I read the news of a murder/suicide in Philly this week with a sad horror. Jennair Gerardot, 47, confronted the woman who was having an affair with her husband, Meredith Chapman, 33, and shot her. Then she turned the gun on herself. Two women dead and the cake-eating bastard who enjoyed the competition of two women is still very much alive.
Like many chumps, I can imagine the dark place Jennair Geradot was in. I’d like to tell you I’m above acts of retribution and vengeance — but after I was betrayed, I certainly imagined them. Vividly. Hourly. For ages. I’d like to tell you I’m above the Pick Me Dance, that no cheating asshole is worth my dignity and self-respect — but I danced. I tried to prove my worth to a worthless person. I know exactly how desperate that feels.
I know what it is to be gaslighted — to have my reality assaulted every day. No, I was never there. I never spoke to her. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You have issues. You have to get over this. When in fact, he was there. He was fucking her. He was lying to me.
And I know what it is to snap. I never knew myself capable of violence before. I never spanked my child. I never got in a fistfight. I’m a granola-headed liberal arts major. But one day, when my cheating husband screamed at me — an inch from my face, a man who left loaded guns in the house to intimidate me, a guy twice as wide me — when that guy screamed at me, that she’s a better lay, that her tits were huge — whatever he could say to humiliate me and take me to the brink — I boxed his ears. The college self-defense class must’ve kicked in, I went straight for the ears.
He fell over. And the look of shock on his face. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve also never regretted it. That cognitive dissonance — who I am versus what I’m capable of, whether that’s abject humiliation, or acts of violence — scarred me. It’s what’s leftover from infidelity. Wow, I was insane then. That mindfuck nearly killed me.
Which is probably why I fight the infidelity mindfuck every day on this blog. Don’t you succumb to the crazy. GET OUT and go NO CONTACT and realize that absolutely no good comes from engaging with cheaters.
There are so many mindfucks to fight too. The mindfuck that divorce makes you damaged goods, that you’ll never love again, that single parenting is less than, that being single is less than. There is so much FEAR fueling the fight to keep abusive partners, fear stoked by the RIC.
I don’t condone violence or revenge. I actually think it’s very un-chump like. Most chumps hurt themselves and buy self-help books, not guns. Most chumps are the victims in these sorts of toxic triangles — the obstacle who must be snuffed out. But I understand the Dark Place after D-Day, the insanity of grief. I wish Jennair had found us and reached out. This is what I would’ve told her.
1. ) These feelings are FINITE. This overwhelming despair and anger will fade. It is FINITE. You must channel it now to escape, but you will not always feel like a raw, exposed nerve. You will not always want to cry. In fact, with enough distance and time, you will feel mortified that you ever knew the cheater, or that this psychodrama was your life.
2.) Killing yourself and killing her will NOT MATTER to your cheater. In fact, the guy is probably crafting dating profiles right now. He’ll use the tragedy of your death, and her death, to great Sad Sausage effect. Poor him. Can you heal him? Can you be the Special Someone who can compete with your ghost? He will continue to hurt women, to triangulate them, to be a narc. He was NEVER a prize. Anyone who would goad you into a competition, or eat cake at your expense, is not someone who loves you. He doesn’t love deeply, and he doesn’t grieve deeply either. Why would you kill yourself over a shallow puddle of a man?
3.) The OW never mattered to him. You weren’t special to him, but guess what, she isn’t either. If it wasn’t her, it would be someone else. And then what? Are you going to shoot every woman that slips him her business card? She was shiny and new. Shiny fades, new gets old, the discard comes. Had you left him, she would’ve led your sad, off-balance life. Wondering about the competition, never being secure in the pick me dance…
Killing her just made her a martyr. And you’ve inflicted unspeakable pain on innocent people who loved her. Who didn’t deserve this pain. You did what narcissists do, by making your pain the Only Pain That Matters, justifying the harm you do to others.
4.) The best revenge is living without him. Don’t stay locked in his centrality. Don’t let him be the last person you ever love again. He’s NOT that powerful. Do NOT worship that false god. Get out there and live a good life and invest in people who truly care for you. The Pick Me Dance cannot impress him, but you not needing shit from him? You succeeding wildly without him? THAT impresses (and infuriates) him. You’ll only see the fury (stay no contact), but it crushes his narc soul to know he doesn’t matter.
Crush his soul. Save yours.
Now the cheater’s dilema, which funeral to attend?
So very sad, tragic really.
Just this week many have read of the horrific happening in Toronto where a “crazy” randomly killed 10 and injured many others in a rented white van at 1:30 in the afternoon. It is stated that the killer was aiming for, and many of his victoms, were women. He belonged to some cult that were against bonding with a woman. A very brave officer was able to capture this weirdo alive. I doubt he will talk much.
I learned after the happening that my youngest daughter had flown on an unexpected business trip, to Toronto and had been on this very street just a few hours earlier than the tragic happening.
I am so thankful she is alive. I watched a news clip on the youngest victim, a beautiful young woman, who worked in a very prominent business building, out for a stroll on a rare beautiful weather day, during her lunch break. Now her life is over. How sad for her loved ones and for this senseless loss of a life that was so full of promise. All information is not out yet, but it is said most of his victims were women. He was out to kill women.
How does society feed and cloth this “crazy” how, how, how……….
It doesn’t appear that Minassian was necessarily mentally ill. He was angry and misogynistic. He made references to being an Incel (involuntarily celibate), a toxic sludge of entitled self-loathing men who see happiness as a zero-sum game. They stoke their rage in an echo chamber of half-baked “evolutionary psychology” theories and revenge fantasies.
Revenge for what? For society somehow conspiring to keep them from having all the sex with hot young women they desire. That’s the justification for murdering those who may be happier than they are..this bizarre sense of righting a cosmic wrong.
I keep hoping we’re near the end, that this explosion of rage by the historically privileged is the sign that unearned privilege is having its last desperate gasp. I’ve got to find hope somewhere, I guess.
Stepping up on a soapbox: (disclaimer, I am not a scholar)I
I am hearing the word privilege more and more in cultural discussion. Kind of a buzzword these days. I think what is missing is that privilege is historically something to be earned through lots of behaviors which include good behavior, respect and hard work. We have come to a point where people confuse privilege and entitlement. I thoroughly believe that fuckwit was very aware that his ancestors and even his father worked like mad to overcome poverty and discrimination to the point where they were part of a more privileged class. He benefitted from that and grew up with these people but I think the privilege became entitlement for him. He did not work for what he had and much was given to him. ( he would argue that) He certainly never knew the poverty his father did of not having indoor plumbing as a child and working to help put food on the table from a young age.
Madeline Levine’s “The price of privilege” was a real eye opener for me. She talks about the pressure and stress on wealthy kids and the problems it causes but I would argue that it doesn’t take being wealthy in America to have this problem, it is a problem of the middle class too. Maybe that is because the middle class in America are rich compared to the rest of the world. My guess is that may be the case in most industrialized countries. I plead ignorance.
These so called privileged cheaters are abusing their privilege and it then becomes entitlement which is a big problem.
Amen on your discussion of entitlement. I see it every day in my profession as a teacher; some students seem genuinely surprised when they are told that the school rules apply to them. Some seem to feel that they can behave as they like; only lesser folk have to behave, I guess.
I have heard about these young men who are “involuntarily celibate,” and their mindset makes me ill. You’re not entitled to sex from anyone, to sexual attention/flirting from anyone, etc.
It is frustrating to see that as victims of sexual harassment and abuse come forward and share their stories, there are members of the population that are completely on another planet, thinking they can take sex when they want, and if no one wants to give it up, well then, they deserve to die. We are regressing from being enlightened, rational beings.
The middle classes of America live like princes compared to many people on this planet. Just think: hot and cold running water (INDOORS), along with comfy indoor (non-stinky) toilets, bath/shower (indoors), warm beds, more food than they need, electricity, on and on and on…
That’s privilege.
The sad “Incel” have just decided that they are justified in their anger because they can’t screw any woman that they want, and women are evil because they will not allow themselves to be used simply as sexual vessels for the Incel.
Well, I have news for the Incel, apparently. The Chads and Stacys they rage against are a vanishingly tiny percentage of the 7 billions of humans on this orb; the rest of us have our own faults and flaws, just as the Incel do. What are the Incel doing to make themselves more desirable? Are they educating themselves, developing interesting hobbies, playing sports? If not, why not?
It’s like most narcissists: it’s everyone else’s faults if the Incel don’t get what they want. As my mom used to say “Cry me a river.”.
“Now the cheater’s dilema, which funeral to attend?”
Hysterical ???? !!!!! Made my morning!
He will need to bring a date.
Somehow, I’d be willing to bet he already has one picked out.
NOW I.C.
“He will need to bring a date” – OMG -so darkly hilarious. Which is what we must be here, for we exist in this place originally due to deep wounds to the heart. To survive, gallows humor is mandatory.
We get it.
I just read of another woman murdered by this piece of trash,
A beautiful single mother of a little boy. She started her first day of work in a school cafeteria and was on her way home, on Yonge Street, in Toronto, by subway, home to her little boy.
No heart, no soul, this piece of trash.
What do we do?
A close friend told me it is because we don’t show enough love to all people.
Help me, help us, to understand, what do we do, what can we do to make our world a better, safer place.
What,Can.We.Do.?
A neigbour of the alleged murderer said it was obvious by casual observation that this young man was mentally not well. Sadly some internet sites provide a hotbed for very twisted thinking.
Peacekeeper, please please please post
Now the cheater’s dilema, which funeral to attend?
on the Washington Post comments!
It is priceless
One of my cheater’s affair partners lives in Toronto. The one he was fucking 20 years ago when we were dating. The one he ran to when he abandoned his wife and daughters.
The cheater should be rarred and feathered in the public square, or vilified on social media, put on blast world-wide as a cheating scumbag.
I hope their families put him in check and refuse him at both services if he dares to show up
Just learned a new word this week-incel.
Refers to an involuntary celibate (usually young men) who are full of rage because they are not getting the sex they think they deserve. Reddit had to close down their community due to inciting violence against women.
Sheesh…
that started with the MRA people, mostly men but also some women who hate feminists and believe women are more than equal. A common complaint is that women can get sex whenever they want but the poor men cannot.
Dear Peacekeeper, hug your daughter for me. Glad she is OK.
Thank You for your kindness Her Blondeness.
She texted me” Mom, this has taught me we must live each day to its fullness!”
So very sorry for the many lives lost and for the families’ sadness.
After I found out 3 years ago about my now ex wife’s cheating I felt rage and fury like I have never done in my life. I can see how easily people who are cheated on can snap and something regrettable occurs. And regrettable it is for the Chump because someone who cheats on you is simply not worth wasting one more second of your life on and you certainly wouldnt want to end up in jail for a worthless waste of space. As oft said, best revenge is a life lived well.
Interesting comments below the original article. Some blaming the wife, but plenty commenting that the Cheater probably got what he wanted, a divorce at zero cost to himself, the OW? He can find another.,.
Lack of pick me dance on my part made the ex so mad he kidnapped me after our children went to school. He tied me up, tried to drug me and when that didn’t work he put me in a choke hold twice til I passed out..hauled me across two counties. Said he was going to shoot himself because I didn’t fight for him from the ow. I was luckily found the next day and he got 30 yrs in prison. Good riddance. That was 2 yrs ago and we are doing great!
Wow!
I am so glad you made it through that! You are mighty!
What a freaking psychopath.
thank you..I could’ve ended much different..two orphaned kids.
Only two years ago! Hugs to you and the kids. Most people will never understand this level of trauma (and I am happy that they will not), but it changes your world forever and you live in a place where few reside. You are so mighty!!!!! He is locked up and that offers some relief. Continue on great soul!
Oh. My. God. I hope you will be advised if he ever gets paroled?
OMG. You’re incredible. The strength it must’ve taken to get that guy behind bars. WOW.
Hardest part…OW still visited him in county jail and his court hearings..hasn’t written one word to his kids..we were married 15 yrs.
You are so very lucky!! Thank God you survived. I know 2 women who were murdered because of infidelity. In the last murder (made into a Forensics File show) the OW waited for the murderer and they married when he was finally released. Sick. I’m sure this is the much more common scenario than what happened in PA.
Wow, I think you literally did dodge a bullet. So glad for you. I hope those 30 years he got are in the US. If it was in the UK that bastard would probably be out in 10!
Glad you are still here and not a statistic. Good for you, you are mighty indeed. I know how tough it is rebuilding your life after something so horrific. You go girl!
Tessie, you sure do.
livedtotell, what a great handle you have. It works even if we don’t know your horrific story, since chumps are survivors of soul-killing betrayal, but in your case it’s also literal.
And if you ever get a chance to meet Tessie, you should!
Oh Boy! Behind BARS! Now THAT is what I call NO CONTACT. And you are incredibly mighty!
I feel so sorry for your kids though, to have this creature as a father. I lament everyday the idiot I gave my sons for a father.
My thoughts are with you Lived!
LivedtoTell–I’m going to join the chorus of voices lauding your mightiness, not only for living through that trauma but for getting to the point of “doing great!” now.
And a note to those in the throes of leaving an emotionally abusive cheater–you are at greatest risk once he realizes that you are serious about divorcing or breaking up. Over half of all women killed, were killed by romantic partners. Take precautions, even if he has never been violent before.
I add my voice to Tempest. Ex escalated from rages to attack, set me up to go to jail for DV and nearly shot me before I got away. Be careful if your cheater is a rager.
Oh my goodness, LivedtoTell!! You are such a BadAss!!
This would make a great movie.
So interesting that he (maybe they all do) needed the pick-me-dance. Really needed. As in would freakin go out of his mind (which he did do) without the pick-me-dance. And you were all calm: nope, not gonna do it.
He was, “Not even if I strangle you!?”
And you were, “Nope.”
He left you to die, you’re so meh, it’s just a footnote almost in your story.
My hat’s off to you, Madame BadAss
OMG my X threatened to shoot himself (couldn’t hold a job) even the white trash Ho dumped him, I hear he’s about to marry someone he met on Plenty O Fish, ROFLMFAO!
Been there. Have managed to not do that.
Several weeks ago, Tracy, you wrote something that continues to resonate with me.
“Please don’t die because of a Fuckwit.”
Duly noted.
I am curious to watch this unfold. The story doesn’t add up.
– Why would the husband say he went to the OW’s house solely because the OW didn’t meet him if he also got a string of texts from the wife detailing her plan?
– Why would he only know the OW was inside and say “my wife might be inside” if he had this aforementioned string of texts?
– Why would the wife put on a disguise to take public transit to the OW’s house only to break in and “lay in wait” to kill a person then commit suicide? What, someone on the bus would see her and say “Hey, Jennair, are you going to Meredith’s to kill her?”
It just all sounds so fishy. It won’t surprise me if the husband turns out to be more involved.
SAME! This happened in my town and it is all anyone is talking about. So much of this doesn’t add up.
I feel bad for the mistresses’ husband though. Poor guy has barely been mentioned in all of this and he was very much a victim too- cheated on and his wife was publicly murdered.
Ugh. Now that cheating shit head is free to find himself another chump, as if this story wasn’t tragic enough.
Unless you are protecting your children, there is no human being on this planet worth killing another human being over, least of all a cheater.
The ex, in an attempt to make light of my discovery, made a flippant remark about me hurting or killing the OW. I told him that he wasn’t worth spending the time in jail if I was convicted of murder. Neither was she. That didn’t top the list of reasons why I would never hurt or kill her but that was the reason that would knock him off his self made pedestal. The look on his face was priceless.
My reason is that so have not desire to parent from jail.
I have no desire.
But I do have fat fingers apparently. ????
Tracy, I think you are being too hard on yourself. I don’t believe it was a streak of violence coming out in you. I think it was your instinct for survival kicking in. This great big man was in your face, threatening you on every level, screaming at you well inside your safety zone. Your limbic system took over and acted to get you away from him.
I had the same thing happen when my first husband, cheater ex #1. He had me pinned up against a wall with his forearm pressed against my throat cutting off my air. On the verge of blacking out, I kneed him in the balls. He had been screaming at me, had snatched my glasses off my face an had thrown them. (I am legally blind without my glasses.) I didn’t think about kneeing him beforehand, I just did it automatically. I think that is our survival mechanism activating, and it’s not a conscious thing.
That being said, I do believe however, under the right circumstances, anyone is capable of murder. Frankly, If I had known that cheater ex (#2) was planning to murder my son, and the only was to save my child was to take cheater ex out before he could act, he would have been toast. I would have gone to jail happily, joyfully knowing my son was saved and could live to grow up and have a life.
As it turned out cheater ex took care of that himself.
I agree with you, Tessie. We are all capable of self-defense, and even of murder, under the right (wrong?) constellation of circumstances. But some people make no effort to suppress those urges, and we call them sociopaths.
Tessie. You are mighty. And I think you’re right about this. I wish Tracy would stop being all chumpy about blaming herself for boxing the bully’s ears to protect herself.
This is a new foundation piece. This column will save lives.
I have waited two years for CL to direct her powerful, piercing intellect to this topic. Who knows what genetic soup predisposes me to it- but I have vivid, medieval fantasies about “addressing”the X and the OW.
Let me be clear: I have a lot to lose. I come from a good family. I get my hair highlighted and smile when people make jokes. I bring appropriate and tasty baked goods to pot lucks.
Didn’t matter.
If I had access to a gun- I could have been Jennair. Wanted to be her. Did the cost/benefit analysis of how much prison time I could bear. I know a lot about prison, and even asked my clients tips on how to survive. They told me it was a living hell- like living in a coffin with the lowest critter you could imagine with body odor and a bad attitude.
Didn’t matter.
I was so shattered and bitter and shocked I would have pitied MY cell mate.
What saved me? Reading this column. Sorrow for my mother if I went through with it. And just the vertigo inducing knowledge that the world would see ME as the monster.
Journalists quoted this POS OW as “fiercely committed to her family.” Really? But giggles and confetti cupcakes in blowing up other’s families? I have no sympathy for her. None. Not a flicker.
Blowing up someone’s entire life is not a fog, it is not a bump in the road. It is life or death business. The only reason more of this does not happen is that the CHUMPS are too decent to pull the plug. They are making grilled cheese sandwiches, buying dog food, bathing children and downloading Turbo Tax to get the taxes done.
And CL’s shattering, magnificent line regarding the possibility of him crafting a dating profile is what slaps you fully awake. I saw him, in my mind’s eye, making sexy eyes at the funeral home receptionist as Kennair lies in a morgue- rigor mortis cold and vilified.
Well-stated, Rosamund.
This story has special significance for me because I lived in Radnor (where it took place) for 13 years before moving to TX with Hannibal Lecher. Upon reading the news feed, one of my thoughts was, “There but for the grace of God, go I.”
Oh Rosamunde, although I didn’t entertain murdering a fuckwit, I sure did wish he had just died instead. It would’ve been so much easier to grieve and have that support of everyone to get me and the kids through it. But instead I got to witness him fucking around with DD14’s 20 something asst sport coach. Not his first schmoopie and I’m guessing not the last. But the last for me anyway.
I do think this site has the power to save others. I so wish she could’ve come here for support and to know that her life wasn’t worth losing over him or his schmoopie. The best revenge is to really let 2 cheaters have at each other. It’s hard to not think the OW/OM caused all of this. It’s hard to think you’ve thrown away many years on a partner who was never worthy of you.
It is so sad.
Your words ring so true, Twice, and raise the question, “What if it was like that?” What if, when cheaters cheat, the societal response was to rally around the chump, not just by immediate family and friends, but none of this Switzerland friends, no, ‘two sides to a story’ bullshit, but what if that happened, if other people as a rule recognised the tragic impact the infidelity had on the lives of the chumps and supported them to recovery? How different things would be. One of the big things about this circumstance is the lack of recognition of the devastation it wreaks on Chumps. It’s impact is equivalent the shock of a sudden death, and this is just not recognised by those who haven’t been through it. I would also like to see cheaters ostrasized aka consequences, but that’s just me.
Where is the red letter when you need it. Of course it would need to be applied to both sides and only if one or the other was already in a recognized primary relationship.
I don’t wish either ex or Schmoopie dead, but I so wish them shunned, at least until they break up and go find other partners who aren’t married.
Nah, the AP gets a big AP in red letters too, you are being overly generous in your literal interpretation of The Rules. Your meh is impressive.
You misunderstood. Both cheater and AP get the red letters (both sides). I just don’t want it to apply to people who aren’t married (some cultures consider any unmarried sex to be adultery and I disagree there).
Ah, got you now, thanks for clarifying.
I threatened to punch my ex in the face in front of his colleagues at the public defender’s office. And go to the OWs house and punch her in the face. I would have welcomed a night in jail for the opportunity to tell everyone at the courthouse about their affair (OW was a divorce lawyer getting a divorce from her divorce lawyer husband). I never did it because I was afraid of losing custody of the kids.
In the end, I did punch him a bunch of times because he refused to leave the house and I didn’t want to have to call the cops in front of the kids. He did not attempt to hit me back, but he also didn’t leave until the next day. Honestly, I felt better having got out out some of my anger on him. My punches only landed a couple of times and didn’t cause harm. But it felt good to physically express my anger and disdain for him. Looking back now, I know that was a dangerous thing to do. It’s taken me a while to understand what a psychopath he is.
If he died today, I’d be happy for my kids. The life insurance policy would pay for their college and they could grow up ignorant of his true self.
I don’t condone violence, I am being honest about my experience.
The feelings of despair and agony make chumps think horrible thoughts and sometimes act on those thoughts. It is such a tragedy.
Xhole told me during wreckconciliation that he had hid the gun he kept beside the bed the day I found out about the howorker. I told him, “you just really don’t know me at all.” But later I realized he wasn’t worried as much about himself, but he thought he was so super special that I might use it on me.
The saddest thing is that this situation continues to play out. The details may be slightly different and it may not get the same amount of press. But people are dying over infidelity and many times it is the innocent chump. So unbelievably sad and preventable.
“These feelings are finite.” “The best revenge is living without him.” Preach on, CL.
Narcs have nothing at their epicentre, so their destructiveness always radiates outwards, where as the chumps of the world usually tend to turn all that pain, rage sadness etc on themselves, for lack of an outlet that won’t be damaging to others (considerate to the last!). I understand where she was, the utter misery, the feeling of being trapped in something that seems endless, the need to do something to take her power back, even though in the end it was self-destructive. Maybe she went there meaning to kill those two, but then once she realised he wasn’t there, but probably more importantly that having her revenge on the OW didn’t change her horrendously painful feelings, then she turned it on herself. I’d like to hear from other chumps about their self-care routines or rather their constructive ways of dealing with the incredibly negative emotions that come with this circus. I’ve had the most horrendous couple of days, after being okay for a while where I just feel absolutely tortured by the reality of my life, by the fact he did this and whatever the future holds, I can’t change the fact that he chose to do this, no matter how sorry he is now and trying to make nice, and ruminating on the emails I found between them where they both absolutely tore me down, me with a new baby while he’s salivating over her flat stomach and hot body. And I’m supposed to conduct myself in a respectful manner towards those fuckwits. So anything productive that helps alleviate the pain, please, I’m all ears.
Your ex & his skank of a whore are pigs…….one thing having an affair while your wife is pregnant or just had a baby…..but to denigrate the wife on top of everything is beyond disgusting. How anyone could engage in that banter is mind boggling. Does the skank think she’ll be impervious to a flabby belly after giving birth? Hopefully she’ll never produce but still…..
I know it sucks right now but down the road the thought of him will make your skin crawl if it doesn’t already. He’s a defective weakling and good riddance. I wish you all the best in your new life free of that creep.
Disloyal fucker
He makes me sick.
Fuck off
He sucks.
These disordered subhumans are not like you and me.
Sorry and trying to make nice?
Fraud. Liar. Image above all else.
You got away. Stay away. Don’t let this disgusting fucktard anywhere near your goodness.
Zero contact.
SOTC, Music, Netflix, Exercise, Classes (ceramics at the local JC), Time Outside, Gardening, and Work. Lean on your support network. In those early days, I was that wounded fox licking my wounds, so I walked up and down country roads until I was beyond tired. I swam in the lake every day and recognized that I needed to direct my energy where it was most important, myself and my kids. I also told my children, who were all into their late teens, that they too needed to take care of themselves, to be selfish, to keep doing well in school, and to focus on their own lives. Infidelity sucks but so much of what we preach here helps. Move forward, focus on your life.???? Working out is great with children too…. I have good memories of those years, even when I was struggling with my broken heart, the sun on my skin let me know I had much to look forward to.
Thank you all for your kind suggestions and words of encouragement and support.
I’ve just screen shorter number 4 to keep reading to myself. 26 years ago today we first hooked up as teenagers at a friends 18th birthday party. 10 years ago today we got engaged in New York. Today I posted my first tax credits claim as a single parent. I plan to succeed the hell out of this new life. First goal is to get through today without crying, and make it the first year free day in 2 months. Then it’s on to tomorrow!
*screen shotted
You are so mighty… and you will “succeed the hell out of this new life”… it takes time… I’m almost 4 years out and am just getting to Meh… but it is out here and it is glorious!
Okay, to be clear, I am not condoning murdering other people. However, I have to admit there is a tiny part of me that admires the balls of this woman. Think about the revenge fulfilled, everyone in the world knows that she’s a whore and he’s a cheatind a**hole. Splayed across the newspapers. Instant karma.
I think the reason part of me feels this way is because the failure of the courts and society to acknowledge the pain of betrayal inflicted upon victims of infidelity.
From no-fault divorces, switzerland friends, to victim shaming (“you should have kept your man happy”), to years long custody battles with cheating narcs (the audacity), we chumps have accepted our lot that nobody cares about our pain and justice is often grossly denied to us. We are expected to take it on the chin and quietly slip away without causing a ruckus. If said ruckus is caused, we are now labeled “crazy”.
It’s sh*tty and unfair to watch selfish people blow up your life and skip off into the sunset while you’re left to clean up the mess for not just yourself, but sometimes the confused children who will carry emotional scars because of it.
Killing people is definitely NOT the answer, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t respect the fact that she took justice into her own hands because society and the courts certainly never would have given her that satisfaction.
No Contact is the toughest, yet most powerful message to a cheater. It is the greatest advice Chump Lady ever gave.
Cheaters hate No Contact. It is their kryptonite. It sends the most powerful message.
Greatest song ever by Jimmy Buffet:
“If the Phone Doesn’t Ring…It’s Me.”
Best. Song. Ever. I had that album memorized my junior year in high school. I love that song.
My fun boyfriend, the one I met when I was discarded by my narc husband (now ex) loves that Buffet song!
No contact is self love.
My ex stood in front of me (we were together for 32 years) 3 years after our divorce, screamed at me that he despised me cause I was happy! Now that sums it all up for me!
I agree. #4 is so powerful. “Don’t stay locked in his centrality. Don’t let him be the last person you ever love again. He’s NOT that powerful. Do NOT worship that false god. Get out there and live a good life and invest in people who truly care for you. The Pick Me Dance cannot impress him, but you not needing shit from him? You succeeding wildly without him? THAT impresses (and infuriates) him.”
When we make the cheater central, when we “stay locked in his centrality,” even in our own minds, we are indeed making a “false god” of a weak, foolish, inadequate person.
Because my cheater is dead, I fear that people consider me suspect, but I never hurt him.
Every once in a while , he got my head into a wrestling lock and reminded me that he could snap my neck if he wanted to. I told him I knew that.
Once I was on my hands and knees to pulling weeds and he came along standing over me and made a threatening/menacing gesture (outside where my neighbors could see which humiliated me) from the ground, I swatted him on the ankles to get him to stop and that manipulative asshole yelled “you hit me!!” then went into the garage and destroyed a dryer with a curved claw hammer…what is it that CL calls that “non-equivalencies”.
Im with CL of get the hell out and dont waste what might be a good life killing a cheater or Schmoopie. If there are times of real self protection, that is different, but Jennair might have had some good years ahead despite her heartbreak and now she doesnt.
As an aside, the threatening/menacing gesture my cheater made at me, he learned that from his dad. (It was a “pretend” slap punch where he almost hit but backed off at the last second and hit his hand instead…as if there were anything ok or decent about that). I sort of wish that at some point in the past, I would have confronted his father on that horrible behavior but I never did and now he is old and griefstricken
Wow, I slap you, you destroy property. Scary and I’m glad you’re out, Uni. Can I ask, and you may have addressed this before – I know the shock of discovering what your cheater really was after his death must have been horrible, but did you find things easier (do you think) having support from people for his death, rather than playing out in divorce, or did it make you angry that he wasn’t there to be accountable? Did you tell people what you found, or did you keep it secret but secretly rail against people talking about him respectfully after death, when you knew he was a royal asshole?
I am normally a very integrated person so living with any sorts of compartments really go against my parenchymal grain. I cant tell everyone what he did but i do tell people when i know it wont get back to my kids or his parents. My mow husband thinks its weird to tell anyone, he doesn’t realize that i HAVE to tell.
I think his death with the outpouring of goodwill was easier than an ugly divorce, but im furious that he avoided accountability and i cant scream at him. He would, however, never admitted what he did.
There are times when I speak of his death as a way of letting people know that i suffered but not letting on that my suffering isnt what they think it was.
I really admire your matter-of-factedness about the whole thing. Thank you for your answer.
Yeah it’s terrible but God how I wish she would have saved one more bullet and shot that prick right between the eyes, just as he was saying “my wife might be in there.”
Disclaimer – I don’t own a gun and have no plans to shoot anyone….
but if I did…
there is NO way I would have let the husband get away alive!?!?!
Unlike many of us who have had their heads fucked with, clearly this wasn’t well thought out.
There are times when my mind went there and pictured shooting both of them and then spending the rest of my life teaching in prison or doing research to help those who are innocent (I know, too many movies vs. reality). Or at least shooting the ex’s genitals off.
She might have thought he would be there. Or was going to wait for him after the OW was dead and it just didn’t work out that way.
revenge fantasies are one thing, but you really really don’t want to go to prison. You would go to a State prison, which are generally awful, and you wouldn’t get life or even very long (unless you had a violent prior conviction). Even if you got 5 years for manslaughter, you would probably only serve 2-3 years of it. Drug charges get more time than murder.
Iron
Weighing out the options is simplistic. They aren’t worth one more second of your energy.
Leaving them in fact is like being released from a long fucking prison sentence. I did my time.
I always say to a friend of mine who jokes about vandalizing my ex’s place: “I don’t EVER want to do anything to him that would result in jail time.” He is not worth the dirt on my shoe let alone many more years of my life because I did something to him that resulted in a jail sentence. The marriage was sentence enough.
I maintain that a *true* jury of my peers – fellow chumps – would never convict me if I had killed either cheater. Rather, they would’ve hoisted me on their shoulders and paraded me around the court room for taking some human scum out of the gene pool. Hey, let me have my dream.
Nevertheless, I, too, did have some pretty vivid revenge fantasies and decided none of those wastes of skin and oxygen were worth even a suspended sentence.
Her Blondeness….You couldn’t have possibly said it any better.
Oh! The vivid revenge fantasies I had for those two. As they made an absolute fool out of me where we all three worked. If I had been one slice crazier the above story could have been mine, but the cheater would be resting with us too.
But as mentioned in the thread below, I too, felt I was too pretty for prison. I like nice things. I’m sure they wouldn’t allow my down pillows and cashmere pillow top mattress in a prison cell. Besides I decided the best hell might be right here on earth for them. They’re old and ugly now. No one wants them and they have no options so they get to look at each other for the rest of their lives. I imagine she’s a shopaholic online addict and he gets sloppy drunk every night.
Exactly.
Yeah, for real… I kept telling myself that I was too pretty for prison… I have to remind myself of that every day here at work too…
LOL!! Prison Princess!!
Hahahaaaa. P.P. for short!!!
Saw your comment on the Article MollyX…werd.
Please, don’t say that. We are never going to change the cheating narrative if we paint ourselves as murderous bitter people. For crying out loud, did you read CL’s article? “You did what narcissists do, by making your pain the Only Pain That Matters, justifying the harm you do to others” THIS
Struggling,
Apologies if my post was a trigger.
What happened is horrific and unbelievably sad. I’m far enough out to be able to have some humor, even about tragedy.
I also believe that this is a space to be honest with each other and the truth is that many people have dreams and thoughts about revenge. It’s a human emotion especially after years of cruel gaslighting.
My personal story is that I was suicidal after learning of my spouse’s years of infidelity. I have gone very public about my hospitization and struggles with depression and finding the right medication for me. The divorce almost killed me and I talk about it to help others who might be ashamed or hopeless. If someone outside of CN were to read about my story, they might assume that we are all a bunch of crazies. That won’t keep me from speaking my truth.
Some of us do have dark thoughts of revenge. I don’t know about you but I was bitter about a 12 year affair and whatever else I don’t know Ned the end of a 30 year marriage with a person I loved deeply.
Part of my story is also how I moved past the suicidality and bitterness. I used the white hot anger to fight along with my lawyers to uncover lost funds and get a settlement that my lawyers thought I deserved (at that point, I took their advice as I was just struggling to survive). My older children, who knew the OW, lost their belief in marriage and faithfulness and their family, including extended family.
But there ARE still moments of bitterness along with many more moments of happiness, hope, joy, anger, love and hate, and lots of humor.
This is a journey of multiple truths! I cannot and will not limit MY truth because of what someone from outside this community might think if they read my story.
Speak your truth.
Rebecca,,
I respect your story, deeply.
I feel it is the humour that anchors CN, it is the glue that holds it together. Humour has always been a huge part of my life. I worked in a profession that too many times, could rob one’s heart and soul of any humour, but I was fortunate in that humour clung to me, it saved me in tight spots and got me through. It also helped my co workers, I was known and loved for it. For that I am eternally grateful.
If we did not have humour in our lives Kleenex sales would be way way up.
❤️
I am also one of those granola eating liberals, who never raised a hand to anyone before discovering X’s infidelity. Like others posting here, I become something I abhor. I never did anything horrible to X, a thrown glass of wine, a shove, but it was my daughter who stopped me in my tracks one day. She said,”Please leave dad. Your anger is turning you into something you’re not.”
My rage was all-consuming and I knew I had to change. It wasn’t easy; I made many mistakes along the way. But I took that anger and made a life for myself. After many years of putting X’s needs, wants, and ego ahead of everyone including, unfortunately, myself and my kids, I realized that he didn’t give a damn whether I lived or died. I damn sure wasn’t going to continue to suffer for a man who could so easily betray me.
I so understand. That’s the main reason I left the Worm. I didn’t like what I was turning into.
Wormfree-
^^^^ this 100%. I saw a part of me that I never knew existed. I will never go back to that darkness again
When he has nothing else to excuse more crappy behavior, ex reminds me that I “raged” at him during our marriage. Yes. I’ll agree to that. I raged occasionally from Dec-Aug when he provoked me with gaslighting and outright lies about his relationship with howorker. When I found a trunk full of proof that early morning I took his car to grocery store before he left for work, my rages ended. And reality set in.
My STBXW considers me to have “abused” her because I lost my temper once – just once (and in a stereotypically British way) in 13.5 years of marriage – 4 months after DDay when she hadn’t come home after midnight and was still out with the AP.
Unfortunately she has FOO trauma so she ended up crying curled up on the couch asking me to stop raising my voice.
She recalled to the MC with glee that “all he did was offer me a glass of water”, when talking of the abuse and neglect.
She didn’t mention that she refused my touch and didn’t want me near her, or that she still had to take a midnight shower afterwards (i.e. had sex with AP).
Hey Rebecca. Actually it was the post before yours that triggered my response, not yours. Sometimes it’s hard to tell in these threads who is replying to whom. Anyway, For me, violence, especially deadly violence, well it’s something that I feel that it’s impoerant to choose words very very carefully, especially in a public forum. Personally, deadly violence is not something I’m comfortable joking about. And Sometimes these tragedies go the other way, where the chumpy spouse is the one who ends up murdered. Anyway, I don’t mean any disrespect to any chump in any way, i know how incredibly important it is we support each other. I just think we should be careful is all I am saying
It’s one thing to have those feelings. It’s another to act on them. I’m still grieving a young person who was very dear to me, either murdered or a suicide in a domestic violence situation. I’d give anything to go back and pluck her out of there but she insisted everything was fine. It’s super important to get away from a family member who is violent and perhaps even more important to reach out if you consider self-harm. No matter who you are, there are people who love you, need you, and will be crushed if you lose your life. That’s just as true if you end up in prison over a cheating jackass.
That “Gain a Life” thing is the ticket.
She is saying it here so she does not do it. If I had not had this blog to write about what happened to me, I would be Inmate #009876.
Point well taken !!!
I feel similarly. And it is only because of anonymity.
Same here.
I had very, VERY dark thoughts those days, and stayed watching Snapped, Dateline NBC, 48 Hours, IDiscovery channel played 24-7, but once enough time had passed, I became much more rational and calm…
I watched all those shows too. All the time. Oddly enough, I don’t remember my dark thoughts having to do with murdering the ex or the OW – she was a stripper (although not the one he is currently engaged to) and I kind of figured doing THAT was punishment enough. I looked up the OW’s husband and he had a prison record for assault and the victim was a woman with a different last name than his. I remember wondering if the victim was the wife of another of his wife’s “clients” and if they would come after me for cutting off the money train. I think maybe I was thinking defense, not offense when watching those shows. IDK…maybe the murder thoughts were there, just deeply buried in my subconscious? I just remember watching hours and hours of those shows.
I binged on ID TV too. Guessing vicariously killed him
Ahhh–ID Channel: Murder Porn.
I’ve gotten really good at realizing when a husband comes home from an errand and finds his wife dead that he’s the perp!
This woman wasn’t justifying; she was desperate.
Desperate people do desperate things.
The husband and the OW played a big part in driving this woman to desperation. Karma happens when you’re a fucktard shithead
; Karma happens when you’re a cheater.
Thinking that the cheating narc can play sad sausage for the rest of his life is infuriating.
The other woman’s husband also was affected. What a sad mess up of a lot of peoples lives due to the actions of cheaters. And the people they turn into desperate crazies.
These cheater narcs deserve consequences,
otherwise a society is morally bankrupt and descends into lawlessness. Right now they’re cleaning up and mopping the floor with the good people in this world.
I don’t defend the desperate woman’s actions however what was laid bare is for everybody to see and learn from.
The karma bus is a bitch.
You know how everyone LOVE, LOVE, LOVES Dr. Suess. Well, he was a cheating, mean-spirited asshole who cheated on his wife with Audrey Giesel (his real name) and his first wife committed suicide. He lived near me and hated children and was rude to any who managed to make their way to his door. Audrey is a first order witch too, and I thought that long before I was a chump. So it happens to Chumps when they have been driven to desperation. This woman just managed to take the OW with her.
I’m going to ceremoniously burn every “Dr” Seuss book in sight.
That’s EXACTLY what prize STD transmitting ex asshole told me to do.
Commit suicide.
Several times.
I’m still standing!
Strangely I didn’t want to hurt OW number 1. I expected poxface to make amends to her!
I was also yelled at for OWs more “prized features” too. How I laugh now!
They’re BOTH homeless. And hate each other. Who cares!
With our beautiful children despairing for my mental state, I saw their pain and DRAGGED MYSELF UPWARDS!
KICKED the butt wipe outta here for good.
If we engage in the pick me dance then it’s ONLY because we are holding on to fantasies of “what we had together” not of the REALITY of the cheater. A dark void of endless need for EVERYTHING.
Life was a nightmare. I was trapped in 4 walls only let out to work and Earn far majority income for the cheater to blow on who knows what or whom.
Who cares!
It’s FAR more satisfying spending money on high order Attorneys that convey the crap so eloquently that the Judge yells at cheater in Divorce Court.
Blissful are these moments of truth smashing cheater in the face. It’s perfect karma that cheater brought so many relatives to court that day.
These are sweet memories.
True justice.
❤ u Chumplady. You brought laughter and MEH so much sooner. Thanku.
My ex is bipolar so when he was manic he could go 4 days without sleep. Consequently I wasn’t allowed to sleep whenever he was awake but I still had to drag myself in to work every day and feed the kids and ….. One night I was chopping vegetables for dinner when he staggered in roaring drunk and started in on me about God only knows what. Right in my personal space, prodding me and yelling with his drunken, cigarette stinking breath. I had the knife in my hand from cutting the veg and I thought “all it would take would be one movement and me and the kids wouldn’t have to put up with this ever again”. Then I thought, no, I ain’t going to prison for that toe rag. BUT, unlike the lady in the story, my killing him would have been spur of the moment, non-premeditated had I done it. Again though I absolutely understand her despair and why she did it, although had she taken him with her it would have been a better ending for everyone.
Amen. I saw some pretty scary sides to myself too. As you mentioned, that’s what lying, gaslighting and verbal abuse will do to you.
I’d also like to say that I don’t think it’s only the RIC that is responsible for the message “that single parenting is less than, that being single is less than”, I think it’s our society as a whole – especially for women.
I was so desperate to be married, to have a complete family, that I ate shit sandwiches for 5 years and then beat myself up about it for another 2. Seven years wasted on that POS. That’s what I’m ashamed of now.
The good news is that as I teeter on the edge of 40, I simply do not care. I’m not married, I’ve never been married, I raised my kid entirely by myself (although that’s been hard for her) and I really don’t care if I ever get married. I date plenty, I have partners and when they start to show their disfunctional ways, I peace out.
There is something liberating about being free and independent.
Now if you are still wanting to start a family, then my heart goes out to you. I don’t know that I could ever trust someone enough to have children with them.
My sister, who lost her fertility and her ease with sex after treatment for cervical cancer (hooray for the new vaccine against HPV–get your kids vaccinated!), adopted, as a single woman. She has two lovely children, one of whom will graduate from high school next month.
Got my boys vaccinated too. It is an wonderful cancer prevention tool.
I’m sorry for your sister.
And happy for her independence and strength.
We don’t know what those vaccines do to people.
One thing we do know about the HPV vaccine is that it prevents cervical cancer. And believe you me, you do not want to have to be treated–nor your children treated–for cervical cancer or suffer the permanent effects of the treatment: loss of fertility, early and sudden menopause with its hot flashes, etc, gut, stomach, and digestion problems. Not to mention the effects of chemotherapy, and the resultant chemo brain. Or a rod of radioactive cesium implanted in your vagina for several days in the hospital with restrictions on how many minutes your caregivers or family can remain in the room with you because you are radioactive.
Newly diagnosed with HPV, here, a souvenir of cheater’s infidelity. My daughter has been vaccinated, thank God. Hopefully she will never face the worry of STDs due to her partner’s inability to be faithful, but at least this is one disease she is now protected against. I wish I had been.
I’ve been looking for your name to pop up. I was a little afraid the nation had failed to help and educate one of us!
Me three. Thank God you’re ok!
The vaccine does protect people from some forms of HPV and thus many of the causes of cervical cancer. I’d rather be protected from some diseases than none!
I have a friend who just lost her husband at age 40 to mouth/tongue/throat cancer. The bottom half of his face had been removed which is how his little kids saw him. Caused by hpv. I live in a very progressive place for medicine, the teaching area for a lot of the world. Best of the best. Vaccinate your children. Unless you’re a medical professional please don’t tell others not to vaccinate.
Please cite medical sources before claiming a vaccine is unsafe. There is always a risk that someone may have some bizarre and terrible reaction to a vaccine, such as an unknown allergy to an ingredient. These are outlier cases and do not negate the vaccines overall benefits and overwhelming statistical safety.
I will delete all anti-vaccine comments. It’s off topic and vaccines save lives. We’re PRO science here.
HM wrote:
The good news is that as I teeter on the edge of 40, I simply do not care. I’m not married, I’ve never been married, I raised my kid entirely by myself (although that’s been hard for her) and I really don’t care if I ever get married. I date plenty, I have partners and when they start to show their disfunctional ways, I peace out.
There is something liberating about being free and independent. – end quote
Very good advice, HM. In this day and age, one no longer has to suffer harsh judgement for having children without a spouse. I wish that I could turn back the clock thirty or so years so I could have Jr. without the dysfunction of either cheater ruling our household. Don’t even get me started on the whole “staying for the children” myth…..grrrr
The topic of revenge in all it’s dark forms, was the start of this piece by CL.
When I heard of the murder/suicide event I read it carefully. I too, wanted to find out what happened to the cheating POS husband. Seems, nothing. We can HOPE he realizes that 2 women who – in someway cared for him, are dead, ALL BECAUSE of him…but this is not likely.
INSTEAD, He’s far more likely to label his wife as “the batchit crazy” one he WANTED to leave, and Schmoopie as his “real love.” And that’s one reason I would never take my own life for my ex. (I can’t speak for those who have had children die. I might not be able to live with that.)
I can only speak for those who have had their lives turned totally upside down with betrayals that are revealed at their most vulnerable moment, and that kept them reeling with each new discovery.
I knew I would not take my life. I did the “equation” once, for maybe a full minute.
Here it was: Knowing that my kids would be devastated, was huge. Being stuck with my X as their only remaining parent (or worse, add on a schmoopie), but the biggest factor I think
was knowing if I took my life for him, my x would feel validated in some way for the smear campaign he has run behind my back for – evidently – years.
So, NO way would I further his distorted-beyond-recognition narrative – by taking my own life. Fuck that.
At the start of this ordeal, I was filled with self doubt about every decision I was making, each choice was subconsciously made with HIS opinion in the back of my mind. It was paralyzing. Just having that gone as a factor, is an improvement.
I availed myself of every resource & worked hard to heal.
I loved my ex literally all of my adult life, and even though I stuck it out with him despite a lot of struggles and sacrifices for HIM, the DOCTOR, I can laugh at it now.
And yet My life is better now than it was for the past 5-10-(??) years of my undermining marriage. (Gaslighting makes it hard to know what exactly happened, and when.)
I still feel loss, and MY income is lower than the x’s of course.
But the DOCTOR “needs” more money than me, b/c he cannot feel good about himself without MORE MORE MORE/THE MOST/MOST MONEY…whereas even though our settlement was NOT fair, I will have “enough”.
It is MY turn now. In my marriage, I’d never have gotten a turn. I did not know that, but I do now.
So, last week I stood on a stage to do stand up comedy for the first time in 2 years. YAY ME.
I’m finally healed enough to do comedy again, AND I dedicated my comedy appearance last week to my ex. I think it was among my best shows.
My set included material about my marriage, my “reframing shitty behaviors of his, and denying reality” to enable the gaslighting, and also about the most serious illness I’d ever had, (which is exactly when my DOCTOR husband chose to leave, btw.)
The reasons I can joke about the grueling ORDEAL now, is because I’m hilarious, smart, resilient, and may I add, damn good looking.
Never mind that I loved him deeply, was loyal during our 35 year marriage. Never mind that he’s lost me and our 3 children’s respect and love, and his integrity and our shared history – (I really don’t know what he does with that. 35 years of achievements and poverty and deployments and beautiful children who are fine adults now…I will have to let go of wondering how he does THAT).
And Never mind that Schmoopie has gained weight, but not IQ points.
I’m not crazy, or greedy, mean or dishonest. I married a poor young guy in school and we managed great success which he has thrown away and will remarry soon. Marry a woman who would never have done what I did for him and looks like white trash. Never mind all of that.
I’m a great catch, who deserved and deserves so much more than my x gave me.
Having him gone is better than having him in my life. I would rather be alone, than wish I was.
My children repeatedly ignore what happened last year a d act like it never happened. Are my kids spackling like I did for almost 20 yrs? My friends tell me to let it go and allow my kids to do this because eventually they will see who he really is? I try. I really try to walk away and allow them to have some kid of relationship with him while he pushes the AP onto them. Hardest thing I’ve ever done. My middle son (since DD day) moved to Colorado and has barely spoken to me. My heart aches to know he will have vacation here for 3 weeks and wants to 1/2 time with me and 1/2 with him n his AP. I can’t give into the rage. What’s the point?! Please tell me that some day they will see the truth. Is it healthy to think that this never happened?I love my kids and myself too much to ever consider going to jail or dying because of a fuckwit n his AP fuckwit.
I propositioned OW #1 and #3 (same ex HS sweetheart) & OW #2 to good old fashioned fist fights. Yeah, I’d never fought anyone my whole life yet here I was reduced to trying to keep my husband by duking it out. WTF?? I laugh now because of the absurdity of it, but I wasn’t laughing at the time. Killing anybody, even him never crossed my mind.
Just a couple of days ago, I ran into a friend of mine who was instrumental in my last DDay with OW #1/#3. Apparently, OW #1/#3 attempted suicide after I called her husband the day after my divorce was final to give a heads up that my XH was now a free man and to not be surprised if they continued to hook up. I also told him of their involvement years earlier when I was pregnant with our first child. Her husband knew about them & apologized for not contacting me sooner, although he was shocked to hear that this wasn’t their first rodeo so to speak. Do I feel bad that she tried to take her own life as a result of me calling her husband? Nope, not one bit. I am a little disappointed that whatever method she chose didn’t work, though. *shrugs*
Full disclosure…for a while I wished for a chance to give Susan of Seattle one good punch in the face.
I wished no permanent injury or harm, just one fair shot. (I have tiny hands and tyrannosaurus rex arms so I really couldnt hurt anyone) but I would have liked one chance. I never got my chance and now that moment has passed.
Yeah, to my shame, I imagined good old fashioned girl fights. And I would have beaten her to a pulp, although I rate very highly on the agreeableness scale usually.
I found out at 7 months pregnant so I ended up having a vivid DREAM where I axe murdered main OW, not exactelly what you want when you are near giving birth
I would never act on it nor do I have dreams about anymore (3 yrs passed), however once in awhile I still daydream these scenarios:
1) she goes surfing and gets ripped apart by sharks
2) I happen to stumbl on her on a jungle path and she got letally snake bit and I dont help her but sit down to watch her die
Would she someday die I would be quite thrilled, for they were unbelievably crurl to me during my pregnancy and my father had just died) and such utter disregard to my baby, fuck them
I wish Jennifer would have found CL… in five yrs she might have been meh :/
“Killing her just made her a martyr.”
I hope not. From the story I read, she was a cheater too and until recently his boss.
It’s truly sad the amount of pain and loss that was caused by selfish behavior.
The family’s statement did specifically state that the OW won’t be “defined by” the tragedy, which leans toward the martyr thing. But it’s to be expected. We revise the dead into innocent angels in our culture.
Yes she very much will be defined by the tragedy. Regardless of the family’s desires.
Yes to this.
Oh my god CL you are so right the damage that asshole will now be able to inflict on the unaware has been magnified by 1000.
I can picture his expression as he tells the story he never gets tired of telling. Probably a new and improved version each and every time.
Nauseating disgusting and dangerous
Fix your picker people!! Whatever hook a narc was able to latch into, find it and file it to a nub.
Hey! NoMo — just wondering, is there any way a sharp detective and attorney could find someone to kick the cheater’s ass? Is it possible that he is legally culpable of something in this case?!
# i understand
Vale Jennair. I forgive you.
I posted a link to this story here yesterday. I live a thirty minute drive from where it happened and am in that area often for one thing or another. There are many details unknown at this time, as the story continues to unfold. Apparently he told his wife as far back as November that he wanted a divorce. She had left her husband and moved to another state for a new job, New house, fresh start. I am sure there was pain all around this situation, but murder and suicide are permanent solutions to temporary problems. It is tempting to rush to judgement, but the truth is none of us know the details of this situation. The bottom line is it’s a loss of two lives and it didn’t need to happen. I suppose when you are in that dark place, only your pain and how to stop it is your primary concern. It’s beyond sad, and I hope both women RIP
I’ve not thought about ever physically hurting him or her.
There were days where I wondered if my body could continue to function. I heard a line in a movie once that described a discard like being in a car crash “ it should of killed you instantly, but it didn’t.”
It felt like that. There was about a month where my kids had to take my phone and lay out my clothes everyday…..and I’m no slacker.
I hope this doesn’t banish me to hell, but I do think at times that I won’t feel sad if I hear my ex, his mistress, or my mother in law has died…..or all three.
Not very meh.
What you say reminded me of the final lines of Jamaica Kincaid’s essay, “On Seeing England for the First Time,” in which she confronts the colonial “mother country” that had so oppressed her native Antigua:
“The white cliffs of Dover, when finally I saw them, were cliffs, but they were not white; you would only call them that if the word “white” meant something special to you; they were dirty and they were steep; they were so steep, the correct height from which all my views of England, starting with the map before me in my classroom and ending with the trip I had just taken, should jump and die and disappear forever.”
I’ve been walking around quoting that last phrase to myself about my stbx quite a lot recently, and when I do it I know I’m not just referring to those rosy “views” I had of my stbx, which I now know to have been figments meant to aggrandize him and keep me in line, but to him as well. My privately imagining him jumping off a cliff is a whole lot less damaging to him than what he did in real life to me.
“My privately imagining him _______________________is a whole lot less damaging to him than what he did in real life to me.” Truth.
Not feeling sad about their demise is not going to send you to Hell. Death happens everyday. It’s not the same as rushing it along.
Or wishing them dead with every breath. There are extended family members/in laws I will not miss or mourn, but I figure if I feel that way, they’ll know it somehow. Moving forward as if they don’t exist is way more freeing. I know, since I sat in that dark place of wanting revenge (never violently, and if it was, it was fleeting and in my head only, never uttered out loud) and it didn’t serve me at all. The ow? She’s still married to her obs/former brother in law/former om and still contacting me (uses new channels) after 4 years. Things like “hey….” I didn’t even know this woman and she’s fishing for something from me – and I’m merely a prop in her big act. She has 4 kids so I don’t wish her dead, but her thinking about me tells me a lot. Same with other 2 other family members and the birthday cards they send. I ignore and send them a clearer message than screaming in their faces ever would. My happiness is the best outcome. People say “but the card is a peace offering, they’re trying to reach out.” Which is the first step on the road to chumpy town, isn’t it? But it has taken me a lot of time and therapy to really know that. And I’m not stopping the therapy. No contact is a real gift towards healing. By not letting them be central and ensuring their invisibility, I’m doing what they most fear.
When your pain engulfs you, you get irrational. This woman was a murderer, no matter how you slice it. I winced when I read it because I felt her pain, but her choices were her choices and they were terrible ones, and by the sound of it, not knee jerk, but planned. Btw the ow is getting huge sympathy on line because she’s pretty and was killed by an older bitter bunny who couldn’t let go. Aaarrrrrgggh my head.
You shouldn’t feel bad, why would you?
Brilliant post CL!
Sympathies to all family members. Tragic.
I remember in my most desperate moment I thought- I’ll let him continue the affair and we’ll stay married. Yes. I actually thought this. Thank god it never happened.
I was offered a downgraded position of roommate. After 22 years serving as wife. Via text message o.O
We did have to live together 6 months after I filed and he actually complained to his lawyer that I had stopped doing his laundry
We continued to live together for 5 months while we were going through mediation and preparing the house for sale. He expected me to continue in the role of wife. When I refused to do his laundry, he said “Is this what we’ve come to?”
I asked him for the password for the cable and he said he would give it to me “If I came downstairs with him” he was sleeping in the basement and he wanted sex in exchange for the password… meanwhile he was still carrying on the affair right in front of my face.
Same with me– we lived together for eight months until I bought and moved into a new home. He still thought we’d go get coffee together and do lots of things with the kids. It was surreal.
Cheater thought that when he came to visit his daughter – “Can’t you see the three of us going out for breakfast?” Oh and he told daughter to make sure I get a house with a basement so he could stay with us when he came to visit- DELUSIONAL!!!!!
You should have told DumbAss that he was being “unfaithful” to her and tried to seduce you.
Too funny now that I look bad. My sad sausage cried his crocodile tears and wanted to live in one bedroom and me in another. He just didn’t want a divorce. I just looked at him in unbelief and said Nope I don’t think so… He was financially cheating and just wanted to finish siphoning off the assets, not to his schmoopie but his grown, married daughter. He had been doing different variations of this for a few years and I found out every time. They had a great time laughing behind my back about their antics. I thought that I truly loved him, I cried, begged and pleaded for him to make a life with me and let his daughter have her family. He continued and I continued to find out. I promised myself that if I caught him doing this one more time, I would divorce him. That is what I did last year. He’s been gone 6 months, we are completely no contact. I came out pretty well financially, but this was not what I pictured for my “golden years” I’m trying hard to get to meh, some days are better than others.
Yes, and in time he will tire of her and come to his senses. So sad to think back on that reasoning now.
I thought about staying married by hiring my ex a professional dominatrix. I got that idea by drinking a whole bottle of wine by myself one night and searching the Internet for bad relationship advice. I literally had an ‘aha’ moment and a rush of relief that I wouldn’t have to end my marriage and raise my heartbroken children alone! This could work! Lol! Later, when I found CL, I tweaked the plan a bit. I would hire a dominatrix to beat the shit out of him, for realsies. I knew he would never go to the cops, so it would have been an ideal revenge. With the help of Chump Nation, I relished and stoked that revenge fantasy without shame, while proceeding with the business of divorcing his ass. You see, the difference between me and him is that I don’t feel entitled to act on every emotion and desire that pops into my head. And I know that when bad things happen in life, feel however you need to about it, just don’t take any actions to make it worse. If you can do that, you’re already halfway to Meh.
It seems to me that narcissists drive you to the point where you go against yourself to save yourself. My mom is very kind and to protect herself she has to be unkind. If you see yourself as peaceful the narc drives you to rage. Chumplady was driven to hit someone for the first time in her life. They find your boundry and spend time trying to get you to undo your sense of self. Run.
I chose to hit him. Thanks for absolving me of responsibility, but we don’t drive people to do things. I preach that about infidelity, and it’s true with violence too.
The responsible thing would’ve been to leave and not engage. I took the bait.
When my husband screamed at me, one foot away from my left ear drum (it still buzzes when I remember this), that he was a failure and that it was MY fault, I was so scared (he was driving on a highway) I kept totally quiet. Didn’t say a single word. I had been trying to talk about our retirement.
Later, in full pick-me-dance swing (I had 28371 signs of cheating, but spackled), I asked him why he thought he was a failure and he denied ever having done or said this. Incredible.
God, when I think of all the shit he poured down my throat.
I have not set eyes on sparkledick for over one year. It seems like ages, a thing in the mists of the past. I have gotten rid of absolutely EVERYTHING from him and his family. Sold, auctioned, given away, garbage.
But now, alas, there is my son’s wedding coming up and son says that morally he can’t consider not having his father at the party, but has uninvited him to the civil ceremony. I told my son that if his father tries any trick that I WILL kick his balls and/or throw a glass of wine in his face. Fuckwit must keep at least 20 meters away from me, no pictures, no conversation. Fuckwit was CRUEL to me, had FUN cheating on me all the while delighting in duping me and making me pay his family’s bills, etc.
I know what to expect: at the court hearing in March 2017 he shows up all sassy and smart and gives my should a friendly squeeze. I looked away and, according to my lawyers, he was so amazed and hurt that I did not return his pleasantries.
So then he flipped on the rage button and begins telling the court mediator how awful I am. And he flipped the poor sausage button: “But ClearWaters, you can trust me!” Says me: “Pray tell me how one goes about trusting a cheater?” Says Fuckwit: “But ClearWaters, I am NOT a cheater!” Says me: “Oh, really, then who is (latest AP-flatterfuck’s name)? Some extragalactic mirage?” Snorts from everyone in court. But the point is: I KNOW I have to have that glass of wine ready. And the party has a sour taste for me. O God help me be serene!
Learn to do the best eye roll on the planet. I did it lots during the last few years and it came out later how much it bothered him.
Seriously why waste a glass of wine or even water when you can send a message of complete dismissal and disdain by simply rolling your eyes at any attempt to get your attention
You don’t even have to look directly at him just a roll in his general direction will do
Clearwaters, your ex will more than likely bait you to throw the wine or make some sort of scene. By now he knows what will set you off…..please don’t fall into the trap. You’ll look bad, not the cheater. This is your son’s day. Not yours or your ex cheater’s.
I was panicked about my son’s wedding but did a lot of things in advance to protect myself.
I helped make the wedding so I would have some say and control. I told him that anything he wanted to contribute financially he could give to the bride and groom as a gift.
I told him that he and his immediate family (who cruelly dropped me after DDay) could come as my guests but that the OW could not attend. Ex and his family were seated on the other side of the reception from me and my guests.
I hired a guard at the entrance with photos of her to make sure she could not eneter if she showed up (she didn’t).
He was given a time to come for photographs after all the other photos were taken. He got a photo with the bride and groom and one with his kids and that was it.
I also hired an event planner to make sure my ex didn’t go anywhere near my friends’ tables during the reception. Every time he crossed the midline of the hall, she told him he had to go back to his table.
I worried a lot about walking down the aisle with the jackass on the other side of my son. When the procession started, I totally forgot that he was even there and just focused on me and my son.
The only thing I didn’t think of was to prearrange for someone to dance with me after the mother/son dance. Luckily my brother jumped up and saved me from an uncomfortable moment.
I can say it was a wonderful day – I danced and enjoyed the whole party while he sat at his table on his iPhone.
My son got married here in France last year too and I was dreading the Twat showing up back from the States. Actually it was ok. I kept my distance from him and we were cordial when we had to be but in the end it had to be about my son and his wife not me and the Twat. I knew he wouldn’t try to provoke me unless he was drunk but I made sure I left well before he got drunk – which of course he did! Good luck with the wedding.
He was screaming in your face and you reacted that way because he was a threat.
You wouldn’t have boxed his ears had he not been in your personal space and had you not felt physically threatened. You defended yourself. If he had been a stranger doing that, would you still feel you acted wrongly?
I’ve been a physically abused spouse. There is a difference between exacting revenge and getting the threat the hell out of your face.
It’s not that same as suddenly a hard penis presented itself to you and you had no choice but to jump on it!
I’m in total agreement with you that emotionally abused partners often lash out in self-defense, but the law doesn’t see it that way. I know a woman whose husband was emotionally abusive and said any number of horrible things to her, so she threw a glass of water at him. When the police arrived (neighbors had heard the fight), they told her that SHE would have been the one to be charged for domestic violence, but they were letting her off with a warning.
Words don’t count as weapons in domestic abuse cases, only physical acts, and there are lots of women with records for lashing out at their abuser. Perfectly understandable, but sadly, it can come with consequences. I know of one Men’s Right site that actually advocates goading a woman into hitting the man so that she gets a DV charge.
No, words don’t, but screaming in someone’s face up close and personal to the point of where you fear physical violence, is by definition, intimidation and just as illegal as assault.
But then, I also come from a state where stand your ground and castle doctrine laws apply and where I am not obligated to retreat if I can.
I completely agree with you, but legally it will largely depend on which police officer shows up to your house as to whether they believe the person who claims his/her spouse was up in her/his face, or whether they believe the handprint across the other person’s face.
I hope Datdamwuf will chime in here; she was framed for domestic violence by her then-Husband. She estimated that half the women in her 6-person DV rehab group had also been either framed, or blamed for violence that the man had started.
Stillhere/GoneforGood posted a story the other day about a nasty encounter with the OW in a restaurant, which resulted in Sh/GfG being arrested for dumping a glass of ice tea on her X’s head (if I recall the story correctly). The person who goads the partner into a physical altercation is rarely held accountable.
And that is not how it should be.
The narrative needs to change.
Just to clarify… It was Her head it was dumped on.
He can go away now after 35 years. My final straw.
Interesting how narcs will set up their spouses to be arrested for DV. I’m guessing it is one way to be able to stay in the home and file an RO? I know of a couple of cheaters (both men) that did this to their OWives….again interesting.
Stillhere/GoneforGood–thanks for correcting my muddled story.
KB22–Dat’s X certainly wanted to be able to stay in her house; overall I suspect powe & monetary gain are the main motivation behind spouses who set up their partners for DV charges.
I don’t want to post the whole thing but Tempest is correct. Ex set me up for a DV charge, found out later he learned how from a DV site. He then pulled a gun on me months later. Be damn careful leaving abusers. The time I spent in jail that night was more traumatic than the gun being pulled on me. To this day I have a deep fear of the cops, something I never had before. The cops were complicit in ex setting me up, they helped him do it. Cop lied on his report. Do not trust in justice.
That’s the mindfuck of domestic abuse. Feeling like we can control the actions of our abuser. That we “know” what they would or wouldn’t do. That what they were doing to us “wasn’t that bad” because we were “strong enough to take it,” and that we have the choice to “walk away and not engage.”
Bullshit.
Responsibility, key word, you took responsibility for your actions. Just no contest, it is not in the realm for the disordered.
The responsible thing in my opinion was to box his ears.
You were being assaulted again after having been assaulted through his actions and his dishonesty and his betrayal.
It is tough not to take the bait. The OW stalked me and made contact numerous times to taunt me, call me names and offer advice in her manly voice.
I’m tough and could have flattened the cunt. I had too much to lose and knew the Limited put her up to it. The one comment that floored me was that she now had a granddaughter. MY granddaughter that I’ve supported and raised part time with her dad for most of her life.
If ever someone needed to be put out if her misery it was this cunt. In order to protect my granddaughter I decided to email copies her arrests, the drug charges and assault of an elderly man to the other grandmother and her dad.
In the end my granddaughter was the one who decided after spending a few hours with them that she wanted no part of the disordered cunt and a grandfather who abandoned.
The only place either on of them look good is sitting st a bar.
Remove yourself from the equation and fight for what’s legally yours.
Hi Chump Kid — I think the rage that erupts inside of us comes from them. Yes I do.
I think their stanky chaotic emotions get mixed up with ours. They feel better, because they sucked out our emotional health, and we feel enraged, because we took a hit of them.
Those horrible feelings, that you never felt before, Chumps? Yah, that’s their internal dynamic. Now you know what it’s like inside their “souls.”
My God. This article brought me to tears.
CL is right on !!
The terrible tragedy of this true story is not surprising. I’ve read a few articles where violence such as this actually took place. No one understands the humiliation & total devestation a cheater causes the innocent spouse unless you’ve experienced it.
But going to this extreme doesn’t help anyone. Two lives were lost over a waste of a person who didn’t give
a shit about either of them.
I pray that any of us chumps or newbies understand that
our life will improve when we leave the cheating narc.
Go no contact & free yourself from toxic waste.
Thanks for addressing this! Like others here, I can remember those dark days & why I had to move as far away from X as I could for my emotional health & his safety!
I wish our media, society, & mental health professionals would take the same approach of addressing this as you have.
She snapped & the husband can take responsibility for it & both deaths
True, the husband should take responsibility for both deaths, but it’s unlikely he will. He will probably gleefully change his status to “widowed” on his dating profiles, and happily reel in the unsuspecting women for whom that word is irresistible.
I guess I’m sounding very cynical today. But I have noted that 99% of the dating profiles of men on Match in my area say that they are widowed. Really? Sounds like an epidemic of female deaths. Either that or predators and low-lifes know that many women feel safer dating a widower.
Such a sad story. He will work it to his advantage. Cheaters are gifted in that way.
I responded to one dating profile for someone claiming to be widowed and he was a catfish. If you ask about their wife, they just say its too upsetting to discuss and try to reel you in.
Statistically…in their 50s, men die at like 4x the rate of women, so most of these people are full of shit. Im sure there are real widowers out there…I doubt they need dating profiles.
I noticed the huge amount of “widowers” too FB. As UNM said, I’m sure it’s their way of trying to reel women in but far from finding it reassuring, I found it weird and a huge red flag. Just another reason I gave up on online dating. The last thing I want at this stage in my life is to start a relationship with a liar.
I won’t date a widower. There is no wayI want to compete with the memory of a dear sweet wife that he wishes wasn’t dead.
Just no.
Terrible story CL. Although I managed to contain my anger to focus my energy towards raising my infant and toddler after DDay, I still to this day would not be sorry if he came to some unfortunate ending, through natural disaster, or losing his footing on one of the many hiking holidays he chose to take instead of knowing his kids. It would have been easier to mourn his loss than deal with the abandonment. We would not have lost his family or mutual friends. The children would have had a deeper community around them. But nearly 5 years out, the strength of the independence and closeness we have gained as a family of three is just beautiful.
crurl = cruel…typos, single working mom with no time to type
The comments are getting it right.
Please can someone with an account go onto the Washington Post and mention Chump Lady (leave a cheater, gain a life)?
I wanted to cut and past point 2.
Nobody plugs the REAL CHARACTER of people who cheat like Chump Lady does!
I don’t know. A lot of the comments seem to think the OW did nothing wrong. Just a charming young woman gunned down in cold blood for no reason by someone who was already crazy and the whole infidelity thing had nothing to do with it.
Many of the posters also seem to think that adultery in general is really no big deal. It is not a crime after all. Actually it is a crime in my state, it just isn’t enforced.
Talk about a walking on eggshells subject this morning. I am glad that CL is true to form and bold to address it.
My mind immediately went to point #2 last night when I read the story: Killing yourself and killing her will NOT MATTER to your cheater.
I can hear the cheater now: “I told you she was crazy!” Nobody would listen to me, the poor misunderstood sad sausage. Yeah, and he lost his twu luv too. Probably some brief show of tears because he is sad after all that he will now have to put forth some effort and find a new victim. BTW, I have seen no mention of her chump hubby from whom one article said she was separated. Never saw the word divorced, gee, seems to be 2 cheaters in the room.
This story is the exception in ending in death as are the stories where the chump ends up dead but the point is if you are the one percent, who cares that your odds are low. I think about that often that I don’t think cheater would commit violence but then you wonder, he has so many characteristics of someone who would, can I rule it out. In nearly every case of a serial killer etc, you see the obligatory interview with the neighbor who had no idea. There were red flags everywhere but these people were completely shocked. I look at my life, there were red flags everywhere that fuckwit was a narcissistic sociopath, but I was completely shocked when I found out he was a cheater for years.
I know I would never kill fuckwit or his whore or anyone but like many here, the thought has passed through my head. Most of us seem to know that it would make a bad situation worse. Why this woman didn’t come to that conclusion, we will probably never know.
So if chump lady speaking up and chumps talking uncomfortable subjects sways anyone against any destructive acts, that is yet another priceless function of this site.
Oh yes. There but for the grace of God go I. If I had not had this forum, my life would be ruined, and there are two seedy soul sucking varmints who would be taking dirt naps.
Sometimes its the chumps who are killed by the OWs. I never understood why an OW would take it out on a chump when she is the one who actually had a right to the husband. Any way you look at it fucking someone else’s husband (or wife) is a really bad idea.
Usually the chumps are murdered by the OW because cheater has blamed his wife for them not being able to be together or in their delusional minds if the the wife is out of the way cheater & OW can be together. Plus most OW are not emotionally stable to begin with..
Another critical point to remember is we are breathing rarefied air here.
I told one man about my cheating saga and he said to me in the most smart mouth but confident voice: so you weren’t treating your man right at home?
I was the energizer bunny when it came to sex. We are a very small minority who understands the power dynamic of cheating. The victim, and I’m referring to the wife, may have been surrounded by people who told her to lose weight or buy new lingerie in response to the Husband’s treacherous heart.
Agree., I was also lucky enough to have at least a few people who put the blame rightly on the cheater (and not on me, the chump). Even though Jennair made a bad choice, I do understand the temporary insanity that can happen with D-Day. Who knows, it’s likely she was being gaslighted by her husband and by the OW. It’s crazy-making.
I’ll just leave this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/on-gardasil/
I guess this comment can be deleted? When I refreshed the page the comment I was responding to was gone.
It’s way up on the top of the page.
The real tragedy is that the OW never got her chance to suffer real Karma and the wife never had a chance to gain a life.
Even before my ex turned out to be a cheater I was sympathetic to people who had violent reactions to infidelity. That surge of emotions and adrenalin can be difficult to contain and it was provoked. One of the cruelest aspects of infidelity is when it does make the chumps go crazy in one way or another. The worst part is when the cheater uses it as an excuse to say “see, (s)he’s crazy. Can you blame me for cheating” when the chump clearly wasn’t crazy before.
In my own case, I have never had physically violent rage fantasies. My fantasies mostly just involve me telling everybody off, but even that I generally try to avoid in real life because I don’t want to appear crazy by making a scene. I did rage at my ex a couple of times. The worst was when I discovered the charges for valentine’s flowers for Schmoopie on our joint credit card. All I could think was “she got flowers for Valentine’s day, I didn’t, and I paid for half those flowers”. I raged at ex and very nearly slapped him. Thank god I didn’t because if I had he could have used that against me in a passive sad sausage kind of way. The main fallout from that rage was my daughter overhearing and finding out about Schmoopie. Once I calmed down I was embarrassed at the time and felt bad that my daughter found out that way, but now I am glad she found out the truth even if it wasn’t in the calmest most controlled way. I had already tried to get ex to come clean on that sooner and he wimped out.
Meanwhile I avoid Schmoopie as best I can. Any reminder of them being together still hurts like hell. When I do see her it fills me with a sudden uncontrollable sense of rage which scares me because that isn’t normal for me. I don’t hate people. I just don’t. Until now. My usual reaction is to run away so that I don’t have to find out how I might react if we came face to face and I actually had to interact with her. In my fantasies I tell her off, everyone hears it and claps and cheers. In real life I fear that I might do something violent at worst or make a fool of myself at best. I avoid her for everyone’s sake. Meanwhile, my ex doesn’t understand why I can’t just get over it and be cordial to Schmoopie “for the sake of the kids”. He thinks I am just being petty and bitter by trying to ignore her and her very existence as best I can. Maybe I am being bitter, but I am not being petty. He is an insensitive clueless asshole.
That being said, the last thing I would want is for Schmoopie to die, either by my hand or otherwise. I don’t want her to die until long after she has fallen off that pedestal.
My very very best revenge would be if Schmoopie from Seattle lived a LONG life convinced that my deadcheater was the love of her life. If I had a chance to talk to her, it would sweeten the deal if I told her that she was his great love…then she could pine away forever.
So this news story was a topic of conversation last night at a dinner I attended. When folks started to get on the bandwagon that the OW deserved it… I spoke up. I said in no uncertain terms that she absolutely did not. She was not the problem, the cheating husband was the problem. It led to a very new discussion about adultery that was refreshing. #changingthenarrative #dinnerpartyconversation #livingwellbestrevenge #letkarmahandleit
Being murdered is not to the same degree as cheating with someone else’s husband.
The other woman may have been love bombed and tricked by a narc like many others.
However if the man was married and she was married and they had an affair while they were married there is wrongdoing being done on both parts.
I never knew what was in a murderer’s heart until I caught my husband in a motel room with another woman and I will always hate him for that.
Despair is a hard pill to swallow. I’ve been to that dark place too. I had been dealing with that shit for two years. And I snapped. I saw red. That’s the only way I can describe it. And I raged like I’ve never raged before. In front of my kids. And their friends. We had just gone to counseling that morning. He finally agreed to go with me. I had hope. And then he said he had to go to work. On a Saturday. He was an elementary school administrator. So was she. But he would only be there a couple hours. I had hope. He came home – I was tending our garden and the kids had friends over playing in the backyard. I had tried to call him several times and I got that dreadful Beep. The Beep that tells you they’re on the other line and choosing not to answer your call. “I tried calling you…” I eeked out. “I was talking to my MOM,” he scoffed. “Here look!” And he placed the phone in my hand. I tapped on the text bubble. And there it was. “ILY.” Their little code. I snapped. I tried to throw the phone over the wall, but he grabbed my wrist. I ran into the house. I overturned a kitchen chair. I slammed the bedroom door. I slammed the bathroom door. He followed me. The children were mortified. And I raged. I hit whatever was within striking distance. The door. The mirror. Him. Myself. I’m not even sure my eyes were open. He must have grabbed my arms to stop me because the next day I had bruised handprints on both of them. I had to wear long sleeves for a week to cover them. My knuckles were completely bruised. I had scratches on my chest. It was all self inflicted. And I never felt any physical pain. I tried to cover it with makeup, but my two best friends noticed when we went to brunch the next day. They didn’t know what had been going on for two years. Nobody did. Except me and him and her. I left the house that night and after failed attempts to reach my friends, I went to my mother in law. And told her. After two years of keeping it bottled up I spilled everything to the one person I knew would love him no matter what. I was still protecting him. I kicked him out of the bedroom a few weeks later and he moved out 4 months later. We’ve been divorced three years now. After 18 years of marriage and 27 years together. And I’m good. I’m not sad or angry anymore. Having two kids, I couldn’t go no contact. But I did figure out how to go no contact emotionally. I don’t engage in any sort of emotional contact with him at all. Negative or positive. It’s strictly business. And that’s what finally got me to my good place. But I understand that dark place.
I remember the dark place. The only time in my life I hit myself, my fists against my head, howling. I remember being so desperate. I’m glad we’re both in a better place now mamabear
Me too. On Dday, Cheater Douchebag was going out of town. When he got back home from his trip, he said, “I will sleep in our bed. You can sleep on the couch if you like.” I still have the texts and it still causes incredible pain to read them. I had slept on the couch once in awhile because he snores so loudly, so yeah he must have figured that would be a good option. I went outside and became hysterical. I paced back and forth and I howled. I called people until I found someone’s house I could stay at. I packed a weird motley assortment of stuff in a bag and got in the car. At that point I could have been Jennair. Soon after, good friends referred me to Chump Lady and her book. I felt myself drawing power from somewhere within me. Yeah I will get through this. I feel so sad that Jennair must not have had these same kinds of friends, or worse, she read and absorbed some of the trash published in the New York Times or absorbed some RIC garbage and felt she was to blame. It breaks my heart.
As horrible as this is….. and it’s horrible…. until you have been thru it with a cheater and the crazy they put you through! Add in the mind games from the ow and there can be a recipe for disaster.
I highly recommend just dumping a large sweet tea on their head. Even if it gets you arrested. That good feeling doesn’t go away!
Yes! You might get a ticket for the iced tea dump, but everyone will be laughing at the Cheater and the OW and cheering for you.
So, it would be worth it. And no blood spilled.
For me, the pain of infidelity wasn’t the sex with the OW. It was the Pick Me Dance. It was the gas lighting, the manipulation, the lies, the blame shifting. I spent a solid two years with the god awful feeling of failing a test I didn’t even know I was taking.
When OW came to light, demanding my ex to leave me, demanding that he answer her calls even as he was breaking my heart (and she knew it) – my god the scars that has left on me. I will never be the same. I feel two years past dday that I will never be whole again.
And even after the immediate shock of dday, and here I am coming up on the one year anniversary of our divorce being final it still kills me that he (outwardly) has it all. A new wife. Solid career. Two earner household. Trips. It feels he has been rewarded, that he is still benefitting from the life we built together while I get to start from nothing but debt.
I hate him as much today as I did when he left. And I don’t want to be like this, but god damn is it hard.
So this is my long winded way to say I understand what drove her to it, as well as all the other Bitter Bunnies out there who went this route just as I say I understand what drove all the unnamed and presumably unmourned chumps out there who commit suicide. Remember that Kennedy wife? Not content with just fucking around and divorcing her, the Kennedy asshole drove her into a state of poverty she knew she could never overcome (a fair divorce trial in Mass against a Kennedy? what would be the odds?) so she hung herself even as he was on red carpets posing with his whore girlfriend.
It is maddening. I mean that literally. It is soul crushing.
As to why I never did anything stupid? Because some blessed soul on Reddit pointed me here three days after Dday. Because I found glimpses of my own mighty reading about others who found theirs. Because I would never give my ex what he wanted most – me out of his life in such a way that would garner his Sad Sausage Points for infinity.
I understand what drove this poor woman and the Kennedy wife. I understand it, but I wish they both would have found Chumplady and found another way instead.
I can relate to Calmafterstorm. Although I am trying to gain a (good and noble) life, it seems as though my exes have been doing much better than me (financially, professionally, socially, romantically, emotionally, physically) for years and are going strong with their current partners.
I subscribe to Chump Lady’s admonishment to ‘Not worship false gods (put adulterers/liars on a pedestal).’
However, not all cheaters/liars care if you, their loyal partner, are doing well. I am sure that my last boyfriend does not care what or how I am doing. He does not value me–seems as though he never really did (at least after the love-bombing phase ended). Soon after he discarded me (when he decided to ‘win’ my replacement), he completely blocked me from all channels of communication. I was suicidal for some months after he discarded me the first time (until he wreckonciled with me). At second discard, I realized that he lied, disrespected me, and just didn’t care about/value me. I felt horrible but not so suicidal as I realized that he might not know and wouldn’t care if I died. If he found out, he would say, ‘See. She was mentally unstable. I tried to help her, but alas, there was no saving her!’ [Cue false grief.]
I wish that I believed that ‘living well is the best revenge.’ It’s not revenge. But it makes sense to try to live well. There is no Karma (in the western definition of it). Life, in some ways to some, is unfair.
RSL, your ex husband is an asshole.
Your ex boyfriend is also an asshole.
You are NOT an asshole.
I wish you cared less about what they think, say, so, or feel. They aren’t worth the mental real estate that you give them.
Thanks, Lola Granola. I felt very good about my work (research) today but felt sad that I couldn’t share thus ‘victory’ with my ex-boyfriend. I thought, ‘He might respect me and feel proud of me (for once).’. I realized that it would help to be my own cheerleader and not feel let down that I can’t share the news with someone who doesn’t give a d–n about me. Why should I be surprised, years before he and I dated, he kicked to the curb a beautiful, very accomplished psychologist a month after she moved interstate to be with him. Going to try to just ‘internally’ celebrate what I am doing right/well, knowing that I am proud of myself and it doesn’t matter if anyone else knows or appreciates the value I bring.
Calm, Your response to this is so heartfelt. So many lives were impacted…Infidelity is no small matter.
I absolutely fantasized about killing OW#1. I could have done it by sabotaging something in her home that I have industrial expertise in and I would not have needed to use a gun. Probably would have been undetected. She dumped the X when I confronted her but I still had revenge fantasies.
But is was foolishness. She had a 4YO little girl and I couldn’t live with her being killed as a side effect of the righteous death of the mother. Not OK.
I admit that I have wished she would get cancer or something still. I mean, little innocent kids and all sorts of kind people are stricken, why can’t the scythe of death be aimed at this POS? I wouldn’t harm her but am not above wishing her dead. I have wished my cheater X, father of my children, dead too.
Strangely I don’t have any such feelings for OW#2, the one I was ultimately abandoned for. Odd.
I hope I can get beyond all of that one day, at least it does not occur to me very often.
My first thought when I heard this story was that I could understand her anger and pain and why she did it. The pain and grief was so intense I don’t know how I survived. This website keeps me on track.
When you really get to MEH, you realize these two people really DO deserve each other, and will never be happy. They need you in the triangle to feel special. When you remove yourself, and go no contact, and they are able to be together, Twu Luv doesn’t last. I heard it happen (from a distance) and I have heard that Ex#2 went thru a series of women and had at least two more marriages. My children still talk to their stepfather sometimes, and he always fishes for information, or gives them tidbits to pass on to me, and sometimes I have had to talk to him over some piece of old marital business. My children’s dad finally remarried, unhappily, after a series of weird relationships. My son’s unfortunately had a better view of most of those, because they had custody visits with their dad thru their teens, and still have contact, because he is their dad. But these two will never be happy, in the sense chumps mean when we say we are happy. These two are only “happy” when they are “getting over” on someone else, or making someone else unhappy. They are doomed to failure because of their dysfunctional personalities. My dad is the same way. He is 86, and I have never known him to say he is happy. He has certainly not told any of his 5 children that he is happy or proud of anything they have done. He is bitter, and unhealthy, and still unbearable while he waits for Death to come calling. Nothing anyone can do will ever be good enough to please him.
Think about how lucky chumps are, no matter what we’ve been through, to have the capacity for simple happiness.
So glad Cl you posted this story. People should realize how cheating is so tragic. yes, I did wish she’d saved a bullet for the cheater.
I too imagined picking the two moral lackwits off with a high powered rifle. But meh, arrived and my brain just said ‘who cares?’. Let them continue on their road of self destruct. Both smoke, do recreational drugs, etc. He is too old to do so, but loves that she does. Me? apparently too boring. Cha Ching to Boring.
Me, now in my new home almost 5 years. Everyone is doing great. Never have to deal with Ex. Recently bought myself new wheels, taking two trips in the next two months, feeling good and so GRATEFUL.
In keeping with some of the comments above:
I changed all the Passwords to things like ‘creepy old man’, ‘cheating fucker’, ‘he who lacks a moral compass’, ‘large ego, little dick’.So when I had to give them to him, he just paled visibly and gulped. Priceless.
To all those in the throes of the pain – I never would have imagined my life would be this awesome…I am one of those who turns down men. I am perfectly content to be on my own and loving my independance. Not saying that might not change but for now, I LOVE IT.
I changed my passwords too – I enjoy typing “shortshortdick” “hereyesarecooked” (she has an eyesocket that is lower than the other, it looks fucking weird) I share my amazon account and I love telling my friends my passwords.
I dont want to kill anyone. I dont want or need that. But i do hope he drops dead(of natural causes.) and i have really struggled with the fact that i feel that way.
I experienced him inches away from my face, screaming. Raging. I have never felt terror like that. I am the girl that will come right back at you. But not then. I just wanted to get away. For the first time in my life i was truly terrified that someone might kill me. Right then and there.
Chump lady all i can say is when you boxed that bastards ears your training did kick in. That is what it is for. I wasnt looking for a fight and you probably werent either. That is the difference between us and disordered. If there isnt a fight they will get one going. People need to know that there are people like this. It is intentional. It is crazy and real and intentional.
I snapped. On a hot Wednesday night in July, around midnight. There was incessant banging at my front door that he told me not to answer. It’s a crazy person, he said.
It was his girlfriend (with her mother and two cousins to protect her from me). She was 21 (my “husband” was 47), and met him at at a bar. They had been fucking for months. He wanted to be a father to her 4 year old son. She told me a lot.
I felt relief first. I wasn’t crazy. Something was going on. It wasnt ME like he had been telling me for months and months. I thanked her for the info.
I turned to look at my “husband”. The man I trusted.
He was just sitting, looking like a deer caught in headlights. Facing one woman and one whore. He kept saying he’s sorry. Sorry. What’s that mean now.
I punched him. Right on that face he thinks looks so good. It felt good. So I did it a couple more times.
Now I will confess even more.
I walked into my house and got a club, took it outside and got him a few more times. His girlfriend hit him. Her big ole boy cousins beat him when i was done.
His girlfriend busted out his car’s windshield and i busted his taillights. He left in his car and ran to his mommy.
His girlfriend, her mom and I sat on my porch til 4 a.m. talking. I learned so much.
I had never used my fist or a weapon on anyone in my life. I abhor violence. I just snapped.
Even after that, Chump that I am, I took him back for 6 months (another story).
Chump Lady and Chump Nation give me knowledge and strength daily. Please don’t judge too harshly.
Judge? I applaud you. Taking him back might have been a mistake you had to make. These are not fun lessons to learn.
I beat the X awake the day I found “THE TEXTS.” I beat him in an adrenaline fugue state as hard as I could punch. A feral chow I had taken off the streets joined and began biting his calves in earnest. Then my Great Dane/Pit Bull Mix rose up from his bed and began making Grizzly Bear sounds, stalking forward with his head low, teeth bared. Bitch boy ran out the front door, like the punk that he is.
There was a reason most ancient cultures reckoned adultery deserved a death sentence. I don’t think its too far off the mark.
Are you kidding? That was one of the best stories ever. I am envious you got to do that. Oh hang on, I just read SLK’s story. The dogs got in on it?? Even better. Good for you both.
I am at Meh and it is glorious, but I tell you that for years I had fantasies of having my X fall off his horse and impaling himself on a pitchfork. Or as he goes off on one of his long rides into the wilderness that he has a stroke, falls off his horse, and has to lie there for hours as he contemplates a miserable death alone and has to reevaluate his life and all the shit he put so many people though. I rarely ever see him, but when I do, I think early onset dementia is kicking in and that will work too. Then I push those thoughts out of my mind and just think, Karma is a Bitch. Then I think Be Kind, Be Loving, Do your Best.
One thing that really curtailed my wish and hope that my cheating ex husband would die…is that he owes me money in the divorce settlement. For a tight fisted penny pincher like him, seeing that court-ordered alimony leave his account each month on payday for two more years…that must drive him crazy. In about two years when he retires from the Army, having to legally give me 26% of that pension is likewise going to drive him crazy. I try to focus my rage and sorrow there. He will have to think about me every payday for the rest of his life.
OW is a special snowflake; she doesn’t work. Didn’t keep a job in her native Singapore, where they met…and of course why would she? She wouldn’t have been available for those frequent scuba holidays with my husband if she actually had to show up at work! Now she is new to the United States, doesn’t know how to drive, doesn’t have any great work history. In time, that lack of $$ is gonna drive my ex nuts. I enjoy knowing that.
Weirdly, my subconscious brain DOES have violent dreams about beating up OW. More often that I would like I wake up in the morning after one of these dreams and the emotions are all fresh and raw again! But I know all parts of my brain are trying to heal from this. It is a deep, physiological hurt. I am trying to be patient with my body and with my heart.
Isn’t it crazy how he can go from…
“He also doted on his wife on his website: “On the personal side, my wife and golden retriever are the center of my universe and the reason I get up every morning.”
to fucking someone else?
This reminds me of me ex – no wonder chumps are so broken. It takes a special kind of evil to mindfuck someone to this degree.
I agree; that line stuck out for me, too. Total mindfuck for the poor wife.
Not to mention referring to his wife and dog in the same sentence.
The best is BIGGER FOOL wanted and won the FOOL!
I’m a few years out and having a lot of shame/flashbacks suddenly about any reaction I had to him – showing pain, anger of any sort. (Very long story short -affair repeatedly denied during difficult pregnancy/emergency delivery. Tons of gas-lighting. Very quick discard after explosive months of emotional abuse soon after delivery. He and OW are still together.)
My justified anger at the time had me so emotionally raw, and I acted in ways I do not recognize for my normally calm, overly accommodating self. It’s coming back to haunt me now and causing anxiety. Any thoughts on how to cope with this?
I am not far enough out to give you any real advice except to say: forgive yourself. Truly, forgive yourself!
A horrible thing happened to you. The person you trusted most in this world betrayed you. If you had a human response to incredibly hurtful, cruel, deliberate behavior, that is understandable and that is okay! In fact you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t feel the way you did. I said a lot of “mean” and petty things to my ex as I dealt with the gaslighting, denial, and lies. I also said a lot of true things to him. How are we supposed to react? Our reactions seem strange/regrettable/wrong in retrospect because we were trying desperately to apply logic and understanding to an illogical cluster*** of selfish behavior.
You have no responsibility to him or how he feels. Did you react in a harsh way? It’s ok. It’s MORE than okay. Know that you are allowed to react. Know that your feelings at the time and how you expressed them were allowed, no matter how they look in retrospect. The fact that you got through it to today means you are strong, and I admire you!
Thank you, this means a lot to me. I’m frustrated with myself that it’s been so hard to forgive myself in light of all the awful things he did…I hope it comes soon.
Don’t worry, Jesso. We will get there! I am just about 1 year out from confirming the affair and leaving…about 7 months out from the divorce. I begged him to pick me (something I never expected to choose to do, or have to do). I waited far too long. I tried to live in denial. Even though it still hurts like hell, the pain is blunter than it first was. I can tell I have moved forward a little bit, and I bet you have, too. You deserve so much more than the life you used to have with him!
Jesso,
Don’t feel badly about your reaction to finding out you were cheated on.
I yelled, begged for answers, cried, told him I wanted another chance (what was I thinking? Ultimately I went no contact and started building my new life.
But I’m proud of those things.
I loved deeply and purely. He was my husband and we were a family. I cherished him. Those are all emotions that come from having values! From being a loving and committed wife!
It speaks volumes about who we are that we are invested in our most personal relationships.
Be proud that you cared.
It’s all in how you view yourself!
Liz C. and Rebecca, great replies. ❤️
I found one-on-one therapy very helpful to reframe and release some of my worst twisted feelings after leaving x. Most of my feelings turned out to not even be about x, they were older expectations. I also had what I referred to as “waves” and later on “ripples” of feeling the trauma again over the 2-3 years after survival/separation/divorce. Oddly enough I found they usually coincided with anniversaries of significant abuse events or freedom. Very helpful working with a therapist with a good fit and some experience working with trauma recovery. Your x’s behavior sounds very traumatizing while you were carrying and birthing his child. Good luck.
Thank you for this. Yes! What I am going through now is definitely coinciding with a lot of significant anniversaries. I didn’t expect to be hit so hard this many years out, but it is exactly like that – a wave of a new type of trauma.
This story is truly tragic. And unimaginable as I am so low conflict that I felt bad for yelling at cheater and AP in public when I ran into them at a restaurant. It was one of the only times I lost control and I nearly called to apologize to the AP the next day (?????? PhD level chump here)
That said, many of us cause incredible harm to ourselves by Pick Me Dancing — thereby turning our anger inward and losing ourselves by believing the lies cheaters spew upon discovery. (I haven’t been happy for a long time…You focused too much on the kids… AP is my soulmate… We were never compatible, blah, blah blah – all after 30-plus years together.) If I hadn’t gone through the discard and gas lighting and betrayal myself, I would never understand the incredible mind-fuck that is experienced by the unsuspecting spouse.
I for one, wasted 2 years of my one precious life post D-day by continuing to think about/ accommodate/ try to change myself for and pine for a partner who has been so thoughtless and cruel to me. I thought he was lost – but really, he was just a selfish jerk who cared more about his “happiness” and hurting a 20-something coworker — than the family (which included three kids just a bit older than ho-worker) and life he had spent half his life building with me.
Thank you CL for showing us the importance of going no contact to stop being abused – to stop spackling and trying to “untangle the skein” – and for urging us to “gain a life” instead of clinging to a devastatingly harmful MIRAGE of a healthy partnership
I have a traumatic, horrible story to share that reminded me that the Cheater does NOT care and will use the chump’s suicide for pity and nothing else. But also, Karma.
My mom’s 3rd husband was 15 years younger than her, she was happier than ever and they were married for 11 years. She was 34 when they met and he was 19, but man she loved him and he seemed to love her. They made a strange, but happy life together .Until she was 45 and he met a 17 year old girl, started using drugs, and started an affair. My mom probably did some pick me dancing, but she also drove her truck through their house after he moved the girl in, and also spray painted her husband’s drug dealers name/ph# on the side of the house.
But eventually she begged. She begged him on the phone to come back to her, and he just said “No”. She shot herself in the chest while on the phone with him, he listened to her die. He listened to my very pregnant sister give her CPR and beg her to live. He listened to the paramedics try to resuscitate her.
After the funeral, he just moved on. Married that now 18 year old girl. Opening moved her into the house he and my mom shared. And they even slept on the antique bed he and my mom picked out years earlier. But, my mom was always a part of their relationship and every time they’d fight, this girl would break some of my mom’s things in front of him. One day, she broke the bed he had loved so much. He was so angry, he threw a bucket of gasoline on her and tried to light her on fire. She got away, he went to prison for attempted murder.
KARMA.
this is a good post to help people to realize that the cheater just isn’t worth it. They don’t have normal human qualities/feelings and they’re not worth hurting yourself over.
Preggychump–I’m so sorry you lost your mother to such tragic circumstances. Horrifying.
thank you Tempest… I lost my dad similar way – when I was 6 my mom cheated on him and got pregnant with my sister. He had a mental breakdown and also killed himself. My mom moved on with new guy – my first step-dad. So, more karma. I come from a long line of karma it seems.
my last memory of my dad was him outside the house, on his knees, begging to see me and my sister. My mom and her mother refused. He killed himself a few days later. It’s also why I have never withheld my son from his father even though he is a douche. Even though he’s caused him harm, I just limit and never deny.
OMG. Your poor father, to be cheated on and then at your mother’s mercy for seeing his children. Too much pain in the world, often heaped upon the innocent.
Resilience and heart…in abundance. I’d like to think my story is better than the ones that have gone before it.
Whoa…..
And is it just me, or is the “we just moved for husband’s new job and he started an affair almost right away and I’m alone in a new city with no support” scenario happen a lot? Besides me, I know of so many women to whom this happened.
In my case the move was the result of several bad business choices that left him with very few options, hence the move. Instead of manning up and accepting his shortcomings, he stuck his shortcoming in the first woman who validated his shit decisions as not his fault, poor thing. Makes me wonder about similar situations.
I know my x was fully aware of what he was planning to do when he tried to convince me to move with him. He was completely involved with the ow. Just another way to mess with me. Just pure meanness. Throwing around his power and control. I can see why a woman would be beyond furious when she discovers her husband had intentionally uprooted her life only to then discard her.
Yup. When we moved to ex’s home state to be closer to his family I thought things would get better because he would be happier living where he wanted to live. Nope. They got worse. Now I realize that he was in the middle of another emotional affair with a woman who lives in this state. She isn’t the one he left me for and it is probable that one never went physical, but it still did damage to the marriage, contributed to the devalue of me and the kids and set him up for the eventual physical affairs and discard or me.
Again I know of a few couples that moved to another state and the wife was dumped shortly after the move. I had a friend that was not married but had been with her boyfriend for at least 5 years. She busted her behind working two to three jobs to save up for the big move to CA and he made sure every penny she made went to the move. They were there a month when he dumped her for someone else and she had to move back (crashed at my place) with nothing. We were all young so not a huge deal as she went on to meet and marry a great guy and she eventually landed a really great, prestigious job. Her ex boyfriend is still a bum, has nothing, but a lot older now and he lost his looks.
One of my good friends quit her amazing, high-profile job (in her mid-50s) to move with her husband, and he dumped her for his OW not even a year later – right after they bought and furnished an expensive house. He’d apparently been seeing the OW for years. My friend is still pissed, though she held her head up high the whole time.
I remember my cheater ex-boyfriend saying, “If you move to (town where he lives), we’ll be fine if you take a pay cut.” First, why would I take a pay cut when I’ve worked so hard to get where I am? Also, why would I move in with a proven cheater and make myself financially vulnerable? Huh?
Was just looking at Mark Geradot’s Linked In profile. Talk about a DoucheMagoo Word Salad. He actually calls himself “a thorn in the side of the status quo.”
Eyeroll at the profile.
My ex leaned on me to move to a big city all throughout our marriage, but I wanted to stay near my family and where I felt we’d have a better quality of life because the cost of living was so much lower. I am so glad that I dug my heels in. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be alone with three small children in a big city without the support of my family and friends when I found out he was cheating. Part of me thinks that I would have stayed with him and spackled away rather than feeling empowered to leave him right away because I had so much support. I will always have to wonder what really motivated him to want to live in a big city. I thought that it was about job opportunities for him, but he was he thinking about all the many women he could cheat with in a big, new place? Glad I will never have to know.
We had just moved out of the country and he met his new direct report. I was told that I legally couldn’t leVe the country with the kids. I felt like I was in a horror movie where the universe was conspiring against me. What could have been a great new adventure and experience for us as a family turned into a living hell for everyone.
To admit to ones self the extreme rage and violence you have towards STBX and then to publish it for all the world to see is incredibly brave.
My only wish is that some of the sad sausages would read this post, as well as the comments and have the epiphany that gaslighting is playing with fire.
I don’t know if they have normal epiphanies. Some get off on the drama. Some are diabolical and would like to see the betrayed spouse sitting in a prison cell while they get everything- kids, house, cars, AP, all of it. Betraying them wasn’t enough. They are destroyers.
Someone wrote on CL that they hated that their Ex now knew what was in the heart of a murderer because they felt it.
I’m a very peaceful and fun loving person. I honestly never understood about how a normal person could commit a crime of passion and kill someone.
Then I had my Dday and the next day was Christmas and Ex told me to watch the kids because she was going out. I could see on her phone usage (her phone was on my account) that she had been sexting OM.
As I sat there watching cartoons with the kids after they opened their presents, I was overwhelmed with feelings of pain, anger, fury and humiliation. I quite literally was seeing red and I wanted to kill both of them.
Luckily looking at my kids it popped in my head what that would do to them. Now Ex is a whore but still is their mother and I couldn’t raise them dead or in prison. My faith also kicked in and the words of Jesus about forgiveness popped into my head and I worked hard to calm down.
I understand where the poor chump in this story was and if I didn’t have my kids and faith it scares me what I wanted to do. As CL said, the murderous rage passes for most of us but I wish that I had never experienced that.
Sorry first sentence should read “they hated that THEY now knew what was in the heart of a murderer because they felt it.”
Also this is a sensitive subject just like having suicidal thoughts. I admit to having both at the time.
Realize that I had been with this woman 16 years (happy so I thought), had 3 underage kids and in an instant I was losing everything (so I felt) AND she was rubbing my nose in her affair.
I’m sharing my story so a fellow Chump experiencing this knows that these feelings are normal and will pass and once you get out of that horrible relationship, happier days are ahead. The poor chump in this story SHOULD have followed CL’s advice, left the cheater — take him to the cleaners in court and move on with her life. Instead her reputation is forever a murderer and her story in this life is over.
Unfortunately, sometimes the Chump, not the abusive cheater, gets financially cleaned out in court. Ask me how I know.
#metoo
The system is incredibly unpredictable sorry to say I don’t want to scare any new chumps but
I volunteer at a dog shelter with a very calm, compassionate woman. I can’t imagine her ever raising her voice As I started to tell my infidelity story, she admitted her first husband had cheated on her, and said, “When I found out, I understood how someone could want to kill another person.” There’s a reason why many operas and plays involving infidelity end with one character’s death.
I think every chump reading today should hug themselves and acknowledge that we may have faltered and been imperfect at times – but deep inside we all Women and Men WITH CORES OF SOLID STEEL.
When we met while dividing some financial assets I looked my cheater straight in the eye and said: YOU NEVER COULD HAVE SURVIVED THIS PAIN IF I HAD DONE THIS TO YOU.
Carpe Diem CN. Rock on
I’m a person who has to cover their eyes during scenes in movies or TV shows that depict torture, because even though I know it’s just acting, the thought of someone suffering like that disturbs me.
Yet after D-day I had fantasies of duct taping fuckface to a chair and giving him a Louisville slugger to the head until I exhausted all my energy. Wanting to participate in such violence scared the shit out of me, angered me, and swung my emotions back and forth like a ping pong ball.
I became aware of how it’s possible for anyone to snap if pushed to the brink.
I spent a lot of time restructuring my conception of fairness and justice. It was a horrible process ripe with a lot of “but it’s not fucking fair!” Ultimately though, I am a much stronger person because of it. I don’t give one ounce of credit to the cheater though, that was all on me, just like his cheating is all on him. I also remember hearing “this will make you stronger” and wanting to punch whoever said it in the mouth, and asking them “did that make YOU stronger.”
Being in that place of devastation is a horrible lonely feeling. I just wanted it to go away.
The only way out, is through! It sucked!
ah hahaha. My family said after bomb drop that “Jesus Christ himself with a Louisville Slugger could not beat the truth out of XH (cheater)”.
now that is quite an image!
Narcissistic, borderline and other cluster b personalities can have passive aggressive traits.
They use these passive actions to bring a negative reaction from you.
They want to elicit an our of control response from you.
They then use your reaction against you in future interactions.
They will store them in an arsenal for future use.
I can not express strongly enough here the damage getting into this dynamic is. Everybody can get into an argument and act out. It takes a special kind of fucked up to store and re use these points.
Narc acts innocent, target gets blame. Blame sends target into spiral of embarrassment and shame, narc gets to play victim.
If someone close to you will not accept their responsibility for actions that enrage you or
deny that they said things, did things or said things they have – see this as a red flag.
If they act like “you are crazy” for calling out their hurtful or outright hostile behavior,
If they throw things back at you – things that you have done or they have re written about you –
you have every red flag you need to walk out. This will not get better. This does not fix itself. It will only get more intense.
Ask me how I know. Just look at my user name. I was made into a villain by a pathological liar. I pick me danced and accepted that role. No more.
This post is so true, Magneto. I once lost control early on when I suspected infidelity and I started wildly hitting him with my purse. I am a violent person, but it was prompted by a visceral emotional response that even I was not expecting. From that day on, any argument we had, he would say, “You’re not going to hit me again, are you?” It was strange like he wanted to make me get to that out-of-control state again. Then, I realized what you said, that he wanted to paint himself as the victim.
Oops, that was supposed to say I am NOT a violent person!!!????
When I read this story in the news, my first thought was wondering if CL would remark on it. Such a tragic waste of two lives. These were both accomplished, remarkable women, who knows what they would have achieved had they lived? So sad to contemplate.
And I also wondered if CL would address how the rest of the world would look at this. Those of us who have been chumped know how we feel about affairs and affair partners, but does the rest of the world look upon infidelity for the awful act that it is? Probably not.
I was angry at my ex’s affair partner, and called her names. I’m rather sad that I stooped to that, as it garnered her sympathy from my ex. He felt bad that she felt bad. Gah.
I never wished them physical harm, but I did wish that my ex could hurt as much as I was hurting. And I knew that he would never hurt like that, because he would never allow himself to get close enough to be hurt.
In the end, all we can control is our reaction to what has happened to us. It’s a real shame that Jenn Aire couldn’t channel her anger and fear into something better for herself.
“I tried to prove my worth to a worthless person”
To keep yourself from going over the edge just ask yourself WHY exactly am I trying to KEEP this crappy person.
Do some ‘no contact’, ‘minimal contact’, ‘grey rock’, and you will begin to feel the peacefulness of them not being around and actually laugh to yourself: sure let the AP have the cheater- that’s the best revenge.
In thinking back to my reactions in the first few years after dDay, I realize that I had lots of revenge fantasies. None were about physical revenge, all were about telling people what a bad person my (at the time STBX) husband was. I wanted others to hate him like I did. Having a good reputation was very important to him and he did not want anyone to know that he had had multiple affairs during our 33 year marriage. I was so shattered and out of control that I told everyone. I look back now and realize that it really was a futile act. He moved to another town and I have heard through my one son who talks to him that he has had multiple relationships and has a whole new set of friends. He moved on unscathed and I think my verbal going on and on kept me tied to my story (and my anger) way longer than I needed to be.
We are divorced now and, in May, I will be 7 years away from him. I no longer have a story to tell – in fact, rarely even think about him. I truly don’t care what happens in his life. It is true – our feelings are finite and someday we will no longer be in that place of revenge.
The story is horrifying on so many levels. I know that I too felt a rage that approached homicidal in the dark days following failed wreconciliation when the mask was finally off and my formerly (so I thought) loving devoted husband suddenly hated me and our kids and was bent on destroying our lives built on a lot of sweat blood and tears over 26 years in favor of the golddigging homewrecking much younger whore he met while she was trolling the elevators of his law firm looking for a mark. She wanted my husband and my life and my future (as I saw it) and she would stop at nothing to get it. I thought is was her! I felt sorry for my “poor wayward” X who seemed so traumatized by adult responsibilities and growing older—midlife crisis? Brain tumor? Fucked up childhood of origin issues….. if SHE would just disappear then WE would be ok again, or so I naively thought before I found CL and CN.
Thank God I didn’t seek revenge on her. Thank God other affairs came out of the woodwork (all shapes and sizes and flavors) and I realized it was HIM!!!!! I still have nothing but contempt for that whore, who to my knowledge (I’m NC) is likely still sucking money from X. But, she got what she deserved… HIM!
My “revenge?” A wonderful new life centered on family; a partner with commitment, maturity, integrity; and a commitment to myself to NEVER accept disrespect and non-reciprocity in my life again from anyone. Meh is indescribably fabulous and that louse and his types are not worth a moment of my life, let alone a life spent in prison or worse.
Peace great Chump Nation.
I remember driving out to homeslice’s house. I just wanted to see his car there so I could confirm the lies he was telling me. I didn’t have plans to confront anybody, I just needed to see his car. I drove 45 minutes to get there, and didn’t see his car. On the drive back, I thought this is a clear sign of an unstable person and that I needed to stop being double-minded about things. I knew the truth yet thought he must be telling me the truth because I didn’t see his car.
I also remember walking over the overpass every Saturday on my way to church and thinking about jumping. I made an agreement that if I didn’t have hope after leaving church I was free to jump. Luckily I always felt some hope after the sermon. I did this for months; my friends saw me as happy and moving on when inside I was breaking and falling apart. I thought about suicide every single day; I thought that the way he treated me, while I begged for his love, was deserving. I thought that the only value I had was the value he had given me. I thought I deserved every single thing that happened…..the lies, the back and forth, the horrible things he said to me when comparing us, calling the police on me, him setting up a video camera in the bedroom after he moved out, him wanting control by deciding if he was going to provide spousal support, the way he treated me like a $20- whore when I gave him oral sex in my quest for him to choose me….. I will never again allow someone to put depreciating value on me.
For those of you feeling that all is lost, it does get better. I no longer have that desire to end it all and am in amazing place both personally and professionally (the clusterfuck started in the beginning of 2016) . It does get better, you just have to get through each day. I found a strength in me I never knew I had and for that I am very thankful. It gave me the strength to tell him to fuck off (kindly) when he asked about working on our marriage, the ability to go NC because I no longer care about what he has to say and the strength to go hard when we went to mediation and not waffle. In the end, I won my freedom, confidence, self-worth and sanity back….. and that is a beautiful and amazing thing!
I’m so glad you didn’t jump Lost220#! I love your insightful posts here and read all of them. I echo everything you said. DDay 12/27/14 for me. Meh is wonderful and I LOVE life again. I will never forget or be ok with what X did, but it most certainly is not worth dying for. It took a few years to come to this frame of mind, though.
I remember at my second Dday the despair of how my and my kids’ lives would change. But it had very little to do with the actual ‘man’ I was married to for 20 years. I see that clearly now. But the FOG is thick for a chump. I truly believe the worse and more abusive the cheater narc is, the better and kinder the chump must be to have balanced that out. And Lost220# you must be a saint in my book!!!
People fucking snap all the time. This is no one’s fault but the cheater. He was so “unhappy” in his marriage he should have divorced his wife first and then moved on with another relationship. Listen up affair partners and cheaters, DON’T FUCK AROUND IN OTHER PEOPLE’S PERSONAL LIVES!!!
Now because of HIS actions two people are dead and many are suffering because of it. Fuck you Mark Gerardot!
And they snap over much less than infidelity too. Ever heard of road rage?
You are correct. Yes, stupid stuff like road rage too! People snap!
But I don’t think one of us here didn’t at least for a fleeting moment at the very least fantasize about doing just this. She’s not the first betrayed spouse to have done this and she won’t be the last. Famous plays and Operas, books, movies, paintings, etc have been written about stuff like this. One would think cheaters would learn. Oh yeah, they’re special. Crap like this won’t happen to them.
Did anyone read the articles about this? That whore was MARRIED! And, she was the cheater husband’s boss and the poor chump wife recently and unwittingly gave up her career to move so her cheater husband could be closer to the AP. The chump posted on NextDoor that she needed a counselor who could change her husband- there was mention of FOO issues and finding a therapist who could make her husband “do what he says he will do” ….. these are all straight out of cheater’s handbook. What a horror.
I know the situation was a bit different but I remember the Betty Broderick case from years ago, the first time I watched it I really couldn’t grasp it, I rewatched years later after dealing with my own cheater and had a totally different take on it. I came close to snapping a few times myself. Sad situation with horrible ending.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-broderick-parole-20170105-story.html
All the usual cheater fare – denial, gas-lighting, verbal abuse.
If they give her parole there may be some chumps who figure a stint in jail is worth it.
“She is unrepentant.”
I do remember Betty Broderick and her story and like you I was all judgy about her. She spent time in prison for running over her husband with her Mercedes. Today well I’m sad to say I kinda get it.
Actually, Betty Broderick almost got away with murder. She shot and killed her exhusband and his new wife. The first trial ended with a hung jury. She was convicted of murder at the second trial.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Broderick
Googled Mark Gerardot, came up with University of Delaware after his name. My god, he looks like a self-regarding fucktard. Also, they chose the most unflattering picture of his wife, because that fits the narrative ie contrasts better with the picture of the hot young OW, but she was actually an attractive lady too. Asshole.
I certainly don’t mean to sound cold, it is a tragedy that this happened, but I’d also like to add this… in her acts of rage and revenge she probably created a host of cheater apologists. People will not feel outraged that this woman was the victim of adultery. Instead they will shift the focus to her horrendous acts, because in her action she made someone else the victim.
In death, we memorialize (exalt, glorify, honor
bless, consecrate, sanctify) the person who has passed. Out of respect we do not dishonor their memories, except occasionally in those instances where their own actions were seen as violent, disturbed, and resulted in victimizing someone else.
I think all of us here understand the amount of pain this woman was in. Unfortunately I don’t think her acts legitimize that pain to provoke an empathetic understanding by the population never touched by cheating. She’ll likely be labeled unstable, bitter, vengeful, etc.
Our society really needs to rethink universally making infidelity a crime. Victims of infidelity have no recourse for justice. Their lives are torn out from beneath them and we simply say “we can’t govern morality.” Infidelity laws shouldn’t exist to govern morality, they should exist to give justice to the victims. Laws are simply deterrents, but in the end, we know they do not stop people from exercising their free will. Laws also exist to protect the rights of victims. On some level we as a society have put more value on personal freedoms, when the consequences of exercising those freedoms would affect only a small percentage of individuals. It’s as if injustice isn’t worth recognition unless it affects the greater population. I honestly believe that the sense of injustice is the fuel for tragic crimes of passion.
With the statistics being 50% of divorces are the result of infidelity, I think it’s safe to say that a great percent of the population is affected by this issue. It’s funny that as an individual you can’t break a cable contract without monitary consequences, but you can blow up the lives of an entire family by breaking a marital contract because their are no laws to enforce it.
The government will recognize that contract to collect taxes, but it’s terms are illegimate and unenforceable to an individual. If our society is evolving and changing its laws, we need to update the contract of marriage to reflect the society we live in today. States have no problem governing the terms of divorce, yet the contact of marriage is viewed as a hands off agreement enforable by the wills of the parties within it!
Rant over!
Ignore my misspellings of passion ????????
Well said Gotabrain. When I finally divorced Cheaterturd his many infidelities had no bearing on his settlement and because I was the responsible one during our marriage I ended up having to pay him a ridiculous amount of money and alimony. No one cared he violated our “legal” agreement in terms of fidelity in the marriage but didn’t mind the “legal” requirements of what he “deserved” monetarily on the way out . Talk about double sided morality. It is enough to turn someone violent
When my cheating ex-wife shacked up with an affair partner after I divorced her, I knew that the tens of thousands of dollars I paid her for “child support” weren’t going to our kids (we had 50-50 custody, and I bought whatever they needed while with me), but largely to support the cheater household. Write those checks every month FOR YEARS. Shit sandwich size: Super Duper.
“No one cared he violated our “legal” agreement in terms of fidelity in the marriage but didn’t mind the “legal” requirements of what he “deserved” monetarily on the way out”
Exactly!
Try doing that with any other legal contract and you’d be laughed out of court! “Oh sorry, I didn’t adhere to the terms of the contract, but can you make them pay me for my failure!”
I’m lucky to live in a state where I was able to sue the OW. You bet your ass I had my attorney subpoena her for our spousal support hearing and distribution of assets.
I was smart in the sense that I saved everything while going through this, even when I still wanted to save my marriage. I kept detailed journal entries (which Douchebag McGee tried to subpoena).
In the end, he didn’t want it all exposed…. I get 100% of the profits from the sale of the house and a monthly spousal support check that will mostly pay for my new place.
What he learned, I was so much smarter than he believed me to be. I also was more together than he thought, even with my erratic attempts to try to make him choose me.
He now knows where I stand and he’ll never be able to manipulate me again; he gets to live his life with homeslice and two young kids while he technically gets to pay for my travels. And for me, that is my ultimate fuck you. It can be wonderful on the other side, just get through it however you can.
I really am not a violent person. BUT…I did very grimly go about destroying a collection of wine he had brought into our house as a result of his affair and the OW’s taste in wine. It was cathartic, and left a huge mess of stain and broken glass in front of where he parks his car.
It actually scared him, since he had never seen me do anything remotely like that in 30 years.
And I have discovered I can swear like a sailor.
Read somewhere of a woman steaming all the labels off her soon-to-be ex husband’s extensive wine collection…for spite.
Always be classy,never act crazy. Why feed into the other’s narrative that “S/he’s crazy !”
Truly, truly tragic.
I’ll admit, I still wish my X dead. The hell he put me through. It still eats at me. Not meh yet.
On a similar note, my cousin had a similar tragedy happen to him. His wife, cheater and drug abuser, opened up their marriage 2 years ago. He agreed to it, yes. After the drugs entered the picture, he filed for divorce. He said he couldn’t do it anymore. I realize that yes, he made choices, but I also see a giant pick me dance with her holding the pistol to make him dance. Two weeks ago, she shot herself. The divorce wasn’t final by any means, but she was having to undergo a court ordered drug test because she didn’t want my cousin to have any rights to their kid. The whole thing was terribly terribly tragic. And on top of divorce bills that amount to no divorce, my cousin is now also fronting the cost of the funeral for his wife that was going to be his STBXW. It was just a mess. She left a 3 year old daughter, who was in the same house (with her parents, luckily) at the time she shot herself.
I don’t even know if I have anything really great to say about these kinds of situations, except, sometimes we don’t get to pick what breaks us. Jennair, my heart goes out to you. Just heartbreaking.
How tragic! I wish your cousin and his little girl all the best. What a horrible series of events!
Md–yes, the “let’s try an open marriage” from a cheater, after one has already been married for years, is an extreme version of the pick-me dance. Several of us have had our cheaters seek some version of an open marriage, or request threesomes, swinging, etc. I’d bet good money that 99% of those who ask that of their long-term spouse have already been behaving as if they are in an open marriage. My then-husband did right after he ended his affair with gradwhore (though it took me 8 years to find out about that affair & make sense of his tawdry requests. And for the record, I never engaged in his requested activities. I assumed he would come to his senses. He never did.)
Even though my mind and life were a mess after D Day and I am glad that I knew early on that I had a life to live. Most likely had to do with the fact that my Mom has just died a month before D Day but I always knew he wasn’t going to take my ability to have a good life away from me. The OW was just trash. So suicide was never in my thoughts. I know I am lucky because not all women can say that and I don’t judge. I just knew it wasn’t for me. The persistent mind fucks are now I’m older, I won’t be able to trust again and I’m not perfect so eventually a man will get bored. So yeah, I didn’t escape without harm but I never considered violence. May Jennair R.I.P.
Yesterday i posted that i think these monsters should be sued for fraud. I was thinking along the lines of how so many of them uproot families with promises they know are fraudulent. In my opinion it is so they can triangulate with the ow and inflict as much chaos as possible. In any other circumstance you would be sued for fraud. They should be financially held responsible for this even outside of a divorce. Forget morals. Cheaters have. But they do understand business/financial consequences. If you plan on taking advantage of someone you should be ready to pay.
I wish i could sue my x for even trying that shit with me. He still tried to con me a million other ways though. A good attorney is worth every penny.
Financial abuse is labeled as “abuse” until it’s committed during an affair. Then it’s relabeled “financial infidelity”.
Psychological & Emotional abuse is labeled as “abuse” until it’s committed during an affair. Then it’s relabeled “emotional infidelity”
Relabeling the abuse inflicted by cheating spouses minimizes the trauma experienced by a betrayed spouse. Many betrayed spouses experience a severe mental health crisis as they struggle to absorb the betrayal and it’s consequences in their lives. In many cases, the victim of betrayal feels forced to stay with their abuser because they are told if they move out prior to a separation agreement, it could jeopardize their chances of child custody (“status quo” demonstrating a lack of commitment to the children) and even hurt them financially (foregoing support or asset rights). This can continue for days, weeks or even months, prolonging the betrayed spouse’s exposure to continued abuse from the cheating spouse which can lead to escalations of emotionally charged arguments and in some cases violence.
What if the words “affair” or “infidelity” in this story were swapped out with “abuse”. What if instead of referring to the cheating spouse’s accomplice as the “affair partner” they were labeled the “abuse partner” (which is sometimes a very accurate description of their role) and if “emotional infidelity” was described as the “emotional abuse” it is. Would we expect victims of any other type of abuse to “get over it” or “get along for the kids”? Would we encourage therapy insisting that a victim of any other type of abuse reconcile with their abuser before running away to safety?
I was smug once….before I was betrayed by my cheating partner. I could never comprehend the severity of the trauma one experience’s from benign words like “affair” and “infidelity”. Perhaps if society treated betrayal by your spouse as the abuse it is, someone may have interjected and changed the outcome of this terribly tragic story.
Chumped to dump you are so right that they are many times an abuse partner. They plot to steal children. They plot how to drive the spouse insane. They plot how to steal money. It really is abuse. I know. The ow literally laughed as i cried. That is abuse. Period.
In the news none of the comments are made about this broken hearted woman. They are made about what a dynamic, adorable person that other woman was. And that sorry piece of shit is going to be put out there as such a tragic human being that he lost his love. I hope his balls fall off
Let go, I will post on whatever venue she was on that she was a mistress. To hell with her being a martyred mistress! Nope, you made your life, now live it……opps LIVED it….past tense. I have no sympathy for “it.”
I was about 4 months into the divorce process. I had threw my husband out of my place. It was a beautiful summer day and I had just dropped off baby chicks to a women and told her how to care for them. It was approximately 10:30 am when I got on the road to come home. I had my drivers window open. I felt the bullet fly in and go in back of my headrest before I ever heard the shot. The bullet hit metal between my windows on the passenger side. The bullet shattered and went up into the headrest. I floored it to get the hell away.
I had 3 very large insurance policies , large 401K, my husband would of got my pension the rest of his life and I had just won a very large Worker’s Comp case. My soon-to-be X was an idiot who had just served 5 yrs in Federal Prison for selling his pain meds. He had no job and no assets. His affair partner liked men with money. It wasn’t looking good for him in the divorce process. To him and the OW it was better if I was dead. Jealousy and greed make people do things they normally would not think about. Unfortunately I couldn’t prove who took the shot. It missed my head by about 5-6 inches. I didn’t stick around for a look-see. The bullet shattered and was unusable to produce a sample. Affairs shatter families and result in murders and serious assaults. I had my Guardian Angel on my shoulder that day.
Wow!! I really hope you are doing better now!!! You did have an angel that day!!
Good God. So glad you made it out.
I think that expressing aggression in an aggressive way is a good idea – just not directed at other people or yourself. I’ve got a punching bag in the garage which comes under heavy use. Just some physical activity that allows you to direct the anger outwards. Doesn’t suit everyone, but it helped me a lot.
While I find this entire situation to be incredibly tragic, I find the reaction of so many even sadder. I don’t know the details, and neither does anyone else outside of the three people involved. I don’t claim to “know” that the OW was a “whore”, that she “had it coming”… or that she “deserved it”. I don’t presume to know better than the many people who knew her personally. Who am I (or anyone else, for that matter?) to make judgements about someone I don’t even know, outside of the headlines in my local paper. My understanding is that she was separated from her husband, and pursuing a divorce… an amicable one, at that. But I digress…I generally find this site to be supportive and free of judgement. It stuns me how readily many are to make assumptions about someone we know nothing about, and and a situation we know little about. These women are both dead. DEAD. They were someone’s daughters, someone’s friends, someone’s family members. What happened was not necessary and it was tragic. THAT is the bottom line. I would hope that this tragic loss would bring home the message to many others that this is not the way to cope. Vengeance is not a solution to anything.
Yes, vengeance is not the answer to anything. But the OW was involved with a man who was still married, and still living with his wife, and still posting lovely things about the wife on social media not that long before. I strongly suspect that the OW separated from her own husband because of her affair.
Given those facts, I think judgment is warranted–both against the husband, and against the OW. Did she deserve to die? No. Am I impressed with her moral standing? No
Queen, yes you do know what happened. The nearly 50 year old man cheated on his wife, she found out about it and he figuratively spit in her face. He was in PA to meet his mistress and not at home with his wife. How long had he tortured her? I am very ambivalent about this. I wish there was some law that held him responsible for inflicting emotional damage on his wife,
Betty Broderick got demonized for killing her ex and his YOUNG wife. Hell hath no fury like a scorned woman.
Martha Stewart got put in prison for lying. Cheaters get a pat on the back for finding a new, young cutie. Gag!
I hear you Queen Bee. I, on the other hand believe the “husband,” caused this mess. Had he been honest with his dishonesty…oh, wait that was an oxymoron, none of this would have happened. I’m sorry the betrayed went to such lengths, murdered another person. Had the “mistress” been of upstanding morality….do you think this would have happened? By no means do I believe any of this is justified. Yet, if one lives a moral life it would lessen such violence. Just MY opinion.
I totally agree with you nomoreskankboy…if people didn’t fuck other people’s spouses….none of this would have happened. What do you expect might happen when you mess when another person’s life this bad? Is it tragic? Absolutely. But then don’t FUCK someone else’s husband or wife. ’nuff said
The day I tossed skankboy out of the house, I told him there would be no drama…meaning him or her. I will call the police or use my glock to protect myself, your choice!
I’m glad CL tackled this topic because it’s very important. It shows just how dangerous affairs are. People pooh pooh them. The Esther Perel’s of the world say it’s no ‘big deal’ if your spouse fucks around. Stories like this drive home just how deadly affairs can be. If you don’t believe me, watch Dateline. Talk about ‘Love Gone Bad’ …..one story after another almost always involving affairs.
People who fuck other people’s spouses are really, really stupid and must have some kind of death wish is all I can think of. It’s the most dangerous game you can play.
ken_doll…I agree. I took pleasure in smashing my 30 year collection of precious moments. Very cathartic. A la War of the Roses. (Better that then his head or car). Besides, he needs his health and car to go to work so he can pay me half his paycheck twice a month. Haha. Jackass. ????
I haven’t read all the comments. I got a fair way through and just couldn’t anymore. This post and this thread, though directed towards gaining a life, is just so full of pain and full of terrible and undeserved consequences that come to those affected by infidelity. I appreciate that this will hopefully help the ones who come here to seek help. But….oh so much pain ????
I wish every cheater apologist and RIC pusher was made to read this.
I wanted to say that I think this situation would have played out like this, even if he had left before starting a new relationship. To take this revenge to such an extreme indicates that there were some deeper emotional issues going on.
I’ve read a lot of comments about “whores” and immorality and just deserts, and I have to say, everyone in this sad story made choices. None of those choices deserved death.
I don’t think Chumplady in any way advocates “beating” one’s cheating spouse and having the dogs join in or doing horrible things to them. I think she advocates not doing the “pick me” dance, and realizing your own self worth, and letting go of whatever broken promises were made to you. You don’t need that person in your life. LET GO.
Is finding out about an affair gut-wrenching? You bet it is. It’s life-ending, in that the life you thought you had has ended. But it is not the end of the world, nor is it a license to visit pain on the ex.
While I understand the pain and despair that Jennair must have been feeling, I don’t understand the thinking that taking the life of someone else is even remotely okay. It’s not.
And it really is a sense of entitlement, in my opinion, to think that anyone owes you anything in this world.
This is exactly what I mean. According to details that are beginning to come out, he did in fact tell her in November that he wanted a divorce….entitlement is a perfect word, as is the advice you gave….move on..this is the best advice..let’s not stay in the trenches for six months trying to bargain and convince..and yes, nobody deserves to die
I don’t see where anyone here is advocating anything, especially violence. The common theme here is if you fuck someone else’s spouse, very bad things can happen. People who screw around with married people are taking a huge risk. My nephew is a police officer and some of the most dangerous situations he has found himself in are ones involving domestic violence. When passions are running high anything can happen.
Yup-very volatile situations for the police officers called to scene,endangering their lives
“LET GO”. What baloney. We are talking about a PRIMAL INSTINCT here. It is an instinctive reaction to want to kill or at least immobilize ANYTHING that threatens our family. This instinct is shared by most if not all other species on earth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re supposed to be “civilized”, “evolved beyond that”, blah, blah, fucking blah.
If you go and fuck someone else’s husband, and you KNOW HE IS STILL MARRIED (I don’t give a shit what the fucker said he said in November about divorce), you are KNOWINGLY doing something that you KNOW could get you killed. And yes, you are absolutely a “whore”, an “owhore”, a “cunt”, and whatever other names society assigns to a scum-sucking, scum-fucking REMORA like you.
She was an aggressive abuser who knowingly and deliberately tried to destroy another woman’s family and got her head blown off because of it. The only “news” here is that Cheesedick didn’t receive a bullet of his own. NOTHING new about this story.
Cheesedick !
Seriously???? I can only hope that you are not raising children. No doubt you would encourage them to name call, bully, and hey, provided that they have a “good reason” of course, to go into school and blow someone’s head off when things don’t go their way. Frightening.
I’m not advocating any of those things. Well, maybe the name calling. I think it is a tragedy that could have been avoided if Jennair had “LET GO” and just walked away. Everyone keeps asking though, “how could she do it?”, “why did she do it?” “what was she thinking?”, meaning Jennair.
In my *opinion*, I think it’s very easy to explain Jennair’s actions. Simple human nature. Fight or flight. She simply acted on the thoughts that enter the mind of every betrayed person.
Maybe YOU can explain to me why no one is asking “how could she do it?”, “why did she do it?” “what was she thinking?”, meaning Meredith?
It’s almost as if they can’t believe that murder is a possible outcome of infidelity. Any cheater stupid enough to think that really has no clue what a truly horrible person they really are.
I’m thinking because Meredith didn’t break into someone’s house and shoot them, for a start. Secondly, the media has released a few more details. Shockingly, many of the assumptions so many made were indeed both inflammatory and incorrect. Jennair and Mark were indeed separated, represented by lawyers and well on their way to divorce. Their home state of Delaware requires a six month separation prior to filing, and as of the crime on Monday, the six months was just about up. So how could Meredith what? Have a boyfriend? Oh but she was MARRIED…except also separated and pursuing an amicable divorce. As I said, tragic and unnecessary, and such a waste of two lives.
Fine. They were both still MARRIED. What is this fascination with fucking the still married? Meredith and Mark could have EASILY said, “hey, I think we have feelings for each other. Once our DIVORCES ARE FINAL, let’s get together.THAT WAY, OUR RELATIONSHIP DOES NOT HAVE TO START OUT WITH CHEATING”. What is so fucking hard about that?
Even though they were “indeed separated, represented by lawyers and well on their way to divorce”, did Jennair know about what was going on between Mark and Meredith? Of course not. Why? Because they were FUCKING CHEATING, that’s why. Even though they were “separated and pursuing an amicable divorce”, did Meredith’s husband know about Mark and Meredith? Same fucking answer.
Until people can stop fucking stabbing their spouses in the back, which Mark and Meredith were absolutely doing, there will be more Jennair’s blowing more Meredith’s heads off.
I don’t know anyone who advocates that infidelity is okay or that it doesn’t create pain. I don’t know anyone who advocates murder for it either (unless you live in an Old Testament society). Meredith didn’t deserve to be shot in the head because she was involved with Mark. I don’t care if she was involved with Mark for YEARS before Jennair found out.
Jennair had no right to shoot her. None. She is completely in the wrong for having chosen to do this.
Do we understand her pain and fury and agony? Sure we do, but thankfully, most of us channel that into moving on and living well.
As far as the thought that eradicating infidelity will prevent this sort of disaster, well I don’t see that ever happening. But saying that Jennair had an f’ing right to do what she did will not go a very long way in preventing the next tragedy.
Completely agree. I am not sure what scares me more, the fact that this happened, or the overwhelming sentiment of “well, what do you expect. She asked for it”. There is not one ounce of this that was acceptable, not one. Changing the narrative of infidelity never included condoning homicide.
Exactly correct. It is indeed incredibly disturbing how many have have responded this way. Infidelity as an excuse for murder. Unbelievable. There are so many other things she could have done. I think the fact that Jennair also took her own life speaks volumes to her instability. Like it or not, their marriages were obviously over for whatever reasons we will never know. Even if Mark and Meredith waited (although I bet you a million they had been in a relationship for quite some time) I think Jennair may have still done what she did- just later. I think the danger here is trying to justify one individuals horrible actions based on our own limited experience. Very very few would do this. Stop trying to justfy it. We have no idea what so ever about Jennairs psychological state, the nature of her relationship with her husband, the true nature of the relationship between Mark and Meredith. We know nothing. It is very very sad she chose to kill someone and herself. Tragic and sad but not justifiable. I think she needed help and sadly could not find it.
Hmm.. I’m not surprised you got cheated on ????
I have been reading CL for a few years now, haven’t posted in a long while but this one got to me. I think this whole situation that CL wrote about here is horrible and tragic. I won’t make any judgements or critisize anything that others have written because I know that everyone is on a different journey and these are your truths.
I think I pause today because contemplating violence was and sometimes still is the dark place I visit and mull over. Its been 6 years since my ex-wife’s affair and the divorce but I have thought about revenge often. I have a new girlfriend now, a new grandson and my life is much better in many ways but I still think about it, I am human.
I am glad I never did anything like this. I suppose it was when my 15yo son offered to kill my wife’s affair partner because he was “a teenager and would probably get off” that I came back to reality. My ex-wife’s AF was a police officer and my son offered to kill him. Pretty messed up. I am so glad I found this place and went NC and haven’t really seen or spoken to the ex-wife in 5 years. NC and Chumplady saved me.
My chaplain did say something to me once that stuck, he told me that I would be “the smartest person on death row” if I didn’t get control of these feelings. I just wanted to hurt someone as much as I hurt, I wanted to hurt the people that did this to me and my family. I took a class at my church which made me think about anger, forgiveness and moving on. Not forgiveness for her but forgiveness to save me. Forgiveness on my terms when I am ready. There are tons of emotions and feelings to think about here.
Tracy, I think you have exactly right when you wrote that “you’ve inflicted unspeakable pain on innocent people who loved her. Who didn’t deserve this pain. You did what narcissists do, by making your pain the Only Pain That Matters.” Regardless of what my wife did or what I think of her, my kids will always love their mother. It is not my place to put that unspeakable pain on my children who have already suffered enough and continue to struggle with this as adults. I suppose my final thought about this story is this…if violence seems like the answer because of crisis and dark place you are at right now, please don’t do it. Life WILL get better.
Thanks for this post CL.
I too am heartbroken about this tragic situation. Unfortunately, Jennair’s demographics reminded me of me! According to newspaper accounts, she (too) was 47 and had married in 1993, meaning she was closing in on her 25th anniversary, having married at age 22. I remember too well how I felt when I discovered my husband of almost 25 years was cheating on me, three weeks shy of that big anniversary. I was devastated! He worked out of town that year, 1000 miles away, often coming home for one weekend a month because he was so busy working at the new job. He had actually begun to devalue and discard me almost the minute he began working away from home (6 months before), while I stayed home and took care of our 4 teenagers. That investment of 25 years just felt so irrevocable to me. How could he leave me after all those years and all that I had done for him, including working at his business and making it successful for the first 10 years of our marriage? He was single again and “Separated” on the match.com profile I discovered.
I remember vividly how I felt, the anguish and heartache. I truly understand how Jennair felt, while never being able to understand or condone her actions, or her need to destroy herself and the AP. I’m sure more of the story still needs to be told. For all chumps who have faced these feelings, please please please know that your life will get dramatically better. You have not lost everything. You have YOU and no one can take that away from you.
Don’t think that revenge is something to focus your energy on! Focus on you and taking care of your needs. Karma is a bitch and believe me when I tell you that I have watched with surprise and delight as karma has wreaked havoc on my XH and his APs. While I have been busy getting a life (thanks CL and CN), their lives have spiralled downward. Put your best foot forward and run away from these messes!
I have been trying to process this tragic situation for days now. It not only resonates with me because I am a chump who was betrayed by the person I loved, trusted, and committed my life to, but because I worked and lived in the same place as the victim. And I believe BOTH women were victims here. I have so many questions — especially, did Jennair reach out for help? Was she dismissed as “the crazy bitch” who was bitter because she “lost” the pick me dance? Was she ignored because she seemed “bitter” about her husband’s affair? How many people had some inkling that she needed help before things reached this level of distress? Meghan is responsible for participating in an affair, but she didn’t “deserve” to be murdered for it. And let’s not forget who is still walking around today with his whole life still ahead of him…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5661463/Jealous-wife-killed-husbands-mistress-binoculars-car.html
I wish she had found Chump Nation first. I should feel worse about Ms. Chapman’s death than I do. I hope that the cheater doesn’t get a penny from his wife’s life insurance, 401k, etc., he’s already benefiting more than he deserves.
What a beautiful piece, CL. And what a tragic story.
I did
Oops, hit submit too soon!
I did occasionally picture myself punching the OW in the face if I saw her in public — partly because she was someone I had considered a friend and partly because she has denied all of it to her then-husband and made me sound like some deranged woman who blamed poor innocent her for the end of her marriage for NO REASON.
It might have been worse if i hadn’t had kids. One of my closest friends told me at the outset of all of this, “You had better look like Mother Fucking Teresa from now on. Anytime you want to do something psycho, you think how that will look in front of a judge when you want custody.“ it was the best divorce advice anybody ever gave me.
My goodness, what a desperate, desperate, desperate, pathetic woman. No man is that important, certainly not someone who cheats on you!!! She obviously had mental issues. Why else kill for a guy who doesn’t respect or love you? Mind baffling. Just get rid of rubbish and call it a day, and HE cheated on HER, why didn’t she punish HIM? I’m sorry, but this is pathetic. The chump award goes to…
There but for the grace of God go I!
Our reactions are not predictable in tough times. They seldom bring out the best in us initially.
All of us know that by the time we had been mind fuckrd by these creatures we didn’t know our heads from our asses.
Most of us did things that we regretted…on a smaller scale.
Consequences are not an exact science and you just can’t predict reaction.
I wont go down the line of whether the af ‘deserved’ to die or not. The outcomes of adultery are myriad and unfortunately we see repeatedly that murder of on or more than one of the parties may occur. Ow/ om kill spouses
Cheating spouses kill unsuspecting chumps. Innocent children get killed. Murder like cheating is always wrong. Like all sin it stems from a form ‘selfishness’. We want what we want when we want it. Some is self preservation.
The wife in this case resented that what she would have worked so hard at …her family life was being taken by another.
How many of you fought in some form for your family? To preserve it?
Our society trivializes family break up but family goes to the core of all of us.
Betrayal goes to the core of us. We hurt each other to the core and are surprised and indignant when there is a strong reaction to the Injustice.
I truly truly hate cheaters. They just go around with a shitty smile on their faces , screwing things up.
I took immense pleasure in barely acknowledging the role of the AP in the destruction of the marriage. I’m not sure why, but I held him 100% accountable for his choice to destroy his family. And that was painful enough.
I believe he was a profoundly unhappy person who took no personal responsibility for his own mental health. He used APs for dopamine hits. His first AP was his secret thoughts of victim hood. His second AP was vodka. He loved that bitch Vodka! He then turned to AP #3, and rekindled his love affair with nicotine, meeting her secretly in his car and the bathroom. When he was still miserable, He tried to get his fix by pushing his kids to achievement. When all that failed, he turned to a full on dopamine-laced love affair with Her Willingness (she was married, now divorced, and I’m 90% sure Mr. Cheatlanta was not her first cheat). So to me, she was a tawdry substitute somewhere between chewing tobacco sitting on the toilet and some other addiction.
The last time I saw him in person, I told him I hated him. I actually felt guilty about that because I said it to be hurtful. Pretty chumpdillyishous of me to take on *that* guilt! I also knew that spouting that hate was the opposite of meh and I was embarrassed to be so weak and mad at myself for handing him that jumbo serving of kibbles.
In the same conversation I coldly told him, “Some day your relationship with her will hit difficulties. They all do. And the only question will be who will cheat first.” He opened his mouth to deny it. Then I saw something like truthiness flicker in his eyes as he realized he knew it was a possibility that she might just do that. Direct hit, y’all!! Injected some time-release poison right into his brain.
Nobody deserves what happened to Meredith Chapman. However, I’m a little uncomfortable over how she was lionized after this terrible tragedy. Maybe that makes me an asshole, but I believe she was complicit in destroying a family and driving an innocent woman into the darkness of despair.
This is an old article but I just watched the 20/20 about this guy and the murder/suicide. I cannot get over how much of a victim he pretends to be. And how he is just so passive about how everything happened to him; he takes no ownership of what he did, or at least only as little as he can.
The entire episode was like a marketing video for himself. His whole life is fake marketing about how great he is. He’s so “sad,” such a victim. Poor him. His wife never told him he was great. Wahh.
My god, what a disgusting human. And now he has a book out and 20/20 is helping him sell it. Wish there was a hell for him to burn in. And like others above, I’m a little disappointed his wife didn’t cap his smarmy ass first. Disgusting human waste.
I hope CL will give us her take on the 20/20 episode that just aired. I found the cheating husband’s interview to be so disturbing. He didn’t shed a tear about his wife or mistress & sees himself as the victim with the license to forgive. And then he does lots of flattering poses, literally & figuratively, before driving off to his new life in his convertible BMW. Jennair may have pulled the trigger, but he was the killer!
I would never condone Jennair’s actions, but I understand her pain. She was being pushed aside after 24 years of marriage. She felt insecure about her place in the world…her whole identity was being his wife, it seems, and she had lost her job.
Not only that, but she seemed to have felt like there was no way she could recover. She stated in one of the recorded conversations that she felt ugly, that she would never be able to find love, that Mark had destroyed her with his infidelity. It taps into the pain women feel at being “replaced” by a younger woman (no disrespect to the male chumps here…it’s just that for women, society puts emphasis on youth and beauty). I believe she had counted on growing old with him, despite their problems, and suddenly her world was turned upside down.
Nothing justifies murder but her actions were those of a desperate, angry, humiliated, confused woman who was in a lot of pain.
Perhaps she couldn’t see that with time, things could get better…that after the rain, sunshine will come eventually. It’s hard to see that when you are full of despair and your life is falling apart, but I wish she could have fought back with dignity. No man (or woman) is worth this.
As for Meredith? It’s sad that she died but I don’t see her as a “victim”. Please forgive me if that sounds unkind, I feel sorry for her family, but she played a part in her own demise.
She knew that this man was married. Sometimes there’s no telling how the betrayed spouse will react…most people are able to move on, but not everyone can. Sadly for Meredith, Jennair was one of the spouses who couldn’t move on or deal with it in a healthy way.
The cost of a broken heart is death in some cases. The blood of both women is figuratively on the cheater’s hands.
Greetings! Just wondering if you happened to catch the 20/20 episode with Mark Gerardot (cheating husband in this story) that aired in September 2019? He also revealed that he is writing a book about his experience. If you decide to watch the episode, or, read his blog, I am curious to know what your thoughts are about him.
https://markgerardotbook.com/