Time for another rousing round of You Might Be a Chump If… !
In the vein of comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be a Redneck If “… tell me how you might be a chump. What are the signs?
Ever wonder what quirks are particular to chumps?
You might be a chump (YMBAC) if … instead of a happy marriage you have 80 perfectly tended rose bushes.
YMBAC if… you’ve bought the entire infidelity oeuvre on Amazon and underlined passages for your cheater, only to find them unread.
YMBAC if… you actually sort of believed he was sleeping in his car in Vermont in January.
YMBAC if… you received a tie-dyed license plate cover for Christmas… and that was the best present.
If your cheater has three cars, three motorcycles, four kayaks, and more boxes coming from eBay each day…. and his gift to you is a tie-dyed license plate cover? YMBAC.
If your children don’t really look anything like you… YMBAC.
YMBAC if… you book all your marriage counseling sessions… and pay for them.
Your turn chumps! I’m sure you’ve got material.
Forward without chumpiness! And TGIF!
If anyone’s got a good Jeff Foxworthy clip, post it. I couldn’t seem to find the stand up stuff.
We need some chump stand ups!
Today 4 1 /2 years with the cheater,doing the pick me dance & feeling like I was going crazy, he confesses to another whore & another brothel, I have to leave, no matter how much it hurts, desperate to get to Meh! Fml I can’t breathe
Focus on the next thing – whatever that may be – to get your ducks in a row financially. Pretend you’re running a marathon, just focus on the next step.
It’ll get better once you get out.
Oh Amanda, you have my prayers and thoughts today. This is the worst pain I ever went through. But I am so much happier without him!! You are mighty, and you can get away from that loser too!
Don’t stay
You will betray yourself
Xo
I discover that an extra 20 lb that I’m gaining recently may be due to the fact of betraying myself… other physical symptoms that causes my low work performance… everything screams “ you are working against yourself, focus on YOUR needs”
Gather up every single scrap of paper that has financial information. Utility bills, grocery bills, insurances, credit card statements (his, yours, joint) TAX RETURNS and every single bank statement you can find. Photocopy all of them. Scan them. Email them to your super-secret email account about which he knows nothing.
Got an accountant? Tell that person you fear you may have signed fraudulent tax returns (you may have). Ask for advice. What divorce lawyer does the accountant fear?
Book a consult with that divorce attorney. Ask which divorce attorney THAT attorney fears. Book a consult with that one too!
You need legal and financial advice.
Keep your lips zipped. Tears unshed. Now is the time to get angry, organized and quiet. Boring. So boring. No drama. No comments.
Clean the toilet with his favorite shirt and toothbrush. It’s very cathartic.
Good luck!
Exactly this. Plus, not only email this stuff to yourself, but put on flash drive and store someplace inaccessible to him (a locked drawer at your office, etc.). DON’T go straight to the accountant if you share one with STBX; I’d recommend doing the divorce lawyer part NOW, and you and the lawyer can later, if necessary, hire a forensic accountant to straighten out and get you clear on the tax stuff. A good lawyer has done this all before. The detective work on your part is what’s important right now, and for that you need to be as inconspicuous as possible. You CAN do this and it WILL get so much better. But right now, you are an undercover agent in a war, and we here at CN have your back.
Hugs and let us hear back from you in the coming months.
OMG you made me squeal with laughter. Clean the toilet with his toothbrush…I cant wait to get home
I might have shredded some of his childhood photos…. maybe a couple from high school when he thought he was so hot…maybe some from our wedding….. maybe the silicone ring I bought him when he wasn’t wearing a ring anymore because “his hair product gets under it”….the shredder, oh how I love her.
Oh yeah – book an appointment with your PCP for a STD panel. Ripping out your heart and stealing marital money may not be his only parting gift to you.
May his dick melt off.
Amanda, you might feel alone when you find out your husband likes prostitutes, but you’re not. Keep coming here, we’ve got the empathy and the understanding to help you through this. sending hugs and mojo.
Meh is a long ways away. Focus on today, focus on taking care of you, focus on trying to look at him and realize what he truly is and what he has done (even if you can only think of one thing).
I wish we were all there with you. This shit fucking sucks, there is no other way to put. The Dickhead visited whores too along with a suspected ho-worker or two. If your man truly loved you, he would not have cheated.
If you have family or friend close by, go visit them. Or call them, if they are not. Let them help you find your way in all this fucked up mess.
Amanda you do need to get out. He’s putting your health in serious jeopardy. I work in health care and the cases of STD’s is astonishing. A friend of mine who’s husband was cheating on her gave her one and she had no idea. She ended up needing a full hysterectomy because of it. THAT is what pushed me to leave my STBX after this last DD (November this year). There had been many, I will be honest, but this one just hit me. He’s NEVER going to stop….ever. This is a mental disorder and there isn’t any cure. It is hard. It will be hard for a long time but I deserve to be safe. You deserve to be safe. He’s not giving you that chance. They are entitled and will play you like a finely tuned violin but we are here. Keep coming to this site, buy CL’s book. It has helped me so much. You aren’t alone and we are all here to help you through this. If the chumpiest of chumps – ME can so can you. Hugs to you my friend.
Hugs to you Amanda. Find a safe place, call a friend, cry for as long as you need to. Be with the pain. We are with you. I found journaling helpful. Writing long angry letters and burning them. Eat to stay healthy. Everything is worse when you are hungry and malnourished. Follow the advice of CN. Freeze assets with separation agreement and freeze credit so he can’t open new accounts. Gather your posse: lawyer, accountant, therapist, friends. Cry, cry while moving forward. Check back in with us as often as you want. We are here!
DO NOT YET TELL HIM YOU ARE LEAVING. GIVE HIM ZERO INFORMATION. Send him an email and see if you can get him to confess to this illegal activity in writing. If it is legal in your state for one participant to record conversations (in many places it is) try to tape him confessing this info. Get your bank records from WAAAY back. Prostitutes are expensive. The family court system may not care about infidelity (depending where you are), but they do care about dissipated marital funds. Look for large cash withdrawals and internet booking companies. While you are his wife call his employer and get access to all retirement funds etc. See if he is moving/withdrawing retirement funds. Ask them to double check the bank account numbers where his check is being direct deposited. Act like there was a bank mix-up…or the deposit never showed… My asshole ex had his check split only part of it was going to the joint checking, part was going to a separate account. DO NOT think “Oh he’d never do THAT.” YES HE WOULD. Take copies of every piece of important, financial, paper you have and store them off site. Make sure you have taxes, your social security, his social security, birth certificates, marriage licenses, account numbers, access codes, phone records, etc. These dicks will try to hold shit up by not turing over records. Make sure he cannot do that. If your computer is a shared one and you both regularly access it or it/kept in common areas, bought with marital funds/ take it to a computer professional and find out what is on that hard drive. Put some cash away as secretly as you can. If you don’t work or he controls bank accounts, take some cash out every time you get groceries or gas. keep thissomewhere you know he won’t look like a tampon box. If you have kids start keeping a log of all the time you care for him versus all the time he does. If he is out all the time, never takes kids to doctor or practice note all of this. You’d be surprised how many assholes who spend zero time with kids in the marriage try to get 50/50 custody to avoid support. IN SHORT, use whatever you can, do whatever you have to, and do NOT give him information. I am so sorry you are going through this. The whorefuckers area special breed of evil.
One of the best pieces of advice I received from my attorney was ‘there is a shelf life on guilt’. Get as much out of the house as you can — including you jewelry. Do not use s safety deposit box — his lawyer can get to it. When you get groceries and use the debit card take out a bit more cash. I have a private office and had it full of things — with money hidden. You will be surprised how much you need.
He is not your friend, he is not to be trusted. Not. At. All. He knows your buttons, he might try to get you to react so he can use it against you.
Someone said it’s a marathon and that’s true. Focus on the long haul not the short term. Get a councilor now. Focus on eating well and getting sleep.
Will be thinking and praying for you.
Elisa
There are some great chump stand up bits on ’the amazing mrs maisel!’. Especially eps1
YESSSS!!!!
YMBAC …… if you immediately jump in to to help a fellow new Chump with great advice. Great posts.
YMBAC if… he returns from traveling with an open box of condoms and an open bottle of lube…but you don’t use either and he certainly didn’t have them BEFORE his trip.
YMBAC if …you find text messages from multiple pimps on his phone and believe him when he says he didn’t do anything.
YMBAC if… you believe him when he tells you he cheated because “you were emotionally cold for so long”.
YMBAC if… he tells you the whores he has used have only been for handjobs.
YMBAC if… you are still with him after he had a year long affair with a flight attendant, and then YOU continued the pick me dance…
I’m still dancing.
YMBAC if: 3 years after your divorce, you are still paying off 7 credit cards that were used to buy her Soul Mate awesome, expensive gifts…..and you always got JC Penney socks and underwear for Christmas.
Super Duper, YMBAC (like me) if you are already divorced and take out a loan for $40,000 to keep him going for a year. The skank has dumped him and he has no income so can’t pay his rent and so on. So here comes chumpy loan lady (me). When your astounded sisters/friends ask you what the hell you are doing you have to reply that it’s February, we live in the mountains where we get heavy snow, and if the twat gets kicked out of his place where’s he gonna go? He’s gonna come running right back to chumpy me right. The skank and all the bar room “friends” are long since gone of course!
Attie – NOOOOooooOOOOO!! It should have been a $1,000 one-way ticket to some remote island to let him rot! Then your conscience wouldn’t have been eaten up by the cold weather issue. Cut. Him. Off.
Kibble free, that is all over now. In fact I make the last payment on that loan in March 2019 then I’m done. Now he has an income (a very good pension) and Schmoopie is working because he still couldn’t make it financially – spends like a mad man. No longer my problem though. He’s back in his home country, can’t blame me that he doesn’t speak the language and schmoops and his family can deal with the never ending car crash that is his life!
I’m a Brit and even I’ll never forget his “if you’ve ever been accused of lying through your tooth —- you just might be a redneck”!
Sorry, that was supposed to come under Chump Lady’s first comment about Jeff Foxworthy!
Foxworthy…..Much like Johnny Carson and Richard Pryor….was so successful because his routine was basically making fun of himself.
Classic Jeff Foxworthy when he first got started in the early 90’s:
https://youtu.be/ZGj4qnZN8yE
The Marvelous Mrs Maisel is all chump stand up!!!! Best show ever!
Love that show. Can’t wait for the next season!
YMBAC if you actually thought the OW husband was a person on your side when he actually reports back to OW every chance he gets.
YMBAC if you think there was only one women until you find all the pictures of different women in his “hidden” file. ????
YMBAC if you lay awake at night waiting for him to fall asleep to get a look at his phone. Now that I’m an effort to “reconcile” he finally gives you the code.
AND TO THAT END….
YMBAC if you are never told passwords to ANY of his stuff.
YMBAC if you think he is different from his mom and dad. Both known cheaters, both married multiple times, both have broken up other families.
I could go on. This was fun! Thanks!
Yes. That belief that you are special and you are the exception to the rule. And there are signs but you keep ignoring them. Or spackling all around them. Haha!
If your husband tells you he is working overnights, but the money is never in his paychecks and you believe payroll is messed up EVERY MONTH.
If you always buy thought gifts and for Christmas he gives you soap “but it was lavender! You like lavender!”
If you handle every single facet of his life, your kids lives, work full-time, and managed an inherited busines and cant find a minute to even get to the doctor after a fall, but he has time for karate classes AND the gym every day+hobbies.
Nobody likes lavender!!!!
YMBAC if when you finally figure out his secret life and seek support from friends, you discover he’s already been there ahead of you and sold them a story they want to believe more than the truth. Sigh.
Oh shit! This! Ditto, Diane ????
Yep that happened to me too and they actually let him live at their rental property free after I kicked him out and had to take him to court to pay child support. They were actually my friends for over 20 years and asshole met them through me.
Yes, Diane, I suffered through the same humiliation. They’re no longer my friends, I’ve come to the conclusion that if they chose to believe the outrageous lies then they were never my friends to begin with.
They’re more his tribe to begin with, and I’m better off without them. He never had anything to do with these people until he needed them to build his alliance and smear campaign.
That’s exactly what’s happened to me, the lying shit has been getting to my friends before me.
Your writing is helping so many people feel strong, and see the light, and to be realistic.
Thank you ChumpLady for DEFINING with actual word definitions, what is happening in cheater relationships.
The WORDS and definitions on Chump Nation are for Chumps as to what Helen Keller was at the well.
Remember that scene, at the end of the movie the Miracle Worker, when Helen Keller was at the well and she finally made the connection of what her teacher was trying to teach her that “there are WORDS for that!”(Waaaah, Waaaah, Waaater)
The WORDS opened up a whole new world of understanding to her, trapped inside blindness and deafness.
Being gaslamped feels alot like being both blind & deaf because it denies a person their instincts, and being in a dishonest marriage, has a ripple effect. It effects ones entire perception of the world. It messes up the internal compass. Which way is North?
YOU WOULD BE AMAZING CL!!
He ask to pay cash at the doctor’s office for an STD test so that the charges won’t show up on your health insurance EOB statements.
My ex asked the kids’ pediatrician to test him when he volunteered for the first time to bring the kids their annual check-up.
????????????????
On the bright side, the pediatrician now knows what a turd he is.
…you have set a boundary/made an agreement and s/he remorselessly violates it without good reason, and you aren’t at least moderately irritated
…you let it go because it was described as “only” a kiss, an online flirtation, or a fantasy, and therefore s/he “didn’t really DO anything”
…your first response to the out-of-character sobbing apology after years of infidelity is “maybe we can still make this work”
…you accepted the idea that he used all those condoms to masturbate because it “contains the mess”
You blame yourself for exs infidelities. He actually asks you to feel sorry for him. Expects you to feel sympathy for mistress, he cons friends that he’s really nice, expects you to forgive infidelity.
Yep
You apologize for brining up the affair because he said it makes him feel bad and he doesn’t want to think about it.
Ugh, this!!!
Me too… she even castigated me for calling it an affair.
Love your name!! Made me laugh, with you, of course.
She said the same thing to me, “it wasn’t an affair”. Well, what do you call it when you fuck and have a relationship with a married man for 2 years when you’re married? Oh, that’s right, it was just a friendship.
Mine said, “You make it sound so sordid.” I said, “Sorry, I didn’t know it was the CLASSY kind of fucking whores in the Wal-mart parking lot!” It sound sordid and disgusting because it is you stupid jackass…
Oh, that one hits home. “Gawd, you’re never gonna forgive me for that!!!!” Said angry ex after he found me crying alone in our bedroom. Turns out you don’t even have to bring it up to get chastised.
Yep
This is something to internalize and remember. Thank you for writing it. They will never forgive YOU for being hurt by their cheating.
I believe it’s just this situation that is keeping my stbx from even wanting to work on our marriage. I believe none of them want to face us being hurt.
None of them want to face the fact that THEY hurt us and so are not Good People. The ex once said, very upset “I don’t want to be a twat!” UBT: “I don’t want people to think I’m selfish”, not “I’m upset I’ve hurt you”.
You almost believe 200 calls to a coworker in one month was work related. Then you see the other months.
OMG, me too. 191 text message in one week was all job related.
You might be a chump if you believe those 200 calls in a month were because “She’s running the office football pool”…Oy vey!
You might be a chump if your husband takes a solo vacation to Provincetown and claims afterwards that he didn’t know it was a gay Mecca….and you believe him.
You might be a chump if your husband spends a summer in LA (on an NEH Seminar you pushed him to apply for), during which you have to initiate all the conversations between the two of you, and comes home sporting an earring he’s afraid his father will see and refuses to wear in your presence…and you think he’s just being overly concerned about looking masculine.
If Dickhead goes on 11 out-of-state hunts, and the family only gets one vacation in 18 years.
If you let Dickhead win at games just so he won’t pout and throw his cards.
If Dickhead buys you a pair of binoculars that you love (and still do), you act like it’s the best thing that ever happened to you. He uses it as an apology for always being a fucking prick.
If you go out of way to not disturb the sleeping beast because then it yells, rages and pouts when it had to do something around the house.
pout and throw his cards??? This behavior for a card game?
Oh yah- check out the forum topic I started a few days ago about “you are not the boss of me” and exactly this kind of antics from our asshat cheaters. Their entitlement and crappy life skills are in full bloom on that thread. I will be playing games with any future partner as a red flag test for sure!
“I will be playing games with any future partner as a red flag test for sure!”
…additionally, how do they act with a slow internet connection? On a scale of mildly irritated to full on rage?
…how do they deal with traveling and inconveniences? This is a critical red flag test too.
This is the Dickhead. He would get so freaking agitated at the stupidest thing like a slow internet. He was also the kind of the driver that liked to drive in the left lane and would force people to pass on the right.
Roadrage, not letting anyone pass him on the freeway, blocking people so they’re not able to change lanes.
He’d Neve confront anyone in person regarding anything. If a contractor didn’t finish a job he’d ignore it or have me talk to them.
Writing anonymous notes or letters to neighbors if he didn’t approve of something in their yard. He’d check everyone in the neighborhoods car tags for their registration date, if they were expired he’d anonymously report them to the police department.
Yikes Brit, that is some asshole right there. Talking of road rage, we were once stuck behind a blue light ambulance and the Twat was laying on the horn so bad that the ambulance stopped and the guy got out and gave him an earful! Yeah because you getting home is more important than a blue light ambulance getting to where it needs to go.
Mine stopped playing any games with me that I would often win. We only played games where I, most often, would lose.
YMBAC if you excuse all of his poor treatment of you and still think he is a good husband because of that one truly nice and sacrificial thing he did for you that one time early in your marriage. He then later says he regrets that one nice thing because it was such a huge sacrifice and there was nothing in it for him. Double points if you feel guilty about it.
Yep, that was me too. That one great thing wiped away a few years’ worth of bad behavior and treating me like an afterthought. We definitely thinking like chumps.
In a similar vein, YMBAC when he changes one bad, immature behaviour, early on, and it helps you spackle for a decade! Cheater Narc initially froze me out for days when he was angry about something. I talked to him, explained, etc. He stopped doing that , and I convinced myself it meant he could have insight, wanted to be a better partner, was capable of change and growth.
Nah, actually he stopped sulking… because it wasn’t working.
OMG! So many chumps have milked the one little decent thing the cheater may have done for their partner. If we really reflect I am sure we would find the one little decent thing benefited the cheater in some way as well.
Yes–I was very grateful for my ladt boyfriend bringing me a glass of water. Forget the fact that he lied to, invalidated, criticized me for years until he found the woman he had really wanted. I used to feel so special being taken to his office holiday parties. I think now hat he was just embarrassed to show up at the parties empty-handed (dateless) as he would not look like a not studly executive. I am amazed at how foolish I have been–I’m over fifty, not fifteen. Hope my kids will be way smarter and wiser than me.
Don’t feel foolish, you loved the guy and he was a jerk. I spent 40 years with a man I loved and cared for only to be told he loved someone else out o f the blue. He’d been cheating for 2 years that I know with this one and once before 20 years earlier. I wasted 40 years of my life I’m 73. I kicked his ass out, bought a new home in another town, made some new friends, reconnected with old ones and I’m happier then I was in those whole 40 years. I got a good settlement, I have my own pensionss and now Mr Sparke Dick has died I have his pension too. Double karma. I maybe have 20 years left and I’m going to live every minute of it,just got back from England sist with DD and planning another get away with her in Amsterdam in April. The days I’m lonely I get up gp to my knitting therapy group. I always come back feeling great, they are a terrific group of women my age with all kids go issues they’re dealing. With so we listen to each other and support each then we say enough therapy and laugh and just have fun.
It’s never too late to leave a cheater and you’ll be surprised at how fulfilling you life can be. Hug to everyone!
PS I was retired for 16 years and scared out of my wits after I threw him out but here I am living life on my terms and having the best time. Life truly what you make of it. If you have kids its tough but you’ll be the sane parent,
Your children will be your legacy proof of. your caring loving ways, xx
Silver Queen,
Thank you for your support and your story of how you lived mightily! Your life sounds like the subject of a movie/book about resilience.
YMBAC if out of nowhere he tells you no one in their right mind would want to fuck you and you ignored his remark, thinking he didn’t mean it.
YMBAC If later on you ask him why he said you’re revolting, he answers with, can’t you take a joke? and that’s acceptable to you.
Biiiig hug for you Brit xxxx
Oh man I got that behavior playing cards and playing dominoes. (He did not throw the cards though thankfully just pout and yell). He taught me to play canasta and then I won all the time. He would rag on me about it and tell his sister. They played when they were young. I guess it bruised his ego that someone who just learned was better than him.
I enjoyed playing dominoes and cards with him in the evening. We would wile away an hour or so. He was always so drunk he could not formulate his next move or understand what was going on. Just yackity yack all the time not paying attention.
I began to let him score at dominoes or hold back my “expertise” and try not to count 3 moves ahead in canasta. Also playing chess. Got to the point you could not play ANY game with him. Whiny baby.
…you feel sorry for HIM because “he just cant see himself retiring with you”
Ah, so it’s not just me who got that one. Damned if my cheater didn’t use that line on me to excuse wanting a divorce.
Not long after he told that that whopper he forgot his previous lie and said he changed his mind about divorce as he was getting closer to retirement and looking forward to retiring with me.
Translation; “I wanted a divorce to be with my shiny new slutterfly. I changed my mind because she wouldn’t leave her husband. So, you lucky gal, I decided to keep you until something better came along.”
These guys are dumber than dirt and colder than the grave.
YMCA…
…if you really thought all those nights at the bar were really just with her ‘girlfriends.’
A month before D-day she had been out with the “girls from work”
I can still remember the blank-eyed stare and silence when I innocently
asked what bars had they visited. By that time I was so worn down
and exhausted that I didn’t even question her lack of a valid response.
Totally get it. My XW would say I am going out for drinks with girlfriends after work. I would ask which bar. She would tell me. Then I would tell her I stopped by that bar and you weren’t there. She would then tell me that they decided to go to a different bar. And I believed her. You might be a redneck…
My XW would travel for some “introspective alone time”.
But YMBAC when you’re never invited with.
Exactly! YMBAC when the man who has no friends and can’t socialize w/o you is suddenly ‘going out for a beer w/people from work’ every Friday. ‘Til quite late. And ‘running at lunchtime w/a guy from work’.
And you’re happy he’s finally developing a social life, and encourage him!
Oh yeah. This. Facepalm. They really do have a playbook.
That was definitely me.
I thought the same the thing, he’s finally socializing! Maybe socializing will make him happier!!
Mine got to the point where he was late coming home so often, he forgot which lies he told me about where he was and who he was with. He couldn’t remember what he “did” after work a week earlier. I’m sure he remembered WHO he did after work, but he surely wasn’t going to tell me that! So glad that nut job is gone!
his parents tell you not to let him ruin your life!
Wow!
You might be a chump if you stay around after you find dick pics on his phone sent to other women and he tells you he only did it to “prove you were snooping.”
omg, you can not make this stuff up !
Wow!!!! There’s a new one (lie/blame-shifting)!!!!!
OMG that was a response I got. “I was deliberately texting hookers because you kept finding out stuff about me and I was wondering how so I was testing to see when you would say something”. OR,” I was waiting for you to say something because you keep ignoring me and are always on your phone!!” ( I wasn’t but there was one night I was following a Tweeter that was being very inappropriate regarding a Canadian tragedy and he knew what I was doing and why). Gaslight, gaslight, gaslight. Ya, and to make sure I knew you had to have that Nuru bodyrub too?? You’d think my energy bill would have been a lot lower with the extra free energy I was getting from all his gaslighting.
YMBAC if you find text messages to his friend that say he is hanging out with howorker and you believe him when he says it was just a joke because he friend had a crush on her and you actually apologize to him!! What the hell was I thinking?!?
YMBAC …. if you believe that it’s your fault that a two income family has debts because you never get bank statements.
Actually, it is true that I didn’t get statements. Spackle? Too lazy to fight?
Today my jaw drops when I think about how damn CYNICAL that accusation was: I received MY salary in a joint account; I had no access to his salary account.
YMBAC … if you swallow the lie about a consigned loan taken out on YOUR salary, you innocently ask cheater about it and he tells you it’s the bank’s mistake, you make a big stink at the bank and the manager shows you the tax number of the person who took out the loan…
And YMBAC if you believe that sparkles lost his wedding band “twirling it” on his desk at work and that the cleaning staff got on their hands and knees and crawled all over his office looking for it.
Jeezz, don’t get me started about thinking what a humongous idiot I was. My day began so well!
ClearWaters, my cheater lost his wedding ring trimming the grass near the fence line. I no longer believe that story!
Martha, for that to have happened, did he lose his ring finger? 😉
OMG, mine lost hers moving the tortoise pen in the garden. It flew off and no amount of metal detecting ever found it.
Mine lost his wedding and engagement bands to a mugger while using a public restroom. ????
I’m laughing in the most loving and heartfelt manner right now. These people are rediculous. Mine just has his sitting with the dinner plates because he can’t wear it to work so never wearing it is easier I guess. Pfffft.
Clearwaters, me too. We had a damn good income between the two of us but I was always dashing up to the Credit Union to take out loans because of his spending on his toys. When we divorced his car was worth $60,000 and mine was (generously) valued at $1,000! But I was a chump because I thought all these toys would make him happy enough to stop beating the crap out of me. Apparently not (but I still loved my little car).
Sorry you had to put up with physical and emotional abuse. Stay strong and God bless.
Attie, I say this with love. This is the same guy that you’re lending $40,000 to? You said that upthread — you’re taking out a $40,000 loan to keep him afloat? The guy who beat the crap out of you? I feel confident in saying that that is not healthy.
Please let people help you make better decisions. Let people help you.
FYI, no worries. I did take out that loan to keep him going because I was terrified he would try to come back (he did try but I told him to get lost). That was 8 years ago now so he is no longer in my life. Probably beating the shit out of latest schmoopie but I am totally no contact so I can’t be sure. I don’t wish it on her and I think maybe being around family might rein him in but a leopard never changes its spots. In any case, all I care about is that we are 3,000 miles apart. That is bliss!
You might be a Chump when he spends 7 hours to clean his truck, like when he cheated before and Big alarm bells dont clang in your ear. You might be a bigger chump when you and the grown kids notice he is texting and devoid of engaging with his family or you find him in a dark shed and when spotted he jumps so hard his cell phone goes flying !
YMBAC if he loves banter but every time you try he takes it personally and gets offended
Taking every little thing personally, like forgetting to turn the dish washer on. Thank god that’s gone.
You are sobbing in the floor and he steps over you to go outside and make a phone call.
That’s just sick. They just can’t face the reality of their cruel behavior.
They can totally face the reality. They know exactly what they’ve done and how you feel.
They just don’t care.
And YMBAC if you kept believing they cared about you, and your kids if you had them, against so much evidence otherwise.
Mine did that too. I was sobbing on the floor (this happened more than once) and he just walked away. No remorse. No emotions. Just like Chris Watts who killed off his entire family.
That was XH the substance abuser. I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the grout in the kitchen floor, getting ready for the home appraiser who would determine whether we could re-fi or not. I had a horrible case of poison ivy. He came home drunk and stepped over me without saying a word.
YMBAC if your alt and classic rock fan husband develops a sudden taste for the musical stylings of Pink.
YMBAC if he’s an avowed nerd who inexplicably expresses an interest in getting tats and buying a Harley.
YMBAC if he spends every wedding anniversary at an annual music festival, puportedly attending the concerts alone.
YMBAC if your lazy-ass chunky monkey proclaims that he’s now doing intermittent fasting and daily workouts “for the health benefits”.
…. inexplicably expresses an interest in getting tats and buying a Harley????
Sparkledick started wearing Native American rings and bracelets and was pestering me about getting a Harley. At the age of 64
Yeesh! Unless your cheater is actually Native American, I diagnose him as a grade A douche. You know you’re dealing with a phony, self-inflated twat when he tries to appear “spiritual”, “enlightened” or some such shit by appropriating the trappings of another culture. Did you laugh when he told you about wanting the Harley? I sure did. Turns out he wanted it because his trailer trash tootsie said guys on Harleys were hot. She also wanted him to grow long biker hair, aquire a six pack and get tats to match hers in order to become the kind of man she’s attracted to. The guy is 100% nerd and a total wimp and this idiot thought she could change him into a character from Sons of Anarchy. I accepted him the way he was and my reward was to be replaced by a POS who didn’t even find him attractive.
Not only do cheaters and their APs suck, they are downright delusional.
What’s with the old men and their Harley’s ?! Cheater XH had to have one and when I said ‘no’ (wasn’t about to go into debt) he left and skank women bought him one. She got herself a pink scooter and off they went into the sunset. Bwahahaha
It isn’t always a Harley. I saved from my “allowance” for 7 years to buy a new car. Cheater X was jealous, so he raided our life savings to buy himself a Porsche. There was nothing wrong with his existing sports car except that it was suddenly older than my much more practical vehicle. Plus, a Porsche is a chick magnet.
YMBAC if you end up paying for 100% of your car, and 50% of Cheater’s far more expensive car, and the auto insurance for both. Especially when Cheater earns twice as much.
Mine bought a Cessna instead. He still has it. That is why he is in debt. I’m not anymore (just a few years worth of savings lighter from when we were still married, he had quit his job, and he kept the plane).
Maybe he can live in the plane.
A pink scooter? Bwahahaa! The image of the two of them taking to the road as if they were playing a scene from Easy Rider is hilarious.
Yeah, these silly old bastards often have fantasies about being tough guys. They stupidly equate it with masculinity (as do the skanks they cheat with) and are desperate to gain macho status to impress the sort of woman who finds that attractive. Hence the aquisition of a Harley.
I noticed a trend while browsing on dating sites. A lot of middle aged men have profile pics with their motorcycles in them. They obviously don’t realize they are only announcing what pathetic clowns they are. There might be some who have them because they enjoy the feeling of riding, but I suspect the majority are just trying to be macho.
Oh yes, this. When the #1fan of the band RUSH decides that Lorde and Alanis Morrisette are da bomb…YMBAC.
Yep, the fools convince themselves that everything the OW likes has to be great because she’s so awesome. Did he also start watching the TV shows she liked? Mine started watching the dumbest of popular sitcoms when all he used to watch was HBO and other cable stuff. It didn’t stick, though. Even he had to admit after a while that they sucked. I’m sure he didn’t tell her that.
Absolutely, that mirroring is a big deal since he is a child and doesn’t know his own self and preferences. He is not a master manipulator but is just an empty bag that makes zero commitments- as Luziana says here, he is a leaky bucket. Pour anything into him and it just dribbles out all over the floor. He then shoves the mop at you and screams, “Just look at what you did! This is YOUR FAULT!”
With OW#1 he started drinking gin, He hates gin. When that blew up (I confronted her and she disappeared like a cockroach) he stopped drinking gin. Worthless POS.
Reality TV! Married at First Sight! Previously very sniffy about such shows, but Trinket watches that crap. Sigh. Sah romantic ????
Hahaha yes mine of 27 years never listened to one country song that I know of ever in that time but is not going with his skank to country concerts. Such losers with zero identities.
Going to dub concerts when an old school rock fan…
YMBAC when your husband tells you he is working out of state and also visits his parent nearly every weekend when he is really hooking up with the latest MOW
when your husband tells you MOW is a really good friend helping him through some rough times when really they have been sleeping together for several months
YMBAC if you believe (for a while) that your H is “going to the gym:” at 9 at night until 1 in the morning. Just getting that work out in. YMBAC if you literally climb on your H and try to have sex and he physically refuses because he is having “cramps in his calves. YMBAC if you somewhat believe that your H is sleeping on the couch because all of those gym sessions have pulled his back and it is better on his back (he never gained any muscle or lost any weight btw even though he was hittin that gym) YMBAC if you actually believe that it is YOUR FAULT he is acting strange and secretive. YMBAC if you just want him to love you again YMBAC if you beg for just that. I would rather, however, be a chump than be him and his disgusting whore. So roar chumps roar!
That’s a huge red flag, that some other man or woman is “helping him through some rough times” when that is, even if there isn’t an affair, undermining the marriage. It’s Dr. Phil 101, that in hard times you turn toward your spouse and not away.
YMBAC . . . If you sort of believed him when he told you that, regarding the hotel room charge that appeared on his credit card statement, (1) he had rented a hotel room for the OW because she’d had too much to drink and he didn’t want her to drive, and (2) he had never stepped foot in said hotel room. When asked why HE would pay for HER hotel room, my STBX replied that he’d thought that was the “gentlemanly” thing to do.
Ugh. Definitely a Chump.
So Done, yes, you are a chump. So far you win….
A gentleman….
This is why I love ChumpNation.
Take care!
ClearWaters,
Right? And this is just one of many examples that I could have chosen to write about. Ugh.
The good news, however, is that I kicked him out 16 months ago, went no contact, and am now almost divorced.
Still trying to wrap my mind around the extent of his treachery though.
So glad you are nearly done, So Done!
Amazing how those pricks are so gentlemanly for the OWs and treat us like dogshit. Mind boggling that we don’t immediately do the math on that and see how many shades of fucked up that is. Been there, done that.
Now I.C.,
Thanks! It feels amazing to be free of him. My STBX is no gentleman, for sure. I continue to marvel at how long it took me to trust my gut about him instead of trying always to make sense of his endless, nonsensical lies. Better late than never, I guess!
This, this, and MORE THIS! Dday was 3 months ago, he moved out 2 months ago and I’ve been NC for one month. The things I’m discovering about him continue to disgust me…hookers, affairs, drugs, gambling…and never any money to pay the household bills, so that was on me. And the gas lighting and abuse I put up with, well, I’ll say this, I won’t allow that to happen ever again. I learned my lesson the hard way. My gut was screaming at me for the 8 years I was with him. I’m so glad he’s gone.
you see the M4M and other really bizarre interests and responses to Craigslist and in describing to him what you saw, he says ‘I never knew you could be so vulgar’
This made me grin, Lady! He was unable to say the word ‘anus’ to me while talking about yoga positions… And a little while ago while visiting kids an unexpected sex scene was on my favourite TV show, embarrassing our teenagers, and he proclaimed “That’s not my kind of thing.” I had to bite my tongue as his porn habit was a major deal-breaker…
AFKAC- wow, I don’t know if I could have let that one go without a “anymore? You’re in rehab? Good for you!” –
Too funny! And awesome gray rock moment for you. ????????
(I still have moments of Monday.)
My ex husband was such a prude, we rarely watched a movie in case it had a sex scene, Big Bang theory was an absolute no no due to its sexual undertones. He would sulk if I watch anything that he didn’t approve of. And if I watched something that was a little on the R rated side he would do his best to make me feel guilty for watching something that was not in character for the wife of an upright Christian husband. If I ever dropped the F bomb I was a deplorable human being. D’Day it came to light he has a serious porn addiction has had one affair by his definition but 20 partners (but I’m the only one he tells this to so everyone thinks my reaction is a little extreme to his one affair) oh and all his partners were male.
Sometimes I think it’s wise not to keep their secrets.
YMBAC…. if you believe her need for blind trust is to strengthen the marriage. (Use of secret passwords on phone a
Etc)
YMBAC if you believe him when he says “she’s just a friend”
YMBAC if you believe him when he says he’s “just helping her with a project and they have to meet at a bar because she doesn’t want her parents to know she’s planning the “project”
YMBAC if you believe him when he says his leaving is YOUR fault
YMBAC if he accuses you of all of the things you have noticed in him doing, you believe it and you feel bad because you didn’t want to make him feel the way he makes you feel every day.
YMBAC if your husband spends the equivalent of your retirement savings trying to save his failing business( and playing with schmoopie), and you STILL co-sign another mortgage on your cottage so he can have even more money to blow. SMDH
YMBAC if during your LDR you see a picture of him and her posing together at an event you didnt know he attended even though he always tells you about events he attends and they have MATCHING African attire and he says it was a coincidence, so for your sanity you pretend to believe it but instead that lie drives you insane for a few more years.
You Might Be a Chump If…
-you believe that his work Christmas party at a restaurant is for employees only and spouses aren’t allowed to come even if they pay for themselves.
-you walk into your husband’s job and 3 co-workers almost jump you to ask how the kids are and GUSH about how much your husband brags about you. (To block the sight of your husband and his ho-worker canoodling.)
-your husband can’t stop complaining about this one woman, out of the blue, so that when she calls about work, he can storm off to yell at her privately and you’ll let him.
-your husband has a sudden interest in being green and carpooling, after years of calling you an idiot for the same idea.
-that annoying ho-worker of his “felt bad” and sent him home with a Christmas box of little treats and trinkets for the wife and family, for giving him such a hard time. (HA!)
-your husband puts more thought and money into his “secret Santa” gift than he does for his own family’s.
-you check Google Timeline regularly, looking at the Raw Settings, and find it curious… how many dots/timestamps he spends in the parking lot, rather than the sales floor. Especially after work on carpooling days.
-you believe him when he says he leaves you sleeping on the couch after watching TV together – and doesn’t even try to wake you up – because he wants to leave you in peace. (I’d wake up at 3 or 4am, after fitful sleep, and go to our room to find him snuggling his charging phone.)
-you think you can convince his ho-worker that what she’s doing is wrong.
-you think you can love someone out of being an asshole.
-you make excuses to other people for your husband when he simply refuses to go to parties/events with his family because his days off are HIS days off.
-other people start thinking that you’re divorced because your husband hasn’t shown up to any social events in several YEARS.
-your kids think it’s normal that fathers don’t have interest in their children.
-you start convincing your older children, now that they’ve noticed that their friends’ fathers DO take the night off to go to their concerts, that their dad’s boss is really mean and never lets him switch nights. (More like he says he asked but never did.)
-you tell the nurse at the hospital that your fiance is working open to close every day (even though he actually took those days OFF) and that’s why he hasn’t been back since the birth, two days prior, to sign the birth certificate or visit us.
-your mother has to show up at your apartment, pluck your fiance from playing video games on the couch, and bring him to the hospital herself.
-your fiance can basically abandon you and your first child in the hospital for 4 days, go back to work on the day you come home, and you’re actually *touched* that he left you a few nice sentences on a note next to a bathtub of tepid water.
-you come home from the hospital with your newborn and wait until your mother leaves to check his drawers and the closet, to see if his clothes are still there.
-you force your mind to a dull receptacle of beige garbage in order to believe that the sexty emails from his ho-worker are just “fanciful descriptions of her delusional hopes,” and NOT actually a play-by-play of their activities. Because believing it would mean that you’re now a single mother of a newborn, 1, and 2 year olds… and he doesn’t make enough to even make child support worth it.
-you stay with a man you know is a lying, cheating piece of shit because if he was slapped with a support order on that small an income, he’d just LEAVE THE STATE and work some job under the table for the next 20 years.
You might be a Chump if you email your husband’s boss and CC your husband, to request switching nights off for your children’s school plays. For the day off to go to my sister’s wedding. To change his 2 days off to when I’m getting out of the hospital with a newborn.
You might be a Chump if your spouse uses sick days to “hang out with a work buddy” but actually pretends to go to work… and when he’s actually sick, it’s unpaid because of a “policy change” that eliminated paid sick days. (LOL)
You might be a Chump if you believe that your husband is having a sleepover at his friend’s house (a male co-worker he mocked) to play a new video game.
You might be a Chump if you bundle up your babies and say you’re coming to visit and bring pizza, and the ho-worker is there too, looking smarmy. And then you LEAVE, thinking that seeing what a nice wife and lovely babies he has will deter ANY of them from being sick fucks.
Oh honey, please get out of there for the sake of you and the future of your children. Living in peace is much better than the life you currently have. I am so sorry. You all deserve so much better.
These are all things from 4-14 years ago. The kids know their father is a cheater and that I’m the sane parent. I’m their home. Thank God.
YMBAC if you do ALL of the Christmas shopping for the kids, your family (small) and his family (large) without a second thought.
YMBAC if you agree to him meeting with the MOW “one last time” because she needs “closure.”
YMBAC if you attend your 538th social event alone because he is is busy with… whatever it is he’s busy with.
“YMBAC if you agree to him meeting with the MOW ‘one last time’ because she needs ‘closure'”
Yup that was me except he had to go see her so that she could break up with him in person after he had already supposedly broken it off with her.
You might be a chump if you believe a company is flying him (without pay) to Asia for a 10 day trial job interview.
… he tells you his attraction to you is waning because you’ve gained weight. You lose 20lbs (15 lbs lighter than when you first got together), and everybody notices, but him.
YMBAC when you are diagnosed with six (6!) STDS over the years and you’re still not SURE that he’s cheating.
YMBAC when you contracted two of the said STDS when you are pregnant/nursing. Giving birth with genital warts is really humiliating.
YMBAC if you had to stop nursing because the antibiotics to treat your STD are so strong that you can’t nurse for almost a week after taking the full course.
YMBAC when you decide not to confront him after the first couple of STDS, because he blames YOU and flies into a rage until you drop the subject.
YMBAC when you don’t question why HE has no questions about how you got the STDS. Cause if he didn’t infect you, wouldn’t he want to know who did?
YMBAC if you had to have surgery to remove scarring caused by the PID after all those STDS.
YMBAC if you still love him after all the evidence that he doesn’t give a shit about you or your little babies.
Aw, honey. ???? That is beyond awful. What an unspeakably evil man.
Big hugs, oldcrone, big hugs.
Old Crone
What a disgusting piece of shit! He should rot in hell ????.
Hugs to you ❤️
What a horrible man!
YMBAC if you believe that he wasn’t able to answer his phone while he was working away because he “left it charging overnight in the car”…
… and YMBAC if you didn’t spot the obvious fact that a car needs to be running to charge a phone and that he NEVER let that phone out of his sight.
YMBAC if you believe that he couldn’t come home on time because a female work colleague who had recently “had a miscarriage, and I feel sorry for her” needed some help to move furniture to her new apartment…
… and YMBAC if you respond to the miscarriage story with “oh, that poor girl, it was so nice of you to help her.”
YMBAC if you believe he has to walk 100 yards up the road from the house to make an “urgent work phone call” because of a “bad phone reception”, even though your own phone works perfectly fine in the same house.
YMBAC if, the day after D-day number two, you fall for a trick like this… STBX receives an email from a workmate asking if he can come to the city where they work that afternoon for a “meet and greet” with a potential new employer. STBX makes sure to show me the email and says it’s an important opportunity. Chumpy me believes him, and off he goes. Turns out he got his friend to help him escape from his awful, sobbing, traumatised wife so he could have a “meet and greet” with the latest OW… or would that be called a “suck and fuck”?
Meh… My divorce gets finalised Monday morning. So long, banana dick.
Great news pinecone about the divorce – “so long, banana dick”. I hope to hear some karma stories from you some day!
And karma for shithead friend of his too.
YMBAC if he tells you that he and Schmoopie “shared rooms” in hotels and never had sex.
YMBAC if he comes home home with a broken kneecap and tells you a story about a dog attacking him on is bike and you believe him. (it seems some manchump got revenge on him though)
That would be so sweet. I was happy with him getting cheated on by his tramp. But aanchump revenge would be awesome!
Yes, but I am SUCH a chump, I didnt connect the dots until after he died. At the time, I felt so bad for him.
I love the Closure argument. I had that conversation with XW and I asked where my closure conversation or letter was??
YMBAC if you trust your spouse.no matter what.
YMBAC if when things devolve to the point where you think that perhaps you can’t trust your spouse you still don’t question anything because you don’t want to offend him/her on the off chance that you are wrong.
YMBAC if you put up with a lot of bad treatment and make excuses for him/her and cover for his/her bad behavior to others and don’t divorce him/her just based on all of that alone.
YMBAC if you think you are lucky because your spouse still loves you and sticks with you in spite of all of your very obvious faults (that he/she is constantly pointing out).
YMBAC if you still think you have a good marriage in spite of all of the above.
^^^^^all of the above!!
Maybe before people get married, they need to write down what they think a “good marriage” is, so there is something to compare with the reality of life with a cheater.
Sounds like my former life Chumpinrecovery. That is why I am in therapy.
(raising hand), that was totally me.
Ungh. This was me too, I was so “lucky to have him despite how I was less organized than him, Didn’t make as much as him and had gained 15lbs (second kid).” He never full on said these things, I was just made to feel this way by his behavior and what he would imply.”
Unexpected,
Sorry you got treated this way.
My last boyfriend at last discard told me that I didn’t earn enough (he earned four times what I did and had only one (him) not three, people to support) and didn’t have enough vacation (my 14 weeks/year to his 4 weeks/year). A few days later, he denied ever saying these things. This is when I realized his willingness to deceive. Now he’s got his high-earning, childless young partner from work. Guess every day is ‘vacation’ for him now that he gets to see attractive, smart, rich partner at both home and work.
Glad to see you on the board, RockStar.
Thanks, LAJ. Glad to see you, too!
Great summary, ChumpInRecovery!
Sounds like me, I trusted him no matter what, no matter how questionable. Made countless excuses defending him and his behavior or treatment of me. They just don’t know him like I do…,
After all, he would give endless lectures on how much more honest he is than the rest of the world, he’s a man of integrity, how could I doubt him??
Didn’t want to offend him by asking questions when stories didn’t quite add up, then I’d be accuse of being paranoid.
Yes, he constantly pointed out how wonderful he is and how flawed I am, despite all my obvious faults and shortcomings he still loved me.
Yep been there
YMBAC if for your 40th birthday you get a frozen cupcake in a flavor that you hate and an unsigned card in an open envelope and find the “thought that counts” in that scenario.
BTW, for his 40th birthday (3 years post d-day) he sets up a weekend get away to a sea side town for himself.
Ahhhh yes, the obvious lack of Giving a Shit.
On the day of my 30th birthday surprise party, Cheater went off to work as usual, in his suit. The house was a mess and I was cleaning. The way they got me to my mother’s house was Cheater’s idea: she’s great at plumbing; say you have a toilet that’s leaking from the base and coming off the floor. Me, thinking I’d be crawling around in fluids in 95-degree heat and getting nasty, wore a shitty sundress I would get down on my knees and weed the garden in… it had holes from crawling around and transplanting things and getting chicken wire stuck in when I mended that. It was a spaghetti-strap and I’m large-chested but I wasn’t going anywhere special… what did I care if I wore my work-bra with wide straps under a sundress? I’d get even nastier, fixing a toilet, probably help Mom weed, and go for a swim in their pool.
I showed up, armed with my tools, a fresh supply line, and wax seals, in a hole-filled, stained sundress with my bra showing, with 3 children in ratty playclothes (because my parents have a farm and the kids always get filthy playing there)… to dozens of people I’d known 12 years prior. All of them dressed to the 9s, including my husband, dressed in his godd@mn suit. I let everyone think that my bursting into tears was gratitude; I was crying because I came to my own party, sweating, filthy from cleaning my own house, with my children and we were all dressed like vagrants.
And not one of my actual friends was there. Mom said she’d asked William and he’d told her that I didn’t have much in the way of friends and volunteered the contact info of exactly NONE. People I’d last seen at my freaking high school graduation party were the attendees. Seeing me look like THIS. A SAHM with three kids, dressed like hobos, with a husband who showed up late and was on his phone the whole time.
A year later, when D-Day came, I looked at Cheater’s google timeline… he’d spent the entire day running around with the ho-worker, who’d taken the day off, and they’d gone to the movies, out to lunch, for a walk in a park in an area no one would know them. It wasn’t often they had a day off together when I wouldn’t be around. That bastard couldn’t even pretend to be sick and stay home, making sure I’d show up in something presentable. That bastard didn’t even go to my parents’ house to HELP… he BARELY showed up in time and RAN to make it across the field and in the house, so I’d think he’d been there all day, helping. That bastard didn’t even remember to grab me a change of clothes, which my mother had apparently urged him to do, so I could look like a decent human being.
The only pictures taken, that day, are of the settings and landscapes and guests. No one took a picture of me. Thank goodness. I wouldn’t have wanted to memorialize how I looked either. That wretched fucker.
Oh honey that is so sad – buuuuutttt, I hope you can see it as a Brigitte Jones moment! I think that’s quite charming!
My x also organised a surprise 40th for me at my parents house. Drove me there straight from a spa afternoon my brother and his partner had given me as a birthday present, during which I’d had a head massage with oils – all still in my (long) hair which was now really greasy and sticking up in all directions. X and I had been laughing in the car about what a sight I looked and how it was a good job I didn’t have to go out in public looking like that. He took me from the car straight into my surprise party, looking a complete sight, knowing I had social anxiety anyway. What struck me about the similarity of our parties Insistonhonesty – mine was full of family members, some quite distant, his friends, and some of my old school friends I hadn’t seen for years. When I asked where my current friends were he said they were unable to come, when I asked them about it later none of them knew nothing about the party, including my 2 best friends. Weird. Was never quite able to work out whether it was all just image management on his part or whether he just genuinely had no idea or interest about my life and who was in it!
You might be a chump if..
At 3 mts pregnant you ring him on a night out to tell him he has to come home because you think you’re miscarrying.
Him: would you ever get off my back?!
You miscarry. AND forgive him. SMH.
I have something similar. You might be a chump if you start to actually miscarry and he tells you you have to drive yourself to the hospital because he “isn’t feeling great.” As you leave tell him “Lie down and rest.” He never makes it to the hospital even though you are gone overnight due to blood loss.
I got one like this too.
YMBAC if you drive yourself to the hospital in heart failure and call him after they get you hooked up on machines to tell him you might not make it and when he says angrily … well, WTF, do you want me to come there? And you quietly reply, no ~ that’s not necessary with silent tears running down your cheeks.
I am so sorry but comforted that the same story happened to me, but I tried to waken him, called the ambulance, they came screaming to the door, carried me out, and he “never woke up” and was furious to find me missing the next morning.
Similar here – I had to drive myself to the hospital while going into anaphylactic shock from the roach essence rampant in his parents’ house, where we were staying. Why were we there, you ask? Because he lost his high paying job in another city, and we had to move in with them because I had lost my home in a short sale due to his shenanigans.
They’re all so selfish and so much alike, I’ve got similar stories but I’ll only post this one.
YMBAC, if you
Sorry, accidentally hit post comment.
YMBAC if you have a complete hysterectomy and he refuses to stay the night with you despite the nurse offering to bring in a cot for him and saying most husbands stay.
That night the person in the room next to me passed away and the male nurse on our floor was shaken up and came into my room sobbing, so I consoled him. Needless to say I had a restless night.
That morning at around 8:00 am I call X to say good morning and tell him about my night, he snaps at me for waking him up, he needs his sleep! then hangs up on me.
While I was recovering at home he would make me wait if I needed something to drink or help walking to the bathroom. It was always, “I’m doing something, after I’m done,” or he had to finish watching a program on television. I tried not to bother him. Later I found out he told people I was too needy…
What a fucking asshole!
I am so sorry you went thru that. I wasn’t a priority when I finally was released from the hospital and came home. He honestly expected me to cook, clean and wash his clothes when I needed to rest and he should have taken care of me.
Yeah, we are too needy. Bullshit.
Oh, Brit! And hysterectomies are so brutal, too. I am sorry you had to go through that, I am glad you are free from him.
You are absolutely a chump
When your yard men tell you that your mid 70’s husband is drinking, whoring and buying cocaine from a guy they know when you are out of town. And they feel sorry for you that you stay with this POS.
And you had no clue. None. Zip.
And they are proven truthful….
Ouch
…he owns an airplane, a state of the art workshop and high end tools, expensive mods for said airplane, expensive computer, iphone, ipad….and you drive a 13 year old Hyundai and don’t own a smart phone yet. And got sexy underwear that you didn’t ask for for Christmas every year for 11 years.
Liz that’s almost my story too (except we didn’t have an airplane – although we probably could have bought one if he didn’t buy himself so many damn cars)! The sexy underwear too – but he didn’t have a damn clue about my size (I’m stacked) so he bought this “sexy” crap with pompoms on (I kid you not) that fitted my boobs like …. oh like trying to stick a watermelon in a thimble! That was such a turn on (not). I took all that crap back and bought myself a table cloth!
Nice! I wish I had returned that stuff for something I actually wanted. The final year before D-Day, I received nothing for Christmas. Not even a belated, I’m-embarrassed-I-forgot gesture. I gave him several things.
I realize now that I treated him like a spoiled child. I placated him with “things” because I thought that made me a “good” wife. I was a freaking fantastic wife that he didn’t deserve, but I should have seen the fact that I wanted him to have the world, and he didn’t care whether I had anything or not.
…I should have seen the fact that I wanted him to have the world, and he didn’t care whether I had anything or not…
This. All of it. Ouch.
YMBAC if you find yourself in an Atlanta strip club at noon on a Monday of the three day marriage saving retreat you’ve booked and paid for, so you can prove to your husband that you can be the “fun” person he wants you to be.
You win. This is truly chumpdom
When you play role of a “ naughty girl” scenario with your h after cleaning and taking care of the 3 kids… not knowing that comments like “ oh it doesn’t work” are there because your h regularly uses prostitutes and he knows exactly how the whooring looks like….
When u suggest stuff to spice up ur boring ( if any) sex life and ur h is not interested because “ that is not his thing” ( as opposed to ts craigslist backpage dating hooking up fucking anyone willing)
When you see your h laying on his back with a hands under his head, suggesting you do stuff to him, and even when that pose is turning you off ( it felt like serving him- not knowing that was exactly his idea) – you go with it.
Ouch ((hug))
YMBAC, if you sign away all the family property into a trust, because you are certain you are in a secure marriage.
YMBAC, if 5 years later you learn that STBX has been going to prostitutes for the last 20 years.
The trust goes to the children, so they are taken care of. I simply want a divorce, 2 years into the process and now we’re are headed for court, mediation was a bust. This may take another year, as he just fired his first lawyer., guess he didn’t like what he was being told.
He said in the beginning,”I’ll do anything to give you peace”. I believed him, he lied. Just give me a settlement please.
YMBAC if, after asking for a divorce, then changing his mind, he continues to behave aberrantly. E.g., your husband comes to you and says that someone he has been chatting with through a dating site is likely to out him to the Board of Regents, so he thinks he should alert you.
Although you think, “He is one fucked-up dude,” you allow him to slide because he claims he thought that a dating profile on the site sounded like you, so he thought YOU were cheating on him (not taking the next step to ask, “Why was he looking at a dating site to begin with?”).
Haha. This.
YMBAC if, after 4th reconciliation attempt failed, ex narcopath finds your dating profile online at 6:35 AM! and loses his mind cycling through all 3 channels of rage, pity and sadz in 10 minutes.
He has no reply when you ask how he found it the profile, when he had claimed to have deleted all his profiles because he “LOOOOVED me so much” and wanted to show me how “I was his life….”
Also, 6:35AM? Seriously?
P.S. Total bullshit excuse on Hannibal Lecher’s part–I never had a dating profile at any point in any year. And why would I, since I was married?
YMBAC if…. you believe his explanation for why no bank statements come to the house.
YMBAC if… you believe that he has Wednesday night “management” meetings.
YMBAC if….you believe that your ex is such a nice guy for helping get her nephew a job, “selling” her son older snow blower and “selling” her other son your son’s no longer used bike. (YMBAC if…. you actually believed that he took money from her.)
YMBAC if…you never ask to see the contents of his phone (although it’s always attached to him.)
YMBAC if…you actually believe that the “missing” Viagra were sold to the guys at the gas station.
YMBAC if…you actually get used to all the nights you spend alone.
YMBAC if…spending time alone is ok because you’re exhausted from doing all the adulting.
YMBAC if…you’re removing blond hairs from his fleece jacket that you think came from your son’s golden retriever.
YMBAC if…you continually go to divorce groups and wonder why you have the worst story.
“….YMBAC if…you never ask to see the contents of his phone (although it’s always attached to him.)
YMBAC if…you actually get used to all the nights you spend alone.
YMBAC if…spending time alone is ok because you’re exhausted from doing all the adulting….”
^^^^^THESE^^^^^^
I’ll add:
YMBAC if you never confronted him about blocking you from his social media accounts, or ever snooping around online to find his SM accounts that you didn’t know he had — and that he was posting negative things about you that you’re friends and family could see all of them
YMBAC if he *insists* on you not going out unless he was with you, but he has no problem going out without you
YMBAC if when you ask him pointed questions, he responds, “Why? Who have you been talking to?”, and doesn’t believe you when you tell him, “No one, I just have these bad vibes/feelings…”
YMBAC if in all the 13 years you were together, you never got a nice gift for anything that you didn’t have to all but buy/order for yourself, but never complained… Then, when his first Christmas with OWife (that you know of), you hear from a friend that coincidentally ran into him at a store, he’s buying OWife an expensive jacket that you had always wanted for yourself, but never spent the money on yourself
YMBAC if your entire paycheck went to paying the househd bills, every dime of your money he had access to and knew where every dime went, but his paychecks were never held to the same accountability
YMBAC if you actually felt relieved and lighter when he left, because life with Jim in the end felt like a 2-ton Albatross around your neck
YMBAC if your entire gaggle of friends, co-workers, family, hell even strangers saw him as a piece of shit and bad for you, but all you could think of for defending yourself of being with him was back when you first got together, and you were freshly divorced and raw and broken from it, and he came into the picture like a “white knight”…
YMBAC if you know that you know that you know he’s a lying dirtbag, but you’re so worn down you have no desire to fight anymore and you just bide your time, get your ducks in a row and wait until he decides to leave, that way he can’t look like the victim
I meant to add:
I’ve been Evil One-free for 3.5 years now, and since those years, my money is truly my own. My time is my own. My DD is with me without hardly any interference nor interruption from TEO.
Chumps, it really is better on the other side.
Oh yes – YMBAC if during wreckonciliation you send a Face Book request to link your account to his as his wife, he never responds and you never ask why
YMBAC if you believe “she’s just a friend.”
YMBAC if you believe “those phone calls all night are from one of your crazy patients.” (Nope, an affair partner)
YMBAC if you believe “everything is all your fault. If you were nicer, this wouldn’t have happened.”
YMBAC if one of the first people you told is a friend from college (who is a women’s health NP) “I think I need to be tested.”
YMBAC if YOU are the one who suggests counseling or talking to the minister.
YMBAC if you do an online record search and find out he has committed identify theft and forged your signature on multimillion bank loans for his family business.
She’s wanted to see “The Killers” for years, You manage to get good tickets
& book a hotel to make a special night of it. Childcare issues mean you can’t
go but seeing her obvious disappointment you suggest she & her best friend
(also a massive Killers fan) should go instead. I’ll stay at home with the kids
and it would be a shame to waste all that money. You don’t question her
social media blackout during the night she was away (well she didn’t want to
upset me by showing what a great time her & best friend were having when
I really should’ve been with her). Post D-day you discover she took schmoopie,
although romantically it was their first “proper” night together!! Ain’t Twu Luv sweet.
–
Vile. Absolutely vile and unforgivable.
You believe her when she says the rhythmic bouncing bed springs noises you recorded were just her masturbating.
You believe her when she says you are too sensitive when she flirts with other men.
You don’t raise hell when you find two dozen blank “come F me” notes in her drawer and she just says she got them from a male coworker and then walks away.
You are ok that she gets the best bedroom and big bed and you are isolated in the little bedroom because you snore.
You’re fine that the dog gets more affection than you and he gets to sleep in her bed.
You stick around even though she won’t go to marriage counseling or even read a book to understand your needs and wants.
You believe ten years of excuses for zero sex, i.e. sore back, headache, not in the mood, and the latest is low libido (even though she uses a vibrator frequently)
You think something good will come from being a marriage cop
Nothing good ever comes from being the marriage police. Its obsessive behavior (even though you’re driven to it) and you are cast as crazy and delusional.
My cheater just cant seem to understand why I don’t trust him…. their lack of self awareness is mind boggling.
Thank you AnnM, I can see it as an obsession and I’m starting to let go. My thoughts were that catching her with solid evidence somehow justifies my leaving. Bad thought, bad, bad, bad. The realization that she doesn’t love me and never did is enough reason to leave. She can cheat all she wants, or not, it’s not my issue anymore. (does that sound brave, or what?) Blessings of Mightyness to you and all Chumps everywhere.
Even though cheaters ALWAYS say they cheat because they don’t get enough sex, it always seems like chumps are the ones having to actually tolerate a life without sex. They are the people really getting rejected and they live completely without sex because of it, while the cheaters are off fucking anything that will lie down!
YMBAC if you believe him when he leaves a beach vacation to go back to “work” and you discover he’s called her that same day. He had to thank her for a project they had been working on.
Ha!!
YMBAC if you believe him when he says his bosses will be angry if they know I see confidential emails regarding work as I’m carrying out my marriage police duties.
YMBAC if you show care and concern over his depressed and confused state during wreckonciliation.
YMBAC if you think they have one ounce of worry and concern for you.
I’m so happy to be closer to MEH. Asking the Selfish Entitled Ass to leave almost two years ago was the best decision I’ve ever made. Thank you CL!
For Christmas he gives you a 16 dollar robe in a color you hate but give the OW an expensive autographed copy of a rare book. Oh, but he asked you to sign the card too, so it was from both of you, see!
ugh! So humiliating.
My X Asshat actually regifted a set of books he had given me– he stole them from me and gave them to the twat. They were a love story trilogy.
When busted he said, “You are crazy! I didn’t take them from you! Anyway, I only LENT them to her! Anyway, she is Just a Friend! You never liked them anyway, you are so controlling and judgmental.”
Deny, blameshift, gaslight.
Remember the narc prayer:
That didn’t happen.
And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
And if it is, that’s not my fault.
And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
And if I did,
You deserved it.
Did you come up with that ‘narc prayer’ yourself? It is soooooo spot on. I am in awe! Also a super handy quick little reference guide.
No, it was texted to me by a friend- it had been a FB meme. Getting it from her made me realize that “this is a thing” and people outside my small world have even written about it. I am not alone and all the crap he blamed on me is NOT MY FAULT. It was like there is an actual cheater handbook out there somewhere!
I’m starting to believe that there is!!!
You might be a chump if after three years and a tearful confession that she is the love of his life, soulmate and she completes him, he doesnt want a divorce because he cant imagine living without me after 40 years.
The long term cheaters are scum.. I’m sorry ( 36 years here)
((((Hugs)))
Newlady
30 here. Yep. And wow, just wow!
If after he files for divorce and before D-day, he says that he failed at 2 marriages and you try to re-assure him that he’s not a failure.
Side note: fuck yes, he’s a failure. If there is anything I could change, I would like to go back to the moment and tell him that he’s a fucking failure and yes, this marriage failed because of you. Because you are an asshole – always has been and always will be.
If he buys you a new iPad for your birthday and gives it to you early in front of the kids and then the night before your birthday tells you he wants a divorce.
YMBAC if you stand on the back porch waiting patiently for her to choose him or me. Only for her not choose, move out, and I take her back several months later. Ikr ????
She sucks Jay ((( Hugs))
Newlady
God what a horrible person she was. You are well shed of her!
Jay,
You aren’t the only one who has been in this situation. Sorry that we were in the same boat.
YMBAC if you have a “come to Jesus” talk with your 15 year old virgin son about the box of condoms you found in his truck that your cheating husband said belonged to son.
YMBAC if same son is also blamed for the Tinder token that accidentally got sent to your phone number and cheating husband said son “must have made that mistake because he’s really struggling with sin.”
Looking back on how you found out husband was actually cheating and scapegoating his son who was rightfully protesting his own innocence – YMBAC if you take on 1000% of the blame for siding with your husband and hurting your child in the process.
Wow that brought back a memory I buried—of the x claiming porn charges on our credit card were from our son who said no it wasn’t him. POS
Oh, snap! That brought up an old memory too— he lied on my son (not his) when I found a box of condoms in a cabinet above the fridge— with three missing. When I confronted him, he said they were for my DS, and he must have used him. I protested that DS was 11 (at the time) and I doubted he was having sex…when challenged, he changed his story to say he was “testing them” before using them on me.
Damn, I was stupid for him …
OMG, all time low, blaming the kids for their sex addiction. They’ll throw anyone under the bus, I guess. Lying cheating selfish jerks! I need to keep reading this blog now 3.5 years past dday and 1 year divorced, cuz I forget how desperate, ugly, and awful my ex was and start to doubt myself again. It’s hard to imagine how messed up they are. I spackled for 20 years, no more.
You might be a Chump if you trust that he is going out with his friend Bill. Starts out going out one night a week that turns into 4 nights. Turns out that Bill was a code name for Skankella my cousin.
You might be a chump when you pay all the household bills. He gave you an average of $600.00 a month. Hubby refuses to put you on his health insurance because it costs to much. When you have trouble paying the bills and get a credit card to pay them. He uses that against you to file for Divorce.
You might be a chump after you find out he was playing pool with Skankella for 5 yrs. And agree to work on the marriage. Only to find out 1.5 years later that he is texting his old girlfriend from high school. His response I did not really know it was her. I thought you were trying to scam me. Fuckwit never will admit to anything. Always a pathetic excuse for his behavior.
You might be a chump if you installed USB outlets in the bathroom so your cheater could charge their phone.
Ouch OC
(((Hugs))
???????? ugh. Yep, the bathroom. The room that launches thousands of affairs.
TEO could have read War & Peace in the time he spent in the bathroom
Back in year 1 or 2 of marriage, I overheard Dickhead telling his best friend how to cheat on his wife. Yep, sitting on the toilet in our tiny bathroom.
YMBAC if you believe your spouse sits alone in a dark living room at 3:00 AM with their phone and iPad – naked
Because it’s uncomfortably warm in the apartment…
YMBAC if your husband blindsides you by walking out on your marriage to move three states away to live with a woman he met online and he doesn’t give one single f**k about leaving you in a crumpled pile of sobs on the floor. But when their true love fizzles out after two months, he comes back and expects you to feel sorry for him because of how much he’s hurting after everything he’s been through. . . and you actually do. Even after all the hell he put you through, you feel bad for him and try to get him help because he’s “suicidal” and you don’t want your kids to have to go through that on top of the abandonment. Then you find out it was just a ploy to get you to take him back and he immediately shacks up with another woman when you don’t entertain his requests to come home.
YMBAC if you believe that he doesn’t know who “Traci” is and she hacked into his Netflix account…
YMBAC if your wife becomes distant and starts using the tell-tale phrases; “I feel restless”, “I’m in a very selfish place”, “I need some space”, and when you lovingly inquire as to what’s wrong and how you can help, she says “I don’t know what’s going on with me, but I need to handle this on my own.”…and you believe her.
YMBAC if, when you’re doing the laundry, you realize your wife’s underwear reeks of sex, but you two haven’t done the horizontal mambo in weeks.
YMBAC if, on Father’s Day, you receive a last-minute gift from your soon-to-be-ex-wife that, as it turns out, was originally intended for her married AP.
[ ps – Last December, my wife reassuringly said to me “I love you, I want to stay married to you, and I want to grow old with you”. Ten weeks later I got the ILYBINILWY speech. Panicked, confused and trying desperately to hold on to my wife and marriage, I suggested counseling. She refused; said it wasn’t going to make a difference. The divorce was final in June. And just like that, 17 years together…*poof*…gone. ]
Same here.
Till the last day before discovery:
“I love you.”
“You are the best thing that happened to me.”
“You are the blessing of my life”
etc…
After D-Day:
“You are an asshole”
“You are a douchebag”.
“You are a crappy husband and a crappy father.”
“He figured me out.”
“I hate you.”
etc…
Yup. Six weeks before his complete abandonment I got, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
When I asked him what the hell that was about after he poofed on me, how could he do that future-faking crap, his reply was, “I just wanted to see how it sounded.”
Total pieces of shit.
Yup I got “I’m yours forever if you want me” three months before I said “It’s me or her” and he left. Gah!!!
From last boyfriend (aka Mr. Nice Guy but really Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) at last discard, I got,
‘I don’t see you in my future.’
1/2 hour later, ‘I love you.’ Chumpy me smiled and felt relieved that night. (Incredible how entrenched in denial I was! Weeks/months later, I thought, ‘in the other times he told me that he loved me, did he really mean it? Or was it all lies?’)
Next day, ‘You can hang around me, but no lovey dovey!’ WTF!
Following day, ‘Can I have the weekend to think about whether I want to stay with you? A lot is going on at work!’ A lot sure was!
All the office hook ups by executives in his little company made Mad Men seem tame. Guess that he didn’t want to be bested by the CEO and the president.
And then, ‘I don’t want you to pine for me by the phone on Friday nights.’ (How thoughtful of him! (sarcasm)) Narc much?
Why, oh why, am I still mourning this guy, my pseudo-partner and faux friend? (at least I deeply cared and invested in this relationsh-t.) Why do I feel so responsible for this relationship crashing and burning? I should be glad that his work subordinate took him off my hands. I wish that I preferred being a single (perpetually dateless) old mother to being a financially secure happily married mother. It would be easier to forget about this guy (and my kids would be better off).
This guy is Jackass’s rich twin.
I can’t say why you are still mourning the guy, although I suspect that mourning him keeps deeper pain at bay. I say that from sad experience.
LAJ,
‘Jackass’s rich twin’–I guess that makes you and me in-laws. (There’s a silver lining in every cloud!) As in many of my relationships, my in-laws and my boyfriends’ relatives were way kinder (and probably more honest) than my partners.
I think that you are right–I suspect that ruminating about this last relationship/last partner ‘protects’ (prevents) me from really thinking about some other painful topics (past relationships with other abusive partners and harsh relatives, lack of completion of my PhD at beginning of dissertation phase, professional/career/financial challenges, chronic disabilities in my family, deaths of relatives, my own flaws). I hope that you recover from the pain you have experienced.
Ex sat in fake MC with church elders because I had asked for a divorce because my gut was screaming that something was off, claimed he loved me, wanted to make our marriage work, was free of all pornography. Six weeks later D’day hit. Up to his eyeballs in porn discovered by our son, admitted to hooking up with a guy three weeks before we separated and his so called desire to see our marriage work was code for this is now all up to you thankful, you wanted the truth, you now have it. My actions are in the past stop hurting me with your needs and want for for assurance it won’t happen again. You can just trust me and if you don’t that’s on you. I didn’t. 5 years out. Praise be.
Pieces of shit doesn’t even begin to describe them.
Yup, 14 years together, he’s actually treating the kids and I way better, after an ultimatum 4 months prior. We are super appreciative and make sure he knows it. He’s spent the last several months talking to me about retirement plans (entirely his initiative), where we’ll live, what we’ll do. He comes back from a short business trip and we have sex 8 times in 4 days, and because of the ‘treating us better’, it’s actually really good. He leaves for his next business trip spontaneously telling me he loves me!
And on that trip, Shmoops hits on him. He comes back his previous crabby self, and within a couple of weeks I’ve figured out what’s going on, and kicked him to the curb.
No depth.
YMBAC if you believe he doesn’t know who “Traci” is and she must have hacked into his Netflix account.
Geez, I have a similar Netflix story, and the skank (a neighbor) even has the same name. He didn’t know how or why her crappy (so, so crappy) movies were showing up in my queue. And why I was getting messages that said that I had reached my device or streaming limit.
He gave her my login information so she wouldn’t have to pay the, what, $8 a month?
What kind of cheap prick gives his skank his wife’s login, instead of offering up his credit card for such a paltry sum?
And he knew that I would never have allowed anyone to piggyback on my account. Shit, I wouldn’t give our kids the login. I thought that was dishonest and would be stealing.
He really lost it when I changed the Netflix password and didn’t tell him.
So…YMBAC if you offer to set up and pay some skank’s Netflix charge every month so your husband stops yelling at you. And you pay it for years and years.
And…YMBAC if you did the same thing for her internet connection, too. And provided tech support. ????
Not that you would ever give it to your (ex?) husband but the Netflix basic subscription allows two devices to be logged in at the same time and their upgraded subscription ($14.00 per month) allows for 4 devices to be logged in at the same time. Netflix allows this so you could give the sign in to your children. I have the upgraded one and my parents, sister and children all have the password. It’s not stealing so don’t sweat it!
YMBAC if…he tells you it was only once and she was trying to get pregnant and you end up believing he was the victim of a woman desperate for a baby that focused on him because he was unhappy in his marriage. Then try to make him happy so he doesn’t cheat again.
I stayed with my husband after he told me that he might have impregnated his co-worker (a former psychotherapist who dated married men) as my husband and this affair partner were trying to start a family together in another state. He wanted our young kids to be with him, too. He wasn’t sure how all this would work out, though. Foolish me stayed with him in wreckonciliation another four months, experiencing daily abuse–too traumatized to think straight and scared that he might harm the kids (found out much later, after separation, that he beat them with a belt while I was out of our home) if we got divorced so stayed to physically protect our kids from him. Also told him that he could keep mistresses while I stayed monogamous to him. He told me I should get him a dating subscription. For two months, he in Excel daily rated me on a scale of one to ten with a minimum passing score of 4 (my average was 2.2, so I failed the ‘wife’ test). Maybe this is why I feel as though I have never been married, in spite of holding a legal document that says I was for many years. Do I win the Doormat Olympics? I hope that I can someday use my life and academic experience to help victims of domestic abuse.
He is a piece of shit on so many levels that he has a special place in Guinness Book of World Records.
You were never a doormat. You were abused by this man. It’s hard to see, think and function on any level with the horrific bullshit he threw at you.
xox
Thanks, USA.
Rockstar- normal people ( chumps) will read your post and think how disgusting, horrific and awful your h’s behavior was…
Not for a moment I thought bad about you- rather sorry, that another good human being was used and abused by the narc.
I know it sounds cliche, but there must be a special place in hell for them…
You know what? Despite all the ugliness of the past, you can still wake up, look in the mirror and realize- that your values never changed, that your moral code is the same, that your character traits are still worth living by… it’s HUGE, and ur h will never have it.
Sure, there are stuff to change, improve, impose more boundaries, put yourself first etc- but they are changes of behavior- not the PERSON that you are
Hold in there, girl…. you survived the unimaginable, so the only way now- is up 🙂
You didn’t have a marriage. You were the only one who made a commitment to love, honor, cherish, etc. What he did is sick and cruel. You deserve so much more than that. Start believing it!
YMBAC if, after finding out he has moved out with zero warning while you were on a business trip and sent you an e-mail (after 28 years married), you actually think, “Well, if no one finds out he did this he can come back and it will be OK.”
YMBAC if, after he has screamed at you that you are judgmental, controlling, and an angry person, you think, “OK, OK, I will just stop talking completely when I am around him so he doesn’t get mad at me, maybe if I do that he will stay!”
Mind boggling that I was negotiating in my head how to make it OK for him to have done his disappearing act, and the answers in my head were not to exist. If I could just disappear he would stay. WTAF.
Congratulations on your clarity Now IC! Yay!!
Now IC,
Sorry you experienced this horrendous treatment.
My husband used to abandoned our young kids and me a couple of hours after arriving home from two-month business trips and breaking my printer. I still remember one of my kids, a toddler at the time, asking me, ‘Where is Daddy going? When will he be back?’ as he stared at the just closed front door. I had no answers and still don’t. The thought of my now ex-husband’s abandonment of our kids years ago still pains me.
Isn’t it ironic cheating narcissists call us all “angry” when they actually gave us a thousand and one reasons to be angry?!?! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard all of us chumps say this. How many times did we all swallow our dignity and hold our tongues with these fuckers just so we wouldn’t “upset” them with our “anger?” And the moment we do defend ourselves, we watch them get irascible and storm their not sorry ass away and listen to them blame us for their shitty behavior.
Fuck them.
Yes fuck them
YMBAC if you believe “she’s just a friend.” and later “she’s crazy”
YMBAC if you believe “That passionate communication you found was ‘only’ an EA”
YMBAC if you believe “If you were better/try harder, the relationship will be better. You suggest marriage counseling but accept when he won’t.
YMBAC if you spackle flirtations /small betrayals but later discover there was far more.
YMBAC if you believe him when he comes back days after moving out saying he was sorry and that he does love me, only to find out a few weeks later he was only saying that so he could stay in your house under “wreckonciliation” ruse because he didn’t have the money for his slut shack”s gas water heater. Yep, he used wreckonciliation for hot water.
if you believe he’s just sleeping on her couch.
if you take back a cheater without an apology because you don’t want to upset him.
if you expect a cheater to respect you after pick me dancing.
Or if you ever bothered to pick me dance at all.
YMBAC if you believe “staying for the kids” is the right decision.
YMBAC if you believe s/he will change for the OW/OM.
YMBAC if you believe someone who self-identifies as BiMWM and looks at T4M personal ads is straight.
YMBAC if he tests positive for chlamydia and his equally narcissistic sister tells a mortified you “at least it is not herpes”
YMBAC if you look at the bank account transactions and try and rationalize charges spent on dates with the OW. I was concerned someone had stolen his debit card. Surely it was an error! Ugh.
YMBAC- Haikus
He blamed the neighbor,
Condom wrappers in the trash,
Neighbor is eighty.
Steals from his mother,
Lies about it for ten years,
Let’s live together!
YMBAC if you allow him to beat the crap out of you, spend all your money, bad-mouth you and so on because you believe he’s ill and he didn’t mean it. What the hell does it matter if he is ill or if he didn’t mean it. He still did all of that!
Yup, they all play the pity angle 🙁 Sorry that that beast hit you.
So sorry. You deserved better
If you look at his book list on the ipad and find he’s read (and highlighted passages from) “Bang” and “Day Bang” and he says he’s “just curious because I had such a sheltered youth” and you think “well they’re only books” – YMBAC
If you discover he’s been texting your friend and have a talk about “inappropriate” communication, he agrees and stops the texts and you don’t even think to check FB messenger, because why would he be doing anything like that? – YMBAC
If he says he has cramp in his buttocks and can’t have sex for a while and you think “sounds legit” – YMBAC
Sheltered youth…
YMBAC if your fiancee says she spent the night with your best friend because she couldn’t find a ride home, but there was absolutely no sex, and you believed her.
YMBAC if after several years of impotence, he Visits the dr. To get “boner” pills and tells you they are for “beating off” and you believe him.
YMBAC if you wonder why the minivan needs to be filled with gasoline so often. It shouldn’t need a fill-up yet?
YMAC when you accidentally pull up the computer’s history showing hundreds of porn site web pages visited at all times of the day and night, and you believe your husband when he claims it was your 10-year old son…or computer “cookies” magically attaching
YMBAC if you agree to stop calling his affair partner his “crusty fuck-buddy.”
YMBAC if you don’t tell the truth when he asks why you’re feeling blue (about his affair) — because he says he gets so upset and writhes in guilt about it when you honestly reveal why you’re in a glum mood because something triggered you.
YMBAC if you feel guilty when he says, “I felt so bad when I saw your face and how angry you were. I know I put that expression there.”
YMBAC if you waste the time going into marital counseling after he says he was only spending time with the OW because you didn’t have any time for him and he thought you were “through with” him.
YMBAC if you think you can shame the OW by texting her to call her a “saggy old scavenger cunt.”
YMBAC if you don’t knock his head off his shoulders when he hears you saying something rude about the OW and tells you to let up “because she’s just a good little Baptist gal.”
OMG a scavenger c unt !! Haha
OMG. I have tears coming down my face! I can’t stop laughing to even type this. Your text is soooo funny!!! I want to be best friends with you!! Love it!!!! Oh, my gosh my belly hurts. I’m still laughing!!
YMBAC if you actually believed that he was going to Hawaii by himself, you know, to clear his head from the demands and stresses of his job. And winter camping in Yosemite, alone, twice, because work stress. *facepalm*
YMAC if you know your husband is always watching porn, he hasn’t been able to get his man-parts alert for years, tells you he doesn’t like sex but it’s ok because he knows you don’t either and you convince yourself that you DON’T like sex (because it’s not that fun when the spontaneity is interrupted by a never-ending conundrum of how to get the man parts to work when you thought you had gotten that trick down decades earlier) and that your love transcends sexuality. And then you believe that he is so important at work that he needs to travel 70% of the time and, for some reason it involves England a lot even though it’s a Japanese company, then you move and give up your career for him because the new job at a different company may be better and you’ll go back to sexy fun times and he STILL has to travel to England 70% of the time. Yep Chump I am. Or was.
YMBAC if you and offspring make sure to attend every commencement speech your spouse is asked to present, but when you are invited to give the commencement speech at your alma mater, he skips it for a “work meeting,” and you just shrug it off and go it alone without another thought. Oh, and when you later show him a video recording of the speech, his one comment is. “You really need to smile more when you speak publicly,” and you really take that comment to heart as something you need to work on.
YMBAC if you see your spouse taking nude selfies and those selfies are not sent to you.
100% the same! 20 yrs and never received a nude shot nor anything remotely sexy/alluring from her. But for her OM…
Still, the photo OM sent her of him naked & masturbating was actually so funny that I’m still tempted to put it up on Grindr one day 😉
Yeah me too. Found her secret email account she used to correspond with these man whores and to set up secret messaging apps like KIK and Skype. Found many jackoff videos these men sent her, fun times. I swear I should have been a detective, I have a talent for knowing when a person is lying and how to find the truth.
Yes!! My sister saw dick pix on Hannibal Lecher’s camera and assumed he was sending them to me, rather than to random skanks on Adult Friend Finder.
In all seriousness, why do (some) guys think that women want pictures of their dicks on their phones? I guess the skanky ones do, but seriously what not-skanky woman wants to see that when she unlocks her phone? Gross!!!
I have heard this is sometimes a tactic for men on dating sites after they start chatting it up with someone they like. Like that would actually make me want to date someone. Just can’t understand it!
Your husband goes to the bathroom four times in a hour and stays for 30 minutes and takes his cell phone!
YMBAC
If you listened to him brag about how he cheayed on his ex and she was too stupid to figure it out but you married him any way because he’d grown up so much since back then
If you watched him wrap an aluminum baseball bat around a tree trunk because he was mad about a call but thought it’s not a problem with his temper/ character he’s just competitive and he’s just caught up in the game.
If you knew he had a child with one woman while in a 10 year long relationship with another and you didn’t run screaming in the opposite direction.
Ok I don’t want to play this game anymore. It makes me feel very very stupid.
“Ok I don’t want to play this game anymore. It makes me feel very very stupid.”
I agree; next week’s challenge–You May Be Mighty if you……
–copied all the financial documents while cheater was out of town
–convinced him to leave the house “just for a few days so I can calm down” and then never let him back in
–tricked him into thinking you were seeing an “accountant” about his settlement proposal but were instead feeding said financial documents to a lawyer
….
Tempest, I like that challenge!
Me, too!!
Me three!
Don’t feel stupid. We trusted because we are trustworthy and thought our partners were too. Normal people can’t conceive of any of the twisted shit out cheaters pull.
TooSmart,
I completely empathize!
Ahh love Foxworthy and this (and I’m a Brit) — ok so my bit…
YMBAC………if you not only organise and arrange for your wife’s OM to visit your country but you also pay for his flight, let him stay in your house for a few days, cook him food, then send him on his way with your wife by plane, which of course you’ve paid for too, to spend a month in your vacation apartment and obviously he doesn’t pay for squat when he’s at the beach
And YMBAC too if you bought your wife’s excuse, just before OM arrived, that she had to sleep in a separate bedroom because of your snoring (only took her 20 yrs to decide that)
WHAT?!?!? Did you know OM was an OM at the time or did your whore wife describe him as a friend or something else?
They are awful people. Truly awful.
I know, when I write it out like that it’s deeply humiliating.
OM is actually her cousin (seriously!) and even though I’d not heard good stuff about him (bad treatment of his mother) STBxW convinced me he was “misunderstood” — I truly believed I was going to meet someone who’d never been outside his country or on a plane, a timid, shy man — the first word that went through my head when I eventually met him was “mafioso” as he was/is completely the opposite — really didn’t get on with him at all in the 3-4 days he stayed, which was my excuse for being so surprised that he of all people was the OM — I still have zero idea of why she’s attracted to him (or any woman for that matter)
But yeah so true — truly, truly awful people — probably always were and most likely always will be
Don’t ever feel humiliated for being a kind and generous and good person; that is what makes you an astounding person. Those fuckwit, greaseball, mafioso, INCEST turds took advantage of your generosity. You don’t have to be humiliated for being a good person. If anything, they should be the ones who are humiliated for everything they have done…sadly, we both know cheaters/narcissists are incapable of feeling shit.
Hugs.
They will never be humiliated… if there were capable of that- cheating wouldn’t be taking place…
Still… no need to apologize for being a good helpful kind human being. None.
Yes, when u think about all the shit cheaters did- u start feeling humiliated, stupid, less than…etc. but then realization hits- I HAVENT done anything wrong, I refuse to feel bad about being a great human being.
Thanks both and that’s a great way to look at our situations!
Reminds me of the following lyric — “The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades”
YMBAC…
when the first thing your STBX says to you after you discover their love letters is: “please don’t do anything that might hurt her”.
In my defense, I left him on the side of the road, drove to our vacation house and packed, drove 8 hours home and changed the locks – all in less than 12 hours.
Talk about mighty! Can you sell the rest of us some of that gumption?
He is wretched!
And you are indeed mighty!
You might be a chump if:
You believe your husband got crabs from a dirty pile of clothes in a basement he was working in.
Year one
You tell you husband the girls downstairs wants to get pregnant no strings attached; she then becomes pregnant; moves and you catch him at her new apartment. She then has another child. Year 2 & 3
You are pregnant with your second child and his work friend shows up at the hospital and then your home. You find letters about the affair and later realize she was pregnant at the hospital.
Year 4.
You can’t breath because your pillow smells like perfume. While you’re working three jobs he’s screwing someone in your bed.
Year 5
You buy a home and find a used condom on top of the garbage.
Year 6.
The list goes on…..19 in all that I know of.
#Don’tbeme!
Dropped him off after 36 years with Nanthony.
#DoingmeGainedALife!
You have all the evidence you need. Once is enough.
Martha, for that to have happened, did he lose his ring finger to the mower? 😉
Hahaha, ClearWaters! 🙂 I wish! He said “it must have slipped off” in the long grass. Most NORMAL husbands/people would by a weed wacker to trim the long grass on the fence line. The cheating weirdo would actually sit on the ground and hand trim the long grass with hand clippers. I kid you not! Our neighbors must have thought he was nuts! So his little story sounded legit to me, but now looking back with all that I know — the ring went missing within the timeframe when he was probably cheating with ho-worker back in 1999 when I was pregnant with our second child. I totally forgot about the lost ring story until others here at CN were sharing their “lost cheater ring” stories.
Martha
I accidentally lost his ring at the beach… imagine the drama and a guilt trip… so, after hearing lamenting ofhow much the ring means to him- as a sign of love and commitment- how disrespectful it was from me to loose it (!) – 6 months pregnant, I was going back to the beach at dusk, searching for the ring.
The terrible part- he was cheating on me since the day one – 14 kids and 3 kids later I got the memo ????
YMBAC if: all those times he did not come home until 3-4-5 am (when he would text at 8-9 pm that he was on his way home)
YMBAC if: THEN believing his excuses that his phone died, couldn’t get ride home, etc
YMBAC if: THEN taking the blame! I’m this or that….
Been there, did that. However, his excuse was that he had to drive his boss home or “babysit” his co-workers at a bar. Ugh, I’m an idiot.
YMBAC if you kick your spouse out of the house for cheating, but buy, and give him/her a bag of gluten free food for their food allergy.
YMBAC if you think because he’s impotent with you he will be with everyone else.
YMBAC if you keep his dirty secrets to protect his ‘image’.
Man, these are all great.
– YMBAC if, following DDay#1, your cheater convinces you she needs to “go at her own pace and isn’t ready for couples therapy yet.” She wants to work on herself first by going to individual therapy. You then research therapists for her and print out a list. She doesn’t call any of them for two months. And even then, the one she picks is about 1 mile down the road. Talk about lazy.
– YMBAC if, between DDays, you print out pictures of men’s faces for her Halloween costume. The costume consisted of hanging mens faces from an umbrella and was called “It’s Raining Men.” Walking into the party, a friend joking asks if my wife had been stepping out on me. It took all of my strength not to cry. How could I have been such a sap?!
YMBAC if cheater gets sloppy drunk on his birthday and tries to make out with his step sister right in front of you. Next morning he remembers nothing but claims if he did do that, he was only expressing “brotherly” love.
At marriage counseling the counselor could only say ‘oh wow, that’s unfortunate’. Even the marriage counselor wasn’t buying that shit but guess who gulp down that shit sandwich? This chump…
After 34 years married But ignoring red flags for 2 years I finally caught them together at her (whore) house.
YMBAC if you believed his saying he was sleeping over his guy friends house because the friend had
many friends just go there.
YMBAC if you believed that he liked the bands in the area that his guy friends liked.
Trying to get to meh after 3 years but the good memories keep popping up ????
YMBAC if your friend invites your husband to a concert without you, and they tell you it’s because you won’t like the music, and you believe them.
YMBAC if your husband spends every free minute texting, hides it from you, and tells you it’s work related. At 11 pm. And you believe him.
YMBAC if your cheater asks for one more meeting with his OW “for closure.” And you agree.
YMBAC if you find out about 20 years worth of serial cheating and then you stay for another 3 to see if it gets any better. (Hint: it doesn’t!)
#3 ahahaa – Oh no!I’m a Chump!!!
I even got him to go twice to explain how he felt about her – expecting her to say “What?! Oh no! I’m sorry, Married Man and Father, I can never see you again,” I suppose. He ASKED ME WHAT HE SHOULD SAY TO HER. Gah. She told me she never refuses comfort to friends in need. She also told me that she’d had to move to where she is now because life at her previous place had become impossible. That was because she’d got involved with a couple whose relationship was rocky to try and help and he’d fallen in love with her, yayaya. I thought she’d have learned a lesson from that. Afterwards several women told me they didn’t trust her and thought she was a loose cannon.
Am I blowing my own trumpet to say that my Chumpiness stemmed from my faith in people to have self-awareness, emotional intelligence, unselfishness and self-control? Don’t have it any longer but fortunately seem to have hung on to compassion. And in a way I’m not angry with my past childlike faith – if only we could all have it and it could be a realistic way of living…
A mashup of my own and others experiences
YMBAC if you get pregnant (condom failure) during hysterical bonding sex after a false reconciliation, you get an abortion (why use an unwanted pregnancy/child to stay married to an asshole ?), you cry after the abortion and your husband asks you “Why are you crying ?” At least he bought you a decent bouquet of flowers, the only time during a quarter century marriage. Once in a blue moon he would deign to pick up a cheap,wilted bunch at the train station before commuting home to the ‘burbs. The children wondered “Why is Mom sobbing ? Why did Dad buy her a big bouquet ?”
YMBAC if your boyfriend’s box of condoms, that you purchased together at the drugstore, is empty the next time you try (limp dick in spite of the little blue pill and a busty hourglass figure for him to ogle) to have sex and he claims he used them to masturbate. After you ghost him (other red flags pop up), you contact one of the sons of his second wife via social media and learn he was an unemployed porn slob who ruined wife #2 emotionally and financially during their ten year marriage.
YMBAC if you don’t immediately dump a man who refers to his bio daughter as his daughter. She grew up across the country and he didn’t provided any child support. He was more of an uncle, seeing her once a year. The baby mama met and married a man when the daughter was four or five. That man was the daughter’s father in every sense of the word, not the loser. This loser also had two older mentally handicapped siblings that he left behind in upstate New York where he grew up. Both lived in group homes and one died under strange circumstances. Did loser bestir himself to see what happened ? Nope. The other one calls every month to talk to his brother and wants to know when loser is coming for a visit. That ain’t happening. Loser portrayed himself as quite the victim, his father died when he was a baby, his brothers are handicapped, his ex-wife left him,blah,blah,blah
YMBAC if you’re reluctant to speak your truth and plainly state “The marriage/relationship failed because s/he is a person of poor character. S/he cheated and I don’t let anybody abuse me.”
YMBAC if… on D-Day you felt guilty sneaking a peak at his cell phone history on the phone account you’ve been paying for him to use for his business… for sixteen years.
YMBAC if… you see dozens of texts listed, from just one number and your first thought is he has a job he’s been working on very hard and the customer is very persistent and needy, calling after midnight and at 7:00 a.m. with photos attached.
YMBAC if… after confronting him and extracting a trickle truth admission, you actually got down on your knees and clasped your hands and begged him not to leave you…. only to hear this response from him: “Oh no, WisedUp, I already asked OW about the Sharing Idea… and she won’t go for that!”
YMBAC if… you offer the cheater $10,000 to help him get his own place, because you are thinking at least he won’t be living with the OW then!! (He turned it down… though months later after he retained a lawyer he suddenly wanted $157,000!)
YMBAC if… you call your sister in law looking for sympathy, and she goes on and on about poor Cheater and how hard this all is for him, and would Chump be a dear and pay the airfare for Cheater to fly across the country so his sister can be supportive to him during this difficult time.. and you …. Say.Yes.
YMBAC if… your sister in law says she is going to send you a couple of books to help you better understand what Cheater is going through during this difficult time for him, (1) The Drama of the Gifted Child (see, poor Cheater was a gifted child… the poor underappreciated exceptional baby man) and (2)… “a book about women aging”. Uh, because, yeah. I’m aging and he’s “special.”
Can’t make this shit up.
OMG! May I ask you what has finally made you to wise up?
Well, that was 5 years ago, so I’m pretty Meh now. At the time, what quickly wised me up was when upon my offering asshole exactly 50% of the equity in our shared assets that I had contributed more than two thirds of, he accused me of “snookering him out of his money.” I literally woke up one night staring at the ceiling saying, “snookering? the man who cheated on me and lied to me daily is accusing ME of being dishonest?” His fate was sealed from that moment on, though it wasn’t easy. After a two year legal battle with him demanding 85%, he ended up with less than 5%. My accountants and lawyer showed me that my share was 95% so that wised me up fast.
YMBAC if you driver her to the bar every Friday to see her fat head while she was swearing they were just friends. Getting mad at you because your a bad man because you don’t want her to have any friends.
YMBAC if you wife was out screwing egg boy while you were with your son at spring training. You face time her and the phone shuts off immediately when she sees your face and she doesn’t call you back for three hours saying your phone died.
YMBAC if you think to yourself, “Well, at least he still cares enough to lie, no matter how poorly. That’s something, anyway.”
But no. It’s nothing. Run.
YMBAC because they are lying asshats.
You may be a chump if your partner’s mantras are: “You aren’t the boss of me.” “It’s not what you think.” “How dare you accuse me?” “It’s your fault.” “Rules don’t apply to me.” “You’d really like AP.”
You may be a chump if your partner smirks when you speak and that smirk says “I know something you don’t know.”
And finally, here’s one I found in my old journal, caps included. It’s a sign of Meh that I actually have to look this stuff up now. “HE LET ME SUFFER IN WAYS THAT WERE UNNECESSARY.”
. “HE LET ME SUFFER IN WAYS THAT WERE UNNECESSARY.”
Of all the pieces of the puzzle I’ve had to put together, every unanswered question, the trickle truth, this statement sums it up perfectly.
Thank you, as always for your caring wisdom.
I used to get that same smirk. Honestly, with all the lies and asinine arguments that went in never ending circles, it was that stupid smirk that made me realize he is a sick twisted evil bastard. He got a kick out of thinking he was pulling one over me.
In the end, I will pull one over him. In the words of Wally Lamb, “This much I know is true.”
Karma is a bitch.
YMBAC if your LEO spouse tells you that he is needed to report to work and stay overnight due to incliment weather. He then sends you a pick of the snow on some other vehicle only to later find out that it’s the AP’s vehicle.
YMBAC….if your traveling boyfriend doesn’t know the name of the hotel he will be staying at because someone from his office booked the reservation.
YMBAC….if your boyfriend still allows his platonic ex-girlfriend to use his credit card.
YMBAC if you ‘are fine’ with him taking his ex GF to your holiday home overnight…
Chumpalicious!! ????
Horses, is your screen name anything to do with the Florence and the Machine song that was #1on my recovery playlist? X
YMBAC…..if after ten years of being involved in a community event with your husband, a committee is created that only your husband is asked to be a part of and for a once a year event he randomly calls you on your way home to remind you he has a committee meeting (first you have heard of it) and that he will not be home for dinner every other week months out from the event.
YMBAC….if people tell you they saw your husband at a random pub having dinner with some guy and when they stopped to say hi they were told he and the guy were having a “committee meeting”.
YMBAC…if you are constantly standing up for your partner against everyone and when they get the opportunity they throw you under the bus to make out the issue is all you.
YMBAC…if over time you loose all your friends while your partner is constantly networking and creating new friendships that he keeps separate from you.
YMBAC…if you are constantly questioning the actions of your partner because some of the most basic of things take massive effort and you are tired all the time because you are constantly trying to make sense of all the crazy.
YMBAC…if you put your life on hold to ensure that your partner is happy while you sholder all the responsibility in the home with the children etc and all he/she can do is critasise
YMBAC if you believed that the reason he slept through alarms blaring for hours past 2 PM was because he had sleep apnea.
YMBAC if you believed he was constantly in the bathroom because of IBS and OCD.
YMBAC if you let him get away with not paying child support for 5 months because you were afraid he would not want to reconcile if you pushed too hard.
YMBAC if you loaned your ex money to buy a luxury car when he earned 3x your salary.
YMBAC…
If you believe it’s all your fault
You believe her married male friend at work is just a friend and comfort her when he tell her she’s getting too close. You tell her to give him a little space and he’ll be fine.
If you believed she constantly forgot to turn her ringer back on at night when she was out of town working
Believed That she had a stomach virus and wasn’t running into the bathroom to text him
Believed She was going out to dinner with girlfriends after work while she was out of town
You received a text message that she was moving out of the family home because you found evidence that she still had contact with her married affair partner
You still thought that maybe you would forget the pain and that you would grow old with the woman you committed the last 28 years of your life to ????
I forgot to mention YMBAC if you were there for her and her mother when her mother was dying of cancer, you took her mother to Dr appointments and you changed her mother’s soiled depends even after her mother told you that you made her cheat because you didn’t complement her enough. See it is all my fault
I hope you find a worthy partner. Can’t there be some influence we have on the universe that Chumps can find each other without advertising themselves to the world as Chumps? The narcs would be picking us off like birds on a wire if we had some dating site! We need some sort of eHarmony vetting system to help people who have character and empathy, and have been bruised by a long term spouse, to find each other and have better odds at making a go of it. Like a trusted background check system that you can sign up for and know the only other “narc discarded” people are in the group. Sigh.
I was the only one at my X’s father’s bedside when he died. The entire family just couldn’t face it and the only one I forgive is his wife (my former MIL) since she had spent the previous 10 years sitting vigil and dealing with the decline. My X and his siblings put it on me to deal with when the actual day came (my X’s excuse: “It was a work day.” Ummmm, I worked a professional job too but decided that the last day his father lived was a good day to take off.) This was long enough ago that I didn’t have to hear from the in-laws how it was my fault though. Unforgivable, and I feel for you.
28 years here too. I lived without compliments for three decades and I didn’t cheat, as a matter of fact my accomplishments were reasons I deserved abuse per his twisted mind. He was a jealous and comparing prick for anything I did that he felt showed him up.
Thanks Now I.C. I agree that there should be a dating (friendship) site for “Chumps”. I’m 52 and my thought process now is “do I really want to open myself up rejection. I’ve already had the ultimate rejection and don’t need any more in my life right now”. Not to mention that My 3 adult kids: 2 live with me. My oldest 31 (technically my stepdaughter, but I’m the only father figure that’s been in her life since she was 16months old) recently moved her, her boyfriend and his dog into the marital home and my Jobless 19 year old. My third, 18yo daughter lives with there mother. They all stayed at their mothers for Thanksgiving and not one of them called or texted me to say Happy Thanksgiving. That is when you know might be a Chump. Now Christmas is right around the corner and I don’t feel like putting up decorations, getting a tree or buying them presents. My plan is to buy blank cards and give them each $50, but I probably shouldn’t even do that. Thanks for letting me vent. Merry Christmas to you all. Here is my email if anyone would like to become pen pals. Joepa18@msn.com. Cheaper than paying for therapy. Oh, a few weeks before Thanksgiving I received a text from her saying “ Sometimes I miss you a lot”. I asked her if that was meant for me because she did accidentally text me a message that was meant for him and said “Love you” to him in that message. She convinced me the “Love you” text was meant for me. She said who else would it be for??? That was when I first thought something was going on. How dumb do they think we are.
Thanks Now I.C. I agree that there should be a dating (friendship) site for “Chumps”. I’m 52 and my thought process now is “do I really want to open myself up to rejection. I’ve already had the ultimate rejection and don’t need any more in my life right now”.
Here’s my email joepa18@msn.com if anyone wants to become pen pals or just vent.
I got another one…
YMBAC if your 3 adult kids (2 live with me) stay at the cheaters apartment for Thanksgiving and not one of them calls or texts to say Happy Thanksgiving knowing your alone, but you’re still considering buying them Christmas presents.
Accepting the fact that this woman will not be the one you grow old with is really hard to process. I still have days of nostalgia that try to pull me back in.
I also expressed my concern of her getting too close with “a friend” (even after I already suspected an affair). She tried to convince me nothing was going on. “He’s married…he’s 55 (12 years older than her)…we are just workout buddies.” And the whole time she was saying these things, she was acting like a giddy teenage girl with a crush.
Hopium is a powerful drug!
YMBAC if you have sex with your husband knowing that he’s leaving the next day to see his girlfriend in Peru.
YMBAC if your husband unfriends you on Facebook and a lot of his “friends” are sluts he cheated on you with…..
YMBAC if your husband had a Tinder account…..
YMBAC if you find a list that your husband made of all the women he fucked and it’s really, really long-but you don’t say anything…..
YMBAC if you can’t remember the last time you celebrated your anniversary and your husbamd never remembers your birthday and if he’s home whennit is your birthday you buy your own cake or make it……
You might be a chump if your husband consistently tells you you are stupid and you have a stupid History degree and you believe him…..
I could go on and on and on……..
Thankfully-we are using our Tax Return to pay for mediation in February and I will have a Super Laweyer helping me through!!!!
Good luck for Feb BodyCombat!! 😀
Great Friday Challenge!
I might be redneck because it was too easy for me to find classic Jeff Foxworthy clips.
Here is the 12 Days of Christmas for Rednecks
https://youtu.be/VJOe3CXE-mA
And a classic video by Jeff on successful relationships:
https://youtu.be/swEE_XsBsdM
YMBAC if……
You wake up 4 years after D day and two years after divorce still wondering what the fuck happened to your life of 26 years……
Even though you’re completely no contact for several years, you still harbor the childish and irrational hope that there is such a thing as a unicorn, or at least a brain tumor that would explain all of it…….
You’re different than you were pre-DDay and have a much smaller social circle and low tolerance for any dysfunction and zero tolerance for any infidelity narratives including movies and novels.
Holidays are a triggering time that takes effort to survive rather than the joyous party-filled time they were before DDay.
Motherchumper, I ask myself the same question, wtf happened to my life in the past 25 years…
I wished for a brain tumor and the the magical Unicorn, there had to be a logical explanation. Surely, this isn’t my husband. Acceptance for me, of who he actually is can only be describe as being hit in the head with an ax,
Unfortunately, holidays are no longer the same, I see life through a different set of eyes. I agree, it’s more of an effort to survive.
I have a low tolerance for fake, or any indication of dysfunction.
I understand Motherchumper. When my son was small it would be all pomp and circumstance. LOVED Christmas. Living alone now it feels like an obligatory process necessary for my son and family. It is what it is. I will take pleasure in working Christmas morning so the younger nurses with children can spend it with them. AND, I’m very joyful for doing that.
YMBAC if you believe him when he says he’s going to really go get a vasectomy this time.
YMBAC if he refuses to switch out his old busted phone and you think it’s because he doesn’t want to lose his progress in “Vikings” and his “clan” will get upset with him. Nothing to do with those naked pictures of course!
YMBAC if you think for one second that he really wants to work on things when really he’s just tired of living with his parents.
YMBAC if he stays out, you track him via his computer and realise he’s in another part of London other that where he purported to stay, you find the number of a woman he rang many times when he probably missed the last train and he says he slept on the sofa fully-clothed and he didn’t tell me because he knew it would hurt me AND YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE IT.
What the effing hell was I thinking? Oh yes, at this point my father I was caring for my father who probably had just over a month to live so maybe I was just sliiiiightly preoccupied. No wonder he left, cold hearted frigid bitch, ignoring him and caring for someone dying of cancer.
Honestly I should have chucked him out that night.
YMBAC if on a family vacation you take your kid to the zoo while he has some “alone time” that you later discover was a lunch date with an ex girlfriend that he tells you was just “an unexpected encounter” and “old friends catching up”… and you believe him.
YMBAC if you…
…ever kissed the OW on the cheek and apologized for thinking she could do something so vile.
…let the cheater come back into your home and live for a year, letting everyone think he was just a good guy who made a bad choice, but he’s really a good guy.
…apologized to a Switzerland friend for thinking they should not be friends with the OW.
…filed for ‘irreconcilable differences’ and not ‘adultery’ because your cheater begged you not to and because you thought if you were nice about it, maybe he’d see how wonderful you are and come back home to his family.
YMBACH (real time) if you let yourself be spoken to like shit, you go to your friends house in an act of defiance but still trot home at the agreed time with a case of beer (to appease him) to find no one home… FML
YMBAC if he texts, “I’m sorry I wasn’t what you needed,” and you feel guilty and like you’re a horrible person.
…after dealing with the “girlfriends,” the happy-ending massages, the five-figure debt acquired at a strip club, the eggshells, the rage and resentment and silence whenever I tried to talk about any of this, and having to move the stars to get into marriage counseling.
But, sure. I was definitely asking too much of my now ex-husband.
YMBAC if he’s always lecturing on what a great guy he is, that he’s a man of integrity, how lucky I am that he’s not like ” other guys,” instead of wondering why he’s telling me these things or who he’s trying to convince.., I believed him.
Oh yeah, YMBAC if one night in January he doesn’t come home after work, you call his cell # many times thru the evening and it goes straight to VM, so you are terrified maybe he is in a ditch somewhere, freezing cold if his vehicle skidded off the road or something, so you sit there thinking what you might say to police if you called a missing person report… I mean, he works for himself so there are no co-workers to ask where he said he was going that night, finally you fall asleep fitfully worrying. At 8:30 in the a.m. you hear his key in the door and you run to the door, so happy he’s ok, hugging and kissing him then ask “Where were you? what happened?” and you BELIEVE him when he says he stopped in a bar in the city and ‘had too many beers’ (though you know in the past he’s never had a problem drinking multiple beers) and ‘got into his truck and realized he was too drunk to drive home.’ So you ask “Why didn’t you call me?” credulously….. and you BELIEVE him when he says ‘Oh. I dropped my phone on the floor of the truck and was too drunk to pick it up’ so he fell asleep in his truck in January in a cold northeast city on the busiest street in the city where no police or passersby saw him slumped over in his truck. Right. But YMBAC, because your little heart is just so happy that he is okay and you snuggle him into bed under the covers. And never question anything.
Because after all, he is always telling you how honest, trustworthy and wonderful he is. And you’ve always believed that. Even when a weird phone call from an adult protective agency calls your house and asks for his ex girlfriend by name, and seems disbelieving when you tell them no one by that name lives or has ever lived at this address. You asked him about that too, and he gets livid telling you to never accept any calls from his ‘crazy’ ex. (The back story on this found out couple years after DDay involved him abusing her in a way that put her in the hospital).
Only after wising up and exposing his cheating, do you realize you definitely WERE a chump for the entire 16 years that this lying imposter parasite faked a relationship with you. Never again. OW can keep the crazy narcissist sociopath.
YMBAC if you encourage your “overstressed” H to take a 4 day bike ride up the coast. You get the bike packs out of storage and get them cleaned up. You make sure all his cycling gear is clean and ready. You purchase snacks and sunscreen and a solo person tent. He takes off, refusing the tent because he says he wants to sleep under the stars. You hear from him exactly one time. He claims the cell service was bad (No. It isn’t. It’s 2015 and your top carrier has excellent service along the coast.) In the end he takes an extra day. He returns after 5 days, all jacked up about the “experience” yet has not a single photo to show you. (He takes photos of views all the time, forever.)
He took this trip right before your two high school aged children had Spring Break, so he was unable to take any time off to do something with the family during that time. You figure out later that his MOWhore employee went on the bike ride with him. They rode during the day and stayed in hotels every night.
Trust they suck.
YMBAC when he get drunk and complains that you don’t treat him with respect and you’re too sensitive about his relationship with a friend. In the middle of his affair with said friend. And I think maybe I am being a bit sensitive because he would never do anything to hurt me…omg I can’t believe I was so naive…
YMBAC if you use spray n’ wash to remove the lipstick off his collar and then drop kick the spray n’ wash bottle for not doing it’s job, even though you don’t wear lipstick.
YMBAC if your spouse wakes up one morning and has an urgent need to find himself (herself) by joining an ashram (that doesn’t exist) and you believe your spouse is on a journey of enlightenment.
Note: Every time I hear the phrase that someone needs to “find themselves” I mentally add the phrase “in someone else’s pants” or “in someone else’s bed” or “in the backseat of someone else’s 69 Chevy” or “at the key party down the street.” (That’s a joke aimed and cheaters and not to be confused with people who are genuinely on a spiritual path).
YMBAC if you believe the key party your spouse got busted attending was about picking out fashionable key chains for house keys.
YMBAC if you think your spouse didn’t call from the ski resort because you are certain he died in a car accident that was being reported on the news.
YMBAC if your spouse has to keep going to dinner with the same female recruiter because his career is on the line if he doesn’t.
YMBAC if you were brought home early from a business trip and your spouse is FURIOUS to see you… and it never crosses your mind he is having an affair and he and the OW were having a “stay-cation” in your bed that you interrupted.
The last three happened to me when I was with my ex.
YMBAC If… You pay for your own engagement ring… and his car… and his realtor start-up costs… and his kids’ child support… and feel guilty when he tells you in marriage counseling (that YOU set-up after finding his mistress) that “I just feel like nothing I ever do is good enough for you…” #ChumpLevel:Ninja