Time Again for a Mightiness Check

I’m mighty having bought my little apartment with proceeds from our house sale and furnishing it with great pieces found on Craigslist and Etsy AND I didn’t have to confer with anyone! I’m also mighty because I realized I needed a raise, asked for it and got an exceptional one and praise for all my effort here in the office! I feel appreciated and excited for this new chapter!

I have been lurking on this site just over a week, first post! Firstly a massive thanks to CL and CN you have been an inspiration and really helped me through and motivated to live my life to it’s fullest potential. It’s only 15 days since DDay. Not a place for my full story but enough to say I have been gaslit to the point of a nervous breakdown and my wasband is a cheating, lying, narcissistic sack of filth. Anyway…
I’ve left my husband! Moved 300 miles away without notifying him until I got there. Sent an email simply stating; I’ve left you.
Looking for and may have found a job.
Applying for college courses to start in the fall.
Gone no contact, only 5 days so far but it’s a real tonic not to have all the shitty blame and self righteous bullshit thrown at me.
Met up with friends, spending lots of time with family.
I’d say I’m well on the way to a speedy recovery. I like to call it recovery as it feels as though I was shot in the chest.
Fuck yeah, I am mighty!

I’ve maintained NC for 7 months with only 2 1/2 minor infractions.
Everything else is still a work in progress, but hey at least it’s in progress.

I finally found the strength to divorce my narcissistic, alcohol abusing, womanizing serial cheater. It took a very long time because his behavior was “balanced” with generosity and consideration, not to mention that he was a wildly successful provider. However the instability and codependency was overwhelming and I am stronger for ending the depressing cycle. Just this month, after 18 years since working as an attorney to raise my 3 wonderful kids, I was hired as a salaried, full time employee managing business and legal affairs at a small consulting firm. Next month I am closing on my own apartment. Some days are very scary, but I’m trying to remember every day to be mighty. Thanks Chump Nation!

Im way out from my initial BD but still reeling from learning the very new info that cheater was unfaithful for most of our 26 year marriage during which I was fully and completely (as in not a single suspicion for YEARS) CHUMPED.

So now, for various reasons, I am choosing to remain in the house where he lived the last 5 years of his life wreckonciled to me.

My mightiness has been reclaiming this place and not only making it MINE but making it the HOME of my true love (who values me and isn’t a cheater). The bathroom was torn out down to the studs and redone to MY design and paid for with life insurance money. The marital bed was purged (mattress went out on top of the debris from the bathroom) and dear loves mattress (that no other woman ever had sex with him on) was moved in.

I took over his office (decorated it all girly and put up a chandelier), removed family photos with him in them, and hung a fucking “US Air Force” flag off the side of my house (Major Cheater was in the Marine Corps).

Colonel Goodguy and I bought a lovely carpet in Istanbul on the trip where we got engaged – its huge and covers the whole floor of our bedroom. Yesterday I was cleaning it and thought about how it reminds me that the old life is gone and my new life is what Im living – I love the visual reminders that the old is gone and its not my life anymore.

I started walking dogs and eating healthier (after I started feeling like eating-I’m only 4 months into the big discard after a 34 year marriage), lost 25 pounds. Involved in two different stage shows. Took up clogging and planning to do a huge rv show with my portable garage business. He is someone else’s problem and I am focusing on myself for a change.

In the last 7 months, I have proudly watched my daughter graduate from high school and helped her move in to college. I sold the marital home without a real estate agent (saved $$), sold many items from that home on Craigslist (without any issues) and packed the stuff I wanted to keep all by myself. I purchased and renovated a townhouse, moved in and finally feel settled and happy. I’ve never lived on my own and I love it! The cat and I are happy and my daughter had a really good first semester at college. I love my new life!

My goals for the upcoming year are to continue to work on healing myself, build my self esteem, clear my head, more renovations, and possibly try dating but no rush for that.

I bit back. I have a supervisor who loves to talk down to me. 10 years I have listen to her minimize my concerns and at times mock me in front of my coworkers….. That ended last month. I unleashed the beast and with professional dialogue promptly took large strips off her. Our director was witness to the tongue lashing and allowed me the platform to purge. I was asked to present to our directors office later, certain that I was going to be reprimanded or terminated…. She very calmly asked me to close the door and have a seat… When seated she burst into laughter and told me ‘ Oh Clip you are my hero!’

I managed all of the paperwork for my divorce and packed his stuff up and moved it out! I became free of the ex last May! Since then, I have fixed my kitchen sink, changed the line on my weed eater, and changed the wiper blades on my car – all by myself! I have continued with my studies and am now only 3 semesters from finishing my degree. I have not only cut out the dead weight of my ex but I have re-evaluated a few of my “friendships” and have cut out a little dead weight there as well. I took myself on vacation and went to a concert that I had always dreamed of attending. I redecorated my bedroom the way I wanted. Every day – I do what I want when I want, no one criticizes me, no one in my life talks down of others and says nasty things, and I laugh more.

Since D-day January 2012, I have maintained NC with the narc except for terse informative emails concerning the absolute minimum of what he needs to know or be involved with.
I adopted a cat and Oscar, my mom’s dog, finalized my will, saw my daughter through four years of college, bought her a (very used) car and helped her relocate for her new job this past summer, assisted in the care of my 85 year old mother with dementia, was finally able to afford baseball and basketball programs for my younger son, taught my older son to drive, took a job as an part-time elementary music teacher at a private school, learned to row, participated in two regattas (boat races), have been kickboxing two to three times a week, and have taken up wheel-throwing (pottery) as a winter activity. I like my life and more importantly, myself, now that I’m cheater-free. Meh is definitely on the horizon.

I am mighty because I decided (a few weeks ago now) that I don’t want to be married to a cheater. We’ve met with a mediator and begun dividing up assets, opening our own accounts, etc. and divorce papers and mediated settlement order will be filed within weeks (we have been separated for about a year now since D-Day). I feel great and I am about as close to Meh as Meh can be. I can look myself in the mirror and know that I had the self-respect to not tolerate what happened and I now know that for years I have put up with abusive and manipulative shit that I should never have permitted. I also have taken a hard inventory of myself and know that I would rather be alone than with someone I can’t trust. Thus, any future relationships will begin with respect and mutuality or there will be no relationship. I loved picking out my own furniture the other day! I wear what I want, do what I want, go to bed when I want, watch what I want, and I am in the best physical shape of my life (in part yes do to affair-discovery dieting – ha!). I wake up early now and write about my future, a future without a cheater. I truly have gained a life.

CL, congrats on the book. I plan to buy two for my local libraries. Yes, I’d love the CL coloring book as well.

I’m 58 now and it’s been 2 years and four months since I attempted suicide when my cheater husband discarded me.

I no longer take medication for depression. I no longer get severe stress migraines. I was out of the job market for 10 years, but now I’ve been working full time since last April at a job that is very fulfilling.

It’s been a hellish journey which I could not have survived w/o CL and CN and yes, I did turn to God and that’s helped too.

I recently contacted a mortgage loan person to ask if I could afford a home on my income and she said yes. I’ve saved and improved my credit score and now hope to buy my own modest home in July of this year when my bankruptcy (thanks, cheater) is two years old.

I would love to share my life with someone but I’m not going out of my way to find that. I like myself and enjoy my own company.

Last week my ex texted me and said “You should talk to me to keep my spirits up.” I told him no. I’ve come a long way.

Love you, Tracy and all of Chump Nation.

xox

My ex abandoned all of us (me and our three kids) pretty much completely after D-Day which was 4 years ago. Despite the incredible mind fuck, I had a lawyer before D-Day was even concluded and got a quick divorce. After a few bouts of hysteria, I maintained my calm for the most part and manipulated my ex (after researching “how to manipulate a sociopath”) and got out of the marriage financially unscathed. I survived finding out that my ex husband had lead a double life and cheated on me with two co-workers for over 15 years. I survived many many humiliations and sick games ex and his AP’s inflicted on chumpy me and our kids throughout my marriage (they were his co-workers and pretended to be family friends). There was gaslighting that is even hard for me to believe as I look back. I survived my until-D-Day-supposedly-loving husband telling me within days that he loved one of his group sex partners more than me and was going to marry her. I survived waiting for her youngest son to be DNA tested.

Once my divorce was final (and after I found Chump Lady), I maintained NC almost completely except for absolutely necessary and business-like financial emails which occur less than once or twice per year now. I remortgaged our family home into my name and maintain it, so that my children would have some stability through all the drama and abandonment. I relied on a few friends, a good counselor, family, journaling, reading about personality disorders and abandonment, and Chump Nation to get me through. And it did. I re-connected with many friends who had fallen to the wayside, many because they had a problem with my ex.

I got my daughter through her final three years of college. She is now in a fellowship teaching position in Italy where I have already traveled to visit her by myself and will do so again soon. I saw my oldest son through his final years of law school, supported him mentally and financially during exams and through the bar exam. I attended their graduations with my parents and their siblings, and ex was AWOL and did not even know when these events occurred.

I kept my law practice going and in fact kicked ass at it and am now a named partner and doing incredibly well. My oldest son is now an associate in our firm and is kicking ass.

Through all this, I raised my youngest son, now 16, alone since ex left (ex has not seen him once in 4 years). He is now a sophomore in high school and we are super-close, having been left alone with the older kids out of the house and his father going to ground since D-Day.

Shortly after my divorce was final, I decided that I’d prefer that the last story in my romantic life not be the hideous things my ex and his AP’s did to me. A few bad dates led me to discontinue Match.com or any kind of organized dating efforts. But I still decided that if the chance happened to come along I would still give dating another try. Shortly after that, my brother’s best friend, a fellow chump who had already been divorced years before, got in touch with me. We met to have a drink, started dating, and were married in June 2014. I never imagined a relationship like this, with a true and authentic connection and the feeling that my husband and I are on the same side. It is so stunning yet so simple, and I have come to learn that I never realized how shallow my ex was and how weak our connection really was until now.

I survived ex marrying AP#1, one I thought was a co-worker and family friend, last summer. I accepted that it still hurt even though I had moved on. I accept the flashbacks of pain and recognition of chumpy moments that still come to me after the 25 years of marriage and deception I endured, but they are coming less and less.

Friends and co-workers tell me I am a very different person than I was before D-Day. I was emotionally stunted, closed down, depressed, unsure why I was empty and sad, and very very withdrawn. I drank too much, every night, just to get through and did not even know why. Since D-Day, I barely drink, feel alive, have more energy, and cannot even seem to fully recall the old Kelly.

Just recently I have noticed that I have stopped cycling through periods of intense pain over the injustice of having been chumped, having the best years of my life wasted, and waiting to witness karma biting ex in the ass (is it true that a watched karma-bus never strikes?). I credit that to time, NC, and bit by bit replacing the places in my life that had been laid to waste with these beautiful things.