It’s not just cheaters who say stupid shit. Other people are horribly insensitive too! Everything from the grossly mistaken — gee, the affair partner doesn’t seem all that bad! To the dunderheaded smugness of, “I’m so glad my husband would never cheat on me.” (Bully for you.)
Chumps, being pretty nice people, are usually taken completely off guard. Did you really just say that? To help you identify Stupid Shit Other People Say in the future, I’ve broken down the SSOPS into a few categories.
1. Your Misfortune Is Very Threatening to Me. See “dunderheaded smugness” above. If a comment seems oddly competitive — “I’m so lucky that my biggest marital crisis was my husband buying a Trans Am!” — you can rest assured that this person is deeply freaked out by you. So let’s heartily avow that Bad Things could never, ever happen to them. Why did a bad thing happen to you? Well, because you brought it on yourself. And in that respect, we’re very, very different people. Unless we’re not. In which case your misfortune may be contagious, so I’m going to avoid you entirely in any case to make sure I don’t catch it.
2. You’re Doing It All Wrong. You know what you need right now? Someone yelling at you from the sidelines of your life. “You should wait 6 months before you make a decision. You didn’t wait 6 months? OMG! Everyone knows you have to wait 6 months!” Chances are this person has never experienced your particular calamity, but they are well versed in exactly how you are fucking this up. You really should thank them. No? What’s wrong with you?
3. Damning with Faint Comparisons. Let’s say you share that your wife cheated on you with 15 men she met on Craigslist. This is the person formerly-known-as-your-friend who replies, “Wow. That reminds me of like, when my car wouldn’t start. I thought it was the battery, but no, the whole alternator was bad. Cost me $700. Can you believe it?” No. No we cannot believe it.
4. Norman Vincent Unreal. “Think outside the box! Shift the paradigm! Breathe!” Are you feeling suicidal? Norman has exactly the right sunny cliche to make it all better. “Everything happens for a reason.” You can’t find a reason? “Every cloud has a silver lining!” Please God make him stop. “A smile is just a frown turned upside down!” “You’ll find someone when you least expect it!” “It’s always darkest before the dawn!”
So I’m curious — what sort of stupid shit did other people say to you? (Not including the cheater, of course, who has their own page of Stupid Shit entirely.)
This column ran previously, but the Stupid Shit lives on.
“People don’t cheat for no reason”
Similar to “oh your husband had an affair? You need to look at your marriage and see what you were both doing wrong”.
Of course, I made him sleep with other women and treat me like shit.
Got this from my pastor! “I’ve done enough marriage council ing to know that it takes two to get this bad.”
Hell, yeah- it takes two. Him and any willing whore. Smh.
Preach!
I hope you’ve left that church!
AMEN, KM.
My ex-pastor tried his best to make me take part of the blame. Hell to the NO!
Doing more for the lying, cheating bastard was not going to fix his character problems. I tried for over 20 years to be the best wife, mother, friend that I could be. Not perfect, but I kept trying to fix what I thought was something lacking in me. I’ve come to realize that there is nothing I could have done to stop him lying and cheating. Bye bye to people who put the blame on me. I’m not carrying that burden anymore.
Ugh that’s horrible. Keep the faith though….God does not want you in these situations. My church were amazing, I was encouraged (through scripture with Matthew) to leave. They saw I had tried (Hopedum) but said only God could help him. I had to get away fast and focus on me. He was cheating and emotionally abusive and my church said no to that.
That’s so good you were supported by your church. And I agree, God doesn’t want us in these situations. My sister has told me quite a few times, “Martha, you don’t know what else God is protecting you from.” My ex is a pathological liar. Lies even about stupid stuff. Who knows what else he’s done and what has transpired behind my back all these years. It’s quite possible his hiding stuff that I need to be protected from. Only God knows. I’ve have told my ex so many times, “God has seen it all.” He has never replied back when I said that. This whole situation has challenged my faith, because I was not only lied to by my “Christian” ex. But his “Christian” mom and my ex-pastor lied to me three times. But God has been so good to me the past two years. I could go on and on about the little miracles in my life. I’m keeping my faith. 🙂
Same shit, different dickhead.
He cheated for YEARS and his pat excuse is “it’s a symptom of a deeper
problem.” Yeah, you shithead. You are a fucking narcissist and only do things that serve your ego. (Oh and he thinks our teenage daughter should realize he cheated on me, not her — wtf?)
Anyway, I digress, which I’m prone to so these days. It didn’t take too long to realize it wasn’t something I did or did not do. It took a lot longer to realize he would have cheated NO MATTER WHAT I DID — stay home, work part time, full time. All the while taking of the kid, the dogs, the house and the vacation cabin.
What did he do? Travel, earn mileage points. Have affair after affair after affair. He’s fucking George Clooney in Up in the Air — but he’s not. Just another middle aged man, fucking around on the road because he’s entitled.
While I have the truly exciting job of taking care of our daughter and house. The thrills of shopping and cooking and driving!! The flexibility he thinks — not!!
I am a child of divorce and swore to myself I’d never been dependent on a man. But little by little, for my daughter and the asshole of a husband, I set my career aside, only to be taken advantage of in the end. Fifteen years later, my career is gone (tech — too old, skills are outdated) while he’s at the pinnacle of his career, finally making the big bucks.
Daughter is great — straight A’s in he honors classes and ivy league bound. He has the audacity to tell me that I have been sitting on my ass for 15 years! Yes, our beautiful, confident, brilliant daughter raised herself while you were traveling and I was eating bonbons. (For the record, I remodeled a house, volunteered at school, wrote two business plans, worked part time for 3 years and took my 13yo to Europe for six months because 8th grade was going to be a real problem.
Ok, I went off on a rant of my own. But you are not alone my friend. You give your heart someone who is supposed to love and protect you — the one person in this world who is supposed to “have your back” and they betray your trust and then try to brush it off and tell you to “move on.” No — the time to move on was 12 YEARS AGO!! When I could have recovered my career and rebuilt my life.
Giddy.
Ditto. Only difference three boys and 21 year marriage.
Same here. Forty years together. Then he “found” somebody.
Giddy, you just described my life almost word for word, I sacrificed my career for his. Raised our son while he traveled the world.
He’s now making big bucks. His attitude is the same “I sat on my ass” for twenty years, I deserve nothing.
I volunteered did all the same things as you did.
I hate them.
My goodness! How do they just think they wind up with these great kids, like it’s a lucky draw or that like you said the kids “just raise themselves”??????
I didn’t stop working when I had my boy but I did professionally stagnate because I could not put in any extra effort. Why? Because I had to raise my son while Narkles the Clown traveled the world. I don’t slack! I take that job seriously! It’s the most important thing I have to do. I mentioned multiple times that I wanted to get my Masters Degree and he would just say “then go do it” knowing full well you can’t leave a two year old at home alone when you’re at night school.
The boy has straight A’s and is a permanent fixture on the honor roll while maintaining two extra circular activities that he has excelled in. Who takes him to these activities? Who meets all the teachers? Who signs permission slips for field trips? Takes him to doctors appointments? Gets uniforms handled? Buys materials for projects? It never was Narkles the Clown and it certainly isn’t now.
Sorry to rant, you may have hit a nerve, but Lord Almighty you are not alone!
Yes. My masters. I kept saying I wanted to go back to school, for it to be “my turn” since I put him through med school. First, he said we couldn’t afford it, then he told me to just “figure it out” – because arranging transportation and child care for 3 kids on the autism spectrum is that easy. When I put together child care costs, he said I had to choose: child care OR school, because we couldn’t afford both.
I did all the above and worked full-time while raising two great boys! But, I did not deserve half his police pension because I was not out on the streets like he was! Really? who do you think was taking care of the kids while you were out riding all the whores!
Fucktard!
“He has the audacity to tell me that I have been sitting on my ass for 15 years!”
My Dickhead wrote me a letter stating “If he’d done what I did, he’d be called a Deadbeat”… and ” I could have done anything I wanted for 15 years”. While he lived and worked across the country and I raised two children, through the teen years, so fun!, sports, band, volunteered on several boards and took care of literally everything (including HIS aging parents) so when he would be home he could ‘relax’.
So true… After 3 kids sahm for a lot of it but still shoring up the finances I sacrificed a pharma job plus car to do his laundry and cook . after we decided I should cut down hours to ferry child about to finish school to help him pass important exams HE decides he’s done after 25 years and last day of school tells kids he’s off to start a new chapter of his life .!? Now the line I get is ‘ you need to get a full time job like you said you would when the kids finish school …’ No hint of irony. NPD to the end .
^^ this ^^ “You give your heart someone who is supposed to love and protect you — the one person in this world who is supposed to “have your back” and they betray your trust and then try to brush it off and tell you to “move on.” ”
… and you wonder how you could have been duped for so long and wasted so much time on him! ?
one word – gas lighting. You are ‘duped’ for so long because they lie/tell you that you have the problem/use you for sex/’future fake’ ie talk constantly about the plans you are making for christmas-next years holiday…. endless confusion until your brain is screaming ‘wtf is going on what I am feeling doesn’t match the words”! I really dont think I could have been justified in acting on this ‘cognitive dissonance’ there was no concrete evidence. Hindsight is a different matter – that’s where you feel completely dense for letting it all play out. but as you say well rid – you believed ‘they had your back’ why would you wake up one morning and decide he was no on your side. Well that day did come; he literally turned to me and said after 25 years and 3 beautiful kids together – fantastic life – ‘maybe familiarity does breed contempt’ …just like that – then I knew what my brain was screaming at me was just under the surface for him and he had kept it in check until his dramatic / hollywood type exit. Now I have nightmares trying to replay what I should have done in circumstances where my intuition was telling me to get out. Most bizarre year of my life… so far anyway!
Likewise. Together 17/years married 14 yrs and 3 Children, 2 boys 14 n 9, 5 yr old girl. Thk the Lord for them,<3 <3 <3 …my reason too b strong and live HAPPY. My 43 yr old husband whom is a deputy still breaks up with me(by word of mouth) whenever we have a planned by him disagreement….subtly mentally/emotionally abuses and controls with his stupid interrogations (my dad and boss HA!!) frustrates the Shit out of me and has manipulated me into stupid arguments and down right mental anguish in the part for years straight. So glad I know know he is And has always only been interested In power n control and never an intention of going back to the sweet heart who supposedly thought the world of me, made me feel special, over complementing me, etc., they were just grooming techniques to build HIS ego and turn on me 5 yrs into the marriage til present x. Sad stupid narcotic immature people actually exist that don't give a rat ass about who they hurt as long as they feeel big 4 a min. Cop at that, asshole, neglecting husband, has a top notch wife That looks amazing after kids get hit on ask the x and my stupid morals keep me stuck with him unloved, un appreciated and basically invisible but am beginning to accept that this asshole is never going to Change and at 37=yrs old I need to enjoy some other people I mms due x. Hate that I actually believed he really did LUV n care about me when he doesn't know how to love genuinely, needs professional help to not destroy his children's souls!!!!
Oh, and get this. First DDay was 4 years prior and was supposedly an “emotional affair”with a high school sweetheart (through FB of course.). He was genuinely surprised that I hadn’t had an affair. We did the obligatory MC, wheee he continued to lie. My guess is he had an affair going while we were in MC.
Anyway, after DDay2, I asked him what his plan was. He said he didn’t
have a plan. Maybe he’d have done something after daughter went to college.
No surprise, since I was OF USE, but the rat bastard had no qualms about taking another 4 years of my life.
Yeah, I’ll cheat on her all through her 30’s, 40’s and 50’s and then cut her loose.
Or maybe his dick wouldn’t work anymore by then and he’s stick around for my cooking, companionship and most importantly for the IMAGE of retiring well.
Fuckwad lives life at such a superficial level. Go forth and bore someone else.
Yes, similar to being told by a “friend” who was aware of X’s change in attitude towards me, and verbal abuse. “Well, you two weren’t getting along.”
Really?? Your spouse chooses to cheat and is sneaking around usually has some affect on the marriage. A cheaters choice to cheat might have something to do with a couple “not getting along.” This same person was aware of X’s increasing abuse towards me before he left. A Switzerland friend and neighbor who I no longer speak to.
“It’s on the same lines as “it takes two” as someone said in an earlier post, it does takes two, the cheater and the AP. It takes one to make the choice to cheat which destroys a marriage and shatters lives.
Thank you so very much for the out loud laugh asi sit at a bar at a ski resort feeling absolutely invisible.
Yes it bloody annoys me the way that people seem to think that the cheating was a consequence of a poor marriage when in fact it’s the other way round. Us gormless chumps are running around doing everything to make the marriage work often not realising that the lack of kindness, engagement, commitment and presence of one’s partner is because they are busy spending all their time fucking other people
Omg???
I got a few “there’s two sides to every story” – to which the response is “yes and he’s a douche in both of them”
I got that from the marriage counselor that we went to 1 time before he decided he HAD to “see where this goes” with his slut puppy. The MC asked me if I was ready to accept my part in the affair. I said “yes – I had ZERO part in the affair. We both made mistakes in our marriage but the decision to find answers to our marital issues by sleeping with a co-worker lies entirely at the feet to the sleeper and sleepee” MC was stunned and meekly asked – “cheater, how do YOU feel about that?” And this was Before I had found Chump Nation – I would have had SO much more to say if I had known then what I know now!
I’ve been getting “Oh, did you know something was wrong with the marriage?” Yes I knew. I didn’t know he was trying to fix it by sleeping with two women.
Thanks to CL, I respond to this one, “Yes, they cheat because they have poor character, lacking integrity and dignity.”
The stupid person typically gets quiet and offended, unable to grasp the all-too-reasonable conclusion I just presented them. Then they call me bitter.
Fuck them.
Hahahaha. I too have been met with blank stares when I have used that same response. When they say I am bitter, I reply, ” yes I am bitter and you would be too if your most trusted person wasted x years of your life, betrayed you, and then tried to take all your money to boot simply because you forgot to remind them they wanted a glass of wine at Epcot Center” (actual reason I was given for his actions)
I bought a new garbage can for our kitchen, that’s what brought our marriage to a screeching halt.
When they reach for the bitter followup after the stunned silence I respond with “nope, I’m empowered” and then walk away.
I love this, Geode. I’m going to borrow it if I ever need it.
I’ve kicked all the narcs and cheater enablers out of my life, so I rarely hear crap anymore. But I’ll be ready if I do!
Oh I love that Geode! Going to use that!!
Nodancing – I bought 4 bar stools and that brought our marriage to a screeching halt, as well.
As Oprah would say, honey – you got more problems than just bar stools.
Funny how it all comes out with the simplest things.
That’s an excellent response Geode. I will file this away for the next time I get similar comments.
A new garbage can? wow!
I said the kids didn’t like pizza covered in onions and peppers 10 years ago but now they like it. See? He lied about cheating and I lied about pizza, pretty much the same thing.
None of my friends are Switzerland but they do wonder why it is taking so long to line up ducks. I haven’t worked for an employer for 9 years, not many are beating down my door yet.
oh yeah – lost count of how many helpful people chimed in the ‘don’t become bitter and twisted’ like that is what I’m aiming for. Also, “there’s 2 sides to every story” was a regular as well. Yep – I had no idea marriage was in trouble because he told me it was fine – and he was telling everyone else ‘she knew for ages the marriage was in trouble and didnt want to admit it’ – oh those 2 sides of the story….
My former spouse had our dog minder cover for him – taking photos of our girls when I was away so he could send them to me to look like he was home (yes I know WTF). When I found out what she’d done for him I sacked her and among the many charming things she said was “he had to do something he wasn’t getting his needs met at home” – apart from being a lot of rubbish, its massively none of her business and how’s #arsehat’s form saying that in the first place
Ooh, and I got this one for. My now ex mother in law:
“If you hadn’t checked on her emails you may never have found out, she would have got it out of her system and you might still be together” ergo it’s your stupid fault for snooping to verify your suspicion
What a horrible hag of a MIL. Proper response to this verbal knee capping: “Yeah, still being with that slut, that’s a terrifying thought. Thanks for confirming that my snooping saved my soul.”
Here is my ex monster in law of a story… my ex cheated with one of his employees, family business. My ex MIL said to me, “If you were nicer to him, this wouldn’t have happened.” My response, “You’re the one who hired the whore.”
Same work situation. From mil, I got, “well she’s been here a long time so I will not change the reporting structure. Ow will continue to be my son’s only direct report.” I was never considered. And at that point, I’d been in the family 25 yrs. The ow, 10, so she trumped my contributions somehow. That was my last contact with mil. February 2014. She’s never reached out since, nor to our kids. She’s a marital therapist. I’d believed her for all those years that when she told me she loved me and cared about me, that it was true. Her betrayal was a real crush to me, I’d met her when I was 18 and loved her and trusted her. No contact however has been very liberating. What I learned was that the mow worshipped mil, and no narc will give that up. And my role was to look good in family pictures. I’m more educated than both women, so that was threatening, but mil knew I’d overdress for functions she attended and the hillbilly would not, so she needed us both in her life. There’s a reason mow only wears cargo pants with reinforced knees (blow jobs), and that same reason is why she was a better listener than most (hard to ever contradict men or nag or blather on with a dick in your mouth all the time).
My x best friend, a cheater apologist (gee, why?) told me angrily that had I been doing the job of blowing sunshine up my h’s ass, he wouldn’t have cheated. That one hurt a lot. I’d dealt with her dramas for 30 years with nothing but total access and support.
I actually consider myself lucky that only those 2 said hurtful things. I really had great friends otherwise.
My ex mother in law said to my cheater when he hooked up with a new piece inside of 2 weeks (probably not “new”), “I’m glad you aren’t going through this alone.”
By “this” she meant the divorce.
She never reached out to support me. Or his entire family. The apple doesn’t fall far…
Same here
Same here. the MIL stopped talking to me the day I threw her SOB son out. I was part of the family for 32 years and then nothing. Her loss not mine.
Same here too. His whole family blamed me for his cheating and his having to divorce me. Yeah, like I’m responsible for his weak character, his lack of morals and his poor life choices. Oh hell no!
His whole family imploded when he was a toddler as his father cheated on his mother, so she went out and revenge-cheated on him for paybacks?!? Yeah, I just can’t imagine where he’d ever get an idea like CHEATING from? His whole family is a bunch of fuck-ups and they’ve all been divorced b/c of one or both partners cheating. Welcome to the family, OW…but don’t get too comfortable since I’m sure EX will cheat on you soon too. No worries, it’s in his DNA and men are not naturally meant to be monogamous! And I’m sure it will last for you both since you too were also divorced twice before you erected this house of cards you’re living in with my Ex. May you both feel the pain you caused those of us you left behind in the wake of your trail of mayhem. Neither of you deserves any happiness in this life!
Unreal, nic! I am sorry that thing is your kids’ grandmother.
Perfect, Nomar! Maybe toss in, “and I’d still have you for a MIL”…. LOL!
Matthew
I had quite a few of these comments along the lines of well if you hadn’t found out then you would be much happier now. So many people asked me “don’t you wish you had never found out? I wouldn’t like to know.”
The rest of friends I used to have said “didn’t you know though really, they say wives always know.”
One of the thing that chills me the most is thinking what if I had not found out, what if it was still going on now. That makes my blood run cold.
Is stealing money from someone who trusts you with their checkbook okay so long as they don’t find out?
Ha! My ex did that too and I didn’t find out about it for years. Funny you should use this example because it happens to be one of the few aspects of my story that doesn’t elicit SSOPS comments. Hm, maybe that’s because not knowing about a betrayal does not make it right, duh.
Two thumbs-up!
Shortly after my now-ex moved out, I found out my dentist had been having a NINE-YEARS-LONG affair with his assistant. It had been announced to the office, and their receptionist was visibly shaken. At least my ex only made an ass out of me with the OW for a few months at most. And we didn’t have any children.
Exactly….I had that same bullshit. My own sister said it was ‘just timing’, she (OW) was convenient and it snowballed…..if I’d not found out then ‘who knows, you might still be together!! There’s still hope’
Oh, I know…I would have been in that miserable cycle of narcissistic abuse for another 12 years. Luckily I found CL and had support of my friends/church and got the hell out. I found meh…..and breathe…..it’s there.
No kidding. However there’s a part of me that wishes I didn’t know — he stopped being a “husband ” a long time ago an evolved into a “business Partner” only he forgot to tell me about the change in status. So while I was faithful and questioning what was wrong, he was getting his dick sucked or fucked or whatever by some whore of a woman who justifies her actions bt whatever means necessary.
I forgot to mention that had he been my “business partner” and not my husband, I’d be able to sue his ass for lack of “good faith” and embezzlement and deception.
Ok, I get that they want to get out of the he said/she said in regards to the actual affairs, but what about the YEARS of deceit? I would have made very different decisions about my life had I known my marriage was a lie. At 43, I could have recovered my career and most likely would have found a real man and be remarried. At 55 — 15 years out of the industry, my career is GONE. I can’t commute or travel because I’m still caring for my 15 yo daughter.
So the spousal support fight is on — he looks me straight in the face and says he’s going to “do the right thing, but not be stupid” but he’s hired the most aggressive lawyer in town.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I outearned him 2-1 in the early years of our marriage. We used $$ from my separate property to buy our first house. (Legally, I get that back, unless he decides to challenge me and I’m supposed to provide proof from 23 years ago.) But the additional $$, which is 4 times the original investment it split 50/50.
Oh, and had I not caught him, he would have just carried on. I asked him what his plan was and he said he didn’t have one. Maybe he’d do something when our daughter went to college.
One last thing — when I caught him he said “I deserve to be happy.” Mr. I Have Been Having Affairs for 15 years while I’ve been faithful, untouched and doing all the boring stuff deserves to be happy. Could he be any more narcissistic?
”They say that wives (or spouses) always know”… hmm… well there’s no way to prove or disprove that theory. I mean… you presume Jim Bob would never, but can you be 100% certain? Well… can you? How’s your intuition?
hehe.
When my SIL called to see how I was doing, she told me that she just wants her brother to be happy. Such sage wisdom coming from the woman on her fourth husband. She couldn’t understand why I unfriended her from every aspect of my life.
Horrid. My sil sent me an email that said I’m so sorry, I love you both, I’m here for you if you need me.
It meant the world to me. And our relationship wasn’t impacted, I think, because this was her immediate reaction.
My SIL said the same thing. But it meant her being Switzerland. She knows a lot of the horrible stuff he did to me but never said a word to him about it because “he didn’t share that information” with her. In other words, if he didn’t admit to wrongdoing, she didn’t hold him accountable. And she never asked him about any of it. I really loved my SIL – she was almost like a sister to me, but I couldn’t live like that. See, in order to be my friend, you have to actually be willing to stand up for and support me.
She is the one thing I lost in the divorce.
OMG! This was my SIL too!! She’s on her 4th (or 5th?) marriage and told me that SHE had forgiven ALL of her cheaters, so why couldn’t I? It clearly works out so well….
Getting it out of her system?? Like a flu bug? Yeah, she’s not responsible at all for her decisions and choices. It was just something she caught that was going around. The more I read here, the more I see how the Cheater’s family system helped create the cheater mindset. They are all so toxic.
Sorry you endured this shit. I’m glad you’re free of all of them.
How about getting her out of YOUR system like a colonoscopy prep. Sorry if too graphic.
The cheater’s family absolutely plays a role. It was discovered at the time of my FIL’s death on Thanksgiving 2014 that he’d been cheating on my MIL for decades. She was devastated. Then it was revealed that my cheater’s grandpa, FIL’s dad, had also cheated for decades. So, yeah. But MIL claims that family history has nothing to do with my cheater’s choices. That’s different. It’s all my fault that he cheated. SMH.
Wtf?
Matthew Webb, With that kind of reasoning from a mother, no wonder her daughter is a cheater. Horrible!
Well, for stupid shit, we really should be interviewing some marriage counsellors to good the real good shit. Let’s face it, they have an incredibly hard job and have to Polish turds all day.
Mine suggested I do nothing and let the affair fizzle out. When that didn’t work, she then told me to “claim” my cheating wife (as if she was some sort of prize). She also suggested it was OK to stay in an abusive relationship. Then there was the “needs” analysis, which the cheater loved as it allowed her to blame me (ie I wasn’t meeting her needs…. So it was OK to cheat).
And I all I wanted from the MC when I first saw her was to have her explain in simple terms to my child-woman ex that it is in fact necessary to stop lying before someone can trust you… MC never once brought up lying again. It was taboo in MC apparently.
I learned the hard way that if there is an abuse issue, you have to find a therapist who understands abuse dynamics. Not all of them are trained.
There are many therapists who should not be counseling cheaters. The counselor we saw make it clear she would not discuss the affair itself. Instead,she wanted to discuss “the reasons for the affair.” Ugh, because X was an entitled narcissist, who didn’t think the rules applied to him. But no, it was because I had failed to “put my marriage first.” What bullshit. Of course, when I later learned that she was OW’s cousin, it all made sense. Interestingly, during one of our solo sessions, she told (without disclosing her kinship) that OW’s whole family was basically a nest of vipers, a bunch of malignant narcissists who kept their divorce attorneys on retainer. At least she wasn’t wrong about that part…
I was married to a (cheating) professional marriage therapist. So, yeah, I believe some people shouldn’t be counselors, IMO.
Yep, lying, cruelty, exploitation of my trust, and my time, never ever discussed, considered, by MC. The exploitative aspect of cheating is never considered by anyone I talk to, I am always the one bringing it up and explaining it over and over again: while the cheaters carry on, the chump is cleaning, looking after kids, working, contributing to common finances, expenses, supporting and counselling children, talking to school, driving kids around, making excuses for whatever deadlines cheater is not meeting because cheater is too busy cheating, all of that FOR FREE!! Yay, slave labour, food on the table and sex at home. Doesn’t get any better. Then they want half of everything on top.
I agree kiwichump–there is an odd gap in understanding. People seem to presume that while he was meeting up with his “soul mate,” spending our money on his pleasures, and losing his job, I was having fun my own way. Affairs are like icebergs–even when outsiders see them, they only seeing a small proportion of the problem. Those of us who’ve been floundering in the water know darn well how big and deep the damn thing is.
No kidding. However there’s a part of me that wishes I didn’t know — he stopped being a “husband ” a long time ago an evolved into a “business Partner” only he forgot to tell me about the change in status. So while I was faithful and questioning what was wrong, he was getting his dick sucked or fucked or whatever by some whore of a woman who justifies her actions bt whatever means necessary.
Before my marriage shattered X and I were talking about a neighbor who we found out was cheating. I mentioned to X how badly I felt for her husband, X replied with “Well, if they weren’t getting along.” as if it were no big deal. That should have been a red flag for me.
There are means of solving marital disagreements, I don’t believe cheating has ever been known to solve a marriage when a couple isn’t “getting along.”
That is so transparent Brit….in hindsight of course…. For months I got a run down of everyone elses marriage woes – little did I know he was attempting to give me coded messages about ours!? probably mentally comparing me to the OW with all the suggestions of why dont I do more exercise, why dont i like such and such … towards D day I got ‘I’ve never lived on my own’… musing to himself! The sick bastard insisted on sleeping with me until the week he left because ‘ he knew no other life’ . If I hadnt found out about NPD I would have spent the last year in more of a mind fuck than I am in already. Its all about them all of the time, the OW is their new mirror minus all the stuff about their old life they don’t want reflected back and they argue and lie like a 6 year old – whats not to like?
FSTL – I’m so sorry you had a therapist that added salt and guilt to your wound!
Some therapists are good though. Upon finding out about his affair, I knew I was in the one and done camp. I got referrals from friends and colleagues and was diligent in picking a counselor that listed marriage AND divorce counseling as the services she offered.
I believe at the time my then-husband believed we were in her office to get wrekonciled. When the therapist asked me while I was there I said I was there to learn how to best navigate the aftermath of his affair so we could be the best possible parents to our kiddo. When the therapist asked my then-husband why he was there, he said “to help chumptitude deal with her trust issues.”
It did take two sessions for the therapist to see that my then-husband was unable to translate the promises he made during our therapy sessions into action between sessions. When I asked him to make the next appointment, it never happened. The week after, he insisted we sat down to “talk and resolved our differences amicably.” WOWZA, this is when I saw him for what he is: a lying cheating cowards that had reached the pinnacle of suckitude by being found out by his trusting chump. He pulled all the mindfuckery he could, from threats to pity to charm.
After that day, I have refused to meet him in person alone. I have only communicated with him over email and txt for kid or divorce-related logistics, and met with him with my lawyer present during our negotiations.
I am still working with that same therapist, she has great insights because she has witnessed him flipping through the 3 channels of mindfuck in her very office.
Chumps, I would only select therapists specialized in domestic abuse and/or who include divorce counseling to their service offerings, these are the ones who can more likely unmask cheating turds and help with chump recovery.
Wow, great story Chumtitude! I, too, am in the One and Done camp but didn’t know it at first. Luckily, I had outside intervention from truly caring friends who gave me tips and evidence of his daliance. It was because of these people that I finally put two and two together to see the real situation. Internally, I already know STBX sucks, but these outside perspective (plus you guys at CN) validated that I am in an abusive and lopsided relationship with a manboy. Then I kind of realized that I really don’t have anything to work on. So I decided it is not worth dealing with this shit anymore..
I know this falls under useless platitudes but it is repeated so often I had to mention it: “Just let it go.” My ex didn’t cheat on me but I did feel like I had to compete with his mother. Doesn’t matter. When something grief-worthy happens people feel like they need to fix you so it doesn’t happen again, especially if you’re a woman.
My ex cheated on me ….a lot. I am now dating a really great guy who has a very dysfunctional relationship with his mother.
She’s had some unsuccessful back surgeries that have left her chronically painful and narcotic addicted. When my boyfriends marriage ended the mother moved in with him (she was living with his sister and her family, since he was now single….his turn) she’s a shopping addict and addicted to pills and not fixing her issues.
Sweet southern lady…gets very Scarlett O’Hara dramatic when he tries to leave the house. He spends two nights a week with me and whenever he does she will always have to call and say she’s lost a cat and he needs to come home or just sound sad and alone….she’s QUEEN of the guilt trip.
A 50yr old man shouldn’t be in a shared custody situation because his mom might feel lonely, or get depressed,or not be able to reach something on a high shelf, or OD on oxy…
I had kind of been rolling with things because I LOVE him, and I like my life even without him. But…..I’m starting to feel like the third party in my relationship again. I’m the mistress….
If nothing else, I’ve learned what not to do to my kids.
Overbearing mothers are the worst,sorry that happened, I totally feel your pain.
Watch out. You can’t win with a mama’s boy. It is the ultimate triangulation. It is a terrible toxic stew of guilt, manipulation and family ick.
It is like an affair, but you can’t call her a whore. And, if you disparage her, you are trashing his mother. You can’t win.
Even if you LOVE him, I would start slowly detaching with kindness. Maybe when his mother dies, he will reappear in your life, out of slavery to the omnipotent MOTHER. 🙁
When I first met my future husband’s mother she told me what a perfect son he’d been, always did what she wanted, always did everything right. I wish I’d run like hell at hearing that.
Yep. I missed that red flag as well. The second red flag was how he basked in his mother’s attention. A mature adult would be a bit sheepish to hear his or her second grade accomplishments praised decades later by a parent.
Wise words, Carmela. You’re right, you can never win. And if you ever empathize with him when he’s fuming at her, well it was YOU who never liked his mother.
My ex was afraid of his mother for years – then bailed out of the marriage not long after she died. She once told me that he had a habit of lying ever since childhood. I used to do his dirty work by standing up to her and then got the blame for causing problems.
My new partners mum became very competitive with me after her husband died – coming to stay for weeks on end – wanting me to sit in the back of the car – making passive agressive remarks. I gave up fighting with him over her and opted out of lengthy times in her presence – polite but short and sweet. I make myself scarce and keep busy when she is around and that has proved far more effective than any amount of getting upset about her.
absolutely – if they haven’t cut that umbilical cord – you can’t do it for them. The mother will have a hold over them like no one else on the planet. It will be nothing to do with you – you can be the best wife/girlfriend – but she will have a psychic hold over him till they both die – its weird but I think alot of us have been here before and it definately has something to do with NPD as well I think.
I dated 4 momma’s boys in a row (married the last one)–narcs to a one.
Unless he sets limits with his mother, consider running.
Where were you 46 years ago Tempest?? I needed that advice way back then sadly. 🙂
End this relationship immediately. Do it kindly and in a constructive way, but no thank you. It’s a 5 alarm signal that this is unhealthy. Tell him why, give true and undramatic examples. Don’t be fooled by promises to change. Give him the gift – because he does sound like he’s between a rock and a very hard place and probably isn’t a bad guy, just weak – of knowing clearly and simply why his relationships fail. Be the one that gets away. Fast, ideally.
After a marriage of 28 years (and living together 5 years prior) my EX “found someone”. I went to be with family for Christmas and got:
From my sister, as she grabbed her hubbie’s hand said, “I got one of the GOOD ones.”.
My mom, “I would be in the same boat if I hadn’t divorced your father .” (she decided she needed her own life – then remarried him 14 years later – yes they are still married), then she added, “not that he ever cheated on me, nor would he.”
And then there are co-workers who come up with
And, I constantly get, “Everything happens for a reason.” God, how I hate that one; After 3.5 years I still want to just chop the tongues off people who tell me that (especially the one who works in the next desk over who tells that to me at least once a week).
And several times, “Well my sister [or friend or cousin] had that happen and she met this fabulous guy, who makes great money, treats her like a queen, and is living the high life in a huge gorgeous house in Florida [or wherever].”
Then there is the always fabulous, “Your life is a result of your choices, if you don’t like your life, make different choices.”
“Smile, you’ll feel better.” Yeah, I plastered a smile on my face for almost 2 years and the only ones who felt better where people around me. After all, I was told, “You look [or sound] so HAPPY.”. Eff that, I finally quit faking it to make them feel better.
Yep, I got the ” my husband deserted me, but at least it wasn’t for another woman.” I think my neighbor is lying to herself.
So with you that one renew. You think the deserting man is out there living a celebate life? Not likely. It’s still sad though. She needs counseling for sure.
Yes she does. He wanted find himself, so he moved out of state to go biking? Yea sure.
I think the people that tell you stories of success/happiness/true love after a marriage blows up are sincere in their attempt to make you feel better and want to give you hope for the future. They just may be a little clumsy in their attempt. The other people are smug, self righteous asswipes that deep down feel pleasure in someone else’s misery. These people are a whole other post.
I agree with this. I do think people who genuinely care about you want to give you hope AND to try to reassure you that not all spouses are like this…there are good ones. As much as we have a right to feel incredible wronged, people who truly care about us do not want to see us bitter. They want to see us “win”. And by that I mean that they want to see us get to what we call “meh” here.
The people who don’t truly care or empathize are the ones who say the stupid stuff. I just close a door emotionally to these people.
I agree. I know I myself truly wish each chump here to find a happy life as soon as is reasonably possible. It doesn’t mean the person offering that hopeful vision doesn’t understand you still have pain and healing ahead of you. Although some do not get that part and think you can just put it all on a shelf and “move on” instantly. My mother thought 9 weeks was more than enough time to be done “looking backwards” … snort.
bogieb, can you shut down the “Everything happens for a reason shit” once and for all? Tell her it is beyond offensive to you and you don’t want to hear it ever again.
When I was pink slipped while barely holding it together in the midst of a contentious divorce and a kid in the hospital for suicidal attempts, some dimwit said, “Well I really believe everything happens for a reason.” I replied, “I agree. But it’s not a result of some master plan. Sometimes things happen because people are just mean. Or stupid.”
I’ve discovered that people who resort to platitudes usually have their head really far up their own assholes.
Amen! My cheating SIL who is diagnosed with BPD is forever posting inspirational memes on facebook that paint herself as the loving, sensitive, and ever-sacrificing victim, with no sense of irony. I shudder to think what she would say to me about my STXH’s cheating. Luckily, now that my marriage is over, I never have to speak to her again! Silver linings…
I especially hate the ‘everything happens for a reason’ bullshit line. I haven’t encountered it much, but the one time I did, I just asked very calmly ‘really? What reason do you think it is, with this situation?’. Got a blank look in return, change of subject. Too many people just want to feel better, themselves, and don’t want to think about what they’re saying might mean to you, or might mean at all.
Annoying but actually true – things do happen for a reason. The reason being that they wanted to cheat and lacked the intergrity to let you know what was going on in your own life. There are choices – being honest or deceitful – being chumpy or being mighty – getting a lawyer and getting out or trying to fix it even if it kills you. The smartest way to get that smile your face is to remove yourself from the toxic shit of chumpdom/fake/trying to fix the unfixable and going NC, getting the best settlement possible and losing that creep.
yeah – I had a ‘friend’ that smugly told me ‘she got one of the good ones’ – and now see her posting frantically all over face book selfies of them at every opportunity… must have given her a bit of a wobble maybe!
There’s stupid shit in what some people don’t say….
Still amazes me that some people don’t express their sorrow when you tell the. Not “of, that’s sad for your, I am sorry”. Instead it’s something like “sometimes it’s for the best”.
Yeh, betrayal is always for the best….
I agree about the platitudes. My friends and family were angry for me (and still hate my ex), which was exactly what I needed. I can’t imagine sharing some sort of “Look on the bright side!” Pollyanna crap with someone who was cheated on even before it happened to me.
People say all kinds of dumb stuff that they think is comforting, whether it’s about someone’s divorce, a death in his/her family, or a terrible illness. Is that an attempt to actually make the person struggling feel better, or is it more about the messenger feeling good about him/herself because he/she shared some sort of hokey “pearl of wisdom”?
A colleague’s mom just died. When I saw him, I told him how sorry I was and hugged him. It never occurred to me to say, “She’s in a better place… things happen for a reason.” We need to just say sorry and mean it, no matter the circumstances.
I’m with you, MovingOn. Takes me 20 minutes to find a sympathy card. Won’t do the preachy…won’t do the “pearls of wisdom.” So presumptuous.
It’s like being betrayed all over again.
I’ve dropped many people from my life who didn’t have the brains or hearts to respond with compassion. I didn’t want a pity party; just some understanding.
Exactly.
I have to say this betrayal stuff really helps you sort out the friends doesn’t it?
One excuse and or platitude was all it took for me to go No Contact.
No Contact, it’s not just for abusive fuckwits!
Getting quite tired of hearing “oh I know you are feeling sad but U know , affairs are really very very common…” (So how come it’s not happening to U – I feel like asking ). So , because it’s common, I have no right up feel angry and aggrieved ? I should just suck it up since , hey, it’s happening all the time . What a moronic thing to say.
Death happens, it’s really very very common, but when it does, you get plenty of support. And death is usually accidental or disease, out of people’s hands, not a result of bad choices. But when you are cheated on, deliberately deceived and taken advantage of, oh, it’s really common so get over it!
Lol x 1000!
Mehmehdancer – I respond with the childbirth argument – Childbirth happens everyday, that does not change the pain level for each mom giving birth…
kiwichump – Good point on death/grieving too :)!
So is cancer! So is stillbirth! Just get over it!
A-holes.
“Aww.., poor fella , he must be having a tough time balancing both families…” When I say that cheater Ex only spends less than 4 hours seeing the kids every week . Since when does a cheater deserve to be cast as a martyr ? What’s wrong with people whom I have known since High School? Should I pass the hat around for the cheater?
Aww poor guy! Someone should really cut his dick off so he has more time to spend with your kids! (Hopefully that was the right answer!)
This !
Ding!
My ex-MIL, although generally very kind and supportive during the initial trauma of D-Day, came out with this gem, “I’m so upset with (CheaterEx), I don’t know what’s wrong with him! I told him he needed to sacrifice for you and the kids!” She then offered to send us on a cruise so we could sweep the whole mess under the rug!
No, ex-MIL, the children and I are not something one must make sacrifices to endure.
My FIL said “I’m so disappointed in my son. We didn’t raise him to be this way.” Well, actually, you did. The STBX’s mother has a black belt in narcissism and his father is a preacher on the down-low. Their whole perfect Christian family is a facade. When the STBXH’s sister (diagnosed BPD) cheated on her husband and he left her, she accused him (falsely) of kidnapping their 3-yr old daughter. MIL and FIL spent $175k to win back primary physical custody for SIL. She then tried to abandon her daughter with me and my husband indefinitely, but I put my foot down and said we would have to notify the child’s father. Instead, she dumped her on my MIL and FIL (her parents), who kept her for months, hiding the child from her father (who shares legal custody), and telling me a thousand lies about him to convince me to keep my mouth shut. When I investigated their lies and found out the truth, my husband wouldn’t call them on it. I notified the father and then I became the scapegoat and they began a new campaign of lies targeting me. Three days after I declared to my husband that I could not and would no longer stay Switzerland on this matter when a child’s well being was involved, I got DDay 4. STBXH declared, from the safety of Burning Man, that he had “discovered” an affinity for S&M and possibly bisexuality, and wanted an open marriage to explore it. I said no thank you to that shit sandwich and now STBXH is living the dream that his father couldn’t. Unfortunately, he is living in his parents’ basement, so my kids are exposed to the full brunt of that family’s insanity 50% of the time. The post nup I made him sign after Dday 1 is the only thing standing between me and the MIL /FIL trying to fight me for primary physical custody of my kids. Meanwhile, he hasn’t told them the truth of why we split, so they assume it was a garden variety affair. They smile at me and express pity for my plight, and I smile back. They don’t know that I’m keeping evidence of their web of lies in case I ever have to use it.
After 5 months since D Day (divirce just finalised), and slowly hearing all the patronizing and condescending advice from
Others ” affairs are really very very common” , ” if things have not been good between you , it’s really best to separate …”, ” when U look back next time, U will realise that its a good thing (U split up)…” . I started to stop mentioning even the slightest information Abt the ex . They simply don’t undetstand, they downplay our pain, nightmares, depression, PTSD. If I were to walk around with my emtional scars , I believe I would look like a zombie from the Living Dead in all its gory horror. They look puzzled when I use words like “touched by evil”, ” PTSD” , “monster” etc deserving the entire episode . So sod it, will not be sharing my experience with these naive, sheltered souls .
I have been married 26 years and I was told last night but my sister, live life for yourself. Do things you want to do. Find your inner happy and people would be attracted to you. Do hot yoga, eat salmon and beets, they are high in omega 3’s. Don’t look for someone. They will find you.
Do you need any help with hiding the body?
I spit my coffee out on that one Lola! I was showing my mom a picture on the other woman’s fb page. She’s a designer and my sister looked at her page and said…” Oh..I love that bathroom and sent the picture of the bathroom she had done to herself”…I said ..” You do realize that’s the other woman’s page and design stuff. She said yes and she loved the bathroom”…That is my sister!!
a double grave it is! 😉
I have shovels 🙂
And black clothes for cover.
I’ll bring the toilet paper we’ll all need after pissing on the graves.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my own divorce and my chumped friend’s divorces, is that CHEATING ALWAYS PAYS!
It seems like even the courts are all for cheaters these days! My chump friends are getting raked over the coals by the court systems and are getting left almost destitute by the court, while the cheaters go on to live their lives in comfort with their OW. The courts are destroying not only marriages, but the lives of those chump survivors and their children in the process.
No-Fault divorce came about to allow abused spouses to get out of their marriages much easier. But somewhere along the line that idea failed and now is allowing cheating spouse a free ride out of their familial responsibilities and moral obligations.
While courts state they are only interested in the equal division of property between the divorcing parties, they need to take into consideration that they’re aiding in the destruction the fiscal, moral and mental health’s of the cheater’s surviving spouses and children! Many of them, who haven’t worked for years at their spouse’s request to raise the kids, are now finding themselves living at, or below, poverty level, while the cheating spouse lives in the manner they are accustomed. Just sickening, and the courts need to stop this destructive behavior ruling!!
But as long as the judges in my county’s court system who dabble in this destructive cheating behavior themselves are allowed to continue to sit on the bench, this “good ol’ boys club” mentality will continue to destroy more lives than they’ll ever save and cheating will continue to pay-off big time…
Fucktard walked out on our mortgage in the two years it took us to divorce in CA, house foreclosed, kids and I scrambled to relocate and he just purchased a second house (all this within five years of divorce). Ex worked pt for our court whose last motion was granting me $70/month spousal support (on his 100k salary. Not including perks.) So happy half “his” pension is mine.
Infidelity should be compensated for.
It should be recognised as not a ‘distress symptom’ the RIC call it, but for the aggressive act it actually is. Nobody should be allowed to hurt other people this bad and not pay damages for it.
KM, I am sorry. It must feel so lonely when your sister is to selfish and insensitive about your pain.
I’ll help with the body…
Salmon and beets. excellent advice, that! Now why didn’t I think of that myself!!!
Butterfly98 and following
Now this is what we should hear!! I have shovels!! ???
Only chumps ‘get’ chumps and wickedly funny chumps are the best.
GIRL YAAAAASSS
I lol’ed hard.
I’ll have you all over for a meal & wine post-deed fellow chumps, you rock :)!
I hope you’ll be serving salmon and beets
Absolutely, and no cake for dessert, I’ll bake pies instead :)!
Sorry for the late reply. I was traveling all day. Just arrived home from visiting my sister for the holiday. No, 🙂 I don’t need help. :). She tried her best. And that was good if you knew my sister.
I hate that live life for you stuff too. Do everything you always wanted to do but couldn’t because you were married. Okay. Because I’m a millionaire without a care in the world and now that I live in half my income and magically don’t have any more responsibilities I can just jet off to find myself in Bora Bora and I can live a new life! It’s a nice idea… I think what REALLY happens is that people don’t get that affairs are a SHOCK. This isn’t a normal divorce situation where you see it coming for months or years. You slowly fall out of love or argue too much or grow apart and it’s inevitable. One of the partners was living a HAPPY normal marriage. The OTHER is a two faced fucking SNEAK! Then ? and life as you knew it is over now.b
Exactly. Exactly.
X1000. Earth shattering to us, PI gossip to others .
x infinity
I hate that live life for you stuff too. Do everything you always wanted to do but couldn’t because you were married. Okay. Because I’m a millionaire without a care in the world and now that I live in half my income and magically don’t have any more responsibilities I can just jet off to find myself in Bora Bora and I can live a new life! It’s a nice idea… I think what REALLY happens is that people don’t get that affairs are a SHOCK. This isn’t a normal divorce situation where you see it coming for months or years. You slowly fall out of love or argue too much or grow apart and it’s inevitable. One of the partners was living a HAPPY normal marriage. The OTHER is a two faced fucking SNEAK! Then ? and life as you knew it is over now
exactly – you are dropped from a great height – and the cheater is sorrowfully telling everyone you’re having a hard time accepting its over…. I got from family ‘Its good to be single’….is it? You’re not so how does that work!?
It might be good to be single. If you are SINGLE and its by choice! I didn’t WANT to be single. I LOVED being married. I found the person I wanted to be with. And married that person. So I could have a partner. Someone that had my back and would hold my hand during the hard times. Someone to turn to when I needed a laugh or wanted to tell about my day or talk about what was happening in the world. I don’t WANT to have to date around and learn all about someone new or get dressed up and go out in awkward situations. Try to find someone that matches me, that I can trust, that cares about me and has my back. That shit takes YEARS! I’m only 32 but have to start all over again? We had enough to get by together but I’ll have to move into someone’s extra bedroom once we sell the condo we saved and saved for. I’ll basically be reverting to teenage years. Really?! This is NOT living the single life. It’s NOT Sex and the City. I am a real life person that wanted real things in my marriage and now this half life and “single hood” has been thrust upon me. I don’t live in a TV show (although this does feel like he worst telenovela EVER written sometimes!) I live in life and this is not the life I chose. And if being single is so great then why aren’t all the people we know divorcing and living it up as single people?! I call bullshit!
Living a single life for me is better than what i had. I have had to start over after 30 years not what i wanted or envisioned but it happened nonethe less. I loved that son of a bitch with all my heart and he tried to destroy me mentally someone who had always been kind turned on me like i was shit. Im 62 one next birthday. I cant and wont start up a new future life with someone new. I dont have the time or patience left. You are only 32 give yourself time, grieve, rant, rave. Its safe here for you. We got your back. Youve time to rebuild with or without a marriage. Take time for you ss. We are all here for weve all been there and all of us here have stories many many heartbreaking. Oh my god heartbreaking. This place is for people like us we get it we got you weve all been there. I choose to be single and will stay single im not living it up im finding my way again, rediscovering me and enjoying the hell out of not dealing with a flaming asshole. I choose me and my happiness over all. Its hard i know its hard. Ive moved away and sometimes i still cry over what was. It gone he loses not me i escaped his life he didnt. Fuck my asswipe and fuck yours. The best revenge us living well shelby i intend to, we all do. Ive gotten a fantastic friend through all this through this place and i love her dearly. Huge shout out to jeep tess! I dont buy that shit everything happens for a reason but out of bad does come good. I feel like i know lots of people here even though ive never met them. We are strong and we are mighty we are a nation and a movement and nobody but nobody can bring us down. Big hugs to you shelby.
sad shelby – too right – 32 might sound like you have ‘done’ the dating game, but really you have got it all to go! – Its the cheaters that calculatedly use you up for all the hard yards with kids and domestic stuff then fuck you over when they believe you’re off the market, but they can tap into another desperate female market when they jump ship. This ensures that they win and you lose because thats what it is with these sick bastards. Dont fall into that mentality – you have it all to go for the future – just right now you can’t imagine it.
Kar Marie is absolutely correct Sad Shelby. We got this and you will too! I promise! It just takes time and the time it takes is different for all of us. Just take your time and keep breathing and NC with your cheating coward! It will happen for you. Sad Shelby will emerge out the other side smiling and grateful not to be tied for decades to a man that lacks basic human decency.
Beau and I love you Kar!!!!! Rock on sister!!! 🙂
Sad Shelby I so agree with what you’ve said. And I’m 58 and have lost companionship in old age, and the father of my children and am now a single parent. But you have so much more time on your side. I know it’s difficult but I would jump in there now and try to find yourself a much better new partner.
Does anyone deserve to be cheated on and betrayed and humiliated (over and over) simply for loving and putting up with a cheater to keep the family and kids together ? And does such a crime against humanity (becoz the devastation inflicted for years to come ) justify the cheater’s vision of a better and happier future ? (We have to go thru the worst to get to a better place .) really , seriously ? It looks like pure selfishness to me !
That is something that just PISSED ME OFF. “I’m not happy. Don’t you WANT me to be happy?!” Well no fucktard. I DON’T! You just SHIT on my life and blew it the fuck up. I want you to be just as fucking miserable as I am! SUFFER you fuck! ?
“One day you’ll find someone new.” Or maybe I won’t. It’s WAY easier for men to find new relationships than it is for women. That might have been my only option. My mom was single after her divorce (no infidelity she just married young to someone disordered with severe FOO issues) for TWENTY YEARS! It wasn’t that she wasn’t open or looking. Because she was. It just happened that it never worked out for her.
Pisses me off the platitudes and “it’ll all work out for the best!” BS. I’m not normal anymore and will never be the same person again, happy, innocent, trusting, scar free. Hopefully I’ll recover and be able to be in a normal relationship again possibly YEARS down the line.
I got the statement “I DESERVE to be happy JUST ONCE before I die” as if marriage to me, nice house, great kids, all the new cars and toys he ever wanted was just a living nightmare. SMDH
I got the same remark from my x. He’s living the life now but yet still miserable as in no joy.
Apparently I was misery wife. And he was unhappy for years. And then the story has changed. It wasn’t actually the entire marriage or the 5 years or 1 year. Or whatever stupid thing it was he said. Wait. Maybe life with you ISN’T that terrible… I can’t even imagine the PAIN and SUFFERING these POOR POOR men had to suffer through! I have 100% confidence you ladies were NOT misery wife and I wasn’t either. It must be hard to not be able to trust your own thoughts and feelings because you’ve turned into a crazy liar crazy person!
It is eerie how these cheaters all sound the same. Wow!
Wishing you a great 2017.
SadShelby, count me in the misery wives club. And my cheater in the Unhappy men club. “I could never make you happy! I tried hard. I failed!” These words started long before DDays when I know now he was preparing to exit, but I didn’t know then. I don’t know how many hundres of liters of tears I cried. “You will make a good wife to somebody else. We are just too different. My interests have never been yours.
.” And I cry again. All of that going on for 3 years was to push me into taking the decision to divorce. Then he would be the good guy in the eyes of other people. “Poor guy, wife left him and lives in another country with the kid for 6 years, she probably has cheated on him, and this poor guy is here taking care of family properties and fully sustaining his family in another country.” THIS IS WHAT HE WANTED AND WAS PUSHING ME into with his unhappy talks.
Then the AP with whom he was planning his exit was offered a great opportunity in her country. She chose her government career over my husband. They still maintained their meetings here and there and now were planning a different thing: my husband would visit with me and our son for 6 months and spend the other 6 months in her country to be close to her.
And this is when the “unhappy husband and misery wife” talks stopped and he actually started re-connecting with me on all levels, physical and emotional. And I was still totally confused but in the hard-core pick me dancing mode because while I saw him “returning” into the family deep down in my guts I KNEW he was still checked out. I read about intermittent reinforcement experiment. It helped a lot in understanding why we get hooked to such idiots.
I am not misery. If I was, people would not like to be around me. Somehow I attract people. I have great friends. Some of them may yet to become Switzerland- need to wait and see. Except I can’t attract my husband. And I realise today it’s for better.
Mine used very similar lines – I can’t believe it. We’re divorced but he keeps asking why we can’t be together since it’s been 3 years now. He has no clue the pain he’s caused. And he’s only gotten worse – he has not improved himself. I wish you joy in 2017
Tobe, I wonder in amazement at their stupidity. I have a feeling I will be dealing with this “take me back” down the road.
Today we discussed the separation terms. Joint custody. Kid lives with me. He visits twice a year, stays over at his mom’s, and the kid is with him for 2 weeks over christmas holidays. He told me you are welcome to come visit too! The sun/sea combination over cold winters in canada is enticing but he comes in with this package!
I said we should tell our 9 year old why. He has been sensing it for the past 3 years (my mood swings and tension and endless conversations) and he knows I always loved his dad. So for now I told my son I am upset with the lies but refused to explain more. And I know he gets angry and more insecure with this confusion.
If the truth is what I advocate from now on in my life then I think it should be disclosed to our kid as well. I can’t just say a common BS that your parents grew apart, stopped loving each other, bla bla bla. I think adults are adults for a reason. They don’t divorce just because they feel they are suddenly out of love and they try hard to figure things out with their spouse instead of jumping into other people’s beds.
So…the cheater goes, “Fine! We can tell him. But it’s not about the infidelity for me. It’s about my personal freedom. I will just tell him that I was always like this and I was not going to stop just because I got married!”
And I said, that’s fine (“dig your own grave”-in between the lines.) You’ll let our son know about your truth and I will let him know about mine. For me, that freedom of yours is a dealbreaker. And he needs to know about the dealbreakers so he can be more mature in his own relationships.”
Now the irony. If you, the cheater, were always like this and were not going to change, as you claim, why did you not inform me about your peculiar preferences 12 years ago? If this is what you are and you have just admitted this, then why did you blame, criticize, gaslight me, accuse of not being able to meet your needs on both physical and emotional levels? Why all that? Whatever I was/wasn’t or did/didn’t do, you were going to do what you pleased anyway…
Silence…
So similar, frightening! You will get thru this dear. Baby steps! Protect yourself and your boy financially. Trust me! And the freedom part. Mine said the same thing at some point. They use all the lines to try to justify their actions. Nothing gives them peace of mind in the end. It’s sad. Stay strong!!
I can totally relate. Sorry for your pain.
my mom still tells me, “there’s two sides to every story” No mom there is not, what I am telling you is the truth, actual facts, it is not a story, you almost lost your son based on the events going on. And for the love of god, please stop talking about what you saw the kids were doing with her on facebook, ask me about the times I shared, talk to me about that, not what the kids were doing during the ex’s time. I had to block the ex, even though I knew it would mean that I wouldn’t see pictures of my kids.
When someone lies, cheats and destroys, there is never “two sides to every story”. Would your mother say that to a young victim of a pedophile? Sorry but your mum is a passive aggressive twit and for your own sake you should take a break from her for a bit.
That was exactly what my mother said to me after my 1st husband cheated on me. Dear old mom was a highly abusive covert narc. Consider the source.
Oh xtk, I’m so sorry. Sorry for you, too, Tessie. This comment sucks big time. She’s clearly not in your corner. It reveals a lot about who your mother is (and perhaps always has been). As KB22 stated, she’s passive aggressive, and you really ought to consider removing her from your life…for as long as you want to. Good for you for blocking…Stay strong ~ Stay mighty!
The whole mom thing! Don’t get me started? I will say I know how you feel. Mine tells me how she is here for me, feels bad about what happened and is angry about it. Then in front of me talks to the kid about what he did with his dad, his dad’s family, his dad’s work. She never asks him about what he has done with me or what he wants to do with me, or anything about me. Until recently there wasn’t even a picture of me in her home that cold be seen by a visitor. Pics of my siblings, pics of my kid, pic of my kid with my sibling, all over. I wasn’t sure if I was dead to her or she was just ashamed of me. But hey, she’s here for me. She said so.
I spent twice as much time in therapy dealing with my mother and how to keep her at arms length so she can’t hurt me as I do dealing with the divorce and what cause it. You gotta learn to keep mom at bay. Stewing in that kind of crazy is pretty dangerous.
Just really glad my mother is dead. The hurtful things she said and did when she thought I had a happy marriage were bad enough. She’d have really had a time of it if she’d been around when I discovered my husband’s infidelity.
Ex MIL 4 days after DDay and XH driving off to personally tell his friends n family we were done (before he had actually fully explained to me and has still not to this day)
Sent a text that said ” look after yourself”
18 years and I get a text……
Neighbours ” we can’t take sides- we like you both”
Narc mother ” where you not a good wife?” ……..btw I never got a Xmas present ?
Sister initially pretty good and very supportive but after nearly 5 years since DDay she now seems to think the marraige was doomed from the beginning as “I did everything ” – that’s where I went wrong …..”you need to move on now”
Other sister (Narc)” sorry you were having problems”(we weren’t).
Best mate – rang at 4 am when I couldn’t breathe or even speak, has been a rock the whole way……… Still shocked and has never indicated there appeared to have been issued or I deserved it – still can’t believe he turned out to be an asshole / had her fooled big time.
Everyone else – I was a bitch and deserved it – we had “problems” despite never having a major argument the whole 18 years we were together – could you blame him for cheating?
Boss at work – very supportive once I told her 3 mths after DDay – helped me with my exit plan and to secure my overseas work visa, still in touch.
Digbert – People we went camping and outings with over the last 10+ years said: “We like you both – we can’t take sides. We don’t agree with what he’s doing to you, it’s terrible, but we love him as our friend. And you are our friend, too.”
Well, if you can love a person who cold-heartedly dumped his family and took his daughter to his house where he moved in with 22 y.o. coworker two months later…and then you are aware of the lies, the evil, sneaky, underhanded things he has done – and continues to do – to screw me out of as much as possible in the divorce and mess with our daughter’s head with his lies, etc. ( Like claiming he has no money and if I have him pay me spousal support his daughter will lose her house and have to move while he lives the high life – he makes 6 figures. The list goes on)
Says quite a bit about their character. What’s interesting is they are cheaters themselves, too. Cheaters stick together. I relate to some of your other statements, too.
Even the boss at work – very supportive. Awesome person. 🙂
Big time difference here other side of the world Findingpeace but I agree with the “cheaters stick together” although one of my neighbours was seriously chumped so I expected better from her, the other neighbour has stopped really communicating after 5 years and I suspect she assumes that there really were marraige issues that I never told her about.
All the Switzerland friends were cheaters (including a couple that were blatant swingers and heavily into porn/ creating online videos etc.) that was the XH’s best mate so I was doomed from the get go, although my XH regularly expressed his disgust about their activities and I was wary of them and didn’t approve really, he was secretly indulging in his own sick fantasies over the years and probably helped by his best mate too!
XH timed his exit to coincide with my work redundancy (he didn’t fuck up- it was all premeditated) my boss and our department were amalgamating (or getting made redundant) into a bigger company – this process was very structured, it took 18-24 mths and I could have taken another role but my XH went mad and encouraged me to take the redundancy package and get out ( surprise surprise!!! ). My boss helped me enormously once she saw me crack and lose it one day as I had never missed a work day since he had walked out. I told her what had happened and we kept it quiet from everyone else and she supported me before I left the country and whilst I was abroad sorting my paperwork, nice to know someone has your back eh?
My boss was amazing too “whatever you need” and he meant it.
Found out later his mom cheated on his dad when he was a teen and they divorced.
Barely know the guy, only talk every other month, more supportive than people I had known for decades. I honestly believe only those who have been there can possibly understand.
The woman who I thought was ons of my best friends, tolde me ‘Well, you just had a difficult relationship with your ex, so this is much beter for you. You must be relieved that he’s gone and you just have to move forward. And so must he (I found out my ex is stille in touch with her and her husband and is acting like he is the victim, he cheated on me with at least 4 women. And he was never interested in my friend and her husband while we wereld married).
Sorry, my phone keeps switchin to dutch….
Yep, Judy. They are so much the ‘victim.’ While we are the ones being cheated to and lied to. I realized he’d been cheating for years and bringing people in our home. In our camper. So gross
Same thing happened to me with my “friends” he never had anything to do with.
Right after he moved out he was having dinner with them going places on weekends
with them X never would do any of these things with them when we were married.
Now they’re close friends with X and I don’t speak with them.
After I got the emergency protective order dear MIL called to convince me to drop it… During this conversation she said some truly stupid shit. Because it makes me laugh now, my all time favorite is: “HE said you stopped shaving your legs”.
OMFG. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. How the hell can people spackle it to themselves when you have to get an EPO? [and I know of what I speak] I’m so sorry.
R u serious ? ???!!!!!!!
Absolutely serious. Her son brings a gun, threatens to kill himself, threatens me and this is what I hear. The not so funny thing she said that day was “HE said the gun wasn’t loaded”. Like that would make it OK? FWIW, the gun was loaded and a bullet was chambered, no safety. I know, I convinced him to unload it but he was drunk and I wasn’t sure all the bullets were out by the time he was chasing me to my car. But hey, MIL is sure he didn’t mean to hurt me…sigh. The insanity of it all.
Omg – well you dodged a bullet there ……literally…… but shame on you for not shaving you legs!!!! The mothers of these fuckwits have a lot to answer for- my XMIL was a cold cold woman-collected Eagles, owls and wolves instead of pics of family over the years my wedding pic ( one of the few that was allowed) would have been removed and replaced by another laminated wolf pic within minutes of her son’s arrival to announce the demise of our marraige – he only told them about the cheating part a couple of months later but as the older cheating brother was on his 3rd wife they would inevitably blame everything on me ‘the big bad wifey’ regardless.
Dat, this has to be the all-time stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. What a load of crap. I guess mommy dearest had a hand in creating your ex’s screwed up mind.
Mine cheated because I turned into a werewolf.
I was post-Holidays sad today. But, after reading about Datdamwuf’s MIL justifying son’s cheating because “HE said you stopped shaving your legs” and so many other sickening examples of Stupid Shit Other People Say, I managed my contribution to Chump Lady’s collection.
One of my SEVEN BILs (so many males wanting to be the alpha male explains a LOT of jealousy and stupid shit that has increased with old age) recently wrote to me, almost one year after total silence from all In-Laws after D-Day, to tell me that:
…he hasn´t been in touch with me so HE (!!??) could “give me enough space to dialogue with STBXH”
…he is also upset with my complaints about mean-spirited STBXH and BILs.
…he “understands” my complaints because “your family has its share of cheaters too”.
I had told one BIL, for example, to go to hell after he complained that I fixed a termite-infested table, ready to crash the TV on the floor, from the soon-to-be-ex-family weekend place that I helped support. Believe me, they got jealous if I cleaned lizard shit from the laundry room.
Another BIL serves cheese and beer to a circle of friends and family and on purpose walks straight past me and STBXH says nothing, probably because he is lost in thought about Flatterfuck.
And many other examples from mean-spirited BILs and lazy, Switzerland SILs.
All this pettiness and mean-spiritedness started about 15 years ago, after 24 years of marriage, which I now know coincides with cheater’s “conversion”. I think there is some kind of Freudian solidarity going on among BILs in spite of all the alpha male competition. Meh will include freedom from being treated like a concierge on my weekends.
A Meh-filled 2017 to all of Chump Nation.
This little nugget came from someone who I thought was a good friend. Her husband is also my exes supposedly best male friend (and he’s a cheater too as he had a one night stand while they were dating and she knows nothing of it.).
So she said to me, “Well, I think that Cheater married you, because we all were getting married at the time. He felt pressured to marry you.” Two guys my ex went to high school with all got married the same year. Gosh! The pressure! Guys don’t pressure each other to get married.
Wow. I could have sworn he repeatedly said I was the love of his life. The perfect woman for him. That woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with and go gray with. And lots of other things that lead me to believe he wanted to marry me. Stupid me. He was pressured to marry me. And that’s why he lied to me constantly for 25 years and cheated me. It was all the pressure.
Sometimes I think the “good friend” betrayals are even worse than the cheater. I can sort of accept that I had one person in my life who had me totally bamboozled, that I was a fool for love and missed clues. But having both of our best friends (a married couple) choose him even after I told them EVERYthing, that was really the straw that broke the camel’s back, y’know?
She said a couple of really hurtful things, mostly I think because of how SOON she came up with, “Well, it’s just EASIER to see him, because he lives nearby so he just pops over.” and “He’s easier because he’s happy and you’re so… sad!” And “I had to stop and ask myself why you & I are actually friends, like, what’s your value to me?” And “Isn’t it exciting to think about going out now and finding someone else for yourself? A whole new man??”
In hindsight — two+ years now — it seems ridiculous that I ever wanted to get any of that back: XH, Switzerland friends, … But those emotional memories run deep. Sad to realize the relationships themselves were so shallow.
Mine cheated with my best friend. She was my maid of honor. It was all very convenient because she was over a lot, while I was recovering from cancer treatment, to help with the kids, etc. They spent a lot of time together and got to know each other well and fell in love. She was married too.
So sorry, Lotus. I can’t stand these lowlife lying scumbags and their whores. During your cancer recovery? A special place in hell awaits.
Hope you had a good holiday, LotusDancer. I am thinking of you with your very awesome Christmas decorations. 🙂
Fabulous Christmas thanks chumpiest!! Several great verbal acknowledgments of awesomeness from the kids. 🙂
Thanks findingbliss. 🙂 it’s still strange to think it really happened. But it’s been a year since dday and it’s starting to fade, the shock.
This sounds similar to my Switzerland best friend. Her husband was BFF with my ex. I had to back off our friendship when my ex was finding out a whole lot of detail about my personal life after we separated (like a guy I was dating). It could only have come from her. I decided I couldn’t make her choose between me and her husband who had my ex over to their house all the time. I backed off and went NC with her.
The killer punch came from another best friend when about 3years post d-day, after her being such a support for me, decided my ex “but really, he’s not a bad person and he’s a good father.” AND “if you want home to treat you better, you need to be nicer to him.” REALLY!? When he only went for more custody so he wouldn’t have to pay as much child support cos he gets his parents to look after them anyway, he goes to the other side of the world FOR CHRISTMAS with his gf and leaves them again, with his parents, he is only reasonable when he is getting what he wants. So I had to cut ties with this one. I need my friends to support me, not my ex.
I am 5 years post d-day and I have moved towns (which my ex best friend also had an issue with as I was not “putting my children first” … well he certainly wasn’t either when he was getting sucked off by the DFW (dirty fucking whore AP)) I have cut ties with most of the people from my old life, and I have a new partner. I remember being in the pit of darkness and people would say “it will get better”, I couldn’t believe them then but it was true. I have become more spiritual and have followed my dream of being a counselor for teens, I would never have had the courage to do that if I was still with my ex. He wouldn’t have seen the point as he has zero empathy and just doesn’t get how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. (Narc).
Cut ties with the Switzerland friends and anyone else who doesn’t have your back. Move on without them. I have found you don’t need many friend, just true ones.
Emmsnearmeh,
Good for you for following your dreams by becoming a counselor for teens! 🙂
And getting rid of the Switzerland friends and anyone else who doesn’t have your back — absolutely 100% agree!
If I hear one more person say , no I think he did love you, or dose love you its just that…………………
He probably wasn’t happy
He just has issues
It was just sex, your the one he comes home to
(His response) it was just fantasy
He was just chasing the fantasy sex that every man is chasing but it doesn’t exist
Join the club
Well if that’s love, sneakily visiting sex/workers and escorts for at least 5 years without me knowing and spending significant amounts of money on the best, ‘including the girlfriend experience’ its gone a little further than just sex, its fantasy girlfriend, he even had a favourite when I found out, he knew plenty about her for a prostitute, hell, he even left a photo of her for me to find in amongst photos of my children on the computer, how thoughtful.
My favourite is, ‘well if that happened to me, I certainly wouldn’t/I would etc
Yes, but it didn’t and hasn’t happened to you, but feel free to tell me how to DO things. Uuugghhh
This is what I get too…if that happened to me I would do this or that….
I don’t judge them though as I was there myself once. When my close friend’s husband was regularly cheating on her (for 11 years of which 7 years was with the same woman) and she was going through motions of leaving him with her two boys then coming back because they both continuously professed love to each other ( !), I kept telling her to leave him for good. She was financially totally dependent on him and his entire family was very supportive of her which kept her in the fighting and fixing mode for all these years. The husband kept swinging between the wife and the OW and appearing at a loss (sad sausage) because he loved them both and could not choose. I recall my own self-righteous ways of saying that THIS COULD NEVER HAPPEN WITH ME BECAUSE I WOULD NEVER TOLERATE IT. And if I was in her place then I would have left the cheater no matter what..Well, it’s always easy to say things when you are not invested and can see things as a third party (usually more objectively).
This friend’s husband then moved to work in another country and she was happy because the OW was not part of his life anymore and he was just having casual sex in the absence of his wife and she was totally fine with that and accepted that “men have different needs.” When I started living long distance with my husband she appeared to be very wise advising me to just accept the biological need and not make a fuss about it. I remember having these outbursts with her when she woul tell me matter-of-factly that for sure my husband was having sex on the side because I was not always available and so I just had to accept it because it’s not really cheating as he was not going to leave me for another one. I used to tell her I trusted my husband and he was the man of high integrity and would not do it. I was convinced that if he wanted to be with another woman he would first advise me of his need and then make a move. Ha!
When I spoke to this friend of mine last summer about my situation and asked for her advise (primarily on how to handle this from an emotional point of view) she told me her husband stopped cheating and she is 100% sure because they now live together and she satisfies all his sex needs. She also told me his attitude towards her changed and he is just more loving, attentive etc. But she then added that it’s not because she fought hard but just because he got tired of it and decided to change himself. This was my ticket to the 2-month long failed wreckonciliation. I hoped that, contrary to the common wisdom, a cheater is not always a cheater and leopard can (sometimes) change the spots and that if my friend could have her husband back then so can I.
I know better now. I don’t want to break my friend’s heart, she recently lost her younger son at 18 yrs old. She genuinely believes her hubby is back to her. I sincerely wish that it was true. I don’t know it for sure but a serial cheater wouldn’t stop just because s/he CAN.
While there have been many stupid comments lobbed my way in the last 6 months, (why don’t you just move on, blah blah..) I think what hurt the worst was my STBX StepMIL’s comment: “What was your part in all this?” And this woman is a marriage counselor – sadly, with the same oldschool RIC training that makes me want to vom. I’m a trauma counselor myself, so there is that whole other level of grief and shame for me to digest/process beacause of that.
However, hearing that bit from her cut deep, coming from one who “should know better” and had previously (I thought) been supportive of me during the last few years of Narkle’s antics and my efforts to start to free myself. What I’m seeing is the the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, and calling out my STBX draws attention to the pervasive culture of enabling my cheating (aslso drug and sex-addicted ) STBX, as well as the other pervasive narc-enabling patterns in the family – like enabling his dad, sister, etc. God forbid we all actually tell the truth and hold people accountable.
One more stupid thing, from Narklrs himself: “She loves me – all of me- just as I am.” Maybe she does love the drug and sex-addicted parts of him…and maybe she is as big a narc as he is and thinks the magical spackling elixir of her special two wuv will save him. Good luck with that.
Yeah, my ex liked that OW didn’t judge him and make him feel like a bad person, because she had cheated on her husband and broken up her family that way, too. She understood!
They truly did deserve each other.
Mine, too. — Two cheaters married to each other. The trust must run deep in those relationships now.
She loves you…yea yea yea!!
My priest: “Only take responsibility for your 50 percent of the problem.”
My father: “give the boy some rope.”
My stepmom: “But look on the bright side. You got two beautiful children out of the deal.”
My sister: “It’s what men “DO!”
My good friend’s husband upon declaring his intend to continue to be friends with my STBX: “No one really cares (about the affair.)”
Oh, the “two beautiful children” comment. God, I can’t tell you how many times I heard that one and it started with my ex.
I am so glad to hear other people have a problem with this. Yeah, I got to kids out of the mess, but now they have to deal with a disordered fuck head. Plus, I wonder all the time if they will end up like dear old mom. Most of all, i wonder if they will end up like me. Forgive others and let them run over you. I am working hard to stop this from happening. Honestly, I wish we hadn’t had kids to subject to all the BS they have had to endure because of the slunt. Now they have to learn how to navigate the world full of shitheads like everyone is discussing here. Oh, i’m so lucky to have two kids with a narcissistic person!
You just stated my fears. STBX wants everyone to think that “things just didn’t work out.” I want kids to learn that his behavior is morally wrong and to not let people get away with treating them this way. Boundaries…we talk a lot about boundaries.
GetMeFree,
This is exactly what I’m dealing with right now. He wants to have his sexting partner and his soul mate (two different women), yet he wants everyone to think “we’ve grown apart”. Actually, he wants to stay with me and continue to live as “happy family”. Not happening. His next idea is to tell everyone that we’ve grown apart. I have been nothing but faithful to him, and I’m very busy raising our three kids. They’re 16,14 and 12. I’m not going to allow him to tell them more lies. The lies have been devastating. No more lies!
You said it, Lostntx. Even though we love our children, we can’t stop worrying about how their need to have a relationship with their cheating, lying, narc other parent is going to affect them in the long run. I most certainly wish that I had left and divorced him before we had children together.
Thank you Lostntx, I could have written the same comment, this is the most twisted and fucked up part of this whole shebang…
I get “At least you didn’t have children!”. How lucky for me to have six miscarriages with traitor instead. And maybe they are right…
I will say I, too, am so relieved we never had kids (for all kinds of reasons, but especially now in hindsight). But I do also resent the subtle implication that, “You’re an adult. You’ll get over it. So just get over it, OK. The kids are what’s important. Your adult feelings aren’t worth addressing.”
I am left with relief my child(ren) will never have to be handed over to the traitor and the whore and risk being left with the whore while he cheats on her, just like he did to me. I would be fear neglect and abuse and would fight tooth and nail to stop him having unsupervised time with them. But I have lost the purity of my grief for my babies. It’s very hard to explain how I can want to hang on to it. If you’ve watched Westworld, they said it perfectly: the pain is all I have left of him/her (Bernard’s son, Maeve’s daughter).
Miss delta
Men and cheating
Oh I hear that a lot or it is the undertone that is present in any conversation to do with cheating – “that’s what men do”. So many people believe that as marriages get longer men will be unable to fight their natural urge to have sex with anything that moves. Cheating is inevitable in a long marriage, it’s just men being men, the opportunity was there so of course they take it. This is the implicit view for most people it seems. Men cheat. It’s depressing.
I wonder what comments male chumps get?
Boys will be boys type BS.
Told my MIL, this shit, the generational serial cheating and rug sweeping with the inlaw family, stops with me and my kids. I am raising men and women of character. Not fucking douchebags and ho’s. That shut her up FAST.
I’m feeling your mightiness, ANC. Thanks for the energizing power boost of the day. The cheating (and lying) in my ex’s family is multigenerational and yes, is swept under the rug and denied and spackled to the max. It. Ends. Now.
Danke. Gender does not influence if one chooses assholery.
(Please, for the life of god iPad, help me with autocorrect)
Hope you understand the meaning of the other reply.
I love your response to your MIL. May I use it?
More than once I’ve been told “if a woman cheats it’s because her emotional needs weren’t being met by the husband”?
Such mind-blowing BS. No amount of evidence or testimony to the contrary will get them to admit the truth. Hundreds of thousands of Chump wives on this site can state truthfully that their emotional needs were never met, and they never cheated.
So sorry you hear this crap, Chump dad.
Hear, hear!
What a piece of crap.
That does not explain the gaping empty black hole/s of the decade-long MOW I experienced.
I spent time early on being a detective because of the huge blindside, the WTF?!! and The Who IS this person(the MOW). Complete BS her needs not being met by her spouse. She too is a serial cheating loser from Corona CA selling MK, picking up losers in bars (the asshat I know) hiding her creepy second life from her spouse…..until she told her spouse a year or two before I busted my asshat. The guy is still doing the pickmedance with her. Alas! His marriage to her was the result of him cheating on his spouse with her.
Chumpy dad, don’t believe that BS. It’s meant to keep you silent. You married a horrid, soul sucking loser who will forever be filling her empty holes with strange dick….because, ya know, her emotional needs are not being met.
ANC-
Every time I see a pink MK car I laugh & think to myself “I wonder if that is the cheater pig mobile?”
(I am in somewhat close proximity to her stomping grounds……………)
Haha! Maybe…. she was the Hog Queen in her teen years and proud of it. I found it fitting when I learned about her identity with this quip: you can put lipstick on a pig and it’s STILL a pig. The Hog Queen, the Rectum of Wonder, sells MK! Yeesh.
The Hog Queen, the Rectum of Wonder, describes the traitor’s whore perfectly too!
Cheaters don’t have emotional needs. They don’t have emotions. Because they’re soulless superficial two-dimensional versions of humans beings. Therefore, that can’t be the reason he cheated.
Q.E.D.
Guys get: “well I guess you weren’t handling your business,” (read – you aren’t wealthy, well hung, controlling enough).
That “men cheat, it’s what they do” comment gets me every time. Judging by the amount of dick I willingly and firmly turned down over a twenty year period , I can confirm that it’s easy to say “no thanks, I’m married” to any number of constant and bewildering offers to stray.
Crotch punches to anyone who uses the “all men /(and also women) stray” line. It’s total crap.
“But you knew what he was like….”
I got this one too. Um, not so much.
One more thing. Oh, my ex-MIL. I could write for the longest time about things she has done to me and things she has said to me the past 25 years.
One month after my ex told me he wanted a divorce, she said to me, “Are you STILL crying about this?” No empathy much? Another narc saying this to me?
After I told her about my ex wanting a divorce, everything became about her grief and suffering. I’m in the throes of a major clinical depression with suicidal ideation and she gets me to feel bad for her. Well, because everything is always about her of course. Her racing heart. Her not being able to sleep. She actually went to the doctor and he put a heart monitor on her that she had to wear for 24 hours (this is someone with NO prior heart problems and she’s healthy.) But me? Why am I still crying?
I’m so happy that fake, lying, entitled woman is out of my life, including her spawn that she turned into a narcopath.
You can’t win with the MIL. There’s a post up above this one somewhere from a chump who’s dating a “mama’s boy,” and I just want to yell “RUNNNNNNNN!!!!”
I personally find it creepy that some mothers have this attitude that no woman will ever be good enough for their precious son. Hmmm, I wonder how XH ended up with that entitled attitude? I *CAN’T* imagine!!!
I didn’t like her in the marriage and I’m glad to be shut of her now. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as my own mom used to say.
(Sadly, there’s a part of me that — now that I’m over fifty — sort of understands how some of these women end up being bitter and judgey with the one thing they do think they have control of. As an older woman, I frequently feel invisible, marginalized, overlooked by men of my own age and older as they oogle over women much younger than them/us. But there are more dignified ways to handle your own feelings of marginalization than by playing Grand Poobah overlording your son’s marriage. Power play, sad.)
After 36 years of being part of her family, my MIL texted, “maybe we’ll see you around some time.” LOL
Whenever I hear ‘these things happen’ I just want to punch someone in the face. No. affairs don’t just happen. It is a calculated decision to repeatedly diminish your spouse and treat them with contempt.
I also hate the blame the betrayed spouse comments – ‘affairs only happen when one side of the marriage has not played their part’. So apparently it’s my fault he screwed another woman an lied about it for a year and a half.
I always know when my time is up to rant at a particular friend because she’ll always bring me up short with, ‘don’t play the victim’.
Icing on the cake was my mother, in a moment of weakness asking me (4 months past D-Day) if I planned to be miserable for the rest of my life. Yes I looked glum on Christmas morning and it took me a little while to shake it off. She might as well have said ‘get over it already’. She says she doesn’t always know how to support me. I told her that this was definitely not the way.
Thanks God for CN. The only place where I don;t have to listen to that crap!
Affairs DO only happen when one side hasn’t played their part. THE CHEATER! Their part was to remain faithful or GTFO! You can only do what you can do as a spouse. If they had unmet needs it is their responsibility to speak clearly and openly to you and end the relationship if necessary. Screw the cheater! You did your job even if you were the WORST spouse on planet Earth! That’s what I tell myself anyway. ?
My response: “Yeah, he said he didn’t mean for it to happen. Like, I guess, he was walking across the room, tripped on the rug, and his dick fell into her vagina. — What’s a guy to do?”
Fuckers.
And if that did happen wouldn’t the gentlemanly thing to do be pulling ones dick out and apologizing profusely? (Oh my god; My wife is going to kill me.) ?
My sister bought me a shirt that said “Let it Go” on it a couple years after d-day then divorce, saying it was time I stopped worrying about it….
My “best” friends told me that they were christians so they had forgiven him, and it was my duty to do so too.
Various acquaintances have basically pretended that nothing happened and say things like, they like us both. Or they don’t want to pick sides. Could you imagine anyone saying that about someone who physically abused their wife instead of “just” mentally abused them?? It’s amazing to me that someone would want to keep hanging out with someone that would treat others so poorly.
My aunt and uncle would hug him if we ran into him at a softball game for our daughter. Cuz, you know, everyone makes mistakes. (Come to find out, that’s how their relationship began as well, as an affair. So now this doesn’t surprise me. But it did crush me to find out they didn’t learn anything from what they put their families through.)
My mom told me that I never seemed happy with him, and that I would be much happier now. It wasn’t until I explained that I was suicidal from the realization that literally no one on this earth took a stand against him for what he did to me and the girls, that she sorta got how it feels. Now she is much better about being understanding when I’m struggling with something.
So I have learned that truly you need to be your own best friend. It broke my heart and still makes me cry to this day to realize how alone we truly are in this world. This site literally saved my life when I found it. The book taught me that I matter as much as anyone else and deserve to be treated with respect. And anyone who cannot meet those expectations does not warrant admiration from me. I will continue to be civil to all, even the people who say ignorant, hurtful things, but that doesn’t mean they will be allowed into my circle of people that I trust.
Ah, yeah, the “forgiveness” guilting.
When “Christians” give me that one I usually snap “Luke 17:3 – no repentance, no forgiveness, and I’ll keep rebuking him all I want!”
Oh yeah, the forgiveness line. Christ forgave us so we must forgive others. It’s total BS used by terrible people who do bad things to others. God forgives me so should you. We’ll see about that. I really, after much thought and reading, don’t believe God forgives so easily. They think that in order to make themselves feel better. Forgiveness requires repentance as well. I believe repentance means correcting the wrong not just muttering some hot air and believing that means all things are better. Call me bitter if you want. I’ve reached the point I don’t really care.
ChChCh, thanks for that verse! I’ll make sure to use it on others who give me that BS line about “forgiveness”
I have looked into this forgiveness business quite a bit. Here are some things I have found:
1. Forgiveness means that you no longer need to have them pay (some might call this “meh” or no longer looking for the karma bus)
2. Forgiveness does NOT diminish the wrong done to you
3. Forgiveness does NOT mean reconciliation on any level
4. Forgiveness does NOT require you to even tell the other person
5. Forgiveness does NOT mean that you loosen boundaries to allow that person to hurt you further or continue the abuse
6. You can forgive and stay no contact
7. You can forgive and still think that person is toxic
It does not wipe out the bad or let the person off the hook for the incredibly shitty treatment they put you and your kids through. It is simply letting the need for revenge go.
Bottom line is that true forgiveness is really up to God. And yes, God requires confession, repentance, and a commitment to sin no more. And I believe that at the end of their life they will have to answer to God and eternity in hell is worse than any karma bus we will ever get to witness in this lifetime.
I believe that people confuse forgiveness with reconciliation. Christians are commanded by God to forgive, because they were also forgiven by Him, and by forgiving those that offended them, they keep the channels of forgiveness open from God to them. We are supposed to forgive not for the sake of the offender, but for our own sake; to release all the harm and not be stuck on it and with that be able to move on.
However, forgiveness does not mean reconciliation. If there is not conviction on the part of the offender, his confession, repentance and asking for forgiveness, followed by the genuine, not superficial effort to change and make amends, reconciliation is not possible and probably not even advised.
So I think we have to look at these 2 concepts separately and not confuse them – forgiveness and reconciliation are 2 different things and by forgiving someone who offended and hurt us does not necessarily mean that we can reconcile with them and continue in the relationship.
That’s just my humble take on this issue, based on what I learned on my own journey.
I take forgiveness to mean no longer being eaten up with the wrong done to you and the need to seek an explanation/apology/revenge to right that wrong. Holding on to that stuff forever is poisonious to you. You can forgive from a distance, go NC and stop giving a flying fuck about the who/what/where/when/why of it all.
Very good points, Beruska and Mary. Forgiveness would then be Meh. And we need to stay clear of wreckonciliation unless we see true repentance, complete with righting the wrongs, making amends, compensating for the harm done.
Amen
I forgave my EX last year – about the time I gave up the EXCRUCIATINGLY HOT tar and feather fantasy – although he doesn’t know it. And he doesn’t know it cause he’s not remorseful, could care less that he hurt his then wife of 30 plus years and his son and daughter, and would only use the information against me in the future. So when stupid people say I should forgive I reply that I have – he’s still alive right?
Count me on the side of “I’ll forgive when hell freezes over, pigs fly, and gnats talk.” In other words, never. X is a remorseless serial cheater across two marriages, who continues to blameshift his saffair (the only one publicly known about) onto my deficiencies and “marital problems.” He instructed all our friend to not socialize with me because I was “lying” about him (which really means I told the truth about the since-discovered affairs–at least 2, including with an undergraduate–and his Ashley Madison profile).
It is not logical to forgive, IMHO. My emotional energies will go toward those who deserve compassion–victims. An edict to forgive just feels like more oppression. S.J. Perelman said it best, “To err is human, to forgive supine.”
Tempest, there are some things in my book that are simply not forgivable. Betrayal and abuse of someone who loves you, intentional betrayal and abuse just because they can? Nope, no can do. The closest I can come is Meh. Erasure from my consciousness and life. Ignoring them to the point that they no longer have an existence in my world. Poof! You are banished! Now fuck off!
Thanks, Tessie, I agree with you. I want to maintain enough anger and indignation to fuel me toward action on behalf of victims. If that means I don’t get to Meh, so be it. I’d rather foment change, no matter how small.
“Various acquaintances have basically pretended that nothing happened and say things like, they like us both. Or they don’t want to pick sides. Could you imagine anyone saying that about someone who physically abused their wife instead of “just” mentally abused them?? It’s amazing to me that someone would want to keep hanging out with someone that would treat others so poorly.”
Not just “others” but US, their supposedly best friends! I used to ask our Switzerland friends — when I was (unbelievably) pick-me dancing for them — “How can you be friends with someone who would do this to your best friend? If you didn’t know him, if he lived somewhere else and I came running to you with this story, wouldn’t you absolutely hate him and support me in this situation?”
The husband said something about how XH isn’t malicious, he’s just negligent. And I said, “With that kind of logic, what if he was babysitting your son, and your son got hit by a car because XH just wasn’t paying attention? How forgiving would you be of that sort of negligence? — Well, that’s what his negligence has wrought: it allowed another woman to disrupt our marriage!” — No answer.
Most of my friends now are from the Island of Misfit Toys, but at least I know they’re real people with real feelings.
The Island of Misfit Toys is a GREAT place to find friends. I pretty much live there now. All the happier for it.
I love that! I had the same thought 2 nights ago–we’re all Misfit Toys here. We don’t fit into normal company because it forces us to hide the trauma we’ve survived; when I talk or text or write to other chumps, the stories are so bizarre, so unpredictable, that it’s like entering some alternative universe. But that is normal for me now; my main friends are people whose spouses spent 6 digits on prostitutes, or ran off into the sunset after the chump nursed them through cancer and a stroke, or who woke up with an AP’s thong stuck to the leg, or whose spouse asked the person to help them pick out clothes for the shagfest with the fuckbuddy that evening, or whose hubby ran off with her best friend and won’t get a full-time job because it would cause child support to go up. How do you step back into polite society when this is the new “normal?”
Tempest
That is sooooo true. And I didn’t particularly fit before….
We are all misfit toys …. Wow so true
And, in case anyone is still reading, I don’t necessarily mean (just) chumps. I mean that my own circle of friends has a slew of genuine coping problems: depression, anxiety, addiction, FOO issues, and more — that they’re coping with. Some days, some of them are very depressed. I frequently have to practically beg them to have dinner with me, because of their own issues. — It does make me wonder sometimes: is this how Life just is? and XH lives in denial of it all? Or am I truly dysfunctional and so are all of my friends? — I can’t be bothered to sort it out. This is who I am, after fifty years, so I think I’m permanent misfit and so are my friends. — Let’s put it this way: we will never be featured in a beer commercial.
Nobody ever told me “let it go” because they know I’d dangle them off a balcony and oblige them.
I recently moved back to the metro area where my ex and I met and got engaged. So, a lot of old friends and family, whom I’ve rarely seen in the past 8 years, are reconnecting.
Most are reasonable. But, there were a few that spouted off the classic lines, reminding me of my MIL right after I left my wife.
Even the good ones, though, have a hard time seeing that I’m a changed person. They give me well-meaning advice about being trustful and engaging, but their judgmental undertone is apparent. It’s a series of “You should…” statements for me to somehow pretend that I know no more about human nature than I did years ago, and I’m none the wiser for having endured trauma.
Until she started cheating, nine of my friends or family saw my ex as a potential cheater. In hindsight, I now recognize the signs that we all should have seen. But friends and family can’t see that (or refuse to see it), and they don’t like when I point out red flags of other potential mates. “No one is perfect, JC,” they say.
I correct them that I’m not looking for perfection. I’m just making sure I don’t repeat the same mistakes I made a years ago.
*none of my friends, not “nine”
Yeah, we aren’t looking for perfection. Just someone with decent values like honesty, commitment, loyalty, etc. We are sooooo demanding by wanting these things. Totally get the changed person statement as well. I am certainly a changed person. Mainly that I will never put up with BS again. I have no problem cutting off people who don’t have my values or beliefs. I have been very lucky that all of the people I went to in the beginning had been through the experience. Even the counselor I choose had experience a cheating wife. He was the first to really smack me with the 2×4. I owe him big time for that.
People who make those comments got lucky. They are probably in relationships where this level of betrayal isn’t even a thought. We were traumatized. Traumatized people proceed with caution and the scars do not go away.
I agree, JC and Lostntx. People definitely don’t get that you are changed. For me, not only will I never put up with BS any more, but I am definitely less trusting, and I’ll even admit to being less giving. After a lifetime of giving (and giving in to stop the crazy), I just don’t have it in me to keep tending to others’ needs, whether emotional or financial or time. This bothers me a bit at times, because I enjoyed helping others and being generous, but then I just tell myself that it’s time for me, for my needs, my healing.
I work daily on the “gain a life” thing. I hope 2017 brings all of us a better grasp of how that will work out in our own lives.
No one is perfect, but I have a perfect record of keeping my dick out of women who aren’t my wife.
THIS!!
Part of my ex’s belief was that she was SO amazing that she could get away with her “mistake.”
And I admit (and have told others) that my ex was amazing… As with many cheaters, she was all sparkles and achievements, caring and creativity, devotion and family….
…until she wasn’t! Until she found a new average, unremarkable rock that she believed needed polishing. Then, she sucked. She disengaged from all that made her great, because she was giving that to someone else.
But her detachment did allow me to see her more clearly…to see her pre-infidelity faults. She’s human, like all of us. And we all only have so much capacity.
I’d rather have a less “amazing” wife who won’t fuck another man.
She didn’t understand that concept.
This was my ex husband. Wow Oh Wow – you just put words to the abstract/random/perplexing muddle that I have been struggling with for months and months.
Chump wisdom – it will heal every time!
My aunt to my mum, about me, “But didn’t she know [about the affair]? Surely she must have suspected something?”
What a crock of BS! You should have seen through the lies and deception that was going on. Plus, they didn’t teach you to trust others and what they said! If I get this crap, I hope they are prepared for the volcano that is about to erupt on them. I’m going to let them experience blame shifting first hand as I blame them for the affair and me not knowing!
I think my sister thinks my situation is contagious. She was initially supportive because she told me my narc was going around to all my family and telling them “he has to walk on eggshells around strong woman because she must be having thyroid issues which are making her crazy -she actually thinks I would cheat on her and I would never do that since I’m such a nice guy” My sister didn’t fall for it – told him off. But she was the only one-everyone else believed him.
Fast forward 6 months and she’s like -why are you crying and upset about all this? I said because he’s trying to turn my kids against me now and leave me with nothing. All my money goes towards lawyer and forensic accountant fees and my kids still would like the same lifestyle they are used too. I said we’ll all be fine but it’s just difficult at times and it still makes me sad. Then she says “your therapy isn’t working if you’re still upset and crying”. I reminded her that I lived the last 23 years with a covert narc who emotionally abused me and although I’m free from him -the shit he told me is still in my head. So I might need some time to heal. Then she says “this isn’t all about you, the fact that you didn’t tell us what he was doing makes us think you were ok with it” because you should have told someone what he was doing then we wouldn’t have thought he was such a nice guy. Then she says her husband still thinks he’s a nice guy and can’t imagine your stbx ever cheating on you. And thank god that her husband doesn’t cheat on her because she would cut his balls off and make his life miserable — I’m just being too nice and need to get over it already. Now shes avoided me for a couple months and doesn’t ever check on me. I guess she’s waiting for the cheater cooties to go away. Foo issues suck and so do cheaters!!
Sorry you have to deal the abandonment of your sister! People just really don’t understand unless they go through it. The comment about what she would do is just her thoughts. We all know until it really happens, we don’t know exactly how we would react. I, like others, am stunned by how I acted at first. The pick me dance is just crazy! Like your sister, I always thought I would be tough and relentless in my reaction. I am now, but I wasn’t at first. Just remember, people don’t know what they are talking about until they walk through the fire! I hope you find some chumps locally that you can form friendships with because they understand. Your sister sucks! Find a therapist that can help you. Just be careful since many of them aren’t qualified to help you. Interview them and see if they understand cheating and being a chump.
“I’ll pray for you.”
These were the last words I ever heard from my ex sister in law, because I changed my email address and phone #.
“I’ll pray for you.” and people sending me Bible verses via text.
Sorry. Yes, prayer is great! I appreciate and appreciated everyone’s prayers. I know that there truly were people praying for me. And I’m thankful for that.
But. Did Jesus ever say, “I’ll pray for you.” Did Jesus ever hand someone over a Bible verse (I know they didn’t have the Bible back then)? No. He did something to help. Only my sisters physically helped me and they had to fly 650 miles to do so. And I was lucky to have work friends that helped emotionally by listening to me. But the church people? Bible verses. No offer to help. I was in direct contact with the pastors wife and kept telling her how depressed I was and I was having trouble getting to work, keeping my house clean, making dinner and taking care of my kids. I got lots of Bible verses when I could have used a helping hand or a meal. And as a chump, it’s hard to ask for help.
I will never send someone a Bible verse unless they ask for it. People need actual physical help. They need a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen. A meal. A hug. Actions. Not words. As I’ve learned with the cheater, words can be cheap and meaningless.
You make a very valid point and I experience the church help as well. I didn’t need verses but someone to walk through it with me. I was fortunate that some did try to help by inviting me to exercise with them or hang out sometimes. Unfortunately, they had families so it was hard to work me in. You are right that the church should be there to help. Having been through it, I know exactly what you mean and try to be there for others now. I knew someone that split with his wife and I just made offers to be there to listen. He took me up on it once, but I made the attempt. I will continue to do so and it’s up to them if they take me up on it.
Good move, Murphy! Going NC from ALL of their deluded support network is key (I learned that later than I should have.)
Perfect!
The dental hygienist asked if I was “enjoying single life” while I was getting a root canal. Awkward. I told her that I would much rather be married to someone who loves me & is faithful, but since that wasn’t the case, I was happier being separated. To his credit, the dentist was giving her the evil eye over his mask.
That leads into next dumbass thing, which, since STBX does seem to be enjoying single life, is people telling me in front of a group that they’ve seen him out with other women. Then all the heads swivel to me to see my reaction like a freaking sitcom. Glad I can entertain y’all.
Dun mean to appear callous but that last dumbass experience of yours had me laughing out loud and made my day ! I find it amusing how my Frens sometimes look chastened when they catch themselves rambling on about weddings and true love etc U know in case I start bawling my eyes out. Puhleeze people, we are not anti marriage or anti relationships – we R just that bit more jaded and cynical after what some monsters (disgusted as humans) did to blow up our lives . Life and our own lives still go on . So please just treat as normal Hoomans!
My favorite is seeing the older couple holding hands after countless years of marriage. No, I did not get that, but I am glad that it does exist.
I also had someone ask me how single life was treating me. (He did not know my STBXH was a serial cheater and liar). Here was my response (by email, which is why I can produce it at will):
In the year and a bit since [STBXH] has been gone, I have not yet faced a question such as, “How is single life treating you?” To say that you caught me off guard is an understatement. You also gave me permission to vent, so here it is:
I was single before I got married. I had LOTS of fun! I danced and drank and dated like, well, like I was single. I had fun. After I got married to the person I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, I was no longer single. So, I am now separated, not single. There is a HUGE difference.
As I mentioned, there is a psychological test (Holmes and Rahe, if you feel like checking it out) that measures life’s most stressful events. Top three – death of a spouse, divorce and marital separation. (Major personal illness is down at number six).
I would not dream of asking someone who had just lost their spouse “How’s single life treating you? “ or, by the same token, asking someone whose child had just died “How’s childless life treating you?” It seems to ask any of these questions, one would have to be blissfully ignorant or incredibly insensitive.
I have had the opportunity to encounter a few people who have experienced divorce and a serious, life-threatening disease simultaneously, and they have concurred that divorce was significantly more impactful on their lives than a life-threatening disease.
There is no cure for divorce; there is no remission. I will always have to deal with this – it is not just in the past, but the present and future. My children will have to face the anxiety of living in two households, the devastation of having their family torn apart, and the uncertainty of not knowing who will still love them (after all, didn’t [STBXH] and I say we would always love each other?).
So, the long preamble to a short answer to your question – “How’s single life treating you?” is that “It sucks.” And now that you are no longer blissfully ignorant about asking such a fucking stupid question, maybe you won’t do it again to others in the future.
End of rant.
Kudos
Clapping here. You’re awesome.
Love it.
Awesome reply! Where’s the applause icon?
Awesome and gutsy reply!
Blessing, be blessed! This was powerful! May I ask if there was any reaction to this? Or did the person decide to disappear from the earth for good?:)
Poof! Vanished into thin air. No response at all.
You.Are.Awesome.
“That leads into next dumbass thing, which, since STBX does seem to be enjoying single life, is people telling me in front of a group that they’ve seen him out with other women. Then all the heads swivel to me to see my reaction like a freaking sitcom. Glad I can entertain y’all.”
Yes THIS ^^^^
Have you practiced a range of reaction faces, Chumperoo?
From ex MIL,I got the “boys will be boys”
“He has been a naughty boy”
” You are too angry about it”
Even taking into account the fact that she is now dead, and that ex was un-doubtedly lying to her, I still cannot stomach it.
I have three sons. No way would I ever say anything like that to one of their wives / girlfriends. I have always said to my sons to get out of a relationship with integrity if unhappy. Just be honest.
MIL was very much part of the reason he is such a creep now. Totally spoilt. Both his parents had affairs, and were a miserable couple married for over 50 years.
Nobody in his family is authentic at all.
I love what you said there about your sons having been raised to exit a relationship with integrity! That’s so important.
I was very proud of my youngest last year. He’d been dating a nice young woman, 18 like him, and while I didn’t see sparks flying, they seemed to enjoy each other’s company, and he treated her with respect and caring.
They had been seeing one another exclusively for several months when he came to me, around Thanksgiving 2015, and told me that he had developed feelings, very strong ones, for a girl he’d been friends and classmates with for awhile. She was also friends with his current girlfriend, and he said that, being honest with himself, he really didn’t feel deeply for “Lindsey” but knew that he could fall in love with “Kaylee.”
He did not want to have any overlap with his relationships, and although he knew that the kinder and more honest thing to do was to break up with Lindsey, regardless of any potential relationship with Kaylee, he did not want to hurt anybody! We talked, and he came to realize that, when you act with honesty and integrity, sometimes people’s feelings will be hurt in the short term, but long run, it’s the better way to live.
So, he broke up with Lindsey, and she did not take it well, at all. I was a teenaged girl, and how I remember that pain! My heart ached for her. But, my son was doing the right thing.
A couple of weeks later, he confessed to Kaylee that his feelings for her had deepened. Turned out, it was mutual, and on January 1st, they will have been “official” for one year! We adore her, and I have never seen my son this happy. They attend the same college, and although they are both busy with school, work, and friends, they spend as much time together as possible. I love observing the mature way they have of communicating and expressing needs to one another. I told my mom, I have seen thirty year old son in less mature, respectful relationships than these two teens! (Well, he’s on the verge of turning 20.) Sometimes people find the right person at a young age, and I find myself hoping that they stay together, because I cannot imagine either of them with anyone else. It was hard on him last year to do the manly thing and end a partnership that just wasn’t working for him, but he did it with an honest heart and in the kindest way he knew how.
I got this in an a recent email, from a relative and whom I thought was a good friend, after my Ex, brought the Other Woman (who is still married) to her house for Thanksgiving, I then unfriended all of his family on Facebook, because I didn’t want to see pictures or comments of the “so-in-luuuve” couple at Thanksgiving. She was very “hurt” by me doing that.
“Life is short, people move on and we can’t control how people live their lives. What we can control is ourselves and how we live our own lives. Everything else is beyond our control”
Glad you took control and kicked them to the curb.
May I also add one to The Stupid Shit Cheater say? (because it just happened yesterday)
My Son (21) wants nothing to do with EX since he told him that he was back with OW (20 years younger – after 4 yrs hiatus). So son did not see EX at Christmas.
EX sent him a present, and a card that said “I wish for you what makes you happiest in your heart” Uhhhhhr this guy simply does not get it!
It’s still all about him. The way I read this –
1) – he is making him feel guilty and
2) – it’s another way of telling my son – that he is only with OW, because that’s what makes his “heart the happiest” Paleeeeeeease!!
Manipulation, pure and simple. My STBX does this shit ALL the time with my 13 and 15 year old. It sucks…for them and for us who have to try to help them wade through the crap without bad talking their father.
You are mighty! We really only control ourselves. She was hurt you unfriended her??? What a bozo the clown! You were so mean. Just because she had pictures of your ex and “married” date to the Thanksgiving event! Talk about clueless. How much of our society has any morals left anymore? I wouldn’t let someone bring a married date to my house ever! Of course, i am mean and not a very understanding person when it comes to others just wanting to be happy.
I honestly don’t get how people can be accepting of two people dating when one or both are married to other people. Couples that We hung out with together now hang out with him and his child girlfriend. Ummm…he walked out on his wife when she was 6 months pregnant. That doesn’t bother you or question whether he is a decent human being? Oh well…he can have those friends. I have no room in my life for people without values, morals, or consciences.
I agree completely! I have no room in my life for those people.
Me neither. It was very hurtful to ME – seeing OW at her table with my EX. She knew how much this OW hurt me.
My daughter was very angry that her dad was making me out to be ‘the bad guy.’ You know, his 25 year younger coworker saved him from me because I was so ‘mean’ etc. etc. One day the truth came out and my daughter so mad that her dad lied to her. Of course, to him I ruined everything by telling the truth. (It was ok our daughter was hating me because of his lies, but for our daughter to be angry at him over the truth was my unpardonable sin.)
Anyway, I took her a psychologist to talk about it. The psychologist told my daughter in front me that: “..they will both be your parents no matter what – everyone makes mistakes.”
Everyone makes mistakes? A mistake is getting a math problem wrong.
Making thousands of decisions for months on not coming home and going to hotels with little coworker, lying, sneaking around, telling me everything was fine that he wasn’t cheating and would I cosign his $80,000 truck, being nasty, bragging to his friends he got himself a 22 y.o., telling everyone I was ‘mean’ (because I get upset over a lying cheating spouse), etc. etc. – you guys know the drill. No, that is not a ‘mistake.’
That is cold-hearted, calculated, selfish actions of someone who is subhuman. We won’t be returning to that psychologist.
And, yes, peaking truth gets you called bitter and told you should ‘get over it.’
Totally agree ! Take the moral high ground ! All that lying for months on end – how can a decent human do that to another . I told my ex that even Frens dun betray each other so kindly disappear from my life , adios
Bitter is the appropriate response to having an axe buried in your back by the person you pledged your life to.
My bible beater father in laws response when I told them I was divorcing their serial cheating, prostitute buying, strip club frequenting son
“while telling us this, probably allowed you to purge and feel better, at this point you both just need to drop the anger, embrace forgiveness and move on. None of us need to embrace bitterness or blame”
Wow, well call me enlightened! Why didn’t I think of that? Oh I know, because that would be
total invalidation to the deep wounds your precious “son of god” has inflicted on myself, our children and this family.
What an idiot! Let’s totally forget one of the only things God himself wrote to us contained the don’t commit adultery line in it. Wow, the “chritian” chest beaters only pick and choose the things that fit there desires.
Or….embrace your bitter bunny instead
This is bad…all these comments and the ones I’ve heard make me think that everyone is stupid…how can that be possible?? World full of stupid people or cheaters…say it ain’t so.
We were together 25years. 2 kids. He left 3 years ago. Here are some of the lines I’ve heard. Not one just said I’m sorry I’m here for you. They fell off the face of the earth or said:
At least you have your kids just focus on them.
The Christian friends:
Only God knows.
God will change him.
God knew this would happen.
God has a plan for you.
God will take care of him.
Others:
It takes two people to get a divorce or cheat — as in I was responsible 50% for the cheating. This usually comes from those in a cheating relationship that are the OW or OM.
These three come from in law side.
He just wants to be happy. And I just want his happiness.
He is the best guy, he would never cheat. Impossible. You’re mistaken.
If you didn’t let him walk over you, if were a stronger woman, if you looked better – if you xyz he wouldn’t have left.
This one was so mean –
The kids are a handful or you don’t discipline your kids or they don’t listen – no wonder he left! I can’t blame him. Wow that hurt a lot!!
More from others:
Just focus on you and raising your kids. They leave the part out I raise them alone and don’t ask if it’s hard if I need help.
Go find another man…why are you still alone.
Have you found a man yet…
The best…I get this a lot and makes me feel awful.
Same thing happened to my friend and she found a man in a month. (Most while separated.) And they’re so happy and we can go on double dates again.
Oh never liked him anyway he was xyz. And they’ll fill in the blank.
Others would say he’s such a great guy, and they can’t believe it.
And what about my ex…
He says…
We were always different people
I was always like this
We want different things
I just want to be happy
I like spending and you’re cheap
Let’s just have sex but not be together…cause I still love you
The kids will be fine
The kids hate me anyhow
You are happy I’m gone
So did you hear many of these people??
Sigh . Same feeling here . People seem callous and insensitive and flippant . Perhaps nothing they say will seem right but can’t at least ONE person give me their full 100% support ? Even my m says that I deserved to be cheated on since I married the wrong guy (she never liked him) then she went on to muse that the ow must be a good mother (mother of 2 kids by different men, no less)!
Yes it’s possible . Been hearing such comments since D day . Divorced now , thank goodness. People R superficial after all and generally care only for themselves . Peiple R only interested in success stories or scandals .
Most people in my opinion don’t understand how devastating cheating is, until it happens to them.
Most people are extremely self-absorbed and cannot spare any thought or empathy for someone other than themselves unless there might be some sort of payoff. Feeling cynical today.
Yes ！
Holy crap! Hearing some of that shit would have made me homicidal! The justice system wouldn’t likely see it a temporary insanity even though I can’t think of a better example. Makes me glad to be an introvert! I didn’t talk to many about it and the few I did were mostly victims themselves. I have concluded that the world is full of shitheads! I just need to learn how to navigate it without becoming a serial killer!
Frankly, reading today’s comments has made me a little homicidal.
“This one was so mean –
The kids are a handful or you don’t discipline your kids or they don’t listen – no wonder he left! I can’t blame him. Wow that hurt a lot!!”
I believe disciplining children is supposed to be the responsibility of BOTH parents. Some people are idiots. Do they honestly not realize how incredibly stupid they sound?
And could there have been problems in the marriage before the cheating that both people contributed to? Yes, but emotional abuse, cheating, lying, and complete devaluing of your spouse is not the proper response or course of action. They suck and anyone who tries to justify their behavior or blame you for their choices suck, too. Just distance or cut ties.
“I have been in several provinces. In some one-half of the people are fools, in others they are too cunning; in some they are weak and simple, in others they affect to be witty; in all, the principal occupation is love, the next is slander, and the third is talking nonsense.”
― Voltaire, Candide
I’ve been thinking about this today, some, and at the end of the day, I think it takes a certain amount of courage to sit quietly and openly when someone was in pain, to just be present and let them speak. — Even in far less serious circumstances, such as bitching about something at work, people seem to want to jump in with a solution instead of just letting a person vent. A friend of mine used to have a signal — if she held up her finger and started talking, it meant, “I just need to bitch about this thing and don’t want a solution,” at the end of which most of us listeners would simply say, “That really sucks. I’m so sorry for you.” Funny, I used to use that with XH, too, after a hard day at work…. It’s a tool I still use today. And when I can’t think of anything to say, I just say, “That really sucks. I’m so sorry for you.” Sometimes that’s all that’s needed. IMO.
True, NW. That’s the beauty of CN, people offer solutions if you ask for them, but you also get a lot of simple compassion and understanding that pain is pain, we need to vent and just be acknowledged.
omg – have heard all of these various times; from the cheater himself – sent me an email a few days ago – so sort of a christmas message; ‘i have to tell you as the mother of my children I have been dating someone and its turned serious.’ hahaha I had a good laugh at that one because he tried to engineer it that he just fell into an accidental relationship months after leaving me and the kids. so even though the financial evidence says it was already in place hence his swift exit, so we are to believe this ‘serious’ relationship started barely a few months ago.
I got this gem too “she will be young and pretty (OW) but not a patch on you”…. “now you can get a hobby that you like”….”can’t live life with regrets” (directly from the cheater) – like I regret meeting you in the first place.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that prior to being a chump I may not myself have been a very understanding friend. I don’t remember ever saying anything unkind to anyone because no one I knew before ever told me they were a chump. That information only came out after I was speaking about what had happened to me.
I’m not sure being honest if I would have understood fully if someone had admitted to being chumped. I am sure I would have been sympathetic but I certainly would not have seen it or understood it for the trauma it was.
I did have a friend who was diagnosed with cancer last year. We were not particularly close but still I feel guilty about not exactly going out of my way to be there for her either. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac so have always excused myself that way but still regret not being of more help or even addressing her diagnosis more openly.
I guess I see now that Infidelity is something you might have to go through to understand fully. Just a thought.
It doesn’t make it easier to handle any of these comments but maybe they are not all malicious and destructive people just clueless and self protective.
And I have to say most of the people I know have been sympathetic if not that interested (or interested in the gory details but not much else). Three friends who I discovered have been chumps get it and are amazing. No one has been particularly unkind but no one in my family of origin know. I have not told them. I am mostly estranged from them but know that when they find out they will take much pleasure in my misery and misfortune. Good job I will probably not hear it when it happens. I’m hoping to be in meh by then.
Since the early days when I told anyone who would stand still for one minute, I am much more discerning about who I tell. I have just learned that most don’t get it.
Capricorn, I always look for your posts. I am sure I was sympathetic, and I am sure I said stupid shit many times, trying to be helpful and sympathetic. Words often fail us and fail our intentions. There is a difference between well meaning stupid shit, I think there’s a lot of it displayed today, and passive aggressive remarks. But sadly I have read quite a few here today too.
You don’t know, until you know.
People don’t get it til it happens to them…..
Capricorn, same here. I am usually the shoulder to cry on for friends and family and most of the times more than I intend to, but I am sure I was not that sympathetic with my chump friend when it was happening in her life almost 20 years ago. Self-righteous is what I was and screaming at her to get out. All that was good but I did not offer any concrete help to her besides telling her that I would never take that shit. Now I know better. Took the shit, pick me danced and even today the cheater triggered guilt in me again. Now I am the egoistic and insensitive one because I dared to confront him in the wring time! DDay happened early January this year when his father was dying in the hospital (after being in the vegetative state for 15 years) and both our son and the cheater were nursing bad cold and high fever. If I was more sensitive and took care of our son instead of deciding to confront him and roll in my misery (he implies he was the one not sleeping at nights taking care of our son while i was sleeping????!) Then he would have dedicated his time at nights to his dad in the ICU instead of being with our son and maybe his father would not die!!! Just told me that and i lost it. And then regretted it…why do i still get hooked? Why can i not just pretend to be a grey rock and just be the yes/no person?
Capricorn, what did you tell your youngest son? Do all your boys know the reason for your divorce? This was another trigger…he wants me to keep this away from our son whom I told that I am upset with his dad because he lied to me but the boy wants to know…and I just want to spit it out and have him hate his dad and I realize nothing good will come out of it but I get triggered.
Sorry…started somewhere else and ended in the wrong spot here.
Cap, it seems to be a symptom of the world today. We are feed BS around the clock about cheating and other tragic events and how they are not significant. We are all suppose to be happy all the time. If we aren’t, we are causing a problem for others. We are taught not to be empathetic. Plus, if something bad happens to us, well we did something to deserve it! I just don’t think people can handle that we have very little control in this world and there are bad people and total chaos around us. We have little control but people now really want to be in control.
Yes, Cappie. I think one must live this shit storm to understand fully what it really does to a person. And even then, I find myself offering what is intended to be support and hope to people here that sound dangerously close to the Norman Vincent Unrealisms. But I think there are a lot of people out there who give strong evidence of not even trying to genuinely empathize and that really pisses me off. It seems like human decency to at least TRY.
I do tend to agree with this too, that’s why I always say to those people, “unless you have been through it, you really cannot fully understand what it does to you” and the other thing that infidelity does – it doesn’t just hurt the two/four people involved, it extends far and wide, and it affects many aspects of our lives. One tiny example I have given in the last couple of weeks is this: My College son, home for the holidays- is right now sleeping in a day bed in my apartment’s living room, he should be coming home to the place he grew up in, his room, spend time with both his parents.
We are living those consequences. Not those two fuckwits!
Until it happened to me, I didn’t really understand the depth of pain betrayal causes. I called two people who I’d tried to help after their own divorces, and told them I’d had no idea of the depth of their sorrow when they were going through it. I apologized to them for not understanding. Both of them were sympathetic and said we never really understand someone else’s pain until we experience it ourselves.
I did the same thing, reached out to a friend to whom I had not been as understanding as I might have otherwise been. I’m mostly sorry I wasn’t more compassionate to my own mother during her divorce (no betrayal, but it’s still hard) and now she’s gone and I can’t tell her. My only excuse is that I was sixteen years old at the time and not exactly renowned for my non-self-centeredness.
Capricorn, you’re kind of a badass, y’know? I agree that your posts are full of courage and wit and wisdom. Your ex is a fucking idiot to walk away from someone like you. That’s all.
NW
Ok. That made me cry. Not too great lately. Misplaced my mighty. So that helps. ❤️
It’s around there somewhere (your mighty). Keep looking. XO
“There are two sides to every story.”
“It takes two for a marriage to fail.”
“Didn’t you see the signs?”
“Better to be happy separately than unhappy together.”
“It’s better for the kids.”
“Your life is so much better now.”
“Aren’t you really glad this happened?”
My good friends husband said 2 weeks after DDay, “get over it kid. Nothing lasts forever”. And of course “this too shall pass”.
My fave response is “fuck you, bye bye”
love the reponse! what a shallow pos. Friend should take that as a warning!
He’s such a pompous arrogant jerk. Honestly I didn’t expect anything less and I can’t wait to use that line on him!
Just for the record here is what I wanted to hear:
What a son-of-a-bitch, disordered, em effer (you name the word)
I’ll drive the get away car
I have tar and feathers. Meet me at 11:30.
You know I have connections with people who “have connections”.
Here’s a gift card for a massage.
Thought I’d stop by with a pizza and bottle of wine.
I always like you better than Dad anyway.
The worst people are family. THE WORST and it’s because they don’t want THEIR little world rocked.
The best I heard was from a rousie who worshipped the traitor because we built such a cosy kitchen and toilet for the -mostly female- rousies in the woolshed and she loved coming out here for shearing: “He’s a fuckwit! Get rid of him. Shit, I used to like him!”. Short and sweet.
I guess I have been pretty selective about who I have told about STBX’s cheating – only close friends and my family. (Most people I just tell that I am divorcing.) I am sure that I am trying to avoid the pain and embarrassment I have internalized. And the comments here give me little faith that people would be decent if I did tell them.
My sister was having a hard time in her own marriage and confided in me some while I was going through my divorce. I never advocated for divorce at all unless absolutely necessary, I always pointed out the challenges and realities that the coparenting component is just as, if not moreso challenging. But anyway one day I was telling her that the things he said to her were disrespectful and that she was well within her rights to speak up and expect better treatment from him she scoffed and said “well I’m not going to take marriage advice from someone whose marriage was as big a failure as yours.”
Then just last week on a message board there was a woman who left her husband to be with friend who had been cheating on her husband. There had been drama. The other person was debating between picking her or her husband. Everyone was sympathetic to the cheater woman. After months of this I finally spoke up and said something like “what is your end goal here? That she leave her husband so you two can be together? Do you have any concept of how challenging that is going to be and how unlikely a marriage between two cheaters is going to be?” Then people got all huffy with me. One person said that I needed to “get over my ex husband’s affair” and another person said something implying I was a rotten person for not being able to support a friend during a difficult time due to my own unresolved feelings towards my ex’s affair.
My feelings towards his affair are quite resolved, thanks. He sucks. And this woman having an affair with a married woman sucks just as much. Nothing unresolved here!
No one wants to call them out because homophobia.
Gay cheating is still cheating. It’s not cute.
You are not in an episode of Modern Family. These are real people who are get
No one wants to call them out because homophobia.
Gay cheating is still cheating. It’s not cute.
Bystanders: You are not in an episode of Modern Family. These are real people who are getting fucked over by cheaters.
In the very beginning of “my hell” I left a voice message for my sister to call me. She did return my call and said, “Maree you sound upset, why?” Another pearler was “He (the predator) worked hard, why did you stay so long”. These 2 comments were made just after my sister had been to my daughter’s wedding from which I was excluded. There were many, many more but in the intervening time she has had to eat humble pie herself because of her 42 year old son and now she almost gets it.
How about the boss who said, “Well, at least he chose you. And you don’t even have kids, so you know he really wants you.”
I know she meant well, I know she meant well, I know she meant well….
My stewpid sil wins the prize in my case. ‘now is not the time to feel sorry for yourself’.
I had MS and had just found our her brother was cheating. What a bitch.
Starbucks Gal
Wow. And I am guessing she didn’t mean “now is not the time to feel sorry for yourself you must get angry and vengeful and kick his sorry cheating ass the low life fucker of my ex-brother”.
When on earth does she think it is acceptable to feel sorry for yourself?
That really does take the biscuit.
I agree with Cappie … the proper response was “I agree. Now is the time to sucker-punch that piece of shit to the curb.”
Now that’s a real bitch! I hope the karma bus hits her so you can respond with a total empathy lacking statement!
“You need to learn forgive him, forgiveness is the key to happiness”. Horse shit. I needed to learn to forgive myself for staying as long as I did and for all the red flags that wrapped me like a mummy. I mean why did it take Christo to wrap our entire house in red flags before I noticed?
+1,000,000
christo! Tee Hee Hee.
Yup.. I get it. Hugs to you
Excellent post! ++++
I’ve heard;
“There’s two sides to every story.”
“It takes two to ruin a marriage.”
“You had to have known at least subconsiously.”
“I’m happy for him.”
“Well, he’s happy now.”
“The marriage (to the OW) is not sinful. It’s a good thing. The cheating and divorce were the sinful things he did.”
“We don’t want to take sides.”
“You have to trust him. It was because of your trust issues.” (This was after he cheated 3 times and left me. I never had trust issues before that.)
“Did you not like sex, or just not with him?”
My fave…..After cheater ex kidnapped and murdered my youngest son…… “I don’t know what you did Tessie, to make God punish you, but it must have been bad.” I had to sit on my hands at that point. If I hadn’t, this 5’2″ woman would have decked the 6’6″ SOB. He had no idea how close he came to bodily mayhem.
Yeah, a lot of people are clueless until the wind up in the same boat.
Tessie, how you restrained yourself is beyond me dear friend. I do hope that, that person is no longer in your life. I wish you a wonderful New Year Tessie. You certainly do deserve it. (((HUGS)))
Another 5’2″ woman here … next time, Tessie, deck him. Aim low … a strategy made easier for we height-challenged folks. And as always, sincere hugs to you.
DC, I grew up in a very rough home. I have 1 sister and 2 brothers. My father always taught my sister and I that if any male ever did anything that was inappropriate towards us, was to kick them between the legs. Now I know that, that is a very drastic thing to do but he said they wouldn’t repeat their actions again. I have never had to put that advice into action in my 65 years. Maybe I should have tried it on the ex !! 🙂
Maybe it’s not too late? 🙂
I only hope that one day God punishes him by putting him in the hottest room in hell for his total lack of tack! You should have at least kicked him so hard in the crotch that he could never reproduce!
I am so very sorry, Tessie. There has to be a special place in hell for these people. I feel such anger on your behalf.
I don’t know how you manage to handle yourself Tessie. You are mighty.
Thanks everyone, he has been out of the picture for a long time. As far as assaulting the genuinely stupid among us, as temporarily satisfying as that may be, I finally decided that they are their own punishment. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
My personal favorites:
Stop looking for things.
All men do this. (from a Christian friend)..Really?
Everything you have is circumstantial evidence. Let it go.
My all time favorite in front of the counselor who BTW is going through a divorce now because he was beating his wife…..After I told him that my husband was looking at cabins one night on the computer (not uncommon for him as we loved the mountains) and two weeks later I see on her facebook page that her family – yep, she’s married with three young adult kids, is going to the mountains for Christmas (last year). I click on and lo and behold…It’s The Same Cabin that I had seen my husband looking at two weeks before. Of course he had no idea how that could happen when I asked him. When he was finally able to answer me when I asked him about it. He was mute and staring at me for five minutes! A couple of weeks later he screams at me that yes, they looked at cabins together and talked about going there. (after months of trying to convince me of no affair)…So we end up back at the counselor’s office. The one who was beating his wife but we didn’t know it at the time. The counselor’s response: He (my husband) needed to give me time to forgive him and to me…I needed to forgive him!!
Okay, I cringed just a bit when I read the Norman Vincent Unreal category … ahem … some of the examples sounded a bit Dixie-ish!!
I offer two examples today … one that was rather nice and supportive from a complete stranger who came to my house to give me a pressure washing quote. And one from my closest friend and sister. An interesting contrast that has me carefully examining that second relationship going forward.
“Someday you will meet someone who will be really grateful that you are divorced.” Nice stranger.
“Tell me again … exactly what makes you believe he had a gay affair for thirty years?” Because she doesn’t believe I am correct and since she was not present for the sit-down confession with her favorite brother-in-law, I might be *exaggerating* or *misinterpreting* something. Or *demonizing* the poor fellow. She follows this comment (which I have heard more than once) with supportive statements that no longer seem sincere, obviously.
The half hostile/nervous: “Well, WHO did he cheat on you with?”
As if I had said, Oh, a gorgeous 18 year old with tons of money- this would have made it acceptable?
But, my biggest evil thrill is enlightening the women who act like this curse could never happen to them. I tell them with relish, Don’t get cocky. All those married men on Match, Miss Travel, CL, Plenty of Fish, Ashley Madison- are married to SOMEBODY.
Maybe it is you? And I also tell them with pleasure: No one is as persistent, or as dangerously fucked up, as a cheating married man. They are capable of lying to you, for years, without a flicker of concern. They are extremely cunning and slick, and plan with great care hotel rendezvous, have secret phones, credit cards. They would make Jason Bourne blush with their sly ways.
You can see the troubled look pass across their previously smug faces………(insert evil laugh here).
I don’t do this to people who are kind. Only ones who act like I have leprosy or I “wasn’t taking care of my man.”
You’re a genius. This is such truth, it should be a standard part of every religion’s premarital counseling. Shoot, it should be taught in high school. No one is as immune as they think they are.
You are so sweet. Sunny, I honestly want to bitch slap those smug women. I did everything but stand on my hand to make my X happy. If he had asked, I would have done that, too. There was nothing more I could do. And he still cheated. I think with more than one slut shit hog.
That is my name for the OW I know about- either SWEAT HOG or SHIT HOG.
Isn’t that awful and appropriate??? 🙂
This really crazy religious lady told me she has saved over 15 marriages. She would need to come to my house and bless it. Jesus would then remove the “lust” from STBX. All would be ok.
I told her I didn’t want the man back.
I’ll come to your house and ask Jesus to bless you and keep all narcissists and crazy people far, far away from you!
I’d deeply appreciate that kind of blessing 🙂
I myself heard from exhole’s coworkers.. “Well, if you would out out more, he wouldn’t have cheated on you.” … W. T. F.
I was told by my exmil that if I would go out more with him, he wouldn’t have found a more outgoing person to be with. Ummmm… This is the guy that would leave the house 20 minutes before I got home (after trolling the internet for ass all morning) and not come home until late. I would run into friends during the week and they would say how sorry they were that I was sick and couldn’t make it to that awesome party like hubby did.
A co-worker of mine revealed on Facebook that his wife was cheating on him. The comments….omg… From his wife “I just wanted my sweet husband back and for things to be the way they were when we were first together.” (married 5 years and 3 kids..things do change a bit) From one of the wife’s friends “Don’t let the Devil win. You two need to work this out. You need to be there for her.” I responded to that one with ” That’s right! Don’t let the Devil win! Divorce her lying, cheating ass and take everything you can get!” …I got unfriended not long after that. I assume they tried to work it out and I was negatively that she couldn’t deal with on FB.
I hate this one:
“Well, you’re divorce is final now so you don’t have to worry anymore.”
Fucking seriously? Just because the ink had dried earlier this year means I should be all rainbows and unicorns now? Especially when I am still discovering hidden assets and a fiancé he had for a year and a half prior to asking me for a divorce? Oh and she’s no longer his fiancé, she’s his fucking wife now as of 3 weeks ago. It took a while to get her fiancé visa, I’m guessing. Oh, but that shit shouldn’t matter at all…we are divorced now so I can’t be upset over shit I’m finding out about now that he did while still married to me? I can’t be upset over the $100’s of thousands of dollars he cheated me out of in the divorce? Nope, it shouldn’t affect me at all. People suck.
What they are really trying to say is: “you need better friends because we suck.”
My sister: “We’re tired of supporting you every time you meet someone (I’ve had three relationships in my 38 years) and getting screwed over.” Um, I was the one who got screwed over? SORRY!
My ex MIL: “Don’t got looking for things you don’t want to find.” I guess she wanted me to just keep my head in the sand like she has all these years.
I should also mention my sister came to ONE BBQ to meet him, and barely said a word. Skipped my wedding party 4 months later. So yeah, her “support” must have really taken a lot out of her.
HMM, let’s see, all the helpful comments. From my Dad: “Men cheat but they don’t leave.” (Except for my ex-h) Also from my Dad: “You think he loved you? He didn’t love you.” Also from my Dad: “I knew he was cheating from the start.” (We were married 35 years) From my friend, who is also divorced from a cheater: “It depresses me when you talk about your divorce. It reminds me of my own stuff. I don’t want to be with you when you are sad and upset.” (She’s divorced 5 years and I’m divorced 5 months. She even took a separate car when we went out with other friends so she could leave if I started acting all sad and ruined her dinner.) From everyone: “You are the winner”. “This is the best thing that could have ever happened to you.” “If you ever take him back, I won’t be friends with you anymore.” “You let yourself go.” “I’m sure you knew.” “Get over it already.” “Why aren’t you dating by now?” “He left because you were a nag.”
I hadn’t seen my dad in a few years and the first thing he said to me was “what did you do?” I said he cheated and he left. Thanks for your support dad. My dad also told me “men cheat” and that those men have a choice to make about leaving, as in apparently there’s something wrong with you because he left. My narc mom told me “we knew he was always cheating on you” well gee thanks mom.
These people are vicious. Never feel bad about avoiding people who sling such toxic shit at you, no matter what the blood relation.
I am starting this new rule for the new year.
If I hang up the phone or leave someone’s presence, or read an email, and I feel: sad, angry, exasperated, deceived, confused, gaslighted or abused, and it is not a one off….let’s say three times:
Cut the cord. Life is too damn short. I am applying this to all relationships as we start in 2017. I simply don’t deserve any more shit sandwiches and you don’t either.
Another new red flag: If someone makes me feel like I have to pretend or lie about something, or I am not being true to who I am…Nope. I am going to stand in the Truth and in the Light. Let the chips fall where they may.
Thanks Carmela, I’m cutting out the toxic people out of my life for sure. I’m tired of all the bullshit and I’m tired of having to pretend or lie to keep someone else’s “idea” of what and who I should be alive. I am living this life and I think at this point I more than earned it with all the sh*t I put up with to be “married”. I was the only one that was “married”, he was always shopping for my replacement.
Flutterby, It is unsettling to do it, at first. To really shut down any fake, abusive or manipulative games that people play. It is revolutionary to implement without mercy, and that applies to my own nonsense.
However, I have been putting on my “big girl pants” and just calling people out on their shit. Not aggressive. Just matter of fact. My sister was playing the “maybe we will not come for Christmas” game.
I was anxious and got a rash. I fretted. I worried about “her” and her children being alone at Christmas, even though she was creating this silly drama.
Then, I called her and said: If this is how you want to play it, that is fine. You are invited, you are welcome and I am cooking. If you want to stay home, do that. You do you, and that is okay. Merry Christmas.
It felt like shaking off a cloak of heavy anchors. I am just going to breathe, and tell the fucking truth.
It is too late in the day for any more bullshit. Even admitting I am wrong is freeing. I promised someone a favor 5 weeks ago. I saw her in town. I started running back to my car to hide from her.I thought, What you are doing, you idiot?
I took a breath and went up to her. I said, I forgot to call you. I am sorry. Can I do it now? And, amazingly…..the world kept turning.
‘People get divorced every day. You will get through this.’
…exactly, but most aren’t fighting for their very lives…assholes.
People GET DIVORCED all the time. Agreed. However this is NOT a regular divorce. Grew apart or fell out of love or incompatibility are not the same as cheating on your spouse.
Oh, I forgot my favorite one from my sister: “It happened because you didn’t sleep naked with him. Ed and I sleep naked.” (Uh, gross, they’ve been married 40+ years)
didn’t you know sleeping naked can solve any problem in the world? hungry and broke? Sleep naked. Laid off at work? Sleep naked. have an asshole for a sibling? Sleep naked. LOL
And that is gross in many ways!
That’s complete and utter bullshit. PreyingMantis and I slept naked, and from what I now understand, there was never a time when there wasn’t cheating. In fact, when we met, I was probably an OW (one of several, I think) but didn’t know it until well after our divorce. Amazing the stuff you find out after the fact. Your sister just doesn’t want to think it can happen to her. However, denial just prolongs the agony.
That person is a whack-a-doo. I think cheating has very little to do with actual sex. Perhaps there are sexless marriages where the couple has not slept together in years and years. It is still a betrayal, but you can frame it in some way that has a calculus to it…someone just wants to get off or have human contact.
Even if a couple has lost that initial stomach flip and aching lust, (which is normal), partners who are invested will absolutely try to get that electricity flowing, and make sex exciting again. As a couple. No third parties involved.
But, I can tell you my ex and I had amazing, sizzling sex. One of the first things he said to me after a period of no contact was that: He really missed the sex. It was about his ego. And punishing me. And finding someone who never questioned his judgment and lifestyle. And he got off on having a secret from me, and chumping me. No question.
Causing me pain made him happy. I witnessed it to many times, on both the micro and macro level, to not know that humiliating and making a fool of me made him very very happy.
And how scary is that?
Carmela, this: “Causing me pain made him happy. I witnessed it to many times, on both the micro and macro level, to not know that humiliating and making a fool of me made him very very happy.”
It was in our marriage from the beginning. Causing me pain. Punishing me. For all the mommy issues that he had and projected on to all women in his life before, during and now after me.
Let me though disagree with you on justifying cheating for the sexless marriage and wanting human contact. We were practically sexless once the cheating started, about a year into the marriage. This also coincided with his big promotion and building a foreign representation of a global company. Lots of overtime. Lots of international travel. So whenever I approached him at night he would literally push me to the edge of the bed, put a pillow over his head and yell at me that I should fucking leave him alone. He did not get enough sleep and rest in between international conference fuckings and emotional and physical bond with the AP whore so no energy left for this pesky wife in her early 30s wanting sex and bonding. After quite a long time of degrading, humiliating and distancing me I gave up any hope on sex. I was joking once saying we had sex once every quarter and this was about right. But I attributed it to his fatigue, work responsibilities, travels and also thought he was more of an intellectual type really not into sex. Another comment of mine once with friends, I said, My husband would never cheat on me not because he loved me or anything but because he would rather prefer reading his newspapers than planning and implementing a cheating- something which requires meticulous planning and deceit and time management.
He enjoyed every second of it. He firmly believes his mom cheated on his dad with her now 2nd husband but this is not true. I have heard accounts from many other people re divorce of his parents. But this blame he put on his mother for sth she has not done is the guilt that all women have to pay for. I just happen to be his wife so I am the easiest target to demand justice from for all the suffering he had endured in his teen years from his mom’s betrayal.
And then when we started our long distance living after 6 years the sex got fiery when we met twice a year. I was elated! He finally showed interest! And we slept naked. And did every thing possible in sex (except bringing a third person in bed which i resisted firmly to). Yes, this was another advice from wiser older women to allow all things and never say no to anything so he wouldn’t look outside. Which i did. I was a firm believer my marriage was cheater proof. It was not perfect. It had ups and downs. But it was affair proof. Because my husband is a man of integrity, thank you very much.
There were times when i was seriously considering to leave him for his constant ego-inflated emotional abuse. He himself proposed the divorce twice for no reason other than feeling that he “could not make me happy.” “I TRIED AND I FAILED IN MAKING YOU HAPPY!”. Oohhh how i cried when i heard this repeated multiple times. The blame was on me again. He tried. But i was sooo critical, controlling, nagging , demanding that he failed….he failed….thank God he did! Little did I know of his web of double and triple lies.
It does not matter how much sex you have, how good or bad it is, how open sexually you are to experiment….a cheater will find a reason. I lived a sexless life for first 6 years craving for a human contact. I did not cheat. I lived the next 6 years in a long distance marriage literally obssessively counting the nights we had sex (10 nights out of 14 together yeyyyyyyy!! And a total of 30 nights out of 50 days a year we saw each other- pretty good!) I travel internationally with my job and have ample opportunities for one night stands in hotel rooms that no one will ever find out about. I never cheated. Period.
I was also told by a female friend of exhole (that I assume he was screwing at one point due to patterns I had seen) that if I “hadn’t been such a jealous bitch, this wouldn’t have happened.” I had to state to her several times that I was not jealous of the OW. I was pissed at his blatant disregard for my feeling a and our marriage. And had every damned right to be!
Yes, this is what I struggled with in my marriage. I always thought I was overly insecure, but when your husband seems to be more attached to his female coworkers than to you as his wife, it’s normal to feel displaced.
Lyn, I have said it many times, we were married to the same chap.
And me obviously – trusting and unsuspecting – then whamo…..
I still laugh when I think of the woman in my church who suggested I, “watch a little more TV” to replace my lost family (ex left right as kids moved away from home). It was such a vapid statement, like telling someone to put a bandaid on their crushed leg and everything would be fine.
Calling men chumps!
I’d love to hear stupid shit men hear from friends and family when their wife cheats.
Us women get the same shit– no pretty, not nice, too demanding, you made him cheat, you own 50% of it. I’ve read through the comments and it makes me sick.
Curious to hear what men are told.
Men are usually attacked via emotional and/or money routes.
“You already divorced her in your heart.”
“You should have given her more attention.”
“You’re so angry (Nevermind, anger is a healthy response to being abused and violated by a cheater).”
“Show me the money.”
You get the picture….
I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve not heard very much in the way of “stupid shit” like most of the other commenters here. The worst I’ve had to deal with are Switzerland friends, but even there it hasn’t been too tough to deal with.
The only thing I can point to is a comment made by the woman who runs the local storytelling events that I participate in (see https://www.chumplady.com/2016/10/the-stranger/). You may recall that Creepy Writer also suddenly took up storytelling over the summer, and participated in a workshop run by this woman, so she is familiar with him.
When we got to talking about him as Kunty Kibbler’s new partner in asspounding, she actually said, “Yeah, well . . . he’s edgy, I guess. Know what I mean? ‘Edgy’?”
She quickly backtracked and started telling me what a nice guy I am, etc. I give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she was looking to offer up a possible explanation that might help me make sense of it, rather than making a comment on any lack of ‘edginess’ on my part as if it were a character deficiency.
Don’t feel bad. I wasn’t “edgy” enough either. I took that to mean being flexible about bad behavior.
He’s edgy alright. In a I-should-be-locked-up kinda way. Guessing the woman in question had had him too. KK is a freak, dude.
I’ve always heard the not enough attention bs. Even heard an associate pastor in a small group (men) give advice on how if you pay attention to them they will never stray. Guess he should have told the pastor at my brother’s church whose wife left him for another woman! Guys I know that are divorced were almost always told emotional reasons for straying, etc. I am thankful to know the women here didn’t cheat even though the received emotional abuse far beyond anything I could even intentionally do. Just recognize it for what it is, bull-shit for excusing their lack of character and values.
Said by our couple therapist after my chitin’ wife said she saw no hope in continuing:
“You should have left her before all this happened”
Wha?
“Why stay with someone who doesn’t love you?”
Also:
“I know why you never made enough money. You wanted to see if your wife really loved you”
How about this one from so many Swiss friends:
“Wow! Everybody’s getting divorced. My friend Sally…blah blah blah.”
Gee, I’m nothing more than example of a semi-interesting nationwide phenomenon. Everybody’s doin’ it.
I got chumped and dumped by my 45-year-old wife at the age of 62. Two kids, 6 and 10. My older brother said, “You’ll find a lady in her late 60’s to take care of you within 6 months. I guarantee it.”
My wife’s therapist wrote in her blog: “Quite often, it is not the person who has the affair that is the problematic one in the relationship.”
I remarked to my wife that she had put her kids in jeopardy of experiencing exactly what she did when she was a child. He therapist was aghast: “He’s MORALIZING?!!?”
Ha. So your therapist thinks the third party is the worst one in the marriage? Ha.
This therapist is unhinged, man.
Sounds like there a few therapists who deserve to be below ground.
Tar & feather crew–are you guys making a list?
My favorite statements came from the whore herself. About a year ago she approached me and stated, “it’s time we made peace”.
Evidently, she is a Christian woman who believes in forgiveness. When she was told he was a serial cheater who led a double life she responded with, “he will never cheat on me”.
Two and a half years later he’s still cheating and devaluation has set in. She is getting therapy to work on HER issues and the Limited, that ‘good guy’ is making her out to be responsible for losing his entire family.
I see a discard in her future.
Karma
Shared this one from my ex-MIL before….We were talking about my cat and how I had commented in her daughter’s presence how the cat had taken care of me. Something lie the following ensued….
XMIL: Do you need someone to take care of you?
Me: That cat has been more faithful to me than your daughter.
Crickets.
Hmmm, let’s see, there are so many plums of wisdom:
1) He must not have loved you
2) All black men cheat
3) Just move forward (within weeks of it happening)
4) At least you didn’t have a baby with him (when I was miscarrying)
5) There’s a reason for everything
6) It could have been worse
7) He wasn’t that good-looking anyway
8) You got spared
9) Wow you sure pick winners
10) All men cheat, just get used to it
11) Were you not giving him any sex?
12) Maybe he felt smothered
13) Your neediness caused him to cheat
14) Your expectations are the problem
15) Just give him some time
16) Stop trying to control everything
Some of these things wouldn’t be bad 6 months after the cheater, but in the direct aftermath? No, they were not cool.
K, I have a black friend who says that all black men cheat. I told her I hope that is not true. She has now moved to dating “white” men, believing this would be the magic talisman that would provide fidelity. I tried to tell her as gently as I could, that white men absolutely cheat.
When we have to eat that shit sandwich, it is comforting to make this broad brush statements. It is worse to acknowledge we mated with someone who has maggots where their character should be.
How about the best responses?
“That sucks. What an ass.”
“You did not deserve this. What he has done speaks volumes about his character and who he is as a human being.”
“Let me bring you dinner”
“What do you need?”
“How about I pick up your daughter for school each morning”
“Do you need a girl’s night out?”
“Let me watch your kids so you can go to counseling or a support group meeting.”
Surround yourself with these type of people and distance yourself from the others. Right now, YOUR healing and survival (and your kids) is what is important. Stay focused on that.
My best response was from the mother of a friend, “How was he successful at seduction? He was always such a sourpuss.”
I also got a nice reaction from (surprisingly) the mother of our best-friend/Switzerland friends. XH & I had visited her with Switzerland friends several times and always had dinner when she came to visit. She said a couple of really nice things, all the more so because she was sort of a peripheral friend, you know, so I didn’t expect much. — She said, “Well, you know, he never was very deep. He’s fun to be around but there’s not much to him, you know?” And when I told her the whole story, which her Switzerland daughter had not told her (no surprise, I guess), she looked shocked and said, “It’s so…unilateral!” I could have hugged her, I was so grateful that someone “got it.”
Unilateral is my new favorite adjective.
I like how her Switzerland daughter did not fill her in on all the details. Why do people protect cheaters?
My ex-wife is a charming, intelligent, high energy narcissist with admirers, so I dealt with some solid Switzerlands.
So, kudos to Ann, a friend of my ex’s who I ran into at a grocery soon after it all went down four years ago. I expected Switzerland and got “don’t worry”, she sad about my ex and her AP, “they are hollow inside and have no souls”. BOOM!
It was like finding water in the desert. Thank you Ann.
After 38 years and seven years since D day and the usual betrayal, theft of money, etc.
(ex) friends – there is ‘another side to every story’
‘ he was a good provider’
another friend now also ex who took the moral high ground and our friendship with it – I couldn’t talk to you if you took him back (too much too soon and showing little care or what I thought or felt)
my sister after a year – I am tired of hearing about this, you need to get over it
my mother – the other day after a long time being supportive – he must have been very unhappy, your (adult ) children were the problem (one Asperger’s, one with incurable chronic illness with acute phases) they took up too much of your time
On the good side:-
my MIL – he is a rotter, I didn’t bring him up like that, I don’t think about him anymore….. This after 38 years of competing for his attention. But all power to her – at 100 she still knows what is right.
From the MIL who was a hugely important mother figure for me, we were super close: “you never waited up for him with a hot plate of food! Not once! He didn’t feel welcome at home.” Excuse me??? You expect me to provide him a hot meal anywhere between 3 and 6 am when he stumbles in drunk and high? And I have to be up at 5:40 to take daughter to school and go to work? All the while he has a $1000 per month drug and alcohol habit? Fuck that noise. Biggest irony of it all: when i would get upset about the drinking and pot, he would be like, “it’s not that bad, at least I’m not CHEATING on you!” Come to find out he WAS cheating too! ????? I’m rid of him now.
I got the “at least I always come home to you” – ohhhh LUCKY ME!
Lol yep. #winning
From my mother not long after Dday 1 – any woman worth her salt would know if her husband was cheating.
CN is full of people worth their salt.
Hope that was a glitch and that your mom isn’t always a judgmental bitch.
I do think people spit back out things that they have heard and/or internalized. That doesn’t excuse their rudeness or the hurt they cause.
Oh, and this one I still hear five months after the divorce is final, from our still married friends: “I would love it if (insert their husband’s name) wasn’t home and I got to be home alone!!” THEN I remind them that shithead is not away for a week and I live alone PERMANENTLY. OHHHH, then they get it. Just for a minute and then the blank look returns.
MIL, two days after D-Day (and first thing she said to me), “oh Cheater is really upset. I don’t know if you can feel sorry for him?”
Mind. Blown.
My MIL said something similar “he is miserable”.
Only when he was at home dealing with a loving wife and reality, instead of off banging the slut puppet without concern for bills, or caring for his mom, or have his lawyer wife figuring out the quagmire of his IRS debt, unpaid tickets, revoked license, etc. Reality being he was losing the wife appliance who paid for everything, including his hair transplant, the car he drove off with the slut on their fuck fest “tour”, the beautiful home for him and his mom, a wife who took care of his mom when he was too busy fucking other women……yep. Misery.
Now that he bamboozled a fan into doing a contract for deed home, and the IRS after him (thAnk you injured spouse form), and a car payment, and being the sole “breadwinner” as a struggling musician, With his first baby on the way (at 45) with a drug addict 26 year old slut puppet musical partner, I hope he is miserable.
MIL, less than a week after D-Day, “Cheater still owns half the house, you know.”
Your MIL is a prize.
I had a falling out with my MIL several years before – I called her out on her crappy behavior and the way she treated my kids as opposed to her other grandkids who lived closer to her. Since then, she watched her step around me. I have had no contact with her for two years. I made it clear to my STBX that I was glad to be shedding myself of his whole dysfunctional family, and apparently he passed that message on. I know that makes it easy for him to lie about me to them, but I reached meh about them immediately.
Did you reply, “Not for long” ; )?
From my mother – ‘you didn’t train him well at the beginning of your marriage’ (he had been sleeping with male prostitutes and watching endless porn for at least 5 years of our marriage ) – not sure what I suppose to train him on . . . to be straight, not to watch porn?
From my female neighbour – ‘I support you so I will not engage with your ex but my husband feels he must reach out to him and do things with him because he must ‘keep the lines of communication open in case he ever wants to come back to Christ’. Christians with no backbone and a weird twisted commitment to ‘love they neighbour’ even if he is repetitively abusive to his wife. ‘The Bible is not calling me to support the abused wife but I MUST support the abuser.’ Such twisted interpretations!
Ha, my mother had a similar reaction, as if people are “trainable.” I find this idea so outdated and sexist, that a wife manages her husband’s sexuality somehow. And that if our man strays, we are somehow wanting or defective in some aspect of our wifely duties. It implies we are somewhat lesser of women. Sorry :/ Most churches I believe support people leaving marriages in cases of adultery, untreated mental illness, addiction, abuse etc.
The male neighbor is gay, too
Both of you were beards (she still is).
Now “back to Christ” is an even better beard than a wife…
I’m 2 years out from DDay, and people ask me why I read Chump Lady. They don’t get it. My picker was severely broken. I do NOT want to pick another dumbass. It’s traumatic to find out your spouse cheated. He crushed my dreams, destroyed our family, left me with all our debt, i’m still having to deal with his family at Christmas (this was the last one), he wouldn’t sign the separation agreement so I had to hire a lawyer and to go court 5 times. I do NOT want a repeat of that. So yes, I still read Chump Lady. Even though I have created a new life for my son and I, I haven’t forgotten what i have been through. I am still learning how much of a Chump I am so I read for me. I need constant reminders of the red flags….because they are subtle and the abusers can be charming at first.
I also had someone say to my face that I should forgive the Whore. I think I wrote to CL about it. I was livid. We all agreed, she was a cheater herself.
And I’ve had people ask me what my part in the destruction of my marriage was. That one puts me in such a rage I can’t even speak. I just look at them and they know I want to throat punch them. I thought we were a TEAM. I thought our marriage was good and strong. I’ll tell you what I did do….more than my fair share!! Grrrrrrrrr
I’ve not been asked “What was your part in the destruction of the marriage?” If I ever get asked that, I will say: “I was stupid enough to believe KK when she said she wanted to explore other relationships with the express purpose of strengthening ours.”
A Switzerland (male) friend who said to me about the OW and my ex, “She’s been looking for a man for years. They seem very happy together.”
Another Switzerland (male) friend after I admittedly talked too much: “Stop talking about your ex. That’s why he’s an ex. You don’t see anyone else talking about their ex, do you? [Well, yes … actually I do. I know a lot about your ex!!!] NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU, CHAMP.” [Ouch!]
A female friend: “It upsets me when you talk about him. I can’t sleep at night.”
His mother: “He holds you in high regard.”
But, the best ever response is when I’ve talked to my creditors, income tax, anybody I owe money to, and they actually give me helpful advice, tell me things will be okay, not to worry. Some say, “Been there, got the T-shirt” and tell me that they’re doing fine now, and so will I. One company said, “Don’t pay us this month … pay [another company] because that will show on your record; we won’t show.”
So, apparently it’s not true that no one cares about me!!!!
One sister: “Maybe you forgot how charming he is.” Another sister’s first response when told of the affair, said sadly: “Well, I guess we won’t be seeing (hubby/cheater) anymore.” On the other hand, MIL called her son a “dumbass” and told me I’d always be family no matter what happened.
One male therapist, in a private session with me when I asked if I should confront hubby/cheater: “No, that’s like catching your child with his hand in the cookie jar then asking him if he took out a cookie.” Same therapist (in joint counseling session with hubby/cheater), upon hearing he went to France to vacation with OW: “What was your airfare?…Wow, that’s a good price.”
A nun, recommending reconciliation: “Let’s just put the affair away on a shelf.”
Male doctor, when I went for STD testing: “It usually takes two to cause a bad marriage.” When hubby/cheater went for his testing, same doc asked him, “How did the Viagara work?”(This was not the doctor who prescribed it.)
Some of the children (there are 5, all out of the house now): “The holidays are going to be awkward. Who should we invite for Christmas?” “The divorced women I know are so bitter.” .
Daughter, who wanted us to reconcile: “Maybe God is working through me.”
Oldfool, you’ve got a handful! These are horrible people! It’s so pathetic when the therapist asked about the airfare to Paris – you actually made me laugh! Who gives them diplomas???!!!
Maybe “Daughter” needs an old fashioned trip to the woodshed.
Is she mentally ill? Or just an insensitive little brat?
I would propose a fifth category:
5. Hidden (Jealous) Chumps:
I mean, we all know this whole phenomenon is a lot more invasive and insidious than any of us ever suspected, right? So what’s to say that these people we’re seeking sympathy from aren’t chumps themselves, maybe living RIGHT NOW in a relationship with a cheating partner. Maybe they sit smoking their Hopium pipe, Pick-Me dancing, handing out kibble like candy on Halloween… and their jealous. WE are leaving! WE are standing up for ourselves and saying, No, this is not acceptable and I will not tolerate being treated like this! — And they can’t or won’t do it for themselves.
So if we just settle down and stop making a fuss, then we are less of a reminder to them of the better life THEY could have for THEMselves.
I totally agree. This should be a category. I remember right after my DDay and I told people at work, there was one woman in particular that would ask me all sorts of questions about my situation. Come to find out she had busted her husband sending and receiving inappropriate emails to a woman. She became the marriage police and she was basically trying to convince herself, in talking to me, that she had him under control. She desperately needed to believe that she could manage that situation. She saw that I made the cheater leave, how devastated i was and it terrified her. But life looks different for me know. And she is still with him.. And I bet he is still cheating…..
Yep, I think there’s a lot of that. In my case I didn’t leave, he left. So being upset and outraged, after a year of pick me dancing, will make the cheater leave. At least what some hidden chumps probably fear.
Kiwi, spot on! “Being upset and outraged for a year will make the cheater leave!” Yes!!! You rock! It’s often that I feel something but cannot put it into the right words. You just did it for me.
His resolve to save the marriage vanished in the air right after my first outburst. 1 month after, to be exact. Not even a year. And just one outburst. When I “arrogantly and self-righteously infringed upon his freedom of expression” and expressed my frustration with regard to his conviniently forgetting of my birthday. For the 12th year in a row. This has been a matter of principle for him: he does not celebrate bdays, holidays, christmases, NYE’s, mother’s days…all because poor him was deprived of that after his parents divorced. And he trained me to not expect. But then I discovered all the niceties he did to the AP on her bdays. Expectations came back with wreckonciling.
So one week after that outburst he rekindled his relationship with a former colleauge. And even told his friend here about his new love. He was usually very discreet with people. There was only one friend in London knowing the inside outs of his life and the AP. I used to refer to this friend as my cheater husband’s first wife, me being the second. This guy was too intimately aware of everything and they were going boys vacationing fuckfests together, swapping women and comparing notes through skype every single day. This friend is now getting married for the first time at 45. Wants to have a child. I sincerely wish him to have a cheating wife. A heartache. Because he also had a hand in my husband’s cheating while openly encouraging and supporting this instead of trying to stop. He was not married out of three close friends and needed to have a fuck buddy so my cheater was a blessing for him.
The fact that the cheater started speaking with others is telling me he is gradually losing it. Maybe alzheimer’s is on the way? Like it struck his narcissistic dad and kept him rotting in a wheelchair for 15 years? Karma?
P.s. i say this and then hate myself for it. I am not really that vicious. I don’t want him to rot. My son enjoys being around him those short precious moments after many months of being with me only. He sometimes does nice stuff..teaches him something…all i want is meh really.
“arrogantly and self-righteously infringed upon his freedom of expression”
LTC, your cheater is simply the most arrogant, pompous fuckwit on CN. He wins the trophy hands down. He even beats my traitor for wasting intelligence and education on vicious mind fucking instead of making the world a better place.
His circle of friends sounds just as bad. Glad you’ll be getting away soon.
Nwbibio
I think you are on to something here. If you tell people you have been cheated on especially by someone like mine ‘a nice quiet guy’ then you can see that they suddenly feel a bit thoughtful about their own marriages. I think this is the fear behind some of these comments. Like whistling in the dark if you hear a sudden noise. That’s why they want to somehow feel it was something to do with you and it still couldn’t happen to them. I have had to remind some when they are talking about how they know their husbands couldn’t cheat on them that when they first found out about mine they were very shocked.
I don’t get too many comments now but I occasionally say that I am sure their husbands dont cheat and for sure they know who he calls, he doesn’t lock his phone, they know where all the money is spent, they know where he is and what he is doing and with whom all the time right………
Yes. great point. I think a lot of folks project onto this situation. As if it’s catching, and maybe as you say, they’re in private what we are publicly. Please Chumps, come out of the closet!
I *know* this is true.
I have a friend whose daughter told me the whole sordid tale of her father cheating on her mother. I will call the friend Betty. I heard about Betty in high speed chases, following her husband to catch him cheating! Of spy equipment, having friends watch their house, of husband sleeping in his car ( I did not have the heart to tell the Daughter her father was not in his car for two weeks…he was with the 24 year old he was fucking.)
When I talk to Betty, I told her I have PTSD from being betrayed by an affair. I know she was cheated on, and that her husband gave her herpes.
She stares at me with a dead, flat look on her face. She shows no emotion, empathy or encouragement. She acts like I am talking about eating moon rocks or riding a dinosaur.
I want to slap the shit out of her. I cannot betray her daughter’s confidences in me, but I am not playing fake with her anymore. She dropped off a Christmas gift. I said Thanks and shut the door.
Two that I hate:
“What doesn’t kill you makes uuu stronger”
“Someday you’ll be grateful for this”
While these may both be true, there are times you just don’t want to hear it…
Oh yes the stronger one. Hear that a lot.
Also, no one ever died from divorce. Hate that one. I did die..a piece of me died as did a piece in my kids hearts. People can be so insensitive!
My cheater told me both numerous times. Yesterday he started, “WELL…one day, after everything is loong in the past…” and I interrupted him and conitued, ” I will be grateful for your cheating and lies and glad that it happened?!”..he said, “No, you’ll be happy to have discovered yourself. I helped you with that.”
Go discover yourself, you pathetic mindfucker loser!
I don’t know how you can stand that arrogant prick LTC. How much longer do you have to stay before getting back to Canada?
10 days and counting. The good this is that I don’t have to see him throughout the day. I position myself on the beach separately and mind my own business.
Another sort of dday hapoened yesterday with his close friend here. I told him everything – he did not know all this since last year. And he first tried to “protect” me by reassuring that all this is love is really happening in my cheater’s imagination until I told him to stop mindfucking me and he then told me that my cheater actually confessed to him about his recent love (a different story than his AP). This happened a week after he came back from canada where we were supposedly wreckonciling in the summer. Arrggg.
So the friend tells me to be “doctor of the family”!!!
Grrr, I want to strangle them both. Is this a particularly fucked-up-men dominated country, or is it just your cheater’s circle? What about the women?
Yes, kiwi, this is a totally men dominated country. Although my cheater grew up in Canada and when I met him he struck me as such an adequate person. He came back here after the university and got stuck with his ailing father but mostly fighting with his step mom over his father’s properties which he now rents and lives off.
The cheater’s friend had his big share of women but since he got married and settled at 40 he did not cheat on his wife. And he had plenty of opportunities by being in a hotel business, travelling, while his wife here is also a foreigner with no support system and language skills. He knows my husband is acting as a jerk but keeps pressuring me to postpone a divorce filing for another year for “the sake of our son”.
My 19-year-old son freaked out and was in the mental hospital for 19 days. We couldn’t figure out what the hell had happened. THE DAY he was released, he had told me about finding his father’s fuck phone. NOW it made sense why he had flipped out.
I was telling a ‘friend’ (I no longer talk to her) the story and she said “What else was going on in his life? There had to be more than JUST THAT to put him in the mental hospital. WTF? I looked at her and said, what the hell would you think if you caught your dad cheating on your mom and confronting your dad and your asswipe father basically tells you that it will be YOUR fault if mom and dad divorce? I think I would go crazy with that knowledge – knowing my dad is pissing all over my mom and I need to tell her he is making a fool of her! What a bitch.
Poor boy. I hope he won’t hold himself responsible for that shit…it’s good he opened up with you.
I think your friend was jealous that you have a son who is so decent and caring that he was nearly destroyed by what he discovered. Treasure that boy!
Just this past week, someone said, “Well at least he is going to see the kids on Christmas. That is something. You shouldn’t be so hard on him.”
This after he left to go visit his side of the family without even seeeing if the kids would want to go along to see their grandparents, aunt/uncle, cousin. He came to the house for a few hours on Christmas Day. Then left without making any plans to see them over the rest of their break (he is off of work, too).
It is as if people do not want to believe someone could be a bad person, so let’s give them kudos for stopping by for a couple of hours to see their kids. Sorry. But that is still being a crappy dad. That is still leaving 99.5% of all parenting to me.
I have just realised reading these posts that “At least…blah, blah” is something I say a lot. Trying to focus on the positive. Never really thought about how hurtful that could be in some circumstances. I guess I have said a lot of stupid shit about a lot of things too.
Kiwi
We could start a club…….
Yes Cap! I just talk too much. I should just shut up and wag my tail. I wish I were a dog, I could make people happy all the time and feel happy within seconds of being miserable or scared. Only a dog can be so happy to see you that its whole body wags, not just the tail! A dog will comfort anyone and not say any stupid shit…
Kiwi and Capricorn, don’t be too hard on yourselves. This comment came from a friend. One I know supports me and wants to see me focus on me and not him. She, like you, was trying to be positive. I have done the same to my kids on occasion. “At least dad shows up at some of your games.” When the reality is he does but then leaves at the end of the game without even talking to them.
I don’t want to live in bitterness, but at the same time, I don’t want to keep spackling either. Nor do I want to lessen the bad crap he has done to me or the kids. Still trying to figure it all out.
Kiwi
Just struck me that our honesty and ability to question our own motivations, flaws and well, literally our selves may be part of our chumpy problem. This post is about the stupid shit people say to us but almost my first thought was – all the stupid shit I have said to others and then I go straight into thinking about excuses and rationalisations for why people who do say stupid shit to me might not be so bad. Could this be a habit we have of devaluing ourselves? First we look to ourselves for the source of the problem and second if we find the source is someone else we try to make them feel better about being shit to us. I do have a problem being angry with my cheater. But why is this. He destroyed me. No fault of mine. I always try to be ‘good’. It’s obviously my fear of being disliked by anyone thanks to my psychopath mom twisting me into pretzels to try and get her to like me and I took the blame for not being what she liked.
I really need to expect more form others and be less eager to excuse them.
Make any sense?
It makes perfect sense Capricorn, but I don’t think that a willingness to look at ourselves first when something goes wrong is a flaw. I believe it should be the default setting, at least that is the way I was brought up, probably through a solid Catholic upbringing. I lost the faith, I don’t think I ever had it really, but the values are precious. They are found in most religions when practised wisely: treat others as you want to be treated, examine your behaviour, be kind. It’s just that there are more people out there than I realised who do not function like this and are just interested in taking advantage of the good nature of others. The issue is learning to detect them early and not waste our qualities on them.
I have absolutely no difficulty in being angry with the traitor. He deliberately chose the most hurtful way to cheat he could think of, with his ex whom I had been accommodating for year, while I was looking after their child. Both of them know about all my miscarriages, both of them know how much I have looked after his four kids. I think he treated me (and others) appallingly, and his behaviour and the whore’s was sadistic. Some cheaters’ behaviour goes much further than selfishness and cowardice leading to talking absolute bullshit to cover their tracks. There is a vicious aspect to it, done to hurt as much as possible. That’s what the traitor did. He is not only unrepentant but hateful and destructive, and makes me out to be the devil when he left his first wife for 2 years with 2 little boys, ostensibly to do his PhD 350 kms away, hooked up with his landlady’s grand daughter while his wife was either pregnant or had just had a third baby, tried to get full custody of their kids and makes her out to be the devil. (I only found out all the details during wreckonciliation when I starting checking on all the bullshit he had told me). He split up with the whore long before we met (or maybe he never did and it was all a scam?). I repeatedly told him in the first year we were together that if he had any doubts or if there was a chance they might get back together, they should for the sake of their little boy, and I would back off. I was completely honest and tried to do right by everybody.
Maybe your cheater has not been as vicious. Mine has. If he had cheated with a stranger, or multiple sex workers, I would look at it with more forgiveness, I would accept that he can be tempted and weak willed, stupid, selfish but not vicious. Instead he deceived me, used me to raise his kids. The whore used me as a free baby sitter for 9 years. She never had any child care costs, was able to focus on her career, borrowed money off me, borrowed my car for WEEKS, lied about having a full driving licence, so my car was not even insured when she borrowed it ( I discovered that last year). My timetable was arranged around her work schedule for 9 years. I bent over backwards for these two. That’s why I talk about exploitation. I was systematically taken advantage of, while I was doing my best to keep the family happy, to help them have an easier life and harmonious shared custody of their son.
I have been in bad relationships before, with cheaters. I have never encountered this level of calculated nastiness.
So when it comes to the traitor, after a year of wreckonciliation during which I uncovered more and more deceit and calculated cruelty, I certainly don’t look at myself first as the cause of our relationship problems. I did for the first 6 months after DDay, but over time what I discovered became more and more outrageous.
Maybe I don’t need to be less eager to excuse other people, just be better at detecting sociopaths.
I agree that it’s not a flaw to look to ourselves for how we might be contributing to a problem. Sometimes I’m jealous of people who can be so clueless or oblivious or insensitive, even when it’s brought to their attention. — Or people who “never make mistakes” and nothing is ever their fault. Even at work, when there’s a miscommunication, I always wonder, “Did I misspeak?” I mean, I MIGHT have, right? I’m only human and I do make mistakes and I can’t be 100% sure I didn’t say nine o’clock instead of ten….
But mostly I’m proud to take responsibility for myself and my actions. I think the world would be a better place if more people did that. I’m currently renting a house which has (in not even three months) had a broken wood stove, a broken snowblower, two shitty potato-peelers (seriously? Just throw them away!), and a court summons try to be served to me on behalf of the landlady. — Have I heard even ONE apology or expression of sympathy from them? Nope. Every time, it’s “Well, what are YOU doing [me] to cause this?”
If that’s what it means to be a chump? I’m proud, for not the first time, nor (I suspect) the last.
Yeah, NW! What ARE you doing to the poor potato peelers?!
I don’t know, but whatever I’m doing seems to have zero effect on the brand new one I bought, which works perfectly! 😉
Most of the beneficial nutrients in a potato are in the skin. You can use this as an excuse to not have to peel! 🙂
I could be a member of that club.
I had a neighbor tell me about friends of his who were divorcing but chose to live together in the same home until the kids were grown, because it’s “just so hard to see a family split”, and suggested I consider doing the same.
I heard “It takes two to tango” more times than I could count.
I heard “There are two sides to every story” (code for “we believe the narc”)
I asked the prayer team at my church to help me find peace during my divorce and they refused, instead praying for reconciliation because that’s what G_d wants
I was threatened by my MIL that if I left I would end up alone because no one would ever love me
The list goes on and on
Oh, the 2 sides to every story is CLASSIC!! I hate that one!!
Yes, you are correct. There is his lying, cheating disgusting lies and then there is my truth….there you have it!!
Ignorant people!!
Thank you for this. My thoughts exactly. For a moment I was tempted to show them every bit of evidence I had of his infidelity, financial abuse, drug use, etc. But that would have just made me look crazy. Better to cut them out of my life. No need for these types!
The cheater gave me that yesterday. When discussing divorce he told me “well, there is two sides to it” and I said , yes, you and your whores”. Then he said, “it does not matter now, we both arrived at the same decision that the marriage is not good for both of us and we should end it.” I said, “no, you did not like the marriage. I did. I know it was not perfect and we had our share of problems. But I did not cheat. You did. So you drove me to this decision to divorce you. If it was up to you, you would be still eating cake being married to me.”
Fucker.
Clare, If you are a member of the tribe, like I am, rabbis ARE THE WORST people in the world to receive marital counseling about adultery. It is big blind spot in Judaism. It is the triumph of form over content.
On Chador and in temple they say all the right things, but if you actually go to your temple for marital counseling, they will never advocate divorce. I repeat- they will never tell you to tell the cheater.
In Jewish law, if a man withholds sex from his wife, and he is not ill, he owes her retribution, money, for each day she is deprived. This is usually what rabbis suggest, that the man pay the wife for his betrayal. They will also try to blame shift, and intellectualize the cheating, or broad brush it.
It makes everything more agonizing with an entitled and usually male rabbi sort of scolding you about the state of your marriage, when you are shattered. A horrible mindfuck. I would avoid at all costs.
I’m not Jewish, but I’m sorry to hear that they, too, practice victim blaming and wreckonciliation!
Oh, how I wish I was Jewish right now. He didn’t touch me for the last 7 years of our marriage. Let’s see — 7 x 375 = 2,555 x say, $100/day = $255,500.
Me too! Hahaha! 12 years times 365 minus 2.5 times per year!
After no return call twice from my church I show up crying – tell the priest’s admin assistant the extent of my newly discovered XH’s cheating – one main AP, another he’d started flying to see, others he’d been dating (who didn’t know me and my children existed) and the crazy double life he’d been leading on his company’s time and dime for years…the priest ends up telling me “nothing is impossible” and hands me a marriage counseling brochure as he walks into a scheduled meeting. WTF! I liked the assistant’s words better – “all that and your first call is the church? I’m from Chicago – the first call I would have made was to a hit man”.
Oh – that and my XMIL – “Yes, but can’t you forgive him” – ummm….no, like you forgave his cheating narc father for YEARS and now finally cut all contact DECADES after your first D-Day! Exactly where he learned the behavior from – nope – not modeling that BS for my two sons!
Sometimes even stupid people say the right thing. My usually clueless and difficult FIL shook his head back and forth and told me that the Fucktard “never was no good.” He told him to his face too.
Survivor, And the truth is usually just that simple, isn’t it?
“Trust that they suck.”
“all that and your first call is the church? I’m from Chicago – the first call I would have made was to a hit man”.
Salvation can come from unexpected quarters…
The most common ones i heard (from my ex’s family’s side) were “Stop acting like a victim” and “It takes two people to cause a marriage to break down.” This was after asking for their help in talking my ex out of her horrendous lifestyle choices. I was so naive to think they would do anything. My ex’s “religious” parents (her father is an Anglican minister) even had the nerve of giving me a greeting card saying “May the love of God forever be in your heart, blah, blah, blah…” before cutting it off with me. Since then, they have pretty much denied that anything ever happened. Just as well. I can see now how my ex is just a caricature of the rest of her family – superficial and narcissistic.
“It’s been a couple of months. Just get over it.”–a friend
former friend?
My sister told me to “move on,” and I blew up after the 3rd time she said it. Didn’t talk to her for 6 months.
Yes, to both. Same here. The impatience, “get over it.” — Clearly these people don’t know what it means to be truly emotionally invested in … well, in anything, probably.
‘Im concerned you are so bitter that you won’t be able to recognise when he actually does things that are good and positive’ Wtaf?!
You deserved to be stepped out on because you did not pay enough attention to him.
Oh, putting him through school, working full time at my job and at home (because his down time was more important than his kids’ needs), sacrificing my career, moving every 2 or 3 years to support his career aspirations, giving him part of my inheritance to pay his bills, agreeing to remortgage the house for his business bills (later found out to be gambling,Ashley Madison, and toy expenditures), ignoring his constant absences while he networked for business (see the business bills above).
I’m also very curious about what his best friend did that x had to sleep with his friend’s wife? Must have been a really shitty friend and he must have dumped that shitty friend … but no x still works with and hangs out with the cuckold. Maybe the cuckold is still useful to him until he finds out about the affair.
No one “deserves” that. If it’s bad, try to fix it. Can’t fix it? Then leave. THEN find someone else.
“He didn’t mean to.”
The stupidest damn statement ever uttered by the stupidest enabling family member, ever!!
Yes, after 15 years he slipped and accidentally fell into every orifice of his old high school girlfriend and then proceeded to move her into our family home before my stuff was even packed!!
Poor guy, you should really feel sorry for him, He’s sorry, not sorry.
*Cue gag reflex*.
So a friend of mine of 30 years said he “wasn’t sure wheather he would talk/ be friends with the OM (him and his wife were friends with the ex too) him and his wife hadn’t made up there minds!”. That hurt. D-Day was 8 months ago for me. I Haven’t seen him or his wife since, dropped them like a stone. I don’t need that sort of disloyalty in my life anymore.
So a friend of mine of 30 years said he “wasn’t sure wheather he would talk/ be friends with the OM (him and his wife were friends with the ex too) him and his wife hadn’t made up there minds!”. That hurt. D-Day was 8 months ago for me. I Haven’t seen him or his wife since, dropped them like a stone. I don’t need that sort of disloyalty in my life anymore.
Sadly, even years after your divorce and you are living your life stress free, someone feels the need to ask you, what BOZO is doing and is he still in business and if he is where is it?
This came from a “friend” of mine of 40 plus years. I was stunned and not one bit happy. My reply to her was the last time he and I talked, he had me slammed up against a wall, with his fist in my face telling me he was going to kill me! (yes, I went to court and got a two year protective order, along with pictures of my bruises). My “friend” responded…well, that was a long time ago. I don’t care if it was 50 years ago, it’s something I will never forget and never should have had to deal with anyway. So, to friend of 40 plus years…Bye Felicia!
I think people put up with all kinds of shit they never tell anyone about. For all you know, maybe your ex-friend has been punched or beaten and thinks it’s no big deal. In this circumstance, I think we really can’t know why people say or do what they do, all we can do is decide where our own boundaries lie. And sometimes they lie between me and some of these people I used to consider friends.
“If I wasn’t here, you’d kill yourself” AND, “I’ll just have you committed”. What a total ASS he was. He’s not here, and I’m still happily living! Hugs…and Happy New Year!
http://www.intheknowwithro.blogspot.com
I got “you need to fix yourself up” if you want to get him back, as I sat there blinking my un-mascaraed eyelashes at her. Oh, if only I hadn’t gained weight and if I stuffed my middle aged body into “unflattering” (but sexy???) tight, low cut clothes, I could “win” back a cheating loser.Maybe show some ass, in some short pair of shorts. That one threw me for a loop. haha… And I sit there looking at her, thinking, do you even look in the mirror when you are applying that super thick line of eyeliner, that’s smearing as she speaks, or the bleeding lipstick on her mouth. But she’s “fixed” up and it is working for her……. right.
Cut that person out of your life, STAT! She is a freak who would tell you stick your hand in a fire.
I went to a Christmas party and there was a couple there who made me happy envious for them. They genuinely seemed to love each other: affectionate, not competitive, married for 22 years, worked as volunteer Meals on Wheels together, gave each other compliments, fixed each other a plate.
She probably weighed…..350? He was a normal size. He acted like she was a Queen. It is not about looks.
I think…he loved her! Those old marriage vows- he meant them! Start the presses.
She knows Halle Berry got cheated on, right? And Sienna Miller? — It has nothing to do with any of that.
I had lots of comments from otherwise supportive friends that betrayed their belief that if I had been nicer / made more effort with makeup etc that he wouldn’t have left. e.g. “I let my husband do all the travel and fun stuff he wants without nagging so he won’t leave me”… “why don’t you go to the hairdresser and get your makeup done and fight to get him back?” OW wears heavy theatre makeup and flowers in her hair with mismatched lurid clothes so it would have had to be a drag queen style makeover…my feminist heart sank when I heard that stupid and insulting advice.
And the usual “the problems in a marriage are always 50-50” – words of wisdom from the psychiatrist husband of a friend (turns out he is a cheater too).
Whenever I hear “there’s 2 sides to every story” defence of separation due to divorce, I say “no there’s not, one person cheated”
I mean separation due to infidelity
People can shove their mascara and make-up up their asses. What do men have to do? Nothing, really. This is about character, not appearance. Fuck them.
Ex MIL: “it takes two to ruin a marriage”
Me: “yes, your son and the whore”
Keep in mind she lived with “us”, even when her sociopath son was on a 3 month fuck fest “tour” with the slut puppet, paid for by me; living in a beautiful home paid for entirely by me. Even while we were divorcing and she was going out with Durt and the slut puppet, she was living with me. They couldn’t understand why I tried to draw the line asking that she not be out with the two of them while she lived with me. It didn’t matter. Her and her son didn’t care, and I couldn’t put an 80 year old woman out on the streets (in hindsight, I should have forced that issue and kicked her out. They are both users.
My dad, who means well and has always been loving, but is a bit of a doofus sometimes said “look at her. He couldn’t help himself.” Really? Yes, he could have. She may be 20 years younger than me, but she is also a stupid, lying, addict slut with daddy issues. Made me wonder if my dad is a closet cheater himself.
By the way, he started the discard as soon as we were married. He is also a serial cheater with a harem of gullible women who engage in sexting with him, as well as a number of side sluts/clueless ladies looking for love. Luckily, I know he does the same to the now pregnant child slut puppet. Congratulations on winning that prize! Now you are stuck with it forever.
PS I should change my name, because I gave up the hopium quote some time ago. Although I worry I would take him back should he deploy his expert hoovering techniques. I was #3, so he has many years of experience.
From X’s friend…he’s been cheating for 35 years, why are you making a big deal out of this one?
Me.. Because until now I didn’t know he had been cheating for 35 years.
From my son..he’s missing a part of his DNA, he doesn’t know his actions are hurtful, you know like serial killers.
“Look at her. He couldn’t help himself.”
I am deeply sorry your father said such a grotesque and horrible thing to you. First of all, I don’t believe her beauty is that amazing, or she would not have to poach married men. She would have her own husband and life, or be making millions off her looks, on Instagram or in the industry.
Second, did your husband look like a super model? Was he breath taking? I bet not.
I wonder when these clueless older men will figure out that the *only* reason younger women like them is this: money and Daddy issues. If anyone disputes me on this, I say:
Name a younger women/older man couple where the OLDER MAN is dirt poor and the 20 something female is supporting the OLDER man.
Crickets.
True. Fortunately for the karma bus, cheater Durt has no money. I am sure she thought he did while I paid for the car, the house, and all the toys. Now I am sure he is doing the sad sausage routine that hopiumrecovery took all of his money. Hahaha. Can’t wait until she finds out the truth! Life is going to get even more difficult then as they experience real life, with MIL in the basement, baby on the way, serial cheating, IRS tax liens…….twu wuv won’t last, although they will probably stay in it for a while to try and save face.
PS she is not a super model, neither is he. They are only supermodels in their own minds. When the world doesn’t recognize it, they pour and rage at the injustice.
Being cheated on and undergoing divorce, I discovered, is a very lonely affair (no pun intended – ouch!)except for CL and CN, no one really “gets” the extent of pain, anger, regret and stress . Other people’s clumsy words are amazingly hurtful and flippant . My own mother often told me I was the stupidest person to have married this devil, why did I have to inflict the divirce on my kids, I could not keep my husband, could not control my kids , was not a good housekeeper etc etc . Basically I was the root of all the cheating and lying . I worked, gave up my social life , chauffeured the kids, spent all my time with the family out of work. I realised that my mother is an abusive narc, criticizing and putting me down at every opportunity since I was young . I am an attorney by profession and I finally feel like I have had it with her . Feel torn with guilt between being filial and not being abused . First the narc ex and now the narc mother – sigh .
MMD. filial duty doesn’t include listening to abusive bullshit. You’ll be able to find ways to support your mother when she is very old and really needs it, without hanging around her listening to this crap. She may need money, she may need you to organise some care at home, whatever. You have every right to keep your distance and protect yourself. You would still be a good daughter doing this, especially since she has treated you this way and you are still helping.
This ! Good advice – thanks !
I forgot to add the comments people made suggesting I must have been a bad wife. My ex had blamed me, and I was beating myself up. I think some of the worst comments had to do with my looks. My ex commented, “What man doesn’t want a beautiful woman on his arm?” Then, my own cousin sent me a message that really brought me down. I cried so much I went through a double roll of toilet paper. He said, “…you are very, very overweight and you are a psychological specialist. Can you blame him/would you arouse you? I see all your posts about God this AND GOD THAT, BUT IN THE END, YOU ARE FAT AND GOD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT! It hurts to say that, but that is the nexis of your problem, You’re pretty WHEN YOU ARE THIN, but now you are repulsive. Quit posting holy scriuptures and go to the gym. Your mother would agree.”
So, appearance is the only thing that matters? Your cousin is a narc jerk who wouldn’t know love if it bit him on his tiny penis.
The blame:shame game is the most debilitating part of this nightmare.
Ohhhhh, I want to bitch slap your cousin!
Thank you! He isn’t skinny himself either!
That’s rubbish. The OW in your case is thinner than you. In my case she’s fatter and she’s dumber. In all cases, she’s a downgrade, whether it’s looks, intelligence, or something else. Morally she’s always a downgrade anyway.
I’ve lost 50+ pounds and he cheated after I got “skinny” so that has nothing to do with it. And STBX tells me I’m beautiful all the time. So that has nothing to do with it either. The whoremat is a disordered train wreck. She’s broke and has no boundaries she’ll sleep with anyone that pays her any attention she’s pathetic. I KNOW who I am and what I want. The whoremat has NOTHING on me! He’s the messed up one. I’m awesome. He sucks!
And I say, again, you know that Halle Berry and Sienna Miller (and many many other traditionally spectacularly beautiful women) were cheated on, right? It has nothing to do with that. — I suppose if he got cancer and lost a leg or an eye, that means YOU can fool around, right? Because he doesn’t look the way you want him to? — Fuck those people and their superficial judgements.
Therapist Chump, fire the fucking cousin! It blows my mind that close people can be so hurting.
You are fat? They want thin.
You are thin? They have nothing to grab from.
You are tall? They want petite.
Not tall enough? Then a shortie.
Too serious? You can’t have fun and enjoy life.
Too happy-go-lucky? Then you don’t possess enough breadth of knowledge and experience.
And in general, Therapist, we are nags, control-freaks, insecure, overweight (or anorexic), jealous, not understanding, not loving, unable to connect ( to the cheater’s poor soul), demanding, egoistic bitches. Nice meeting with you. I am also this!
Oh, and mine just an hour ago told me that he could not eat stale bread (me) anymore and so he wanted fresh bread.
Therapist Chump, go NC with that cousin of yours!
So you’re fat, why the f he/she feels he must tell you that??? That is bullying!
Cheating has nothing to do with the person cheated on. It has everything to do with lack of character!
Trust me, your weight has no play in that. If he did not want you because x, y, z, then the normal way to do it is to get a divorce. Tell it to your face (if he had the courage!) and get a divorce.
What he did? Went behind your back and started a new life? Who does that!?!?!
Let her have him! Will get interesting when he’ll find some fault in her!
My husband found a cheap prostitute and ended up moving in with her. There’s no sense in what he did and I shall not compare myself to that! There is no comparison! All there is to see is a f*ing coward!
Thank you all!! I am having trouble replying to all of your comments individually on here from my phone. Our preacher’s response to my ex was, “Well, you don’t look like no Brad Pitt.” My ex gained weight and started going bald as we got older but I did not care. My friends and family have apologetically told me he was not good looking and I could have done better. He married one of the OW, and she has put on a lot of weight (not judging her), I just wonder how he will handle that. Oh, he picked me all apart. He said I worked too much, yet liked me bringing home more money. He complained I hadn’t finished my dissertation, but my mother completed suicide and he started his cheating while I was working on it. Kind of hard to focus during all of that. He complained I had depression. Yet he was struggling with a porn and sex addiction I knew nothing about. He said I criticized too much (e.g., complaining when he didn’t take the trash out after I asked politely several times). The list goes on. I am so glad I found CL. You members of CN are amazing! Thank you for your support!
My friend upon learning he cheated on me, “Maybe they are just friends and it’s not what you think.” When I have solid proof he was lying to me. Why not just listen instead of giving some stupid quick fix?
My friend/coworker upon seeing the OW in a picture, “She’s beautiful!!” Gee, thanks for that.
And for the record, all this stuff about “forgiving” kind of drives me nuts. Can’t we just come up with a better word other than “forgive” because to say I “forgive”someone who cheated on me, gaslighted me endlessly, caused me to lose my job and suffer from depression for a year and a half, and got sick twisted enjoyment out of betraying me all while watching me unravel is not forgivable. It’ something I will “process” and “deal with” to move on with my life, but “forgiving” him isn’t in my cards. There really should be a better psychology term than “forgive” in this situation – it seems absurdly antithetical.
I agree. I gave him “forgiveness” the first few d-days. I am shooting for forgetness or irrelevance or overness. Better yet, I am hoping to find me, and learn I have value. Never forgiveness. He deliberately targeted, groomed and then abused me. Not only that, but he did the same to my family. If I forgive that, he has crossed the boundaries again.
Forgiveness is for you, blah blah blah. I am glad that works for some, and I understand it. For me, I need to heal myself, listen to my instincts, and fix my picker.
I struggled for a long time with “forgiveness.” I confess it surprised me when it snuck up on me more than two years after the fact. Admittedly, I had a “light sentence” as CL says, with only an exit affair, no hookers, no STDs, no stolen money, no violence… no kids. I was very lucky.
Ultimately, for me, the forgiveness is that I realized he’s just a fallible human being and not the person I thought he was or would become — that was all me, painting those qualities on him. They were never really there. Unlike some here, I don’t think XH was out to get me; I think he was just weak and cowardly and superficial, and so he exited in the only way he knew how, and goddamn if anyone was gonna stand in his way, so he was as hurtful as possible so there was no way I would ever want him or take him back. Shallow, selfish, cowardly… Sad that I chose such a person, but I can forgive that. Not to his face, and I still want absolutely nothing to do with him, and if it turns out a bus falls on him tomorrow morning, I’ll do a little jig. But … for me, forgiveness just turned out to means something completely different from what I thought was being asked of me.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!! I hate the bs about forgiveness being for yourself. I will NEVER forgive. It’s deplorable, reprehensible, disgusting, indulgent, despicable, dishonest, evil, the list of horrible adjectives goes on and on. In the end, this one person who you’ve ENTRUSTED with your emotional and financial wellbeing has decided you don’t matter and are only there to serve them as they see fit. Forgive? NEVER! Accept so I can move on? Yes, I’m working on that as well as the PTSD this has caused me and my beautiful daughter.
What I learned from this experience, it is important to let the wounded person talk. Just listen. It’s plenty enough.
Unless you’ve been through this betrayal, you can’t possible get it. So why come up with idiotic stuff? Just shut up and listen!
In retrospective, the greatest help and support I had from someone who revealed at the last moment that they have been through the same shit! Wow! Mind blowing. When they felt like telling me details, I just let them talk.
“Sorry to hear you guys could not make things work out…prayers for both.” …..blink blink blink….words fail….
Whenever someone tells you that her husband cheated on her, just say this, “Asshole.”
Lol well said. I do smile when I hear that reply.
His mother, “you have to take your share of the blame for the relationship failing.”
My reply: “I refuse to take blame for a relationship based on lies.”
MY MOTHER (who said the worst shit out of anyone) “I knew all along he was an asshole.”
“I would never have stayed with him as long you did.”
When I reminded her she stayed with my cheating father for 28 years she said, “That’s different, we had a been together 28 years.” EXACTLY! THAT’S MY WHOLE POINT!
My mother again. “My friend was involved with a narcissist, she always seemed to be a really intelligent woman but she got sucked in.”
My reply: “She is still an intelligent woman. ”
My mom again: “My friend is with a narcissist but I dont take his shit.”
My response,” That’s because he tailor’s his abuse to his victim. If he wanted you he would tailor his abuse for your insecurities”.
I got so sick of trying to correctangular stupid I just gave up.
“You can be friends” ROFLMAO yeah right
MIL on why I should take any job even cleaning to pay all my bills including daycare of our toddler while STBXH surfs and naps and has no money: “He has problems, he is an alcoholic.” spackle much
Sweet huh.
Let me guess, he sleeps on her sofa? Let him be his mommy’s problem!
The way things arrange themselves is sometimes sweet 🙂
This was his friend…supposedly my friend too.
First, she said she does not want to interfere in our problem.
Then, she told me to “get help!”
Lucky me, I’m not ever gonna see this person in my life. She lives in a different country and I know I’ll not take a trip to see her. So I packed all the crap she sent my son as present, put it back in the ugly envelope from her (with her unreadable hand written name and address) and sent it to her!
I don’t need any stupid reminders of her stupidity! I KNOW she’ll get it! Either the envelope, either karma, she will get it!
This has, by far, been the worst year of my life. I am sitting on my sofa just bawling. I am jobless, nearly penniless, most everyone believes what he did to me was my fault because he is an amazing liar and his life is all good while mine is falling to pieces. If I am to believe in Karma I can only assume that I am a truly horrible person for all of this to be happening. Now that I am out, NC for almost 4 months I see the truth and hate myself for letting it all happen. People do not understand, my dignity was stolen, my light does not shine, and today I just wish I could fall asleep and never wake up. That is my truth.
Angie, you have no idea, but this has been the worst year for me as well.
I live with my parents with my 2 years old son. Looking for a job… I can’t afford to be depressed or let myself defeated. I’m a mom! Please don’t feel depressed!
Karma is not about punishment, is about learning. Some lessons are harsh.
SBXH has been recently promoted, while I’m jobless. He has everyone fooled and I can’t say a word until we are divorced. But you know what? I give 0 fucks what they think of me! I’ll have my say and I don’t care if they’ll believe me or not! I’ll shine the truth upon his actions and call it a day. It’s not under my control what people think. I choose to focus my energy on little things I can control: the time I spend with my son, what I add to my CV, my wardrobe…
So please don’t feel down. This is a hard lesson, and I think it’s mostly what we can learn about ourselves. You made it until here, you’re awesome!
So sorry Angie. I understand your pain. 3 years for me. Just divorced in June. We’re here. Message if you need to vent
Angie. Me too. I live with my daughter. My cheater would like nothing better than to see me penniless. Please don’t give up.
Angie, we’ve been where you are. I am sorry you are right in the middle of it and suffering. It’s totally unfair. But hang on hour by hour, read CL, read the FUCK thread on the forum, let the gallows humour of CN and the compassion get you through. It will get better. You’ll still have moments or days of despair, but they will get fewer. Yes, he’s trying to destroy you. So don’t let the bastard win!
Baby steps, do one thing a day that needs doing and is challenging, write down that you have done it. Then move on to bigger challenges and keep a record of every challenge you have faced. When you get too scared and too sad, look back on your list of achievements. Before you know it, it will be quite long. Do simple things for yourself, get a little sunlight on your face by going for a walk, eat your veggies and fruit, you need to have nutritious foods. Do something you couldn’t do when cheater scumbag was around because he didn’t like it. Reclaim your freedom.
Angie, your dignity was not stolen, he stole his own dignity and destroyed it. You were dignified if you pick me danced because you did it to save your marriage and your love. You are dignified when you grieve for your marriage and your love. This is dignity and loyalty. Don’t hate yourself, hate him! Big hugs.
Angie, this time last year I was where you are. In fact when the ball dropped at midnight on New Year’s Eve last year, i was sobbing because I was so relieved that the shittiest year of my life was finally over. This is all pretty new for you but please believe it will get better. You must fight now, for your life and your future. My marriage ended after 28 years and I had to start over in my mid 50s, and I realized that the rest of my life was going to go by pretty quickly so I didn’t want to waste much more of it feeling sad. It can be a battle every day, but I try to find something every day that makes me happy. Just take it one day at a time. Do something today that gives you joy. Hugs to you.
In my case husband decided to have affair with one of my friends. When told of this my brother in law said “It’s a he said, she said situation.” No it’s not. It’s a fact. Then he said “I’m hoping this can all be resolved and life continue as before” really…
pay attention, your husband has smeared you already and accused you of adultery: “he said, she said situation”
He’s voicing his hopes in case he gets caught…
As a therapist, it hurts me that many of you have experienced unsupportive or inexperienced therapists. Like any profession, there are rotten apples out there. I have an amazing therapist. I know it can be frustrating at times trying to find an appropriate therapist. I just don’t want anyone to think they are all like that and give up on therapy, When you find the right one, it can be life changing. I wish you all the best. Hugs!
My best friends asked me round to dinner a month or two after d-day and me kicking my man out of the house. So I’m having dinner with these two couples who have known me for most of my 27 year marriage and we end up having a philosophical debate as to whether it is the right or wrong thing to inform your partner about an infidelity even if it has happened only once. The 2 couples think that it can be the right thing not to inform your partner if you feel that it is in their best interests not to know. My view is that it is always the brave, courageous and ethical thing to inform them so that they are not being patronised but are in full possession of the facts. Could not believe that my friends should a) have these views and b) express them to me, especially as I was the only member of the group who had experienced the pain of being subjected to this patronising lying.
I don’t have many people in my life so I still see these people socially, but I don’t think our friendship can ever be the same again.
Leli, your friends are scared. It’s safer to live in denial. Maybe one time will just stay at that. Maybe it won’t repeat. Just close your eyes and pretend you didn’t see or hear it.
I don’t even blame people. I was one of them. I thought if it was once i rather not know.
I have changed now. I want to know it all. But it takes courage.
well said that people are scared of the truth.
My philosophical dilemma is whether I would have forgiven my husband for a one time straying, for the sake of my child. Luckily or unfortunately, I had no choice: my husband has moved in with the affair partner. The details are gruesome, but to simplify, it wasn’t a one time stray. He did not keep his pants on once, twice, for the period of the affair. Case closed!
Leli–I’m not sure how far out you are from D-day or divorce, but you will find that the second ring of hell is sorting true friends from semi-clueless friends. You may retain both as ‘friends’ but only the ones who ‘get it’ will stay in your inner circle. Some semi-clueless friends can be educated (e.g., one friend did learn from me to ALWAYS tell a spouse, even if anonymously, that their partner is cheating. I was able to convince her that we all deserve to lead honest lives, and that, no, spouses do not always “know.”). Other are un-educable, and will not be able to stay in the inner circle. This will be painful; you will want them to validate your feelings and experiences. But, sadly, it will not always happen.
My MIL told me – of course our daughter is angry – her parents messed up her life!
Uh no… her dad – your son – messed up her life by screwing around with his 22 yo coworker, denying he was doing anything wrong, then abandoning his family, taking his daughter to new home with coworker, and telling our daughter that she will lose her home because I am out to destroy him financially. While he buys diamond rings, rents expensive house for expensive truck, and the list goes on. Mind fuckery and deceitfulness on her son’s part. But then both of his parents had multiple partners and multiple kids. I told my daughter – look at your partners family history to see what is acceptable to them. Then decide if that is acceptable to you.
Earlier this week my mother (who has done a great job up until this moment) out of the blue walked up with a gorgeous and delicious cake. “Would it be weird to give this to him?”
Note that she lives over 500 miles away. This would mean me hand delivering it to him when I get home from the holidays. COME on.
Two gems I’ve encountered:
1) from my immediate family: “at least your not going to be miserable the rest of your life, now…” …so true…
2) “Stop fighting so hard. You’re fixated on winning these little battles…but sh!t – you’ve already lost the war. Move on…”
From a friend who was herself divirced but not from cheating – “allo? The divorce has been finalised – what’s the point of ruminating and feeling amgry ? …”. So when people die, what’s the point of feeling sad ?
And from an emotionally unavailable mother from all my years with her – ” I don’t want to talk about that person!!! ” well , not that I want to be wasting brain space on him either but it’s only been 5 months out from DDay and 1 month from the finalization of the divorce .. And who’s the one being divorced here again!
How about this stupid article full of chumpity advice: http://www.christiantoday.com/article/xxx.church.shares.3.ways.wives.can.help.their.porn.addicted.husbands.on.their.road.to.recovery/103370.htm
It’s one thing when someone wants to act like a chump. It’s another when they dispense this stuff as godly wisdom.
One of my favorite comments after I decided to leave after 18 years of infidelity was when I told a friend who already knew about the adultery that I was filing for divorce: “But he’s not BEATING you!!” Same woman had refused to divorce her husband who’d been living with another woman for three years, but paid all of my “friend’s” bills and came over to her house every night to eat dinner with the family.
omg, my father said that to me also, “Well, he doesn’t beat you.” And when I mentioned about the cheating, he suggested I put up with it since he earned good money. This is terrible advice and putting up with disrespectful, abusive behavior is simply soul death. When I got divorced, I did it without my family’s support and had to stay away from my parents because I was already doing something very difficult and scary.
One of my biggest losses is trust.
Tempest talked of the levels of loss you go through after D Day. First your husband. Then his family, his friends, your mutual friends. All gone. Even some of your oldest dearest friends. Your children, shared family times, celebrations, finances, home, reputation, the future. So much loss.
And we all get so many trite stupid unkind or downright cruel comments that basically all tell you the same thing. You are other. You are not me or mine and are unacceptable unless you behave right (do a,b or c) and/or become right (be x, y or z – delete according to particular outlook).
Victim shaming and blaming.
Well f*+! dat.
I lost my trust and faith in humanity to be honest. I remember once reading a book by Prof James Lovelock on a beach in Cuba which should have been heaven but was not as he was sloping off at every opportunity to text his latest floozy, all the while berating me for complaining as it was all for work, work which was paying for our fabulous holiday.
In the book, James Lovelock made the point that we should not be surprised at the parlous state of our world given that we are the most successful species of predator the world has ever known.
And the winners get there by lying stealing cheating and bullying.
And most of the world wants to stand by the winners. The cake is best at that buffet.
I was lucky enough to have a fabulous little old Irish lady therapist early on. She told me my nice middle-class married friends would all dump me. I didn’t believe her at the time but she was right. My world had no place for a spare difficult sad and yet not entirely unattractive or unthreatening single female. So I had to go.
I used to host lovely dinners and throw massive parties and my home was full of people I barely heard from afterwards, or if I did I got a version of all the lines you’ve put down. Horrible stuff. And my life emptied out. But there they were, just a few true friends and they were the most wonderful support as I rebuilt. A smaller more lonely and much more honest life.
So now I look for the losers. Those at the margins. And I enjoy the honesty. I work at winter shelters and help out with the aged. Ask old people about their love stories and the rights and wrongs of their lives. Some of them are still deluded and narcissistic and lie to themselves and anyone else about their pasts, but for many of them all of the nonsense has fallen away and they speak honestly about what was right and wrong and their part in it all. This is not my way of saying you need to look at your contribution to marriage breakdown …Oh no, cheating is 100% the responsibility of the cheat.
Seems to me that the vast majority of humanity is involved in a shit board game of lies and powerplay. And I’m only interested in those who have stopped playing it. Kids too, they are only just starting the game and I love their company and wisdom.
I am a hermit and a mad cat lady and my trust is shot to pieces. Still I go about my new business just fine and I have no regrets now. I care deeply and respect and move on if that is not reciprocal. Why would I want to be back in a life where 99% of the people in it did not care about me at all? Their comments to you tell you all you need to know. Listen and learn.
Thank you. Your reply hit the nail. You are very articulate and right. I felt the pain, I experienced the same journey as I’m sure many others have. Thank you for inspiring me. All the best in the new year.
Beautifully put.
“To heal we have to surrender our egos”
FFS
I was in a supermarket a month or so ago, having an awful, uncontrollable sobby kind of a day. Resenting the hell out of my situation (partner not admitting to affair, I’d just moved out of our home, was having extreme panic attacks & great difficulty eating etc etc). Despite my best efforts, I fell apart at the checkout, when asked the obligatory, “How are you today?” I sputter-wept, “My partner is cheating on me”, to which the checkout operator replied, “Aww, don’t worry, there are plenty of other fish in the sea”. I was gobsmacked.
Other fish weren’t what I was wanting or needing. Other fish would not lesson my terror in my new world of total chaos. Other fish in the sea was irrelevant to the desert wilderness gasping thorn-infested abyss vacant nothingness shitland hellhole I was in. Other fish wouldn’t solve panic attacks/ eating problems, or my sense of betrayal or trust issuez. Other fish is the worst reaction to someone weeping at your checkout ever. Gah.
RLC, I feel your pain. I was told by the cheater today all this..”Don’t worry..you will find the partner that you want. I just can’t be the one.”
I got this from a stranger in the beach yesterday to whom I poured my heart out. She told me she went through several divorces and it’s hard but I just have to put this behind and look forward.
The cheater is now pushing for “let’s stay friends for the sake of our 9 year old. Just let it go.” I told him I can’t be friends with the person who stabbed my back for 12 years. Not with a person that was planning a life with the AP and her daughter and did not exit our marriage only because she chose to stay in hers. I can’t be friends with a person who never cared about me. Never loved me.
I told him I was ready to put everything behind me and reconcile but he did it again. How can I be friends with somebody who just does not stop?
He said….”You are a great person….i just don’t know why I don”t have any feelings to you.”
The best and only good advice I took from marriage counseling when my then husband told the counselor I was his best friend, ” Friends don’t to that to friends.” That one phrase has stuck with me.
Oh I have a couple doozies on this one. This post really resonated w me. Even though I am a few days late to the party, I have to add mine.
From my mom: “I’m so lucky, I never had to worry about that with your dad.” (Implication being, I did so much better than YOU in the man dept.)
From my best friend: “are you sure you want to divorce ? It’s really going to be a nightmare out to be dating at your age.” Implication being “All the good ones are already taken.”
Same friend, different time: ” I think if I found out my husband was cheating, I would still stay with him because I just love him SO much.” (“My love is way bigger than yours and so is my ability to forgive).
I should say that in all fairness, I still refer to this person as my best friend, because she was really there for me the whole time and I finally told her, much later, how these comments hurt at the time. She took it well, apologized profusely and seems to understand now how hurtful those comments were. And also, the dating pool turned out to not be a nightmare for me! I’m better off now and have a much better guy, and I think she admires my courage that I didn’t listen to her bad advice and believed I could be happy again even if other people didn’t. I choose to think in spite of her dumb comments, that her intentions were good. For the most part her actions have shown this and I’m glad shes still in my life.
As for my mom, my response to her was to just look her in the eye And say “isn’t that just so great for you.” Since she’s a total Narc, I don’t think it really even registered how big of an asshole she was being, but it felt good to say it.
Sigh. I too had long time frens telling me things, out of very good intentions, i am certain , which really hurt. “well, you know that you have to please the emperor, for the sake of the future of your kids” – you know like we are still living in the Manchurian era. I was gobsmacked by how archaic her thinking was. Well, if that’s the way the wind blows, then I am prepared to remain single for the rest of my life. Equally hurtful was “I know it’s sad but you know, it’s really very very common (for affairs) to happen.” then goes on to say how she has frens who have overcome the affair and continued. Why? I wanted to scream. Why put yourself down and live in fear for the rest of your life , simply for reconciliation. and then she goes on to say that her husband loves hanging around her and accompanies her to reunions and gatherings all the time. Still not very sure how that was relevant to the conversation at hand.
Besides the stupid shit which our frens, frenemies and enemies say, I have found myself shedding the fake people from my life. it was like a sifting process. life has been pared down much much . I feel that I can breathe easier.
And to the Ex who pleaded ” can’t we remain friends? ” – I told him that even friends do not betray each other – no, I can’t. not ever. Friends do not gaslight, lie, manipulate and withhold information for months on end while pretending to be part of the family. Eat at the same table, live in the same house. I could never get past the deception inflicted and the terrible sense of betrayal and loss. Not in a million years. Time and distance may heal the pain but what is broken is lost forever after I have seen the monster behind the mask.
That’s the thing about infidelity. There is no going back once you cross the line. Be prepared for all hell to break loose once you sell your soul to your needs. And even after years have passed, you realize that you were such a POS for doing what you did – especially to your kids.
And one more thing I’d like to add, in case anyone is reading this thread wondering what the right thing is to say to a friend of yours who has found out they are being cheated on and/or going through a divorce.
The right thing to say, is “I am so sorry. I know you are in pain and I am here for you. You call me anytime. Is it OK if I check in on you frequently?” Then,do it. checking on them. Be there for them, and be prepared to listen through the pain and tears. Remind them that it will get easier. And of course if they don’t know about chump lady, send them here.
hear hear . well said. and very compassionate as well.