of his new wife and never knows when she will haul off and clobber him, but he knows that she will.

          • Glad, Buddy, and Finally–

            How’s this for an active imagination? Every time I hear sirens, or read the headlines in my local paper, “Woman arrested for Domestic Violence,” or, “Man Arrested For Beating Wife,” I say a cheeky little prayer that somehow the ex and OW are involved.

            Then I remember that the college tuition (half) he pays is pretty handy for our kids, so I can be patient. Youngest graduates in 3 years, and then, que sera, sera!

            Um, but I read somewhere, and have a chumped friend as an example, that if the ex and OW don’t blow up quickly after the triangulation with the chump is over, then they tend to have a long and suffocating relationship that endures and drains, and is miserable. So, I’ll be satisfied with that, because I really do believe that will be the case with the Coward and the Twat Troll. They each have different loves. xH loves nobody, but whatever is his hobby du jour. It’s sort of a sad existence, really. OW has got to be realizing that she stole a moldy lemon. Perhaps she will find someone else to rescue soon.

            I keep my outrage and hurt in a box on the shelf. It’s reserved for xH and OW, and their ilk. I bring it out here, as part of my ongoing therapy. I don’t show it to many people, least of all my kids. Nobody but enlightened chumps really can understand.

            Truly, mostly I am at meh, SO SO glad that xH is not my ugly problem any more. I would have loved for us to have been an old couple who age together gracefully and graciously, loving our children and grandchildren, and our life together. But I was finally awakened to the truth, that that’s not possible for xH, and I am certain that he will never be a capable and confident man with ANY woman, if he couldn’t be that man for me.

            I’d wish him well, but I don’t.

            I am doing great. NC is the best invention ever. Chump Lady and this Nation have truly been a life-saver. I cannot imagine going through Life After Cheater with confusion and self-doubt. Tracy has helped to bring clarity to my life through her words of wisdom, with input from the experienced chumps here.

            I love you all!! Have a great weekend, everyone!

    • “She and I have a lot in common–you and I have NOTHING in common!”

      I heard EXACTLY the same words!!!

      • I heard later from mutual friends (now my Ex-Friends because they stuck with Cheater) that Cheater and OW were drawn to each other in part because they had both attended the same state university in the midwest in the 1980s though they never knew each other. Wow!! If that’s all it takes, I should have been fucking every guy who went to the same college and law school as me, right?

        • That is so funny, Muse. I had the same conversation with my cheater. He and the Whore lived in the same low rent apartments when he was in his twenties. So of course they had to be Special Friends now. I asked him, So it is o.k.to sneak around with people from apartments, or schools,or work, or whatever since they are part of the past. You do know this would include thousands of people, right?

          My college alone had over 30,000 people. So they are all fair game, as well as the thousands more I’ve worked with over the years. And let’s not even talk about neighbors. They really are stupid, aren’t they?

        • Muse, I think you figured out cheater logic. (Ex needed his Mommy. He cheated with a woman who has straight hair like his Mom. “I told you to straighten your hair more.” Sometimes I would do my hair naturally wavey and he would come up behind me with his hair gel on his hands and flatten my hair. Then, he would be totally baffled why I was mad.) And then, he took my children away from their Mommy. He just couldn’t handle the chaos of frizzy hair.

    • Miss Sunshine – I have a similar story. The two things that stuck out that you mentioned was the separate bank accounts and pictures. About 10 years ago my stbx and I got into a fight about “My” affair (ficticious). I left. He threatened that if I didn’t come home he would take my name off of our checking account. I didn’t come home. He went to the bank and had them take my name off! YES – THEY TOOK MY NAME OFF OUR JOINT CHECKING ACCOUNT! Now – he has the attitude that it is “His Money – it is HIS name on the paycheck, therefore he can spend it any way he choses!” So yes – he can go out and buy pool tables that are used as shelves or just sit in the shed while I am the one paying for school lunches, Dr. bills, Senior pictures, parties….As far as pictures…. I can GUARANTEE there is NOT ONE picture of me in his phone. But I CAN GUARANTEE there are lots of pictures of beer cans, morel mushrooms, and his friends.

      • Good luck with your divorce, M’Lady!

        What a self-absorbed prick you live with. What a disordered, navel-gazing jerk.

        You deserve a better life. And, we’ll see what the court says about “his” money.

        Why do these freaks bother to get married?

    • Miss Sunshine, I’m sure you realize this, but he has/had a seriously fuckedup relationship with his Narc mother.

      • Yeah, I’m really not sure what to think about his mom. She has a rescue complex, like OW. I think these types feel like those who need rescuing cannot judge them, or something. And they live in fear of judgement.

        She hated compliments and would act as though I was secretly insulting her. I realize that women often use fake compliments to humiliate other women, but I’m kind of shocked that she never learned to trust me. What can I say, but I often admired her talents. She did not accept this. For example, she tiled her kitchen countertop by herself. I was and am truly impressed. It looked great. I said so, completely charmed by her ability and drive. Same for the slip-covered couches–the covers fit like GLOVES. She would react in a hurt tone, “Well I don’t HAVE the money to PAY someone!!” I would back-pedal and try to reassure her that I meant that I was in awe–in a good way! And she just always seemed so hurt….

        She hated when I would brag about HER GRANDCHILDREN. ?WTF? If you can’t brag about grandchildren to their GRANDMOTHER, well…. Did she see it as some sort of personal failure? Did she think I was trying to be a better mother than she is? Did she resent my lack of struggle, being in a 2-parent household with her son? To this day, I don’t get it.

        She came alive when she could swoop in and help–such as bringing a Christmas tree to our house, because her son was too busy, and I was tied to 3 toddlers and not feeling capable of doing it myself.

        She revealed BITTER resentment toward her daughter’s sister-in-law, who drove expensive cars, and required a re-model of their expensive home at a young age.

        Interestingly, I do believe that xH is a covert narcissist. Perhaps xMIL is, too.
        http://www1.appstate.edu/~hillrw/Narcissism/shycovertnarcissist.html

        There’s another sad angle to his story–he is adopted within the family, from one dysfunctional woman to a relative in a dysfunctional marriage to a dysfunctional male. The whole thing is really sad, but I can’t help but believe xH has some sort of attachment disorder.

        I’m definitely not perfect, myself. I’m sure that if xH were to weigh in here, he could come up with a long list of terrible things I said or did in our marriage–far short of cheating and abuse, however.

        I can say that I tried, even without a lot of reciprocity. I was not married to a partner, I now realize. Sometimes I wonder if the poor dude did the best he could.

        Then I throw up my hands–“Meh.”

        • ExLoki did not do the best he could. I practically paved the path to happiness in yellow brick for him. He chose the path to misery.
          I can say that he traveled the life journey with me as far as he wanted to. When I really looked and realized he would not be going anywhere further with me I decided that i would keep going to the finish line alone.
          Sure, bad character stunted him, but he made a few choices when good and bad were as stark as day and night.
          People say, “I wouldn’t want to be him when collection day comes.”

          • Wow!
            That is spot on, I copied it into my CL archives.
            ‘Paved in yellow brick’, yes, so true. I used to tell our friends, after I knew he chumped me good, that he’d had everything handed to him on a Silver Platter (by me)
            I guess I was trying to win the wife olympics, but now, I realize I never should have had to try so hard!
            And that’s why my current life is easy!

  64. YMBAC if you believed that the late night “jogs” with your neighbor were because it was just “too hot” to jog in the daytime. And kids couldn’t come along on daytime “jogs” because….oh wait…no reason. Kids couldn’t come because they snuck out without saying anything and then came back to say they had gone “jogging”.

  65. YMBAC – the “work wife” was invited and attended your baby shower
    YMBAC – believed the “im depressed” crapola
    YMBAC – gave x a weekend in mountains cause he had not been sleeping because of our newborn…he
    texts ho-worker all weekend
    YMBAC – believed him moving out was a way for him to find himself and then come back to marriage

    • The last one rings soooo true for me. Needed his “place” to work on himself so he could come home happy. I am so a chump.

    • Exactly, YMBAC if your spouse says the affair is over but wants to move out temporarily to work on mental health issues because they have to fix themselves before working on the marriage

  66. YMBAC, if your spouse has new items around that house she did not buy and tells you they came from a person that is not their friend and they rarely if ever see them

    YMBAC, if you been married over 10 years and all of a sudden your spouse is comparing your sexual abilities to a hypothetical person

    YMBAC, if your spouse is a stay at home parent (child is in school) and never answers the phone and when you get home they just got home 15 minutes before you arrived

    YMBAC, if your spouse has a ton of selfies on her phone with flowers and bathtub full of rosepedals but you have never received those selfies from her (in fact never)

    YMBAC, if you have roll over minutes on your family plan cell phone with over 500 minutes and in a period of one month they all disapeared and you receive an email that your cell phone will be $50 more than it normally is

    YMBAC, if your spouse is asleep in bed andw hile you get up for work and are taking a shower they are making phone calls and by the time you get out of the shower they are asleep again

    YMBAC, if you come home from work and your spouse starts an argument to which you have no idea what it is about only to see them then turn to the children in private and tell them how bad of a person you are because you argue with the other parent (for what you still have no idea)

    I can go on for hours on this and make a poster larger than ChumpLady did but I really have to work LOL!

  67. YMBAC when your disgusting cheating boyfriend comes to the bar you work in, gets ridiculously drunk and has sex with a random woman in the ladies’ toilets while you’re in the next room working! And the chumpy cherry on the cake? Refusing to believe your colleagues when they tell you what happened. Oh yes, I was once that Chump! *facepalm*

  68. Thank god there is humor here at this blog! It certainly helps to be able to laugh about some of this now, in light of the nightmare that all of us have experienced… thank you CL and CN!

  69. YMBAC if you foolishly agree to try bogus reconciliation even though your spouse is the biggest cheater in the world and has a bunch of conditions for YOU if reconciliation is “to work.” And the two of you go to a MC for a consultation, and after listening to your spouse talk for an hour straight about all of his gay cheating and straight cheating, the MC says he does NOT recommend you reconcile and you should go ahead with divorce. But you still try reconciling for eight more months. 🙁

  70. YMBAC if your husband asked another woman to go Christmas shopping with him because he didn;t know which tye-died license plate cover you would like best. She got jewelry that Cheistmas, And black leather boots.

  71. From my fiance’s YMBAC file:

    YMBAC if you are supposed to be in the Pentagon on 9/11/01 and when you frantically call your wife to tell her you werent killed in the attack she seems totally unaffected by the whole mundane topic.

    YMBAC if your spouse writes her will and you arent in it

    YMBAC if your spouse buys a house and you are not on the title

    YMBAC if she decides to “leave” you and she makes you drive her moving truck

    YMBAC if your XW has no job and uses the child support you send for your child to pay a cleaning lady

    You might be a RECOVERED Chump if you heal from the pain and indignity, find a fabulous chump to marry and live a wonderful life that is much better than the one your ex found after chasing green grass and mirages.

    • You drove the truck…. Oh, I’m so sorry. You’re a nice guy, aren’t you? Honorable, and all that. And she chumped you.

      Hope you’re over that.

      I was proud of myself for sitting back and watching–very atypical of chumpy me–as STBXH packed up his truck by himself before moving to his luxury apartment. I was a little crazed (a lot) and sat and berated him.

      But my chumpy side took over when he started to cry real tears about how he’d fucked everything up. I hugged him and told him it was all going to be ok–and I meant it. So, I guess we’re all chumps here.

    • I like the one about the will. I’m an attorney and I drafted my own will, health care proxy and POA. I was a chump because Cheater asked me to draft only a POA and a health care proxy for him. Either he didn’t have a will (doubful) or he had a secret one somewhere, probably naming his disfunctional narc sister.

  72. YMBAC if you thought he was serious about returning because he begged you and your kids!
    Said he was losing it with out his family, but in reality OW was tired of him and dumped him.
    Didn’t move back in because he wanted to give us space, or the flexibility of texting different OW at night.

    Oh the stories!
    It was complicated I thought she was pregnant cause I am fixed, she said she would tell you! (I already knew) She said she would send someone to hurt my family!

    Oh then it flipped, you were never a good house wife, you ignored me, you are not a good mom, you are lazy, you wasted my money, you never got along with my family!

  73. YMBAC if you sincerely asked your cheater if he missed the OW.

    (cringe…cringe…)

  74. YMBAEpicC if you crawl into bed with him to snuggle because he was home sick all day, only to discover a wet spot where you usually sleep. Nope. Not sweat or pee. Nope. Not spilled water. And the soda you like is half gone and he doesn’t drink your brand. And your shampoo cover is and your blow dryer is put away wrong.

      • It says so much about the cheater and theOW when they sleep in your bed together. I had to burn my bedding. Ex was ALWAYS washing the sheets. I used to appreciate this until his final cheating spree. What woman in their right mind would knowingly sleep in a married mans bed and think he will be faithful? X is already lying to her and contacted one his previous AP’S to meet up. She called me laughing. He duped her years ago and told her we were separated. She caught on and contacted me. I knew her in high school. I am sure he is spring shopping it’s his cheating season. What a relief it is to know what they are and pass the torch someone else.

    • That shit is just beyond anything disgusting, gross and disrespectful. These people really, really need to be struck by lightening and then boiled in hot oil. If there is any justice in the universe, they will, minimally, be attacked by locusts and covered in boils. At the very least, they should have to experience what they have put someone else through.

  75. YMBAC if he freaks out about how I have to help him clean before his AP comes over and when you say “She doesn’t care!” he responds “well I do!!” He never cleaned for any other company.

    • This was how I finally KNEW about OW. He was going to give her a ride (!) to a work function, and I saw him in the driveway, frantically cleaning out the passenger side in his truck. When he came back inside and saw the smirk on my face, he asked, “What?!?” with this really irritated voice. I said, quietly, “I think there’s something going on between you & OW.” You could’ve knocked him over with a feather. The next morning, he confessed his twu wuv for her & I asked him to move out that very day.

      • His OW was sick in the head and mess with me. Once she asked me in front of him what would I do if he had an affair. I said divorce him. She said WOW! You don’t f**k around do you? I said no ma’am I do not! This was a week after they confessed their twu wuv (hee!) to each other. Now he is alone and divorced and her husband took her back.

  76. YMBAC if you trusted your husband instead of your gut for 15 long years, and believed him when he said that he adored you, that those co-workers were just friends, and that you were “crazy” to think he would cheat

    YMBAC when you assumed no husband would want to cheat on their spouse forever, and so if your husband had been cheating on you he would have told you and left you “by now”

    YMBAC when you apologize to your husband for being so “jealous” and thanking him for not divorcing you over your “unreasonable” jealousy of his co-workers and female friends

    YMBAC when you believe his business trips are just business trips

    YMBAC when your husband went away for business and forgot to call and did not pick up the phone, and insisted he just fell asleep

    YMBAC when on the same business trip you believe your husband’s story that the front desk of the hotel made a mistake when they told you that he never checked in as planned because he canceled his reservations, and when he insisted he was under no circumstances with AP one of the AP’s that night (and when you find a receipt post-D-Day proving that he was).

    YMBAC when you believed that your husband was really caught in a freak ice storm on his way home from work and then fell asleep in his car, keeping him stuck there until the wee hours of the morning

    YMBAC when you believe the AP is your friend and you hang artwork she painted on the walls of your home and vacation home

    YMBAC when you and your husband and children socialize with the AP, her husband, and sons

    YMBAC when you defend your husband even to your own daughter and other friends who say that they “do not like those women” and you insist they are just a co-workers and friends, and that your husband can be trusted

    YMBAC when you do not keep track of your earnings and do not realize that your husband is using your money to look successful and important, and to wine and dine his AP’s

    YMBAC when you do not realize that your husband has drained the kids’ college funds that you deposited

    YMBAC when you pay off $20,000 of your husband’s credit card debt two short weeks before D-Day

    YMBAC when you failed to notice exactly when your spouse started pass-wording everything and was constantly on his phone and computer

    YMBAC when you thought it normal that someone erases all text messages, e-mails and computer histories as a matter of course

    YMBAC when you just thought your husband was pretty poor in the sexual performance department but you did not mind because you loved him

    YMBAC that you did not even realize until you read something about “porn addicts” and sociopaths after D-day that husband had been faking orgasms for a long time (sorry TMI!)

    YMBAC when the lies went on for so many years that you cannot even remember what happened and when exactly he was deceiving you or not

    YMBAC when on D-Day and the months afterward you actually thought that ex had a brain tumor, or cancer, or some other reason he was “pretending” that he no longer loved you or cared, because you were so sure he did

    YMBAC when after D-Day you waited for your ex to wake up and be sorry for what he did, and you expect him to tell you that with every phone call or contact

    YMBAC when you keep encouraging your children to see their father and you feel sorry for him when they refuse to do so

    YMBAC when you gush with appreciation when your ex simply asks in an e-mail how his children are doing, and after you regale him with details of the children he has not seen in 3 years, you are disappointed that he simply responds “thanks”

    YMBAC when you offer to help your ex and his AP-fiance build a relationship with your children, and ex refuses to take you up on that

    After 25 years of marriage, I literally could go on forever………

    • Oh wait, sorry, have to add this:

      YMBAC if you accidentally hit buttons on the computer which show the history and when you look at it, it appears that someone was viewing all kinds of porn sites dozens and dozens of times during the day and night….and you believe your husband’s explanation that it is just “cookies” or even your 10 year old son (who you thereafter start watching like a hawk just in case).

      • What is it with these freaks blaming their children for their porn?

        Prior to Cheater McAnus getting a laptop, we had a desktop that was the family shared computer. Initially during this time, my boys were in middle school, or maybe slightly younger. The computer frequently got hijacked by porn sites and I would spend hours on the phone with Microsoft having them scrub it so that the computer was useable. Skeevy McCheater always blamed the boys and I would admonish them about being on porn sites at their age and messing up the computer. They would always tell me it wasn’t them, that it was Dad. I then, too, started watching the boys like a hawk.

        Chump-dee-dee-Chump-Chump.

        • Princess, they are the lowest of the low, and they have no limits or boundaries, or shame–all things us chumpy normal folks have in droves.

          Maybe one day I will find a word bad enough to describe him and what he did, it would be comforting somehow, but I’m still searching……

    • LOL, I think we were married to the same person!!! Married 31 years for me…together 36!

      • Especially this:

        YMBAC when you apologize to your husband for being so “jealous” and thanking him for not divorcing you over your “unreasonable” jealousy of his co-workers and female friends

        That was me too!!!!

    • YMBAC when you gush with appreciation when your ex simply asks in an e-mail how his children are doing, and after you regale him with details of the children he has not seen in 3 years, you are disappointed that he simply responds “thanks”

      This breaks my heart….

      I’m so sorry he’s such a shitty father.

      There’s that phenomenon in the early days, where you think they will care because they should care, and the interaction with the person who was your best friend just brightens your day, until you realize, so cruelly, that they’re not really there and they don’t really care. And it’s like being kicked in the gut all over again.

    • Kelly, I have read and re-read your post a couple of times, but I can’t get past the part where he hasn’t seen his own children in 3 years????? WTF????

      • Muse, our three children were understandably upset and angry with their father, and ex did not do any of the normal things one would expect in that situation. He did not sit down and try to talk to them, he did not drive out to the university and law school where the older two were studying to speak to them. Instead, on D-Day ex left and would not tell anyone where he was (he only eventually told me when I threatened to have the divorce complaint served on him at an office where he worked).

        He sent a few lame texts telling the children he was sorry, he wanted to see them but would understand if they did not want to do so. We were divorced quickly and ex agreed to a custody agreement that simply says we will privately agree to his visitation with our youngest son…. and ex has never asked to exercise that. He refused my repeated suggestions that he and the children go to counseling to figure out how to establish a relationship. He refused my suggestions that he attend our youngest son’s sporting events. I sent him updates on our youngest son for a year and ex did not attend a single event or object or even appear to notice when I stopped doing so.

        Ex did not attend our oldest son’s law school graduation last year. He does not even know the date of our daughter’s graduation from university in a few weeks, and will certainly not be in attendance. Our youngest son will be learning to drive soon, and his older brother as well as his step-father will be the ones teaching him. Ex still send the children a birthday and Christmas card and a few texts if that a year. I am an attorney and know I could probably have his parental rights to our youngest terminated but do not want to emphasize the abandonment or open that can of worms.

        I can only believe that he is a stone cold sociopath.

  77. You might be a chump… if you believed that google maps history is wrong and not the cheater.

    You might be a chump… if you believed that “nothing happened”.

    • oh yes, forgot that-
      YMBAC if find-my-phone app shows him pinpointed to IN HER BEDROOM for about 5 hours during my workday, and he says that it’s just so inaccurate, you know that stuff doesn’t work!
      I’m mostly just insulted, that he pretty much stopped trying to hide their fucking, and making goo-goo eyes at each other. Like he just assumed I had no backbone, and could never live without him!

      My new life isn’t perfect, but man, is it good!

      • Anything is better than living with a lying POS who has no respect for you or your relationship and with time, life will become the happiness you deserve. He almost had me convinced google maps was wrong! I was trying to convince HIM I was right and google maps is correct when I should have instead told him to stay where he was… Oh how time has changed.

  78. YMBAC…

    Your fiance’ tells you he might be interested in someone else, then changes his mind and tells you he really wants you back…and you take him back.

    You husband’s coworker sells jewelry and candles on the side and you keep getting them as gifts.

    Your husband’s coworker’s kids call him Uncle.

    Your husband’s ringtone for his coworker is “I want to lay you down in a bed of roses” by Bon Jovi.

    Your husband’s coworker picks out the Christmas pillows your husband gives you for Christmas.

    Your husband tells you on D-day that you had nothing in common but the kids, and you blurt out “But we both like Mexican food.”

    Your intuition gets so frustrated with you for ignoring it that it speaks out loud “There’s someone else” when your husband comes back from a trip.

    You have dreams where you tell your husband “You can go to OW, I’m strong enough for you to leave me now” but you wake up thinking you’re just insecure so you say nothing.

    You believe your husband when he stops wearing his wedding ring because it interferes with his work around the farm, even when he’s going to his office.

    Your husband takes a part time job with his married coworker to make extra money on the weekends.

    Your husband invites his coworker, husband and kids over when you’re out of town, after you tell him you aren’t comfortable socializing with them and you find out from your kids.

    Your husband gets mad while dancing with you during your son’s wedding, and spends the rest of the night dancing with his coworker.

    Your husband’s female boss calls in the evenings to ask his opinion on her sex life.

    Your husband’s female boss calls him her “work husband.”

    Your husband sobs and blurts out “I’m a bad person” on D-day and you try to convince him he’s not.

    You keep hoping your husband will wake up and realize what he’s destroying.

    Your marriage counseling sessions are for one.

      • That made me laugh out loud, too.

        Oh, dear. I’m sorry, Lyn.

        We were once so naive….

    • Oh, I forgot some…YMBAC…

      If your husband’s coworker delivers his dry-cleaning to your house.

      The people at the dry cleaner are confused when you stop to pick clothes up for him because they think his coworker is his wife.

      Everyone looks at you funny when you attend work events with your husband.

      You come back from a weekend trip looking forward to seeing your husband when you walk in the door, only to discover he’s at his coworker’s house.

      Your husband is traveling for two weeks with his female boss, then calls to tell you she’s afraid to go home alone so he’s going go with her to make sure her house is okay.

      Your husband announces he practiced his presentation with his boss in her hotel room when he comes back from a business trip.

      You find love notes in your husband’s suit pocket and he tells you a student has a crush on him.

      You get a strange call from a man asking if you know where your husband is, and when you confront your husband he says it’s a jealous coworker trying to stir up trouble.

    • I too went to marriage counseling. Alone. What was I thinking – scheduling appointments when he had already made plans with his buddy’s to play pool on those particular days…. Silly me.

  79. (A) You folks are brilliant!

    (B) YMBAC … if you were so busy working,
    going to school,
    de facto single parenting,
    maintaining the house & household
    keeping the relationship on some kind of even keel (i.e, what does the cheater need today/this week/this minute?)

    … that you didn’t even notice the red flags!

  80. You might be a chump… if you found nude pics of an unknown woman on his computer, but he managed to convince you he was being stalked by a crazy business associate.

    You might be a chump… if he told you all about the office whore, and the sordid details of office staffers who had fucked her, and still you assumed he was above it all because he seemed to be so disgusted by it all.

    • You might be a chump… if he told you all about the office whore, and the sordid details of office staffers who had fucked her, and still you assumed he was above it all because he seemed to be so disgusted by it all.

      ItsAJourney, this comment triggered me this morning (Melbourne time). My ex husband used to laugh about the office whore because she was screwing anyone and taking drugs. Well, that all changed and all I got was what ‘M’ did and said and I can tell you that the red flag went up the flag pole. He was preparing to go on a staff conference for a few days and brought home a work staff newsletter and he took the time to show me a coloured photo of her. I lost it and went berserk. He knew the game was up and slowly but surely our trajectory was downhill from then on.

    • Wow. Ex was often reporting on the “disgusting” behavior, clothing and language of his coworkers. I told him to stand up for decency. He said, “I am just glad that I can protect you from that environment by keeping you at home.”
      I (gag) thought he was so noble. Turns out he was plotting. (He works for one of those successful companies that everyone knows the name of)

  81. YMBAC if your 2.5 year old hands you an empty condom wrapper he found near the couch and when you question the douchebag, he responds by telling you that he was home all alone during the day watching videos (while you were at work and the son at daycare) and you actually believe him.
    Yep, stayed married to that for 10 more years then divorced him 1.5 years ago. Buh, bye….
    The only person I need to forgive is myself, for trusting an untrustworthy person.

  82. YMBAC if…. you believe him when he says that he is SO busy at work that he must now leave the house before 5 am. After D-Day, found out he was just going straight to her apartment. They worked together so then he would drive her to work with him in our truck.

    • Leaving before 5 am and working until 7pm…..Just so busy. So busy that he couldn’t take a break to send even 1 text to me, but had plenty of time to text, email, talk on the phone, etc. others….*wink, wink”

  83. YMBAC if you think that your cheating XH’s recent radiation on his neck caused a brain tumor thus caused him to cheat and leave you.

    • I seriously thought my husband had a brain tumor too because he was sobbing so much. He’d shed barely a tear during our whole 36 years together…It was so uncharacteristic I thought he was sick, and kept trying to convince him to go to a doctor. I even called his mom to see if she could convince him to go. LOL

      • To try and suck me back, when I had fled to Mom’s house, X used to text me ‘I’m sobbing like a little girl, over losing you’. I did feel a twinge of pain for him, as he’d been training me for 34 years! But then I had to remember the million chances I gave him to stay away from crazy as fuck AP. He made his decision, even if he acted like he was a poor little Ping Pong ball on the Ocean of Life. Time for Chumpy me to save my own life! And I did not know at that time, that I had breast cancer, and it needed to come out, but maybe my subconscious knew!

        • omg I’m STILL dealing with this! As XH’s life continues to circle the drain (who knew getting together with a fellow narcissistic who is even WORSE at finances than he is would make him suddenly see how good he actually had it, lol!), he calls me at least once a month in tears or nearly in tears…jealous of how my life “has only gotten better” since he left and his has only gotten worse.

          Ugh, the sad part is that part of me actually feels bad for him ><

          • When I went and had our taxes done – my accountant told me to file separate because asshole is trying to screw me (i.e. cashing in his Roth last year right after getting served and claiming 1 and have been telling him FOR YEARS to claim 0) Anyway – I was about to file separate, but decided I would be nice and give him the option of me saving him $3000 by filing joint or him paying $8000. I went back to the tax accountant and told her we will file joint. She said I was way to nice and asked “What is he going to do without you?” I laughed and said “What do you mean? According to him he’s gonna be rich when I am out of his life!”

            • That’s funny, I was just thinking about taxes myself. Cheater is “self employed” so he never paid in any taxes, it was all taken out of my check. But when the refund come in, there he was with his hand out for half of it. If you say anything, then you are a non sharing, stingy hag.

            • YMBAC when for the entire marriage, all taxes were taken from your paycheck- STBX paid not a sou.

              However, you might not be a chump when, the year he moved out to find free dumb and happiness, he forgot that he fired you as wife and breadwinner, and the IRS reminded him to pay his taxes next time… to the tune of $25,000.

              Which he continues to pay off at $250 a month, forever… along with all his other massive credit card debts.

            • Not to lecture, but please know that filing a joint return puts you on the hook if cheater lies on tax return. Make the sob pay or understand Uncle Sam can come after you for all money-interest, penalties, etc. for even mistaken deduction/returns. Always file separately once you know of the cheating, even if it costs you $ in the short run.

          • Yes, TM, because we have hearts beating in our chests, and we did love these crazy, self-destructive Cheaters for a long time.
            I really feel that me taking care of him allowed him to be completely irresponsible. In a way, I was bad for him. And for sure he was bad for me. So, since I’m not there to mop up his messes, he has had to quit drinking every day, and he may actually learn and grow up.
            If I had stayed to try and ‘help’ him, I probably would be well on my way to literally dying from unhappiness. So, there you go.

    • Yes I thought it was a brain tumor also. Now I know it was from being malignant narcissist serial cheating asshole.

  84. YMBAC if you actually thought of believing the OW that nothing happen, but yet on his maps history there was searches for local hotels the night after your sons birthday party.

  85. YMBAC if he left skid marks on your white bath towels (pre marriage) and you married him anyway. Blech!!

  86. YMBAC if you really believed that middle of the night texting was from China, and never bothered to check his phone!

    YMBAC if your spouse would never go out on a work night, but all of a sudden, when the young (female) temp workers all decided to go to a restaurant, your spouse called you to ask you if you wanted to go along and you were happy that he was at last going to do something other than eat, sleep, watch TV, and work.

    YMBAC when your spouse calls on Wednesday evening, just before you get off work, to see if you want to go to a Shakespeare play that evening because OW won a pair of free tickets, and you’re happy because your spouse is finally going to do something on a work night other than eat/watch tv/sleep.

    STBX never dated one of the temps, but for a while, he had about 4 young women @ age 20 working as temps for him. OW was one of his full-time staffers. None of the women were particularly well-educated, and most were single moms (because birth control = hard). He knew all the details of their personal lives, and I remember telling him that it’s true that young people often have very little sense of what’s appropriate to talk about on the job, but he needed to distance himself from their personal lives, and set some boundaries on what was considered appropriate sharing. Post-Dday, I came across a couple of texts that suggested that STBX was considering one of the temps as a possible AP in case Schmoopie fell through.

    The Shakespeare play was totally weird. I asked STBX why Schmoopie had called him, as it was completely inappropriate. He said that he was the only person that she knew who’d like the play, which was performed by the very fine theater department of the local university. I completely believed this. Schmoopie is trailer-park through and through,and all of her friends are about the same. What I didn’t ask myself was why Schmoopie would have called in on the contest line for tickets to a Shakespeare play in the first place, given that her preferred form of entertainment was getting drunk at the local bar scene!

  87. Kb, mine told me the middle of the night texts were from Australian colleagues. I bought that. Then a few weeks later I mentioned “the australian project” to his boss who replied, “we dont do any projects in australis”. Not sure why I never got suspicious…just thought sausage was working hard.

  88. When his young female colleague had a box containing a starbucks coffee jar and two mugs delivered to our house, with a note “because I know how you love your first coffee of the day”… And naive me bought the explanation that she was his student at work (she was 35 minimum)…and why he seemed pissed off about her sending the gift…

    • What is THAT behavior? Is it condescension? Is she proclaiming her territory?

      I don’t get it.

      Is she thinking that you’re all going to be great friends as she fucks your husband, because, Look! She’s so thoughtful and generous, and you can bond over thoughtlessly generic overpriced Costco gift packages?

    • OW sending things to your house makes him mad because he wants Cake.. he wants to control both sources of supply… her sending the mugs may have been innocent but I doubt it; she probably wanted more of a relationship w/him than he would do at that.

  89. YMBAC….

    If your husband owns at least half a mil in firearms, but you actually believe y’all are broke because you’re not clipping coupons.

  90. YMBAC if you

    *organize a surprise birthday party for him and invite at least two OWs and wonder why he doesn´t dance with you or say thank you

    *allow him to organize parties with his friends (and OWs) at your home when you have a baby and a toddler, thinking that he will be safer and won´t stray if he is in your home

    *catch him kissing a colleague after one of these parties when you wake up at 3 am to feed the baby and then believe that it was only that one kiss and it was because they had too much to drink but that it never happened before and would never happen again

    *host his female students and colleagues at your home for study groups, all the time, and it really bothers you but you don´t say anything because you also admire and support your husbands work

    *make more money than he does and contribute to everything in the family generously, but allow him to treat you badly when he gets pissed off because you spent a little money on yourself

    *think that he doesn´t want to have sex because he is depressed and going through mid life crisis, and you are patient and let a sexless marriage go on for a while until he feels better (but he never does…)

    *accept that he cheated on his first wife and believe he will never do that to you because you are special and she must not have met his needs like you do

    *have an awesome home, an awesome job, awesome kids, awesome trips, give him amazing gifts and believe that he would never give all that up for anyone in the world

    *know he secretly watches porn while he is supposedly working in his home office late at night, and let it pass because at least he is not cheating on you

    *he starts going to bed in his sweatsuit thought it is not cold and he always used to sleep in a t-shirt and underwear

    *he all of a sudden starts exercising, buying different style of underwear, and eating healthy when he used to criticize me for doing anything that would force him to change his bad habits

    *you can never do anything right and there are no compliments for anything you do, even if you are the one keeping the house together

    *he forgets your birthday for several years in a row…

  91. YMBAC if you believe OW (my friend of thirty plus years) coming on holiday with you guarantees there could be no cheating. YMBACif you think him sharing her texts with you also means there’s no cheating. YMBAC if him laughing with you about her narc tendencies means he still hates her (his cheating exGF.) YMBAC if your amazing sex life makes you think all is well, as usual.

    I like this game, but I think I might break the internet if I keep playing!

  92. You Might Be A Chump if men at church ask you to “ask your husband not to flirt” with their wives;
    YMBAC if your husband asks you to pray that he will be “protected from the lusts of his heart” and you chuckle, because who does that? ;
    YMBAC if you take a semester long “Marriage Enhancement” class and he is too busy with racquetball to ever attend.
    YMBAC if the labor of your childbirths is inconvenient for him.
    YMBAC if you take your newborn to class and to final exams with you because he has a heavy workload.
    YMBAC if he yells at you, goes to work and comes home & you comfort him because it was such a bad day for HIM.
    YMBAC if his female coworkers won’t make eye contact with you.
    YMBAC if a bratty woman says, “You can’t keep your man.” and your fiancé talks you out of confronting her, but suddenly also likes to spend a LOT of time alone with her.
    YMBAC if you believe the 22year old is a virgin, although he can’t look you in the eyes when he says it. Oh, and he has never masturbated. And, yaknow, he did not seem like a novice the wedding night.
    YMBAC if you don’t realize that he was with prostitutes until after the divorce. He just took photos with them to spoof his friends, and sex was as cheap as a pineapple in the developing country where he lived… and girls sent him numerous love letters and he had the location down of nearby brothels, but he didn’t ever do that. And sometimes, you still slip into that, “Nah, not him!” state of mind because he hid it so deep, YMBAC.
    YMBAC if you overhear a woman visiting your home say to him, “This would kill [your wife] if she found out.” and you go to investigate and nothing is amiss, so you dismiss it.
    YMBAC if you ever have to ask, “You sure you love me?”
    YMBAC if you stay so long you totally lose touch with your personal safety as the guy acquires numerous guns, locks your SS card in his safe and will not share the combination, lies to other people about you, feels sorry for himself when you are in the hospital and calls to tell his whole family halftruths about you.

    YMBAC if he files for divorce and your initial reaction is, “Stupid idiot, well we can work with this. It is not the first stupid thing he has done.”

    You might be an ex- chump if even the friends that want you to break up with him still want to be friends with him… and you gradually realize how awesome you must be if thousands of people want to fuck your man just to show you how they trump you in the “pecker” order and you say, “Have at him, ladies and gents” because you know who built his career, managed his financial empire, conquered sex time and who usually took top.

    🙂

  93. YMBAC if you’re picking up your son’s dirty clothes from his room after a camping trip he went on with his dad (your husband) and “friends” only to find a pair of yoga pants mixed in that are not yours. Chumped! Should have cut the crotch out and given them to him to return to the OW. I donated them to GoodWill instead, after deciding NOT to wash them.

  94. YMBAC if you smell cigarettes on your nonsmoking spouse. if you smell perfume on him, if he constantly travels, if you find condoms in his car (supposedly our sons) if he has to go out of the country on business over the holidays, if he rarely txt,calls or answers the phone while away on business. if he constantly complains and diminishes your worth. if he avoids walking with you in public. or at school fuctions. or distances himself when with certain friends and relatives. when he is constantly on the cell phone and or computer. YOU MIGHT BE A BIG ASS CHUMP if he arranges a week long (an hour away) getaway for you and the kids where he says he has to go to work during the day. and he takes the only car, leaving you with the kids at some mediocre resort all day waiting for him to return for the evenings. this is just a sampling. I trusted him unreservedly. never ever suspected a thing. what a fool what a fool

  95. YMBAC if……. You and your husband are in the backyard filling up your bicycle tires to take a ride together, when suddenly his bike falls over and a condom falls out of the cupholder right onto the patio. And he’s had a vasectomy and you haven’t used condoms with him in 15 years.

    YMBA SUPER C if you both look at the condom, then each other, he says “I have no idea how that got there” and you sort of believe him because questioning it is too much to wrap your mind around, and you actually go for your bike ride anyway.

    DUH. So glad I’m almost done with him.

    • YMBA chump if you believe he couldn’t think of anything to get you for Christmas but three crappy gift cards after 40 years of marriage. Then you find out he bought Schmoopie sexy Jammie’s! (he is a cheap ass and they were from Walmart Ha! Ha! Ha!)

  97. YMBAC if on the first day of your honeymoon in the midst of lovemaking he gets pissed, you both get dressed, you leave the hotel, and drive 3 hours back home with him screaming,”Divorce!” because apparently YOU did something wrong but he’s not telling you.

    YMBAC if he says “we’re broke” and I’m running up his phone bill making local calls while he spends $5,000 on 1 antique firearm. What???

    YMBAC if your guts says his best friend’s wife seems a tad too giggly about him. Then 10 years later you find out she left her husband and made a bee-line to his doorstep and you still don’t connect the dots that they were cheating all along.

    YMBAC if you come home from work to find your husband and sorority sister in bed under the covers and they are telling you it’s a prank. Sorority sis has told you “he’s not her type”.

    YMBAC if you are travelling in another country and in the heat of an argument he tells he if you hadn’t been able to make the trip(paying half) he would have PAID another woman’s way. When you become righteously PO’d he back pedals and says said female co-worker is a lesbian.

    YMBAC if former married co-worker affectionately named “his other wife” has a bedroom in their home for him so if he got sick he could stay with them. She seems to take a special interest in you. It’s all innocent. Right. Uh-huh.

    YMBAC when you tell him you won’t stay in a house with a broken septic and overrunning with mice he tells you he’s sure he could find another woman who would love him and the situation just the way things are and you become afraid he means it.

    YMBAC if he makes a trip to your state for a gun show and does not call until he gets back home. When he does call it’s to tell you how he spent his money and money he borrowed from his best friend on gun shit at the booth of a woman who has been recently widowed. He has also called her a couple of times to check on her because “he’s a nice guy”. During said time period he’s been hateful and giving you the silent treatment. You are miffed but you still believe he’d never cheat on you.

    YMBAC if it takes Him asking You if You cheated on Him before you get it. Facepalm!!!

    Turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I found CL and CN and no longer blame myself for any of it. Aside from lying cheaterpants I have name that totally explains his “quirks”, Cluster B! I also know my worth. Suck it Cluster B, LOL!

    • “I have name that totally explains his “quirks”, Cluster B! I also know my worth. Suck it Cluster B, LOL!”

      You nailed that, Chumpy!

      • My ex went through a very lengthy period of being completely obsessed with plucking out every nipple hair. He would spend half hour or so every single night in the bathroom, plucking away. He eventually graduated to shaving his chest, and then shaving all of his pubes as well, even though I asked him not to.

        • Nothing more attractive than a shaved down Sasquatch with razor burn and ingrown hairs… Its like having sex on sandpaper with the chupacabra. I used to insist on wearing a tshirt to have sex so I wouldnt have to have skin grafts.

          YMBAC if you waxed your husbands back for his girls friends pleasure….

          • Shaved pubes is just gross.
            Mine would do a half baked job at shaving his legs and ass too.

            Eeewwww

            Is it wrong that I now find hairy legs on a man sexy?

        • Just. spit. coffee. Amen to the shaved everything parade. Chest, pubes, pits. I asked WTF he was doing, and he seemed so completely confused. “I’ve always shaved..I get sweaty.” ???? No, never once in 9 years…and then you’re stuck in a crazy argument with a crazy plucked/shaved man that looks like a little boy, and it’s gross and creepy and confusing. If I ever date again, I can’t wait to see a man with a hairy chest that looks like a man. That really f’ed with my head.

    • You might be a chump… if you find a toilet clogged with body hair, and it’s not yours. I think he flushed and walked away, assuming our plumbing could take it all.

  99. YMBAC…if your child tells you about meeting daddy’s friend at the pool,pizza parlor and icercream shop…hmmm

    • YMBAC if you expect him to keep paying the household bills when separated and heading for divorce (mortgage, etc) especially as he no longer pays college expenses for our kids. But hey He no longer lives there! And has a new woman to court which is very expensive!
      YMBAC if you don’t realize why he had to have that part time job with the family court.
      YMBAC if you put up with mediocre unreciprocal sex your entire marriage, waiting for him to get it right, and not recognize that even crappy “porn” sex was his choice. Sex w/him those last years…”ICK!”
      YMBAC when your ex has refinanced two homes four times in eight years (no longevity there). He made great money.
      YMBAC when he spends more time AWAY from home working and playing racquetball and you have never made this an issue until he finally got weekends off and spent them at the club!
      YMBAC if you make excuses for his crap behavior cause he’s so tired, overworked, hungry, overwhelmed, WTFever …poor sausage.
      YMBAC if you have risen to every life challenge (good and bad) while he has run away…literally and figuratively.
      YMBAC when you answer the phone and even his best friend is asking why he’s never home.
      YMBAC when vacations with your ex were anything but… (Have great memories with our kids though, hands down my best legacy.)
      YMBAC when you know he’s hanging out with losers, not only at work but the club as well, and he’s always been a chameleon.
      YMBAC when you overlook sketchy behavior (lying about a “work” injury, his crap relationship w/family, his inability to discuss any concerns.)
      YMBAC when you recognize he lives a life that is very compartmentalized. And that you and your kids are isolated.

  101. I figure that yes, I WAS a chump, but I got the greatest gift of all. My divorce was granted, I got every asset free and clear and this cheater is now my bitch! He gets to work for me for the rest of his miserable life! Looks like we have a winner!

      • Thank you, I feel pretty damn good. He kept harping about our assets being 50/50 by law. He really thought he could build some “understanding” if he could show the court how “generous” he intended to be in our divorce! Truth is he had no intention of being fair at all! And he was ended up being very “generous” once he found out that everyone in the mediation knew he was a POS! I just keep seeing his face afterwards, it was just golden! He looked positively she’ll shocked and if looks could kill then I should have keeled on the spot!

        • Mine harps on 50/50 too. I am going for dissipation with his irradic spending (on gambling, alcohol, phone lines….) and hiding of money. He said he wanted me to be ‘comfortable.’ Ya – what comfortable to him was what his is his and what mine is mine – like the one 2000 vehicle I own compared to his 2013 truck…. he thinks that is what is fair…. He is an idiot. He thinks because HE went out and bought the shit that WE own – it should just be his. Well – it can be…. he just has to pay me half of it…. Jack ass. I hope I am as happy as you roberta with the outcome. He is an alcoholic – so this is going to be a battle of one sober mind -v- mush.

          • I got mine to agree to pay all costs for taxes this year, but that I would get 50/50 of any refund, written into the settlement. Because younger daughter is NC with him, he refused to pay toward the $5000 for her braces, so he can eat the $4000 tax bill. Only complained a little about it.

          • Trust me folks, these idiots are dreaming if they honestly believe they can just walk away and it’s all even Steven! Get your bitch back! Go for the juggler! Get an attorney who takes no shit! I refused to bend and I told my attorney I wasn’t going to accept less! My Ex called me a Bitch like that’s a bad thing! NOT! After the shit he layed at my feet! Bitch is the least of it! Get mad! Don’t let them hand you this load of shit! They misunderstand, the law usually states “equitable” which, I hate to tell you is NOT the same as equal! Use your power of NO! And don’t buy into all the crap your obviously brain Deficient cheater tells you. They are deep into fantasy land!

            • Thank you Roberta! I think I am being more than fair, but of course he does not. You just inspired me to push on an not give in. I even have a text from the asshole that says “I know you are going to take everything in this divorce, but once I find a new girlfriend, I will have just as much money again and I will never get married again so all MY money will be ALL MINE!” So if that’s the case, why is he fighting me?

              • He’s blowing smoke! He knows he’s holding the shitty end of the pool stick! Ha! Ha! Ha! Call his bluff in court or mediation! You get one bite at the apple and it’s your future you are securing! Don’t forget this!

            • Roberta, I guess he lost his entitlement after all. Those are what I call consequences! Nice job! I love the word final!!

            • “My Ex called me a Bitch like that’s a bad thing! NOT!” Roberta, THIS!!!! LOLOL!

              This is what I hope to have happen when my divorce is finalized. I have been “cooperative” on those things over which I have no control and I have been assembling as much documentation as I can find citing all of my contributions to the marriage and to his job and the short-lived business we set up. My STBX, too, believes that the law says 50/50, when it says “equitable.” He lied at his deposition and I have documentation that can disprove several of his lies. So, of course, at trial, unless we have a narcissistic, cheater judge, the benefit of the doubt regarding what is true will be given to me because he will already have been proven a liar.

              Every time I read one of your comments it inspires me to do more research to hand my attorney and I have stood firm about what I will not give up or accept from him.

              Ultimately, it is going to be the way it is, but you keep me in a fighting spirit, Roberta.

  102. You are still trying to figure out the “why” of the choice they made….YMBAC. Especially when they were getting their apartment to “work on their issues” and are kissing you, telling you that they love you and are not sure they are doing the right thing by moving out…..but doesn’t want you to know where they are moving and you aren’t welcome at the apartment right now as “I need to make it my place fist”….NO, you want to have a slutshack for you and OWhore. What a Chump to have believed all the lies.

    • Wow, your STBX and mine used the same playbook. I fell for that needing an apartment too, needed his space to “work on his book” and “work on his issues”. I even bought him a laptop to help him out. Ugggggh.

  103. YMBAC if you believe he only lies to everyone else. Not you.

    YMBAC if, when you find a small pair of women’s flat sneakers (not my size 10 jogging shoes), in his trunk, you believe him that they belong to his niece.

    YMBAC if you believe he slept in his car after a late (several) band practice in January. He was so tired he couldn’t make it the 20 minute drive home until an hour before he had to leave for work.

    YMBAC if you believed he was helping his parents on Sundays (all of a sudden) when he HATED helping them and never answered their phone calls. I know because they would call me and yell at me for “not aallowing him” to talk to them. WTF?

    I could go on for pages …

    • Yes FeralBlue…. YMBAC if he tells you he is helping his grandma move and he leaves the house with his “I’m going out” jeans on and his pool stick. Not to mention he didn’t get home until after 1 am. I find that hard to believe that he was helping grandma for 11 hours….
      Or how about “I’m going deer hunting with a friend.” Huh – why would you need your pool stick to go deer hunting with? Interesting technique. I was outside that evening and a few deer ran through the yard. I quick texted asswipe and said “OMG – there are 2 deer in the yard! Should I shoot them with MY pool stick???”

      • LOL! I just snorted my drink through my nose!
        Well, he could use it as a javelin, sort of. Except I’d be throwing it at the cheater, not the deer! Bwahahahaha!

  104. YMBAC if you get a round of cheese as a present. From Amsterdam which was the last stopover from Surinam. Which is where he ‘got to know’ his co-worker OW (I always wondered why he was so excited by that particular non-deal).
    Wow, when I look back the moments of disrespect and lack of regard, pre-affair, and just took it, I REALLY know I was a first class chump.
    (And the cheese? I gave it to my Dutch friend).

  105. YMBAC if he comes back with an extra pearl necklace and you say ‘oh, is that for your sister’. (he lies to this day that he gave that necklace to his OW).
    Hell, I was stupid. Just plain stupid. But I really loved him, and I thought he loved me and had my back. Gad! I was dumb.

  106. YMBAC if you are reading all these posts and clicking off all the ones that apply (or applied)!! Check, check and check………..

    Cheaters suck!!

  108. Forgot to add, hang on to the pool stick. I can think of one more “thing” you can beat to death with that thing! Ha! Ha! Ha!

  109. I checked his pay stub because he was always working. He saw me and flipped out!!
    Said he wanted to fall in love with someone else.
    Hooked up with his married ex g.f. Big fat swine.
    He said I pee’d wrong.
    Drank my tea wrong.
    And didn’t like that my parents didn’t have too many friends. HELLO???? They are in their 80’s!!! Their friends have died!!!!
    Wanted a 3 some for years. NOPE!
    Wanted me to have an affair with his best and only friend. He wanted to watch!!!! NOPE!
    Had to sit facing the door in a restaurant so he could see who walked in.
    Would comment on the other women saying how big their boobs were and I’m sure they gave bl*w jobs.
    Divorced 2013.
    My new man looks in my eyes at a restaurant, only wants me and me alone and has total respect for me.
    Someone saw me crying in the shower and made things change.
    Thankfully!

    • Interesting comment re looking into your eyes. My ex never did this. His eyes were on every thing but mine. Another flag perhaps?

    • Rachel–tres curious. How does one “pee wrong?” Did he want you to pee standing up?

      (not sure I really need an answer, but that one is a head scratcher)

  110. You Might Be A Recovered Chump (YMBARC) if you started throwing away his mail when he kept forgetting to get it it forwarded instead of acquiescing to his request to send it to him

    YMBARC if you stopped trying to be fair and told him to take this settlement or see you in court

    YMBARC if you recognize the gaslighting and know your reality is not “imaginary”

    YMBARC if the Forget me Not flowers that he gave you so long ago, the ones you planted in your garden, and still grow in your garden are beautiful, as you pull the seeds and scatter them for another round? They serve to remind you that you are free and the flowers are not his, they never were, they are flowers and know nothing of origins.

  111. YMBAC if you get “Ok. Good Night” in return to your “I love you” while he is out of town on business.

    • And special chump points for thinking to yourself. “I guess he didn’t hear me…”

  112. YMBAC if you believe that he is working late, going to work early and working extra at a job he hates, because they are so short handed.
    YMBAC if you believe that he is sorry and would never cheat again after the first and second time he cheated and like a fool take him back (I did).
    YMBAC if you believe he has no idea how that wrapped condom ended up on the living room floor, why would he need a condom at work (ok, I didn’t really believe he had no idea but I let him get away with the lie).
    YMBAC if you ignore all the telltale signs of an affair; wearing cologne to work, keeping his phone with him at all times and on vibrate, making sure his laptop is facing away from me so I can’t see what he is looking at on the computer, buying me my favorite cake for my birthday when I usually don’t even get a “Happy Birthday” from him (guilt gifts), etc.
    YMBAC if you let him get away with texting on family outings and dinners and when you do finally ask him what’s up with the texts, you really want to believe him when he says “work problems.”
    YMBAC if you believe it must be your fault he is having an affair, that it must be something you have done. That the OW must be so much better than you. That damn it he just wants to be happy and he is doing what is best for everyone.
    I could go on all day! I am guilty of all of the above. I am working on the last one and I am coming to realize that it wouldn’t have mattered what I did or didn’t do, he would cheat on me anyway. He seems to think that because he loved all the women he had affairs with, he is not a bad guy. He just wants to be happy and find true love, so his affairs are ok in his head. This time I am done!

    • Tossed away, it truly is mind boggling what these Cheaters do but know there is not one single thing you did or could do to control what was ultimately HIS poor decision to Cheat. I always felt the disconnect, agonized over our relationship, because in many ways it was normal, but the secrets he had and the lies he lived were deal breakers. Oh and I don’t think these people are ever really happy. Like that old saying, “there is always going to be somebody skinnier, richer, better…” Who wants someone who is always looking at the grass next door, right!?!? I just know that in my future a great Chump guy who deserves a great woman will see my beauty and won’t be squandering any second of our life together. I think most of us spent many years with our Cheaters giving them chances to recognize what they had. Problem is they will never love the way we do.

      • Drew,
        Brilliant point. I wanted to reply to one of your posts a while back. You are incredible. You are so strong. Xoxo

  113. YMBAC if your husband of 38 years asked you to bid on eBay for faster, better roller skates, only to find out he was trolling for his “rollerwhore”. They are adorable together doing their fancy shuffle skating. I got to see a video in Facebook just the other day of them. “Rollerdick” & his “rollerwhore”. They skate to live organ music, lol. My grown son asked me what the hell is Dad doing & what weird kind of music is that & who is that young woman he’s skating with. I said, “well son, that’s your Daddy’s new woman, and that’s live organ music !!! which both he loves now more than anything. More than me, more than your brother and 2 sisters and more than all the grandchildren”. It’s true, I got dumped for a roller skating bimbo.

    • That is jacked up. An 80 something year old man went skating with my church once. He fell and broke a hip.

    • That’s crazy! So odd… it would make a great subplot for the porno version of Napoleon Dynamite.

      • LMAO….at porno Napoleon Dynamite. Must share that one with my grown kids. They think he’s off his rocker too…or should I say off his roller skates??? Whack-a-Doodle alright!!! I have to laugh at it all or I’d just be miserable.

  114. YMBAC if your husband needs to take late-night drives to “clear his head.”
    YMBAC if your husband’s Christmas tradition is every year to go out to lunch with his male coworkers on the last workday before Christmas holiday. However, the lunch is held at the “Cherokee Rose,” a raunchy strip club.
    YMBAC if you wake up at 4 a.m. to find yourself in labor and see that your husband is just now slipping into your bedroom after an all-nighter at “work” getting ready to take time off for new baby boy.
    YMBAC if your husband spends the entire time you are in the hospital for labor and delivery (13 hours) of a 10-plus pound baby boy (note natural childbirth, AND induced, AND the baby almost died) leaving the room constantly to go make “work phone calls.”
    YMBAC if the first person your husband calls after you give birth is his secretary. And he talks to her for 45 minutes before calling your family with the news of the new grandchild.
    YMBAC if your husband does not even look up from his phone and acknowledge the arrival of the grandparents and his first born child (now 3 years) who arrive at the hospital to see the new baby.
    YMBAC if one week later your husband tells you he wants a divorce because you are such a bad wife and he has been miserable for the entire 16 years.
    YMBAC if you inadvertently on three separate occasions burn up two microwaves and also start a small fire in the oven attempting to cook great meals to convince husband you are not a bad wife while simultaneously breastfeeding and recovering from birthing a small bear.

    • Miss Delta, I’ve been following your story since I first came on here, and I must say, it is inspiring. To have been through all that crap, and to wind up so happy on the other side, is just like–WOW. It’s equally satisfying to know how karma bit your ex and OW in the ass. What goes around comes around. Hugs to you!

      • Kelly,
        Please don’t hate him. I don’t! At this point, I pity him, if I think about him at all. After all, this July will be 10 years out. His life is miserable. He is still with the OWife, dead broke, living in her mother’s home, held prisoner by OWife on a very short leash. He has lost all his friends, except the shady ones. I have a great life with a loving husband who has adopted my baby bear and my sweet daughter!!!! None of which would be possible if I hadn’t gotten ditched by El Jeffe. There is a silver lining.

    • YMBAC if he spends the time you are in labor chatting with the midwife. They have so much in common!

  115. I’m so excited to read all these later, but I have to add one, because I’ll bet I’m the only one with this one:
    YMBAC if…. you really thought your 40 year old husband suddenly taking up riding his skateboard to work was NOT the sign of the Apocalypse.

  116. My ex was miserable for 25 years. Told my son he married me because the invitations were out.

    • What a jerk. I remember talking to my stbx one night about retirement and how he wanted to move to Flagstaff, Az. Then he asked me what I was gonna do…..

      • Or the flip side of that particular coin;
        YMBAC if your partner is talking often of plans for retirement, what the two of you can do, where you can go, how great it’s going to be … and you take that as a sign they value the relationship and are invested in its continuing.

  117. If 2 years after DDay, months after filing and going through hell as it becomes apparent she won’t leave until she gets the financial settlement she wants (which includes fraudulent claims), you wonder if it might be better for everyone involved if you just disappeared and let her take everything.

    • ANR, no. Just, NO. You have come too far and survived too much to let that conniving, disordered POS cheating woman win. I don’t know what your living arrangements are at the moment, but I sincerely hope you will NOT let her take one more thing from you. Move out if you have to; hire another lawyer, whatever. But she squandered a ginormous sum on her asshole boss and made your life hell. She doesn’t deserve this settlement!

      • Do NOT move out. You don’t want that being used as leverage against you.
        This might sound really morbid as hell to say, but this happened to a chump friend of mine. She said “I’d rather my lawyers have all my money, than my fuckwit ex-husband”

        • Than’m just for the advice, FMT and Lania. I’.m just so tired … not just of living here, but of living. I feel so weak, so maybe she’s right about me. Sorry to be so whiny … I imagine I’ll feel better tomorrow

          • I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but someday soon you will turn a corner and not feel so helpless. Maybe a little sad, but nothing like what you’re going thru now. And if you give her all of everything, you’re gonna be really pissed at yourself. Hang in there. Go for a walk. Distract yourself. But don’t give her one single more thing than you are required to. You’ll be glad, later. Promise.

          • She’s not right about you. She is a sick, twisted piece of shit that can only lie, lie and lie some more. You’re being taken hostage by her own disordered garbage.
            Any way you can find evidence on said fraudulent claims as your own leverage against her in a settlement? Sorta the ‘If you don’t play nice, everything comes out about your illegal behaviour’? If so, go for the jugular. She’s shown she obviously don’t give a fuck about you – so all bets are off.

          • ANR–HELL TO THE NO!! She is not right about you; you are a wonderful contribution to society and she is a class-A fucktard. If you need to move out to feel better, do it. Yes, chumps deserve the best settlement they can get, but not at the expense of your overall mental health.

            Do what YOU need to do to heal; you are worthwhile, you post comments that are helpful to the rest of us. We want you around; do not admit defeat. Imagine all of Chump Nation behind you, propping you up, until you are strong enough to do so yourself. No house, no amount of money, is worth depression so deep that you wonder about your own worth. Please post tomorrow so we know you’re okay?!

            • ANR, what Tempest and Lania and NWBiblio and Friend say, HELL TO THE NO. You have been victimized and abused but you can’t give up. I remember those dark awful days feeling like you do now, it WILL get better. We are behind you, we are holding your hand, keep walking with us. You have helped so many here, keep going ANR. (((Hugs)))

              • ANR–I’m glad to hear you’re okay. Try to distance yourself from cheater (physically and psychologically) as much as possible–no one can heal with the scalpel still stuck in them. Each day, do something small for yourself. You will go from okay, to pretty good, to “didn’t think about her today,” to building your own life.

    • ANR,

      I know how you feel (sincerely I do) and I am feeling your pain. These disordered people and their demands and justifications are disheartening and exhausting. I have been cycling through this phase recently myself.

      DO NOT GIVE UP! Get away from her and do something nice for yourself. Clear your head. We are all here behind you and we know and appreciate your value. A bubble-headed cheater who lacks morals, character and integrity denying your value is not a bad thing. These cheaters have shallow investment in everything so it is easier for them to fight because they always fight as if they have nothing to lose because they don’t really value anything except what makes them feel good in the moment.

      This is a game for her. If you can, stop playing. Read Roberta’s posts. You are going to have days when this is just overwhelming, but the finish line is ahead. If you’re lucky, someone (you, your attorney?) will trip your STBXW as she attempts to make it across. (((HUGS))) to you.

      • Agreed.
        ANR, keep your head up, and your eyes forward! I promise you, when asswipe ‘wife’ is out of your life, your worries will evaporate, and you’ll be happy! I do think we should get the monetary settlement we deserve, but put that burden on your attorney, that’s one of their jobs, is to protect your equity, and pensions, etc.
        I also agree with CP that peace and mental health is more important. Protect your heart, and let the lawyers protect your assets.
        The X made a big faux paus when he said he was going to make me pay alimony, maybe forever. Oh, really? I went into fighting mode, and my lawyer just laughed and said she’d pull up his lifetime earnings history, and show it to the judge! Silly man, no I’m not paying you to watch TV and laugh at me with HER. Go get a J O B.
        So, ANR, I’m sending you lots of love, I’ve been down so low, too, but then it just has to get better, and it does!
        Freedom is the key to happiness, so be free!

      • ANR, divorce is hard! Especially when dealing with a selfish halfwit. I know your pain and misgivings, but be bold! You don’t get if you don’t ask! Honestly, while in mediation my lawyer and the mediator were telling me how brave and mighty I was, but truth is the day before I was laying in the fetal position in my robe till noon!! Then I realized that I was the ONLY one who could stand up for me! This was going to affect the rest of my life! I looked around and sure enough, there was only one Roberta in the room. If I couldn’t pull it off then there was no stand in for me. You have to look out for your own self interests now. And I hate hearing folks say shit like, “I want to be fair!” Hell no! Was it fair when they went out and made unilateral decisions behind your back? Was it fair when they lied to your face? Was it fair when you were the last person to know that the poor little sausage was unhappy? NO! Believe me, these mentally stunted cheats are always figuring the angle and they’ll grab whatever they can! I know it’s hard, but say little to your cheater and suck it up! Don’t give up, the end is in sight!

  118. To the ones who responded to my previous post, thanks but: My idiot STBX thinks he could never fall and break anything. He acts and thinks like an adolescent. He’s 58 years old. He skis on the most treacherous ski slopes too with his young honey. I can’t wait til he breaks something.
    YMBAC if you try to tell yourself your 58 year old husband took up roller skating because another website told you it’s a midlife crisis (this would be labeled the “replay phase”) which may lead to the dreaded mid life affair. Mid life crisis my ass!!! Is his brain in his dick?

    • Ya – mine thinks and acts like an adolescent as well. Drinks like a fish. He is an alcoholic and is actually proud to admit it. Yet – somehow he has 18,000 lives….never had a DWI. Totaled a few cars (drinking), but never got caught drinking. I was always the dd or he called his kids or kids’ girlfriends to pick him up and bring him home. Now he hangs out with 28-year-olds. He is 44. I made him have a physical last year and he has metabolic syndrome. That doesn’t stop him. His beer is his best friend…Doc told me he will be a full-blown diabetic within the next 4 years, if he doesn’t have a stroke or heart attack first.

  119. YMBAC if

    You loan the Downgrade’s brother money ‘for a deposit on an apartment’ only to find out he got busted dealing coke

    You start tapping your toes to the pick me dance -that was for all of two days, but still

    You try to believe that whatever your cheater did to you, they still love and will protect and support their child

    You tell yourself that all the new shirts, colognes, iphones etc are just a reflection of finally getting out of your broke thirties

    You think your sister in law wouldn’t do something like that to her own kid, never mind yours

    I could go on……but I am an ex-Chump now, and aside from DD still getting regular headfucks, it feels like it happened to somebody else.

    Bon Weekend, and love to all Chump Nation. x-Meh

  120. All I have to say is I must be getting better cause some of the sexploits of these asshats are just hilarious! And I believe it’s ANR who thinks it would be better to just give it all to his cheater!!! NO, NO, NO! It’s always difficult towards the very end! And trust me, you will NOT have to give a cheating POS everything! Stop, think, and get mad! It’s even sweeter getting their greedy asses. My lawyer told me that the courts won’t leave him naked and homeless! She was close to wrong. If it wasn’t for his Schmoopie he pretty much would be just that, but if she dumps him then he is just another homeless bum!! She’ll probably take the car she bought for him back also!

  121. YMBAC if you thought the reason why you lived a sexless marriage is because he had a medical problem ( high blood pressure) but decided to love him no matter what.

    YMBAC if you believed him when he says it was your fault for gaining weight that he can’t be intimate with you.

    YMBAC when he says out of the blue that he wants to shave his private parts and you still don’t think he could be cheating.

    YMBAC when you call a number on his cell phone and a girl answers. His response, “We are just friends. She’s married.” Hmmmm. So are WE!

  122. YMBAC if he gives you his white work shirts to take to the cleaner and you ask him “what is that long red streak (lipstick) down the front of your shirt?” and he just stares at you with a blank look and you don’t pursue the issue any further.

  123. YMBAC if he tells his doctor that he doesn’t want to take a certain med because it will lower his sex drive and you haven’t had sex with him in 9 months or more because of his heart surgery.

  125. YMBAC if you stumble across an eBay purchase on his computer screen…of a “Sexy red cupid bra” and get excited because he’s going to surprise you and it’s not even your birthday. When you never receive it, you assume, of course, that he must have noticed a flaw and sent it back. Yes, yes, you just MBAC……

    And that eBay order was nine months before the two year affair which you eventually learned about had even begun.

    After D Day, you think back on that with your eyes open, and apparently the explanation is that he got it for a former GF from 20 years ago (who is now just an old friend, uh huh) because her bra strap was uncomfortable. REALLY? Y’all still talk underwear? You’re still supplying her intimate apparel?? If that’s what you consider the acceptable explanation, then what would the UNACCEPTABLE one be?

    • I was also clueless. I don’t even know what word would best describe my level of cluelessness: oblivious? Ignorant? I mean really… I opened the glove box of his car, and a rather large box of condoms fell out for all our kids to see. What do you think I did??? I confronted him of course! I asked him “why would you leave these condoms where the kids could clearly see them?” Then I asked him to keep them in the bathroom or bedroom. I never saw the box of condoms again, and we never used a condom.

      Now when I look back and piece things together I can see why he was so careless before Dday; he thought his activities were invisible, because they were. Once I got that red flag though, I began seeing inconsistencies everywhere. He was horrible at hiding it at the beginning, because he almost didn’t have to as long as he was married to Captain Oblivious.

  126. Mehwillbesoooogood,
    How about, he had his sperm checked to make sure his vasectomy was working.
    We weren’t having sex!!!

  127. When your partner tells you he had dinner with his adult son & DIL on son’s birthday at a restaurant…and later on, the DIL mentions to me that partner’s ex-wife was there as well. Partner didn’t think it necessary to mention this key bit of information. When challenged, partner denies presence of ex-wife. Hateful turd.

  128. After I threw him out for cheating, I found an unopened package “sexy fireman outfit” mankini thing….ugh gross…under OUR BED. When I sent him a sarcastic email about it, he answered “that was your next Valentine’s gift” Yeah sure! I would NOT have wanted to see that on him. Yuck. What a flaming turd.

    • The lying rats have an answer for everything and I mean everything. My ex was so quick on his feet with responses that he confused me. No longer because I see him for what he really is and has always been.

  129. YMBAC…if, when pregnant, he stays out until 3 or 4 am several nights a week towards the end of the pregnancy, doesn’t answer the phone, you stay up worried as hell, calling over and over again and when he does come home he says he was working late/gaming with friends online at offices around the world/phone died.

    When I discovered the years of affairs that period of time made total sense, along with him being pissy in the delivery room when I was writhing in pain (long, long, long labour for a very big baby).

    YMBAC…if five weeks after you deliver said baby you fall very ill with an infection and end up in the hospital for five days, hovering near death. And he visits once. Because he was working and his new business needed his attention. 24/7 apparently.

    He’s a dick.

    • Nord,

      You were hovering near death after giving birth and he visited you once? To call your ex a dick is an insult to great dicks everywhere. Let me just call him out as the shit-covered Baboon’s anus that he is.

      • “shit-covered Baboon’s anus” I’ve officially joined the chumps here who have just about sprayed their computer screen with coffee. Love it.

      • You guys are cracking me up. 🙂

        I really bought that because he had started this new business he was working so much and just didn’t have time to visit me. So I was in the hospital in all kinds of drips and he came by, once, and sat for maybe just under an hour.

        Could it have been any more clear that he really didn’t give a shit about me? And could I have been any more dumb? I should have left him as soon as they discharged me.

    • Wow, Nord.

      But, then again…. Perhaps you could have been a LIttle more thoughtful about the timing of your labour and infection? Did you at least TRY to consider HIM when you chose to have a big baby and become septic?

    • The first thing I thought was- our bodies know, don’t they? You had no emotional support or love, so you got sick!
      Glad you got better, in spite of your spouse.

  130. YMBAC if you actually believed that $1,400 spent in strip clubs was for lap dances for his co-workers.

    • You just reminded me of his account of his son’s stag party, when he told me proudly that he had paid for lap dances for various pals of his son’s because they were such “good guys”. And in the next breath is telling you how great a family man one of them is, with a sweet wife and new born twin babies………..Oh, and of course HE didn’t want any lap dances for himself because he knew it would upset me………….Yes, I might be a chump.

  131. YMBAC if your husband told you that his truck was broken into (smashed the window)…in your driveway…in broad daylight…with him at home…and the overprotective family dog…and our child…in a cul de sac…on a dead end street…with retired neighbors all around who are always home…and “wildlife cams” that are motion detection, all over the yard…and two driveway sensors that ring in the house when someone crosses the beam…

    and stole his $55 GPS off his windshield, and his $20 digital camera. Left the two guns that were inside, with ammo. Never approached the house to steal the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of “toys” just on the other side of the garage door. Didn’t go to ANY other houses.

    And no one saw or heard a thing, including him. The cameras were “at the wrong angle”. The sensors must have malfunctioned. The dog was pooping or sleeping or just checked out. The kid was asleep. The neighbors were all gone or sleeping or had their tvs up too loud. In the middle of the day.

    And we can’t call the police or make a report because “he will handle it”, meaning he’s going to go all detective mode and find the perps who did the dastardly deed and he’s going to “protect his family from the bad guys”.

    And you believed him.

    GPSs have a history that you can pull off the drive and cameras have memory that can be retrieved even if pics are erased from it.

    He was trying to hide his galavanting in his truck with OW and the pictures that they took of each other while “dating”.

    • Mine too! A peace officer parked at the fitness club in his state ride and his truck got broken into, his wallet stolen, and state phone taken as well. Hmmm like to see that report! Looking back, I think the truer story was that he wasn’t anywhere he was supposed to be and while he was “working out” his truck was broken into.

      • 🙁 Sorry he did that to you! Mine actually didn’t happen, though. What I was trying to say is that he made the story up because he got rid of the GPS and the camera himself. Nothing was stolen. He did it to cover his tracks.

  132. Miss Sunshine,

    Way late checking back on this thread, but, My God. What a piece of total trash. So sorry, and so glad you are putting it behind you.

    I have to say the recurring theme of always trying to go the extra mile for them because you loved them, and that is who you are, and constantly walking on eggshells because no matter what you did, it probably wouldn’t be quite perfect for them…very familiar and very sad.

  133. YMBAC if you believed your husband’s claim that the reason why he needed to password protect his laptop and log out after each session was to strengthen the life of his computer’s battery–oh, and that you should be doing the same and if you aren’t you’re just being lazy and putting your computer data at risk.

    YMBAC if, when you pointed out to your husband that the passwords to all of your shared financial accounts–which you trusted him to manage–could only be accessed via the keychain on his password-protected laptop and that you might need to access all of them in the event of his sudden death, you believed him when he claimed the passwords were included with the other paperwork in your safe deposit box.

    YMBACIR (You Might Be A Chump In Recovery) if you decided to hunt down the keys to the safe deposit box only to discover that there were, in fact, no passwords anywhere to be found. You may be on the road to recovery not only if you were not surprised to find that his excuse was a lie but if, for once, you refused to accept the usual gaslighted explanations–“I never told you I put the passwords in the safe deposit box, who does that, that’s just crazy, and now you’re just making shit up to try to make me look bad,” blah, blah, blah.

  134. ymbac, in recovery and healing when the whore approaches you in a public place and try’s to pull you into triangulation with insults and you sincerely don’t care your x is in a relationship with a sleazy pig.

  135. YMBAC if your husband has moved out to his own apartment but you still sort of believe him when he says everything will be OK, that he’s doing it for our future.

    …if he still comes to your house every day, but then leaves to sleep in his apartment every night, and you feel sorry for him because he is so broken.

    …if you still attend the church where he is the pastor, and somehow do not sob in the pew every Sunday when he is preaching.

    …if you suddenly are drinking barrels of wine.

    • “…if you still attend the church where he is the pastor, and somehow do not sob in the pew every Sunday when he is preaching.”

      These Jesus Cheaters are unbelievable! It is amazing to me that when they open their mouths to preach that their lips don’t spontaneously combust. There has got to be a special place in hell for them and I have to believe that a just God reserves a special punishment for them while they are here on earth.

      • I didn’t go today. I just couldn’t. And when my children were confused, I just told them that since dad has mivedcout, it is too hard for me to sit in church. My daughter is angry. My son agreed with me. But I just can’t do it anymore.

  136. YMBAC when your wife says “No one does me like you do…” after sex, and you’ve been married for 21 years….

    YMBAC when you find the dick pick on her phone and she tells you her friend is having an affair and forwarded it to her….

        • Hopiumsmoker, I confess as soon as it clicked, I got a real good chuckle. It is really sad. It is really sick, but, so dang “wow”. I can’t even imagine your reaction.

  137. YMBAC if the jewelry store at the local mall called to say that my ring needed cleaning….and I’d never received a ring purchased at that store. And I didn’t ask any questions, assuming the store had made an error…

  138. So many awesome, brave, funny chumps out there…hugs to you all.

    Hmmmm,

    YMBAC if you’ve seen the movie “Green Card” but still believe he loves you and isn’t using you as a ticket out of his shit-hole family and life.

    YMBAC if you pay for absolutely everything for a year until he can work legally; and in addition to a 60 hour week and a dying father, you come home and have to do every bit of housework and yardwork because he’s busy working out and watching TV to “improve his English”.

    YMBAC is you accept with a huge, hollow sadness that he finds kissing “disgusting” – and other than a peck on the cheek every morning, you go without being kissed for the entire 10+ years of your marraige. Then you figure out that was probably some wierd thing he had set up with the primary OW, and you just feel completely empty inside.

    YMBAC if he forbids you to play music in the house, and you used to play four instruments very well, but you dont make a peep when he plays his hideous home country folk music loud enough to make the neighbors dog howl.

    YMBAC when he pisses the bed regularly, and you just do the laundry and feel sorry for him and don’t say a word.

    YMBAC when you spend every single Christmas but one in your 11 years of married life alone (or with your young children) because he needs to celebrate the holidays with his “mother” or she’ll “kill herself for real this tme.”

    YMBAC when he returns from Christmas in the motherland with new banana hammock black underwear in this foul silky fabric, as well as these fucking shining black velour pajamas and he insists on wearing that shit to bed with me; and you can smell the petroleum based fiber fumes all night, and they leave little hairy shedding black whore fibers in your bed…and you so want to believe him when he says they were a Christmas gift from his dying mother (who BTW was never even sick and you believed that shit too) but even then it’s icky and Freudian and just so completely nasty.

    YMBAC when you can’t comprehend how a father can tell you that he feels absolutely nothng for his 2 precious kids; and you wonder if he has a brain tumor and not just a sucking black hole where his heart should be.

    YMBAC when you sometimes are optimistic that he will someday pay the $90K in back child support owed; and

    YMBAC when you actually believe you can love him enough to make him love you back.

    No Longer a Chump

  139. YMBAC if you believed your husband was spending those nights at his fire station (2 hours from home) because bad weather was coming, or he had to come in early for a coworker, orange had to stay late for a coworker, or he was working late on a call, or he got called in for extra help, or he had gone out for drinks with coworkers after work and was too inebriated to drive home 2 hours.

    YMBACI you felt bad every time your phone received a notification because you husband had convinced you that YOU were on it too much (despite the fact that he was always on his phone). And you conyinues to believe you were the problem even after your family (unknowing about Husband’s accusations of you being on yor phone all the time) commented to you how much your husband was always on his phone and so secretive about it.
    YMBACI you let your husband define your reality, move your boundaries, and bully you through emotional manipulation into accepting his behavior, accepting blame for perceived attacks, and submitting to surveillance of your activity.

    YMBACI you went to pastoral counseling for marriage therapy but got nowhere, only to learn later that your pastor was having an affair of his own

    YMBACI you accepted any form of blame for yor cheating spouses behavior,because you honestly believed that your behavior contributed to them cheating.

    YMBACI you’ve ever had the Love Dare book, your wedding ring, or a full 2 liter of pop thrown at you for questioning your spouses behavior and alibis
    YMBACI you feel like your in competition with every other female on the face of the earth for your husbands affection
    YMBACI you ever had to consult law enforcement about a safety plan to leave your husband
    YMBACI your husband was served with a restraining order on your front porch banging on your door and looking in your windows to find you
    YMBACI your husband told the officer who served him that he “only wanted to talk” to you

  140. I won’t be kicking my self for being a trusting person.

    My cheating wife needs to be kicking herself for being a cheater.

    Yes, I missed all the signs, but heck, she was my wife, I trusted her. We should be able to trust our spouse.

    Heck, I was hit on many many times, when out with the boys, and I waved my wedding ring at them and firmly declined. A good wife is suppose to do the same. I should not have had to wonder what she was doing while out with the girls. She was already married. She claimed to be happy, too. There was never a peep about any problems.

  141. Just about every one of these posts I have checked off on my own YMBAC list…

    He is about to move out in a couple of weeks. I am trying to ready myself with sage to smudge through the house and candles to light after I deep clean the house to purify it from his presence…

    I accidentally realized his secret plans about 3, 4 weeks ago, and when he realized I knew what he was up to, we had a talk… right now, I am being as pro-active as can be- checking account changes, insurance changes, etc. I have even set up counseling appointments for myself- I call it grief therapy, because that’s the only way I will be able to overcome this.

    My first husband fucked me over in so many ways on so many levels and I had zero support, no back-bone, no one to help me. He took everything from me, even our children…but I dug in, got my shit straight and came out better than I ever thought possible.

    Now, I see it as a huge lesson in that I learned that I survived him, I can survive this mother fuckin’ asshat-

    I keep thinking of that line in the movie Twister where Melissa leaves Billy and says, “I’m not even that upset. What does that mean?”… Another movie quote is the one from Shawshank Redemption- “…Andy Dufrene, who crawled through a river of shit, and came out clean on the other side”

    I would LOVE a CN meeting in my area- I’ve seen comments about it throughout CN’s posts…

    It’s crazy, but the more I share with friends about what MFA is doing to me, they just about ALL share that they have gone through the same thing- crazy!!!! I guess the idea of a completely monogamous marriage is a rarity these days. Sad…

  142. UnsinkableMollyX; You go! Power his ass out of there (Cheer, Cheer Whistle!!)
    You are right, it seems the men (boys) these days just never grow up, and some of the girls too! There are scads of women looking for a man to bed/steal-more than I have ever seen before.
    You know, it was such a disappointment to find out I didn’t have the Real Man I thought I had, but a little boy still playing with his pecker. Good luck!

  143. I’ve pretty much taken it as a given that all men cheat, or at least WILL cheat if in the right circumstance. I have some good looking girlfriends and we promote events and interact with a lot of people. These married men walk by us, flirt, and go as far as they possibly can even though their wives are typically present. Or, they’ll approach a male model and ask him to slip us an “offer”. You’re walking with your wife and multi-tasking while offering models money to be whores. This happens at just about every event. I’m posting this video below because I did it to test my boyfriend’s (of 3 years) fidelity. I was always suspicious, but the stuff I found was not what I thought. I figured he was good “until” someone flirted with him; not the case he was chasing everything. He was even texting a chic who called him accidentally as a wrong number! Just ANYTHING!! I hope you guys will do what I did and save yourself a few years of BS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75rSC2QBmeE

  144. YMBAC if you uploaded pictures of you and your spouse before he went to Europe… to meet up with the OW.