If you’re responsible for their cheating, (thanks RIC!) then it stands to reason you’re responsible for all the other slings and arrows of their outrageous annoyance too.
In Tuesday’s column, The Mindfuckery of Reverse Victim Offender, “Xmaschump” shared a gem.
“I got chased down in the shower with xh holding a pickle that he needed me to see how badly I fucked up buying the brand I bought. I had no idea what was happening.”
Let me explain it — You. Bought. The. Wrong. Pickle. Xmaschump.
I know you were in the bathroom attending to your basic bodily care, but that was time you could’ve spent reviewing his briny brand preferences. Priorities, woman! Clearly, the proper course of action would’ve been to leap sopping wet from the shower and correct your mistake at once. Speed to the nearest convenience store…
“I NEED VLASSIC HALF-SOURS, STAT!”
How ever can you make it up to him? He’s fucking strange and you failed pickle clairvoyance. Someone deserves an apology here.
The Friday Challenge, CN, is to share the most absurd ways you Failed to Meet Their Needs. (Thanks RIC!)
He told me I was required to say “I love you” at a minimum of 2 times per day.
Can you say it to the dog?
You are hilarious! This little comment just made my morning.
Hahahah! I say I love you even to my morning coffeee so…
The day isn’t long enough to start that conversation. There aren’t enough words. But hey. I was a good wife for the most part. Those words warm my heart to this day since everything was my fault. Smh
I had that too!!! I had to thank him, also, for allowing me to stay at home and raise our three sons.
Mine :
Me: well at least you are being paid biweekly for the work you do while I ( SAHM3 kids per agreement, since he was traveling a lot, no family around) am not getting a single $ for my work
Him: you live in the house, you eat the food, you don’t have to worry about the bills
That left me speechless.
Ah yes, he needed gratitude, “just a simple thank you,” is what he wrote after D-Day when discussing needs. I chumpily nodded, “Why yes, that seems reasonable!”
Later, when removed from his presence, I thought, wait a minute! I’m a person that says thank you all the time! For holding the door! For washing dishes! For watching his own kids while I catch up on work! For mowing the lawn AND picking up dog doo too, man, I acted like he was a effing hero because I consider the latter “my” chore even though it’s never been officially assigned to me. I was scratching my head like, WTF is he talking about?
And then I connected this with my growing suspicion of narcissism. Oh wait. He didn’t ACTUALLY want “a simple thank you.” That was just him trying to subtly blame shift, making me sound ungrateful. What he ACTUALLY wanted was for me to kiss his ass and fawn over him. To act like I was on cloud nine whenever I was graced with his presence. Oh, now I get it. And NO thank you. Peace out!
Funny you say this, mine told me I said it too much, now I never say it cause I really dont.mean it
I vacuumed and cleaned our 680′ condo too much! And I prepared dinner too late. Mind you I get home from dialysis at 4pm and need to rest a few hours. I also bought the wrong pickles. I spent too much time grocery shopping, and worked too much on my laptop, which let to us not communicating which led to his affair because we didn’t talk. Also he started shaving his balls and did 12 hour happy hours… about a year before d-day. Big red flags. He still has never given me closure and told me trickle truths. Im at the point I don’t care anymore. The irony is, he blamed me for everything, while he had his ho-worker affair. I confronted ho-worker by instant message. She of course wasn’t woman enough to reply to me. (I figured anyway) but I got blamed for sending dickface penis-nose I’M’s telling her she can have him now, he is all yours, thanks for helping me see his true character;) And wear earplugs at night because he snores. And sorry he is a 2 pump chump but I figured you already knew that. Also real women don’t fuck other Womens boyfriends, they call them up and report that their bf is chasing them. Real women have each others backs. Not go to France with their serious live in BF while she is on dialysis. He asked me why I sent her SOOOO many I”M’s (only 4), I said bc the bitch had it coming and I am not a fun person to cheat on. I ALWAYS call out the other woman if I get lied too and cheated on. She knew me and knew better. Dumb ugly cunt. You can have her. She looks like a man. anyway.
My hair was “unstructured” aka curly, I never wear pink. I folded t-shirts and underwear incorrectly. The list is endless.
Ugh I can relate to the clothing thing.
Ex-husband said I needed to start wearing dresses…it was winter ????
I couldn’t wear attractive clothing or pretty shoes.
I couldn’t speak to the mailman if I happened to be at the door when the mail arrived.
When we separated, I bought some red leather sling-back sandals and a nifty dress.
Humph–
Oh I bet you looked killer! Now I want some red pumps haha
Soldiering On, holy shit have I got a story for you about SHOES…
So this was the first big argument I had with my abuser. It was about some damn shoes.
I have these goth heels with little bats on the buckles. I love these shoes. They are really tall and kinda hard to walk in, so I only bust them out occasionally when I’m feeling like I wanna wear something sassy on my feet, or I know when I will have the opportunity to sit. Last year I dressed as a vampire for Halloween and wore them.
Anyway, one day we’re headed to work. At the time I worked in a small shop, so I decided I wanted to wear my bat-buckle heels. I put on a pair of sandals for the bus, and my boyfriend put the heels in his backpack. I forgot to get the heels from him before I went in to work. I texted him and said I’d forgotten them. He said yeah, he noticed, he’d just bring them home later. I said I’ll come get them after I’m off, I’d like to walk around a bit while wearing them since I didn’t get to at work.
This, apparently, was an absolute crime against humanity. Because he replied with “WHO do you need to look that good for???” I thought he was kidding. I said “Me? I want to. I feel good in them.”
Thus began the argument. Apparently I can’t possibly just want to look good for myself, is him telling me I’m beautiful NOT GOOD ENOUGH???? Women only wear things like that when they want attention from other guys, these aren’t walking around shoes, if I’m willing to go out in these “slut shoes” (as he called them) when he’s not with me, then who’s attention am I looking for?
When I told him to stop slut shaming me, because that’s what that was, he told me it’s not slut shaming, but literally if the “shoe fits” and then he went on (and on and on and on…) about this Dave Chapelle sketch where he says if women don’t want to be called sluts, don’t dress like one, if you wore a police outfit you’d get mistaken for being a cop, so what’s the difference? (He also had to throw in that his ex Holly NEVER wore shoes like THESE…)
And when he came home, he didn’t stop. He kept going, holding the shoes in my face, pointing to how tall they were, asking me if all I was going to do was walk around in them, then why didn’t I just wear them on the bus instead of my sandals? SEE! That PROVES IT! AND didn’t I know? It’s just WEIRD to need to wear “whore shoes” (went from slut to whore shoes) to feel good about myself. Do I need to be a whore to feel good? Everyone in his shop thinks that’s weird, he asked them all, and they ALL agree! So I’m in the wrong and I should apologize. Also, would I let a child wear these? No? Why not? Because I know they’re slutty? If I’m not okay with a little girl wearing them then shut the fuck up about slut shaming.
So basically that’s where the standard that I cannot wear clothes that I would not also be okay with a child wearing, Dave Chapelle apparently knows more about how women should dress than …women, I couldn’t wear something to feel good about myself because HE should be the only reassurance I need, and wearing heels in public without him with me meant I was trying to pick up someone to cheat with.
…Interesting…considering he was the one who cheated…<_<…ask me about the time he didn't come home until 6 am and screamed at me for being concerned.
Yup, you cannot win. My Ex LOVED it when I wore what I call ‘fuck me pumps’, and was pissed that I didn’t wear them all the time. You know, when wrangling toddlers, taking the subway to work, spending the day on my feet at work, taking kids to the park, attending family functions. Oh, those short skirts should have been part of the every day wardrobe too …
(Took me a long time after our separation to finally realize he LOVED it when other men looked at me lustfully, as long as I didn’t notice or respond in any way. He was full of envy, and wanted other men to envy him.)
Whatever we do, we are in the wrong. I am 100% sure that if I had the kind of life and stamina it takes to wear fuck-me pumps all day every day, he would have criticized that instead.
PS, I am envious now … of your bat-buckle shoes!
Me too, and I’d really like to buy some kids ass bat buckle shoes. But mine would have to be comfortable to walk in. I draw the line at uncomfortable shoes.
I mean kick ass! Sorry! Autocorrect.
I don’t think the bat shoes are available anymore, but the company is Pleasers and they were part of their “Funtasma” line. Those are their more costumy styles for Halloween. I couldn’t find the bat buckles on their site but they have some cool skeleton shoes that have feet bones on them. Those come in heels and flats.
Dear Chump Lady, there was this one time, he was very angry that I did not do the mending, he was forced to throw a stack of folded laundry in my face and start screaming about how irresponsible and lazy I was. When I demonstrated that the mending was done. He told me it didn’t matter and refused to apologize for throwing laundry in my face. He thought I didn’t do the mending, he was wrong. Of all the horrendous sins against marriage, all he had was a perceived lack of timely mending. I truly am a horrible person.
Then there was my inability to magically deduce where I should park my car. I asked to have an assigned parking spot to eliminate his daily fury at my inability to park properly. He refused to tell me how I could park the car to please him. So daily he would come home and scream about where I parked my car. Where it should have been parked was a constantly changing location. The poor man was married to a poor parker. I deliberately parked in a manner to make his life unbearable. I am a terrible person.
I was too clean. I was constantly putting things away where he couldn’t find them. How dare I remove his shit stained drawers from the dining room floor? What madness forced me to hide his tools in the garage and not leave them on the kitchen counter? Why wouldn’t I save the envelope the bills came in? My cleanliness was his cross, his burden. The poor man lived in a tidy hell of my making. What an awful wife I was!
Then perhaps my greatest sin against him was my bitterness. He needed me to not be so bitter. Why? Why couldn’t I be a little more cheery about his infidelities? My bitterness was just too much for him. He brought this bitterness up to the therapist and was shocked that she told him I was entitled to be bitter. He stated loudly, “I need Thirtythreeyearsachump to stop being bitter.” I was bitter, it was a downer for him.
Chump Lady, as you see I didn’t meet his needs. But it turns out a Howorker AND a decades younger hood rat could take up where I had failed. So I left him to their tender whorish mercies. Surely two whores could meet his needs where I had failed? I take a perverse pride in the fact that it took two whores to replace me. Enjoy, bitches!!!
I now delight in parking where the hell ever I want too. I have very little mending to do. Strangely, I am not bitter.
Thirtythreeyearsachump –
I delighted in your stories. You are quite the writer! A toast to your bad parking and bitterness. ????
“the tidy hell of my making”…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA and HA
Oh, the horror! How could you? 🙂
Did make bed correctly
Didnt get ketchup at drive thru- ketchup at house “isnt the same”
Never, ever drove correctly
Ooo… I got told I folded laundry incorrectly (while doing probably 80% of the laundry and losing 100% of the closet space, so ALL my clothes needed to be folded but only about 1/3 of hers). Also I was a bad driver. I couldn’t park the car well. I didn’t know how to make appointments. I couldn’t cook. I……
I faded all of his clothes in the dryer. The crazy part is I am very particular about laundry – I sort meticulously, wash per tag instructions and only partially dry before putting the clothes on hangars – it is my system. Because of all of the care I put into it I believe he felt it was his duty to make me feel inadequate.
So different. It’s insane how different everyone’s households run.
I did all the laundry, ironing, sewing, etc. His clothes got all the closet space while mine were in plastic tubs. . . I know, wtf was I thinking?!?!
In my house, I was told “you don’t do the laundry”, the MACHINE does it. I did 100% of laundry (for he and two sons) and all appeared magically, clean and folded in the drawers. I was also told that he had to walk too far to the hamper!
My hair was “poufy”. Yeah, he knew that when he married me.
Ooh, I love that phrase! Unstructured hair! I have unstructured hair too! It sounds so avant garde!
I folded underwear incorrectly and I hung his shirts wrong.
I didn’t pair up his clean socks (before we even lived together he left his laundry at mine, looking back I was such a doormat) and he flipped out massively at me because “you get home from work at 5!” “Actually I don’t it’s nearer half-“ “YOU GET HOME FROM WORK AT 5!!!” Like the time I do or do not arrive home means I had more free time to spend pairing up his clean socks?
My standards were too high. I made everyone uncomfortable, feeling they had to do the right thing.
Mad hatter thinking.
I’m so glad someone else made people feel ‘uncomfortable’. I thought it was just me! I made people feel ‘very, very uncomfortable’ so perhaps that’s worse! I also failed to heat up baked beans properly. I had to be supervised because I followed the instructions on the tin, and so didn’t boil them! I have many other faults. Too long a list to mention.
And what is it with the ‘very, very’. Everything I did wrong was ‘very, very’ wrong. It was like having a conversation with Boris Johnson (Brit here).
trump does the same thing. Everything is ‘very, very’. As in, I have been treated very, very unfairly. lol
???? Rumblekitty, I didn’t want to be rude about another country’s leader. Ours is bad enough.
I was told by my ex that no one limed me not even my daughter.
Liked me. Not limed me.
Yup. No one liked me, either, Cuzchump.
Probably because I made people very, very uncomfortable…????
Sometimes it is a relief to live so far away from the rest of the world here in Kiwiland.
I honestly felt like I was the only one. After social events (only during the time I now know he was having an affair), my ex-H used to tell me I wasn’t funny and I should stop trying to make jokes and embarrass him in front of all of “his” friends. He would also tell me I made people uncomfortable if I spoke about my work (in the non profit sector – most of our friends were in business/for-profit companies). It got to the point I was anxious to attend anything because all these friends I had thought were close for years apparently didn’t like having me around!
Dang. This struck a chord. What I got when I made a joke was, “That’s not cute. It was never cute.” It worked. I stopped joking with or around him.
Yes, I got that too. I apparently made everyone miserable with my unreasonable demands that we both pitch in to pay our bills on time (we had plenty of money), keep house, and establish boundaries for our kids (homework, junk food, bed times, etc.). Utterly confusing since we discussed these things and reached a consensus on them, only to find out later I was crazy for relying on what she said.
I am convinced that many cheaters reach false consensus on domestic issues only to later claim they were abusive, so they can be used to justify cheating.
Since he had been a marine, we reached a “consensus” whereby we were going to have a weekly “clean up” day, just like they did at the marine house. I hadn’t realized it only applied to me though – he’d sit there passed out drunk on the sofa or pranging away murdering his guitar while I tried to shop, cook, clean and take care of 2 kids – as well as work full-time!
No one should be bullied into a fake consensus (I think this happens with many “open marriages”), but also no one should agree to consensus without the intention of doing what they say (what I was trying to describe). Adults seem to get this, but not cheaters. Your husband sounds like a lazy jerk who didn’t want to carry his own rucksack.
“… didn’t want to carry his own rucksack.” I love it. ????
This exactly Nomar. Its all justification for poor behavior.
I got a similar objection (during the discard phase of course – I never heard this during 17 years of marriage) that my standards were too high and I made her feel bad about herself. My standards are not high: minimize screen time for the kids, everyone sits down to dinner, don’t buy stuff you don’t need – that just about covers it. And it’s not like I was imposing these on my XW: I did all the cooking, child care, house maintenance, bill paying, etc. so these were standards I was holding myself to much more than her.
In the end, I also was accused of abuse (financial, and implied physical) because I did so much for her (enabling her high-powered career) that she didn’t know the day-to-day workings of our household.
The abusive husband narrative is just too enticing for them to resist. It instantly produces a community of supporters and justifies adultery as a means of escape. The saddest part, in a way, is that her lies raise doubts about all the actual instances of domestic abuse (many of them written about on this site). My XW calls herself a feminist, but I think that her lying about this kind of thing seriously risks undermining the progress that’s been made towards believing and helping victims of domestic violence.
Involuntary, I hear what you’re saying and I absolutely hate what they do us. I’m a woman and a feminist – and I had the shit beat out of me on a regular basis. So yeah I get this. But I still feel so much for those men who have this thrown at them when it’s so not true. I’m sorry for you – and I guess I’m sorry for me.
Thank you for chiming in. It was easy for my cheating ex-wife to convince her coworkers that was was a jerk lawyer husband because it’s a common stereotype. After the truth came out they apologized To me for enabling her For so many years and ignoring evidence (My actions whenever they were around me) that I was not the monster she portrayed me to be. This community-wide gaslighting is nothing compared to the physical abuse that so many women endure, but it still hurts like hell. And I appreciate feeling heard in discussions like this.
Not a feminist because I just couldn’t buy the whole political platform.
She’s sounded like her words and actions didn’t match a chump from what you described. Perhaps her “friends” figured that part out after awhile. Hope for your sake they’re not flying monkeys. Male chumps have extra hurdles and burdens from society. I’m sorry she sucks.
Nomar– what you say is so true. The minority of prevaricators tar actual victims and muck up progress.
I was raised by feminist parents and never wanted to believe that fakers existed. But I’ve seen this happen more than once. The prevaricator profile (I’m thinking of three specific people) is a dead ringer for she-cheaters come to think of it. Very narc-y.
Here’s the irony: the enticing abuser narrative only whips up a community of support in individual situations when it’s fabricated.
I’m not talking about publicized cases that trigger movements but obscure, regular people stuff. Workplace harassment, assault, etc.
I don’t know why this is but I imagine the liars are more pleasing as they gently wipe that single tear away and tell their tale of woe in dulcet tones or something.
Meanwhile the actual victims are sobbing alone in the restroom fearing for jobs and reps and hesitant to tell anyone. When they try to tell what happened they’re just not cinematic enough. Too wild-eyed and apoplectic to inspire communal sympathy, either shaking like chihuahuas or coming off completely numb, flat and spooky.
Go figure.
I agree with this. Too many times the real abuse victim minimises what has happened to them and then deflects attention away from it. They don’t want to rock the boat, make things worse- or they are just so scared that they will not be believed or that they really are as horrible as the abuser tells them. So they cry in the restroom, they never mention it or brush aside questions from well-meaning people who are picking up abuse vibes.
And it is so hard to break out of that mould. I still don’t like to vocalise that I was a victim of abuse – and I still feel that I am ‘over-reacting’ in calling it abuse despite the fact that the most obvious sign of it was that MONTHS AFTER I had broken up with him, he chased me down and hit me with his car before throwing me in the back and holding me against my will for over 48 hours with a number of those hours spent in his bedroom. *sigh*
And I thought I was super lucky to then end up meeting and falling in love with the cheating exhole afterwards! LOL
And my greatest sin in the cheating exhole’s eyes was that I didn’t believe him when he told me that he wasn’t cheating on me. Apparently, I should have continued to be a gormless idiot and believe whatever he said after I was given proof of his cheating.
This is a slightly different take … but still related, because it shows that certain feminists don’t think about their life choices and how they may affect other women…
After hearing my ex’s 30-year-old fiancé is a feminist, and is going back to med school (with my ex’s money) to help women, I decided I had to point out the irony to her. I left her a voicemail stating that, maybe before she claims her membership in the feminist movement, she should do some research on how divorce hurts women financially, and think about her role in my divorce. I explained that I likely won’t be able to retire for quite a while now because she enticed my husband of 24 years to run off into the sunset with her. I told her that I was with him while he built his career from nothing and now she’ll benefit from my years of support of him. Meanwhile my retirement and income took a giant hit. The next day, my ex threatened a protective order against me if I ever contacted his fiancé again. Think I might have touched a nerve…
Dear Duped–
How dare you break through her elaborate “reduction of self punishment” borderline system of denial. Apparently her eau de social justice warrior spray couldn’t cover up the tell-tale mate poacher stink.
Now you can get a t-shirt saying you’ve had an encounter with a “sex-positive third wave feminist.”
No doubt she cheered over the Nike sponsored “pink pussy hat” portion of the last big women’s march- the one that infamously marginalized women of color. And never mind that impoverished women producing Nike gear in third world garment factories were being routinely raped and harassed on the job for ages and paid slave wages. I could go down the list of sponsors’ ironic abuses but it would get too long.
In short, it’s corporate entryism. Unfortunately this new commercialized narc-y bastardization of feminism sells well with many up-talking idiots. They shoot each other while shooting themselves in the foot.
I’m behind the #MeToo movement but not the #MeMeMe movement.
Hell of a Chump,
LOVE! Every word you said, spot on!!!
Thank you!!
“ I was crazy for relying on what he /she said”
On all fronts 100%
But my part of the deal was expected.
Monogamy, love, care, kids etc
He told me if I trimmed back his straggly fruit trees, he would divorce me.
This is a good one. I would pay to see that on a divorce decree. “She pruned my trees”. There are so many snarky comments in my head, I don’t even know where to start!
just wow
Shelly,
I would have said, “I don’t want to touch your “straggly fruit trees”! I wouldn’t want to catch something!
I’m not sure how anyone can beat being chased by a pickle.
I only have the same boring examples of not folding his underwear or stacking the dishes correctly. When they are looking for reasons to hate and blame, they will grasp at anything.
Not sure I can ever look at a pickle the same way!
Yes, pickles should sue for defamation!
It was my fault each time at the end of the season that the Boston Red Sox didn’t make it into the World Series. It got to the point where I stopped watching the games with him in order to avoid an argument. Stupid idiot!
How could it possibly be your fault? Did he ever explain?
Apparently every time I watched his favourite team play (on television), they would lose. I was banned from watching. My telepathic powers thousands of kilometres from the game were incredible!!
Chumpful– we bow down before you oh god-like being.
Would you contract out those telepathic powers? Like, you know, make all the pedophiles in the world turn themselves in en masse or make would be drunk drivers lose their car keys?
I had a stillborn, which he said caused him to do drugs with prostitutes.
Shame about the sti(s).
Incidentally I saw the prostitute, one of them on the bus, this morning she was wearing a face mask, shame she cared more about her face than her genitals.
She kept on turning around and looking at me. She thought my ex was wonderful, she had to tell him that didn’t she, being paid and all that.
I once got blamed for my ex’s injury to his hand– which he used to punch a wall when he got mad at me because I didn’t want to join his family for dinner that night.
My lovely ex told me that he cheated(never admitted to cheating. They were just friends). Because I was no fun. I just did not give him enough attention and affection. He felt unloved. I did not want to go play pool and go to bars. He felt lonely. She was fun. She did not complain. She was happy all the time. And she was a nice person.
I felt lonely and unloved for most of my marriage. But, I did not decide it was a good idea to cheat with his cousin. Not once did he say he cheated because he wanted to.
Skankboy, said “it just happened.” Poor thing not being able to control his dick.” I would be horrified if I had no control over my vajaja!
So I’m not the only one that got cheated on with just a friend. I feel better now
You’re definitely not the only one.
I was constantly told, “she’s just my fishing buddy”, “she’s just a friend” “she’s your friend too”, “I think of her like a daughter”. (the rat faced whore is almost 30 years his junior).
I can’t beat the pickle story, but there were so many tiny things he threw tantrums about it’s hard to pick just one, and although I remember the rages, I can’t always remember what triggered it.
But there was the time Christmas Dinner wasn’t ready when he thought it should have been, and he went into a screaming tantrum: ” I demand and *expect* that Christmas day should be perfect!!”
And the time he went into another screaming rage because he found the fly spray in the same cupboard as the tinned goods – apparently I was trying to poison him…
And there was the time I made egg and chips for his tea; he went into a screaming tantrum about that, because it was apparently no meal for a man who was working so hard, I was a lazy cunt, then he threw the plate on the floor.
chumpnomore6, I’m responsible for a similar atrocity,
I made Sloppy Joes for dinner.
Other faults and built up resentments on his list, I didn’t compliment him on his biceps. I didn’t run up to the front door to greet him when he came home. I didn’t fix pasta twice a week, and I know he likes pasta. I parked my car too close to the house.
These are only a few, the list is long.
Sloppy Joe’s!!! How dare you! ????
The time I asked him to go to the hospital with me, when I had a breast cancer scare. He went into a screaming rage because he would have to take time off work. He smashed his dinner plate on the table, then swept the mess onto the floor.
Dear God, when I look back, what the fuck was I thinking!!?? ????????
I rescheduled my hysterectomy surgery, I didn’t think it would be a problem but apparently it was, he became enraged, screaming and stomping around the house like a mad man.
Later, I had a pre op appointment with the Dr. who would be doing the surgery and I told him my husband was upset that I changed my last surgery date.
Dr. paused for a moment, then looked me in the eyes and said if you want to change your appointment for surgery, change it, that’s your decision, he said I don’t care if it’s the morning of your surgery. We can reschedule. It’s your surgery not your husbands.
Should have been a red flag moment but no, being a super Chump, continued to walk on egg shells.
Looking back, what was I thinking? why didn’t I tell ex to fuck off !!??
I made hot dogs.
Oh! He told me I boiled water the wrong way. WTF?
My XW actually DID boil the water the wrong way. One day I had to work late and I asked her to put on a pot of water for pasta so I could quickly make dinner for the kids when I got home. When I arrived, the water had boiled over and put out the fire, so the house was filling with gas. Needless to say I didn’t ask her to do anything in the kitchen again.
Oh, and XW is Italian, too.
Ooh, I got the stamped with the Failed Door Greeter label, too.
Wonder if I would’ve accepted the job in the first place if “human Lassie, 24/7” was in the job description…
At first, I didn’t make pasta enough…then he decided to become gluten free, so, no pasta at all!
What is it about the GF diet?Like a supportive spouse I purged the pantry of all gluten products. I made GF meals and homemade breads. I shopped niche stores that specialized in gluten free foods. Mine was on and off the GF diet a few times. No notifications on when he ditched the diet the first time mind you. I had to figure it out myself by noticing the increase in nonGF foods.
Then he announced we were back on the diet again because it caused him to get debilitating migraines. He would lay around complaining for hours about them. But he didn’t embrace the migraine diet. He kept drinking alcohol and caffeine, eating other known trigger foods just avoided GLUTEN. The second time I didn’t purge the pantry. I wasn’t buying the special needs when he just dismissed he diet on his own before. Just another sham.
PS. I have migraines and on a migraine diet. It does work to decrease the symptoms as does the prescription medicines I take daily.
If he hates eggs and chips so much then he can be a big man and make his own damn dinner…
This is what I keep thinking when I read all the “didn’t fold clothes properly” stories! “Welp, here you go asswipe, if you don’t like how I do it, you’re welcome to do it yourself.”
One of my best friends used to be dating (emphasis on “used to”) a guy that I could. Not. Stand. I told her as much. She knew I didn’t like him, and he was garbage, but she had to come to that conclusion herself. She finally did, thank god, and she’s much happier now, but this reminds me of one of the things he did that made me say he sucks.
So she was still in grad school at the time, and was in class/lab very late. She didn’t get home to her apartment until around 11 pm. At which time he shows up to see her. And he’s hungry so he start giving her shit for not having had dinner ready for him. …At 11 o’ clock at night. At HER apartment.
That became an argument because she was like…s’cuse the fuck out of me but you didn’t feed your damn self???? His argument was her apartment was messy so she’s clearly not doing what she’s supposed to do anyway so therefore it’s still her fault because she’s just not a responsible person.
…It’s been over a year since she dumped him and she has been SO much happier since.
Regarding dinner, thirty six years, dinner on the table at 5:30… all while working full time and raising two boys. Always had Sunday dinner also! He “retired” (at age 58) two years before D-day. I once asked, “why can’t I have dinner ready when I arrive home”? His response, “don’t come home”!
Cuzchump, my STBX also said he needed more affection and sex. (So did I!!) he called himself a “heavy drinker” refused to admit it odd to get drunk minimum three times a week. I wasn’t allowed to complain, I was told “not to make him pay for the sins of my mother”, my amazing mum who I adored was also an alcoholic (would binge for a week then not drink for 10-12 weeks). Living with my narcissistic alcoholic husband was never going to lead to a loving Normal sex life, when everything else was less than normal!! He never got the notion of cause and effect! Unfortunately we only ever relate to our perspective of the situation, my reality will never be experienced by him. He probably was feeling disconnected and desperate for “love” and sex, but never asked himself why two people who genuinely loved each other for two decades ended up with a gulf of distance between them (I’d fled to the attic room 18 months before I discovered his 2 year affair and worked late to avoid the gut wrenching disappointment of walking in the front door to see a drunk at the kitchen table smiling like an idiot), he just doesn’t get it, my patience ran out especially as he started physically abusing my youngest son. He’d created a toxic atmosphere in our home over the last five years. Yet he keeps referring to “all the hurt I’ve caused him”. He was pretending to be a divorcee to his girlfriend while living a lie with his family for two years. I was tippy toeing around to avoid setting off an incendiary device!! What hurt! He’s utterly delusional. Now he’s living alone (broke) and keeps calling to say how sad he is. He valued all the wrong things, fast life and fun (including heavy drinking, porn and sex). I think the pandemic has taught him that what he valued over family, kids, a loyal hard working, kind and loving life partner who stood by him and supported him financially for ever, might have been a mistake. They value the wrong things. Who wants to spend more of our lives with such screwed up people who wear a mask pretending to be normal!
Yep same here. His ho-worker had all day to fool around and be fun because she had her kids in day care (she works to get away and shop and flirt and go to lunch apparently) and I was home doing laundry and dishes and all the indoor and out door work including raising our six children, and wasn’t “fun” enough. I didn’t greet him every day with a huge stupid smile and look at him adoringly like he said she did. I sometimes called to discuss issues with the kids and that “ruined his day when he just wanted to be in a good mood.” I also apparently didn’t make eggs, grilled sandwiches, or etc the right way. Funny enough when they were outed I bought all this shit and tried so hard to be what he wanted for two years and hell he kept on cheating and lying so hmmm… in the end he said I never loved him and God sent him someone that did and he couldn’t let her go but he wanted more time to date and decide because he wasn’t “ sure” yet he didn’t want me. I filed and am so done. Good luck with brainless happy dipshit with the 3 attention lacking kids.
My ex gave me the classic you’re so-controlling-you-never-ask-me spiel. Tried to make me his mommy, never wanted to make any adult decisions about anything, then would get kissed at me ten years later for the decisions I had to make alone.
I definitely get the Mommy the in ng! My xh told our Mareiage Counselor Minister that I treated him like a child sometimes. Minister hit the nail on the head when his reply was, “You force her into the parent role by your behavior. You demand she take care of you like a mother would.” So basically, I had to be the responsible one or everything would turn to shit. He expected me to do all the cleaning & cooking & to wait on him, even when I worked more hours then him. Then he used this against me as a reason he cheated. Minister caught onto that way before I did.
Mine was like a child also. It took until the kids were in their teens for me to realize it though. Once they hit 14-ish they were indisputably more mature than him. And then it hit me like a ton of brinks.
*bricks
I got the exact same crap. I had to do all the adulting because he was either incapable or didn’t want to, but was then called controlling. Srsly? If I didn’t handle all this stuff that you can’t/won’t/refuse to, then we’d be living in a charmin box under the freeway, but mmkay, I’m controlling!
Yes, yes yes! to the mother thing. He wouldn’t make a decision, so I would. That made me “controlling”. This guy is so weak that he’s incapable of a firm yes or no on anything. Even when he asked me to make a decision it was still all wrong and all my fault.
This is all coming back to me now.
Also he didn’t want to have sex because I nagged him too much. And “who wants to have sex with their mom?”
Gross. Unfortunately, his actual mother died. He hasn’t dealt with it so I get the brunt of the rage against her. Then his father died and he went off the rails completely. That’s when I left.
OH WOW, Differently Chumped! I literally had a light bulb moment. My STBXH always answered with either “I’ll think about it” or “maybe.” Then, when I had to make a decision, I was considered the bossy, control-freak. The part that was weird, was I always saw him as the controlling person in the relationship. It’s because it was passive-aggressive. Thanks for the clarity!
I was always blamed for anything the dog did. Dog had an accident, “YOUR DOG did……..!!!!!”
and I always apologized.
His main reasoning was that he felt pressure because I asked him to clean up after himself! I guess asking to put his dishes in the sink was too stressful? Once he screamed at me and said the reason he kept his hair cut short was because he would pull it out of his head because I made him so miserable (funny, you’ve been wearing your hair short your whole life…).
I was not allowed to say “No, I think…” or “Yes, but…”. Saying that was too controlling and I was silencing my ex’s opinion. I was only allowed to respond with “Yes, and…” so my views could only be built with the express support of their’s.
Red-breasted songbird, I wasn’t allowed to say “okay.” I still don’t know why, but I guess because I didn’t want to argue? So weird they try to control even what we say.
I think it because they just wanted to move the conversation towards the path of justification they chose. To be the victim in different ways.
I got pulled up for the verbal tics of saying ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I’m afraid’ or ‘to be fair’ at the beginning of a sentence. I’m a senior lawyer and articulate. I came to realise that I had become so scared of voicing an opinion that I developed the tics to protect myself.
I had read somewhere (probably in some save your marriage article) that you should say, “It makes me feel bad when you…” or “It hurts me when you…” so that your spouse doesnt feel attacked. After the second time I said that my xh said, “EVERYTHING hurts you and makes you feel bad!” After that of I ever even accidentally said “I feel…” he would never at me with those snake eyes, huff and just walk away before I could finish. So essentially, I was no longer allowed to voice when anything he did or said hurt me. Most of the marital advice I read to try caused the opposite reaction from him.
*sneer at me not never
I couldn’t say “crap,” as an noun or an expletive. If I did I was called low-class. He still tells my kids that so of course they say it regularly at home.
Sunrise,
One time, in anger, I said “shit.” he called me white trash, and trailer trash.
Sunrise & Brit,
Next time you say shit or crap & he says you’re low class/trailer trash for saying it reply with, “Oh, you’re so right -.FUCK! I’ll try not to ever say crap/shit again!’ Lmao
I seriously thought that the first words my son would say would be “GoddamitMotherFuckItAllToHell”.
Yet if I said “Damn” in front of the kid I was a terrible example for our child and should be ashamed of my potty mouth.
I was told that it wasn’t okay to say “Crud!” That was considered very bad manners. While he dropped F-bombs and cussed people out on the phone in front of our young children. He always claimed that his family had excellent manners. One of nephew’s first words was “shit.” That’s a fun one to add to any baby book!
I can’t compete with the pickle but if only I could have become him all would have been well with the marriage allegedly. Let’s just think about that. Yuk.
I was too honest. I said no to sex once in a while. I “nagged” him to stop f#cking strange and stop spending our life savings on himself.
I initiated sex, “but only when YOU are in the mood!” I guess I was supposed to initiate when I used my mind-reading super power to figure out HE was in the mood. Or maybe I was supposed to initiate when I WASN’T in the mood, just because having sex while not wanting it is the ultimate show of true love?
This is classic crazy. He is off the chain.
Same. He would say I never initiated sex. And when I did, he would reject me. It always had to be when he wanted it. Then he would say in don’t know how to initiate. Then he would blame sexomnia (sleep sex) on me. The last time I was with him, he forced himself on me. I gave in after trying to stop him. Before the affair, he was the gentlest nicest man in bed. So confusing.
Your comment really made me think. I recognize those patterns! I didn’t realize it but that’s what was happening to me as well. It’s amazing what we learn from the stories of others.
He rejected me ALL THE TIME. Often in painful and humiliating ways. And it was always my fault that he didn’t want to have sex. His ED was my fault, too. He’d complain he didn’t know how to initiate. (Yeah, it’s called going out on a limb, buddy, which you would never ever do.)
I can’t remember one single time where he was vulnerable in our marriage. And I had his babies! Talk about vulnerability!
I often wonder what childbirth would have been like with a caring, emotionally functional husband.
ED was my issue – I wasn’t attractive enough.
I found viagra ( we haven’t had sex for weeks) with few pills missing
“ that wasn’t my damn business, that was between him and his doctor”
But doc didn’t prescribed them…. they were bought online?!?????
Well, not my business
But few were missing?!?????????
Yes, he wanted to take them to have sex with me but changed his mind
Whores. – he needed the pills to last with hookers.
Now, I know that his fucked up sex life was 100% on him- rejecting me, humiliating me ( by saying that my often Infections were turning him on, while my infections were caused by his unprotected sex with prostitutes)
I’m free.
I feel attractive.
I take my feminine side back.
Mine loved this tactic. If I tried to give/get a kiss and a cuddle I was “soliciting affection” and rejected. (With the unspoken connotation of whore-like behavior) So after a while of this behavior I no longer felt my advances were welcome, so I stopped. Then I got “you never initiate sex with me.”
He loved to make me crazy through withholding attention, silent treatment, treat me like a person he could barely tolerate to be around. Then he’d ambush me after I had gone to bed, wake me up and want sex! If I refused, I was the withholding bitch he claimed me to be.
Totally crazy making!
You know in all our marriage I just thought we had been unfortunate in that he seemed to be amorous when I was not and that he was stressed or in well when I was in the mood. I’m sitting here stunned that I never before considered how unlikely it was for us to be THAT unlucky. I mean 13 years worth of coincidence? How did I not see this was another manipulation? I can’t tell you how often I agonized over this “problem”. I am feeling very stupid at this moment
You’re not stupid. Wasband used sex to manipulate, control and punish me.
It hurt so badly when I realized he used sex as a weapon. To me, sex is a precious thing that brings two people together in ways nothing else can.
Our minister flat-out called him out on that. Looked right at him and said, “Withholding is infidelity. How do you feel about leaving her open to temptation like that?”
God bless my minister for his support and straight talk. Of course, the talk did no good for Wasband. He’s never going to change. But it spoke VOLUMES to me. So much support shown in one question.
Wow, i will never not be astonished by how predictable their behavior is! My stbx followed the same psycho game plan to the step. During the big discovery/discard he followed up with this is all your fault! You made me do it, because you’re a frigid bitch????
Ooooh, yeah, the old head game of;
– you should be enthusiastically available for sex whenever I want it
– you should not initiate sex yourself, in any direct way, although wearing something sexy is good
– but if it becomes obvious you’d like to have sex or expect to have sex (like after a date night when you dressed up etc or during a much anticipated vacation), despite no direct approach, I will ignore you or fight with you instead
– if you try to initiate sex, I will lie there like a dead fish until you give up and slink away in humiliation
– when you decide you’re DONE initiating, the fact you never initiate will become one of the reasons I was ‘so unhappy I had to cheat’ – despite my never mentioning it before that.
– you are required to find ways to add zing to our sex life, but I will never lift a finger in that direction
– if one of those zing-adding suggestions is something you would like to try, but I haven’t really thought about before, it will never happen
– when you get fed up with my laziness/selfishness in bed and don’t make efforts anymore, that will also become a reason I ‘had to cheat’.
My Ex added in the ‘zero appreciation for the fact my wife LOVES sex and we have a very active sex life’.
They are manipulative selfish fucks, and that applies everywhere. What always appalls me is how long it took to figure that out, and how much crap I put up with.
Yes.
He wanted sex when I was in bed with the flu, high temperature, felt really ill. I said no, I feel too ill.
He said he felt rejected, and if I really loved him it wouldn’t matter if I was ill. ????????
I was too affectionate in public. I was not affectionate enough. I bought the Tylenol instead of Advil. I made pork chops the day he got the results of his cholesterol test and it was high (never mind he didn’t tell me) – he actually accused me of trying to kill him that day.
Pork chops are a deadly weapon!?! Who knew?
Hahahaha!
Ugh, my name is Differently Chumped. Fat fingers here.
Shame they didn’t have an extra thick layer of fat on those chops hey Chumperella.
Lmao. Good one Dudders! ????????
Ex accused me of trying to kill him by spraying air freshener.
It wasn’t often, I’d wait until he was in another room, if he’d walked into the room and noticed
the fragrance of air freshener he’d become enraged accusing me of trying to kill him.
Judging by his behavior you’d think I had sprayed cyanide directly in his face.
Hmmm, sounds like you should have fed him bacon friend in butter, with hollandaise sauce.
I love a theme week.
I slowed down to not hit a man and his dog on the curb (dog was pooping) when parking to drop our son off at daycare – before dropping ex-DH off at work. I was wrong to slow down.
I got kicked out of the car in 90F heat while eight months pregnant for exclaiming “watch it” when he sped up towards pedestrian who had the gall to jaywalk in front of him.
Oh my goodness, me too! The issue of driving could be a whole other post. I am sure we all have stories.
Once he missed a stop sign and almost ran my children and I head first into a deep ditch. My therapist suggested maybe he was uncomfortable with what we were discussing and he wanted to end the conversation. I think she was right. What a dangerous coward asshole.
Differently Chumped, almost running you all head first into a ditch sounds like he wanted to end more than the conversation.
Scary..
Ex-husband was livid I wouldn’t tell him where I lived after I moved out.
He said he would have the cops track me down to find me and he’d eventually have my address so I might as well stop being difficult and just tell him myself where I was living.
His obsession with trying to find me was strange to me. He even tried by saying he’d bring me groceries to my new place the day after I moved out.
It’s like he couldn’t connect our divorce with no longer having access to me.
My ex was furious after I bought him out of the house and changed the locks. He felt he should have a key “in case something happens to you”! I told him the only bad thing that ever happened to me was him!
LOL!
I don’t get why they want the access to us? It literally makes ZERO sense.
Having my own place and him not knowing where I was, enraged him. I mean the man wouldn’t come home after work when we were married and he was messing around, yet he wanted to know where I was all the sudden? weirdo!
Yes. Mine was mad when he didn’t know where I lived. It was funny though, he’s ask all these seemingly unrelated questions but it was so obvious he was digging for info. I saw right through it. What a dumbass. The only ones they are fooling are themselves!
Must be a common thing with cheaters. I find it incredibly odd they wanna keep tabs on us.
A) We belong to them, and even after they’ve discarded us or we have gotten away from them, we still belong to them
B) at some point Cheater will probably want to circle back to us, at least for a few kibbles. Harder if they don’t know where we are.
As my at-the-time 12 year old daughter said about how her cheater father treated her and her brother;
‘He thinks we’re toys he can just leave lying on the floor when he’s tired of playing with us. Then a few days or weeks later when he wants to play with us again, he can just pick us up and carry on. And we should be fine with that.’
KarenE, it’s true. He absolutely believed I was still his. I think he still does to be honest. I know for the rest of my life, I’ll have to expect a message, email, call, etc out of the blue from him.
I won’t be responding to him though.
I’m so sorry your children felt used as well. That’s just heartbreaking. It’s a lesson we all have to learn in life but to learn it from a parent like that is just terrible.
They want it all!! My STBX who has been planning a new life with his girlfriend (almost 20 years younger than he) for 2 years, then leaves messages saying “I hope this isn’t the end of our story”, admittedly I think he was drunk! He repulses me, I want to be a million miles away from that deluded self entitled man. Our story!! OMG
Wow. Just wow.
I got something similar from my ex-husband, something like “we still have the future to make this work”. Uuuuhhhh no!
Why can’t these people just let it go!
He was trying to intimidate you into some kind of compliance under the threat “I know where you live.”
Similarly, mine told me IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR DIVORCE that he took out a million dollar life insurance policy on me. I NEVER had life insurance after becoming a SAHM because he said “there was nothing to insure” because I didn’t bring in a salary any longer.
That’s just disgusting for him to say something like that to the woman who gave you children. Karma is going to hit him hard one day…if it hasn’t already.
I got followed while he was berating me for leaving the garage door open. Mind you it was a Saturday morning and he was outside doing yard work. One of my ear piercings is crooked and he hated having to buy me earrings knowing that my left earring would be crooked. The list continued.
For 15 years, she threatened to never have contact with her mother or sisters again after some perceived slight or show of preferential treatment — but of course, within days after each instance, she was acting as if as if nothing ever happened.
Then one night, I committed the sin of saying: “Come on, you know you don’t mean that.”
What followed was an hours-long rage like I’d never seen before, concluding with: “You’ve NEVER supported me. I’ve never in my life felt so alone as I do right now.”
That gave me chills, UXworld. I got the EXACT same two sentences from my ex when I dared to point out that he was taking his job stress out on me every night when he came home.
Also got shouted at and called names for taking his laundry off the line while it was still very slightly damp (we lived in a desert). Let’s see, what all else didn’t I do to his standards?
Laugh, eat, walk, exercise, open and close and lock doors (this was a biggie), drive the car, park the car, keep our accounts, organize the house, talk to people at parties, touch or look at things at other people’s houses, talk to his family, kiss him, make love to him, disagree with him…exist?
I got told by my Ex-Wife (an alcoholic) that I have a drink problem because I am tee-total. She could not see I did not drink because the best way to deal with her drunken toxicity was to stay stone-cold sober.
She then doubled down, saying that she was embarrassed to have her friends round, because: as a non-drinker, I don’t know how frequently I need to top our guest’s glasses (making me a terrible host) and; that me not drinking with them made her and her friends “uncomfortable.”
Hey LookingforwardtoTuesday, that’s deflection by your Ex. I got that too. As a non drinker the person I made most uncomfortable was him!! I’m quite sure the same was true of your Ex. It’s exhausting, alcoholics can never bring themselves to admit their drinking is not normal as that threatens one of their greatest pleasures, their drink. My Ex was a beautiful person utterly corrupted by alcohol (joined AA recently and called me a week later while drunk!). He will never change as he’s such an unwavering sense of entitlement- to his highs. Much better off without that type of person. They might be beautiful on the outside but they are very ugly on the inside. Only those close to them get to see that ugly side.
Olly,
Seeing what drink does to someone you love is heartbreaking; it destroyed both her looks and personality. The woman that I loved (and our children loved) is now long gone.
Worst of all, it brought out (or allowed to escape) a side of her that I never knew existed.
Her family (who I am still in contact with and thankfully get on with very well) have said that they always knew that side of her was there – she hid it from the kids and I for years – but hoped that we would never be exposed to it.
I changed the baby at the airport coming off the plane. He cussed and shouted. Then I also changed the bodice. So over the top the diaper would have kept the dripping poop of the skin! Apparently this time added was the time when another passenger took my suitcase by mistake. Because that’s what typically happens when you don’t run to the belt with the business travelers with their Rimowas. (We were returning home btw with a house full of everything needed).
I inconvenienced him by deciding to keep up breast milk by pump for a full year when the baby wouldn’t feed of me. I walked, vacuumed and all with a discreet bra pump and took the annoying decision to sit with a medical pump every six hours while trying to teach the baby to drink again.
The day the baby stopped drinking from me he shouted at me and we had a fight. I went dry for three days. I let him cut my mother’s lifeline.
This breaks my heart. I loathe him for you.
Thank you, motherchumper. Lots of love
It’s sad how stress can effect one’s body. After my xh walked out on us, I never had another period. Dr said I went into menopause early, at age 44, because of the stress.
Me too, RoseThorns. Never heard of that before. I was in the middle of my period when I found him (gps) at a motel with his skank.
Period stopped that day, never to return. Sure made me a believer in mind/body connection.
((((GermanChump))))
Your post touches my heart.
Please know that you are an amazing Mother to do all of these things to provide your precious child with your breast milk.
I don’t know what age your child is now, but one thing is for certain, this child will always know who is the loving, caring parent.
Big big hugs to you.
I am so sorry you were treated so badly.
Peacekeeper, thank you for your words. Indeed, my child is in primary school now and has beautiful, flawless teeth even though lazy with brushing. So I guess the breast milk did kick in as hoped for (ex’s family has many dental problems).
Love to you, all sane parents and all of CN from the Aegaen coast (we are able to travel within Europe again). Different topic, I know, but two chumps with kids, we do find comfort and joy comparing mom’s vacations with all the troubles traveling with fuckwits.
Anyone else out there who never got it right for vacations/destination? I remember trembling while trying to establish in Spanish what the bandwidth of WiFi would be in the different rooms in a resort.
I’m loving this one. Let’s see:
I threw out socks that had large holes in them.
I added apples to a crumb cake.
I went to bed too early (of course I had to wake up at 5a every day to get to work as the sole breadwinner).
I was no fun because I didn’t want to sky dive.
I didn’t want to watch him play video games for hours on end.
I demanded “perfection” , AKA I got upset every time I found out about another affair.
OMG, mine berated me for going to bed too early too! I got up at 5am, drove the kids to his moms, went to work, drove on hour back to pick up the kids, made the meal, took care of the kids while he was out running around. Then he laughed at me for being tired. I literally fell asleep while driving I was so exhausted! He would make jokes about it in front of our friends, then I would explain the situation and the friends would stop laughing at me and just say “oh.”
Me too!!!
This one was not me not meeting his needs it was my then 4 year old daughter (stepdaughter to ex). She and I would say a cute little grace before dinner that she learned in daycare; “God made the sun, God made the sea……”. Shortly after we were married he threw a temper tantrum at dinner and forced us to say grace the way he wanted because he was “the man of the house”. From that day on it was “Bless us oh lord…” we even had to make the sign of the cross – I am sure Jesus was impressed ???? I remember being completely mortified. I wish I would have thrown him out right then and saved myself 20 years of abuse.
This is hilarious! I forgot that my ex would occasionally say in an authoritative tone, “BECAUSE I AM THE MAN OF THE HOUSE!”
I made too big of a deal about where he and kids put their shoes. It was his “rule” shoes came off when in the house – how terrible of me to not want them in the middle of the kitchen! Oh and I gave him a hard time about how much time he spent at work – seems I was right since he was having an affair with a part time employee.
I, like so many, folded shirts wrong.
I like quilts and other handmade household items, but I don’t like jerry-rigged cars that frequently fail, and I don’t agree that both count as “handmade”.
I believe it isn’t monogamy unless it’s mutual.
I don’t want animals that are half wild
(half wolf dogs, etc.) living in my home.
I don’t want to engage in high risk travel.
These things all make me boring and/or irritating.
Living without him is GLORIOUS.
At one of many attempts at marital counseling, his one complaint about me was that I was disrespectful because I didn’t park as far over in the driveway as he wanted me to making it so that he didn’t have as much room on his side of the driveway as he would like (he had enough room and never mentioned my atrocious behavior to me prior to counseling). It is unbiblical to be disrespectful toward your husband this way.
I wasn’t loud enough when I orgasmed.
geez..
Same. Ugh. These people are such aholes.
#metoo
Oh wow. I had the opposite problem. I wasn’t allowed to make a peep during sexy time. He literally told me to shush!
The weird thing is, I never was super vocal anyway. Yet he still made it a rule I had to be quiet.
Jeff I Am,
I dated a guy over a year after my ex left me and the first time we had sex, he was upset with me because I didn’t tell him I had orgasmed (several times, actually!). I thought the heavy breathing and moaning would make it obvious but… Why would I tell him and stop it??? Why not enjoy it and go with the flow???
Then, before he orgasmed, he had to tell me about how close he was the whole step of the way – like an orgasm play by play. It was a bit of a turn off, honestly. Afterward, he said to me, “THAT is how you tell someone you orgasmed!”
Ok…bye, bye!!! Won’t play with you again! Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!
“You left your parents’ home not knowing your cuts of meat!”
This was thrown at me in admittedly his wildest tantrum, where he ranted via text 2 hours straight, after flipping out and abandoning me on my birthday (first birthday apart, we were reconciling!!!)
Now, just to put this in context, I wasn’t raised on a farm in the 50’s, and neither was he, but rather by neglectful parents who apparently also failed, amongst other sins, to give me the proper palate education, which resulted in me not particularly liking fried veal cutlet, which he happened to love.
Re: abandoning you on your birthday: I’ve been reading “The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist” by Debbie Mirza, and evidently this business of ruining holidays and birthdays is pretty typical. Glad you’re on the other side!
That is a great book! I highlighted every item that pertained to my ex — and half of some chapters are bright yellow! I knew my ex was passive aggressive, because we both had to take the MMPI (a personality test) as part of a pre-adoption home study. My ex came back with passive aggressive and hypochondriac personality traits.
Fast forward 25 years — when I asked why he had an affair, my husband said it was because I had called him passive aggressive when he weed whacked my peonies down. (He never did any yard work — until he decided to weed whack my emerging peonies in a flower bed I built and told him I had planted bulbs.) The irony of having an affair for being called passive aggressive was totally lost on him.
I had also purchased new dishes after 42 years and he was afraid I would yell at him if he chipped a coffee cup. My marriage would have been saved if only he knew it was open stock!
I was told he left our 25 year marriage because I didn’t thank him for hanging the kitchen cabinets and I embarrassed him when I spoke. That’s reasonable, right???!!!
Ugh, I’d have a hard time not responding with, “you hung the cabinets?” just to piss him off haha
I had the audacity to go through menopause. It was a sign of aging and he couldn’t handle it.
I got told “dried-up old women are yucky. I don’t want to hear one single word about it.”
So I went through menopause with no medication, no doctor, nothing but shame and silence 🙁
I wouldn’t let his work colleague have him as a boyfriend. I was a bad wife!
Wish I could key his car or something for ya 😉
Alice, thank you!
Everything in my ex’s life that he was unhappy about was my fault, because he wasn’t happy because of me. He was fat because of me. He wasn’t writing because of me. He failed to become a Full Professor because of me. But the most fundamental way I failed him is that I was a woman and he wasn’t, and he resented me for that.
The exhole accuse me of not telling him he was fat! Look in the mirror dude! By the way, he was looking portly last time I saw him. Maybe I should have told him. I guess that’s the AP’s job now.
My ex, also, blamed me for making him fat! Despite the fact that I had been on a diet for a year and a half before he left and tried to get him to exercise with me each night and eat more vegetables. I ended up having to make my healthy dinner (lean protein and lots of high fiber veggies) and then mashed potatoes for his side. After dinner, he’d eat a bowl of ice cream while I’d allow myself one little chocolate. But, yet I made HIM fat! After he left me for his 21-years-younger girlfriend, now fiancé, he lost about 60 lbs in four months. I don’t know how he did it. But she must have had some influence on his weight.
I once got yelled at because my teenage (about 14 at the time) son didn’t bring the trash can in. I told him to go upstairs and remind him because teenagers forget. Mind you my son is a great guy…. very little attitude.
He then proceeded to berate me because that was coddling, and why should son bother to listen because he “knows you’ll remind him”.
That’s right….my 14 year old son looked at that trash can and thought to himself, “I think I’ll ignore it because my mom will remind me later”.
I proceeded to tell ex to fuck off because everyone knew his snotty ass daughter didn’t lift a fucking finger in the house growing up. Ex muttered something under his breath and walked away.
Somehow my son became a fine engineering student of almost 20 who helps me with whatever I need.
I could never keep the house clean enough. It was my fault he was unhappy at his job.
Mine too. Also every bad decision he’d ever made was my fault. It took some considerable therapy to get it into my head that his bad choices weren’t my responsibility. I had a very tough time with that particular abuse.
I’m really wondering whether we were all married to the same guy!
Same. It was my fault his tattooing career failed, and I was a lazy freeloader. I would try to do what I thought he wanted, but it was always wrong. I asked him what he wanted and I got “I shouldn’t have to tell you, you should just know.”
One that stands out is I was experimenting with new recipes. He came home and I told him what I was doing and that one of the experiments did not work and tasted disgusting. He went straight to it, tasted it, sneered at me and said, “This is absolutely disgusting.” I was like, “I JUST told you it’s disgusting. Why did you immediately go taste it?” He just shook his head at me like I should be ashamed of my existence. And I was just like “I KNOW it’s gross why did you taste it? It makes no sense.” He was so desperate to shame and berate me that if I handed him any opportunity to do more of it, he hopped on it in a way that was often laughable toward the end. In fact, that’s what eventually got me to break up with him. I eventually was laughing so hard at his lame attempts to tear me down there was a point I couldn’t take him seriously at all anymore and I dumped him.
One of your posts earlier this was so right that probably the best indicator someone is cheating on you is that they find fault in you for the most insane things. Chumpy and willing as we are to take blame and responsibility for too much, even we can go WTF? This doesn’t even make any sense.
Mine did this too! I made falafel with canned beans one time FOR THE KIDS. He had some weird hand up that food = love. The kids and I agreed that the recipe was alright, but not as good as the more time consuming recipe. He sensed from afar that there was home cooking happening, and came home early. He proceeded to go on and on about how terrible the falafel were (while continuing to consume said falafel). I finally hollered, “I’m SO sorry. I promise to NEVER use canned beans again.” Which made him shut up, but look at me like I was the crazy one.
HANG up, not HAND up.
What a picture of contradictions! Complaining about the food while continuing to consume it!! Makes my head hurt!
I forgot to shut off the hallway lights in the morning before he left for work. Trying to get two kids ready for school, fed, lunches made. I didn’t hit the ‘clear off’ button on the microwave if a few seconds were left on it. I didn’t stop making him and the kids dinner when he came home from work (which was usually 15 minutes after I got home from work and picking up kids) and greet him at the door with a kiss. I left the garage door up a couple times after leaving for work. I didn’t put the clothes away fast enough after I did all the laundry, cleaned the house and took care of the kids – on Sundays when he watched the football game. He told me he left because of a bunch of my small failures, for the 20 year younger girl at his work. I just didn’t give him enough attention, not enough sex, not outgoing enough, my hair wasn’t the right color, at the end there was nothing about myself that I even could like. And I blamed myself for a long time, for all of it – its what I deserve cause even I think I suck. Its good to be out from under that, because I was exhausted.
” I just didn’t give him enough attention, not enough sex, not outgoing enough, my hair wasn’t the right color, at the end there was nothing about myself that I even could like. And I blamed myself for a long time, for all of it – its what I deserve cause even I think I suck. Its good to be out from under that, because I was exhausted.”
^^^This. Replace “not outgoing enough” with “too outgoing” and this is an exact, EXACT description of what it was like when my ex discarded me after 18 years of marriage, for a woman he had known all of 3 weeks.
It’s so helpful to read that other people have gone through pretty much exactly the same thing I did and survived. Thank you, NewLife2017.
They really are emotional vampires, aren’t they? And when they’ve finally sucked you down to a gray husk, in spite of you putting up the fight of your life for yourself and them, they look down in disgust at what they’ve created and step over your body and on to another victim….
That reminded me! He constantly berated me because I wouldn’t dye my dark brown hair with red stripes. My job (the one that paid for his lifestyle) wouldn’t allow variations in hair color but man I had to hear about it constantly. “If you loved me you would put red stripes in your hair”. I was also apparently fat as well (I’m 5”2” and weigh 110 pounds). They are emotional vampires!
My X called me fatso for years, even though I told him to stop! Then acted like it was a funny joke. ????
It took me two years to get out of my own head, and not have his words keep replaying. And I am working towards trying to know in my head, that the girl he left me for, he is still with (they were just friend you know), isn’t better then me and IS the next victim. Before I enforced no contact, he told me he was going to counseling to see how he can be a better husband and father, and no I wasn’t worth it for him to do it for me. She was everything I wasn’t he would say, she gets the best of him cause she deserves the best he says. The kids will see what a real mother and father should act. He also would ask me what I was going to do, since who would want a women like me, with all my mental instability. (note: my daughter was using his phone and found texts back and forth between ex and girlfriend, laughing about how ugly I am – and she told me and said – Mom I look like you, what does he mean you are ugly?) If he caught wind that I dating (which I wasn’t) he would ask, does he know your nuts? Its a long road to Tuesday.
What a toxic abusive ass. I’m sorry he treated you this way. I know exactly how that feels.
Your ex has a cruel streak and there is no help for that nor will he change. His OW could shit ice cream doesn’t matter she’s next in line for his abuse. He’ll just keep sticking it to you, telling you how wonderful she is, as long as you allow any conversation with this defect. Shut down all lines of communication and if the kids are underage use an app for scheduling. Oh and OW deserves him, you and the kids so not…
NewLife2017, my heart breaks for your daughter. I wish she had never seen those text messages. Praying she will have a strong, confident, positive self image that isn’t damaged by toxic comments from a toxic father.
@Newlife2017 A good friend told me: “Why do you listen to him? HE IS A LIAR.” Yep, that is my go to when I remember him telling me “she is so beautiful. I’m so sorry, but you are just not beautiful like that.” He hit me right where it hurts, my deepest insecurity. You know what? He is a liar and I am beautiful. So are you, Newlife 2017 – and so is your daughter.
I had another friend point out that beautiful people have integrity and his measurement has nothing to do with true beauty. AND, I’ve seen pictures of her and she is a hag – I also read her text messages to him -she is AWFUL.
Your comment: I was exhausted also rings true with me. I was so tired. Two months out, I can feel my energy coming back.
I hate that guy for you. It’s important to realize that this was abusive behavior and that no normal person would treat someone this way. The behavior you described is downright sociopathic. All of those awful things he told you about yourself were meant to undermine your self esteem and weaken you so he could hold all of the power. You will heal from this and now you get to decide your worth, and not depend on a shitbag sociopath to define it for you. Sending you a big hug. Surround yourself with some good people who appreciate you, you deserve it.
I was also married to a Sociopath. Ex said that leaving me for AP was the best decision he’d ever made and he’d never been happier in his life.
He also took it upon himself to call my Mother who was dying of cancer at the time, the same thing.
No one in their right mind would want to fuck me, I’m mentally unstable, a pathological liar, pathetic, and told our son he didn’t have to respect me because I don’t deserve to be respected.
He comes across to outsiders as a “nice guy,” charming, articulate, funny, all American great guy.
People would tell me how lucky I was to be married to him.
His personality would change behind closed doors. Mr. Personality would turn into an arrogant, sarcastic, vile, hateful monster. He’d say it was my fault because he’d say he got along with everyone but me. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time but now I know it was just the fact that I was breathing.
“I got chased down in the shower with xh holding a pickle that he needed me to see how badly I fucked up buying the brand I bought. I had no idea what was happening.”
Well, if a pickle is a stand-in for a particular body part, then yes – Xmaschump DID buy an inferior product. His.
For me it was pie. I made the wrong kind of pie and I should have known it wasn’t one he liked despite his eating it and complimenting me on it. So I told him no worries, I would never bake a homemade pie for him ever again. And I haven’t.
My mom has a story like that about my dad. She burnt one cookie sheet’s worth of cookies in the batch and my dad said “You always burn the cookies.” So she resolved never to make them when he was around again (but stayed with him another 20 years…).
Love this!
Mine had an issue with never taking stuff out of his pants pockets at the end of the day. It was my job before doing laundry to fish all of the leftovers out of his constantly gritty pockets. Seriously, it was like he purposely picked up dirt to put in his pockets. He called one day in a rage that I hadn’t checked his pockets and washed a check that he left in his jeans. (The check was from our company and it would take one phone call to get it replaced.) I told him I hadn’t done any of the wash because I was too busy entertaining his guests that were staying at our house. He told me to never do his wash ever again because I was so lousy at it. THANK YOU!!! One less thing for me to do. It took him about 2 weeks to realize that I took him literally on that mean comment. Oh, and the check? It was found a day later in the pocket of his pants. (Took over a year for him to acknowledge his mistake, but only because he was hoping to get me to do his laundry.) They hate it when what they say bites them in the butt.
Mine screamed at me how bad my ironing was one time. He had been a marine and knew how to iron and I was obviously so terrible at it. So I stopped doing it – and he walked round like a bag of shit for the next however long because he never ironed anything!
Good move! Way to stick to your guns! Let the cheaters do their own laundry if they don’t like your way. Laundry is NOT apart of the marriage vows!
I also failed to check his pockets before washing his trousers.
There was a £5 note in them, and he screamed at me that it was *my job* to check his pockets before washing.
Oh dear, where to start. The choice is unlimited. There was dishwasher stacking of course. Then the fact that I kept a mop and bucket in the kitchen to wipe the floor over. If he ever saw it he would throw it across the kitchen so I had to clean it up – but that just made me do it even more. Then there was the time in D.C. he was supposed to go for an interview “at a mall”, so I said I reckon it’ll be down by the Potomac because that strikes me as where all the cafés and shops will be (we were new there). He went apoplectic, did I even realize what a stupid cunt I was, could I be any more thick? (we’d been married about 4 weeks at this point). Turns out I was right. Trouble is, he was usually so drunk he wasn’t often coherent so he could have an argument in an empty cupboard and I’d be none the wiser. Oh and then “someone must be stealing money from my bank account because it’s all gone”. Yeah, try smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day, buying nightly rounds in the ho bar, getting drunk and ordering yourself a $60,000 car – but no, someone was obviously accessing his bank account and stealing his money!
Forgot to say, he was actually WORSE if I ever proved him wrong. Better to know I was right and just keep my mouth shut rather than prove him wrong. Then he went from zero to 1000 in about 10 seconds flat!
Yes, I also know that lesson. NEVER let that ego get bruised. We’d both know he was wrong about something and play this stupid game of pretending it didn’t happen. And I gladly participated because that was way better than raging, ego bruised asshole. The kids eventually learned this rule too. I still feel so awful for keep them in that crap situation.
Beenchumped, absolutely this x
Sounds like I said “Im going to put the single bed in the center of the room” (we were separating and it was going to be my room) and he went BATSHIT on me, because “everyone knows single beds go along the wall”, and “how could I possibly be that stupid!?” and he kept going on for a good 5 minutes and I just stood there all deer-in-the-headlights, despite knowing at that point very well who I was dealing with.
He yelled at me for baking fish fingers for dinner. He actually carried one into the family room and waived it at me because it was also cold. He had stopped coming home for family dinner for months but still expected a nice meal in front of the TV after screwing around. Entitled douche nozzle.
Apparently, I was short with a grocery store cashier in our early married days. We were married over 24 years before he informed me of this horrible deed. Also, I served crab cakes on Thanksgiving. Mind you he bought the meat & made them – it was all his idea.
Oh my gosh, this sounds just like those blogs that “shame” toddlers. Like “he cried because the cookie was gone. He ate it.” LOL. Overgrown toddlers, all of them!!!
@ LaLaLandChump: hahahaha!! Thank you for this! Helps me keep it in perspective. He is an overgrown toddler. I even had to teach him when not to tuck his shirt in – he dressed like a toddler. oye vie!
I applied my deodorant too noisily and ironed his polo shirt collars wrong
Also none of this would have happened if I hadn’t spent so much money on holidays- erm the holidays you came on and with me when we booked them ????????♀️
OMG – holidays
We were lucky enough to be able to afford to go to USA and Canada for 3 years in a row .
Of course this costs quiet a bit of money but I seemingly decided this all by myself , never once asked him or talked to him about spending £0000 to go to these places .
I said to him what you just sit there and then next minute you are in San Fransisco ( the entire other side of the world ) and I never once asked you / talked to you / saved the money I just dragged you there ?? He just looked at me like shit as he knew he was lying .
What does noisy deodorant sound like? ????????
I was going to ask that! ????????
No idea- always find my Dove roll on pretty quiet ????
One night, I told him I like my steak cooked to medium versus so rare it’s still mooing and put it back on the grill. Keep in mind after 5 years, he knew how I liked steak cooked.
The next morning he was staring at the wall seething with anger. When I asked him what was wrong he said “you should just be grateful I cooked and eat what’s made for you”
I spent 3 hours apologizing. Oy.
Oh geez! In the end he got extra aggravated with anything I did. Even critiqued my cooking when he had always loved it before and never lifted a finger to help clean up afterwards either.
So one night I added dish-soap to his meal, whoops.
He never noticed the difference. But I had to clean his mouth out somehow right?
I got … “why’d you buy red grapes, you should have bought green!” “Why’d you buy red leaf lettuce, you should have bought Romaine!” “Why are you folding laundry at 10:00 at night??” “What *do* you do all day??”
It was an endless barrage of “why’d you …??!!??” I couldn’t do anything right in his eyes.
He eventually took over the grocery shopping and then it became, “you’re lazy, dumb and stupid!!”
Thank God that’s now all behind me and he’s someone else’s problem!!
The worst of it is, he managed to alienate our three now-adult sons from me (haven’t seen or heard from them for 7 years) and they’ll continue the cycle with their own girlfriends/wives.
Im sorry for the alienation of your sons.. Hang in there, have hope, who knows what tomorrow will bring.
I shopped wrong too.. never mind I did the shopping, but rarely did I do it correctly.
I’m so sorry Sue????????????
I’m sorry about your sons Sue.
I know the pain and frustration.
I dropped a tissue in the marriage counselor’s office while sobbing about his cheating.
“You see what a mess she is?!”
You have GOT to be kidding me. What a piece of human garbage.
The counselor, God bless him, gave my now ex such a glare of contempt as he picked up the tissue from the floor and comforted me. It was such a stark contrast to how I was used to be treated.
I made the 120 lb Great Pyrenees “nervous” when I treated him differently that the two cats by letting them lounge on the sofa and not him. ???? I also caused him pressure when I would constantly watch him so he didn’t hike his leg and piss on my furniture.
We split in 2016. In 2010 and 2011, I sent him emails in an attempt to get across grievances I had without getting emotional about them. It didn’t work, so I stopped doing it. He used those against me 5 and 6 years later.
what a thread…
I not only bought the WRONG broccoli, I also used the WRONG bag to buy it with.
I did lots wrong, I have no idea how anyone could ever live with a failure such as me 🙂
The broccoli though.., that was one that I still get a kick out of.
The “last straw” for XH was I bought organic sugar and stored it in the yellow domino sugar tub. How dare I switch his sugar on him, I obviously did it with malicious intent…
Also, when his Dad had heart surgery, he didn’t go until a day or so after the surgery, “because there’s nothing he could do but sit there during the surgery”. His step brothers were very upset with him for not being there during the surgery (they were all there with their mum). I told him that I agreed with them, they had a right to be upset and it would have been nice for him to be there just to support his step mom. He then raged at me for trying to make him feel bad.
Hmmmm….where should I begin?
When we were dating he told me that I didn’t love him because I bought Duncan Hines instead of Betty Crocker cake mix. Then he would get confused about which kind he liked, so would berate me if I bought Betty Crocker instead of Duncan Hines.
I wasn’t “allowed” to buy sheets/towels/or anything for that matter without his permission. Post-separation I gave him every ragged towel that he was still using to wipe his ass from his undergrad days and bought more for me and my kiddo.
He hated the fact that when we first got together I had a favorite soap opera, so he ridiculed me so much that I stopped.
He hated the fact that I read – he once screamed at me for reading his GQ magazine before him. He demanded that I stop reading romance novels – though he was addicted to watching porn – he once picked up one of my books and started reading the passages out loud in an attempt to humiliate me and got very upset when I asked should we pop on his computer to see what he had been up to that day. He would get irate if I dared pick up my Kindle during the commercials of shows we were watching together. It didn’t matter what I was reading – he just didn’t want me reading at all.
When we were breaking up and I said I just couldn’t trust him anymore, he looked me in my face and said “Trust goes both ways – for instance, I can’t trust you to go to the grocery store and pick out the right items.”
Sigh. I wonder what the hell took me so long to divorce him!
Oh that reminds me, my reading was just my way of trying to show I was better than him!
Mine hated if I read too.
Oh yes, please, let’s watch golf. Again.
And I had to sit and pay attention to the show, not read or do a puzzle or a game on my iPad.
Hahaha! this: Then he would get confused about which kind he liked.
Baaah hahaha! The XBF was seriously stupid, too. He got confused all the time. I stayed because I thought I could fix him and the situation. Now I know better.
I can’t fix stupid!!!!
–I didn’t participate in church enough (I worked full time and had 4 children)
–I wasn’t hospitable enough to dinner guests (I insisted that they leave by 10 p.m.ish, sometimes 11. Interesting that the OW–a fellow pastor who frequently came for dinner, sometimes unannounced– wanted to stay later)
–my standards were too high (I asked for basic help w household tasks like the dishwasher)
–I wasn’t very fun in bed (well. Why would I want to have adventurous butt sex with someone who invalidated my needs on a regular basis and, at every turn, made me feel less than? And a side note: what is it w butt sex and middle aged men?)
I have no idea – but I forgot to add “buttless sex” to my list of transgressions, lmao!!
Now that I’m dating and can set new boundaries, I’m finding that there are plenty of men who enjoy buttless sex. Which for me is so much more enjoyable than butt sex.
It’s still a jaw-dropper for me, that two pastors cheat together! How? They did read the scriptures a few times, didn’t they?
Song of Solomon for sure
Oh my god don’t get me started on anal sex and middle aged men…
I used to work in an adult toy store. It was a good job. Woman-owned small bussiness, LGBTQ friendly. It was one of my favorite jobs. The owners and managers really wanted to establish an atmosphere of being welcoming and giving good information to the customers (there are a lot of sleezy porn shops that don’t really give a shit what you do as long as they make a buck…this was not one of them.)
Obviously we had a section for anal toys and products. A lot of people would ask about it, thinking there was something “weird” or “messed up” with them being curious about it. It’s a lot more common than they’d think. Nothing really wrong with it if both parties are interested in trying it. So we would usually tell them about safety, what kinds of toys are best for starters, etc. You get the idea.
But oh…my…god I cannot COUNT how many times middle-aged men would come in and start pressuring their wives to look at the anal toys no matter how many times she’d say “NO.” And I would say 100% of them were pressuring it on their wives, but should she suggest he be the recipient (“pegging” is what it’s called) he would recoil in horror at the very idea. And this would happen almost exclusively with middle aged, balding, out of shape men. (Sometimes it would happen with younger couples with the guys being the frat-boy type too, but mostly it was the middle-aged guys.)
Usually when we saw this happening, we were allowed to reinforce that “No means no.” Often the man would approach one of the store associates, asking stupid shit like “What would be a good thing to start with for her?” or “What can you tell her that would get her more into the idea?” And we’d be like “Nothing, because she said no.”
You can imagine the looks of relief of their wive’s faces when they heard someone was on their side.
It’s astonishing.
@Kara Thank you so much for this story. It’s so helpful and validating to all women out there who have been pressured to try anal sex in spite of a lack of comfort with the idea. Agreed, if both parties are into it then great – go for it. But I really appreciate your way of shutting down men who were trying to rope you into pressuring their partners to go outside of their comfort zones. I recently ended a relationship that otherwise seemed great, but this kind of pressuring became a repeated issue and I finally had to see it for the red flag that it is.
Yep. If they can’t take a NO for an answer, then it’s a huge red flag. Especially with sex. One of the reasons I left my ex husband was that. He would think “No” meant “we’ll come back to it later.” We almost got into an argument in front of a friend about this. The friend (that I don’t talk to anymore) brought up the idea of a threesome with me and my ex husband. I said “Absolutely not,” my husband said “We’ll put a button in it.” Conversation proceeded something like:
“We’ll put a button in it.”
“The button is NO.”
“I mean for later.”
“It will still be NO later.”
“We can talk about it then.”
“There’s nothing to talk about, I’m saying no.”
“Think about it?”
“All my thoughts are NO.”
My ex husband is straight, I’m straight. Our friend was a guy. So this threesome he was trying to push me into would have undoubtedly been all about them doing whatever they wanted to me, or me doing whatever they told me to do. I saw zero potential for any kind of enjoyment in this. I have no idea to this day what made my ex husband think this was acceptable.
The point was to degrade you and abuse you – make you into one of his porn fantasies, which will then give him the opportunity to shame you. Sick. Congratulations on standing your ground 🙂
Kara you are a hero. Seriously. You and your associates were probably the only ones who ever stood up to these creeps anally raping their partners. None consent it not consent. Thank you, from someone who’s serial cheater/serial rapist ex pressured into anal sex with subtle violent threats and threatening actions.
alternatively, I was too hospitable.
I tried to “force his friends to dance at a wedding”, by asking people if they wanted to dance with me.
I was “a control freak and a master moderator” by making sure to include a shy friend in the conversation over dinner (he would say “maybe she has nothing to say and you’re forcing her to talk)
I was “too nice to his mother” because I brought her a bottle of liqueur as a gift for Christmas.
I “smiled too much”.
The tears I cried because I was a doormat for that man…
He was a hoarder and I couldn’t clean his stuff without touching it. I didn’t buy Tupperware. I didn’t sit next to him on the couch. I couldn’t fix his computer when it broke. I didn’t make enough money. I didn’t buy all the snacks he required. Could not find parking spaces, stop traffic jams or prevent us from taking a wrong turn while driving.
Was not able to find one particular pen out of the 20 we owned. Oh, and he threw a soda at me because I turned down the radio during an argument.
You couldn’t fix his computer?! Haha! Yep, that one sounds like both my narcissist mom and my narcissist ex-husband. I’m way smarter than both of them, and therefore, they always assumed that if I said I couldn’t do something, I really just didn’t want to.
I ironed his French cuffs wrong. How he suffered. When he complained of this at a work dinner all his male work colleagues said they did their own ironing. That shut him up. Ha. Ha. Ha. Still makes me chuckle.
The most absurd thing I ever got from a narcissist ex was, after meeting his parents, for their Easter Sunday dinner no less, and after looking at a ring, and having him tell me he wanted to get married, my deadly transgression was….BELIEVING HIM.
No, seriously, I’m not kidding.
When he called to dump me (after ghosting me and answering maybe two text messages for two weeks…you can imagine I wanted to know what the fuck was going on…) he told me he was “Just being cute” and called me crazy, insecure, unstable, and in need of serious help for actually believing that he wanted to marry me.
Because I mean come on…he only went to a jewelry store with me, checked my ring size, had a holiday dinner with his parents and called me his wifey and asked where an ideal honeymoon spot would be for me…what kind of crazy person thinks that’s serious???
Yikes! This is the sign of a psychopath.
Oh my god he was SUCH a freaking narc psycho. While I can say being lied to about marriage intentions was one of the most hurtful things that has ever happened to me in my life, hands down, it was a dodged bullet. Hindsight is 20/20 and I’m relieved I did not marry him and that he’s out of my life. He was really, really good at turning on the charm channel but now I realize it was just a bunch of white noise.
Lovebringer69 lamented loudly that I had not once in 20 years bought him socks or jock for father’s Day. He was correct I bought him gaming consoles and iPhones. Such a terrible wife.
“Don’t ever wear red pants again.” He thought he was such an “artiste.” Apparently red pants offended his esthetic sensibilities. I also had the wrong (natural) hair color.
Yes what is it about reading? I’m a college professor. Reading is my life. Yet ex would get all sad sausage when I would revel in reading on vacation. It’s like he would be offended by my enjoyment of it. And I was still putting out plenty.
I don’t know how to put images in comments, but I’m picturing Gaston from Beauty and the Beast holding Belle’s book upside down saying “How can you read this?? There’s no pictures!”
Yes this!!!
I’m a former college professor–an English professor–nearing the end of my first year of retirement. Finally I have the time and freedom to read what I want to read (instead of what I “needed” to read to stay current in my field), when I want to read it, for as long as I want to read it. It’s heavenly.
Mine resented my reading too. He bought me a Kindle for Christmas one year and then got pouty when I actually used it! I started only reading when he wasn’t home. By the end, I had a lot of free time to read because he was out getting high and screwing around. Of course, by that point I was so depressed, I lost interest in reading.
Now I can finally spend time studying = READING for licensure testing. He would become angry if anyone interrupted him when he was “concentrating” but my attention to studies or books would cause him to interrupt me endlessly. I am so glad to have silence in my home now.
I got angry.
Never mind what he did.
The problem was not his porn addiction and his refusal to make any effort to keep the living space habitable and his charming way of blaming me for his every act of self-sabotage, relationship sabotage, and sabotage of anything I did that wasn’t about him. The sole problem was that I got angry instead of worshiping him.
Sounds like my ex. I remember after one argument (I don’t recall what it was even about, it was something absurd) he told me the next morning that it’s not fair that I get angry at him. Like that was it. Full stop. He said it isn’t fair that I get angry at him. There was nothing else to this. His phrasing was “You look at me like, ‘how dare I’ and you can’t be doing that.”
…what.
Addendum: my anger was so incredibly powerful that it kept him from making any change in his behavior and forced him, FORCED him to keep doing exactly what he would have done anyway. But if I hadn’t been angry, everything would be fine. For some time, I tried very hard (thanks RIC) to not be angry and nothing changed.
It’s almost like all he wanted was a scapegoat.
My XH insisted I apologize for making him angry, which was very easy to do. I had a talent for it. One time I made him so angry he punched me in the face with a closed fist, 5 times in a row. Boy did I have to apologize for that one! I never thought he would forgive me.
So glad you’re away from that! Kudos to you.
You survived, IamChump. NO ONE deserves this. No matter what the abuse, they will look for a scapegoat. You had nothing to be sorry for. Your wounds will heal, he will not.
He nearly lost his shit when I suggested we could do with tidying up our massive shed because I couldn’t get a clear path up to shelves. He said he was going to burn it down and it was like I had mortally wounded him.
He said he could bear living with all this stuff. Stuff being you know house stuff, kitchen stuff, stuff you have in a house, to run a household.
Around the same time he was disgusted how dirty our fridge was (been in the last few months of nursing my dad through cancer so you know kinda busy. It was quite bad, so we set to to sort it and he was going ugh this hasn’t been cleaned since we’ve moved in. Yeah right 4 years. Mate, you wouldn’t know because only once in that 4 years have you helped me and you wouldn’t even know what a fridge would look like that hadn’t been cleaned for 4 years. Obvs questions here about why he didn’t just flaming do it giving what I had on my plate but no he has to prove his absolute disgust for me.
Then he put on insta a picture of my kitchen utensils draw which is large and deep and full of (guess what) kitchen utensils of many kinds and stuck a picture of it on insta because apparently the fact everything wasn’t in neat lines was disgusting to him and his caption was ‘Where the F is the Potato Peeler’. Only one person liked it. I think we know who. He was still living with me at the time. Now wish I had rammed the knife sharpener up his ……
haha! I moved in with dopey and his refrigerator was filthy and water was leaking out of the bottom. I cleaned it and the leaking stopped. One day he says, “The refrigerator isn’t leaking anymore.” To which I replied, “yeah, because I cleaned it.” This was early on and I think that was the start of him hating me… because I cleaned his filthy house. Lesson learned: filthy house = red flag!!
I remember once my XW said she wanted a new pillow. So I bought a very nice one at Costco. When I gave it to her she screamed “Why can’t you buy a pillow I wanted! I don’t want this one” and then proceeded to throw it out the bedroom and it landed in my daughters room. Now, she did not tell what brand of pillow to get. My daughter picked it up and asked if she could keep it. My daughter loved that pillow.
I bought my ex a GPS for his birthday. Note: he never bought me any gifts. He opened it and said” Can you be any cheaper?” This thing is junk and threw it aside. I returned it for a refund. He always insulted my gifts. I never bought him another gift again.
I told my XW I will never buy her another gift again. She can pick it out and I would pay for it. DDay would happen soon later.
I wouldn’t read the Five effin Love Languages. Found out later that he and his ho-worker both read it and discussed it at length. Obviously, she’s a better fit.
I wouldn’t watch Game of Thrones, but the OW would.
I wonder if they do dungeons and dragons together too? Losers (insert eye roll here)
Hope she likes watching a losing football team year and year with him. So thankful I don’t have to anymore.
I think she must be with my ex – go Lions lol!
I “wouldn’t let” her buy leather seats for our new car. (This was eight years prior and we were struggling financially to pay off her student loans.)
During a trip to Boston I refused to visit Cambridge. (We’d had a wonderful time walking around the city all day and I was exhausted.)
I got irritable when trying to teach her how to use a computer. Guilty.
I didn’t accompany her and our baby to a few baby birthday parties. (I was exhausted from our new baby and I needed a break a few times having attended nearly every other baby function.)
I questioned having a rabbi officiate over a religious oriented wedding ceremony. (I’m not religious but ultimately agreed. No problem. But my momentary sin apparently had never been forgotten nor forgiven.)
All these crimes and more made me the monster I was.
Wow, we all sure got insulted by these judges of the world! The only one I can remember, is he told me for years that I walked too heavily!? He could hear my steps, and they were too loud.
I didn’t even know what a mindfuck that was, because at the time I was too busy adoring him, and trying to make things perfect for him. I’d NEVER get a compliment, no matter what I did. Grrr, now that I’m older and wiser, I know he just loved keeping me downtrodden!
Oh, I sense this is going to be a very long list of comments today – but it’s fun right? I remember making myself a hot chocolate with milk and he went absolutely batshit crazy because “the instructions say to use water”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “But I like it with milk”! “But the instructions say to use water”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chumpity-Chump
I didn’t make pizza correctly. So, I listened to his cooking lessons -how to spread sauce correctly, slice onions etc- nagging and anger on this went on for years and the lessons to perfection continued. After D-Day he told our marriage counsellor I purposely made pizza better than him to one-up him.
Now we are separated and he’s teaching our kids. I felt like telling them not to get to good at making pizza-his ego can’t take it.
I did not sufficiently share his interests in pop culture. Hence, we did not have enough common interests. Nevermind a 25-year shared history and two kids, ages 4 & 8.
Also I did not do the laundry right.
Also I did not do the grocery shopping right.
Also I did not always tuck my hair behind my ear the way he liked.
Also I did not always wear his favorite outfits.
Also my favorite bra did not lift and separate the right way.
Also I had morning breath when I woke up in the morning.
It makes me laugh a little each time I think about how the OW is engaged to be married to that bag of dicks. Natural consequences.
hahaha I just remembered a few
I did not know how to properly place utensils inside a dishwasher.
I used too much skincare (with the implication that I am shallow for moisturizing)
I did not care about climate change because I bought avocados from the grocery store.
One time he left me a note in the bathroom lamenting the fact that I put the toilet paper on the holder “over” rather than “under”
WHAT!!! But that is the correct way. TP goes OVER, not under. Visit ANY hotel and TP always goes over. Even the cheapest motel knows that!!!
What is it about the TP? My ex complained I put it on the holder the wrong way too (can’t remember what he considered the ‘right’ way). I added to his dreadful suffering from my first misdemeanour by telling him he could turn it round any time he liked as I didn’t care which way it rolled. He got so angry.
Waffles weren’t crispy enough.
I cried when my mother died. Somehow that was all about him.
I orgasmed wrong. He tried to teach me the proper way.
My dresses were too short. My dresses were too long.
The way I ate bananas deeply offended him.
Oh god he was always telling me what to say and how to say it and starting fights when it wasn’t right
My worst offenses were if I did or said anything that made it seem like I was smarter than him.
OMG quicksilver, I ate apples the wrong way!
I was alternately too much of an alpha female or on other days not a ‘go-getter’. Even though I made triple what he did. And he had every toy he wanted.
Giving any weight to one word out of these degnenerate’s mouths is the mistake. Scrape them off like the dog shit they are.
My XW told me that because I did not see the subtle signs and hints she was giving off, indicating that she needed me more emotionally, it meant that I did not love her enough. Therefore she needed to leave me.
Oh, abso-fucking-lutely!! “If you can’t understand what I want/need/demand/require by now, you clearly don’t love me.”
It’s the perfect set-up for goalpost-shifting. Everything you say or do is wrong, because you’re “just supposed to know.”
Interesting how many cheaters require mind-reading isn’t it?!
Yes! The mind-reading requirement. I missed it in our vows.
That rings a bell. I think in my case it was “If you really loved me, you’d just know.”
I forgot to buy limes for his gin and tonic. This was an inexcusable offense! He hadn’t told me he wanted limes. I guess I was supposed to read his mind. He said it was summer and I should know he likes G&Ts in the summer.
What a jerk!
CN, I’m embarrassed to admit that I went back to the store. *sigh*
I’m embarrassed for the things I did too. He used to tell me how I wasn’t as smart as him and I’d always say, “I’m sorry”. I was so stupid to give into his way of thinking.
Mine had a melt-down when I deliberately counted 7 spaces on the game board–moving my piece 1,2,3,4,5, 6,7– instead of simply moving the 7 spaces in one fell swoop.
He said that I had embarrassed him in front of our friends.
Spinach@35, I do the same thing you do!! Lol!
It got on my exhusbands nerves too, I never understood that. (insert shrug)
Alice,
Now I realize that, in addition to being a low life, he really isn’t that smart…AT ALL.
Glad I was able to establish this during the divorce proceedings. He did and said so many dumb things, and he lied! Not a good look! Even the judge-mediator was scratching her head. Plus he hired a bad lawyer. Tweedledum and tweedledee.
I ended up with much more in the end. Maybe I count spaces on the game board, but I think it’s my deliberateness and attention to detail that won the day! Oh, and my ability to research and hire the best lawyer. He took the first one that was recommended to him.
That dang impulsivity (and doing things in one fell swoop) screwed him in the end!
Spinach, good! It’s like they under estimated us so much they literally thought we didn’t know what we were doing when it came to divorce matters.
It may have been my first rodeo with divorce, but I wasn’t going to let him abuse me anymore and I was going to get all that was owed to me. I’m glad you did the same!
I made him feel infantile when I brought his lunch into the office where we worked together each day. Apparently I didn’t let him do enough for himself. He had to spend a session with his psych analysing how me doing things for him was actually causing him psychological stress. Still, he never once made his own lunch or mine or the kids for that matter.
Omg@! Yesssss. I stopped at the deli with our 3 little kids in tow. Had to get an Italian sandwich for him. Lo and behold…I accidentally got the sandwich with oil and vinegar. He didnt want oil and vinegar that time!! He wanted me to pack the kids back in the car and drive back the deli to get the right sandwich??!!! Also, I wouldnt cut my hair, I wouldnt just wear sneakers, tshirt and Jean’s every place I went. He probably just didnt appreciate me looking nice when I left the house. So many rules….. I am so glad to be free of his oppression.
Oh so many to choose from. I would say the worst was XH screaming from the top of the stairs once holding one of his shirts on a hangar. “You don’t hang my clothes the same as you do yours! You don’t give my shirts the same attention! It’s disgusting I have to walk around in wrinkled shirts!” Ummm. His entire closet was color-coded and ironed. But perhaps I missed a polo in my “lack of attentiveness.” ???????? Glad to be rid of that! Happy Fri-yay!
#MommieDearest
I couldn’t cook, shop or fold laundry correctly. I vacuumed “wrong,” and the kitchen — even while I was actually cleaning it — was never clean to his specifications. Yet strangely, he could not articulate those specifications or tell me what was wrong with the way I cleaned the kitchen. I loaded the dishwasher wrong, and he’d pull everything out of the dishwasher and slam it into the sink. Any piece of stone wear that survived that insult went back into the dishwasher “correctly,” and surprise — the dishwasher wasn’t nearly as crowded. I was also lousy at my full time job (from which I contributed my paycheck to our joint accounts). He knew this because he used to work in the same ICU as me ten years before and according to him, nothing changed in ten years. He’d regularly ream me out about my lousy job skills in front of my colleagues when he and his team had reason to be on my unit. He’d also regale them with tales of my lousy cooking (made-up tales).
The deal breaker was that he didn’t like me driving the boat. He always had to be at the helm, which left me with the charts and the handheld GPS and non-functional depth sounder. (He swore up and down we didn’t need a chart plotter, it was too much money and I was just lazy for wanting one. So we’re motoring down a twisty, windy river in Georgia that doubled back on itself over fifty feet or so and he spotted a range marker for ships downstream and immediately asked me if we were going to pass in front of it. I was concerned with the schoals we were passing over, and didn’t immediately flip through other pages of the chart to find the answer to his totally irrelevant questions. He ripped the spiral bound charts out of my hand, leaving a tear across one palm and when I protested that it hurt, he told me not to be such a baby. Then he couldn’t figure out if we passed in front of the range markers (we didn’t) and had such a tantrum he deliberated drove the boat aground. We were stranded for about 13 hours until the evening tide rolled in and fortunately, was higher than the high tide we’d run aground on. We were able to get the boat floating again without any holes or other obvious damage. He motored less than a mile down the stream and then turned off the main channel headed for an anchorage he’d read about while we were sitting hiked out on the high side of our sailboat and I, at least, was praying that it didn’t tip all the way over. (He was texting his fuckbuddy the whole time.). I was scared we were going to lose our boat and everything we owned including the dog and our lives. (THat had happened to a couple in the same spot a few months before.). So anyway, he turns into this anchorage, motored right past the suitable spots and stopped in four feet of water and before I knew what he was doing, he dropped the anchor, shoved me out of his way and shut off the engine. We were in about four feet of water. It was high tide, 12 foot tide. We draw four feet, so when low tide came we’d be marooned high and dry. He said he didn’t care; he was tired. And what made me think I knew anything about navigation anyway? Clearly I was reading the charts wrong, because there was plenty of water there.
Daylight came and we were high and dry, our anchor sitting out on the rocky bottom and no water for a quarter of a mile. And I was reading the charts wrong, eh?
I realized I couldn’t trust his judgement and I was afraid he’d kill me, either by deliberately running the boat aground or by blowing us up while he was working on the propane line while smoking a joint. But we were miles from the nearest civilization and the alligators kept cruising by our boat eyeing the dog. Damn, I’m lucky to be out of that mess even though I did have to give up my boat to get out of it!
They don’t care what they destroy in their tempers do they. Mine would “aim” his car at things and bounce of them and then I’d have to find the money to repair the damage he’d deliberately caused!
Your ex is a total maroon (literally). As a former yachtie and livaboard, I can say with authority he had no business owning a boat, let alone being near ine.
I also have so many to choose from but my favorite is that after 20 years of marriage, his affair was my fault because I failed to define clear boundaries…20 effin’ years!
I bought mature cheddar cheese and not mild cheddar cheese. I clearly am responsible for everything.
Bit annoyed he still ate the mature after I purchased the mild…. might still be in my fridge? But that’s another character flaw of mine.
Hmm..After 10 years I heard I FORCED my husband to marry me:) As far as I remember I was already moving out from the apartment we were living in together (I was fed up with “I don’t know if I want to marry after 3 years of life with you”) but he ran to me with the ring…Gosh…Why didn’t I see the red flag then when he couldn’t make up his mind?? I should have left. If man loves – he wants to be with his woman..Eh
1st Ex-‘ I want to be with a woman who looks good in a bikini’ (I had just had children… by most people standards I looked really good btw).
‘You like to decorate’ (we are talking moving around the throw cushions -I never did any big projects or spent any big money)
‘ I want to be with a businesswoman’
(I have a great career with a full pension just not in business)
After a long stretch of being single and raising my kids….
2nd H. ‘ There wasn’t enough intimacy’ Me: ‘ What do you mean by intimacy?’ Xh’ ‘sex’ me: “? I never turned you down’ Xh ‘ Yea that’s true’ (btw I initiated 1/2 or most of the time)
Xh ‘it was all about the kids’
Me ‘? They are only here 1/2 time and I told you you came 1st’
Xh ‘ yea that’s true’
I won’t get into comments about gardening and something I said five years ago that annoyed him…
After 25 years together, my ex-husband suddenly became cranky, secretive, and had a million complaints about everything I did. I thought he was going through a midlife crisis but in retrospect know that these are all signs of cheating. His complaints? It made him angry that whenever he got into the car after I’d been driving it, the radio was set to NPR. The other thing was that I didn’t zero-out the microwave after using it. He had never mentioned this in the decades prior. To try to make him happy, I started to zero it out every time I used it. I saw later that he himself never set the microwave timer back to zero after he used it. When I brought it up, he didn’t know what I was talking about (he obviously forgot all about it). Trying to fix my “faults” didn’t work, of course. If I made changes, he just came up with new petty complaints.
“you didn’t hug me right” = 3 days of withdrawal
“these olives have PITS in them” = RAGE
“you had abs when we first met…”
“just tell me what I need to do!” and then never doing any suggested such thing.
“I need you to greet me at the door happily every day, excited to see me, why aren’t you happy all the time?!”
“are you just going to sit around or are you going to be pro-active with your life?” when I was deep in a depression.
SCORE!
Oh my…. the same thing! To the t
“You just hate Mexicans!”
My XW asked me to fix the security/screen door. The hinge was integrated into frame and do to metal fatigue could not be repaired. She was not happy at the expense. I replaced it and later set it at the curb as it was time for our annual neighborhood clean-up week. Later while we were working outside she noticed an older Hispanic looking guy examining and then loading up the screen door.
“There, see! Someone just picked up that door and is going to replace the hinges. You wasted money!”
“No. He only thinks he can. The hinge is integrated into the fr_____.
“You just hate Mexicans!”
Her affair partner was Hispanic.
LOL!
I couldn’t get my ex-husband to mow the lawn! Some women have no idea how good they have it when a man will actually want to do things around the house.
I did all household chores including mowing the lawn, taking out trash, and shoveling snow. Then I would get criticized when something wasn’t done. (I also worked full time and went to grad school.) The worst was the day I came home and he started yelling at me that the light blew out and I didn’t change the light bulb, so now he had to sit in the dark! Chumpy me ran to the kitchen to grab the bulbs to change it.
WTF was wrong with me that I tolerated this treatment for years? Whenever I get down about my life, I think about things like this and realize how mighty I am now.
I can relate to this so much Sicatrose. I was always doing things on my own in the household and I had a full-time career as well.
In the end, he once told me all I did was “mother” him and he hated it. I was so confused, he didn’t complain for 7.5yrs and all the sudden it was a problem that I took care of him?
He really thought he was Gods gift in the end. I couldn’t do anything right. I will never apologize for taking care of my husband (now exhusband), that’s what you do for the person you love.
I agree Alice, I thought I was taking care of my husband. I thought that I was being a good wife.
But now I see that I was just making life easy for an unappreciative man-child. I think part of the drugs and cheating was him rebelling against “Mommy”aka me.
My new partner does things for me, as well as, me doing for him. We do chores together. Now that I see what a reciprocal relationship looks like, I will never tolerate anything less.
I’m so happy you are in a much better relationship now Sicatrose, I love updates like that!
I hope I can find someone someday who wants to take care of me as much as I will take care of them. The fact that you found it after being with such an ungrateful man, it gives me hope.
Thank you Alice! Neither my partner nor I were looking for a relationship, but some mutual friends introduced us and we just hit it off! He was previously married to an abusive cheater. I think that the best thing about us both being chumps is that we both knew what we wanted and didn’t want in a relationship.
You seem like a really caring person, I hope that you will meet someone who appreciates you!
At the height of my chumpiness I never even lived with the SO who expected me to: wash fold dry his laundry; wash dry put away the accumulated dirty dishes in his sink; grocery shopping for him (and I was supposed to telepathically know what to buy, and pay for it myself); drop off and pick up his dry cleaning; gas up his car; wait all afternoon and evening for him to decide if we would have dinner or sleep over; on a few hours notice cancel all my plans to travel with him while he attended a conference and I sat in a hotel room available if/when he was ready to break away from the conference; plan and book elaborate trips that he would then cancel or change at whim.
He tried to make me the maid and booty call and fallback girl for whenever he failed to line up some other dinner or travel companionship. He didn’t expect me to clean his bathroom, vacuum, etc. only because those maid services were included in the rent.
We spent holidays with his family or my family, which I mistook for proof that we were a couple.
He was on salary, “worked” 80 hours/week, and as far as I could see accomplished nothing. Only long after he discarded me did I recognize all the red flags of how he had been cheating on me.
I was too happy all the time. He said that made him feel like I didn’t need him. (As it turns out, he was right about that. 🙂 )
I also failed to appreciate the Clone Wars as the true Star Wars canon.
Haha! That reminds me of how the EX said that he could no longer be attracted to me because he felt that I didn’t admire him enough. I didn’t follow around behind him telling him how awesome he was all the time and that I would die without him, I guess. Well, it’s pretty difficult to admire someone who steals, cheats, and lies.
It is so obvious to me now that these tactics are invitations to the pick-me dance. I’m supposed to fall all over myself expressing my new-found admiration so that he will be attracted to me again. You were supposed to wail that you couldn’t live without his awesomeness.
I had “ too much energy”
Turns out lots of men like that
Xo
In our cash-strapped early days, we agreed that we wouldn’t buy each other birthday gifts the first year because we’d just bought fairly expensive bikes.
Our birthdays are days apart. His comes first.
Sooooo, per our agreement, I didn’t give him a gift but instead made a heartfelt card.
He sulked for 3 days and didn’t explain why he was in such a bad mood.
Then, on my birthday, he tossed an unwrapped box of pearl earrings at me. No card.
Crazymaking! What a jerk! But boy did he train me. From then on, I always inundated him with lavish gifts. Ugh. I hate that I gave in to him. He was like a baby–a physician on the outside but a crying, colicky baby with unmet needs on the inside. Ugh!!!
On another birthday, I heard him on the phone with him mother, complaining that I’d made crepes for dinner. I thought it was a special treat. Guess not.
These were inexcusable offenses as were the raft of others that I committed throughout our 35 years of marriage.
What a jerk!
I had a habit of leaving open Diet Coke cans in the fridge because I couldn’t finish the whole can at once. It was too much. Just too much for him to bear.
I didn’t support him because our daughter occasionally chewed gum with sugar when he said she should chew sugarless gum. It was actually his mother who bought the gum with sugar, not me.
I, like so many others, did not know how to fold clothes. It should look like we live in a Baby Gap and I just fold the regular way.
I was also totally unreasonable my requests of his time. This was a big one for him. He worked 60 hours a week and I wanted to find a way to have dinner as a family ONCE per week. I clearly did not respect his job or that he was the financial provider because I wanted to see him occasionally.
There are so many things but ultimately I did not like his double life when I found out about it. My reaction “broke” him. My words were so evil and mean he had to leave me. (For a 21 year old he met online).
After I watered the vegetable garden, I left the hose out in the driveway.
She yelled out the window: “A real man would have rolled up the hose when he was done!” The implication was clear. Her AP was a “real man” and I was lesser than that.
I, too, committed the mortal sin of not coiling the hose.
I stopped coloring my hair cuz I wanted to have a more natural look. This was about the time his affair started. So he told me I looked like a mother with my graying hair. His AP was 20 yrs younger. And of course we didn’t have enough sex. So I dutifully dyed my hair again. The sex ..he was getting enough of that somewhere else. COVID has once again brought out my natural locks and I’m keeping them.
I took “all” the pillows on the bed to prop my head up when I sat in the bed to read a book. I also locked the front door when he was outside walking the dog once. Even today, 5 some years later, he thanked me because I didn’t do his parenting job and obtain a camp carpool sticker for him….. “Thanks for making this more difficult than it needs to be – but I didn’t expect anything different from you.”
I didn’t like to fly fish enough. (I went all over the world fly fishing with that man.)
I didn’t want to get a tattoo. (Looks like he and the whore got matching, massive, upper-thigh tattoos of a fish.)
Note: Thank God I’m free of that obsessed angler and that I never agreed to a fish tattoo.
Damn, can’t top the pickle story, but… I didn’t put my shoes by the door away fast enough? I didn’t like having my hair pulled during sex, so that meant I wasn’t attracted enough to him. (Heaven forbid if I didn’t climax). He claimed I wouldn’t let him have his friends over? But he never asked? And when we did have people over for a football watch party we invited his friends, so I have no idea where he came up with that. I even called him out, “So you’re blaming me for an answer I never gave to a question you never asked?” I’m not a morning person (been that way since we were dating, it was not even remotely a secret, lol). I like to be on time. It was like he was throwing darts at a dart board to see what would stick when I was trying to address his lying and lack of quality time with the family at couple’s therapy.
What happened to the nice girl you used to be? (You killed her)
You don’t do the laundry correctly. He started doing his own. Every one else at work does theirs too. (Yay! Less work for me! And a lot of your fellow employees are cheaters. I didn’t know that part!)
You don’t have to fold my clothes. Different day, you fold my clothes wrong.
You can only ask me about something 3 times!!! Yes that was a rule! I had to keep a mental list or there would be rage. He would deny there was such a rule.
You are not sick. You could go back to work. (Yes, I am sick. I’m officially disabled!)
When he had surgery, he refused to go back to work on light duty. He even threatened to file a grievance. (Doctor said he could go back to work on light duty with accommodations.)
OMG CL I just spat tea all over the keyboard, you are hilarious.
I got stressed before holidays…..
I didn’t like violence on TV…..
I didn’t get drunk with him (alcohol gives me really bad migraines)
my bad
I bought the wrong meatballs. Had bought everything for ex to make kids dinner while i was working late and thought fresh would be better. “I could have finished making the kids dinner a half an hour ago if we were at my house and used the frozen ones!”. This was soon after ex moved out to live with AP leaving me to raise our 3 children. Fast forward 1 year. Divorce finalized last month. I have the kids, the house and get a little child support to boot! She still lives with AP and sees kids once a week and every other weekend. I couldn’t be happier!
Our son played competitive ice hockey. Because our son was good, big, and strong, my ex basked in kibbles every game. He assumed he was the envy of every dad there.
But, one day, our son committed a true error that deflated my his father’s narcissistic needs and plunged him into near despair. Son’s crime? He didn’t fight another kid during the hockey game. Apparently, the poor kid violated some unwritten hockey code that you fight the opposing player who hit one of your teammates. He was only 11 at the time. My ex (I kid you not) was in tears as a result of this mortal wound to his self-esteem.
And, again, one of your stories take my breath away… We were married to the same person. OMG!
Our DD was completely ignored and not celebrated at all for being being an exceptional athlete. He couldn’t brag or take on the manly achievements as his own because she was a girl.
He wasn’t happy for or proud of son (was jealous actually) BUT rather he somehow (sickly) acted like son’s achievements were a reflection of himself. A really fucking weird dynamic as son got older.
Wow! That’s interesting.
I actually think my ex did it with both our daughters and son, but I think it’s because they played the same sports he played growing up and/or as an adult.
With son: Once when our son was in college, my ex and he actually played a men’s league hockey game together. After the game, my ex admitted that when our son scored a goal, he felt HE had scored the goal. He said it was a weird sensation as if he’d completely merged with our son. Btw, for a visual, our son is 6′ 2″ and muscular whereas ex is a scrawny 5′ 9″ (he would dispute the scrawny part, but there’s most definitely age-related muscle loss, despite his best efforts. He’s in his 60s).
With daughter: In a parent-child soccer game, he showed off (it was embarrassing to watch because these girls were only 12 and he–a grown man–was trying WAY too hard) and said he did so to show the coaches what kind of “potential” our daughter had.
In writing this, I now realize that it was only sporting and academic achievements that he reveled in. And only sports that he himself was relatively good at.
Example: he hated to swim, and they were on swim teams, so he didn’t care about their swimming achievements and barely went to meets.
Also, they excelled in music (singing and the violin). He missed concerts.
So, interestingly enough, the hyper-identification (inability to separate himself from his kids) only seemed to occur in sports he was relatively successful in himself and in academia (he was a good student and went on to become a physician).
Later he became jealous of them. Our daughter became a physician, too. In his narcissistic way, he assumed she did so to be like him. Over time, he became jealous because she went to a better medical school and seems to be on track for a more prestigious career.
Are there any psych people on this site who can explain this to me?
I have a Ph.D in clinical psychology and twenty five years of clinical experience.
This is TYPICAL narcissistic behaviour and thinking.
Other people exist only as objects for their use, including by being exactly like them (which is why they can’t stand if we like to read and they prefer to watch TV or vice- versa) and by providing ego kibbles either by direct constant adoration or by allowing them to bask in their kids or their subordinates or their team’s (meaning THEIR) achievements.
And they are SUPER envious of others, sooooo envious …..
Why they are like this and do such irrational things is another, unresolved question. Likely involves a combo of genetics (naturally low on the emotional side of empathy, although the smart ones can do the cognitive part, making them better manipulators) and upbringing (having a narc or sociopathic parent).
I stupidly spent years trying to not only support him emotionally so he would be happier, but also to EXPLAIN things to my Ex, like how not only the kids and I but he himself would be much happier if he treated us better. I needed to understand that there are predictable patterns to their behaviour, and that they DO NOT CHANGE. That’s it, that’s all.
And I am living proof that having psych or other mental health training doesn’t protect us from these idiots. Because my Ex wasn’t the ‘sparkly’ kind of narc, I didn’t recognize it for years. And because I was trained by people who transmitted the unspoken assumption that anybody could change, anybody could be understood and could be helped to function better and be happier, I thought that was true. Nope, there are definitely exceptions.
Fortunately there is now more and better info readily available, in books and on the Web, including CL and CN.
I’m at the beginning of the journey, but I see the weird competitiveness even now:
My kids are gifted( that’s somehow his achievement )
Whenever kids have fun with me- he somehow interrupts, complains
When he was mean to our son, and son started talking to me more- he said that we shouldn’t create alliances, cause that’s unhealthy ( while doing it himself, it was childish in my eyes, I didn’t participate in some weird competitive dragging kids)
Of course- the fact that he was having sex with hookers/ sex with me while pregnant, while breastfeeding…. that he was fucking while I was at the hospital with our baby… that’s a tiny noise…
I had the audacity to ask for a knife when he was bringing me mayo. I asked why he was gone so long to check the mail at his parent’s empty house and he said he had to do dishes- at an empty house. He was SO MAD I asked. I’m assuming he and OW were meeting up over there again. Oh LAWD there’s so many more, it would take all day.
Every morning EX ate a Yoplait yogurt. I did not eat those yogurts but was expected to purchase them for him. And if he ran out, he’d scream at me “where’s the yogurts??!.” I’d say “I’m sorry, you didn’t tell me you were down to the last few or I would have gotten more.” He would be so angry! He just expected me to “know” and I guess he thought magic fairies filled the fridge. He also expected (every single morning) with his breakfast: a glass of milk, a hot cup of coffee, a glass of water, a glass of orange juice and a smoothie. NOT. KIDDING. Inevitably I’d forget one or run behind and he’d be so pi$$ed. I’m not sure how he didn’t leak himself just getting up from drinking that much liquid.
Oh, my sins! My sins! I once got overly involved with a charity project helping orphans in Uganda for three months. Three months of hell, apparently, that he brought up as an excuse for his cheating ten years later! I too bought wrong-brand food, including Hunts ketchup instead of Heinz. I had the audacity to serve spaghetti with a side of sliced pears instead of applesauce. Everyone knows that you serve spaghetti with applesauce. Also, I was raised in a different country, and sometimes it shows. It was like I wasn’t even trying to pretend I always lived in the USA. Sometimes I still even celebrated holidays from my home country and taught the children a little of the language. True that he knew I was from that country when he married me, but I guess he thought marriage erased all cultural ties. But my WORST sin was having a moral compass. I had this rigid sense of morality, and no one could ever measure up to it! He had to cheat. I was no fun with that darn sense of morality. I was controlling him with it–I mean, not enough to prevent him stealing and cheating and lying… but enough to make him uncomfortable about it. Darn me.
“Everyone knows you serve spaghetti with applesauces” FTW! That would be news to my Italian mother!