When You Piss Off the Unicorns

Wait so Elle stopped into CL and was dismissed?

Yeah, ol’ Sean lost me with “I am a leaf on the wind”. Nope, I’m pretty sure the wind you refer to is just the hot air coming out your ass, Sean. You’re not a leaf on the wind, you’re a fart in the air and you stink.

Oh and Elle can go fuck herself with that “sub-tribe of betrayed” nonsense. She gets no sympathy from me for being a spackle queen. We are not a sub-tribe. We are a clan, a nation, a kingdom and a family. And we are mighty.

Wow. No real remorse, except that he lost his long walks on the beach with Tru Luv Schmoopie…..

No mention of how he has sought to make amends for all these regrettable, unfortunate “lapses” in character. Because the real problem seems to how bitter and judgmental the betrayed are…..Sound familiar, chumps?

I hope his ex-wife has found her Meh.

Something I’ve noticed about all sorts of aspects of life is that there are always some people who want to really sell you on how great something is, whether it’s themselves, or something they identify with that is important to them. It’s important to them that you understand this greatness, too!

I grew up in a small town where a lot of the older folks would profess about how great of a place this was to live. I remember thinking as a kid, “If this place is as great as all these adults tell me, wouldn’t I be able to just experience it and figure that out for myself?” (I haven’t lived there for over ten years and don’t miss it a bit.)

I don’t think it’s impossible for someone who cheated to eventually grow into a better person (though I do think it’s very unlikely), but it’s certainly not going to come from someone on full display like this about how They’ve Learned and They’re Living A Better Life Now and yada yada. Stop telling me about what a better person you are, and just go live a decent life from this point forward, be a better person to those around you and in your circle, and let it be that.

I tend to find most of the goodness I’ve seen in life in quieter, reserved, unexpected people and places rather than from where all the flashing signs point, the twitter #hashtags trend, and the shitty self-congratulatory parades are thrown.

Oh geez, how timely my Sean has been trying to come back for about a year and a half now. Reckons he ‘is not that person anymore’ I tell him he must be some kind of mythical unicorn. As part of his relentless love bombing he gave me a unicorn head plant holder with a succulent in it. I kept it for a while then through it in the bin and resumed the joy that is LC.
Time will tell if he is a unicorn but I won’t be hanging around for that. I trust the good Dr Phil ‘past behaviour is the best indictator of future behaviour’
Oh and Sean’s word salad rubbish just sounds like my ex, their minds are like the sideshow mirrors at the circus.

“Of course cheaters are fully human and not Other. You too are projecting. The devaluing, the lack of empathy, the creation of Other, is what a cheater had to do to YOU in order to cheat on you. The sins you see in CN are the sins you fail to acknowledge in your partner.”

This is brilliant. Oh how my “spiritual” Switzerland “friends” loved to point out how I was “othering” my abuser (Who is such a fantastic person!????).
This is really nothing other than pure gaslighting. Abuse piled on top of abuse.

Sean reminds me of the type of person that morally equivocates every he does but when something is done to him, it is obviously wrong. The two entries I have read show me that he has learned nothing and is happily spending all of his rather copious amounts of time justifying what he feels.

This is an excellent example of someone NO ONE should every get involved with in any way. He takes no responsibility, does no real heavy lifting for growth (but pretends to have an open mind, but is defensive in a heartbeat) and is pretty good at making himself feel good with quotes from others. This is a person that will do this again to others happily.

He is also an excellent example of someone who can blow a lot of smoke and I bet some would find this attractive, but the actions of a man make more than the Suit or the Word. From what I have read so far, his words are plentiful but mean nothing and he is far more interested in justifying himself than anything else. Esther can have this one, he is of her “mature” elk. I’ll happily stay over here, keeping my commitments,finding right and wrong in life, following through on my word and trying to be the person of character I want to be.

Let pigs eat his word salad, it smells rancid anyway.

I wonder if Sean B. Manchild ever thought ONCE about how it felt to be on the other end of this:

“I created an emotionally abusive Pattern come here/go away. I’d make committments, break them, feel bad, make new commitments, break them. I’d b kind/thoughtful & then a dick…”

Ah, the mindfucking vacillations of the Nice-Guy-Cheater! I’m glad she left him for good.

Also? I am cracking up over the noun they invented for us, “betrayeds.” Oh, so melodramatic! I prefer Chump. Or better yet, FORMER Chump!

Love to all my homies at Chump Nation!

Acknowledging the humanity of the cheater (or abuser, whatever)? What exactly is the point being made by people who claim that’s what we ought to be doing? Why would anyone dare to dictate that we ought to be more sympathetic to our cheaters? Umm…why do we need to extend compassion to someone who clearly devalued us and often continues to do so? That’s not even safe.

So, here’s the thing. My father was a very abusive man growing up. He is an alcoholic and he used to beat on my mother. I spent time in two different women’s shelters before the age of 10. After my mother dared to leave my father and return to the safety and protection of her family to keep my brother and I safe, my father raged and eventually abducted my brother and I to another country where we were kept for a year (I kid you not, my childhood was trauma-filled). By the time I was a teenager, my father pretty much abandoned his fatherhood. I went 16 years without seeing him until the day of my wedding, in which I invited him because I felt it was the right thing to do.

Was I supposed to feel sympathy for this man as he was betraying, abusing and abondoning me all those years ago?

Hell, no. We would never expect that of a battered wife or child.

After years of living fearfully of this man, I eventually healed (sort of) and became empowered in my own right. It was only after I established my own strength and capacity to protect myself, and after a very long passage of time, that I was able to become more compassionate towards my father. That is part of the process of forgiveness, and it cannot be forced. I’m in my mid-40s now, and I was able to resume some kind of relationship with my father about 15 years ago. It’s not a traditional father-daughter relationship by any stretch. I’ve come to an understanding that my father is a very broken man. His own upbringing was horrible, and he never learned how to be a proper husband or father. He had no business ever marrying and having children. He has never outright acknowledged the things he’s done or said sorry, but I see that he is filled with regret and he tries as best as he knows how to be kind. I have absolutely no expectations of him to rise to the challenge of fatherhood; my only expectation is that he is respectful towards me and he is in the short few times we see each other. I see that he is grateful that I allow him some time to spend with my children. I tend to leave him alone.

There is a difference between what my father did and what my ex did. I know that what my father did was not personal against me. However, what he did was very personal against my mother. All those years ago, he sought to control her. He sought revenge against her when she fought back to protect herself and us. That was personal.

Now my STBXH, the cheater. Yes, he has FOO issues. But, I do too – boy do I ever. But I did not cheat for the last few years of my marriage with multiple people. I didn’t leave him for another man. I fought for this marriage until the bitter end. He has now discarded me, and the irony of being abandoned by the two most important men in my life is not lost on me. But, I am supposed to feel sorry for him? Poor sad sausage who should be pitied, and it’s just so unfortunate that I was burned in his pain?

No, that’s not what being a victim of an affair is about. Affairs are very pointed and very personal. I was deliberately and systemically devalued by my cheater. I was told I was not loveable or attractive to him. I was told that my whole relationship was a lie because he never really loved me. I was told I wasn’t meeting his needs, needs I didn’t know he had because he never shared them with me. He continuously lied to me and then blamed me when I learned truths. He tried to make me feel like I was crazy. He made me feel stupid for being so easily manipulated. When I fought for this marriage, he pretended to try to work on things, but continuously kept this woman on the go as his Plan B. In the secret email account I discovered when he left, I found emails in which he mocked my pain and my attempts to apologize to him as I was attempting reconciliation. He was using principles used in our marriage counselling sessions to apply to his affair relationship to convince the OW how they were going to beat the odds of affair relationships surviving.

This is all very, very personal. It was an attack against me by the man to which I believed I was sacramentally bonded for life, shared two children with, and shared a tremendous amount of financial assets. Almost 15 years of sunk costs.

But I am supposed to honour his humanity?

Now, I’m not saying that I don’t make every effort to “rise above,” and I have written a number of posts over the past year in which I attempt to demonstrate respect for the dignity of my STBXH. I seek to reach a point with him that I eventually reached with my father. Both of them will have a place up on some shelf or box in brain in which they are kept. But I was betrayed and there was a trauma that came with that betrayal that must be healed. There is a grief process in which I must journey…and a large part of that grieving process involves anger. I have a right to my anger, to sit in the pain of it, to let it ride through me, to spew and exorcise it. And, believe me, that as I do that, anyone who attempts to tell me that I should “humanize” my ex and have sympathy for his poor lot in life can go F&$% themselves.

This is what I know it true…that I am a person of integrity, honour and strength. I am a moral person who loves God and believes in his healing grace. As I heal, I pray for my ex’s well-being and enlightenment so that he can be redeemed as the father of our children. I want his happiness, but real happiness. I want for him to mature and work to restore his integrity. I want a unicorn for my children. But, he’s totally on his own for that, it has nothing to do with me anymore, nor should it.

I do know those who have cheated change their lives around. My step-dad was a serial cheater in his first marriage (side note, his ex is a psycho who murdered someone and got away with it). He paid the price for it as 4 of his 6 kids don’t have a relationship with him. After she divorced him, he put the work in to change. Didn’t date for 14 years until he fixed himself. Has been a loving and faithful husband to my mom. I have other friends who cheated, accepted the consequences, put the work in and changed. They readily admit what they did was wrong! But most of us (me included) are dealing with unrepentant cheaters who pretend to be sorry but don’t want to put the work in. They want YOU to make all the changes, but they are perfect. My XW gave me a long list of changes I had to make for her to stay. I drew a line in the sand. Filed for divorce (3 1/2 weeks post D/Day) separated, and divorced her. She goes around with her sad sausage ways and blame shifting. But isn’t really sorry she cheated for 4-5 years.

For Sean:

I like the sound of “The Bitter Bunny Society”. Mission: To educate the world about fuckwits.