Blameshifting Jujitso

BlameshiftingToday’s Fun Friday Challenge is flip the blameshifting script. Slam it on the mat and bounce it a few times for good measure.

In yesterday’s post, BeardBoy was told his wife had to cheat because he was a homebody and didn’t throw enough parties.

He wrote:

I never thought being a responsible father and husband would backfire so incredibly.

Struggling, comes out swinging and reframes that shit.

“I am a “homebody”, work too hard, don’t throw enough parties at the house, and am too narrowly focused on our nuclear family.” I just read this sentence again. Dude, you are the perfect husband and father. You are the type of man that many of us female chumps mistakenly believed we had married. It sucks profoundly for you that you married someone who doesn’t share your values at all, but that is unfortunately what happened. You being your awesome self didn’t “backfire”. Let’s reframe that sentence. How’s this: “I never thought being a responsible father and husband would mean nothing to the person I loved, trusted, and believed shared my values. I didn’t see her for who she really is…” Someday, this truth will be very clear to you. Give it time

Your job today is to reframe.

Whatever stupid shit they told you, whatever suckitude you’ve internalized, exorcise it today.

Blameshift: I’m a difficult person who fails to remember the proper pasta : sauce ratios.

Flip: I’m an awesome person who cooks for the people she loves.

We all have faults. But remember — you didn’t make someone cheat.

TGIF!

Subscribe
Notify of

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

292 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
HM
HM
4 years ago

Wow, this just brought me back to a time I had forgotten.

While thinking of a submission, I remember how he loved to work on cars and loved to exclude me from everything. I remember yet again trying to get him to include me and I said “I can help work on the car with you” at almost the same time he said “yeah, and you’d probably insist on helping” and rolled his eyes.

I thought why not? I’m smart, clever, capable…while I don’t know anything about cars, I pick things up fast and if he needs help…why not me? It be a great way for us to spend time together and for me to learn a little bit more about his interests.

But that was not what he wanted. He wanted to be “left alone”…but not really of course. He just didn’t want ME involved. ????

But don’t feel bad, No sad sausage here. Once I confirmed the cheating and implemented boundaries and consequences he couldn’t get enough of me. Harassed me for 2 years actually! But a little threat of police action stopped all that ????

Sorry my submission was not on topic, just sometimes this site brings back the most fucked up memories for me.

It is SO NICE to be with someone now who loves spending time with me. We could do something has banal as grocery shopping and see it as a way to spend QT together. Lucky me ????

Chumpinrecovery
Chumpinrecovery
4 years ago
Reply to  HM

That reminds me of another of ex’s complaints. I didn’t share his passion for flying and was reluctant to learn to fly myself. I loved going flying with him and helping him navigate when we could find a sitter to watch the kids long enough. I didn’t think, however, that it was a good investment of time or money for me to take it up when I didn’t really have the desire to do so. I figured that money was better spent letting him take the time and spend the money for him to keep flying. I might have felt differently if I had known he was going to have an emotional affair that almost went physical with one of his flight instructors. 

I imagined I might at least learn enough to be able to land the plane in an emergency when the kids were old enough that sitters weren’t an issue. I also imagined that we would go on many flights together. By the time the kids were old enough he didn’t want to take me flying anymore. He was too busy taking at least one Schmoopie, probably the current one too. After DDay I drove myself nuts wondering whether or not he had banged her in the back of his plane because I had never had that privilege. I wonder if she is or has learned to fly in order to please him. If so, she is a flaming hypocrite. Her then husband was one of Ex’s flight students and she complained very loudly and publically about how much it was costing them and she didn’t approve. This was before DDay and I remember thinking how lucky my husband was that I was so supportive of his flying.

Sydneychump
Sydneychump
4 years ago

Blameshift: I never took STBXW out for coffees.

Flip: I’m a father focused on my kids, so gave STBXW the opportunity for kid-free time as we couldn’t find a sitter.

MovingOn
MovingOn
4 years ago
Reply to  Sydneychump

Additional flip: I would have loved to have that kid-free time guilt free. On the few occasions that I went out with family or girlfriends, my ex would call and ask when I was getting home after I had been gone for barely an hour. What you did was lovely. What she did was not appreciate you.

dontunderstand
dontunderstand
4 years ago
Reply to  MovingOn

Same here! My STBXH, was starting his own business and it required a lot of traveling and late night of balancing the books for him. He called me a home body and said he cheated because I never liked to go out.
Reality: I raised 2 beautiful girls, avoiding calling you nonstop with complaints of being home alone, taking girls too school, picking them up, doctors appointments, after school activities, play dates, maintained the home, and limited interruptions of your late nights to ask you to give me a break. That was the devoted wife I was. Instead, you and OW decided too start taking business trips together and I, YOUR WIFE, was just so irritating to you.

Luziana
Luziana
4 years ago

OMG this Challenge is perfect!

My MultiMarried and Divorced Cheater told me I had become ‘just so negative lately just like my first wife’ and the Sluterus was ‘always cheerful like you used to be.’

As if being lied to and used and devalued, then told to my face I was imagining things wouldn’t be a colossal bummer to ANYONE.

My response: ‘So what you’re saying is…you have a looong history of meeting perfectly happy women and proceeding to make them miserable? Maybe you’re the constant among variables here.’

And that frens, is why there was never gonna be a Unicorn with Cold Slab O’Meat and me. May he and the Sluterus enjoy many years of misery together!

KarenE
KarenE
4 years ago
Reply to  Luziana

Oh yeah. this! ‘So what you’re saying is…you have a looong history of meeting perfectly happy women and proceeding to make them miserable? Maybe you’re the constant among variables here.’

I think my Ex is now out of his fourth Long Term Serious Relationship (ie; you are so special, we will be together forever. Let us build a life together (based on YOUR earning power more than mine, YOUR friends ’cause I don’t have any, even YOUR geographical location)! He’s around 55 ys old, so he can do a few more of these, he’s from a long-lived family, and is the classic ‘tall, dark and handsome’. He has excellent taste in the women he targets for this (Shmoops wasn’t supposed to be a long-term thing, any more than the APs from his first 10 year relationship, or AP #1 w/me). But we do all eventually wise up.

Oh, wait! If he’s true to form, he is already IN his 5th ‘forever’ relationship! Even if he didn’t cheat on #4 (he MAY have figured out that cheating doesn’t work out well for him), he knows that Match is an excellent source of new targets. It took him 1 week to meet #4 after #3 (Shmoops) dumped him (for another man, for the second time) and 2 more weeks for them to decide they were ‘serious’.

Since he’ll likely outlive me (he’s 9 ys younger), maybe I’ll ask the kids to put that quote on his tombstone.

OptionNoMore
OptionNoMore
4 years ago
Reply to  Luziana

Ooooo…that’s a good one.

Seerant
Seerant
4 years ago
Reply to  Luziana

This is so awesome! I like to say look for the common denominator.

NotAmbitious
NotAmbitious
4 years ago
Reply to  Luziana

Blame shift: You are not ambitious enough.

Flip : I focused my energies on helping her accomplish her goals and dreams and set mine aside. I took care of the kids when she decided she wanted to go for an evening out with her sister (it wasn’t her sister. ..). I reviewed, criticized, and edited her essays for her university study. I helped her with business ambitions that she could never find time to do herself and later abandoned when it was time for her to contribute after I spent nights and weekends on it for years. It’s true. I wasn’t ambitious for me at all. I was ambitious for her.

Chumpinrecovery
Chumpinrecovery
4 years ago
Reply to  NotAmbitious

Some people just don’t appreciate the support they get.

I refused to quit my career altogether at Ex’s request (wasn’t willing to give up my soul for him – another complaint) but I did go down to working four days a week so I could focus more on the family. I was also the one who took time off from work for kids appointments and went to their school events. I put his job first. I kept my place in my career but didn’t really advance. That was the compromise. Later when he quit his high paying job, he complained that I didn’t ‘make enough money and should be farther along in my career after having worked all of those years. When I then started putting in more hours so that I could get ahead (which did lead to a promotion and a raise) he complained that I spent too much time focused on my work so of course he had to cheat. Whatever you do it’s just wrong.

LeavingToxicTown
LeavingToxicTown
4 years ago
Reply to  Luziana

I LOVE it! Spot on!!

It’s amazing to see the blameshifting come out since D-Day. It really is almost an artform. I roll my eyes and ignore it. Just another part of him that was hidden until his true character was exposed.

STBXH: You don’t tell me anything.

Me: I told you everything for 27 years. You hid things. I’ve just caught up. Plus you don’t ask.

Amiisfree
Amiisfree
4 years ago
Reply to  Luziana

Your response: Perfection!!!

ClearWaters
ClearWaters
4 years ago
Reply to  Tracy Schorn

So what you’re saying is…you have a looong history of meeting perfectly happy women and proceeding to make them miserable? Maybe you’re the constant among variables here.’

This deserves to be written in stone…

kiwichump
kiwichump
4 years ago
Reply to  ClearWaters

Yes!!! Luziana wins the internet today!

Sucker Punched by a Saffa
Sucker Punched by a Saffa
4 years ago
Reply to  Tracy Schorn

Yup ! Way over his head !

Luziana
Luziana
4 years ago
Reply to  Tracy Schorn

LOL this glorified Bank Teller never attended day of University but constantly LIED and called himself an engineer. I saw it on his resume!

So that bit, especially for him.

Magneto
Magneto
4 years ago

Blame: Magneto has – {insert one of 18 diagnosis’ here}. Never contributed to the family, makes all the decisions. Magneto is miserable. Magneto is a horrible wife who held her long suffering husband captive. So much, he needed rescue.

Reality: Magneto is perfectly, boringly average. Magneto did all the child care, child shuttle, health, dental and optical insurance. Did 85% of household “stuff”, averaging 12 – 15 hours a day of “on” time. Spent days organizing all family celebrations, (Christmas Eve was a three grocery store run every year).
Loves career. Career loves her back. Mag has friends. The more Magneto pick me danced, on the 1/8 tank of gas she had left every evening, the more criticized she became. Magneto is OBVIOUSLY a horrible wife.

Blame and blame shifting is a zero sum game. You will never make any points, only wear and tear yourself down.

dontunderstand
dontunderstand
4 years ago
Reply to  Magneto

Sounds like my dysfunctional marriage!! Except my STBXH, didn’t understand why I simply shouldn’t give him my entire paycheck every month. (This request came after Dday #2).

ChumpedupChik
ChumpedupChik
4 years ago
Reply to  Magneto

This exactly Magento :/ they do just suck

NoRainNoFlowers
NoRainNoFlowers
4 years ago
Reply to  Magneto

NRNF was “never going to be an interesting trophy wife”. Nope. That’s right. Because she decided to become “an interesting trophy divorcee”. Guess who’s having all the fun now?

Walkaway Woman
Walkaway Woman
4 years ago

“Interesting trophy wife” is an oxymoron. Like jumbo shrimp or mobile home estate.

MotherChumper99
MotherChumper99
4 years ago

????????????????????????”…became an .interesting trophy divorcee!” Love this! That’s me too!

Magneto
Magneto
4 years ago

Lol!

Tempest
Tempest
4 years ago
Reply to  Magneto

Your post resonates with me, down to the percentage of household stuff, and number of hours worked per day.

-Horrible Wife ll

UXworld
UXworld
4 years ago

Blameshift: I “never fully accepted and acknowledged my role in the ending of the marriage”

Flip: I (finally) stood firm and refused to bend reality and accept blame for situations I did not create, just to keep her placated and the home conflict-free

(Really tempted to do a parody to “Kung Fu Fighting but I’ve got meetings all morning)

musicguy1982
musicguy1982
4 years ago
Reply to  UXworld

Oh my gosh, yes. My ex-wife (as of two days ago) said something along the lines of the following.

Blameshit (misspelling intentional): Don’t tell people we’re getting divorced because of my affair. This is on both of us. If you don’t own up to your part, you’ll do the exact same thing in another relationship.

Truth: Actually, I’ve worked through a lot of my issues in therapy, which I think we certainly could’ve done together. Tell yourself what you want, but the reason I’m divorcing you is 100% because of your affair.

apolloniablooms
apolloniablooms
4 years ago
Reply to  musicguy1982

A-fucking-men musicguy. Strong and inspiring comeback. The level of projection that my cheater engages in (which clearly your ex was doing) is exhausting and honestly a little scary as I contemplate how divorce will go. I need to have an arsenal of strong and steady comebacks like this one ready and waiting.

Tall One
Tall One
4 years ago

Just don’t engage. Don’t take the bait. Focus it all on the legal stuff and let the rest fly by.

ChumpTight
ChumpTight
4 years ago
Reply to  musicguy1982

Right on brother! My STBXW basically said the same shit. She complains about ChumpTight telling people why we’re divorcing asking me why I keep telling everyone about her affair. I just tell her Well because bitch I don’t lie and don’t be so embarrassed about your shiny turd.

Tall One
Tall One
4 years ago
Reply to  musicguy1982

Way to go MusicGuy.

Amiisfree
Amiisfree
4 years ago
Reply to  UXworld

Doo Doo Doo Doo doot doot doot doot dooooooooooo!!!!!

UXworld
UXworld
4 years ago
Reply to  Tracy Schorn

See below

Cuzchump
Cuzchump
4 years ago

I think BeardBoy wife and my ex must have had the same excuse 101 textbook. My ex was forced to cheat on me with Skankella. Because I did not want to have fun. I stayed home on weekends and took care of my grandchild. I was told that Skankella was fun to be with. She didn’t bitch or complain. Na, she only fucked her cousins husband. But, what my ex forgot was he was not pleasant to be around. When we went on vacation all he did was criticize and bitch. But, unlike him I did not use that as an excuse to cheat.
Of course Skankella could be fun. She wasn’t married with all the responsibilities.

Quetzal
Quetzal
4 years ago

Blameshift: I was only concerned about myself, wasn’t able to grow my business from home, I’m not someone he felt he could talk to

Reframe: I was trying to take care of my health as best as I could so my health wouldn’t get in the way of our life together, I tried very hard to run an innovative business on my own from home, without the help of anyone, since I’d relocated to follow him and take care of our house while he was at work, I’m someone who desperately tried to have serious conversations with him and he refused to resolve anything.

Bonus: I take responsibility for any and all of my shortcomings, but he should have talked to me about me not being financially independent if it bothered him, not continue to assure me that our “division of tasks” worked fine for him (he was the breadwinner, I was the stay-at-home woman-future-mom, trying to run a business from home, also in view of a future as a mompreneur)

Because in the end, my willingness to place myself at a logistical and economical disadvantage, rendered me a victim that he could both be disgusted by and feel superior to, which is exactly how he likes it, so he could continue being the hero, while conquering new territories (=predating co-workers)

NotAfraid
NotAfraid
4 years ago

“You never let me take care of you.”

“I’m a strong, independent, self-sufficient person, and I thought you were too. I figured that we didn’t NEED each other, but we were together because we WANTED to be. But, since we’re on the topic of “letting you take care of me”—it’s interesting that you actually left me flat the first time I actually needed you to have my back. So, thank you SO MUCH for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts for you.”

playedlikeafiddle
playedlikeafiddle
4 years ago
Reply to  NotAfraid

Yup! Never mind that the reason I had to be so self sufficient at times was because he didn’t know how to take care of me.

“You made me feel insecure”

Nah dude. You made YOURSELF feel that way.

Luziana
Luziana
4 years ago
Reply to  NotAfraid

IT ALSO ME ^^^^^.

“The Sluterus needs me. You only want me.”

“You’re good at too many things and it can be intimidating. It makes me feel small.”

Flip: “Mediocrity is IRRESISTIBLE, Damsel! Let me throw my shield and sword before your messy personal life and angry creditors! Office affairs are best with my subordinates!”

Also: Only I at 5 feet nothing and 169 pounds can make your 300+ pounds feel small! Beware Me, Gimlette, the last Dwarf in Mornia! Let the Skanks Come!

NewLife2017
NewLife2017
4 years ago

Blame shifting, it’s been a couple years but it continues to be hurled my way. I left the lights on in a room after I left to take kids to school, do all the laundry and fold and would take me a couple days to put it away, I would run errands on Saturday instead of spending time with him and left him with kids, after I work a full time job and try to get everything done on a Saturday to enjoy the rest of my weekend, and the best was…it’s a lot of little things that made me leave you like how you wouldn’t watch shows about aliens with me. There was no winning this, and nowI don’t have to watch shows about his relatives. I win.

Iwantmyfairytale
Iwantmyfairytale
4 years ago
Reply to  NewLife2017

Mine didn’t like it that I didn’t Ike scary and Halloween movies. October always has a month of horror movies on. He would watch them relentlessly and badger me to watch them. He knew I did not like the scary movies. I don’t know why but since having kids I no longer like horror movies. It makes me feel insecure for some reason. Maybe it’s my mothering and protective instincts get threatened with horror movies. But he would torment me every October and berate me because “mom doesn’t like scary movies”. I began to dread Halloween and October some time in August and September when the commercials would come on for the horror fest.

Ya know what? our anniversary is/was October 30. So On top of it all he began to ruin our anniversary for me too Since the scary movie build up always culminated in Halloween, the day after our anniversary. His berating would reach a fever pitch at our anniversary.

Wobble
Wobble
4 years ago

Same here – the moment I became a mom I could no longer watch horror movies or anything violent. My Sister-in-law is the same way.

Picking on someone because they are afraid is some first-grade bullying bullshit.

Chumpedincanada
Chumpedincanada
4 years ago
Reply to  NewLife2017

Omg. “Wouldnt watch shows with aliens with me…..”

Now there is a winner.

The delusion is strong with this one…

ChumpedupChik
ChumpedupChik
4 years ago

ChumpedinCanada for the win – “wouldn’t watch shows about aliens with me…now I don’t have to watch shows about his relatives.” I snorted tea out my nose, but so worth it. You keep on moving forward bc that’s about as fucked up as it gets. ????

Chumpinrecovery
Chumpinrecovery
4 years ago

Sometimes they really have to stretch to find anything wrong.

nomar
nomar
4 years ago

I think like many male chumps I was told after many years of marriage of my unbearable “Terrible Toos”: too nerdy, too independent, too hard working, too moralistic, too much of a homebody, too careful, too neat, too sentimental, too organized, too nostalgic, too boring, too tired on Friday nights and too busy on Saturday mornings. You know, things she initially said made me attractive to her, and from which she benefitted enormously for 22 years. She used what I thought were my strengths against me, and perfected emotional jujitsu before I even knew I was in the sparring ring.

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago
Reply to  nomar

Good grief, what a whiny little bitch. Those are fine qualities. She might as well have complained that you were too witty, too warm, not ugly enough and didn’t cook meth.

They’ll use anything, no matter how stupid. I got; “You never went to my work parties.” These parties were always pathetic drunkfests where his howorker mistress was present, FFS, and either sloppily flirting with anyone with a penis or jerking some guy off under a table. I kid you not. He wanted me there to witness him being cucked? I think not.

Kbchump
Kbchump
4 years ago
Reply to  nomar

“You know, things she initially said made me attractive to her, and from which she benefitted enormously for 22 years.”
Oh man does this hit home…24 years for me, and this is the exact same thing that happened as she was explaining to me all my faults on her way out the door

Tracy
Tracy
4 years ago
Reply to  nomar

SAME HERE!!! Everything that he used to brag about concerning me was now all.of the sudden a reason to cheat with a chick he met in a bar on a business trip in Chicago. Stay at home wife/mother, worked from home to be said Wife/Mother…cooked…ironed shirts…decorated for holidays…I was Martha Stewart and well be wanted JBlo… Blows don’t make great childhood memories…but beautiful holiday traditions with your kids do. Sorry that Blows became more important.
Sucks to be him now.
He can’t afford to retire now at 60. While I am retired at 50. That BLOWS for him I am quite certain.

Mac1234
Mac1234
4 years ago
Reply to  nomar

Welp, that makes 4 of us. I’m 3 months post Dday still living with cheating wife. I too was duped and captured. Pretty obvious in hindsight she simply mirrored my values and I fell for it.
Luckily the bar wench was too dumb to cover her tracks with even remedial measures. These dumbasses leave a technological yellow brick road that reveals about 1000 lies in 10 minutes.
I’ve only been married 6 years and I’m 28.
The blame shifting is so juvenile and illogical that it has no effect anymore. I will admit an occasional barb landed.
My favorite counter was straight to the point: “I didn’t deserve this and neither did our daughter. You’re a liar, a thief, and a piece of shit.”

SalBal
SalBal
4 years ago
Reply to  Mac1234

Boom!! My favourite shutdown is also “I didn’t ask for this, and nor did our daughter. And neither of us deserve the shit that you have created.” The silence that comes after this is a beautiful thing.

DavidB
DavidB
4 years ago
Reply to  nomar

In the beginning, she always said she appreciated how I left my life of drinking and partying for her. My hard work. I spent time with kids. I was the stability she always longed for! 20 years later, I was boring and could do nothing right. Her first known AP was ex from high school who did drugs, drank, had trouble keeping a job and lived behind his moms house in a shack. The exact opposite of me!

Zell
Zell
4 years ago
Reply to  nomar

I realize now she was just pretending to like me (and in some cases be like me in the beginning) in order to “capture” me. Looking back I think she was ready to discard me once we had our child. She wan’t interested in the kid or me or that family life.

TKO
TKO
4 years ago
Reply to  Zell

She’s probably BPD. I experienced the exact same thing: intentional capture and disinterest in our kids. She at least admitted all this to me. Apparently, after our first few weeks of dating, when I explained that this relationship wouldn’t likely go anywhere because of how odd her father was, she intentionally set upon a course of “winning”. She would not be broken up with. No way. She would not be rejected. She began to construct the perfect mirrored personage, and put me at ease on her father by admitting his oddities but explaining them as insecurities of a fundamentally good man. As a chump, I readily reworked my conclusions to see (invent) the best in him. For three years I spackled the red flags and connected deeply with the persona. She continued to cheat behind her false front. I asked her to marry me. She went through with it. I still remember the 10,000 yard stare and sick look on her face on the airplane to our honeymoon. I knew it was regret. But that made absolutely no sense. WTF was wrong with me to read it this way?! She must be tired, air sick, something. But looking back with benefit of all I now know, for her the party was over, the “game” of stealing my life was won, and she was faced with a moment of now what? These disordereds are moment-to-moment mood state seekers. They can plan certainly, but every plan is trumped to the extent necessary by securing mood supply. She quickly settled in on living her comfortable persona which I funded, knowing she had access to her fabulous real self any time she wanted. My trust was complete – and completely blinding. So it was 11 years later, one too many cracks and contradictions appeared and my spackling stopped. The truth began to come out. And part of that was admissions that our three children never meant anything to her. That she went through with the marriage for the sake of “image”. She’s subsequently been formally diagnosed by a specialist she herself selected as BPD with “features” of NPD and APD. She has described how she never felt “love” for anyone. They live right next to us, but within a completely different world.

Kbchump
Kbchump
4 years ago
Reply to  TKO

Wow .well written…yup amazing how once the cracks start you see the real person that has duped us for years

The Original Melissa
The Original Melissa
4 years ago

STBXH visited his workplace mental health counsellor because he was “feeling sad”. (This was just before he started his affair). The counsellor gave him a bunch of pamphlets on depression and quizzes, workbooks etc. She told him he sounded depressed. She was a counsellor, not a doctor or psychologist btw.

He came home and told me that he had always been a happy person, and he had never been depressed…until being married to me. Ergo, he was depressed because I “made him depressed”.

We had been married for 15 years at that point. Had 3 kids. He had been through a lot of job turmoil, and dealing with his sick parents, and other things. But, yes, I was the CAUSE of his depression he had decided because, before knowing me: no depression. Married to me for 15 years: depressed.

He had successfully diagnosed himself! Of course, everything can be blamed on me!

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago

Gee, I guess the curse of Melissa took 15 years to kick in. What a tool. Mine also blamed me for his alleged depression, at a time when there were deaths in the family and our daughter was seriously ill. We’d been together almost 30 years. But of course it somehow had to be my fault. He then used it as an excuse to cheat. They’re morons.

Chumpd
Chumpd
4 years ago

I could’ve written this, married 13 years with 3 young children. I drove him to depression. So depressed that he could only find relief in bars with men a decade younger, fucking AP in parking lots before coming home to sit at the dinner table with his wife and kids. I did all that, just being married to me did that.

Sunrise
Sunrise
4 years ago
Reply to  Chumpd

Me too. 14 years, 3 kids, sick mother that he parked in a temporary rehab home permanently until her sister and friends and I begged him to let her go home with a pt care giver.

Ex: “there’s other lives I want to live”

Reframe: while you’re off chasing strange with these “new lives” I’ll continue adulting.

The Original Melissa
The Original Melissa
4 years ago
Reply to  Chumpd

I’m sorry Chumpd. It seems our fuckwits found a depression treatment that worked for them!

I’m kidding, of course ????

The Original Melissa
The Original Melissa
4 years ago

Reframe! I forgot the reframe!

Depression is real and it can happen. I don’t deny that, and I never did. But someone can’t “give” you depression. Situational stress and anxiety is also not clinical depression. Someone can, however, give you a bad case of bacterial vaginosis because he couldnt be bothered to be worried about my health and wellbeing or use a condom when he fuvked his HoWorker. That is very real and it happened!

karenb6702
karenb6702
4 years ago

Blame : Went to the cinema and never went home to make his dinner so he HAD to have sex with his whore in my bed ( that i later slept in but he didn’t )

Really : I went to the cinema as he was ignoring me for days and i like going to the Cinema – My bad !

Ergo
Ergo
4 years ago
Reply to  karenb6702

Cinema? Are you kidding me..?? Who does that????????????????

karenb6702
karenb6702
4 years ago
Reply to  Ergo

These were his exact words . Well that night you went to the cinema you broke me . I waited for you to come home we had meatloaf looked out for dinner and you never came home until like 9pm so i ramped it with her that night . She came round and we had sex for the first time that night .

Me – Where did you have sex ?
Him – In bed that’s why i never came to bed that night cause i was having a wank thinking about it again .

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago
Reply to  karenb6702

Yuck. In addition to being an absolute douche, the guy gives out way too much info. Like you wanted to hear about him jerking off to his whore after banging her in your bed. Sick.

Ergo
Ergo
4 years ago
Reply to  karenb6702

Unbelievable ????

RaesOfChumpshine
RaesOfChumpshine
4 years ago

Blameshift: “She can squirt on command without me even touching her; you take too long IF you even bother to get excited.” – Defective Slip n’ Slide

Flip: Like most women, my sexual culmination is in direct correlation with my partner’s give a shit factor. I also don’t find rubber sheets and aphrodisiac. – Will Not Provide Vaginal Incontinence

DuddersGetsChumped
DuddersGetsChumped
4 years ago

Ha ha tell me you are making this up, but clearly you are not. How did you keep a straight face. Yeuch. However, these ones are always quite good because they are the ones you come back to and laugh. Had. few of them that were absolutely so ludicrous they were comedy gold and still are.

Chumpity-doo-da
Chumpity-doo-da
4 years ago

I’m imagining a really interesting game of beer pong.

MsMachete
MsMachete
4 years ago

They’ve done studies. On squirters. Like, analyzed the…liquid.

*Whispers* It’s pee pee you guys.

Thaaaaat’s…not hot. ????????????

Fooled-Me-Twice
Fooled-Me-Twice
4 years ago

Typical fuckwit, he just wants everything to cum easy and doesn’t want to put the work in. Well the best things in life are always worth the wait. You don’t need this POS in your life and I’m sorry this happened to you. Hugs.

UXworld
UXworld
4 years ago

That must be a fun life.

– “I command you to squirt without me touching you.”

– “OK” (pffffft!)

– “Well, that was fun. Want to grab a panini?”

No Shit Cupcakes
No Shit Cupcakes
4 years ago
Reply to  UXworld

I just fried a keyboard. You’re the best, Uxworld!

ChumpedupChik
ChumpedupChik
4 years ago

I. Can’t. Breathe! ????????????????????

Quetzal
Quetzal
4 years ago
Reply to  UXworld

this is comedy gold!!!

sweetChumpgirl
sweetChumpgirl
4 years ago

What bullshit that is. Her vagina is a supersoaker? What a loser!

Luziana
Luziana
4 years ago

LOL I can see the Social Media Management now! #jesussentasquirter #hashbrowndiaperedandblessed

UnsinkableMollyX
UnsinkableMollyX
4 years ago
Reply to  Luziana

???????????????????????? OMG

Newlady15
Newlady15
4 years ago
Reply to  Luziana

Im dying here. Thanks for turning my tears into laughter!!

ChumpedupChik
ChumpedupChik
4 years ago
Reply to  Newlady15

I cannot stop laughing it hurts????

Ergo
Ergo
4 years ago

Blameshifting : you are just negative and your emotional instability doesn’t help me at all. I wanted to learn the healthy way of living and I thought that you may lead me in that process. I was mistaken- there is no leadership qualities in you and I just can’t do it any longer.

Reality: he asked me to help him “ become a better man and develop good character” ( I will do anything it takes) since for the past 15 years, my stand on honesty, trust, goal, moral values are the same and I live by them.
It took almost 3 weeks for him to realize, that “ working on developing character” doesn’t mean few talks and me cuddling his ego. I was calling him on his bs and lies non stop- and poor thing had enough.
You know, I was too harsh on him ????

Yes, I’m not a good leader- living by values ( respect, care, love, trust, honesty , fidelity) is not important.
Living in stressful environment caused by his abusing ways and cheating – is a walk in the park.
Ugh…
????????‍♀️

MissBailey
MissBailey
4 years ago
Reply to  Ergo

#nobuildingblocks to work with. Can’t make something out of nothing.

Ragingmeh
Ragingmeh
4 years ago

Blameshift:
You are too loud and intense. You constantly criticize. You and your family are confrontational toxic people.
Flip;
I am passionate and invested and present and I care. I give praise way more then I criticize; criticism is not asking for help and explaining why the change is needed. Me and my family are not passive aggressive people who sweep everything under the rug and pretend it isnt there. We get crap out un the open, we get upset, we are honest and we work through it.

Sara Bloomer
Sara Bloomer
4 years ago
Reply to  Ragingmeh

I love this and it resonates with my story!

susan Devlin
susan Devlin
4 years ago

“she let me drink”
“she’s a slag”
“goes with everything”
Apparently she had been a addict since the age of 18. That’s the ow.
NEWS FLASH! was told yesterday that prostitutes used to show him their breasts, one said don’t show him your breasts, he’s not interested. I said if they do that why do you go there, no answer came back.
We actually split up 6 years ago.
He said yesterday he loved me, you couldn’t make it up could you.

Attie
Attie
4 years ago
Reply to  susan Devlin

Oooohhhh Susan, hoovering!

RollerSkater
RollerSkater
4 years ago

Him: “Don’t tell MAPs partner- you’ll destroy their family”
Me: “You kidding right?! Because what you both did will destroy their family as it did ours but my saying the truth isn’t what will.” Didn’t want to have families destroyed- shouldn’t have cheated. Simple. Get that blameshift the hell away from me. Mic drop.

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago
Reply to  RollerSkater

They’re so predictable. I told the OW’s husband and he accused me of destroying their marriage.

Me; “No, YOU did that when you fucked her in their marital bed and took her attention and affection away from her husband for more than five years, you hypocritical asshole.”

That shut his trap fast.

Sirchumpalot
Sirchumpalot
4 years ago
Reply to  RollerSkater

My XW said the same thing when I told the Married OM’s wife. She didn’t want to destroy his life. ????????????

GetMeFree
GetMeFree
4 years ago

Blameshift: Why do you think I cheated again? I had to cheat because you couldn’t trust me.

Flip: You couldn’t trust me because I am a cheater.

Unexpectedchumpiness
Unexpectedchumpiness
4 years ago
Reply to  GetMeFree

“Why do you think I cheated again? I had to cheat because you couldn’t trust me”

My brain had to take a few seconds to process this because it’s SO FUCKING ILLOGICAL!

Bloomingwithouthim
Bloomingwithouthim
4 years ago

“You don’t get any more chances!” Was hissed (with spit flying) through the Fuckwit’s teeth.

That is absolutely right. I don’t get one more chance to forgive another affair, to let you sleep in my bed while your dick oozes green, to cover your stupid actions and make you look good anyway, to teach your children to respect you inspite of all of it, to protect your reputation in the community, to pick up your trash left everywhere, to make every meal to suit your taste, to swallow my tears when you forget my birthday and our anniversary and Valentine’s day again, to smile when my Christmas present is an unwrapped bag of Lady Bic razors, to hold back my fury when you treat every other man woman and child on Earth better than you treat the children I bore or me, or to nod in agreement when people at church call you godly.
Thanks for not giving me any more chances you Fuckwit.

Best thing you ever gave me!

Jax
Jax
4 years ago

Her: ” You’re not sophisticated enough to understand an affair”
Flip: “You’re not sophisticated enough to understand lying, deceptions, conspiring, backstabbing, more lying, unprotected sex with a scum bag (‘friend’ of mine) and more lies!
Blame shift: “You went to the club on too many Fridays to have beers after work with your buddys and neglected me”!
Flip: ” You went to the club too many times after work on Fridays for beers so I decided to screw one of your buddys you went to the club with!”
Reality: This is just one of the weak rationalizations I used to justify going to a hotel numerous times with your so called ‘friend’ while you were at work earning my keep!”
” You ‘deserved’ it”!
Her: ‘ I can’t believe you would accuse me of screwing your friends’ – how sick!’
Flip : I can’t believe you would accuse me of screwing your friends – in fact I feel so bad that next week I’m going to a hotel and screw your ‘ friend’ !
(Actually happened)

Fooled-Me-Twice
Fooled-Me-Twice
4 years ago

I am so sorry you had to live with that. My fuckwit would run to Wawa the day before or the day of (Father’s Day, Christmas, birthday day, anniversary) and buy me a $10 gift card. One year I got the Wawa Pez truck dispenser for Christmas.

peacekeeper
peacekeeper
4 years ago

the “Wawa Pez truck dispenser” for the win!
And a 10 dollar gift card as well? Or just the Wawa Pez dispenser?
You can’t make this shit up!

????????????

Fooled-Me-Twice
Fooled-Me-Twice
4 years ago
Reply to  peacekeeper

Just the Pez truck from her and a gift card from each kid. She put way too much thought into it ???? I mean Christmas does sneak up on us when we’re busy fucking other people’s husbands.

karenb6702
karenb6702
4 years ago

Sorry Bloomingwithouthim

But i so laughed at the Unwrapped Bic Razor blades for Christmas – OMG ! How shit is that ! I’d have punched his face

Fuck face was crap at presents he use to give me £10 for Christmas and tell me to buy myself something which is considerably better than disposable razor blades !

Chumpedincanada
Chumpedincanada
4 years ago
Reply to  karenb6702

Our first xmas, ex narcopath got me dishwasher pods. I thought the present in the tree (looked like a 2 year old wrapped it) was a treat for the dog. Nope it was MY present.

Because the week before on our grocery trip he wanted to spend $18 on a bucket of dishwasher pods and I refused saying I’d rather wash everything by hand.

Survivor
Survivor
4 years ago

One year I got a Thighmaster. Within a couple of days, X had taken it and was using it every day. I thought it was an insulting gift. Nope, just something he wanted for himself.

Attie
Attie
4 years ago
Reply to  Survivor

Ah yes, the Christmas gift “for me” which was really something he wanted for himself!!! Don’t miss that at all.

Hilarious
Hilarious
4 years ago

Preemptive blameshift: You are too angry for a sensitive man like me. Oh, and did I mention I fucked another woman? Don’t you be angry now … I just told you I was sensitive.

Reframe: I AM ANGRY BECAUSE YOU FUCKED ANOTHER WOMAN. I may also have been angry in the past because you completely neglected me emotionally.

Followup blameshift: If you keep having these panic attacks, I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

Reframe: I AM HAVING PANIC ATTACKS BECAUSE YOU FUCKED ANOTHER WOMAN AND SAID YOU NEEDED TIME TO DECIDE WHETHER TO LEAVE ME AND OUR TWO CHILDREN FOR HER. Also because you told me not be angry, remember?

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago
Reply to  Hilarious

Sensitive people aren’t just sensitive to their own feelings, they are sensitive to the feelings of others. He’s not sensitive, he’s just insecure and self-centered.

Wow, he threatened you about the panic attacks he caused? How very “sensitive” of him. What a champion narc.

playedlikeafiddle
playedlikeafiddle
4 years ago
Reply to  Hilarious

Hilarious, I am so sorry. These jerks. Mine used to like to say/do things. I’d get angry and ask “why”. He’d respond “cuz I knew it’d make you angry” while also wondering why I was so angry. Total utter mindfuck.

Blameshift: you get angry all the time and call me names.

Flip: I have normal emotional reactions to your bullshit and call you out on it with well justified anger and well suited names.

ChumpedupChik
ChumpedupChik
4 years ago

Played – good God this is same for me! They’re like “Why are you being all hostile huh?” Gah!!!! It IS total mindfuckery – around and around we go. It makes me want to bang my head on the floor

Now I.C.
Now I.C.
4 years ago

Blameshift: “You were never weak or vulnerable or needed me. I need a counterpart who can show weakness and vulnerability in order for me to equally fully expose myself and show them as well, without fear of being told to grow up and get over it (whatever ‘it’ may be).”

(That is an exact quote so let me do a quick UBT here- “I abandoned you at every turn when you needed me and you learned to do without me, so now I haz a sadz and need to fuck a foreign chick half our age. She gets me.”)

Reframe: Yep, you ignored me for 3 decades and never grew up. You are much better off with a little desperate gurl that meets your emotional level. So go be the child you wish to be. Elsewhere.

No Shit Cupcakes
No Shit Cupcakes
4 years ago
Reply to  Now I.C.

Classic drama triangle.

In order to be a Hero, you need a Victim.

You were cast in the role of Persecutor.

Victims spend a lot of time on their knees, funnily enough.

Now I.C.
Now I.C.
4 years ago
Reply to  Now I.C.

All so familiar. The worst part is that it is just a lie.

In our 31 year relationship we had our share of difficulties that should have bonded us and there were many times he should have been the leader of our family but he cowered. We put each other through school, almost lost a daughter to pneumonia, watched his parents’ decline and deaths, and built a life from absolute zero to an enviable level of enjoyment with an early retirement. But as with all narcs, they are always a day late and a block away when shit gets real. He abandoned me within the marriage long before he poofed by e-mail.

If he was physically around (but usually not) he turned into a petulant child who could not tolerate his mommy doing anything less than serving his needs so he got angry or ignored me. I was told that I had “better get over it because we are not going to do this every day” when I was barfing from morning sickness, the most temporary and joyful type of illness. When our daughter nearly died he hid from me and slept on the couch in his clothes and didn’t want to talk about her treatment or next steps, he couldn’t stand to be near me and no way was he going to comfort me.

So many other examples, all chances for him to support me when I was exhausted, sick, or frightened. And he NEVER, EVER, stepped up. I learned to cope with it and then got told I was the problem.

Hope Schmoops is enjoying life with the man baby.

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago
Reply to  Now I.C.

Telling you to “get over” the effects of pregnancy and using an implied threat if you didn’t has got to be one of the most abusive statements I’ve ever heard.
He’s a monster.

DuddersGetsChumped
DuddersGetsChumped
4 years ago
Reply to  Now I.C.

Ah, ‘she gets me’. The old classic.

Flip: She blows smoke so far up your backside, puts you on the pedestal I failed to keep you up on, doesn’t laugh at your appalling poetry and thinks you are dead sensitive because you’ve just read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (he’s 45, not 18 may I add). She has to ‘get you’ cause she is pick me dancing her ass off (I now realise) for a year to get you to decide to leave me and break up your family. And maybe she also ‘gets you’ cause you actually fucking talk to her instead of moping around with a sullen look of disdain contributing almost nothing except sucking the fun out of the room.

weddingbelle
weddingbelle
4 years ago
Reply to  Now I.C.

I, too, got the “she gets me”.

Him: she gets me. She was in the trades and understands the bad days you can have.

Me: so let me get this straight. You’ve known her for 20 MINUTES and want to break up a 20 YEAR marriage because she “gets you”?

Him: well, she also kinda reminds me of Emma Stone.

Hilarious
Hilarious
4 years ago
Reply to  weddingbelle

I got “She gets me” too. Swapping a 20-year marriage and breaking up his family for someone he had talked to online for four months and spent three days with.
(Of course, I got “It’s not about her,” too.)

chumpfor21
chumpfor21
4 years ago

Blame shift – You are too judgmental and you don’t leave the house.

Truth – I was injured, awaiting surgery (which is why I did not go out much – except to do the all marketing and errands). Judgmental, well maybe. Unless you count the times I didn’t judge and forgave at least two affairs, a foreclosure because you didn’t pay the house loan for 27 months, and the fact you spent all your time breaking, acquiring, and repairing off road vehicles.

To which I say – a mighty F%CK YOU. I was not a perfect wife. But what I did right, I did with an open and generous heart.

MissBailey
MissBailey
4 years ago

Blameshift: I’m too sensitive.

Flip: according to you, Dickhead, you only have one feelings. I guess if someone had 1.5 feelings that would be too sensitive for you. I wasn’t too sensitive, you fucking jackass, when I was tending to you after every surgery and medical problems you encountered. Just because you deliberating prodded and poked me doesn’t make me too sensitive. It makes you a damn bully.

Blameshift: I’m not fun anymore.

Flip: you sat right there and said that your son told you that I was going to kill you while you lay sleeping. No, other people saw it. It wasn’t me…it was always you. Like I said before, a bully.

Iwantmyfairytale
Iwantmyfairytale
4 years ago
Reply to  MissBailey

I got this among many

Blame shift: you always wake my up with the blow dryer.

Flip: I go to work and need to wash my hair and dry it so that I look and smell good. Oh and you just get to sleep in and get out of bed after I leave for work, then when I get home from work you are DEAD DRUNK like you’ve been drinking for hours.

Lol “ I’m a real go getter, I take my wife to work and then I go get her”

Attie
Attie
4 years ago

Ah yes, coming home from work to a paralytic drunk. Except, the Twat would pass out and leave his key in the front door so we couldn’t get in. I used to think that was an accident until I took all the keys to a little used back door so that we could at least get in through that one – and then he took a different key and jammed THAT into the back door so we still couldn’t get in. It took that for me to realize all his crap was deliberate!

Anna
Anna
4 years ago

He didn’t actually blame me for his cheating and lies. But he did manipulate me enough with his “I’m so sad and my life is so hard!” act that I actually felt bad for him. He knew that I’m empathetic person who genuinely relates to people.

Me, reframing his manipulative act: You can be sad and have a lot of issues, that doesn’t give you an excuse to cheat and lie to the only person who put up with you, loved you and supported you no matter what.

Another way of reframing it: I’m also sad and have gone through a lot of things… But I never even considered lying and cheating on you just because I had a lot going on for me. You’re just an asshole.

Ah, thank you for this thread.

Grumpy
Grumpy
4 years ago
Reply to  Anna

“You can be sad and have a lot of issues, that doesn’t give you an excuse to cheat and lie to the only person who put up with you, loved you and supported you no matter what.”

My husband said he had to hurt me (lots of ways, and also look at gay porn and shop gay hookups sites and more, for decades), because, he grew up in an alcoholic home, and so he knew people couldn’t be trusted, that if you trusted someone they would abandon you and shame you. So he had to be cruel to me (and look at gay porn and shop gay hookup sites and more, for decades), because people couldn’t be trusted, and people would hurt you, so I was a threat because wanted to love him, so he had to do everything possible to put me down, and push me away, so that I would not abandon him and shame him.

He also said, as he was angry at me for being hurt, and wanted me to stop crying and focus on him, I am sorry that my dysfunctional childhood family hurt you.”

Grumpy
Grumpy
4 years ago
Reply to  Grumpy

With advance acknowledgement that we all have pain, and many have deep pain from truly hard circumstances—

I am gonna dissect this blameshift, how fifty-shades-of-victim it is: He is claiming he is a victim in all ways here—and the subtle blameshift rom Grumpy is that Gtumpy must pet and scratch and rub the belly of all these “poor victim creatures” or Grumpy is cruel and Grumpy is toast!

-A victim from his hard home, a hard childhood just living through it
-A victim of the inner damage of sadness and pain forever
-A victim of how this makes him into a person who feels exquisite hurt in intimacy—if someone loves him, it hurts him
-A victim of how this hurt actually makes him be lonely because he will not seek love
-A victim of all people because they want to shame and abandon him, everyone, no matter who or what
-A victim of himself, he says, because he is sabotaging himself
-And yet another subtle victim as it goes a level deeper: a victim not just of self sabotage, but to the inability to CONTROL his self sabotage. “I know do this (hurting people which hurts me), and I just cannot help it!!”
And, follow me here, another level: he also is a victim of self realization! A victim of self-realization of his inability to control his self sabotage: “I am so sad to think I am the kind of person who cannot control how I hurt other people (which hurts me).”
-A victim of not being willing to share his inner pain—he is not vulnerable about his shame and keeps it hidden, and it hurts to keep it hidden, and it hurts to know you are a person who cannot show their hurt to all the hurtful people in this hurtful world.
-A victim because real life people do actually distance themselves sometimes

Lately I have mentioned to him that he has been telling me this since we met. He has shared with me his hidden shame about how hurt he feels. The hidden shame he did not share with me was that he was gay and using me.

One evening, after an hour of me weeping and trying to express my grief related to DDay and him pushing back with everything, finally, he sighed big and deep, “what you have to understand about ME is ….”. It went on a long long time, and not about the gay, but about his pain through hurting people.

Eventually, loopy from my sleeping med that I have to take since DDay, I said, half crying, “Hooray! You did it! You win! You got what you always wanted! You did it! The person who loved you most of all, the person you could have trusted most of all—you have pushed her away!”

“You are mocking me!” He cried.

And yes, I am.

Carol39
Carol39
4 years ago

Blameshift: You pushed me around these past few months, and that was a huge mistake. You just pushed me away.

Reframe: You have this sincere desire to stay out of jail, and you found out I was using your name to steal money for my fucking around. Now that you know and you are all pissed about it, it is much harder for me to use your name in my fraud games. I need a new chump.

playedlikeafiddle
playedlikeafiddle
4 years ago
Reply to  Carol39

OMG I got the “you pushed me away” too

Blsmeshift: you pushed me away so I had to go (to her)

Reframe: I had been treating you like shit, then you wished up and stopped letting it get to you. So I had to find someone else to respond to my bullshit.

playedlikeafiddle
playedlikeafiddle
4 years ago

*wised up not wished

Unexpectedchumpiness
Unexpectedchumpiness
4 years ago

Blameshift- “I didn’t tell you I lost my wedding ring because I knew you’d jump to conclusions”

Flip- I took my wedding ring off to bang some chic and lost it, but you’re too smart to buy the bs that it just “fell off” especially when I come home coincidentally the NEXT DAY and tell you I want a divorce.

Blameshift- “You’re not fun anymore and you don’t drink enough.”

Flip-Thanks for parenting our children while I go out drinking with my “fun” college friends. Also, thanks for not being a closet alcoholic like I am so your liver will still function and you’ll be around for our kids long after I’m dead.

Blameshift- “You’re a terrible person Unexpectedchumpiness, you don’t even help out our friend V and her family, and R and her family.

Flip- He walked out of V and R’s lives forever, never to be seen by them again. I worked with V and her family for a year to repair their credit and buy the house of their dreams. And I’ve been helping R for over a year by having her live with me for free. I have changed her life for the better including helping her support 75 friends and family members that live in Venezuela and are starving and destitute because of the trashed economy. We send them regular shipments of food and essentials every month. It costs me personally close to $1500 a year to buy supplies and I help raise additional money by getting some friends and family to pitch in too.

I could go on….I think I’ll publish a book.

Sausalito
Sausalito
4 years ago

Yeah, I got the same crap about how I was boring because I didn’t want to go out and drink and party anymore. Well, hmm, I was 50 years old and we had two kid so, I dunno, maybe it’s time to grow up and be responsible. He clearly did not agree, and continued to go out and pick up bar whores… How’s that working out for ya, old man?

Grumpy
Grumpy
4 years ago

The last blameshift you listed—about how you are terrible because you are not doing a valuable thing, while you actually are doing it—I have gotten a lot of those! They are some of the worst blameshifts because they are not even distortions of something, they are just outright lies, and all directed at your strengths.

I frequently got a version of “I thought you would be the kind of mother who would have brought culture into our children’s lives.” Or he thought I would have coached them to sing duets with me at large community gatherings. Just mean. Like what: “I thought you would have been the kind of mother who took our children fossil hunting in hidden mountain gem mines! But you did not go fossil hunting, at least not in magical hidden gem mines, so you are a terrible mother, and you have hurt me by not caring about what I want, you never care about what I want, which means I have to look elsewhere and punish you for it.”

Meanwhile I was doing all kinds of teaching music in kids classrooms, organizing community children’s art fairs, taking groups of kids on field trips to museums, practing music with my kids, reading all kinds of books with them and talking about all kinds of ideas, volunteering to run the backstage at kids theater performances, performing myself, arranging music, teaching singing to preschool children and taking seminars in children’s music, creating a school wide writing enrichment program, planning family activities on vacations for museums, historical tidbits, etc. That sounds like so much it interfered with family life, but it did not because it was spread out and I was a great mom and a great spouse in all kinds of other ways—it is just that this kind of thing was something that brought me joy and public attention. But if there was even one dinner late, or if I left him one evening with the tween children while I went to a rehearsal, he would angrily say I was not meeting his needs.

Reframed: I envy your talents and want to absorb them to make myself look good. I will never be able to find and absorb all the praise I deserve to fill my endless leaky black hole of need. I resent how people admire you when they should admire me. So I will punish you by telling you that you have no talents and making it harder and harder for you to use them. And I will tell you that you are a horrible mother besides. Because that is also one of your greatest strengths, though parenting and relationships are one of my biggest failings. I hate it that the kids love you and that other people enjoy your wit and insight. Everyone should admire me! Everyone should love me! You are a threat and an obstacle when I thought you were my tool. I thought you would be the kind of mother who would sing Queen of the Night while riding a unicycle breastfeeding our baby and making fresh-sea-scallop dinner with artisanal tomato purée to serve me and post photos of on insta! Maybe then everyone would admire me.

Chumpinrecovery
Chumpinrecovery
4 years ago

Oh yeah. Ex also complained about my not drinking. He had to “drink alone”. Well he also had a designated driver every time we went out and he always got home safe.

Seriously, I don’t see why not being a lush is considered such a horrible personality defect by so many people.

Deee
Deee
4 years ago

This is because they can’t imagine being able to have a good time without being tipsy. My STBX made sure I chauffered him everywhere so he could drink constantly – didn’t matter if I had a migraine or was super tired – it was all about him. Now, he is with someone and they love to drink expensive wine and alcohol and he thinks it makes him sophisticated. He’s a dick – wish I’d never met him.

Attie
Attie
4 years ago
Reply to  Deee

The dickhead used to buy expensive wine then drink 2-3 bottles straight off because that made him a “connaisseur”! And I used to get up around 1 a.m. to pick him up from the bar (drag him out of the bar more like) on week nights when I had to be up at 6 a.m. to go to work!

Iwantmyfairytale
Iwantmyfairytale
4 years ago

I also did not party enough. He chose alcohol over me.

Newlady15
Newlady15
4 years ago

This shit still winds me up when I think about it too much.

” You are a nag”
Yup I nagged you to stop sticking your dick in strange and doing in MY bed(s) ( yup every bed–my home, cottage and even the place in Florida we had just purchased during the pick me dance). He even allowed her to “shop” in our homes after the separation and take what she wanted, leaving me with what they didn’t want and to clean every.single. property. up. for selling.

“You can’t ever say no to sex, it is very important to me”
I said no maybe once a month, we still were VERY active right up until 3 weeks before he abandoned me to move in with schmoopie. I said no NOT EVER for the last 4 years after he dumped this little gem on me.

” I should be able to retire, I ran the business for 20 years”
You mean even though you blew our entire retirement fund in it–$500,000? Gee how am I( yes I) supposed to make that happen? ( I also ran my own business with no thought of retiring because I was pick me dancing so hard I was paying for everything while he stopped earning money all together in prep for leaving me and paying no spousal support.)

” You are all about money”
Yup , me, the adult that was still adulting and paying for everything, see above.

“I hate it when you tell me I can’t order what I want”
I was such a terrible wife I asked him not to order more than one of those $10 glasses of wine he was so fond of, never said a word about the very expensive meals he loved to order while I ate an appetizer and a soft drink to afford it since HE WAS EARNING NOTHING!! Again, me being the adult.

Wow I just bleed at how small I made myself. Unbelievable to me now.
How could I do that to myself?? I am crying now…..

Rabbit007
Rabbit007
4 years ago
Reply to  Newlady15

NewLady, stay strong dear, you get to start fresh. It sucks when you put all your eggs in one basket,I had my share of that experience. Follow the light and have faith,everything is going to be alright.

peacekeeper
peacekeeper
4 years ago
Reply to  Newlady15

(((((Newlady15)))),
You have earned the right to every tear.
I am so sorry for all you have been through.

WaitingforTuesday
WaitingforTuesday
4 years ago
Reply to  Newlady15

We’ve all done it. I can’t believe how small I made myself, just to make him feel better about himself. How much I dimmed my light, so that his dimness would appear bright. You are mighty, Newlady15

Chumpinrecovery
Chumpinrecovery
4 years ago

His complaint: I don’t buy new clothes and shoes often enough and the clothes I do buy aren’t expensive enough. I don’t carry a high end classy purse (or any purse actually). I don’t go to the hair dresser often enough. I don’t look like a trophy wife.

Reframe: I am low maintenance.

His complaint: I mothered him by making his lunches to take to work for years and putting little notes in them.

Reframe: I was saving him time and money by making his lunches for him and putting in little notes so that he would know that I was thinking about him and so he would be thinking about me at least once a day.

His complaint: “Ew, I don’t want to kiss you goodbye. You don’t even look like a woman dressed like that” (when bundled up to bike to work in subzero weather).

Reframe: I still want to kiss you goodbye before I leave even after 20+ years of marriage. I bike to work to keep fit and healthy so I can still be attractive. Ex of all people knew what was under all of those clothes.

His complaint: “God your hair is poufy. You look like you have an afro.”

Reframe: I have beautiful hair thank you very much. Honestly, I get more compliments on my hair than anything else in life except maybe my kids. I have total strangers coming up to me on the street with random compliments, but after 20+ years of marriage he decided he didn’t like it.

His complaint: I had to do all of the laundry

Reframe: He is lucky I let him quit his high paying job to be a SAHD for a few years while also encouraging his dream of becoming a flight instructor. He is lucky I still helped out with dishes (even though he used every dish in the house with every meal when he cooked, although sometimes I cooked and did dishes) and helped the kids with homework and got them to bed and got up with the youngest in the middle of the night who was still having nightmares at the time. I also let him spend money we didn’t have on a housekeeper to clean house. I let him do the laundry because he had time and I knew he didn’t like the way I did it.

His complaint: “God that looks terrible” in response the seeing the window air conditioner that I had installed in our attic bedroom while he was out of town.

What he should have said: Thank you so much for spending the time to install that heavy and awkward air conditioner that was too big for the window with the frame and still getting it sealed around the edges and working so we no longer have to sleep in a sauna and that will make lovemaking much more comfortable. I am a lucky man to have a wife who is so capable. Let me contribute by finding a way to make it look nice too.

I could go on but that’s enough for now.

Grumpy
Grumpy
4 years ago

Oh this makes me cry. I know what it is like to have every little thing criticized, including my strengths and loving actions. Your marriage was 20+ years, you say, so I bet you could fill 100 pages per year listing all the criticisms. That’s 2000-plus pages. Hugs to you.

gentlechump
gentlechump
4 years ago

fuckwit: No one understands me on the same level that [skank MOW] does. Everyone else in my life only knows me on this shallow basis.

Reframed: There’s no depth to me. I am just a shallow shit puddle. The skank MOW understands me because she’s just as shallow and shitty as I am. Gentlechump had no chance to understand me because she has character and integrity.

Truth: High quality oil can’t mix with shitty water.

fuckwit: I couldn’t tell you the truth because I didn’t think you could handle it.

Reframed: I’m an asshole who magically can read Gentlechump’s mind and then tell her what she can and can’t process. I somehow know everything about her anxiety challenges even though I never bothered to learn or even ask her about them.

Truth: He couldn’t tell the truth because all he had were his lies. Telling the truth would require honesty and a grasp of reality and consequences.

WaitingforTuesday
WaitingforTuesday
4 years ago

Blameshift: “You buy organic food and it is too expensive. I can’t live like this anymore…” (this was one of the “reasons” he wanted a divorce)

Reframe: I’m a working mom who makes good money, and I like my young children and myself to eat healthy. Especially if I can’t be with my children all day, at least I can feel good spending my money towards something that I feel will benefit them.

Night before I am scheduled to give birth to second child, out of no where he tells me:
Doofus: “I don’t feel like you are supportive of me running.”
(He runs every single day, and I encourage it, bought him a running log to track things, signed him up for a 5k in another state because he wanted to run a 5k in every state. I might not stand outside with pompoms every morning to welcome him home from his run, but the fact that he was running every day meant that I was supporting it. If I hadn’t supported it, he wouldn’t have done it at all, but then again, I’m a chump and never would have gone to those lengths.)
I was so caught of guard, I was like what do you mean? What is it you want me to do to show that I’m supportive of you running?
His response: “Nothing, it’s just I don’t feel like you really care. It’s just how I feel.”

He literally made me start crying about this, when I was already worried about the birth the next day because they had told me the baby was really big and I was 10 days late. I don’t really know if this is blame shifting, or just him trying to rationalize to himself why he was cheating on me.

Mehny Rivers to Cross
Mehny Rivers to Cross
4 years ago

The remarks that come out of their mouths during pregnancy/childbirth… WTF? This post triggered a memory I have tried to bury.

Blameshift: “Are you sure I’m the father? [of our daughter]” Said after 24 hours of labor, then c-section for 9 lb 12 oz baby.

Reframe: “I’m a cheater. Therefore, everyone else must be one, too.”

At the time, the question cut me to the core and completely confused me. Now I just shake my head that I couldn’t see what was really going on.

Tishalicious
Tishalicious
4 years ago

Oh my gosh, I got that one too! And he made sure to mention his ‘concern’ around every single person we knew; I found myself explaining and having to explain to people that hadn’t even known that I existed, much less concerned about a stranger’s business.

Reframe: I actually am sorry that your name is on the birth certificate. If I hadn’t been so stunned and mortified, kidlet and I could have made our escape years ago.

(MY friends, who called me Pure Pureness, couldn’t imagine someone actually saying that with a straight face)

Fearful&loathing
Fearful&loathing
4 years ago

Mone later made the comment that I didn’t “really” know what it’s like to give birth because I ended up having a c-section.

Yep. The whole growing a human being, being overdue, trying to give birth the (apparently) proper way, then having major surgery to get said human being out of me, doesn’t rate as a birth experience.

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago

Mansplaining childbirth. It doesn’t get much more arrogant than that.

Attie
Attie
4 years ago
Reply to  Chumperella

I never made a sound in child birth – I’m not a screamer – but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell. But because I wasn’t screaming, after our son was born he leaned over with his coffee breath and said “that wasn’t too bad at all”! Well I guess not from your perspective you dickhead!

NotMyFault
NotMyFault
4 years ago
Reply to  Attie

Mine, many years later, actually stated “push”….it’s just a figure of speech, right? Needless to say, I should have PUSHED him off of a cliff! PS: No push present for me.

Sucker Punched by a Saffa
Sucker Punched by a Saffa
4 years ago

Nasty comment “You really look unattractive pushing our son in his stroller”

Response/Comeback ? I had no words. I was stunned and felt like I had been slapped in the face.

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago

“You look like a total asshole insulting the mother of your child as she’s caring for your child. Oh, did I mention that your dick is small, too?”

Attie
Attie
4 years ago

I got “man I can’t believe how fat your stomach is” – our baby was 3 days old!

Sucker Punched by a Saffa
Sucker Punched by a Saffa
4 years ago
Reply to  Attie

I am wishing “Happy F*ck Off Friday” to all the exes (or soon to be for those in the process of divorce) who insulted and demeaned all the chumps ! In the rear view mirror.

WaitingforTuesday
WaitingforTuesday
4 years ago

For real, we are all so much better off without these crazies!!!

Fearful&loathing
Fearful&loathing
4 years ago

It was him trying to put the focus and attention back on himself. After all, your attention wasn’t fully on him because you were preoccupied with little things at the moment such as ypur health and the life of the child you were mere hours away from birthing. Narcissistic move to grab the spotlight.

You’re an a good mom and a good person.
Hope his running shoes took him very far away from you.

WaitingforTuesday
WaitingforTuesday
4 years ago

Thank you so much, Fearful & Loathing!!! Yes, he’s out of my life as much as possible now, thank goodness!!!

Sucker Punched by a Saffa
Sucker Punched by a Saffa
4 years ago

Too bad he didn’t keel over and die of a heart attack during one of his out of state 5K races…

WaitingforTuesday
WaitingforTuesday
4 years ago

Hahaha, for real!!!

Fooled-Me-Twice
Fooled-Me-Twice
4 years ago

Blameshift: You are extremely negative and controlling.

Reframe: I worried too much for my kids safety (I would always see how they could get hurt and warn them) and I tried to teach the proper techniques in sports and in doing chores.

Blameshift: You would always bitch about something.

Reframe: How dare you expect me and the kids to clean up after ourselves all weekend while you worked 12 hour shifts.

Blameshift: You put me in a really bad place.

Reframe: Fucking a married man and tearing apart Our family (while his family has no clue he’s a lying, cheating fuckwit and they are all still together) has put us all in a much better place. As long as she’s happy now, that’s all that matters. So I guess the Reframe is… You expected me to keep my wedding vows and commitment to the family like you for the rest of your life. (I should call his wife in Father’s Day to let her know who she’s really married to). Been struggling with that for 3 years now.

Sausalito
Sausalito
4 years ago

Do it. The only way I found out the affair was still going on (after he swore he broke it off and wanted to work on our marriage) was when the AP’s husband put a GPS tracker on her car and then emailed me to let me know they were still at it. Definitely the wake-up call I needed to realize what a massive POS I was married to.

MMarg
MMarg
4 years ago

“You’re the reason I drink”. Ha. The first time he got blackout drunk, he said it never happened before and was terribly sorry and it would never happen again. The second time, he said he never noticed how much he was drinking and asked me to watch out and let him know when he had enough. See where this is going? Next, who was I to tell him when to stop drinking? Finally, I was the cause of it all.

Well, he was the reason I walked home in high heels through dark stretches of north Toronto (before cell phones) the several times he disappeared and drove home drunk and left me stranded. Reframe: if I’m the reason he drinks, I can solve the problem easily. I left him. His parting shot: you can’t solve your problems by running away. Me: Yes I can. He went out and found a potential new excuse right away.

chumpfor12
chumpfor12
4 years ago

X: She appreciates me and it’s nice to feel appreciated for once.

Me: Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t realize that by caring for our children pretty much single handedly, keeping our home going, our landscaping up, our second home up, following you in pursuit of your career (complete moves every three years) and leaving my family, I was somehow showing you I was unappreciative of you. I never gave you blow jobs at work because one, you never asked and I was always with our children and two, I’m just not that kind of girl. But I’m so thrilled you finally found someone that will accommodate you in that regard, appreciatively of course. I’ll just continue to do all the things I was doing before except now I get the pleasure of doing them without you and for that I’m now appreciative.

Sucker Punched by a Saffa
Sucker Punched by a Saffa
4 years ago
Reply to  chumpfor12

Never gave him blow jobs at work ?! Nothing says professional, safe work environment like a woman crawling under a man’s desk to service him. Did you two work at the same company or were you expected to come ’round during his lunch hour ?

chumpfor12
chumpfor12
4 years ago

@Sucker Punched, I didn’t work, his job was way too important and my job was to raise his (our) children and do everything else. I guess lunch hour is the preferred time for workplace blow jobs, luckily his accounting manager was very accommodating.

LeavingToxicTown
LeavingToxicTown
4 years ago
Reply to  chumpfor12

Chumpfor12, Me too. I gave up my career for his. Stayed home and raised 2 amazing children, managed 2 homes, planned vacations, social lives, managed finances, holidays etc, etc so he could focus on his job and all the while he took me for granted; replaced by lunchtie workplace BJ’s in the backseat of his skank’s car (after she moved the twin booster seats of course).

Rabbit007
Rabbit007
4 years ago

LTT, I’m pretty sure karma is just around the corner.

Madge
Madge
4 years ago

Blameshift: You want to control my sexuality.

Flip: I don’t want to live with your increasingly disgusting porn habit. I want a partner who is interested in real sex with a real person.

Blameshift: I don’t do X task (or Y task or Z task or On Beyond Zebra task) because you always criticize how I do things. I can’t do anything right according to you! Pout. I’m not going to try to do anything anymore.

Flip: You asked me how to do the task because you “didn’t know how and wanted to get it right.” I told you the way that worked for me, based on experience and on what I was taught. You decided you had a better way that was born of laziness and ignorance. You proceeded to do the task badly, so that it needed to be done over, and dangerously, so that you almost hurt yourself and damaged equipment. I was angry because you sabotaged the task, the equipment, and your own safety.

UXworld
UXworld
4 years ago
Reply to  Madge

Oh, @Madge. I got such a perversion of that.

Blameshift: “You want to control my sexuality and make all of my sexual decisions for me.”

Flip: I want to have a good sex life with the woman I married and committed to, whatever that takes, short of allowing her to “go out and fuck 17 guys if that’s what I want to do” (her exact words)

ChumpNoMore
ChumpNoMore
4 years ago

Of course this wasn’t ever an issue until we were in front of a judge
Blame: Your honor she is controlling with our finances. She doesn’t let me see the bills

Reality: Your honor I take care of all the bills because I always have. When he was on his own he had evictions, late charges, terrible credit, avoided doing his taxes etc. All bills are setup electronically and paid automatically from our “Joint” account and he has the password to every electronic bill that is set up. (It was his password he uses for everything)

“Joint” account was another joke. He’d get bonus’s and per diem checks he’d cash and keep the money for what he wanted and spend the joint money on what he wanted as well. And of course making way less than I but in court he deserved equal everything even though he didn’t put in equal ANYTHING. But sure spent 90% more.

OutFromTheShadows
OutFromTheShadows
4 years ago
Reply to  ChumpNoMore

Sounds oh so similar 🙁

STBXW never had any interest in family finances until her affair and her wanting to give money to OM to keep him interested. Then of course it was the same blame-shifting that I was controlling of finances and therefore controlling of her. How can you stop someone doing something they don’t want to do. Hello!?

And yep, the same difference with spending. No problem for her to spend 500 on botox, but heaven forbid I ‘waste’ money buying our kids some ice-cream — grrrrr

Deee
Deee
4 years ago

What is it with this crazy rationale? I too did the finances – he liked to spend the money (on himself of course) and I made sure bills were paid and mortgage got extra payments. It turns out his own account was for his pot and viagra – which of course I had to split my own saved account (lawyer said it would cost just as much to fight it). Not to mention his very expensive solo vacation that of course I know now wasn’t solo. Then the asshole started this whole rant about how I had excluded him from the finances – even though I talked to him about everything and he had all the passwords. He is spending money like water but fought me on every penny after I had made my needs small and saved my money (may his money run out :). He is a complete dick who is busy telling everyone what an amazing new person he is (so delusional).

Attie
Attie
4 years ago
Reply to  Deee

Same here. Dickhead spent all OUR money on himself and then would bang his fist on the table because he wanted to know where all the money was going. I was the one that kept everything going. Now he has had to put his big boy’s knickers on I would give my right arm to see the state of his accounts! Oddly enough Schmoopie used to post on FB about it being Monday but “HEY, WHO CARES, I’M RETIRED”. Dickhead is on a damn good pension but Schmoopie went back to work about 6 months ago “because she was bored”. Nah, I think she has probably realized what his spending is like and they ain’t making it. Must have come as quite a shock to her that half that money he was throwing around was actually mine!

Ruggermom
Ruggermom
4 years ago

Cheater-“Our boys are closer to you. They only come to you to talk or for help or to confide.”

Truth-that’s what happens when you stop at the no tell motel on your way home from work instead of being home for family dinners. When you lock yourself up in the home office to “work” or “study” instead of bedtime reading, helping with baths, tucking the boys in at night. Opting to go the gym/“study”/not attending family after game parties/going to your imaginary softball games (no tell motels) on the weekends instead of playing baseball with your boys

Cheater- “you were to smothering when I was hospitalized for 2 transplants.”

Truth-you asked me to run by your office every day to bring your work/mail. You asked me to bring you certain foods every day that you could tolerate while on chemo. Your blind mother and father with Alzheimer’s wanted to see you as often as possible because the doctors were not sure if you would survive. In actuality my being at the hospital with you diminished the time that Vajay Jay could be there.

ChumpXSeven
ChumpXSeven
4 years ago

Blame: You are the problem, you caused all this (divorce, tearing our family apart)

Reality: Apparently only I was supposed to be the faithful one and let him have his secret life, secret email, many affair specific web accounts and be ok with waking up in the middle of the night and catching him Video recording HIMSELF masterbating. Yeah yeah I caused the problem… ** eye roll **

Sara Bloomer
Sara Bloomer
4 years ago

Blameshift: She loves me unconditionally. But she’s “just a friend”

Flip: She accepts that I am running away from my responsibilities and she gives me a place, and drugs, to make it easier.

Blameshift: You are abusive.

Flip: I am okay enough with you to still plan camping trips and Halloween parties together. Why can’t we just do all the family stuff while I sleep with someone else? You not letting me be free is mean.

LotusDancer
LotusDancer
4 years ago

“You don’t have enough sex with me.”

” True. We hardly ever have sex, thankfully. I used to like it and have a decent sex drive but after being married to you and having sex with a semi-flaccid penis for 20 years, which caused nerve damage to me over the years and now I have vulvadynia, you’re not sexy or appealing to me at all. Sex with you is super painful. You don’t do enough foreplay, I just want it over with, and you watch so much porn I can see you watching it in your head while fucking me. The weird porn-video leer on your face is disgusting. Oh and sorry #notsorry that while I’m going through chemo and radiation and jumping into chemical menopause I don’t want to have any sex. #sadsausage.”

Well. That was cathartic. Sexless marriages ≠ reason to be a fucking cheating scum. Get a fucking divorce.

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago
Reply to  LotusDancer

I hear you. We didn’t have a sexless marriage at all, even though he was (unbeknownst to me) a porn freak and was just using me to masturbate to his gross fantasies. Like your jerk, he was in his own head, never there with me during sex, and now that you mention it, he did have a weird look on his face. It creeped me right out, and he *never* looked at me during intercourse. We actually had plenty of sex before he started cheating and treating me like crap. We did have a dry spell when I was having a terrible time with menopause, interstitial cystitis, suffering from depression, a worsening chronic illness, and the libido lowering effects of an SSRI, all at once. I told him I was doing everything I could to get better, and I was. Shitheel still used it as an excuse to bang some ho and discard me like I was garbage. They SUCK!

LotusDancer
LotusDancer
4 years ago
Reply to  Chumperella

Yep. It’s your fault. Everything is your fault. #solidarity, Chumperella.

OutFromTheShadows
OutFromTheShadows
4 years ago

Ok, here goes, might be a bit of a diatribe but well…

Her:
“I wanted a man, but you took the woman’s role in our marriage, while I had to be the man and work.”

Me:
“I gave up my 20-year career to start a family business with you. In the past decade you only had to teach part-time (about 13 hours a week) while I took care of everything else (admin, communication, finance, marketing, IT, event-planning, you-name-it). Like all new businesses we struggled for several years, but now the business is finally producing and will or would have provided a nice income for us and our kids into a sunset retirement.

I stayed up late many, many nights, finding ever more creative ways to keep us out of bankruptcy. But I got us through the ‘dip’ and now the business is a success.

I also did the lion’s share of looking after our children and the house.

I get the kids up every morning, make breakfast, prepare their snacks and do the hour-long round journey to their school. I’m generally the one who makes us lunch. Then I pick up the kids from school, prepare their evening meal, get them showered and into bed. Then do a bit more work on the business until I can’t stay awake any longer. On Sundays, when you inevitably have your all-day headache, I take care of the kids. I take them to activities, birthday parties, playgrounds, parks, the lot. Well, you do have your telenovelas.

I do all the supermarket shopping, pet shops, pharmacies, toy stores, etc. I organise & pay all household bills. I do the rubbish (trash) and a lot of the cleaning.

Nope, I reckon I’ve been more of a man by stepping up, taking responsibility and running a business while also looking after kids and a home.

…and with that 6-pack starting to appear now, I reckon I’m still a helluva catch even in my 50’s!

Just one problem — awful, awful taste in women — need to do something about that ;)”

Mac1234
Mac1234
4 years ago

I hear you man. They won’t take responsibility so they have to justify their despicable choices. No amount of household service was good enough. Even when you have demonstrable proof that their assertions are false, a narc cannot be proven wrong.
For example, my wife says I was always on my phone. Uh honey, you used 5 times as much data as me this month. That’s 500% for any dumbass cheaters reading (are they all bad at math too?).
I feel your pain, so many of your positive efforts will go completely unseen and the rest of the world will shrug and think, “you probably deserved it.”
Or another one, you drink too much. I learned this is a classic one the cheater uses on their parents. Uh sweetie, you spent $300 last night at the old “bar and grill”. Did you buy a round for the whole place or were you getting shitfaced before blowing some funky old ex con while I stayed home with our toddler?
Narcs can’t even do basic reasoning so they won’t even feel guilty about any of it.

OutFromTheShadows
OutFromTheShadows
4 years ago
Reply to  Mac1234

Yep, sadly you’re so right @Mac1234 — I’m slowly noticing that most people don’t really care about infidelity

CN was a good find for me to get me on the path of getting through all this (after wasting a year or so in RIC land) and generally it’s the same script whether you’re male, female, straight, gay, young, old or whatever — however there are some differences, namely the automatic assumption that the wife, even if she’s a lazy narc cheater, is still a good mother and always there for her kids — if a husband cheats then it’s “all men are bastards” and sympathy for the woman — if a wife cheats then it’s “well, we don’t really know what went on behind closed doors that forced her to stray” — I got told that to my face, hello, what!?

It’s been mentioned here in CN so many times that we have to be the sane parent and do our best for our kids. Hopefully at least they’ll remember all the breakfasts made, all the trips out, all the evenings we spent with them while their mum had gone AWOL again, even if no-one else does

Deee
Deee
4 years ago

Hi Shadows

You are right. Infidelity is not taken seriously enough and people really don’t understand how damaging it is to a persons psyche. My STBX told his teenage boys that he hadn’t wanted to be in his cookie cutter marriage for 12 years. That is a huge chunk of their life that he says he hasn’t wanted this family (fucking idiot how do you think that made them feel). So I said to my son if that is true then he stole 12 years of my life (I am not going to spackle for the man anymore — too much spackling beforehand).

Most people think this could never happen to them and that they would “be smarter” than me. I even have a sister in law who is trying to be supportive but says things like “I wouldn’t let him do that” and “boy would I pin his balls to the wall if it was me”. Really? I have let my kids know that this behaviour is horrible and selfish but my STBX insisted on living in the same house while separating so turning it into a war zone would do nothing but further damage my kids. It was more of an ice zone – how cold can it get.

I am not sure about the gender thing but I did have someone relate another story of cheating by saying “his wife was a bitch so she deserved it”. Hmmm – I guess it is easier to just have some pat excuses so you never have to self-reflect and think this could happen to you.

Good luck to you Shadows.

OutFromTheShadows
OutFromTheShadows
4 years ago
Reply to  Deee

Spot on @Deee, most people don’t believe this could happen to them and I was one of those too

“cookie cutter marriage” — bit of a crass way of saying how he stole 12 years of your life, as you said, and that fits the recent theme here in CN of how we the chumps were never consulted about this, were never given the choice; because obviously none of us would have got together with them knowing that in 10/15 years we’d end up a traumatised single parent

I’m almost out of the in-house separation thing too — “ice zone” was a very apt description 🙂

Attie
Attie
4 years ago

My family was very supportive but I did hear “cudda, wudda, shudda” too, and how “I wouldn’t have tolerated that”. Sorry, but walk in my shoes for just a month and then get back to me on that!

OutFromTheShadows
OutFromTheShadows
4 years ago

And obviously the ‘manly’ OM is a bit of an underworked childless layabout, much younger too, who does a bit of sound-mixing for club bands at night and the odd part-time job here’n’there and not much else — sadly he’s too lazy to take her completely off my hands, so in true chump style I’m having to do all the work to get myself free (almost there!)

OutFromTheShadows
OutFromTheShadows
4 years ago

It felt really weird to write that — quite wrong in fact — makes me look quite arrogant — but it’s actually the reality of what I though was “us” and certainly the past few years

DevastatedDee
DevastatedDee
4 years ago

I am blown away by how many of us didn’t “need” them enough.

“You didn’t need me like I needed you”.

Reframe: “I was a grown adult and he wasn’t.”

Elizabeth Lee
Elizabeth Lee
4 years ago

Blameshift: “Our marriage is falling apart because we don’t communicate. We need marriage counseling to solve our communication problems.”

What he really meant: This wife appliance is defective. She doesn’t read my mind and do everything I want her to do. Never mind that she is doing 95% of the chores to raise our 5 children and maintain our home. I need someone to make her comply. And hopefully, she’ll ignore the fact that I’m in love with another woman.

Playedlikeafiddle
Playedlikeafiddle
4 years ago
Reply to  Elizabeth Lee

Holy crap! I just realized THAT’S why he pushed for marriage counseling that last month. Wow. That’s actually a relief to know.

OutFromTheShadows
OutFromTheShadows
4 years ago

Oh yep! A classic cheater ploy to delay things when they’re not yet ready to run off and also used when they want to pretend that they tried to fix things but you (the chump) were the problem and that they were so lucky to find someone immediately afterwards to ‘comfort’ them.

Add to that one, the cheater initiating divorce through a mediator, but then delaying things and breaking things off months later, saying we should get separate lawyers (I fell for that one too).

Mac1234
Mac1234
4 years ago

Thank you for sharing that one shadows. I’m a few steps behind you and it looks like that is in the cards.

Mac1234
Mac1234
4 years ago
Reply to  Elizabeth Lee

Damn I got that too. The MC didn’t even bat an eyelash when the cat got out of the bag.
Another I’m sure is classic: Cheater feels so bad about the affair and wants to show they are taking responsibility. So, they will sacrificially confess to their parents.
In reality they are just spinning up some narrative that you would never suspect. That one was tough to catch but so predictable.

OutFromTheShadows
OutFromTheShadows
4 years ago
Reply to  Elizabeth Lee

Ahh so did he use the classic cheater ploy of getting you into marriage therapy after he had already started his affair

She Won't Even Notice!
She Won't Even Notice!
4 years ago

“You never go anywhere or do anything.”

I never accepted this blame. Even when I was on hopium I thought it was stupid.

I used to travel the world, but my ex was afraid of airplanes and didn’t like to stay away from home for more than an evening, so I gave up that passion of mine.
We all make sacrifices for the people we love, right?

I used to have a car when I lived with Cheater, but I had to sell it. Cheater refused to get a job, so I sold my car to make my meager salary stretch. I walked to work while Cheater kept the car.
We all make sacrifices for the people we love, right?

So when he blamed me for not traveling more I was all like [mathlady.gif]. It wasn’t adding up. Of COURSE I stopped traveling. You can’t WALK to Europe, genius. What did you expect??

In honor of this exercise, however, I’ll reframe it: I am willing to sacrifice my hobbies and convenience for the people I love.

Hubby also blamed his affair on his little brother. Of course he had to fuck the next door neighbor! His little brother is in a wheelchair and might need his help! The fact that his little brother is an independent extreme-sport paraathlete that lives almost 3,000 miles away didn’t factor into this equation. I never asked him how fucking whores while I am at work is support to help his little brother, but what do I know. I’m not a doctor.

Reframe: ????????????????????????? You can’t reframe a picture that wasn’t all that clear to begin with.

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago

I never internalized any of his blame, and was always ready with a reframe, so he would usually drop one blameshift, then come up with another. These are my responses. I would write them down just to have a record of his drivel. These are but a few of his many reams of bullshit.

Examples;
Blameshift; you didn’t like visting my family.
Reframe; I don’t enjoy visting the violent ward at a mental health facility, either. *You* didn’t even like visting them.

Blameshift; Not enough sex.
Reframe; Yet your mistress fucking you only twice in five years constitutes enough? Then I was a sex veritable machine.

Blameshift; You were controlling about my drinking.
Reframe; Your drinking was out of control, and you refused to stop. So how was I controlling it exactly?

Blameshift; You weren’t social enough.
Reframe; Meaning I don’t drink, because that’s what “socializing” means to you.

Blameshift; You were too sarcastic.
Reframe; I wasn’t aware sarcastic humor is so traumatic to you that it requires you to plow whore pussy to feel better. That explains why you first fucked her right after going to a comedy club with her. At last, we have the answer!

Blameshift; I could talk to her with no drama. We were always fighting.
Reframe; We only started fighting after you decided to discard me for her. That’s an effect of cheating, not a cause.

Blameshift; You didn’t love me anymore.
Reframe; Which you suddenly determined after you realized you wanted to plow new pussy. How very convenient for you.

Blameshift; You enjoy conflict.
Reframe; I do? Then I guess you shouldn’t have provided me with so much pleasure by coming home so drunk you could barely stand and being cold and nasty for no reason, then. I guess you shouldn’t have broken almost every promise you ever made, then denied making them. I must have been getting a ton of “enjoyment”.

He hated it when I did the air quotes. Hee hee.

Blameshift; You wouldn’t go on a bunch of overseas trips like my friend and my brother do with their wives to help their marriages.
Reframe; You mean the friend and the brother who have terrible marriages and whose wives can’t stand them because they’re treated like shit by those jerks? Sounds like heaven. Book us a trip to Bora-Bora. Oh, was that sarcastic? I guess you’ll need to find a whore right away to ease your anxiety from sarcasm phobia.

Blameshift; Everything was just so EASY with her.
Reframe; Except getting her to fuck you, to stop manipulating you and bossing you around, and stop fucking other guys practically in front of you. That was impossible. What was easy again, besides her virtue?

And here we are
And here we are
4 years ago

My ex husband (then in his surgical residency) told me that our marriage could not survive because I (an attorney) was unable to discuss detailed medical issues with him. He said it was the most important thing in the world to him, and unless we could have in depth discussions about medicine, we would never have enough in common to survive. We had been together for 13 years at that point.

My mind was blown. I always asked about his day and engaged with him about his job. I am educated, well-read, and have a variety of interests. Believe me, I can converse on a lot of topics. Also, who only wants to talk about ONE thing all the time? How one dimensional can you get?

It will shock no one to hear that he was sleeping with an intern…

Reframe: he was desperately looking for a justification for his actions and that weak excuse is what he landed on. Plus, he wanted someone who could fawn over his medical “genius” in more detail.

RockStarWife
RockStarWife
4 years ago

AHWA,

I feel your pain, my last partner (now ex-oyfriend) is an executive at an engineering firm in a field that I have not worked in for many years but is his passion. Wanting to emotionally support him and also be a well-rounded person, in spite of being very busy, I read journals in his discipline and tried to hold intelligent conversations about it. Looking back, nearly two years post-discard, I was never good enough for him, but to him, his young, rich, brilliant engineer subordinate was exciting and worth marrying. And unlike me, who just enjoyed Star Wars, she was super into Star Wars.

Criticism by partner: My last partner also didn’t approve of the way my car trunk was organized.
Reframe: As a single mom, I was doing many different things and, die to my lifestyle, which included driving 80 miles round trip to see him for half our relationship (before I moved closer to his home), required me to keep a lot in my car.

Criticism by partner: My career is at it’s zenith, but yours is just getting re-started. That’s why I don’t see you in my future.
Reframe: You had no kids, which take time. I decided to raise my children and conduct research, often for nothing or little money, for the greater good. I am a charitable person. I also choose to spend precious time with you instead of trying to earn extra money. I am loving and devoted to my partner. And I never asked you to financially take care of my kids and me, so financial dependence is not an issue. I am not a gold digger and loved and respected you back when you were a middle-class kid.

Criticism by partner: You wear lipstick when you cycle.
Reframe: It prevents my lips from drying out and it makes me feel like the high-caliber athlete I want to be, making me feel good about me. If you’re not going to feel good about me, at least I should feel good about me.

Criticism by partner: You put on your bike a bottle of soda instead of a bottle of water today.
Reframe: Sometimes I like to drink diet soda or didn’t get around to refilling my water bottle. So what? You are nitpicky.

Criticism by partner, who is wealthy and doesn’t need anything when I gave him a photo of is for Christmas (complaining instead of thanking me): You’re smiling; you almost never smile.
Reframe: I love you enough to want to give you a nice photo of us together as I have never seen online a photo of us together nor seen any mention of me online by you. (I later learned, after years of being acquainted with and dating him, that he was embarrassed to be seen with me.) Perhaps I didn’t smile much because my ex-husband constantly harassed me and my then boyfriend lied to, invalidated, insulted, invalidated, criticized, and tried to exert control over me. I made a note to self to smile more often to make my boyfriend happy. Didn’t work at keeping him. He was quite ungrateful.

The list is a lot longer, but this gives an idea of what was going on.

I won’t list the examples of my ex-husband’s blameshifting and criticism as the would be longer than War and Peace.

The question is, ‘Why did I stick around people who treated me like garbage for years?’ I wasn’t perfect—I was sad, afraid (due to typical an bizarre challenges of my particular divorce and life) and I imagine seemed needy although I did not want to, but I deserved much better treatment from many of my partners. People don’t deserve to be lied to and denigrated.

I still feel angry at these partners for mistreating me and angry at me for tolerating this treatment. And I still feel sad and feel as though I have nothing to live for other than preventing my ex-husband from getting sole custody of our kids as I think that living only with my ex-husband and his numerous partners (40/year?) would be bad for our kids. I don’t plan to kill myself as I think that killing myself might be bad for my young kids and my exes would probably say, ‘See. This is why I had to leave her. She was crazy.’ I often really look forward to my life ending, and as I am in my fifties, perhaps I won’t have to wait very long, or at least not as long as the typical young adult or teen. I don’t bother getting screened for cancer any more as I, in a way, hope that I develop a fatal case of cancer soon, even though it is physically painful. At least I would be free of perpetual harassment and results of false allegations by my ex-husband. Knowing him, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if he would try to sue me after I died. Probably tell my family that I owe him!

I feel bad for many people on this board for being treated badly. I hope that your lives markedly improve.

Ruggermom
Ruggermom
4 years ago

And-it wouldn’t have made a difference. I am a nurse, ex is a physician. I am more than capable of having intelligent conversations about medical issues. In fact one of the many reasons he just had to cheat was that often times I was a better diagnostician than he was

The office file girl who never graduated high school could hold more intelligent convos i guess????. I think it was just more fun to play the daily game of “guess what color her g-string is.” True story-the office staff would try to guess what color the g-string was each day. They found out when she started filing in the bottom drawers. Guess I just take professionalism in a medical practice a little more seriously! My bad!

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago

You could just as easily have turned it around on him and demanded he discuss legal issues. Notice how everything THEY are interested in is important and all your interests are trivial? I like in-depth discussions political and social issues, but shit for brains is too dumb to understand a lot of that and too shallow to care, so he preferred listening to his idiot mistress blather about her boring, self-centered life.

Chumpinrecovery
Chumpinrecovery
4 years ago
Reply to  Chumperella

Wow! Ex’s Schmoopie also likes to “blather about her boring, self-centered life.” I swear the woman never shuts up. But it makes sense that ex likes her because another of his criticisms was that I didn’t do that.

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago

Hahahaha! Yet if you had, it would have been; “You blathering about your boring, self-centered life caused me to cheat.”
They make sure you can’t possibly satisfy them.

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago
Reply to  Chumperella

That should say “discussions of”. Need an edit feature.

No Shit Cupcakes
No Shit Cupcakes
4 years ago

FUU said, “I’m a bad husband. You deserve better.”

NSC said, “Yes, I do. Are you going to step up and do better, continue to mewl about how awful you are and look for pity or are we done here?”

FUU *jaw dropped*

ICanSeeTheMehComing!
ICanSeeTheMehComing!
4 years ago

Blameshift: “You always put the kids first.”

Reframe: “You created children with three women. I try, whenever possible, to unite them through family events, with us, as siblings so they can have a relationship.”

Blameshift: “I watched my mom and dad have a sexless marriage and I am not going to settle for that.”

Reframe: “I’m sorry you grew up witnessing an abusive marriage and instead of being committed to being a better man/husband/father decided instead to create a marriage just like it by serially cheating on me and I decided to protect myself from STDs until you got a blood test.”

Blameshift: “We need to fix US.”

Reframe: “US isn’t fucking around with strangers met through online dating sites and Craigslist. Fix YOU and then maybe we can talk.”

Blameshift: “You’re a BITCH.”

Reframe: “I know how to establish boundaries, follow a divorce order, and kick your shit out of my garage.”

Fearful&loathing
Fearful&loathing
4 years ago

“We need to fix US.
US isn’t fucking around”

BRILLIANT

GrandeDameChump
GrandeDameChump
4 years ago

Oh this is brilliant, and I wish I had the “US isn’t fucking around with strangers met on Craigslist” comeback a few years ago!! OMG… I was such a chump. Never again.

Kara
Kara
4 years ago

Blameshift: His career is failing because I’m a distraction and because of me he can’t focus on making it what it should be.

Reframe: Nothing I do, or don’t do, will make or break his career if he doesn’t do the necessary things to market himself, his artwork, and his services. If he refuses every walk-in client because he doesn’t like the design they have, doesn’t create a business account for himself and depends only on his personal fb and friends from high school he hasn’t otherwise spoken to in 10 years, only has 6 posts on his instagram, never sells any of his pieces, never gets commissions, and never goes to any conventions or events his fellow artists attend, it is his fault, not mine, that his career has not gone anywhere.

Blameshift: It’s my fault I get sexually harassed because I walked outside in a pair of heels without him to chaperone me, what do I expect? Women only dress like that for men’s attention, so that must be what I wanted when I walked out in those “slut shoes.”

Reframe: He was highly insecure about himself, his relationships, his self-image, and his life. It was easier for him to call me a slut for wearing heels in public than it was for him to examine his insecurities, and think about the real things that were making him angry all the time.

And a different person, but nonetheless a reframe-

Blameshift: We had sex, that’s not a big deal, I’m making too much of a deal out of it. I’m too clingy, I need to learn self confidence and how to be alone, can’t I see he’s just too busy for a relationship right now? I’m not fit for a relationship because I’m too insecure. Do I know what co-dependence means? (pat on the head)…so when are we going to bang again? (Actual quote there folks.)

Reframe: If he minimizes the signifigance of sex, invalidates my feelings and needs, disrespects me and tells me it is my problem and I shouldn’t even be in a relationship because there is something wrong with me, it is easier for him to shirk responsibility. It’s easier to manipulate me into sex without having to commit if he tells me I can’t handle a relationship. But the reality is I am not weak, broken, codependent and insecure, I can recognize when someone has lied to me and is trying to avoid responsibility, and the look of shock on his face when I told him he will either commit or there will be no sex ever again was priceless, and the continued shock of seeing how little I cared when he didn’t commit was even more priceless. It can actually be a little fun when narcissists see they aren’t the center of your universe.

Smart Woman
Smart Woman
4 years ago

Blameshifting: I am incapable of watching violence against woman and children on the TV. I leave the room.
Flip: I am a sensitive person with empathy, who finds the pain of the others almost to much to cope with. However I don’t insist on others behaving the same, I remove myself from the situation.

Okay this one wasn’t hard, who lists sensitivity as a reason for divorce!

Chumperella
Chumperella
4 years ago
Reply to  Smart Woman

Methinks the asshole got off on watching violence against women, knew it meant he was a sick creep, and deflected onto you to ease his shame.

My jerk always loved watching Game of Thrones, which is full of graphic depections of rape and murder, plus every other sick show which glorified violence, but pompously asked me how I could stand to watch “all those pedophiles and rapists” on Special Victims Unit.
Me; “Unlike on your beloved shows that celebrate violence and evil, it doesn’t show the violence, glorify the perpetrators, and has compassion for the victims, you hypocrite.”
That shut him up.
My take is that if a guy isn’t bothered by violence against women, he’s probably into it sexually.

Seerant
Seerant
4 years ago

Him: you never want to have sex

Me: tell that to my 44 year old FWB who is not a premature ejaculator like you